Fifty Degrees Below

by Kim Stanley Robinson

  “It’s a term?”

  “Yes, didn’t you know?” She looked up at him, laughed at his expression. “Heading NSF is a presidential appointment, it lasts for six years. I have just over a year to go.”

  They stopped in front of their hotel.

  “I didn’t know that,” Frank said stupidly.

  “They must have told you when you did the orientation.”

  “Oh,” said Frank. “I missed some of that.”

  “You blew it off.”

  “Well, yes, a little bit, not all of it. . . .”

  She watched him, seeming amused but guarded. He had thought she was going to be his boss indefinitely. Now he had suddenly learned she was not as powerful as he had thought. And power is attractive. On the other hand, this meant she was not going to be his boss indefinitely, which meant that particular strangeness would go away, leaving them unconstrained by work issues—by the past in any manifestation—free to examine whatever was between them. So, less powerful in the pure sense, but less constrained in her relation to him; and how did these factors affect his feelings?

  She was watching his face to see!

  He didn’t know himself, so there was no way his face could show anything. But then that too must have been visible. And the unconscious mind—

  He shivered at his own confusion, tried to smile. “So there’s light at the end of your tunnel,” he said.

  “But I like the job.”

  “Ah. Yes. Well . . . that’s too bad, then.”

  She shrugged. “I’ll do something else.”

  “Dang.”

  She shrugged again. She was still watching him; interested in him. He wondered how much longer they could stand outside the hotel talking before it began to look strange.

  “I want to hear more about this down in D.C.,” he said. “What you’re thinking of doing, and all.”

  “Okay.”

  “Good. Well, 6:00 train—shall we meet in the lobby and walk over to the station?”

  “Sure. Five A.M. sharp.”

  They turned together into the hotel and walked to the elevator. Up it went, opened at the third floor:

  “Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  “That was fun.”

  “Yes it was.”

  WHEN CHARLIE CLEANED HOUSE HE WORKED in a burst of maniacal effort powered by very loud music, making the event into a kind of indoor extreme sport, a domestic pentathlon performed in a last-minute attempt to stave off utter shabbiness. The ancient insane and incontinent cats, the ineradicable musk that the swimming tiger had left in the basement (perhaps contributing to the cats’ paranoia), Joe’s depredations and accidents, Nick’s absent-minded tendency to use the furniture as a napkin, for instance to clean his fork so as to keep his food pure; all these left marks. Even the divinely slovenly Anna left marks, dropping her clothing wherever she happened to take it off, depositing books and papers and mail wherever she finished with them—all behaviors in stark contrast to the extreme order of her abstract thinking—all these had an impact. And Charlie himself was disorganized in both the abstract and the concrete; so that eventually their house’s interior came to consist of narrow passageways through immense tottering middens of household detritus.

  Charlie would therefore occasionally knock something over and block the way, notice the chaos, and freak out. He would leap into action, trying to rectify everything in a single morning. He had to begin by putting things away, to the extent possible, as all closets and drawers remained mysteriously full, middens of their own despite all that was strewn at large. However, he at least got things off the floors, into stacks on tables and dressers near where they were supposed to go. Then he cleaned the bathrooms and the kitchen, scrubbing madly; then it was time for vacuuming.

  All this was Charlie’s version of the zen meditation practice called “chop wood carry water,” and he enjoyed it as such; but it had to be fueled by music or it was no good. Vacuum cleaning in particular needed music, fast intricate surging music that sounded good at high volume. The buzzsaw solos of Charlie Parker made an excellent vacuuming soundtrack, allowing Charlie to shout “Salt—PEEEEnuts!” over and over as he crashed about. Certain rock guitarists could of course push a vacuum as well; when Steve Howe was soloing the world practically vacuumed itself.

