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

People looked at him. Even the Zygotes gave him sidelong looks, when he laughed or said something
unusual, when they thought he wouldn’t see. It was easiest just to pretend he didn’t notice. But that was
hard with the occasional visitors, who were more direct. “Oh, you’re Nirgal,” one short red-haired
woman said. “I’ve heard you’re bright.” Nirgal, who was constantly crashing against the limits of his
understanding, blushed and shook his head while the woman calmly surveyed him. She made her
judgment and smiled and shook his hand. “I’m glad to meet you.”

One day when they were five Jackie brought an old lectern to school with her, on a day when Maya was
teaching. Ignoring Maya’s glare, she showed it to the others. “This is my grandfather’s AI. It has a lot of
what he said in it. Kasei gave it to me.” Kasei was leaving Zygote to move to one of the other
sanctuaries. But not the one where Esther lived.

Jackie turned the lectern on. “Pauline, play back something my grandfather said.”

“Well, here we are,” said a man’s voice.

“No, something different. Play back something he said about the hidden colony.”

The man’s voice said, “The hidden colony must still have contacts with surface settlements. There’s too
many things they can’t manufacture while hiding. Nuclear fuel rods for one, I should think. Those are
controlled pretty well, and it could be that records would show where they’ve been disappearing.”

The voice stopped. Maya told Jackie to put the lectern away, and she started another history lesson, the
nineteenth century told in’ Russian sentences so short and harsh that her voice shook. And then more
algebra. Maya was very insistent that they learn their math well. “You’re getting a horrible education,”
she would say, shaking her head darkly. “But if you learn your math you can catch up later.” And she
would glare at them and demand the next answer.

Nirgal stared at her, remembering when she had been their Bad Witch. It would be strange to be her, so
fierce sometimes and so cheerful others. With most of the people in Zygote, he could look at them and
feel what it would be like to be them. He could see it in their faces, just as he could see the second color
inside the first; it was that kind of gift, something like his hyperacute sense of temperature. But he didn’t
understand Maya.



In the winter they made forays onto the surface, to the nearby crater where Nadia was building a shelter,
and the dark ice-spangled dunes beyond. But when the fog hood lifted they had to stay under the dome,
or at most go out to the window gallery. They weren’t to be seen from above. No one was sure if the
police were still watching from space or not, but it was best to be safe. Or so the issei said. Peter was
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often away, and his travels had led him to believe that the hunt for hidden colonies must be over. And that
the hunt was hopeless in any case. “There are resistance settlements that aren’t hiding at all. And there’s