Fifty Degrees Below - Kim Stanley Robinson [152]
The fires burned all night and into the next day, but on the other hand, the temperatures never dropped lower than ten below. Some in the coffee shops next morning thought all the smoke had created a smudge pot effect, the ultimate urban heat-island insulator; but even out in the country the temperatures had not dropped as low as they had gotten the night before. The low had been a freak thing, an all-time record for the city, and even the Post the next morning had a headline like a London tabloid: FIFTY DEGREES BELOW.
Though it never got that cold again in the days that followed, it always remained well below zero, keeping the city somewhat in crisis mode. First the great flood, now the great freeze, with widespread fires as well—what next? “There’s an excellent chance of drought next summer,” Kenzo cackled when Frank talked to him on the phone. “We could hit for the cycle. And it’s going to get windy tomorrow.”
NSF stayed closed, along with the rest of the federal government. Frank called Diane every morning, and once when he lamented the lost work time she said “Don’t you worry about that, I’m working Congress every day, I take them out until they look like they are frostbit, and every one of them will vote for what we ask next time. It couldn’t be better.”
So Frank would wish her good luck, and spend that day cruising up and down Connecticut, hiking into the park, and helping out wherever he could, mostly with FOG work. Repair a hot box, keep them supplied with food, help lift out a tranquilized camel; always keeping an eye out for Chessman or the bros. Down to Dupont Circle, up to Adams Morgan, crossing the frozen creekbed to get to Georgia Avenue, marveling at the stream’s white arabesques, the frolic architecture of ice and snow.
On the third night of the snap he ran into the bros, hunkered in a concrete embayment surrounding a Dupont Metro station grating. They had walled off the indentation from the sidewalk with refrigerator boxes, and cantilevered a roof of flattened boxes as well. The interior was even frosting up like an old refrigerator.
“Come on you guys,” Frank said. “You should get to one of the shelters, the wind is supposed to hit soon. This is serious.”
“It’s always been serious, Bleeder.”
“Hey who’s winning! Where’s that barrel of brandy?”
“The UDC gym is open as a shelter.”
“Fuck that.”
“This is warmer here.”
“Yeah yeah. Whatever.”
He went up into the UDC shelter himself, and spent an hour or two walking down the rows of cots, handing out paper cups of hot chocolate to the kids. The homeless or the heatless, it was hard to tell the difference in here. He ran across the knitting woman, sitting on her cot knitting away, and greeted her with pleasure. He sat and they talked for a while.
“Why won’t the guys come in?”
“They’re stubborn. What about you, have you come in?”
“Well, no. But I don’t need to.”
She smiled her gap-toothed smile. “You’re all the same.”
“Hey what about Chessman? Do you know what happened to him?”
“I don’t. He just stopped showing up. It don’t mean nothing. I think he probably moved.”
“I hope.”
She knitted on imperturbably. She had knitted herself pale yellow gloves that left her fingertips free, poking out of the fabric like tree roots. “He lived over in Northeast somewhere. His people may have moved.”
“You don’t think something bad happened to him?”
She shook her head, counting under her breath. “I don’t think so. I’ve been living out for twelve years. Hardly anything