Frank is also a budding neo-paleolithic man; he has nowhere to live and decides to build a sleeping platform in a tree in a local park. We get an unprecedented amount of detail about D.C. and its various neighbourhoods and parks and the people who live there. Robinson has a lot of insight into how people from all different strata of society live, and Frank is a great viewpoint character to use in this context.
Frank is also a way for Robinson to describe what is happening, with regard to climate change, with a more visceral impact than might have happened with a different character. As Frank notes after living in his tree, most people in a modern society are insulated from immediate contact with nature. Frank, on the other hand, is actively trying to throw off some of the habits of civilization.
Unfortunately, I'm not entirely sure Frank is a sympathetic character. Even he doesn't seem to remember the shady things he did in the first book. And of all things, he's injured in a fight and suffers damage to the area of his brain behind his nose—for the majority of Fifty Degrees Below, he has trouble making decisions due to his brain damage. When a book is so focused on one character's personal dilemmas, and that character has to agonize over every one of those decisions, it gets to be a bit much!
Frank's San Diego colleagues disappear almost entirely, while the rest of the cast of D.C. characters continue much as before. Charlie Quibler still works in politics and takes care of his son, Charlie's wife Anna works for the NSF solving scientific dilemmas, and the Buddhist monks who came to D.C. to save their homeland have essentially moved in and settled down. At one point, Frank lives with them when his friends convince him that living in his treehouse is too dangerous for someone who can't make decisions effectively.
What it comes down to: Robinson bets his book on Frank, and I'm not convinced that the bet pays off.
Two other things in the book are worth mentioning: the process of restarting the stalled Gulf Stream is shown in fascinating detail—the technology, the unusual allies, and so forth—and mostly told from Frank's point of view; and there's a presidential election. I'll talk about this a bit more in my review of the third and final book in the series, but I was initially disappointed in Robinson's answer to many of the problems currently plaguing the American political system (and wider circles); it's actually a bit deeper if you ponder what he's saying by the end of the third book. The political side of the solution is a fantasy of long-standing tradition in American culture—the great man who comes in and cleans up politics—but there are some deeper waters. Onward!
* * * *
Sixty Days and Counting, Kim Stanley Robinson, Bantam Spectra, 2007, 600 pp.
* * * *
The title of the third and final book in this series refers to the burst of energy in Washington D.C. with a new president in charge. Never mind a hundred days—newly-elected Phil Chase wants to fix everything within sixty days: the environment, foreign relations, the greedy system of hypercapitalism, etc. That's just as impossible as FDR's famous 100 days, of course, but Chase wants to carry that energy and momentum past the first 60 days, thus the “and counting."
Chase is the great man who comes in to clean up politics and, as such, represents a huge swath of wish-fulfillment fantasy in this book. The political system in America is so clearly broken, especially for those who care about science and various looming crises of the climate kind and otherwise, that it's tempting beyond the forbearance of rational beings to dream about what could be fixed. And in this particular headspace, the enormous frustration on the part of a writer like Robinson—an example would be the passage I quoted at length from the first book—can warp even the finest storytelling instinct towards the didactic. If only there were a politician like Phil Chase, then the enormous task of changing our society to a more sustainable basis would apparently have a chance! Maybe so, maybe not.
When I think back on the series as whole, I find this political magic-hand-waving to be a remarkable contrast to what happens on the scientific side. Bluntly: it's going to be hard work, there are some big projects described (salting the ocean, filling inland lakes with water from rising sea levels) but those are the exceptions, and the only hope we have is our hard work and cheery optimism. As near as I can tell, that's the recipe for change on the political side as well in real life; perhaps we are more used to having a solitary leader, symbolic or otherwise, in politics. Science is already more of an ad hoc process, with the crowd nature an essential part of the endeavour (along with a healthy dose of skepticism, of course!). The unruly mob of scientists might be pushing in thousands of different directions but I would agree with Robinson that they would be agreeable to a sustained effort to chase certain goals, like sustainable energy sources, mitigating climate change, and other large scale survival efforts.
