"Kate Wilhelm - Scream" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

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The Scream by Kate Wilhelm

First published in Orbit 13, ed. Damon Knight, Putnam, 1974

The sea had turned to copper; it rose and fell gently, the motion starting so deep that no ripple broke the
surface of the slow swells. The sky was darkening to a deep blue-violet, with rose streaks in the west
and a high cirrocumulus formation in the east that was a dazzling white mountain crowned with brilliant
reds and touches of green. No wind stirred. The irregular dark strip that was Miami Beach separated the
metallic sea from the fiery sky. We were at anchor eight miles offshore aboard the catamaran _Loretta_.
She was a forty-foot, single-masted, inboard motorboat.

Evinson wanted to go on in, but Trainor, whose boat it was, said no. Too dangerous: sand, silt, wrecks,
God knew what we might hit. We waited until morning.

We had to go in at Biscayne Bay; the Bal Harbour inlet was clogged with the remains of the bridge on
old A1A. Trainor put in at the Port of Miami. All the while J.P. kept taking his water samples, not once
glancing at the ruined city; Delia kept a running check for radiation, and Bernard took pictures. Corrie
and I tried to keep out of the way, and Evinson didn't. The ancient catamaran was clumsy, and Trainor
was kept busy until we were tied up, then he bowed sarcastically to Evinson and went below.

Rusting ships were in the harbor, some of them on their sides half in water, half out. Some of them
seemed afloat, but then we saw that without the constant dredging that had kept the port open, silt and
sand had entered, and the bottom was no more than ten to fifteen feet down. The water was very clear.
Some catfish lay unmoving on the bottom, and a school of big-eyed mullet circled at the surface, the first
marine life we had seen. The terns were diving here, and sandpipers ran with the waves. J.P.'s eyes were
shining as he watched the birds. We all had been afraid that there would be no life of any kind.

Our plan was to reconnoiter the first day, try to find transportation: bicycles, which none of us had ridden
before, skates, canoes, anything. Miami and the beaches covered a lot of miles, and we had a lot of
work; without transportation the work would be less valuable -- if it had any value to begin with.

Bernard and Delia went ahead to find a place to set up our base, and the rest of us started to unload the
boat. In half an hour we were drenched with sweat. At first glance the city had seemed perfectly
habitable, just empty of people, but as we carried the boxes to the hotel that Bernard had found, the ruins
dominated the scene. Walls were down, streets vanished under sand and palmettos and sea grapes. The
hotel was five stories, the first floor covered with sand and junk: shells, driftwood, an aluminum oar eaten
through with corrosion. Furniture was piled against walls haphazardly, like heaps of rotting compost. The
water had risen and fallen more than once, rearranging floatables. It was hellishly hot, and the hotel stank
of ocean and decay and dry rot and heat. No one talked much as we all worked, all but Trainor, who
had worked to get us here and who now guzzled beer with his feet up. Evinson cursed him
monotonously. We carried our stuff to the hotel, then to the second floor, where we put mosquito netting
at the windows of three connecting rooms that would be used jointly. We separated to select our private
rooms and clear them and secure them against the mosquitoes that would appear by the millions as soon
as the sun went down.