Fifty Degrees Below

by Kim Stanley Robinson

This made for a very quiet neighborhood. No one wanted to attract the attention of the police. Any lit windows Frank gave a wide berth on principle, and so apparently did everyone else. Good avoidance protocols make good neighbors. Chessman might be tucked away in one of these hulks, but if so Frank wasn’t going to find out by knocking on doors or looking in windows.

  And he doubted the youth would be in any of them anyway. Chessman had had a healthy propensity for staying outdoors.

  That being the case, where was he?

  Then Frank ran into Cutter out on Connecticut, and a tendril connected two parcels in his mind. “Cutter, do you know what happened to Chessman?”

  “No, I ain’t seen him lately. Don’t know what happened to him.”

  “Do you know anyone who might?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe Byron, he used to play chess with him. I’ll ask.”

  “Thanks, I’d appreciate that. Do you know what his real name was, by chance?”

  “No, only thing I heard him called was Chessman.”

  Out in the park proper the forest now seemed wilderness, with most human sign snowed over or overgrown or flooded away. It was a whole world. Firelight in the distance the only touch of humanity. A kind of Mirkwood or primeval forest, every tree Yggdrasil, and Frank the Green Man. Encountering a structure now was like stumbling on ruins. The Carter Barron amphitheater and the huge bridges south of the zoo looked like the work of Incans or Atlanteans.

  The campfires in the park, unlike the squatter houses, could be investigated. It was possible to approach them surreptitiously, to put them under surveillance, to see if any of the little firelit faces were known to him. Stalking, pure and simple. Peering around trees, over flood snags, now flanked by snowdrifts. Rain had hardened the snow. Stepping through the crust made a distinct crunchy noise. One had to float on top with one’s weight on the back foot until the next step was pressed home. Time for the tiger mind to come to the fore. Someone had reported seeing the jaguar, east of the park.

  Once he came on a single old man shivering before a smoky little blaze, obviously sick, and he roused him and asked him if he could get himself out to one of the homeless shelters on Connecticut, or the ER at the UDC hospital; but stubbornly the old man turned away from him, not quite coherent, maybe drunk, but maybe sick. All Frank could do was call 911 and give GPS coordinates, and wait for an EMS team to hike in and take over. Even if you were healthy, living out here was a tenuous thing, but for a sick person it was miserable. The paramedics ended up talking him onto a stretcher and carrying him out. The next night Frank passed by again, as part of his rounds, to see if the man had returned and if he was okay. No one there, fire out.

  And never a sign of Chessman. The longer it went on the less likely it seemed Frank would ever find him. He must have moved to a different part of the city, or out of the metro area entirely.

  One evening before climbing into his tree house Frank hiked under the moon, in a stiff north wind that tossed the branches up and down and side to side, a glorious skitter-skatter of black lines against gray sky. When he headed north the wind shoved his breath right into his lungs. How big the world seemed with the moonlight on the snow.

  Then he came over the rise next to site 21 and saw around its fire shouting figures, fighting furiously. “Hey!” he cried, rushing down in a wild glissade. Something hit the fire and sparks exploded out of it; Frank saw a figure swing something to hit one of the prone bros, and as Frank plunged through the last trees toward him, shouting and pulling the hand axe from his fanny pack, the man looked up and Frank saw suddenly that it was the crazy guy who had chased him off Route 66 in his pick-up truck. Frank screamed and leaped forward feet first, kicking the man right above the knees. The man went down like a bowling pin and Frank jumped up over him with the hand axe ready to strike, then the man rolled to the side and Frank saw that he was not in fact the driver of the pick-up, he had only looked like him. Then Frank was down.

  He was on his knees and elbows and his hands were at his face, trying uselessly to catch the rush of blood from his nose. He didn’t know what had hit him. Blood was shooting out both nostrils and he was also swallowing it as fast as he could so that he wouldn’t choke on it. He felt nothing, but blood shot out in a black flood, he saw it pool on the ground under him. He heard voices but they sounded distant. Don’t, he thought. Don’t die.