As with the previous two books, we get a mix of the domestic lives of the characters and the grand schemes that must be brought to life to mitigate climate change. One of the high points in the book for me was a rather unexpected description of the game Apples to Apples—a family plays a hilarious round or two during a blackout. Like a lot of Robinson's books, there's a big emphasis on outdoor life and activity, including a particularly vivid trip to the Sierras. Charlie has a tradition of going on a backpacking trip with his friends, and he takes Frank along this year. They venture into California's interior, only to discover that a whole series of microclimates, familiar to them from previous trips up and down the mountainsides, have been burned out by lack of rainfall. And when a fragile area loses its life, it takes a long time to get it back.
Frank, a shady character in the first book and an indecisive neo-caveman in the second, gets his brain damage fixed up (insofar as this is possible), gets to help out in some of the largest scale endeavours in human history, and finally gets his girl! Unlike what happens to the majority of protagonists in spy thrillers, Frank's encounter with the surveillance apparatus of various black-ops groups turns out rather well for his sake. In the tradition of tragedy and comedy, Sixty Days and Counting is definitely a comedy, complete with multiple marriages.
So the trilogy is complete—I was wondering where Robinson was going to get his usual optimism from in the face of climate change, but his hope is where it's always been: the smart people who find a way to act, and act together. Still, there was not much in the way of resolution. Granted, one person cannot solve something as giant as “climate change” as such; that's why I was frantically dialling down my expectations all the way through. In the end, the trilogy boils down to something like “we should get some smart people to work on this problem; here's what their lives might be like in this situation.” If that's enough for you, you'll like the trilogy; I'm still not entirely sure if that was enough for me.
* * * *
James Schellenberg lives and writes in Ottawa.
* * * *
Rapid cultural change is obviously very possible—we've seen it before—so the attempt to forget that it can happen is one part of the power struggle that's going on. The power structure always pretends that it's impossible to change, inevitable that things are the way they are, but that's obviously untrue; change is going to happen.
—Kim Stanley Robinson, “Kim Stanley Robinson: Chop Wood, Carry Water” in Locus (April 2007, Vol 58 No 4)
[Back to Table of Contents]
Pretty Birds by A. R. Morlan
There was a baby girl lying on the back lawn. Again. Arna leaned into the window until the screen pressed against her right cheek, and tiny squares of powdered flesh were outlined in gray-black gridwork. It was on its back, fat-creased arms and legs rhythmically flailing while the fingers and toes wiggled, and she—if the pink-check sundress could be believed to be an intentional choice—was looking up at the odd pigeons flying above her head. The sky was overcast, so Arna knew that the baby wasn't staring up into the sun but still, those birds, those small-headed pigeons, might relieve themselves on the baby in mid-flight—
"She's out there again, Dehaan. I should call someone abou
t her mother—"
Dehaan didn't look at Arna as he shoved his cell and his wallet into his pockets. All he said was what he always said when she saw the baby on the lawn: “C'mon, we're going to be late. Lynet doesn't like it when we're late—"
"Yeah, especially when she shows up like half a minute before the session is due to start.” Arna found herself saying the words she always said in reply, before taking a last look at the baby and the circling pigeons, or birds very much like pigeons, there in the back yard. Her back yard. Hers and Dehaan's. The spot where this baby was lying, again. She knew from the other times she'd seen the baby that Dehaan wouldn't come look at it (her), wouldn't consider calling the police to come check on this baby lying out there alone (save for the birds), wouldn't even admit that there was a small infant back there (on the lawn, our lawn).
Riding next to Dehaan in the silent car, leaning against her shoulder harness strap until it cut into her neck, Arna told herself that Dehaan's indifference was the Beltrans’ fault. Paloma's stories of the little baby boy sitting on her back deck, on her kitchen floor, on her husband Jonas’ foot stool in the den, they'd made Dehaan skeptical. Just as they made everyone else in group think Paloma was more than slightly off ... as if the stories the others there told, of dead infants lying under warming lamps in the birthing room, of the tiny pastel knit caps and fuzzy blankets supplied by the nurses for “the picture” of the stillborn infant, of searching for just the right container for the handful of cremains, as if those tales were somehow on, in a positive sense.
