Sixty Days and Counting sitc-3

by Kim Stanley Robinson

  The iceboat did not heel in the wind, but when gusts struck it merely squeaked and slid along even faster, the skates making a loud clattery hiss. When a really strong gust hit, the craft rocketed forward with a palpable jolt. Frank’s eyes watered heavily under the assault of the wind. He ducked when Caroline told him to, their heads together as the boom swung over them as part of a big curving tack. To get up the narrow lake against the wind they would have to tack a lot; the craft did not appear able to hold too close to the wind.

  As they worked their way north, Caroline explained that Mary’s grandfather had built the iceboat out of wood left over from when he had built the garage. “He built everything there, even some of the furniture. He dug out the cellar, built the chimney, the terraces, the dock and rowboats….” Mary’s father had told them about this; Caroline had met the grandfather only once, when she was very young.

  “This last month I’ve been feeling like he’s still around the place, like a ghost, but in the best kind of way. The first night I got here the electricity wasn’t on and there was no sound at all. I never realized how used to noise we’ve gotten. That there’s always some kind of sound, even if it’s only the refrigerator.”

  “Usually it’s a lot more than that,” Frank said, thinking of how D.C. sounded from his treehouse.

  “Yes. But this time it was completely quiet. I began to hear myself breathing. I could even hear my heart beat. And then there was a loon on the lake. It was so beautiful. And I thought of Mary’s grandfather building everything, and it seemed like he was there. Not a voice, just part of the house somehow. It was comforting.”

  “Good for him,” Frank said. He liked the sound of such a moment, also the fact that she had noticed it. It occurred to him again how little he knew her. She was watching the ice ahead of the boat, holding the boom line and the tiller in place, making small adjustments, splayed in the cockpit as if holding a kind of dance position with the wind. And there they were barreling across the frozen surface of the lake, the ice blazing in a low tarnished sun that was smeared out in long bars of translucid cloud—the wind frigid, and flying through him as if the gusts were stabs of feeling for her—for the way she was capable, the way she liked it out here. He had thought she would be like this, but they had spent so little time together he could not be sure. But now he was seeing it. His Caroline, real in the sunlight and the wind. A gust of wind was a surge of feeling.

  She brought the iceboat around again, east to west, and continued the smooth curve west, as they were now shooting into the channel that began the other arm of the lake’s Y. Here the north wind was somewhat blocked by the peninsula separating the two arms of the lake, and the iceboat slid along with less speed and noise. Then another curve, and they were headed into the wind again, on the short arm of the Y, running up to a little island she called Rum Island, which turned out to be just a round bump of snow and trees in the middle of a narrow part of the lake.

  As they were about to pass Rum Island, something beeped in Caroline’s jacket pocket. “Shit!” she said, and snatched out a small device, like a handheld GPS or a cell phone. She steered with a knee while she held it up to her face to see it in the sunlight. She cursed again. “Someone’s at camp.”

  She swerved, keeping Rum Island between the boat and Mary’s place. As they approached the island she turned into the wind and let loose the sail, so that they skidded into a tiny cove and onto a gravel beach no bigger than the iceboat itself. They stepped over the side onto icy gravel, and tied the boat to a tree, then made their way to the island’s other side. The trees on the island hooted and creaked like the Sierras in a storm, a million pine needles whooshing their great chorale. It was strange to see the lake surface perfectly still and white under the slaps of such a hard blow.

  Across that white expanse, the green house and its little white boathouse were the size of postage stamps. Caroline had binoculars in the boat, however, and through them the house’s lake side was quite distinct; and through its big windows there was movement.

  “Someone inside.”

  “Yes.”

  They crouched behind a big schist erratic. Caroline took the binoculars back from him and balanced them on the rock, then bent over and looked through them for a long time. “It looks like Andy and George,” she said in a low voice, as if they might overhear. “Uh oh—get down,” and she pulled him down behind the boulder. “There’s a couple more up by the house, with some kind of scope. Can those IR glasses you use for the animals see heat this far away?”

  “Yes,” Frank said. He had often used IR when tracking the ferals in Rock Creek. He took the binoculars back from her and looked around the side of the boulder near the ground, with only one lens exposed.

  There they were—looking out toward the island—then hustling down the garden path and onto the ice itself, their long dark overcoats flapping in the wind. “Jesus,” he said, “they’re coming over here to check! They must have seen our heat.”

  “Damn it,” she said. “Let’s go, then.”

  They ran back over the little island to the beach. A hard kick from Caroline to the hull of the iceboat and it was off the gravel and ready to sail. Push it around, get in and take off, waiting helplessly for the craft to gain speed, which it did with an icy scratching that grew louder as they slid out from the island’s wind shadow and skidded south.

  “You saw four of them?” Frank asked.

  “Yes.”