  CHARLIE WAS STARTLED OUT OF A dream in which he was protesting, “I can’t do it, I can’t—” and so his first words into the phone no doubt sounded like an objection: “Ha, what, what?”

  “Charlie, this is Diane Chang.”

  Charlie saw his bedside clock’s red 4:30 A.M. and his heart pounded. “What is it?”

  “I just got a call from the UDC Hospital. They told me that Frank Vanderwal was admitted to their ER about three hours ago with a head injury.”

  “How bad is it? Is he all right?”

  “Yes, but he has a concussion, and a broken nose, and he lost a lot of blood. Anyway, I’m going there now, I was just leaving for work anyway, but it’ll take me a while to get to the hospital, and I realized it’s near you and Anna and that you know Frank. You guys were the second number on his who-to-call form. So I thought you might be able to go over.”

  “Sure,” Charlie said. “I can be there in fifteen minutes.”

  Anna was sitting up beside him, saying “What, what is it?”

  “Frank Vanderwal’s been injured. He’ll be all right, but he’s over at UDC Hospital. Diane thought—well here.” He handed her the phone and got up to dress. When he was ready to go Anna was still on the phone with Diane. Charlie kissed the top of her head and left.

  He drove fast through the nearly empty streets. In the hospital ER receiving room the fluorescent lights hummed loudly. The nurses were matter-of-fact, pacing themselves for the long haul. They treated Charlie casually; people came in like this all the time. Finally one of them led him down the concrete-floored hallway to a curtained-off enclosure on the right.

  There Frank lay, pale in his hospital whites, wired up and IVed. Two black eyes flanking a swollen red nose, and a bandage under his nose covered much of his upper lip.

  “Hey Frank.”

  “Hey, Charlie.” He did not look surprised to see him. Behind his black eyes he did not look like anything could surprise him.

  “They said your nose is broken and you’ve been concussed.”

  “Yes, I think that’s right.”

  “What happened?”

  “I tried to break up a fight.”

  “Jesus. Where was this?”

  “In Rock Creek Park.”

  “Wow. You were out there tracking the zoo animals?”

  Frank frowned.

  “Never mind, it doesn’t matter.”

  “No, I was out there. Yes. I’ve been out there a lot lately. They’ve been trying to recapture the ferals, and they don’t all have radio collars.”

  “So you were out there at night?”

  “Yeah. A lot of animals are out then.”

  “I see. Wow. So what hit you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  “Well, let’s see . . . I saw a fight. I ran down to help. Some people I know were being attacked. Then something hit me.”

  “Never mind,” Charlie said. Thinking seemed to pain Frank. “Don’t worry about it. Obviously you got hit by something.”

  “Yes.”

  “Does your face hurt bad? It looks terrible.”

  “I can’t feel it at all. Can’t breathe through it. It bled for a long time. It’s still bleeding a little inside.”

  “Wow.” Charlie pulled a chair over and sat by the bed.

  After a while a different nurse came by and checked the monitor. “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  “Strange. Am I concussed?”

  “Yes, like I told you.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Broken nose. Maxillary bone, cracked in
place. Some cuts and bruises. The doctor sewed you up a little inside your mouth—there, inside your upper lip, yes. When the anesthetic wears off it will probably hurt more. Sorry. We put some blood back in you, and your blood pressure is looking, let’s see . . . good. You took quite a whack there.”

  “Yes.”

  The nurse left. The two men sat under the fluorescent lights, among the blinking machinery. Charlie watched Frank’s heartbeat on the monitor. It was fast.

  “So you’ve been going into Rock Creek Park at night?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Isn’t that dangerous?”

  Frank shrugged. “I didn’t think so. A lot of the animals are nocturnal.”

  “Yes.” Charlie didn’t know what to say. He realized he didn’t know Frank all that well; had met him only in party contexts really, except for the trip to Khembalung, but that had been a busy time. Anna collected odd people, somehow. She liked Frank, always with an undercurrent of exasperation, but he amused her. And Nick really enjoyed doing the zoo thing with him.

  Now he fell asleep. Charlie watched him breathe through his mouth. Strange to see such a distant and even self-contained person in such a vulnerable state.

