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

And after that day Maya dropped Michel completely, with never a word nor any
outward sign that things had changed, but only a single swift glance at
Tatiana, in his presence, after which a purely formal politeness, no content
whatsoever. And now Michel knew, very acutely, whose company in this group he
craved the most; but would never have again.
Frank had done that.
And all around him it was happening: the pointless wars of the heart. It
was all so small, petty, tawdry. Yet it mattered; it was their life. Sax and
Ann had gone dead to each other, likewise Marina and Vlad, and Hiroko and
Iwao. New cliques were forming around Hiroko and Vlad and Arkady and Phyllis,
as they all spun out into their own separate orbits. No - this group would go
dysfunctional. Was going dysfunctional, he could see it right before his eyes.
It was too hard to live isolated in this sub-biological sensory deprivation;
and this was paradise compared to Mars. There was no such thing as a good
test. There was no such thing as a good analogy. There was only reality,
unique and different in every moment, to be lived without rehearsal and
without revision. Mars would not be like this cold continuous night on the
bottom of their world; it would be worse. Worse than this! They would go mad.
A hundred people confined in tanks and sent to a poisonous cold dead planet, a
place to which winter in Antarctica was like paradise; a prison universe, like
the inside of a head when your eyes are closed. They would all go mad.

* * *

In the first week of September the noonday twilight grew almost as
bright as day, and they could see sunlight on the peaks of the Asgaard and
Olympus Ranges, flanking the deep valley. Because the valley was such a narrow
slot between such high ranges, it would be perhaps another ten days before the
sun fell directly on the base, and Arkady organized a hike up the side of
Mount Odin to catch an earlier glimpse of it. This turned into a general
expedition, as almost everyone proved interested in seeing the sun again as
soon as possible. So early on the morning of September 10th, they stood nearly
a thousand metres above Lake Vanda, on a shelf occupied by a small ice pond
and tarn. It was windy, so the climb had not warmed them. The sky was a pale
starless blue; the east sides of the peaks of both ranges were glazed gold
with sunlight. Finally to the east, at the end of the valley, over the
burnished plate of the frozen Ross Sea, the sun emerged over the horizon and
burned like a flare. They cheered; their eyes ran with emotion, also an excess
of new light and cold wind. People hugged each other, bundle after bundle. But
Maya kept on the other side of the group from Michel, with Frank always
between them. And it seemed to Michel that everyone's joy had a desperate edge
to it, as of people who had barely survived an extinction event.

Thus when the time came to make his report to the selection committees, Michel
advised against the project as designed. 'No group can stay functional under
such conditions indefinitely/ he wrote. In the meetings he made his case point
by point. The long list of double-binds was especially impressive.
This was in Houston. The heat and humidity were sauna-like; Antarctica
was already a nightmare memory, slipping quickly away.
'But this is just social life,' Charles York pointed out, bemused. 'All