But as Arna listened to Paloma's tales, as translated by her husband (whose English was less than fluent), she'd found herself more than empathizing, especially since she and Paloma shared a bond within the group, a small subset of a Venn diagram of expectation, loss, and hoped-for acceptance. Both of their babies had vanished within them. One day, they were looking at the print out from a normal ultrasound, that sugary miasma of what looked like a tiny body swirling in blackness, like a lump of sugar starting to dissolve in a cup of hot black coffee, so that there was a main shape in the middle, surrounded by wing-like protrusions which leeched into the darkness beyond. And then, after a day or so of unexplainable unease, coupled with a gradual lack of movement, of presence, from within, another ultrasound, only this time, the coffee had absorbed all the sugar. No baby. Nothing. Just a swelling void, which in turn became a flattened-out void.
Arna and Paloma had no snapshots of a permanently wrinkled, yet oddly flaccid little face under a pulled-low knit cap, no folded little blanket sealed in a zip-top plastic bag, no ... nothing. Just that grainy ultrasound image, and a distinct sense memory of having been full, then having emptied, with no definite in-between stage. There, gone.
As they pulled up to the center, Arna saw the Beltrans’ SUV parked next to the Hollebs’ little hybrid-power two-door. Thinking of the Hollebs’ (a couple new to the group Lynet counseled, who hadn't had much of anything to say in the last session) combined size and girth, Arna was seized with a clown-car image from her childhood, and began to muffle the giggle which welled within her. Dehaan paused as he took off his shoulder harness, saying, “You up to this today? I could leave a message, tell Lynet you're not—"
"I'm fine.” Just as they quitted their car, Lynet pulled up in her burgundy four by four, exactly a minute before the group counseling session for the parents of “preborn departures” was set to begin.
* * * *
The group session room was located at the back of the mental health care clinic, not much bigger than the average family entertainment center, and made smaller by the inclusion of the card table which held (or would hold, once Lynet brought them in) paper plates covered with small shaped crackers, plastic-tough squares of sliced cheese, flat fillingless cookies, and personal-sized bottles of flavored waters. There used to be a carafe of coffee, but no one ever drank it—just as no one picked up the bottles of water—so Arna guessed that Lynet had switched to the same brand of bottled water she herself drank, so she could recycle the leftovers more efficiently.
While Lynet set the plates of food (carried in a tote which reminded Arna of a diaper bag) and bottles of water out, the other couples stood around awkwardly, not really saying much of anything, and not allowing their eyes to meet even if they did speak. Arna saw that the Fugols were still carrying around that scrapbook of Rand and Fala's still born, which was big enough for the obligatory ultrasound image. The scrapbook jutted out from Fala's oversized purse, just shy of being diaper-bag sized. Arna knew that the scrapbook would be passed around at least once during group. And the Vogels were carrying the plastic bagged knit cap, with a couple of fine hairs still adhering to the band, in her sweater pocket. That, too, was usually passed from non-parent to almost-parent, as the Vogels took turns speaking.
Arna did find herself wondering if Paloma would tell another tale of the phantom boy-baby who would appear in her home. Lynet never seemed comfortable with those twice-told stories (first in jumbled, hurried Spanish, then in slowly-spoken English, the words coming in small clusters, like big round baby beads on a choke-proof string), perhaps because they were too mundane, too quotidian in their unadorned reality. Not the anxious fantasies of a child-less mother, but the simple observances of a woman seeing a baby in her house, a baby which merely acted like a baby, and not some angelic or hyper-real version of infancy, courtesy of Hollywood CGI magic, or aging A-list actor voice overs. Hadn't Paloma-via-Jonas said that the baby even smelled, as if he'd filled his diaper? And every time she'd seen this boy-baby, Paloma had found herself distracted by something (a phone ringing, the doorbell, a bird bouncing off the front window) for a fraction of a second, and in that minute slice of time, the baby would vanish. But she'd said something about the smell lingering, even after he was gone. And she had once patted the empty seat next to her, while emphatically sputtering and Jonas had mimicked her flat-palm-on-empty-vinyl motion while he translated, “The seat, it stay warm, where he sit."
