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

spent a year in command of the station, during which a couple of
emergency repairs had bolstered her reputation. Administrative
assignments in Baikonur and Moscow had followed, and over time she had
managed to penetrate Glavkosmos's little politburo, playing the men
against each other in the subtlest of ways, marrying one of them, divorcing
him, rising afterwards in Glavkosmos a free agent, becoming one of the
utmost inner circle, the double triumvurate.
And so here she was, having a leisurely breakfast. "So civilized,"
Nadia would scoffed. She was Maya's best friend on the Ares, a short
woman round as a stone, with a square face framed by cropped salt-and-
pepper hair. Plain as could be. Maya, who knew she was good-looking,
and knew that this had helped her many times, loved Nadia's plainness,
which somehow underlined her competence. Nadia was an engineer and
very practical, an expert in cold-climate construction. They had met in
Baikonur twenty years before, and once lived together on Novy Mir for
several months; over the years they had become like sisters, in that they
were not much alike, and did not often get along, and yet were intimate.
Now Nadia looked around and said, "Putting the Russian and
American living quarters in different toruses was a horrible idea. We work
with them during the day, but we spend most of our time here with the
same old faces. It only reinforces the other divisions between us."
"Maybe we should offer to exchange half the rooms."
Arkady, wolfing down coffee rolls, leaned over from the next table.
"It's not enough," he said, as if he had been part of their conversation all
along. His red beard, growing wilder every day, was dusted with crumbs.
"We should declare every other Sunday to be moving day, and have
everyone shift quarters on a random basis. People would get to know more
of the others, and there would be fewer cliques. And the notion of
ownership of the rooms would be reduced."
"But I like owning a room," Nadia said.
Arkady downed another roll, grinned at her as he chewed. It was a
miracle he had passed the selection committee.
But Maya brought up the subject with the Americans, and though no
one liked Arkady's plan, a single exchange of half the apartments struck
them as a good idea. After some consulting and discussion, the move was
arranged. They did it on a Sunday morning; and after that, breakfast was a
little more cosmopolitan. Mornings in the D dining hall now included
Frank Chalmers and John Boone, and also Sax Russell, Mary Dunkel,
Janet Byleven, Rya Jimenez, Michel Duval, and Ursula Kohl.
John Boone turned out to be an early riser, geting to the dining hall
even before Maya. "This room is so spacious and airy, it really has an
outdoor feel to it," he said from his table one dawn when Maya came in.
"A lot better than B's hall."
"The trick is to remove all chrome and white plastic," Maya replied.
Her English was fairly good, and getting better fast. "And then paint the
ceiling like real sky."
"Not just straight blue, you mean?"
"Yes."
He was, she thought, a typical American: simple, open,
straightforward, relaxed. And yet this particular specimen was one of the