"Kim Stanley Robinson - Sixty Days and Counting" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

through the forest again, on a winding small road. He only had a rough sense of
where he was, but then he was driving down an incline, and the smooth white surface
of Long Pond appeared through the trees. The southern end of its long arm was
walled on both sides by steep granite slopes, six or seven hundred feet high: a pure
glacial U, floored by a lake.
He parked in the little parking lot by the pump house and got out. The wind from the
north slammed him in the face. Far up the lake he saw a tiny sail appear as if out of
the rock wall to the left. It looked like a big windsurfing sail. Faster than he would
have thought possible it grew larger, and the iceboat swept up to the shore, Caroline
at the tiller, turning it in a neat curlicue at the end, to lose speed and drift backward
to shore.
тАЬAmazing,тАЭ Frank said.
тАЬHere, waitтАФpark your van up in those trees, just past the stop sign up there.тАЭ
Frank did so and then returned to the craft, stepped in and stowed his daypack
before the mast. The iceboat was a wooden triangular contraption, obviously
handmade, more like a big soapbox-derby car than a boat. Three heavy struts
extended from the cockpit box, one ahead and two sideways and back from the
cockpit. It was an odd-looking thing, but the mast and sails seemed to have been
scavenged from an ordinary sloop, and Caroline was obviously familiar with it. Her
face was flushed with the wind, and she looked pleased in a way Frank had never
seen before. She pulled the sail taut and twisted the tiller, which set the angles of the
big metal skates out at the ends of the rear struts, and with a clatter they gained
speed and were off in a chorus of scraping.
The iceboat did not heel in the wind, but when gusts struck it merely squeaked and
slid along even faster, the skates making a loud clattery hiss. When a really strong
gust hit, the craft rocketed forward with a palpable jolt. FrankтАЩs eyes watered heavily
under the assault of the wind. He ducked when Caroline told him to, their heads
together as the boom swung over them as part of a big curving tack. To get up the
narrow lake against the wind they would have to tack a lot; the craft did not appear
able to hold too close to the wind.
As they worked their way north, Caroline explained that MaryтАЩs grandfather had built
the iceboat out of wood left over from when he had built the garage. тАЬHe built
everything there, even some of the furniture. He dug out the cellar, built the chimney,
the terraces, the dock and rowboatsтАж.тАЭ MaryтАЩs father had told them about this;
Caroline had met the grandfather only once, when she was very young.
тАЬThis last month IтАЩve been feeling like heтАЩs still around the place, like a ghost, but in
the best kind of way. The first night I got here the electricity wasnтАЩt on and there was
no sound at all. I never realized how used to noise weтАЩve gotten. That thereтАЩs always
some kind of sound, even if itтАЩs only the refrigerator.тАЭ
тАЬUsually itтАЩs a lot more than that,тАЭ Frank said, thinking of how D.C. sounded from
his treehouse.
тАЬYes. But this time it was completely quiet. I began to hear myself breathing. I could
even hear my heart beat. And then there was a loon on the lake. It was so beautiful.
And I thought of MaryтАЩs grandfather building everything, and it seemed like he was
there. Not a voice, just part of the house somehow. It was comforting.тАЭ
тАЬGood for him,тАЭ Frank said. He liked the sound of such a moment, also the fact that
she had noticed it. It occurred to him again how little he knew her. She was watching
the ice ahead of the boat, holding the boom line and the tiller in place, making small
adjustments, splayed in the cockpit as if holding a kind of dance position with the
wind. And there they were barreling across the frozen surface of the lake, the ice