The Planet on the Table

by Kim Stanley Robinson

  “We are ready to voyage at Torcello’?” one asked, and the other smiled and repeated the question. Their names were Hamada and Taku They had made a few jokes concerning the latter name’s similarity to Carlo’s own, but Taku was the one with less Italian, so the sallies hadn’t gone on for long. They had hired him four days before, at Salerno’s stall.

  “Yes,” Carlo said. He rowed out of the Piazza and up back canals past Campo San Maria Formosa, which was nearly as crowded as the Piazza. Beyond that the canals were empty, and only an occasional roof-house marred the look of flooded tranquility.

  “That part of city Venice here not many people live,” Hamada observed. “Not houses on houses.”

  “That’s true,” Carlo replied. As he rowed past San Zanipolo and the hospital, he explained, “It’s too close to the hospital here, where many diseases were contained, Sicknesses, you know.”

  “Ah, the hospital!” Hamada nodded, as did Taku “We have swam hospital in our Venice voyage previous to that one here. Salvage many fine statues from lowest rooms,”

  “Stone lions,” Taku added. “Many stone lions with wings in room below Twenty-forty waterline.”

  “Is that right,” Carlo said. Stone lions, he thought, set up in the entryway of some Japanese businessman’s expensive home around the world… He tried to divert his thoughts by watching the brilliantly healthy, masklike faces of his two passengers as they laughed over their reminiscences.

  Then they were over the Fondamente Nuova, the northern limit of the city, and on the Lagoon. There was a small swell from the north. Carlo rowed out a way and then stepped forward to raise the boat’s single sail. The wind was from the east, so they would make good time north to Torcello. Behind them Venice looked beautiful in the morning light, as if they were miles away, and a watery horizon blocked their full view of it.

  The two Japanese had stopped talking and were looking over the side. They were over the cemetery of San Michele, Carlo realized. Below them lay the island that had been the city’s chief cemetery for centuries; they sailed over a field of tombs, mausoleums, gravestones, obelisks that at low tide could be a navigational hazard… Just enough of the bizarre white blocks could be seen to convince one that they were indeed the result of the architectural thinking of fishes. Carlo crossed himself quickly to impress his customers, and sat back down at the tiller. He pulled the sail tight and they heeled over slightly, slapped into the waves.

  In no more than twenty minutes they were east of Murano, skirting its edge. Murano, like Venice an island city crossed with canals, had been a quaint little town before the flood. But it didn’t have as many tall buildings as Venice, and it was said that an underwater river had undercut its islands. In any case, it was a wreck. The two Japanese chattered with excitement

  “Can we visit to that city here, Carlo?” asked Hamada.

  “It’s too dangerous,” Carlo answered. “Buildings have fallen into the canal.”

  They nodded, smiling. “Are people live here?” Taku asked.

  “A few, yes. They live in the highest buildings on the floors still above water, and work in Venice. That way they avoid having to build a roof-house in the city.”

  The two faces of his companions expressed incomprehension.

  “They avoid the housing shortage in Venice,” Carlo said. “There’s a certain housing shortage in Venice, as you may have noticed.” His listeners caught the joke this time and laughed.

  “Could live on floors below if owning scuba such as that here,” Hamada said, gesturing at Carlo’s equipment.

  “Yes,” he replied. “Or we could grow gills.” He bugged his eyes out and wiggled his fingers at his neck to indicate gills. The Japanese loved it.

  Past Murano the Lagoon was clear for a few miles, a sunbeaten blue covered with choppy waves. The boat tipped up and down, the wind tugged at the sail cord in Carlo’s hand. He began to enjoy himself. “Storm coming,” he volunteered to the others, and pointed at the black line over the horizon to the north. It was a common sight; short, violent storms swept over Brenner Pass from the Austrian Alps, dumping on the Po Valley and the Lagoon before dissipating in the Adriatic… once a week, or more, even in the summer. That was one reason the fish market was held under the domes of San Marco; everyone had gotten sick of trading in the rain.

  Even the Japanese recognized the clouds. “Many rain fall soon here,” Taku said.

  Hamada grinned and said, “Taku and Tafur, weather prophets no doubt, make big company!”

  They laughed. “Does he do this in Japan, too?” Carlo asked.

  “Yes, indeed, surely. In Japan rains every day—Taku says, ‘It rains tomorrow for surely.’ Weather prophet!”

  After the laughter receded, Carlo said, “Hasn’t all the rain drowned some of your cities too?”

  “What’s that here?”

  “Don’t you have some Venices in Japan?”

  But they didn’t want to talk about that. “I don’t understand… No, no Venice in Japan,” Hamada said easily, but neither laughed as they had before. They sailed on. Venice was out of sight under the horizon, as was Murano. Soon they would reach Burano. Carlo guided the boat over the waves and listened to his companions converse in their improbable language, or mangle Italian in a way that alternately made him 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 stiIl 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.