  But the apotheosis of vacuum cleaning, Charlie had found over the years, was that part of Beethoven’s late work that expressed the composer’s sense of “the mad blind energy of the universe,” which was just what vacuuming needed. These movements, as defined by Beethoven’s biographer Walter Sullivan, who had identified and named the mode, were those characterized by tunes repetitive and staccato, woven into fugues so that different lines perpetually overlapped in dense interference patterns, relentless, machinelike, interminable. Possibly only a deaf man could have composed such music. The famous second movement of the Ninth Symphony was a good example of this mode, but to Charlie the two very best examples were the finale of the Hammerklavier sonata, opus 106, and the Grosse Fugue, originally the finale of string quartet opus 130, later detached and designated opus 133. The finale of the Hammerklavier was so difficult to play that concert pianists often gave up performing it years ahead of their full retirement; while the Grosse Fugue had caused the first quartet that attempted it to beg Beethoven to write a replacement finale more within human capacities—a request which Beethoven had granted with a laugh, no doubt foreseeing that quartet players in the future would end up having to perform both finales, compounding their problem.

  In any case, the cosmic inexorability of these two huge fugues made perfect music to propel a vacuum cleaner around the house. And long ago Charlie had discovered by accident that it worked even better to play them both at once, one on the stereo upstairs, the other downstairs, with the volumes on both stereos turned up to eleven.

  Joe of course loved this unholy racket, real big truck music, and he insisted on lending a hand with the vacuuming itself, causing Charlie to dodge and leap about to avoid trampling him, and to catch the machine if it got loose and began to drag the undetachable toddler down some lane of open space toward furniture or walls. After a few such mishaps Joe would usually hand it back over and follow Charlie around, slinging dinosaurs into the vacuum’s path to see if they would survive.

  So, now a day came when Charlie was flying around the dining room, smashing chairs aside with the vacuum cleaner to make room under the table, lots of odd rattles and clunks under there as usual, glorying in the criss-cross of the two monster fugues, the way they almost seemed to match each other, the piano rippling up and down within the massed chaos of the strings, everything sounding wrong but right, insane but perfect—and then came that magic moment when both the hammering on the klavier and the grossness of the fugue quieted at the same time, as if Beethoven had somehow foreseen that the two pieces would be played together someday, or as if there was some underlying method in both, introducing a little eye to the storm before the exhilarating assault on all meaning and sense started to chomp away again—when Charlie looked around and saw that Joe was sitting on the floor of the living room, red-faced and open-mouthed, bawling his eyes out, unheard in the cacophony.

  Charlie killed the vacuum cleaner, rushed over to turn off Charles Rosen, then slid across the hardwood floor to snatch the boy up in his arms.

  “Oh Joe! Joe! What’s wrong, buddy? What’s wrong?”

  Joe stuck out his lower lip. “Loud.”

  “Oh God Joe I’m sorry. I’m sorry. But, you know—we’re vacuuming! It’s always loud when we vacuum the house.”

  “Too loud,” Joe said, and whimpered pathetically.

  Charlie hugged him, held him. “Sorry guy,” he said. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t know. This is the way we’ve always done it before.”

  And also, it seemed to him, in the past, if Joe had wanted something like the sound turned down, he would have let Charlie know by beating on his kneecap or launching a dinosaur at his head. Charl
ie was used to a very frank and open exchange of views with Joe, so that they would bicker with each other, sure, tussle, whack, yell—but cry? To have Joe Quibler whimpering in his arms pathetically, content to snuggle up against his chest . . . it was not right. And though it felt good to be able to comfort him, to rock him side to side in his arms, as he had many years before when trying to get Nick to fall asleep—humming gently the main theme of the Grosse Fugue until the Arditti Quartet finished with it upstairs, then continuing to hum it, until it became something like a lullaby for infant robots—it was still extremely disturbing. It just wasn’t like Joe.

  He sat down and for a long time hugged the child, communing. Then Joe looked up at the big front window, and his eyes grew round.

  “Snow,” he said.

  “Yes, that’s right, that’s snow! Very good Joe! I didn’t know you knew how to say that. It must be last winter since you saw snow, and you were just a baby then.”

  Joe conducted the snow with outstretched arms, looking rapt, or maybe just stunned. “Snow go down.”