  Skating downwind did not feel as fast as crossing the lake had, but then they passed the end of the peninsula, and Caroline steered the craft in another broad curve, and as she did it picked up speed until it shot across the ice, into the gap leading to the longer stretch of the lake. Looking back, Frank saw the men crossing the lake. They saw him; one of them took a phone from his jacket pocket and held it to his ear. Back at the house, tiny now, he saw the two others running around the back of the house.

  Then the point of the peninsula blocked the view.

  “The ones still at the house went for the driveway,” he said. “They’re going to drive around the lake, I bet. Do you think they can get to the southern end of the lake before we do?”

  “Depends on the wind,” Caroline said. “Also, they might stop at Pond’s End, for a second at least, to take a look and see if we’re coming up to that end.”

  “But it wouldn’t make sense for us to do that.”

  “Unless we had parked there. But they’ll only stop a second, because they’ll be able to see us. You can see all the way down the lake. So they’ll see which way we’re going.”

  “And then?”

  “I think we can beat them. They’ll have to circle around on the roads. If the wind holds, I’m sure we can beat them.”

  The craft emerged from the channel onto the long stretch of the lake, where the wind was even stronger. Looking through the binoculars as best he could given the chatter, Frank saw a dark van stop at the far end of the pond, then, after a few moments’ pause, drive on.

  He had made the same drive himself a couple of hours before, and it seemed to him it had taken about fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, to get to the south end of the pond by way of the small roads through the woods. But he hadn’t been hurrying. At full speed it might take only half that.

  But now the iceboat had the full force of the north wind behind it, funneling down the steep granite walls to both sides—and the gusts felt stronger than ever, even though they were running straight downwind. The boat only touched the ice along the edges of the metal runners, screeching their banshee trio. Caroline’s attention was fixed on the sail, her body hunched at the tiller and line, feeling the wind like a telegraph operator. Frank didn’t disturb her, but only sat on the gunwale opposite to the sail, as she had told him to do. The stretch of the lake they had to sail looked a couple of miles long. In a sailboat they would have been in trouble. On the ice, however, they zipped along as if in a catamaran’s dream, almost frictionless despite the loud noise of what friction was le
ft. Frank guessed they were going about twenty miles an hour, maybe twenty-five, maybe thirty; it was hard to tell. Fast enough: down a granite wind tunnel, perfectly shaped to their need for speed. The dwarf trees on the steep granite slopes to each side bounced and whistled, the sun was almost blocked by the western cliff, blazing in the pale streaked sky, whitening the cloud to each side of it. Caroline spared a moment to give Frank a look, and it seemed she was going to speak, then shook her head and simply gestured at the surrounding scene, mouth tight. Frustrated.

  “I guess them showing up so soon suggests I tipped them off somehow,” he said.

  “Yes.” She was looking at the sail.

  “I’m sorry. I thought I needed to warn you.”

  Her mouth stayed tight. She said nothing.

  The minutes dragged, but Frank’s watch showed that only eight had passed when they came to the south end of the lake. There were a couple of big houses tucked back in the forest to the left. Caroline pulled the tiller and boom line and brought them into the beach next to the pump house, executing a bravura late turn that hooked so hard Frank was afraid the iceboat might be knocked on its side. Certainly a windsurfer or catamaran would have gone down like a bowling pin. But there was nothing for the iceboat to do but groan and scrape and spin, into the wind and past it, then screeching back, then stopping, then drifting back onto the beach.

  “Hurry,” Caroline said, and jumped out and ran up to Frank’s van.

  Frank followed. “What about the boat?”

  She grimaced. “We have to leave it!” Then, when they were in his van: “I’ll call Mary when I can get a clean line and tell her where it is. I’d hate for Harold’s boat to be lost because of this shit.” Her voice was suddenly vicious.

  Then she was all business, giving Frank directions; they got out to a paved road and turned right, and Frank accelerated as fast as he dared on the still frozen road, which was often in shadow, and seemed a good candidate for black ice. When they came to a T-stop she had him turn right. “My car’s right there, the black Honda. I’m going to take off.”

  “Where?”

  “I’ve got a place. I’ve got to hurry, I don’t want them to see me at the bridge. You should head directly for the bridge and get off the island. Go back home.”

  “Okay,” Frank said. He could feel himself entering one of his indecision fugues, and was grateful she had such a strong sense of what they should do. “Look, I’m sorry about this. I thought I had to warn you.”

  “I know. It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault. It was good of you to try to help. I know why you did it.” And she leaned over and gave him a quick peck of a kiss before she got out.

  “I was pretty sure my van is clean,” Frank said. “And my stuff too. We checked all of it out.”

  “They may have you under other kinds of surveillance. Satellite cameras, or people just tailing you.”

  “Satellite cameras? Is that possible?”

  “Of course.” Annoyed that he could be so ignorant.

  Frank shrugged, thinking it over. He would have to ask Edgardo. Right now he was glad she was giving him directions.

  She came around the van and leaned in on his side. Frank could see she was angry.

  “You’ll be able to come back here someday,” he said.

  “I 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 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 iceboated 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 rearview 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 REESTABLISHED 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.