  Diane arrived, then Anna called as she was getting Nick up for school, wanting to know how Frank was. Frank woke up and Charlie handed his phone to him; he now looked slightly embarrassed, and definitely more alert. “Conked in the nose,” he was saying to Anna as Diane pulled Charlie out into the hall. “I don’t remember very much.”

  “Listen,” Diane said, “Frank only had a driver’s license and NSF card on him, and both had his address from last year. Do you know where he’s living now?”

  Charlie shook his head.

  Diane said, “He told me he had found a place over near you.”

  “Yes—he’s been joining us for dinner sometimes, and I think he said he had a place over near Cleveland Park, I’m not sure.” Frank seldom talked about himself, now that Charlie thought of it. He looked at Diane, shrugged; she frowned and led him back to Frank’s bedside.

  Frank handed Charlie his cell phone. Anna wanted Charlie to come home and watch Joe, so she could visit the hospital.

  “Sure. Although I think they’re going to release him soon.”

  “That’s good! Well, maybe I can drive him home.”

  Charlie said, “Anna says she’ll come over and be able to give you a ride home when you’re released.”

  Frank nodded. “I’ll have to get my van. She can drive me to it.” He frowned suddenly.

  “That’s fine, we’ll take care of that. But I wonder if you should drive, actually.”

  “Oh sure. It’s just a broken nose. I have to get my van.”

  Charlie and Diane exchanged a glance.

  Charlie said hesitantly, “You know, we live near here, maybe we could help you get your van to our place, and you could rest up there until you felt well enough to drive home.”

  “It doesn’t actually hurt.” Frank thought it over. “Okay,” he said at last. “Thanks. That would be good.”

  Frank was discharged that afternoon, by which time Anna had visited and gone on to work, and Charlie had returned with Joe. Before going out to get his car, Charlie checked at the desk. “I’m driving him home. Did he give you a home address?”

  “4201 Wilson.” That was the NSF building.

  Charlie thought about that as he drove Frank back to their house. He said, “I can take you home instead if you want.”

  “No that’s okay. I need to be taken back to my van so I can pick it up.”

  “There’s no rush with that. You need some food in you.”

  “I guess,” Frank said. “But I need to get my van before it gets towed. Tonight is the night that street has to be cleared for the street cleaners.”

  “I see.” How come you know that, Charlie didn’t say. “Okay, we’ll get it first thing after dinner. It shouldn’t be that late.”

  The other Quiblers had welcomed Frank in with a great fanfare, marveling at his bulbous red nose and his colorful black eyes. Anna got take-out from the Iranian deli across the street, and after a while Drepung dropped by, having heard the news. He too marveled as he scooped clean the take-out boxes; Frank had had little appetite.

  In the kitchen Charlie told Drepung about Frank’s mystery housing. “Even Diane Chang didn’t know where he lives. I’m wondering now if he isn’t living out of the back of his van. He bought it right after he left his apartment in Virginia. And he knows which night of the week the street he’s parked on gets cleaned.”

  “Hmmm,” Drepung said. “No, I don’t know what his situation is.”

  Out at the dining room table Drepung said to Frank, “I know you are from San Diego, and I don’t suppose you have family in this area. I was wondering if, while you are convalescing, you would move in with us at the embassy house.”

  “But you have all those refugees from the island.”

  “Yes, well, but we have an extra bed in Rudra Cakrin’s room, you see. No one wants to take it. And he is studying English now, as you know, so. . . .”

  “I thought he had a tutor.”

  “Yes, but now he needs a new one.”

  Frank cracked a little smile. “Fired another one, eh?”

  “Yes, he is not a good student. But with you it will be different. And you once told me you had an interest in learning Tibetan, remember? So you could teach each other. It would help us. We can use help right now.”

  “Thanks. That’s very kind of you.” Frank looked down, nodded without expression. It seemed to Charlie that the concussion was still having its way with him. And no doubt a monster headache. Drepung went to the kitchen to boil water for tea. “Not Tibetan tea, I promise! But a good herb tea for headache.”

  “Okay,” Frank said. “Thanks. Although I don’t really have a headache. I’m not sure why. I can’t feel my nose at all.”