  “It sure does. Wow, that’s pretty heavy for a first storm. It looks like it’s going to bury the house. I thought this was supposed to be global warming we were having.”

  “Berry house?”

  “No not really, I was joking there. It might come up to the windows though, see? I don’t think it will get any higher than that.”

  “No?”

  “Oh, well, no reason really. It just never does. At least so far. And cold dry winters are supposed to be the thing now. The great paradox. I guess it’s been kind of dry this fall. But now it’s snowing. When it snows it snows.” Charlie was used to babbling meaninglessly at Joe; they were privileged conversations, as between lawyer and client. It was actually a little bit disconcerting to have Joe be starting to understand what he was saying.

  Joe kept conducting the snow, his hands making evocative little flutters downward.

  Impulsively Charlie gave him another hug. The boy was hot as usual. Not by much, but Charlie could feel it. Anna was keeping a chart on him now, and she had established that he was hotter by day, just under a hundred, and a bit cooler at night, right over 98.6; average 98.9, she concluded after going through one of her statistical fits. It was a way of not thinking, Charlie thought. Quantification as coping. Charlie just felt the heat with his fingertips, as now. Joe shrugged him aside. He was more sensitive these days. Was that true? Well, there was this sudden aversion to Beethoven squared. But one of the weird things about living with a toddler was how fast they changed, and how hard it then became to remember what they had been like before the change, overwhelmed as that memory was by the present state, now so vivid to the eye. Probably Joe was different, because of course, he had to be different. He was growing up. He was adding several million brain cells an hour, and several hundred experiences.

  And occasionally he burst out with a newly angry version of his old vehemence; so it wasn’t as if he were mellowing out. No one who knew him would put it that way. But before, he had been permanently and so to speak impersonally irritated, at the slowness of everything, perhaps; now when he got upset it appeared more deeply felt, and often directed at Charlie. It almost seemed as if he were unhappy. This had never been true before; Joe had been furious often, unhappy never. Even the thought of him unhappy cut Charlie to the quick. And fearful, needy, even affectionate . . . all these were strange things for Charlie to witness.

  Now he watched Joe stare out the window at the falling snow: not writhing in his arms, not trying to throw anything, not bouncing around absorbed in solitary play, not babbling. Of course the snow was a startling sight, so fair enough. But Charlie was scared by the way Joe felt in his arms.

  “Maybe we should go out there and play in the snow!”

  “Okay.”

  “Come on, it’ll be fun! We can dress warm and make a snowman. Throw snowballs.”

  “Okay Da.”

  Charlie sighed. No leap up, no marching to the door shouting GO GO GO with finger imperiously extended. . . .

  He got up and started to get them dressed. It was a long operation. It was eighteen degrees outside. Already he was thinking, fire in the fireplace, Thomas the Train on the carpet, snow drifting down outside the window. “We won’t be able to stay out long.”

  The phone rang. “Oh, wait just a second here.”

  Joe’s eyes bugged out in their old style. “Daaa! Wanna GO! GO!”

  “Ha! I bet you do! Good for you! Just a second, ha ha. Hello?”

  “Charlie it’s Roy.”

  “Roy! How are you?”

  “I’m fine you? This a good time?”

  “No worse than usual.”

  “Still suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous children?”

  “Yes. Joe and I are about to go outside in the snow, but I can talk to you out there. Let me get my earplug in.”

  “I won’t keep you long, you guys just keep doing what you’re doing. We’ve been talking about what Phil can say to counter the president’s people’s attacks. Now that he’s declared he’s running, they’re clearly concerned, and they keep saying that he’ll gut the economy in a futile attempt to reverse climate change.”

  “As opposed to letting it continue on its merry way?”

  “Yes. Adaptation opportunities are a big thing in certain think tanks now. There are regions due to see more productive climates, they say.”

  “I’ll bet they do. Well, let’s hold them to that. Phil has to keep saying that getting right with the planet has become an industrial activity, and getting there first could be a spur to any nation’s economy. It’ll be like the dot com boom, only real.”

