The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson

by Johnathan Strahan

  She picked up the candle lantern beside her, and Carlo followed her up the stairs, stepping carefully in the shifting shadows.

  On the floor above, the wind swirled, and through the stairway to the floor above that, he could distinguish black clouds. The woman put the lantern on the floor, started up the stairs. "Come up and see," she said.

  Once through the hole they were in the wind, out under the sky. The rain had stopped. Great blocks of stone lay about the floor, and the walls broke off unevenly.

  "I thought the whole campanile would fall," she shouted at him over the whistle of the wind. He nodded, and walked over to the west wall, which stood chest high. Looking over it, he could see the waves approaching, rising up, smashing against the stone below, spraying back and up at him. He could feel the blows in his feet. Their force frightened him; it was hard to believe he had survived them and was now out of danger. He shook his head violently. To his right and left, the white lines of crumbled waves marked the Lido, a broad swath of them against the black. The old woman was speaking, he could see; he walked back to her side to listen.

  "The waters yet rise," she shouted. "See? And the lightning… you can see the lightning breaking the Alps to dust. It's the end, child. Every island fled away, and the mountains were not found… the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea, and it became as the blood of a dead man: and every living thing died in the sea." On and on she spoke, her voice mingling with the sound of the gale and the boom of the waves, just carrying over it all… until Carlo, cold and tired, filled with pity and a black anguish like the clouds rolling over them, put his arm around her thin shoulders and turned her around. They descended to the floor below, picked up the extinguished lantern, and descended to her chamber, which was still lit. It seemed warm, a refuge. He could hear her still speaking. He was shivering without pause.

  "You must be cold," she said in a practical tone. She pulled a few blankets from her bed. "Here, take these." He sat down in the big heavy chair, put the blankets around his legs, put his head back. He was tired. The old woman sat in her chair and wound thread onto a spool. After a few minutes of silence she began talking again; and as Carlo dozed and shifted position and nodded off again, she talked and talked, of storms, and drownings, and the world's end, and lost love….

  In the morning when he woke up, she wasn't there. Her room stood revealed in the dim morning light: shabby, the furniture battered, the blankets worn, the knickknacks of Venetian glass ugly, as Venetian glass always was. But it was clean. Carlo got up and stretched his stiff muscles. He went up to the roof; she wasn't there. It was a sunny morning. Over the east wall he saw that his boat was still there, still floating. He grinned—the first one in a few days, he could feel that in his face.

  The woman was not in the floors below, either. The lowest one served as her boathouse, he could see. In it were a pair of decrepit rowboats and some lobster pots. The biggest "boatslip" was empty; she was probably out checking pots. Or perhaps she hadn't wanted to talk with him in the light of day.

  From the boathouse he could walk around to his craft, through water only knee deep. He sat in the stern, reliving the previous afternoon, and grinned again at being alive.

  He took off the decking and bailed out the water on the keel with his bailing can, keeping an eye out for the old woman. Then he remembered the boathook and went back upstairs for it. When he returned there was still no sight of her. He shrugged; he'd come back and say good-bye another time. He rowed around the campanile and off the Lido, pulled up the sail, and headed northwest, where he presumed Venice was.

  The Lagoon was as flat as a pond this morning, the sky cloudless, like the blue dome of a great basilica. It was amazing, but Carlo was not surprised. The weather was like that these days. Last night's storm, however, had been something else. That was the mother of all squalls; those were the biggest waves in the Lagoon ever, without a doubt. He began rehearsing his tale in his mind, for wife and friends.

  Venice appeared over the horizon right off his bow, just where he thought it would be: first the great campanile, then San Marco and the other spires. The campanile… Thank God his ancestors had wanted to get up there so close to God—or so far off the water—the urge had saved his life. In the rain-washed air the sea approach to the city was more beautiful than ever, and it didn't even bother him as it usually did that no matter how close you got to it, it still seemed to be over the horizon. That was just the way it was, now. The Serenissima. He was happy to see it.

  He was hungry, and still very tired. When he pulled into the Grand Canal and took down the sail, he found he could barely row. The rain was pouring off the land into the Lagoon, and the Grand Canal was running like a mountain river. It was tough going. At the fire station where the canal bent back, some of his friends working on a new roof-house waved at him, looking surprised to see him going upstream so early in the morning. "You're going the wrong way!" one shouted.

