Fifty Degrees Below

by Kim Stanley Robinson

  “Well, maybe not entirely, but I did want to talk about it too.”

  “Sure. I thought you made some good points. I thought you might be interested in trying them out. So, here you are.”

  “So you let the other stuff go.”

  “It has to stay in your file, I can’t change people’s files. But there’s no sense looking for trouble. I find letting trouble stay in a file often works pretty well. And in your case, it was all going to work out one way or another. Either you’d go back to San Diego, or you’d help us here. In that sense you did good to give it to me in person like you did, I mean just the hard copy.”

  “I tried to take it back,” Frank confessed.

  “You did? How?”

  “I came back and looked for it. But Laveta had already given it to you.”

  “I see. I’m glad she did. I think it’s worked out for the best.”

  Frank thought about it.

  “Don’t you?”

  “Well, yes. I don’t know. I guess I’m still finding out.”

  She smiled her little smile again, and he discovered he liked to see it. He liked to cause it.

  The train moved again, and soon pulled into Penn Station. Up on the streets of Manhattan they walked through the immense slots created by the skyscrapers, across midtown to the UN building, Frank goggling at the views with an ex-window-washer’s awe.

  The day’s work at the UN was interesting. Frank got to see another side of Diane, perhaps a glimpse of her true métier, as some kind of international diplomat or technocrat. She knew all these people already, and in the meetings she got up from her seat from time to time to look over their shoulders at their screens, putting a hand to a shoulder while pointing and asking a question. They all had met many times before, clearly; there was even a pause wherein the Secretary General himself dropped by to say hi to her, thanking her lavishly for “all she was doing.” Back in the discussions, she was always driving the issue, always pushing for action, occasionally joking about the fact that she was a representative of the United States and yet still promoting a vigorous array of environmental actions. She didn’t overplay this, but her message seemed to be that although the U.S. historically had been part of the problem in global warming, from rejecting Kyoto to pumping more carbon than any other country into the atmosphere, that was all about to change. As for the past, Diane and her allies had nothing to be ashamed of just because they had not prevailed politically. In one conversation she made the point that polls showed that a majority of American citizens were interested in protecting the environment, and wanted their government to do something about climate change, so that it was not a matter of being outnumbered so much as denied, as part of a more general breakdown of democratic systems in the U.S. Diane shrugged as she said this; no cause for outrage—the fight against greed was never going to end—meanwhile, she served as an ambassador for all the elements of American society who wanted to engage the climate problem. Now they might be in a position to prevail.

  Mostly all this was implicit in her manner: cheerful, unapologetic, intent on the present, and on future results. She pushed relentlessly all day, discussing plan after plan, typing memos into her laptop and then without further ado moving on to the next matter, sometimes with a changed cast facing her, other times abruptly with the same people, with nothing more than an: “Okay, what about this?”

  Late in the day they met with representatives of the European carbon emissions trading group and futures market; there was a futures market in carbon credits, as there was for everything else, and Diane felt its calculations could be tweaked to make it more accurate and useful. The carbon treaty talks scheduled for the following year were almost certain to make emissions much more expensive, and this was the kind of prospect that often gave a huge push to a futures market, as people tried to buy while the commodity was still cheap. (Frank followed this discussion very closely, thinking about his own commodity status.) That kind of investment could generate a big fund in advance of the need for it in payouts, and that could be used to prime the pump for various mitigation projects. Calculations using the Dynamic Integrated Model of Climate and the Economy, DICE-99, showed that a carbon tax as low as ten cents a gallon of gas at the pump could have built up a hedge fund large enough to fund almost any mitigation they could conceive, if they had pegged the tax to inflation and started it some years before; they had missed that precautionary opportunity as they had so many others, but in many ways it still existed, and most nations were instituting some version of a carbon exchange and a carbon tax.

  After that they met with delegations from China, then India, then the European Union and the African Union. Usually representatives from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were on hand, and the discussions had a curiously suspended or hypothetical air; if Diane were the American president or a representative of his, they would have been more intent perhaps to press their positions; as it was they knew they were dealing with a kind of shadow government figure, or with the amorphous scientific community out there beyond the government, which Diane might be said to represent. She understood this and dealt with it using a kind of tightrope-walking tact, diplomatic and attractive; there were things NSF could do, and things it might do, were the political climate to change; and the physical climate changes might drive the political ones.

  After these meetings, it was the IPCC crowd itself who stayed on in the meeting rooms. The IPCC was one of the oldest and most influential global warming study groups; their list of suggested amelioration projects was huge, and they had already performed or commissioned preliminary studies of most of them, so that they had them sorted by cost, size, type, area, time needed, potential carbon drawdown, estimated time of sequestration, secondary effects, and many other determinants. They went over this list item by item in the late afternoon and early evening, and by the time they were done it certainly seemed like a robust carbon capture campaign could be constructed, if the funding were there and political obstructions did not exist.

  Diane and Frank’s questions to them about an intervention in the North Atlantic broached new territory, however, and though they were interested, the discussion could only outline the parameters of the problem. The International Maritime Treaty was administered through the UN, so there were experts available to answer some of Diane’s questions, but it would take them some time.

