"Kim Stanley Robinson - Kistenpass" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

The Muttsee and the Limmerensee were both blue, but the blues were very different. The Muttsee was
the brilliant turquoise of water lying over submerged ice, under a clear sky. The Limmerensee, on the
other hand, was a reservoir, and its catchment basin included two hanging glaciers that added glacial milk
to the clearer waters coming in from elsewhere. The resulting mix was the opaque virulent blue of radiator
antifreeze.

The reservoir flooded a valley which must have been quite something before it was drowned. The
mapmakers had retained the contour lines of the submerged area, turning them blue rather than the usual
brown, and these showed what had probably been meadow or forest, or a mix of the two, with the
Limmerenbach running down the middle. It might have looked like Yosemite; but this had not stopped
the Swiss from damming it. In their drive for electricity they had dammed and drowned many of the
deepest gorges in the Swiss Alps. I suppose you can’t afford to regard sixty-five percent of your country
as an untouchable wilderness, but I was still a little shocked whenever I saw how relentlessly they have
altered their landscape. We’ve done a lot of it in the Sierra too, but nothing compared to them. No doubt
a hidden valley like this one never had a chance.

And yet it was still a great space; and the Muttsee at least was still beautiful. I pulled my bahnhof
sandwich from my daypack, pleased with my lunchtime prospect.

As I began eating I heard a buzz from below, and spotted a helicopter the size of a mosquito, floating just
over the antifreeze. It rose in slow spirals, working hard to gain altitude. No doubt it was climbing to
resupply the Muttseehutte: I had been at other SAC huts when helicopters flew in with supplies. It was
going to be interesting to watch it from this distance.

The helicopter rose in an expanding spiral that used the entire space of the gorge. It took at least ten
minutes for it to ascend, giving me a sudden new sense of just how deep the gorge was. It’s hard to see
vertical distance; the eye has a predilection to see all great heights as about a thousand feet, a
foreshortening error that does not go away even when you know about it. Now the helicopter’s long
struggle was making the real height of the gorge evident.

Eventually it completed its climb and banked in a final spiral that brought it under my part of the cliff. I
was going to get a good view of it as it passed me by. I sat on my overlook and observed its two circles
of blurred blades, big one horizontal, small one vertical. They are strange machines. The engine noise,
which had started as a mosquito buzz, was now a roar. It was really going to pass close to me.

Then it rose to my level and hung right before me, making an incredible racket. It turned toward me, and
I found myself looking into its bubble windshield, eye-to-eye with the pilot. He was a black man, wearing
mirrored sunglasses and big earphones. I thought he looked American, and waved at him, but his hands
were busy and he didn’t wave back. I saw his forearms shift on his controls, and the helicopter tilted
forward and began to drift straight in at me.

“Whoah!” I said. What the hell? The helo was still closing, the pilot’s face was still blank. I scrambled to
my feet, turned and retreated quickly onto the spur’s flat top. I looked over my shoulder to be sure all
was well and was astonished to see the helicopter was topping the spur and turning down toward me,
louder than ever.

I bolted up the hill in a panic. The blast of its wind buffeted my back, and in the horrible roar I dared a
look over my shoulder, terrified of what I would see—

It was landing on the flat spot behind the spur.