"Robert F. Young - A Glass of Mars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

He was accustomed to Miss Fromm's forthrightness, having had her as his secretary ever since she
had come to work for the Bureau of Geologic Research three Martian months ago; but this time it
seemed to him that she was going too far. "That's no way for a respectable girl to talk, Miss Fromm."
"It is when she's a Martian and the man she's talking to is going to marry her."
"I've told you before that I’m never going to marry anyone!"
"When you realize what a bargain you're getting in me, though, you'll change your mind. I'm
thirty-eight, twenty-seven, thirty-nine. I'm five feet, eight inches tail, and I weigh one hundred and
twenty-eight pounds. Stripped."
He sighed. She had told him her measurements before. It was customary on Mars for girls to do such
things, and after his initial shock he had managed to take the custom in his stride. Nevertheless, he was
still diametrically opposed to it.
"Don't you see, Miss Fromm, that when you break your body down into Arabic numerals, you're
demeaning it? Don't you see that when you approach sex by the numbers, you're robbing it of its last
vestige of romance?"
Again she laughed, showing the slight gap between her front teeth. It was almost as though she were
proud of the imperfection. "What do you know about romance, Mr. Shepard?"
"I know that it's dead on Mars, and has been for millennia! I know that supervisors who concern
themselves about their secretaries' safety have rocks in their heads the size of the Martian moons. Good
night, Miss Fromm!"
He turned and walked away. For a while there was no sound behind him; then he heard the
clack-clack of her high heels as she set forth in the direction of her apartment. Presently the sound faded
away.

The nerve of her, he thought, implying that he didn't know anything about romance! Still upset by
her remark, he continued on in the direction of the Edom I Tube Terminal. He was going to have to do
something about Miss Fromm.
He halted when he came opposite one of the fenced-off stands of Martian ruins around which Edom
I had been built. Maybe a brief exposure to beauty would soothe his ruffled feelings. Beyond the
plastipicket fence delicate fluted columns stood palely in the starlight. A poignant tower fragment seemed
to be reaching for the bright blob of the farther moon which hovered high above the transparent
pressurized dome that enclosed the city and held the cold at bay. The flagstones of a millennia-old
courtyard lay like silver fronds upon the hallowed ground.
Invariably, when he looked at the ruins of Marlton buildings, Shepard saw the Martians who had
lived in them. Presently he saw the Martians who had lived in these. Tall, graceful, their noble faces
reflecting their noble thoughts, they strolled sedately in the light of the stars and the moon, blissfully
unaware of the ugly terrestrial structures that had sprung up like weeds in the garden of their glorious city.
Some of them carried metallic books, and read as they strolled. Others had formed into groups, and
were conversing in low melodic voices. Some stood apart, looking at the heavens in silent meditation.
None would ever know in his pursuit of lofty ideas of the ugly domed metropolises that had mushroomed
up from the sites of the original archaeological bases; of the hordes of men and women who had come
from Earth to collect artifacts and compile data and live off the bones of a civilization whose feet they
were unfit to kiss; who got drunk in cheap cafes in the shadows of ancient halls of learning and who
broke through fences and made love in the once-sacrosanct aisles of ancient temples; who in a thousand
other ways defiled, sullied, contaminated, and desecrated the sad and shining memories of Mars.

II

There was a cafe just down the street. Leaving the ruins behind him, Shepard walked past it rapidly,
trying to ignore the bawdy laughter that came from within; the clink of glasses and the inane chittering of
cheap machines; the whine and whir of handbandits on the walls.