  Then they were done, and it was dark outside, the windows reflecting them in the room. Workday over, in Manhattan in the cocktail hour, on a clear chill November evening.

  “Dinner,” Diane announced, looking down at the East River and its bridges.

  “Right,” said Frank. He was hungry.

  “Shall we try this place I know?”

  They were on a date.

  They were on a date in the big city, the world’s great city, paradigmatic and incomparable. Manhattan always boggled Frank; he had spent very little time in it, and that spread out over the years. Here the primate mind had to be stunned by the verticality of the cliffs and canyons and towers. Add to those unnatural landforms the rivers of cars and taxis, and the omnipresence of people, hundreds in view at every moment, and the cumulative effect was staggering—literally so for Frank, as he had no inhibitions about spinning down the sidewalks, head swiveling like an owl’s to see more. Diane had to grab his arm and pull him out of traffic when he tried to get a better view of the Chrysler building. Yes, there they were, arm in arm on the streets of Manhattan, laughing at Frank’s hick amazement, his window-washer’s euphoria. West through midtown, then up toward Central Park, where Diane knew of a good restaurant. In the crowd at the next red light she slipped her arm out of his, which released him from an awkward position, in which his forearm had hung as if from an invisible sling to give her forearm something to rest on. These old postures. And yet the touch had coursed through him as he walked, like a light charge of electricity, or a new idea. Oooooooop.

  The restaurant proved to be run by Chinese or east Asians of
some other kind, Frank didn’t inquire because in every other respect the restaurant was pure Provençal. It was jammed into an archetypal Manhattan restaurant space, two stories of narrow rooms with a patio in the airshaft out back, a deep brick-walled enclosure, home to a hardy old tree; the whole burnished to a mysterious black-brick and battered-wood perfection.

  Two faces in candlelight over a restaurant table: an old situation, and they both knew it. Although probably only Frank was also helplessly theorizing the event in terms of its million-year-old tradition. Two faces in the light of a fire, one male one female: eat, drink, man, woman. Big parts of the brain were no doubt ignited by the candlelight alone, not to mention the smells and tastes. A million years.

  They talked about the day, the work in hand. Frank admitted to being impressed by the IPCC group and the work they had done. “Still, I’d like to do something faster, if we could. I think we’ll need it.”

  “You think so?”

  He told her about seeing Khembalung go under. Then his notions for dealing with the changing ocean, for clean energy, for really serious carbon drawdown from the atmosphere.

  “So,” Diane said, “really you’re talking about global cooling.”

  “Well, if we can warm it, maybe we can cool it too.”

  “But the warming took a lot. The whole world’s economy, two hundred years.”

  “Well, but just by accident though. The economy wasn’t dedicated to warming. It was just a byproduct.”

  “Making things cooler might be harder than warming.”

  “But if we actually direct part of the economy to that project. Like as if paying for a war or something.”

  “Maybe.” She thought about it, shook her head as if freeing herself from the subject.

  Then they talked about their pasts, in brief disconnected anecdotes. She described her children, Frank his parents. This seemed odd, but then she described her parents too; quite like his in some ways, it sounded. Her mother had been born in China, and Diane could do a funny imitation of her primitive English, “You go in street car squish you like bug!” After that Frank could hear better the Chinese accent in Diane’s own speech, which was perfectly grammatical and idiomatic, California Standard in fact, but with a lilt to it that he now understood better.

  Then world events; problems in the Middle East; travels, New York; other meals in New York. They tried each other’s dishes, refilled each other’s wineglasses. They each drank half the bottle; then, over crème brûlée, sipped samples of cognac from a tray of ancient bottles offered for their inspection by the waiter.

  Complex sensations, coursing through the sensorium. Some part of the parcellated mind watched all the parts coming together. Nice to be so here in the moment. Frank watched Diane’s face and felt something like the glow he had felt when she took his arm on the street. She too was enjoying herself. Seeing that was part of the glow. Reciprocity: this kind of mutual enjoyment, he thought, only works if it is mutual. We live for this, we crave this. He felt a little vertiginous, as if climbing a hard pitch or maybe the Chrysler Building up the street. Aware of a risk.

  He saw again how beautiful her arms were. This was an Optimodal thing; not just biceps but the whole upper arm, amazingly thick front to back, from shoulder to elbow; unlike anyone else’s arms. Gorgeous. It was different for everybody, what looked good to them. The argument that beauty corresponded to adaptive function was obviously stupid. Deviance from the norm was what drew the eye. Francesca Taolini had a crooked nose and various other asymmetries typical of narrow sharp-edged faces, and yet she was gorgeous; Diane had a blunt pentagonal face, perfectly symmetrical, and she too, while not as glamorous as Francesca, was yet still very attractive, one might even say charismatic. Yes, a true star that day at the UN. She drew the eye.

  At a table near the door to the kitchen, another couple was having a similar sort of dinner, except they were much more demonstrative, more romantic; from time to time they even leaned together and kissed, in that New York way of pretending they were alone when they weren’t. Frank thought they were showing off, and turned his head away; Diane saw them and his response too, and smiled her slight smile.

