"Kim Stanley Robinson - Venice Drowned (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

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the waves and listened to his companions converse in their improbable language, or mangle Italian
in a way that alternately made hum want to burst with hilarity or bite the gunwale with
frustration.
Gradually, Burano bounced over the horizon, the campanile first, followed by the few
buildings still above water. Murano still had inhabitants, a tiny market, even a midsummer
festival; Burano was empty. Its campanile stood at a distinct angle, like the mast of a foundered
ship. It had been an island town, before 2040; now it had "canals" between every rooftop. Carlo
disliked the town intensely and gave it a wide berth. His companions discussed it quietly in
Japanese.
A mile beyond it was Torcello, another island ghost town. The campanile could be seen from
Burano, tall and white against the black clouds to the north. They approached in silence. Carlo
took down the sail, set Taku in the bow to look for snags, and rowed cautiously to the edge of
town. They moved between rooftops and walls that stuck up like reefs or like old foundations out
of the earth. Many of the roof tiles and beams had been taken for use in construction back in
Venice. This happened to Torcello before; during the Renaissance it had been a little rival of
Venice, boasting a population of twenty thousand, but during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries it had been entirely deserted. Builders from Venice had come looking in the ruins for
good marble or a staircase of the right dimensions . . . . Briefly a tiny population had returned,
to make lace and host those tourists who wanted to be melancholy; but the waters rose, and
Torcello died for good. Carlo pushed off a wall with his oar, and a big section of it tilted over
and sank. He tried not to notice.
He rowed them to the open patch of water that had been the Piazza. Around them stood a few
intact rooftops, no taller than the mast of their boat; broken walls of stone or rounded brick;
the shadowy suggestion of walls just underwater. It was hard to tell what the street plan of the
town would have been. On one side of the Piazza was the cathedral of Santa Maria Ascunta, however,
still holding fast, still supporting the white campanile that stood square and solid, as if over a
living community.
"That here is the church we desire to dive," Hamada said.
Carlo nodded. The amusement he had felt during the sail

was entirely gone. He rowed around the Piazza looking for a flat spot where they could stand and
put the scuba gear on. The church outbuildings-it had been an extensive structure were all
underwater. At one point the boat's keel scraped the ridge of a roof. They rowed down the length
of the barnlike nave, looked in the high windows: floored with water. No surprise. One of the
small windows in the side of the campanile had been widened with sledgehammers; directly inside it
was the stone staircase and, a few steps up, a stone floor. They hooked the boat to the wall and
moved their gear up to the floor. In the dim midday light the stone of the interior was pocked
with shadows. It had a rough-hewn look. The citizens of Torcello had built the campanile in a
hurry, thinking that the world would end at the millennium, the year 1000. Carlo snuled to think
how much longer they had had than that. They climbed the steps of the staircase, up to the sudden
sunlight of the bell chamber, to look around; viewed Burano, Venice in the distance . . . to the
north, the shallows of the Lagoon, and the coast of Italy. Beyond that, the black line of clouds
was like a wall nearly submerged under the horizon, but it was rising; the storm would come.
They descended, put on the scuba gear, and flopped into the water beside the campanile.
They were above the complex of church buildings, and it was dark; Carlo slowly led the two