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

Kistenpass
by Kim Stanley Robinson

Story Copyright (C) 2007, Kim Stanley Robinson.
Images Copyright (C) 2007, Rudy Rucker.
9,200 Words.




During our last summer in Z├╝rich I tried to get up into the Alps as often as I could. I spent many evenings
hovering over a plastic three-D map of Switzerland set flat on our dining room table, getting a helicopter
view of the miniaturized mountains. Everything looks possible when the scale is that small. I was
searching for likely day trips in the pattern of my L├╢tschepass crossing, which meant using the massively
overbuilt Swiss transport system of trains, buses and cable cars to get to a high trailhead, hike over a
pass to some other high trailhead, and return on public transport that same day.

Evening spent like that, deep in my early version of Google Earth, would send me to bed dreaming of
potential hikes, so that I would sleep poorly, and wake at five to call the national weather service for the
dayтАЩs forecast. Very often the recorded female voice would report rain in every region, but on some
lucky mornings she would announce in a cheery tone that it was going to be тАЬsch├╢nтАЭ somewhere I
wanted to go, and I would throw my windbreaker and a topo map and water bottle into my daypack,
and say good-bye to Lisa as she prepared to leave for her lab. IтАЩd hurry down to our tram stop still
eating a pastry, and tram down to the Z├╝rich hauptbahnhof to catch the first train leaving in the direction I
wanted. I no longer bothered to check train schedules, having learned to trust the Swiss to link all
elements of their transport in a dense network of daily movement. On this day as always I barely had
time to buy a ticket and a sandwich and chocolate bar before I needed to get on the express for Chur. At
the stroke of six A.M., before I even had time to find an empty seat, we were off.

By seven-fifteen we were in Chur. Quickly I found my next train, which was going to take me up the
valley called the Vorderrhein, the watershed of the headwaters of the Rhine River. This train proved to
be made up of little old cars, set on a narrower track than normal. I didnтАЩt recognize this might represent
a problem for my plans, and read with interest what I could of a poster describing the history of the
Rhenischer Bahn, a company that had laid its tracks in the 1860s, and only later gotten connected with
the larger Swiss system, keeping however its narrow gauge. I boarded one of the little passenger cars
and was pleased to see it was a well-preserved antique, with leather seats and hand-painted trim in
typical Swiss chalet style.

Rolling westward out of Chur, I quickly learned that the Vorderrhein was an immense glacial valley, with
the classic U shape, and a particularly deep post-glacier river gorge scoring the bottom of the U. This
was the Rhine itself, snaking from sidewall to sidewall so that the little train had to cross bridges and
viaducts, go through tunnels, and struggle up sharp curves. It seldom got up to fifty kilometers an hour,
and was often much slower. And it stopped at every one of the tiny stations along the way. So even
though my destination, the village of Danis, was just sixty kilometers east of Chur, it was still going to take
about twice the time it had to traverse the hundred and twenty kilometers from Z├╝rich to Chur.

Well, nothing to do but sit back and watch the scenery. It wasnтАЩt even eight oтАЩclock yet, so I had some
time to spare.

The other passengers in my car were conversing in what I assumed at first was GermanтАФexcept it