Sixty Days and Counting. Kim Stanley Robinson

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СКАЧАТЬ hope so.’

      ‘You know,’ he said, ‘instead of holing up somewhere, you could stay with people who would keep you hidden, and cover for you.’

      ‘Like Anne Frank?’

      Startled, Frank said, ‘Well, I guess so.’

      She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t stand it. And I wouldn’t want to put anyone else to the trouble.’

      ‘Well, but what about me? I’m staying with the Khembalis in almost that way already. They’re very helpful, and their place is packed with people.’

      Again she shook her head. ‘I’ve got a Plan C, and it’s down in that area. Once I get into that I can contact you again.’

      ‘If we can figure out a clean system.’

      ‘Yes. I’ll work on that. We can always set up a dead drop.’

      ‘My friends from the park live all over the city –’

      ‘I’ve got a plan!’ she said sharply.

      ‘Okay.’ He shook his head, swallowed; tasted blood at the back of his throat.

      ‘What?’ she said.

      ‘Nothing,’ he said automatically.

      ‘Something,’ she said, and reached in to touch the side of his head. ‘Tell me what you just thought. Tell me quick, I’ve got to go, but I didn’t like that look!’

      He told her about it as briefly as he could. Taste of blood. Inability to make decisions. Maybe it was sounding like he was making excuses for coming up to warn her. She was frowning. When he was done, she shook her head.

      ‘Frank? Go see a doctor.’

      ‘I know.’

      ‘Don’t say that! I want you to promise me. Make the appointment, and then go see the doctor.’

      ‘Okay. I will.’

      ‘All right, now I’ve got to go. I think they’ve got you chipped. Be careful and go right back home. I’ll be in touch.’

      ‘How?’

      She grimaced. ‘Just go!’

      A phrase which haunted him as he made the long drive south. Back to home; back to work; back to Diane. Just go!

      He could not seem to come to grips with what had happened. The island was dreamlike in the way it was so vivid and surreal, but detached from any obvious meaning. Heavily symbolic of something that could nevertheless not be decoded. They had hugged so hard, and yet had never really kissed; they had climbed together up a rock wall, they had ice-boated on a wild wind, and yet in the end she had been angry, perhaps with him, and holding back from saying things, it had seemed. He wasn’t sure.

      Mile after mile winged by, minute after minute; on and on they went, by the tens, then the hundreds. And as night fell, and his world reduced to a pattern of white and red lights, both moving and still, with glowing green signs and their white lettering providing name after name, his feel for his location on the globe became entirely theoretical to him, and everything grew stranger and stranger. Some kind of fugue state, the same thoughts over and over. Obsession without compulsion. Headlights in the rear-view mirror; who could tell if they were from the same vehicle or not?

      It became hard to believe there was anything outside the lit strip of the highway. Once Kenzo had shown him a USGS map of the United States that had displayed the human population as raised areas, and on that map the 95 corridor had been like an immense Himalaya from Atlanta to Boston, rising from both directions to the Everest that was New York. And yet driving right down the spine of this great density of his species he could see nothing but the walls of trees lining both sides of the endless slot. He might as well have been driving south though Siberia, or over the face of some empty forest planet, tracking some great circle route that was only going to bring him back where he had started. The forest hid so much.

      Despite the re-established Gulf Stream, the jet stream still snaked up and down the Northern Hemisphere under its own pressures, and now a strong cold front rode it south from Hudson Bay and arrived just in time to strike the inauguration. When the day dawned, temperatures in the capital region hovered around zero degrees Fahrenheit, with clear sunny skies and a north wind averaging fifteen miles an hour. Everyone out of doors had to bundle up, so it was a slow process at all the security checkpoints. The audience settled onto the cold aluminum risers set on the east side of the Capitol, and Phil Chase and his entourage stepped onto the dais, tucked discreetly behind its walls of protective glass. The cold air and Phil’s happy, relaxed demeanor reminded Charlie of the Kennedy inauguration, and images of JFK and Earl Warren and Robert Frost filled his mind as he felt Joe kicking him in the back. He had only been a few years older than Joe when he had seen that one on TV. Thus the generations span the years, and now his boy was huddled against him, heavy as a rock, dragging him down but keeping him warm. ‘Dad, let’s go to the zoo! Wanna go to the zoo!’

      ‘Okay, Joe, but after this, okay? This is history!’

      ‘His story?’

      Phil stood looking out at the crowd after the oath of office was administered by the Chief Justice, a man about ten years younger than he was. With a wave of his gloved hand he smiled his beautiful smile.

      ‘Fellow Americans,’ he said, pacing his speech to the reverb of the loudspeakers, ‘you have entrusted me with the job of president during a difficult time. The crisis we face now, of abrupt climate change and crippling damage to the biosphere, is a very dangerous one, to be sure. But we are not at war with anyone, and in fact we face a challenge that all humanity has to meet together. On this podium, Franklin Roosevelt said, “This generation has a rendezvous with destiny.” Now it’s true again. We are the generation that has to deal with the profound destruction that will be caused by the global warming that has already been set in motion. The potential disruption of the natural order is so great that scientists warn of a mass extinction event. Losses on that scale would endanger all humanity, and so we cannot fail to address the threat. The lives of our children, and all their descendants, depend on us doing so.

      ‘So, like FDR and his generation, we have to face the great challenge of our time. We have to use our government to organize a total social response to the problem. That took courage then, and we will need courage now. In the years since we used our government to help get us out of the Great Depression, it has sometimes been fashionable to belittle the American government as some kind of foreign burden laid on us. That attitude is nothing more than an attack on American history, deliberately designed to shift power away from the American people. I want us to remember how Abraham Lincoln said it: “that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from this Earth.” This is the crucial concept of American democracy – that government expresses what the majority of us would like to do as a society. It’s us. We do it to us and for us. I believe this reminder is so important that I intend to add the defining phrase “of the people, by the people, and for the people” every time I use the word “government,” and I intend to do all I can to make that phrase be a true description. It will make me even more long-winded than I was before, but I am willing to pay that price, and you are going to have to pay it with me.

      ‘So, this winter, with your approval and support, I intend to instruct my team in the executive branch of government of the people, by the people, and СКАЧАТЬ