  Just 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 had 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 Assunta, however, 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 entirety gone. He rowed around the Piazza looking for a flat spot where they could stand and put on the scuba gear. 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 Torcel
lo had built the campanile in a hurry, thinking that the world would end at the millennium, the year 1000. Carlo smiled 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 Japanese back into the Piazza and swam down. The ground was silted, and Carlo was careful not to step on it. His charges saw the great stone chair in the center of the Piazza (it had been called the Throne of Attila, Carlo remembered from one of his moldy books, and no one had known why), and waving to each other they swam to it. One of them made ludicrous attempts to stand on the bottom and walk around in his fins: he threw up clouds of silt. The other joined him. They each sat in the stone chair, columns of bubbles rising from them, and snapped pictures of each other with their underwater cameras. The silt would ruin the shots, Carlo thought. While they cavorted, he wondered sourly what they wanted in the church.

  Eventually, Hamada swam up to him and gestured at the church. Behind the mask his eyes were excited. Carlo pumped his fins up and down slowly and led them around to the big entrance at the front. The doors were gone. They swam into the church.

  Inside it was dark, and all three of them unhooked their big flashlights and turned them on. Cones of murky water turned to crystal as the beams swept about. The interior of the church was undistinguished, the floor thick with mud. Carlo watched his two customers swim about and let his flashlight beam rove the walls. Some of the underwater windows were still intact, an odd sight. Occasionally the beam caught a column of bubbles, transmuting them to silver.

  Quickly enough the Japanese went to the picture at the west end of the nave, a tile mosaic. Taku (Carlo guessed) rubbed the slime off the tiles, vastly improving their color. They had gone to the big one first, the one portraying the Crucifixion, the Resurrection of the Dead, and the Day of Judgement. A busy mural. Carlo swam over to have a better look. But no sooner had the Japanese wiped the wall clean than they were off to the other end of the church, where above the stalls of the apse was another mosaic. Carlo followed.

  It didn’t take long to rub this one clean; and when the water had cleared, the three of them floated there, their flashlight beams converged on the picture revealed.

  It was the Teotaca Madonna, the God-bearer. She stood against a dull gold background, holding the Child in her arms, staring out at the world with a sad and knowing gaze. Carlo pumped his legs to get above the Japanese, holding his light steady on the Madonna’s face. She looked as though she could see all time: all her child’s short life, all the terror and calamity after that… There were mosaic tears on her cheeks. At the sight of them, Carlo could barely check tears of his own from joining the general wetness on his face. He felt that he had suddenly been transposed to a church on the deepest floor of the ocean, the pressure of his feelings threatened to implode him, he could scarcely hold them off. The water was freezing, he was shivering, sending up a thick, nearly continuous stream of bubbles… and the Madonna watched. With a kick he turned and swam away. Like startled fish his two companions followed him. Carlo led them out of the church into murky light, then up to the surface, to the boat and the window casement.

  Fins off, Carlo sat on the staircase and dripped. Taku and Hamada scrambled through the window and joined him. They conversed for a moment in Japanese, clearly excited. Carlo stared at them blackly.

  Hamada turned to him. “That here is the picture we desire,” he said. “The Madonna with Child.”

  “What?” Carlo cried.

  Hamada raised his eyebrows. “We desire taking home that here picture to Japan.”

  “But it’s impossible! The picture is made of little tiles stuck to the wall—there’s no way to get them off!”

  “Italy government permits.” Taku said, but Hamada silenced him with a gesture.

  “Mosaic, yes. We use instruments we take here—water torch. Archaeology method, you understand. Cut blocks out of wall, bricks, number them—construct on new place in Japan. Above water.” He flashed his pearly smile.

  “You can’t do that,” Carlo stated, deeply affronted.

  “I don’t understand.” Hamada said. But he did. “Italian government permits us that.’

  “This isn’t Italy,” Carlo said savagely, and in his anger stood. What good would a Madonna do in Japan, anyway? They weren’t even Christian. “Italy is over there,” he said, in his excitement mistakenly waving to the southeast, no doubt confusing his listeners even more. “This has never been Italy! This is Venice! The Republic!”

  “I don’t understand.” He had that phrase down pat. “Italian government has giving permit us.”

  “Christ,” Carlo said. After a disgusted pause: “Just how long will this take?”

  “Time? We work that afternoon, tomorrow; place the bricks here, go hire Venice barge to carry bricks to Venice—”

  “Stay here overnight? I’m not going to stay here over night, God damn it!”

  “We bring sleeping bag for you—”

  “No!” Carlo was furious. “I’m not staying, you miserable heathen hyenas—” He pulled off his scuba gear.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Carlo dried off, got dressed. “I’ll let you keep your scuba tanks, and I’ll be back for you tomorrow afternoon, late. Understand?”