  Carlo waved an oar weakly before plopping it back in. "Don't I know it!" he replied.

  Over the Rialto, back into the little courtyard of San Giacometta. Onto the sturdy dock he and his neighbors had built, staggering a bit—careful there, Carlo.

  "Carlo!" his wife shrieked from above. "Carlo, Carlo, Carlo!" She flew down the ladder from the roof.

  He stood on the dock. He was home.

  "Carlo, Carlo, Carlo!" his wife cried as she ran onto the dock.

  "Jesus," he pleaded, "shut up." And pulled her into a rough hug.

  "Where have you been, I was so worried about you because of the storm, you said you'd be back yesterday, oh, Carlo, I'm so glad to see you…." She tried to help him up the ladder. The baby was crying. Carlo sat down in the kitchen chair and looked around the little makeshift room with satisfaction. In between chewing down bites of a loaf of bread, he told Luisa of his adventure: the two Japanese and their vandalism, the wild ride across the Lagoon, the madwoman on the campanile. When he had finished the story and the loaf of bread, he began to fall asleep.

  "But, Carlo, you have to go back and pick up those Japanese."

  "To hell with them," he said slurrily. "Creepy little bastards…. They're tearing the Madonna apart, didn't I tell you? They'll take everything in Venice, every last painting and statue and carving and mosaic and all…. I can't stand it."

  "Oh, Carlo. It's all right. They take those things all over the world and put them up and say this is from Venice, the greatest city in the world."

  "They should be here."

  "Here, here, come in and lie down for a few hours. I'll go see if Giuseppe will go to Torcello with you to bring back those bricks." She arranged him on their bed. "Let them have what's under the water, Carlo. Let them have it." He slept.

  He sat up struggling, his arm shaken by his wife.

  "Wake up, it's late. You've got to go to Torcello to get those men. Besides, they've got your scuba gear."

  Carlo groaned.

  "Maria says Giuseppe will go with you; he'll meet you with his boat on the Fondamente."

  "Damn."

  "Come on, Carlo, we need that money."

  "All right, all right." The baby was squalling. He collapsed back on the bed. "I'll do it; don't pester me."

  He got up and drank her soup. Stiffly he descended the ladder, ignoring Luisa's good-byes and warnings, and got back in his boat. He untied it, pushed off, let it float out of the courtyard to the wall of San Giacometta. He stared at the wall.

  Once, he remembered, he had put on his scuba gear and swum down into the church. He had sat down in one of the stone pews in front of the altar, adjusting his weight belts and tank to do so, and had tried to pray through his mouthpiece and the facemask. The silver bubbles of his breath had floated up through the water toward heaven; whether his prayers had gone with them, he had no idea. After a while, feeling somewhat foolish—but not entirely—he had swum out the door. Over it he had noticed an inscription and stopped to read it, facemask centimeters from the stone. Around This Temple
Let the Merchant's Law Be Just, His Weight True, and His Covenants Faithful. It was an admonition to the old usurers of the Rialto, but he could make it his, he thought; the true weight could refer to the diving belts, not to overload his clients and sink them to the bottom….

  The memory passed and he was on the surface again, with a job to do. He took in a deep breath and let it out, put the oars in the oarlocks and started to row.

  Let them have what was under the water. What lived in Venice was still afloat.

  Ridge Running

  Three men sit on a rock. The rock is wet granite, a bouldertop surrounded by snow that has melted just enough to reveal it. Snow extends away from the rock in every direction. To the east it drops to treeline, to the west it rises to a rock wall that points up and ends at sky. The boulder the three men are on is the only break in the snow from the treeline to rock wall. Snowshoe tracks lead to the rock, coming from the north on a traverse across the slope. The men sit sunning like marmots.

  One man chews snow. He is short and broad-chested, with thick arms and legs. He adjusts blue nylon gaiters that cover his boots and lower legs. His thighs are bare, he wears gray gym shorts. He leans over to strap a boot into an orange plastic snowshoe.