  VII

  THE COLD SNAP

  The weather got worse. The new year’s January saw:

  High temperature in London for the week of Jan. 10, -26° F. In Lisbon, a 60 degree drop in 7 minutes. Snow in San Diego, snow in Miami. New York Harbor froze over, trucks drove across. Reunion Island: 235 inches of rain in ten days. In Montana, temp dropped 100° F in 24 hours, to -56° F. In South Dakota the temperature rose 60 degrees in 2 minutes. On Hawaii’s big island, 12 inches rain in an hour. In Buffalo, New York, 30 foot snowdrifts, all from snow blown in from frozen Lake Erie, on 60 mph winds. Reindeer walked over fences from the zoo and went feral. On the Olympic peninsula in Washington, a single downdraft knocked over forest trees estimated at 8 million board feet of lumber.

  In a North Sea storm similar to that of 1953, Holland suffered four hundred dead and flooding up to 27 miles inland.

  February was worse. That February saw:

  A storm in New England with 92 mph winds. Waterloo, Iowa, had 16 days straight below 0° F. 7 inches snow in San Francisco. Great Lakes totally frozen over. Snow in L.A. stopped traffic. Ice in New Orleans blocked the Mississippi River. -66° F in Montana. 100 mph winds in Sydney, Australia. Feb. 4, 180 tornadoes reported, 1,200 killed; named the “Enigma Outbreak.”

  A low-pressure system experiencing extremely rapid intensification of the kind called “bombogenesis” brought 77 inches of snow in one day, Maine. Storm surge was 12 foot high. Reunion Island, 73 inches rain in 24 hours. Winds 113 mph in Utah. Rhine floods caused 60 billion dollars damage. An Alberta hailstorm killed 36,000 ducks.

  A thunderstorm complex with winds of hurricane force, called a derecho, struck Paris and surrounding region, $20 billion in damages. 150 mph wind storm in Oslo. Two Bengal tigers escaped a Madison, Wisconsin, zoo in a tornado. Thousands of fish fell in a storm on Yarmouth, England.

  165 mph winds make a category 5 storm; there had been three in U.S. history; two struck Europe that February, in Scotland and Portugal.

  At that point they were only halfway through February. Soon it would be Washington’s turn.r />
  During 1815’s “year without summer,” after the Tambora volcano exploded, temperatures worldwide lowered by 37° F average.

  AS SOON AS HE FELT HE could make an adequate display of normality to the Quiblers, Frank thanked them for their hospitality and excused himself. They regarded him oddly, he thought, and he had to admit it was a bit of a stretch to claim nothing was wrong. Actually he felt quite bizarre.

  But he didn’t want to tell them that. And he didn’t want to tell them that he had no place to go. So he stood in their doorway insisting he was fine. He could see Anna and Charlie glance at each other. But it was his business in the end. So Charlie drove him down to his van, and after a final burst of cheerful assurances he was left alone.

  He found himself driving around Washington, D.C. It was like the night he lost his apartment; again he wasn’t sure what to do. He drove aimlessly, and without deciding anything, found himself back on the streets west of Rock Creek Park.

  His nose and the area behind it were still numb, as if shot with Novocain. He had to breathe through his mouth. The world tasted like blood. Things out the windshield were slightly fogged, slightly distant, as if at the wrong end of a telescope.

  He wasn’t sure what to do. He could think of any number of options, but none of them seemed quite right. Go back to his tree? Drive to the NSF basement? Try to find a room? Return to the ER?

  He had no feeling for which course to pursue. Like the area behind his nose, his sense of inclination was numb.

  It occurred to him that he might have been hit hard enough to damage his thinking. He clutched the steering wheel as his pulse rose.

  His heartbeat slowed to something more normal. Do anything. Just do anything. Do the easiest thing. Do the most adaptive thing.

  He sat there until he got too cold. To stay warm on a night like this one he would have to either drive with the heater on, or walk vigorously, or lie in the sleeping bag in the back of the van, or climb his tree and get in the even heavier sleeping bag there. Well, he could do any of those, so. . . .