  “Uh huh, uh huh, I’m writing all this down—”

  “Yeah right.”

  “—but why shouldn’t we just let private enterprise take care of it, like they say it will?”

  “The free market is not good at disaster recovery. Catastrophe is not profitable.”

  “But they say it is.”

  “We’ll have to point out that it isn’t true.”

  “Maybe that’s why we keep losing.”

  “Think positive, Roy. Here, put your legs in first, it works better that way. It’s warmer. No way are we going outside unless you agree to put that on. You’re so funny!”

  “Charlie, do you need to go?”

  “No no. Hey, come on! No, not at all. Here we go. Now, what were we saying, that we’re doomed to lose this election?”

  “No, it’s not that, I’m just trying to refine the message.”

  “Job creation! Helping people get through the bad weather by stimulating these two new industries, adaptation, then mitigation.”

  “The time for a Work Projects Administration may have passed.”

  “Roy—”

  “I’m just trying to see their next move!”

  “You’re bumming me out. I’m out in the beautiful white snow, whee!”

  “Ooh! Ooh!”

  “Okay Charlie. Call me back, I don’t think my ear can handle you guys besporting yourselves like that.”

  “Right, think it over and I’ll call you back. We won’t be out long. Oh but wait just a sec—when I do call back, remind me we should talk about insurance, they might be interested hey Joe! Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  Charlie hustled after Joe, out into the street. Their street dead-ended right in front of their house, and there was a blanket of snow covering it. Joe kicked around in an ecstasy, his cheeks red, his eyes a brilliant blue. Charlie kicked around behind him, calling, “Go! Ha! Take that!”

  Snow drifted down on them. It was cold but almost windless. Beautiful, really. Maybe they could adapt to any climate.

  Well, but that was thinking about individuals, the body in its clothing. The support system more generally might not fare as well: food production, energy. . . .

  As he danced in the snow, Charlie considered what could be said to the American public to convince them they needed to elect Phil Cha
se as their next president, rather than the current happy occupant. Incumbents had an advantage; but the Republican party had stood firm, so far, on a policy of denying the existence of climate change. Surely the time was coming when they could be held to account for that heedlessness?

  Maybe, maybe not.

  The snow lofted down. Looking up it was strange to see so many tiny white missiles plunging down out of the gray cloud that covered the sky, flocking down in waves.

  Individual flakes caught in Joe’s hair. His mittens were too big; he looked displeased and shook his hands. Angrily he tried to pluck the mittens off, one hand then the other, but both hands were equally impeded.

  “DAAAA!”

  “No, Joe, wait, don’t do that Joe, your hands will freeze. Cold! Cold!”

  “Wanna! Wanna!” Joe flung his arms wildly around him, and off the mittens flew.

  “Ah shit Joe. Come on. We’ll have to go back inside if you do that.”

  “Wanna snow.”

  Happily Joe scooped up loose snow and smooshed it into snowballs to throw at his dad. Quickly his hands turned pink and wet, but he didn’t seem to mind. Charlie helped him build a little snowman. Base, torso, head. The new snow cohered very nicely. Seed cones from a low branch for eyes. “Very cool.”

  Joe stood facing it. He put his red wet hands together. “Namaste,” he said.

  Charlie jerked upright. “What did you say?”

  “No ma stay.”

  “Oh! You want to go back inside?”

  “Owee.” Holding out a red-and-white hand for Charlie’s inspection.

  “I bet! That looks cold! That’s what I was telling you, about the mittens.”

  “Too big.”

  “Sorry. We’ll look for some smaller ones.”

  Joe began kicking the snowman. Charlie watched him fondly, fully in the grip of the genomic sublime. This was his Joe, kicking his creation to pieces. Like a sand mandala poured into the river. Huge gusto when wiping a slate clean. His snowsuit looked like it was covered with wet diamonds.

  “Come on, let’s go back inside. He’s all gone now. People won’t even know what we did. They’ll think that two big tigers have been out here wrestling in the snow.”