  She leaned over and whispered, “They have wedding bands.”

  “Ah?”

  “No way they are married to each other.”

  “Ahhh,” Frank said.

  She nodded, pleased by her deduction.

  “The big city,” Frank said awkwardly.

  “It’s true. I waited tables here for a while when I was going to school. I liked to guess the stories, like with these two, though this was easy. Usually it was harder. You only see an hour. But sometimes you can tell it’s an important hour. People forget to eat, or they cry, or argue. You could see the story. The other girls thought I was crazy, but it was just to be doing something.”

  “Recreational anthropology.”

  She laughed. “Yes, or Nancy Drew. Passing the time.”

  Then they were done, the bill divided and paid. Out on the sidewalks she said, “Where are you staying?”

  “The Metropolitan.”

  “Me too. Okay. We can walk through the park and see if the ice skating is going yet.”

  “It’s certainly been cold enough for it.”

  As they walked into it, Central Park’s similarity to Rock Creek Park struck Frank. Flat terrain instead of a ravine, but they were still in a piece of the great eastern hardwood forest. It was very familiar.

  “I’ve been spending time around the National Zoo,” Frank said impulsively. “It’s kind of like this.”

  “What do you do there?”

  “I’ve joined a group trying to keep track of the animals they haven’t yet recaptured.”

  “That must be interesting.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “And are you recapturing these animals?”

  “Eventually I suppose they will. We’re mostly watching them now. It would be hard to trap some of them. The gibbons are my favorite, and they can get away from people very easily, but they’ll need some help with this cold.”

  “I like their singing.”

  “So do I!” Frank glanced down at her, suppressing several inane comments as they arose; in the end saying nothing. She walked beside him, relaxed and easy, short and solid, her dark hair gleaming where it reflected a distant streetlight or park light, seeming unaware of his gaze.

  “Ah look, it is going. How nice.” She led him onto the bridge overlooking the northern bank of the ice rink. They leaned against it, watching New Yorkers expert and inexpert gliding over the illuminated white ice.

  “Come on,” Diane said, tugging his arm. “I haven’t skated in years.”

  “Ah God,” Frank said. “I’m terrible at it.”

  “I’ll teach you.”

  She took his rental boots from him, demanded a stiffer and tighter pair from the help, then laced them up for him. “Nice and stiff, that’s the secret. Now just stand straight and set a line. Glide forward. Shift quickly back and forth.”

  He tried it and it worked. Sort of. Anyway it went better than he remembered earlier times having done. He staggered around and tried not to fall, or run into anybody. Diane glided past from time to time, undemonstrative but deft, throwing him off balance every time he caught sight of her. She skated with him, held him up, helped him up, then took off and skated by, red-cheeked and grinning.

  “Okay,” she said after a while. “I’m losing it here, my ankles are tired.”

  “Mine are broken.”

  “Ah.”

  Back into shoes, back walking on the ground—stumping along, it felt, after the skating. Frank felt a little tense, and they drew apart as they walked. Frank searched for something to talk about.

  They walked more slowly, as if to prolong the evening, or stave off an awkward moment. Two single adults, out on a date in Manhattan, with empty hotel rooms waiting, in the same hotel; and no one on Earth knew where they were at that moment, except them. The theoretical pos
sibilities were obvious.

  But she was his boss, and about a decade older than him. Not that that mattered—though it did—but it was the professional relationship that was the main thing, standing like the bottom half of a Dutch door between them. So much could go wrong. So much could be misinterpreted. They were going to be working together for the foreseeable future. And then there was Caroline too, the existence of Caroline which had changed everything in his life; except not, it seemed, the content of this parcel of it.

  The incorrigible scientist inside him was trying to analyze the situation. Every street they came to had a red light, and there was time to think, perhaps too much time. Alpha females often led their troop in all the most fundamental ways, particularly matters of sexual access, meaning reproductive success. The alpha males—and really, in this situation Frank almost might be considered a beta male—they were almost ceremonial in their powers. They got what they wanted, but did not control the troop.

  Well, whatever; at this moment that wasn’t really the point. He needed to know what to do. It was like being in high school. He had hated high school for this very reason.

  Diane sighed. He glanced at her; she was smiling her little smile. “That was fun,” she said. “I never take time like this anymore.”

  She was keeping a good distance between them.

  “We’ll have to do it in D.C.,” Frank suggested. “Take a break.”

  “That would be nice. We might even have outdoor ice skating this winter, if the forecasts come true.”

  “Yes, that’s right. Out on the Potomac for that matter.”

  Another block.

  Frank said, “You do work long hours.”

  “No more than anyone else.”

  “I hear it’s a lot more.”

  “Well, there’s a lot to do. Anyway, it won’t last much longer.”

  She pointed down a crossing street this time, rather than nudging him along. “Down that way. The hotel’s at Fifty-first and Lex.”

  “Ah yeah. What do you mean, not much longer?”

  “Well, my term is almost up.”