  The man sitting beside him says, "Brian, I thought we were going to eat lunch." This second man is big, and he wears sunglasses that clip onto prescription wire-rims.

  "Pe-ter," Brian drawls. "We can't eat here comfortably, there's barely room to sit. As soon as we get around that shoulder"—he points south—"the traverse will be done and we'll be at the pass."

  Peter takes in a deep breath, lets it out. "I need to rest."

  "O.K.," Brian says, "do it. I'm just going to go around to the pass, I'm tired of sitting." He picks up the other orange snowshoe, sticks his boot in the binding.

  The third man, who is medium height and very thin, has been staring at the snow granules on his boot. Now he picks up a yellow snowshoe and kicks into it. Peter sees him do it, sighs, bends over to yank his aluminum-and-cord snowshoes out of the snow they are stuck in.

  "Look at that hummingbird," the third man says with pleasure and points.

  He is pointing at blank snow. His two companions look where he is pointing, then glance at each other uncomfortably. Peter shakes his head, looks at his boots.

  "I didn't know there were hummingbirds in the Sierras," the third man says. "What a beauty!" He looks at Brian uncertainly. "Are there hummingbirds in the Sierras?"

  "Well," Brian says, "actually, I think there are. But…"

  "But not this time, Joe," Peter finishes.

  "Ah," Joe says, and stares at the spot in the snow. "I could have sworn…" Peter looks at Brian, his face squinched up in distress. "Maybe the light breaking on that clump of snow," Joe says, mystified. "Oh, well."

  Brian stands and hoists a compact blue pack onto his shoulders, and steps off the boulder onto the snow. He leans over to adjust a binding. "Let's get going, Joe," he says. "Don't worry about it." And to Peter: "This spring snow is great."

  "If you're a goddamn polar bear," Peter says.

  Brian shakes his head, and his silvered sunglasses flash reflections of snow and Peter. "This is the best time to be up here. If you would ever come with us in January or February you'd know that."

  "Summer!" Peter says as he picks up his long frame pack. "Summer's what I like—catch the rays, see the flowers, walk around without these damn flippers on—" He swings his pack onto his back, steps back quickly (clatter of aluminum on granite) to keep his balance. He buckles his waistbelt awkwardly, looks at the sun. It is near midday. He wipes his forehead.

  "You don't even come up with us in the summer anymore," Brian points out. "What has it been, four years?"

  "Time," Peter says. "I don't have any time, and that's a fact."

  "Just all your life," Brian scoffs. Peter shakes off the remark with an irritated scowl, and steps onto the snow.

  They turn to look at Joe, who is still inspecting the snow with a fierce squint.

  "Hey, Joe!" Brian says.

  Joe starts and looks up.

  "Time to hike, remember?"

  "Oh, yeah, just a second." Joe readies himself.

  Three men snowshoeing.

  Brian leads. He sinks about a foot into the snow with every step. Joe follows, placing his yellow snowshoes carefully in the prints of Brian's, so that he sinks hardly at all. Peter pays no attention to prints, and his snowshoes crash into and across the holes. His snowshoes slide left, downhill, and he slips frequently.

  The slope steepens. The three men sweat. Brian slips left one time too often and stops to remove his snowshoes. They can no longer see the rock wall above them, the slope is so steep. Brian ties his snowshoes to his pack, puts the pack back on. He puts a glove on his right hand and walks canted over so he can punch into the slope with his fist.

  Joe and Peter stop where Brian stops, to make the same changes. Joe points ahead to Brian, who is now crossing a section of slope steeper than forty-five degrees.

  "Strange three-legged hill animal," says Joe, and laughs. "Snoweater."

  Peter looks in his pack for his glove. "Why don't we go down into the trees and avoid this damn traverse?"

  "The view isn't as good."

  Peter sighs. Joe waits, scuffs snow, looks at Peter curiously. Pete has put suntan oil on his face, and the sweat has poured from his forehead, so that his stubbled cheeks shine with reflected light. He says, "Am I imagining this, or are we working really hard?"

  "We're working very hard," Joe says. "Traverses are difficult."

  They watch Brian, who is near the middle of the steepest section. "You guys do this snow stuff for fun?" Peter says.

  After a moment Joe starts. "I'm sorry," he says. "What were we talking about?"

