Fifty Degrees Below sitc-2
Page 49
This was just like that—a sudden Carnavale, bursting onto Wisconsin. It had the feel of that day in the cold snap when everyone had gone out on the frozen Potomac. The city surprised by joy.
Frank watched through the windows of his van, feeling detached. No doubt it was good news—parts of him knew it was very good news—but he could not feel it. He was still too disturbed by what had happened with Caroline and her husband.
Inching forward, he gave Edgardo a call.
When Edgardo picked up, Frank’s ear was blasted by the sound of one of Astor Piazzolla’s wild tangos, the bandoneon leading the charge with such scrunching dissonances that Franks phone howled. “LET ME TURN IT DOWN” he heard as he held the phone at arm’s length.
“Sure.”
“Okay I’m back! Who is it?”
“It’s Frank.”
“Ah, Frank! How are you!”
“I’m okay. So, what happened?”
Edgardo laughed. “Didn’t you hear?” he said. “Phil Chase won the election!”
Behind his voice the tango kept charging along, and the shifting static in the phone led Frank to think that he might be dancing around his apartment.
“I know that, but how?”
“We will certainly be talking about how this happened for a long time, Frank, and I’m sure it will keep us entertained on our runs. But I predict right now that no one will ever be able to say exactly why this election came out the way it did.” He laughed again, seemingly at the way he could use such innocuous pundit clichés to convey exactly what he meant: not now. Of course. And maybe never. “Meanwhile just enjoy yourself, Frank. Celebrate.”
In the background the tango band twirled on. Frank pushed End on his phone; he could tell Edgardo about the new set of disks later. Best not to use phones anymore, as Edgardo had reminded him. He shook his head: his leap-before-you-look strategy was not capable of noticing all the possible consequences of an act. It was not working.
He dropped into Georgetown. It was even more crowded than upper Wisconsin had been; but soon he would cross to Arlington, and presumably over there it wouldn’t be like this. Frank wasn’t certain Arlington would be celebrating at all. That would be all right with Frank.
Then just before the Key Bridge traffic came to a complete halt. Downstream to the left he could see fireworks, shooting up off the levee next to the Lincoln Memorial, bursting over their own reflections in the black Potomac. All the celebrants crowding the street and sidewalk were cheering, many jumping up and down. Drivers of cars in front of Frank were giving up and getting out to stretch their legs or join the party. Some of them climbed on the roofs of their cars.
Frank got out too, smacked by the cold into a new awareness of the night and the crowd. Every boom of the fireworks brought another cheer, and all the skyward-tipped faces shone with the succession of mineral colors splashing over them. Frank was seized by the arms by two young women, pulled into their dance as they sang, “Happy Days Are Here Again,” kicking out in time before him. To keep step he started kicking as well, adding gibbon hoots to the general din. So what if sea level was rapidly rising, so what if there were lichen out there sucking carbon out of the sky—so what if the whole world had just seized the tiger by the tail! They were under a new dispensation, they were entering a new age! Oooooooooooop!
Then traffic was moving again, and Frank had to smooch his dancers and dash to his van. Into its warmth and over the bridge, creeping forward slowly, the fireworks still showering sparks into the river.
Over in Arlington it was entirely different: dark, empty, a little bit spooky. Streetside trees bounced and flailed on the wind. Snow blanketed the big open spaces downtown. Wilson Boulevard was deserted, just as he had thought it might be. There were two countries bound together now, and one of them was not celebrating. A cold and windy night to be sure. Hard to sustain being out on such a night, if one were not in Carnavale mode. Where would the knitting woman be tonight, for instance? And where was Chessman? Where would the bros sleep on this night? Did it matter to any of them that Phil Chase had won the election? In a system that demanded five percent unemployment, so that fifteen million people were going hungry, without jobs or homes, and an ice age coming on—did any election matter?
By the time Frank drove up to the curb outside Khembali House it was well after midnight, and he was exhausted. All was dark, the wind hooting around the eaves. The house had a presence in the night—big, solid, and he had to say comforting. It was not his home, but it did feel like a place he could come to. Inside were people he trusted.
Through the gate and around the back. Thank God they did not go in for those great Tibetan mastiffs that terrorized Himalayan villages. All was peaceful in the snowed-over autumn garden. Little scraps of prayer flag flapped on a string in the breeze.
The light was on in their shed. He turned the doorknob gently and urged the door in with its most silent twist.
Rudra was sitting up in bed reading. “It’s okay,” he said. “No need to be quiet.”
“Thanks.”
Inside it was nice and warm. Frank was still shivering, though it was not visible on the surface. He sat down on his bed, cold hands between his legs and tucked under his thighs. Like sitting on two lumps of snow.