  “Yes.” Hamada said, staring at him steadily, without expression. “Bring barge?”

  “What?—yes, yes, I’ll bring your barge, you miserable slime-eating catfish. Vultures…“ He went on for a while, getting the boat out of the window.

  “Storm coming” Taku said brightly, pointing to the north.

  “To hell with you!” Carlo said, pushing off and beginning to row. “Understand?”

  He rowed out of Torcello and back onto the Lagoon. Indeed, a storm was coming. He would have to hurry. He put up the sail and pulled the canvas decking back until it covered everything but the seat he was sitting on. The wind was from the north now, strong but fitful. It pulled the sail taut, and the boat bucked over the choppy waves, leaving behind a wake that was bright white against the black of the sky. The clouds were drawing over the sky like a curtain, covering half of it: half black, half colorless blue, and the line of the edge was solid. It resembled that first great storm of 2040. Carlo guessed, that had pulled over Venice like a black wool blanket and dumped water for forty days. And it bad never been the same again, not anywhere in the world…

  Now he was beside the wreck of Burano. Against the black sky he could see only the drunken campanile, and suddenly he realized why he hated the sight of this abandoned town: it was a vision of the Venice to come, a cruel model of the future. If the water level rose even three meters, Venice would become nothing but a big Burano. Even if the water didn’t rise, more people were leaving Venice every year… One day it would be empty. Once again the sadness he had felt looking at the Teotaca filled him, a sadness become a bottomless despair. “God damn it,” he said, staring at the crippled campanile; but that wasn’t enough. He didn’t know words that were enough. “God damn it.”

  Just beyond Burano the squall hit. It almost blew the sail out of his hand; he had to hold on with a fierce clench, tie it to the stem, tie the tiller in place, and scramble over the pitching canvas deck to lower the sail, cursing all the while. He brought the sail down to its last reefing, which left a handkerchief-sized patch exposed to the wind. Even so, the boat yanked over the waves and the mast creaked as if it would tear loose… The choppy waves had become white caps, in the screaming wind their tops were tearing loose and flying through the air, white foam in the blackness…

  Best to head for Murano for ref
uge, Carlo thought. Then the rain started. It was colder than the Lagoon water and fell almost horizontally. The wind was still picking up. His handkerchief sail was going to pull the mast out. “Madonna,” he said. He got onto the decking again, slid up to the mast, took down the sail with cold and disobedient fingers. He crawled back to his hole in the deck, hanging on desperately as the boat yawed. It was almost broadside to the waves and hastily he grabbed the tiller and pulled it around, just in time to meet a large wave stern-on. He shuddered with relief. Each wave seemed bigger than the last; they picked up quickly on the Lagoon. Well, he thought, what now? Get out the oars? No, that wouldn’t do; he had to keep stern-on to the waves, and besides, he couldn’t row effectively in this chop. He had to go where the waves were going, he realized; and if they missed Murano and Venice, that meant the Adriatic.

  As the waves lifted and dropped him, he grimly contemplated the thought. His mast alone acted like a sail in a wind of this force; and the wind seemed to be blowing from a bit to the west of north. The waves—the biggest he had ever seen on the Lagoon, perhaps the biggest ever on the Lagoon—pushed in about the same direction as the wind, naturally. Well, that meant he would miss Venice, which was directly south, maybe even a touch west of south. Damn, he thought. And all because he had been angered by those two Japanese and the Teotaca. What did he care what happened to a sunken mosaic from Torcello? He had helped foreigners find and cart off the one bronze horse of San Marco that had fallen… more than one of the stone lions of Venice, symbol of the city… the entire Bridge of Sighs, for Christ’s sake! What had come over him? Why should he have cared about a forgotten mosaic?

  Well, he had done it; and here he was. No altering it. Each wave lifted his boat stern first and slid under it until he could look down m the trough, if he cared to, and see his mast nearly horizontal, until he rose over the broken, foaming crest, each one of which seemed to want to break down his little hole in the decking and swamp him—for a second he was in midair, the tiller free and useless until he crashed into the next trough. Every time at the top he thought, this wave will catch us, and so even though he was wet and the wind and rain were cold, the repeated spurts of fear adrenaline and his thick wool coat kept him warm. A hundred waves or so served to convince him that the next one would probably slide under him as safely as the last, and he relaxed a bit. Nothing to do but wait it out, keep the boat exactly stern-on to the swell… and he would be all right. Sure, he thought, he would just ride these waves across the Adriatic to Trieste or Rijeka, one of those two tawdry towns that had replaced Venice as Queen of the Adriatic… the princesses of the Adriatic, so to speak, and two little sluts they were, too… Or ride the storm out, turn around, and sail back in, better yet. ...