"Kim Stanley Robinson - Mars 4 - The Martians" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

homely, actually) they knew they were only going to be here for a year or
three, and then out and back home to England. Almost anything could be endured
if there was some release foreseeable at the end of it, coming closer every
day. Without that it would be a life sentence - no exit indeed. Exile, to a
sur-antarctic wasteland of frigid airless rock.
Surely it made better sense to cycle the scientists and technicians to
Mars in a way similar to that of the early Antarcticans. Tours of duty at
small scientific stations, the stations built and then manned continuously,
but by rotating teams, with individuals out there for three years each. This
would be more in keeping with recommended lifetime maximum radiation doses.
Boone and the others on the first trip there and back, two years before, had
taken about thirty-five rad. Subsequent visiting scientists could stick to
something like that.
But the American and Russian space programmers had decided otherwise.
They wanted a permanent base, and they had invited scientists to move there
for good. They wanted a commitment from people, no doubt hoping for a similar
commitment of public


interest back home - interest in a permanent cast of characters that could be
learned, their lives become a matter of drama for public consumption back on
Earth, with its bottomless addiction to narrative - biography as spectacle.
Part of the funding effort. It made sense in its way.
But who would want to do such a thing? This was a matter that troubled
Michel greatly; it headed the long list of double-binds he felt applicants
were put in by the process of selection. In short, they had to be sane to be
selected, but crazy to want to go.

Many other double-binds accompanied that basic one. Applicants had to be
extroverted enough to socialize, but introverted enough to have studied a
discipline to the point of mastering it. They had to be old enough to have
learned these primary, secondary and sometimes tertiary professions, and yet
be young enough to withstand the rigors of the trip out and the work there.
They had to do well in groups, but want to leave everyone they knew behind
forever. They were being asked to tell the truth, but clearly had to lie to
increase their changes of getting what they wanted. They had to be both
ordinary and extraordinary.
Yes, the double-binds were endless. Nevertheless this nearly final group
had come from an initial pool of many thousands of applicants. Double-binds?
So what! Nothing new to fear there. Everyone on Earth was strung up in vast
networks of double-binds. Going to Mars might actually reduce their number,
decrease their strain! Perhaps that was part of the appeal of going!
Perhaps that was why these men of the first Antarctic explorations had
volunteered to come south. Still, looking around at the bare wooden room, it
was amazing to Michel that those who had wintered down here had managed to
stay sane. On the wall of Shackleton's hut there was a photo of them: three
men, huddled before a black stove. Michel stared long at this evocative photo.
The men were worn-looking, battered, dirty, frostbitten, tired. Also calm,
even serene. They could sit and do nothing but watch fire burn in a stove,
entirely satisfied. They looked cold but warm. The very structure of the brain