"Kim Stanley Robinson - Mars 3 - Green Mars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

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The very next afternoon the wave machine was waving too well, as Jackie put it. They were playing on
the beach, and thought they had the big breakers gauged, but then a really big one surged over the ice
filigree and knocked Nirgal to his knees, and pulled him back down the strand with an irresistible
sucking. He struggled, gasping for air as he tumbled in the shockingly icy water, but he couldn’t escape
and was pulled under, then rolled hard in the rush of the next incoming wave.

Jackie grabbed him by the arm and hair, pulled him back up the strand with her. Dao helped them to
their feet, crying “Are you okay are you okay?” If they got wet the rule was to run for the village as fast
as they could, so Nirgal and Jackie struggled to their feet and raced over the dunes and up the village
path, the rest of the children trailing far behind. The wind cut to the bone. They ran straight to the
bathhouse and burst through the doors and stripped off their stiff garments with shaking hands, helped by
Nadia and Sax and Michel and Rya, who had been in there bathing.

As they were being hustled into the shallows of the big communal bath, Nirgal remembered his dream.
He said, “Wait, wait.”

The others stopped, confused. He closed his eyes, held his breath. He clutched Jackie’s cold upper arm.
He saw himself back into the dream, felt himself swimming through the sky. Heat from the fingertips. The
white world in the green.

He searched for the spot in his middle that was always warm, even now when he was so cold. As long
as he was alive it would be there. He found it, and with every breath he pushed it outward through his
flesh. It was hard but he could feel it working, the warmth traveling out into his ribs like a fire, down his
arms, down his legs, into his hands and feet. It was his left hand holding on to Jackie, and he glanced at
her bare body with its white goose-pimpled skin, and concentrated on sending the heat into her. He was
shivering slightly now, but not from the cold.

“You’re warm,” Jackie exclaimed.

“Feel it,” he said to her, and for a few moments she leaned into his grip. Then with an alarmed look she
pulled free, and stepped down into the bath. Nirgal stood on the edge until his shivering stopped.

“Wow,” Nadia said. “That’s some kind of metabolic burn. I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never seen it.”

“Do you know how you do it?” Sax asked him. He and Nadia and Michel and Rya were staring at
Nirgal with a curious expression, which he did not want to meet.

Nirgal shook his head. He sat down on the concrete coping of the bath, suddenly exhausted. He stuck
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his feet in the water, which felt like liquid flame. Fish in water, sloshing free, out in the air, the fire within,
white in the green, alchemy, soaring with eagles ... thunderbolts from his fingertips!