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

previous expedition. While the evening room was still buzzing with the
news Maya had seen Chalmers come in and be told of it, and he had jerked
his head around to stare at his informant; and then for a fraction of a
second she had seen a flash of fury, a flash so fast it was almost a
subliminal event.
But it had made her attentive to him. And certainly he and John
Boone had an odd relationship. It was difficult for Chalmers, of course; he
was the Americans' official leader, and even had the title Captain; but
Boone, with his blond good looks and the strange presence of his
accomplishment, certainly had more natural authority—he seemed the real
American leader, and Frank Chalmers something like an overactive
executive officer, doing Boone's unspoken bidding. That could not be
comfortable.
They were old friends, Maya had been told when she asked. But she
saw few signs of it herself, even watching closely. They seldom talked to
each other in public, and did not seem to visit in private. Thus when they
were together she watched them more closely than ever, without ever
consciously considering why; the natural logic of the situation just seemed
to demand it. If they had been back at Glavkosmos, it would have made
strategic sense to drive a wedge between them; but she didn't think of it
that way here. There was a lot that Maya didn't think about consciously.
She watched, though. And one morning Janet Blyleven wore her
video glasses into D hall for breakfast. She was a principal reporter for
American television, and often she wove her way through the ship wearing
her vidglasses, looking around and talking the commentary, collecting
stories and transmitting them back home where they would be, as Arkady
put it, "predigested and vomited back into that baby bird consensus."
It was nothing new, of course. Media attention was a familiar part of
every astronaut's life, and during the selection process they had been more
scrutinized than ever. Now, however, they were the raw material for
programs magnitudes more popular than any space program had been
before. Millions watched them as the ultimate soap opera, and this
bothered some of them. So when Janet settled at the end of the table
wearing those stylish spectacles with the optical fibers in the frame, there
were a few groans. And at the other end of the table Ann Clayborne and
Sax Russell were arguing, oblivious to any of them.
"It'll take years to find out what we have there, Sax. Decades.
There's as much land on Mars as on Earth, with a unique geology and
chemistry. The land has to be thoroughly studied before we can start
changing it."
"We'll change it just by landing." Russell brushed aside Ann's
objections as if they were spiderwebs on his face. "Deciding to go to Mars
is like the first phrase of a sentence, and the whole sentence says—"
"Veni, vedi, veci."
Russell shrugged. "If you want to put it that way."
"You're the weenie, Sax," Ann said, lip curled with irritation. She
was a broad-shouldered woman with wild brown hair, a geologist with
strong views, difficult in argument. "Look, Mars is its own place. You
can play your climate-shifting games back on Earth if you want, they need
the help. Or try it on Venus. But you can't just wipe out a three billion