"Aldiss, Brian - There is a Tide" - читать интересную книгу автора (Aldiss Brian W)

Nervously, Sloe put down her cheroot and did not resume
it. She fingered a dial and the windows opaqued.
"There's an ominous waiting quality out there I don't
like," she said, to explain our sudden privacy.
"Should I be feeling alarmed?" I asked.
She flashed me a smile. "Quite honestly, yes. You don't
live in our world, Rog, or you would guess at once what was
happening at Lake Victoria. They've just finished raising the
level again; for a long time they've been on about more pres-
sure, and the recent heavy rains gave them their chance to
build it up. It seems to have been the last straw."
"And what does this three-inch drop mean? Is there a
breach in the dam somewhere?"
"No. They'd have found that. I'm afraid it means the bed
of the lake has collapsed somewhere. The water's pouring into
subterranean reservoirs."
The extreme seriousness of the matter was now obvious
even to me. Lake Victoria is the source of the White Nile; if
it ceased to feed the river, millions of people in Uganda
and the Sudan would die of drought. And not only people:
birds, beasts, fish, insects, plants.
We both grew restless. We took a turn outside in the cool
night air, and then decided we too would go down to the
town.
All the way there a picture filled my head; the image of
that great dark lake emptying like a wash-basin. Did it drain
in sinister silence, or did it gargle as it went? Men of action
forget to tell you vital details like that.
That night was an anticlimax, apart from the sight of the
full moon sailing over Mount Kangosi. We joined Jubal
and his henchman and hung about uneasily until midnight.
As if an unknown god had been propitiated by the sacrifice
of an hour's sleep, we then felt easier and retired to bed.
The news was bad the next morning. By the time
I was dressed Jubal was already back in town; Sloe and I
breakfasted alone together. She told me they had been in-
formed that Victoria had now dropped thirteen and a half
inches; the rate of fall seemed to be increasing.
I flew into Mokulgu and found Jubal without difficulty. He
was just embarking on one of the Dam Authority's survey
floats with J-Casta.
"You'd better come, too, Rog," he shouted. "You'll probably
enjoy the flight more than we shall."
I did enjoy the flight, despite the circumstances. A disturb-
ance on Lake Tanganyika's eastern fringes had been observed
on an earlier survey and we were going to investigate it.
"You're not afraid the bed will collapse here, too, are
you?" I asked.
"It's not that," Jubal said. "The two hundred miles between
us and Victoria is a faulty region, geologically speaking. I'll