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

allowed us to cope with them.
The breakthrough was now a quarter of a mile long. Water
poured from it with unabated force, a mighty waterfall where
land had been before. We skirted it painfully, making a land-
ing as near to it as we dared.
The rest of that day, under its blinding arch of sky, passed
in various stages of confusion and fear.
It was two and a half hours before we were taken off the
strip of shore. We were not idle in that time, although every
few minutes Jubal paused to curse the fact that he was strand-
ed and powerless. Miraculous as it seems, there were some
survivors from the obliterated village, women mostly; we
helped to get them ashore and built fires for them.
Meanwhile, Dam Authority planes began to circle the
area. We managed to attract the attention of one, which
landed by our party. Jubal's manner changed at once; now
that he had a machine and men who, unlike the villagers, were
in his command, he worked with a silent purpose allowing of
no question.
Over the vision, he ordered the rest of the floats to attend
to the villagers' needs. We sped back to Mokulgu.
On the way, Jubal spoke to Owenstown. They took his
news almost without comment. They reported that Victoria
was still sinking, although the rate had now steadied. A
twenty-four-hour a day airlift was about to go into operation,
dropping solid blocks of marble on to the lake bed. "There,
a fault about three miles square had been located; four frog-
men had been lost, drowned.
"It's like tossing pennies into the ocean," Jubal said.
I was thinking of the frogmen, sucked irresistibly down the
fault. They would be swept through underground waterways,
battered and pulped, to be spat out eventually into our lake.
Vision from Mokulgu, coming on just before we landed
there, reported a breach in the lake banks, some twenty
miles north of the town. At a word from Jubal, we switched
plans and veered north at once to see just how extensive the
damage was.
The break was at a tiny cluster of huts, dignified by the
name of Ulatuama, growing like a wart on the edge of Lake
Tanganyika. Several men, the crew of a Dam Authority patrol
boat, were working furiously at a widening gap. The damage
had been caused by the very waves which had swamped
us, and I learnt that a small, disused lock had stood here,
relic of an earlier irrigation scheme; so the weakness had been
of man's making. Beyond the lock had been a dried-up chan-
nel some twenty yards wide; this was now a swollen, plung-
ing river.
"Is this serious?" I asked Jubal. "Isn't there a good way
of getting rid of surplus water?"
He gave me a withering look. "Where are we if we lose