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

By this time she and Nirgal were alone, the other kids running around the dunes or up and down the
strand. Nirgal bent down to touch a wave as it stalled out next to their feet, leaving behind a white lace of
foam. “It’s two seventy-five and a little over.”

“You’re so sure.”

“I can always tell.”
 Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html




“Here,” she said, “do I have a fever?”

He reached up and held her neck. “No, you’re cool.”

“That’s right. I’m always about half a degree low. Vlad and Ursula can’t figure out why.”

“It’s because you’re happy.”

Hiroko laughed, looking just like Jackie, suffused with joy. “I love you, Nirgal.”

Inside he warmed as if a heating grate were in there. Half a degree at least. “And I love you.”

And they walked down the beach hand in hand, silently following the sandpipers.



Coyote returned, and Hiroko said to him, “Okay. Let’s take them outside.” .

And so the next morning when they met for school, Hiroko and Coyote and Peter led them through the
locks and down the long white tunnel that connected the dome to the outside world. At its far end were
located the hangar and the cliff gallery above it. They had run the gallery with Peter in the past, looking
out the little polarized windows at the icy sand and the pink sky, trying to see the great wall of dry ice that
they stood in—the south polar cap, the bottom of the world, which they lived in to escape the notice of
people who would put them in jail.

Because of that they had always stayed inside the gallery. But on this day they went into the hangar locks
and put on tight elastic jumpers, rolling up sleeves and legs; then heavy boots, and tight gloves, and finally
helmets, with bubble windows on their front side. Getting more excited every moment, until the
excitement became something very like fright, especially when Simud started crying and insisting she
didn’t want to go. Hiroko calmed her with a long touch. “Come on. I’ll be there with you.”

They huddled together speechlessly as the adults herded them into the lock. There was a hissing noise,
and then the outer door opened. Clutching the adults, they walked cautiously outside, bumping together
as they moved.

It was too bright to see. They were in a swirling white mist. The ground was dotted with intricate ice
flowers, all aglint in the bath of light. Nirgal was holding Hiroko and Coyote by the hand, and they
propelled him forward and let go of his hands. He staggered in the onslaught of white glare. “This is the