Fifty Degrees Below - Kim Stanley Robinson [121]
“beatitude dips from on high down on us and we see. It is not in us so much as we are in it. If the air come to our lungs, we breathe and live; if not, we die. If the light come to our eyes, we see; else not. And if truth come to our mind we suddenly expand to its dimensions, as if we grew to worlds.”
My. Ralph Waldo Emerson, from a website called Emersonfortheday.net. Frank read a little more: quite amazing stuff. He bookmarked the site, which apparently featured a new thought from the philosopher’s writings every few days. Earlier samples read like some miraculously profound horoscope or fortune cookie. Reading them, Frank suddenly realized that the people who had lived before him in this immense hardwood forest had had epiphanies much like his. Emerson, the great Transcendentalist, had already sketched the parameters or the route to a new kind of nature-worshipping religion. His journal entries in particular suited Frank’s late night go-to-sleep reading, for the feel they had of someone thinking on the page. This was a good person to know about.
One night after he fell asleep skimming the site, his cell phone jolted him awake. “Hello?”
“Frank, it’s Caroline.”
“Oh good.” He was already sitting up.
“Can you come see me, in the same place?”
“Yes. When will you be there?”
“Half an hour.”
She was sitting on the same bench, under the bronze dancer. When she saw him approaching she stood, and they embraced. He felt her against him. For a long time they breathed in and out, their bodies pressed together. A lot was conveyed, somehow. He could feel that she had been having a hard time—that she was lonely—that she needed him, in the same way he needed her.
They sat on the bench, holding hands.
“So,” she said. “You’ve been traveling.”
“Yes?”
“Boston, Atlanta—Khembalung, even?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“But—I mean—I told you this Pierzinski was probably the reason you were listed, right? And Francesca Taolini is on the list too?”
“Yes, you did.” Frank shrugged. “I needed to talk to them. I couldn’t do my job without talking to them. So I thought I’d go ahead, and see if you noticed any, I don’t know—change in my status or whatever.”
“Yes. I did.”
“So, were we taped?”
“No. You mean beyond your office phones? No. Not yet.”
“Interesting.”
She gazed at him curiously. “You know, this could be serious. It’s not a game.”
“I know that, believe me. I’m not thinking of it as a game. More like an experiment.”
“But you don’t want to draw any more attention to yourself.”
“I suppose not, but why? What could they do to me?”
“Oh I don’t know. Every agency has its inspector general. You could suddenly find your travel expenses questioned, or your outside consulting. You could lose your job, if they really wanted to make it happen.”
“Then I’d just go back to UCSD.”
“I hope you don’t do that.”
He squeezed her hand. “Okay, but tell me more. How did my status change exactly?”
“You went up a level.”
“So my stock rose?”
“It did. But that’s a different issue. Your stock rose, fine, but that means it hit an amount that triggered your level of surveillance to go up. At that level, you’ll have more intrusive methods applied to you. It’s all set in the programs.”
“But why, what for?”
“I’m sure it’s something to do with Pierzinski, like you said last time. Taolini was really googling him after your trip to Boston, him and you both.”
“She was?”
“Yeah. She called up pretty much everything you’ve ever published. And lots of Pierzinski too. What did you two talk about?”
“She was on the panel I ran that reviewed Pierzinski’s proposal.”
“Yes, I know.”
“So, we talked about the work he’s doing, stuff like that.”
“She looks like she’s cute.”
“Yes.”
He didn’t know what to say. She laughed at him, squeezed his hand. Now that he was with her he understood that the others were all just displacements of his real desire. “So my calls are being recorded?”
“Your office calls, yes. I told you that last time.