"Kim Stanley Robinson - A Short, Sharp Shock" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

we rise on it, floated by slings I have made of kelp bladders and wood. The current pushes us out,
usually to the south, but we are tied by the ropes to the anchor rocks, and when the tide ebbs, we float
down to a landing, and complete the crossing of the brough to the other cape."

"Why have you made these things?" Thel asked. "Why do you do this?"

The sandstone-colored man shrugged. "The peninsula extends around the world, and there is no land but
it. And this is the only place in its circumference where the sea had chewed the peninsula down almost to
its level. And naturally the peninsula must be passable. Traders come through, and circumnavigators on
pilgrimagesтАФbelievers of more religious persuasions than I'd care to recall. It is simply the natural order
of things. The land itself calls forth a guide to sustain that order, and I am the forty-ninth reincarnation of
that guide, Birsay."

He led them to a tall cave entrance in the side of the knob, down stone steps to a dry sand floor. Against
one wall were circles of coiled rope, made of some sort of animal hair or plantlike fiberтАФimpossible in
this world to be sure which, it occurred to Thel as he examined it. It was thick in the hand, and would
certainly hold against any current. The floats Birsay had mentioned were there too, made of the big bulbs
one saw at the base of kelp tubes, tied by flat cords to a wooden framework that held them under the
arms and around the chest and back. тАЬYou spend almost half a day suspended in the tide," Birsay said.
"The water is warm, though by the end it doesn't feel so. The bath is good for the skin. Then the distance
from the rise to the western cape is not as great as the distance from here to the rise."

The three travelers conferred by eye. Garth said, "When would you have us leave?"

"We've wasted too much of this ebb. And they are getting longer every day now, for twenty more days.
The next one will begin in the dark before dawn."

"The next, then," Thel said, and the other two nodded their agreement.

They spent the night in the cave, around a small warm driftwood fire, the twisted shapes of the wood
burning in bright flames tinged with blue, green, salmon. What little smoke there was rose through a
blowhole in the roof of the cave. The guide fed them broiled conch; seasoned with wild onions and a
gingery seaweed, wonderful after their week of subsistence on Garth's bitter apples.

Birsay had a place for everything, and he moved neatly and quickly around the fire, catching its light just
as the cave walls did, so that sometimes it was hard to see him. He brought out a tray of black loam for
Garth to stick his feet into after the regular meal was done, and with a blush and a grateful look, Garth
silently buried his feet in the dirt.

"Do you guide all travelers that appear here?" Thel asked.

"I do."

"You make no distinctions?"

"What do you mean?"

"Those that follow us are murderers, intent on our lives."

"Is that so?" The wet-pebble eyes regarded them with interest. "Well, I wish you all speed. I make no