Once Lynet had finished putting out the plates of food no one would be eating later that evening, she sat down in the circle of couples (who all sat next to each other, with empty spaces between them, like breaks in the pattern of water-filled pillows on a teething ring), and said in that small, chirpy voice of hers, “Well people, shall we begin? Who would like to speak first?"
For the first few minutes, Arna found herself looking down at Lynet's sandal-covered feet, and bright carnation-pink nails. It was better than seeing the slow droop of Lynet's mouth as she once again realized that despite all the weeks they'd all been coming to group, next to no progress had been made.
Arna wondered if she should mention the baby girl lying on her lawn, in case someone else in the group might want to make a call to child services for her, on the child's behalf, but the Hollebs began to speak at once:
"Our situation, it is somewhat—"
"We realize that you folks went through a lot, giving birth to—"
"Ok ok, talking is good, but talking at once is confusing ... how about if your wife ... Sagirah, isn't it? ... how about she speaks first?"
Sagirah lowered her eyes, casting dark wings of lashes across the tops of her broad cheekbones, before beginning again, “I was saying, we, my husband and I, we realize that you women especially have been through a lot of pain, giving birth to ... but we just want you to know that our situation is not quite the same as all of yours. We had the exams, the ultrasound, and everything was going well, but then, when I went in for the next ultrasound, the woman with the device, that slid over my belly, she went white, and called for someone to help her ... she was gone. Our daughter. Just not there. All that was left was this dark void, inside me. A cave, just empty space inside my body. She was over five months along, she had bones, and a heartbeat, and even hair, you could see it on the ultrasound, and suddenly ... she was just gone. The doctors, they said she ... reabsorbed into me, but there was so much of her, and she ... so quickly. I had thought she was just being quiet. I thoug
ht she was giving me a break, from all the kicking—"
Arna and Dehaan's baby had been almost six months along, when she went wherever it was she went to, inside Arna. One morning, she had been kicking and somersaulting inside her mother. Dehaan used to call it “bouncing on the walls,” only Arna had thought of it more like the baby flying around in that watery space, with her pre-birth wing-arms grazing the sides of her temporary submerged cage. That was why she had suggested the name Olitia, which meant “winged” in some language ... Dehaan had agreed, especially since the baby could change it to something like Litia if she didn't like the sound of it once she was old enough ... They'd called her that, while speaking to Arna's growing belly each night, patting her taut flesh, and murmuring the name against the skin, hoping the baby within could hear them. But then came the morning when, after a dream of flocks of birds, small-headed pale birds, flying low over her head as she hung clothes out to dry in the back yard, their wings beating and flapping in time with the wind-whipped snap and flutter of the wooden-pin trapped sheets and pillowcases bobbing on the green plastic line before her, Arna had felt her belly, and all her hands could detect was warm skin, with only the subtle throb of her own breathing and distant heartbeat pulsing under her spayed fingers. No kicking, and worse yet, no heavy sensation of something within her.
It had been a few weeks since her last ultrasound, but when she'd climbed up on that table, and found herself watching the ceiling rather than look as the technician slathered her jutting belly with the clear lubricant, because she knew that her protruding abdomen wouldn't jerk and shudder from within anymore as the tech slid the sensor-thingie across that gleaming mound of full-full-full flesh ... and thus, she didn't see the look on the tech's face as she stared at an empty screen, but she did hear the panic in the woman's voice as she called for help, for a witness...
Challenging Destiny #25 Page 17