His main cell phone was on his bedside table, blinking. He pulled a hand out and flipped it open to check it. Message from Diane. Called; would call back. He stared at it.
“You also got call tonight on phone in house.”
“What? I did?”
“Yes.”
“Did they leave a message?”
“Qang say, a woman call, very late. Said, tell Frank she is okay. She will call again.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Frank sat there. He didn’t know what to think. He could think this, he could think that. Could, could, could, could, could. Diane had called. Caroline had called.
“Windy.”
“Sure is.”
“Good night?”
“I guess so.”
“You are not happy at election result?”
“Yeah, sure. It’s great. If it holds.”
“Good for Khembalung, I think.”
“Yes, probably so. Good for everyone.” Except for fifteen million of us, he didn’t say.
“And your voyage, out to the salt fleet? Went well?”
“Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah, it was very interesting. We seeded the ocean. Poured five hundred million tons of salt in it.”
“You put salt in ocean?”
“That’s right.”
Rudra grinned. Once again the thousand wrinkles in his face reconfigured into their particular map of delight. How often he must have smiled—
“I know I know!” Frank interrupted. “Good idea!”
Rudra laughed his helpless deep belly laugh. “Salt to ocean! Oh, very good idea!”
“Well, it was. We may have saved the world with that salt. Saved it from more winters like the last one, and this one too.”
“Good.”
Rudra considered it. “And yet you do not seem happy, my friend.”
“No. Well.” A deep, deep breath. “… I don’t know. I’m cold. I’m afraid we’re in for another bad winter, whether the salt works or not. I don’t think any of the feral animals left will make it if that happens.”
“You put out shelters?”
“Yes.” An image: “I was in one of those myself, when Drepung found me and brought me here.”
“You told me that.”
“It was filled with all kinds of different animals, all in there together.”
“That must have looked strange.”
“Yes. And they saw me, too. I sat right down by them. But they didn’t like it. They didn’t like me being there.”
Rudra shook his head regretfully. “No. The animals don’t love us anymore.”
“Well. You can see why.”
“Yes.”
They sat there, staring at the orange glow of the space heater.
Rudra said, “If winter is all that is troubling you, then you are okay, I think.”
“Ah well. I don’t know.”
The taste of blood. Frank gestured at his cell phone, put his cold hand back under his thigh, rocked forward and back, forward and back. Warm up, warm up. Don’t bleed inside. “There’s too many… different things going on at once. I go from thing to thing, you know. Hour to hour. I see people, I do different things with them, and I’m not… I don’t feel like the same person with these different people. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what to do. If anyone were watching they’d think I had some kind of mental disorder. I don’t make any sense.”
“But no one is watching.”
“Except what if they are?”
Rudra shook his head. “No one can see inside you. So no matter what they see, they don’t know. Everyone only judges themself.”
“That’s not good!” Frank said. “I need someone more generous than that!”
“Ha ha. You are funny.”
“I’m serious!”
“A good thing to know, then. You are the judge. A place to start.”
Frank shuddered, rubbed his face. Cold hands, cold face; and dead behind the nose. “I don’t see how I can. I’m so different in these different situations. It’s like living multiple lives. I mean I just act the parts. People believe me. But I don’t know what I feel. I don’t know what I mean.”
“Of course. This is always true. To some you are like this, to others like that. Sometimes a spirit comes down. Voices take over inside you. People take away what they see, they think that is all there is. And sometimes you want to fool them in just that way. But want to or not, you fool them. And they fool you! And on it goes—everyone in their own life, everyone fooling all the others— No! It is easy to live multiple lives! What is hard is to be a whole person.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks for always generous help from:
Jürgen Atzgerstorfer, Terry Baier, Willa Baker, Guy Guthridge, George Hazelrigg, Charles Hess, Tim Highham, Neil Koehler, Rachel Park, Ann Russell, Tom St. Germain, Michael Schlesinger, Mark Schwartz, Jim Shea, Gary Snyder, Mark Thiemens, Buck Tilley, and Paul J. Werbos.
FIFTY DEGREES BELOW
A Bantam Spectra Book / November 2005
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2005 by Kim Stanley Robinson
Bantam Books, the rooster colophon, Spectra, and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are
trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Robinson, Kim Stanley.
Fifty degrees below / Kim Stanley Robinson.
p. cm.
ISBN-10:0-553-80312-3
ISBN-13:978-0-553-80312-9
1. Washington (D.C.)—Fiction. I. Tide.
PS3568.02893F54 2005
813’.54—dc22 2005048074
Printed in the United States of America
Published simultaneously in Canada
www.bantamdell.com
10 987654321
BVG
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