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

slash, in skin as white as the domino still covering her eyes.
Frank pulled off his mask and threw it away. There was broken glass
all over the street. A man rushed at them. "Frank! Maya!"
It was Sax Russell; Frank had never seen the little man so agitated.
"It's John—he's been attacked!"
"What?" they exclaimed together.
"He tried to stop a fight, and three or four men jumped him. They
knocked him down and dragged him away!"
"You didn't stop them?" Maya cried.
"We tried—a whole bunch of us chased them. But they lost us in the
medina."
Maya looked at Frank.
"What's going on!" he cried. "Where would anyone take him?"
"The gates," she said.
"But they're locked tonight, aren't they?"
"Maybe not to everyone."
They followed her to the medina. Streetlights were broken, there was
glass underfoot. They found a fire marshall and went to the Turkish Gate;
he unlocked it and several of them hurried through, throwing on walkers at
emergency speed. Then out into the night to look around, illuminated by
the bathysphere glow of the city. Frank's ankles hurt with the night cold,
and he could feel the precise configuration of his lungs, as if two globes of
ice had been inserted in his chest, to cool the rapid beat of his heart.
Nothing out there. Back inside. Over to the northern wall and the
Syrian Gate, and out again under the stars. Nothing.
It took them a long time to think of the farm. By then there were
about thirty of them in walkers, and they ran down and through the lock
and flooded down the farm's aisles, spreading out, running between crops.
They found him among the radishes. His jacket was pulled over his
face, in the standard emergency air pocket; he must have done it
unconsciously, because when they rolled him carefully onto one side, they
saw a lump behind one ear.
"Get him inside," Maya said, her voice a bitter croak— "Hurry, get
him inside."
Four of them lifted him. Chalmers cradled John's head, and his
fingers were intertwined with Maya's. They trotted back up the shallow
steps. Through the farm gate they stumbled, back into the heat of the city.
One of the Swiss led them to the nearest medical center, already crowded
with desperate people. They got John onto an empty bench. His
unconscious expression was pinched, determined. Frank tore off his
helmet and went to work pulling rank, bulling into the emergency rooms
and shouting at the doctors and nurses. They ignored him until one doctor
said, "Shut up. I'm coming." She went into the hallway and with a
nurse's help clipped John into a monitor, then checked him out with the
abstracted, absent look doctors have while working: hands at neck and
face and head and chest, stethoscope. . . .
Maya explained what they knew. The doctor took down an oxygen
unit from the wall, looking at the monitor. Her mouth was bunched into a
displeased little knot. Maya sat at the end of the bench, face suddenly
distraught. Her domino had long since disappeared.