  Peter shrugs, examines Joe closely. "You O.K.?" he asks, putting his gloved hand to Joe's arm.

  "Yeah, yeah. I just… forgot. Again!"

  "Everyone forgets sometimes."

  "I know, I know." With a discouraged sigh Joe steps off into Brian's prints. Peter follows.

  From above they appear little dots, the only moving objects in a sea of white and black. Snow blazes white and prisms flash from sunglasses. They wipe their foreheads, stop now and then to catch their breath. Brian pulls ahead, Pete falls behind. Joe steps out the traverse with care, talking to himself in undertones. Their gloves get wet, there are ice bracelets around their wrists. Below them solitary trees at treeline wave in a breeze, but on the slope it is windless and hot.

  The slope lessens, and they are past the shoulder. Brian pulls off his pack and gets out his groundpad, sits on it. He roots in the pack. After a while Joe joins him. "Whew!" Joe says. "That was a hard traverse."

  "Not really hard," Brian replies. "Just boring." He eats some M&M's, waves a handful up at the ridge above. "I'm tired of traversing, though, that's for sure. I'm going up to the ridge so I can walk down it to the pass."

  Joe looks at the wall of snow leading up to the ridge. "Yeah, well, I think Pete and I will continue around the corner here and go past Lake Doris to the pass. It's almost level from here on."

  "True. I'm going to go up there anyway."

  "All right. We'll see you in the pass in a while." Brian looks at Joe. "You'll be all right?"

  "Sure."

  Brian gets his pack on, turns and begins walking up the slope, bending forward to take big slow strides. Watching him, Joe says to himself, "Humped splayfoot pack beast, yes. House-backed creature. Giant snow snail. Yo ho for the mountains. Rum de dum. Rum de dum de dum."

  Peter appears around the shoulder, walking slowly and carelessly. He spreads his groundpad, sits beside Joe. After a time his breathing slows. "Where's Brian?"

  "He went up there."

  "Is that where we're going?"

  "I thought we might go around to the pass the way the trail goes."

  "Thank God."

  "We'll get to go by Lake Doris."

  "The renowned Lake Dor
is," Peter scoffs.

  Joe waves a finger to scold. "It is nice, you know."

  Joe and Peter walk. Soon their breathing hits a regular rhythm. They cross a meadow tucked into the side of the range like a terrace. It is covered with suncones, small melt depressions in the snow, and the walking is uneven.

  "My feet are freezing," Pete says from several yards behind Joe.

  Joe looks back to reply. "It's a cooling system. Most of my blood is hot—so hot I can hold snow in my hand and my hand won't get cold. But my feet are chilled. It cools the blood. I figure there's a spot around my knees that's perfect. My knees feel great. I live there and everything's comfortable."

  "My knees hurt."

  "Hmm," Joe says. "Now that is a problem."

  After a silence filled by the squeak of snow and the crick of boot against snowshoe, Pete says, "I don't understand why I'm getting so tired. I've been playing full-court basketball all winter."

  "Mountains aren't as flat as basketball courts."

  Joe's pace is a bit faster than Pete's, and slowly he pulls ahead. He looks left, to the tree-filled valley, but slips a few times and turns his gaze back to the snow in front of him. His breaths rasp in his throat. He wipes sweat from an eyebrow. He hums unmusically, then starts a breath-chant, muttering a word for each step: animal, animal, animal, animal, animal. He watches his snowshoes crush patterns onto the points and ridges of the pocked, glaring snow. White light blasts around the sides of his sunglasses. He stops to tighten a binding, looks up when he is done. There is a tree a few score yards ahead—he adjusts his course for it, and walks again.

  After a while he reaches the tree. He looks at it; a gnarled old Sierra juniper, thick and not very tall. Around it hundreds of black pine needles are scattered, each sunk in its own tiny pocket in the snow. Joe opens his mouth several times, says "Lugwump?" He shakes his head, walks up to the tree, puts a hand on it. "I don't know who you are?" He leans in, his nose is inches from bark. The bark peels away from the tree like papery sheets of filo dough. He puts his arms out, hugs the trunk. "Tr-eeeee," he says. "Tr-eeeeeeee."