"Kim Stanley Robinson - Mars 2 - Blue Mars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

attention to her for long enough. Nadia was going on about control of orbit
and safe-conduct passes and the like.
The strange Sax interrupted Nadia, having never heard her, and said, "We've
promised to ... help them out."
"By sending them more metals?" Ann said. "Do they really need those?"
"We could ... take people. It might help."
Ann shook her head. "We could never take enough."
He frowned. Nadia saw they weren't listening to her, returned to the table.
Sax and Ann fell into silence.
Always they argued. Neither conceded anything, no compromises were made,
nothing was ever accomplished. They argued using the same words to mean
different things, and scarcely even spoke to one another. Once it had been
different, very long ago, when they had argued in the same language, and
understood each other. But that had been so long ago she couldn't even
remember when exactly it was. In Antarctica? Somewhere. But not on Mars.
"You know," Sax said in a conversational tone, again very un-Sax-like but in a
different way, "it wasn't the Red militia that caused the Transitional
Authority to evacuate Burroughs and the rest of the planet. If guerrillas had
been the only factor then the Terrans would have gone after us, and they might
well have succeeded. But those mass demonstrations in the tents made it clear
that almost everyone on the planet was against them. That's what governments
fear the most; mass protests in the cities. Hundreds of thousands of people
going into the streets to reject the current system. That's what Nirgal means
when he says political power comes out of the look in people's eye. And not
out of the end of a gun."
"And so?" Ann said.
Sax gestured at the people in the warehouse. "They're all greens."
The others continued debating. Sax watched her like a bird.
Ann got up and walked out of the meeting, into the strangely unbusy streets of
east Pavonis. Here and there militia bands held posts on street corners,
keeping an eye to the south, toward Sheffield and the cable terminal. Happy,
hopeful, serious young natives. There on one corner a group was in an animated
discussion, and as Ann passed them a young woman, her face utterly intent,
flushed with passionate conviction, cried out "You can't just do what you
want!"
Ann walked on. As she walked she felt more and more uneasy, without knowing
why. This is how people change- in little quantum jumps when struck by outer
events-no intention, no plan. Someone says "the look in people's eye," and the
phrase is suddenly conjoined with an image: a face glowing with passionate
conviction, another phrase: you can't just do what you want! And so it
occurred to her (the look on that young woman's face!) that it was not just
the cable's fate they were deciding-not just "should the cable come down," but
"how do we decide things?" That was the critical postrevolutionary question,
perhaps more important than any single issue being debated, even the fate of
the cable. Up until now, most people in the underground had operated by a
working method which said if we don't agree with you we will fight you. That
attitude was what had gotten people into the underground in the first place,
Ann included. And once used to that method, it was hard to get away from it.
After all, they had just proved that it worked. And so there was the
inclination to continue to use it. She felt that herself.