Fifty Degrees Below - Kim Stanley Robinson [158]
“Other FOG people?”
“No, just we didn’t know who, and the gibbons took off and Frank took off running after them.”
“Didn’t you too?”
“Yeah I did, but he was fast. I couldn’t keep up. So but neither could he, not with the gibbons, they just fly along, but the one he shot fell. From way up there.”
“Oh no.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh no. So Frank couldn’t . . .”
“No, he tried but he couldn’t keep up. He wasn’t there to catch it.”
“So it died?”
“Yeah. Frank picked it up. He checked it out.”
“He was hoping it was still alive.”
“Yeah. But it wasn’t. It got killed by the fall. I mean it looked okay, but it was . . . loose. It wasn’t there.”
“Oh no. How awful. What did Frank do?”
“He was kind of upset.”
THE BARE BRANCHES OVERHEAD WERE LIKE black lightning bolts striking out of the Earth into the clouds. Like decision maps, first choose this, then that. He was cold, cold in his head somehow. All his thoughts congealed. Maybe if he weren’t injured. Maybe next winter. Maybe if it wasn’t a long winter. Maybe they all had to find their cave. Fur esh var kalt.
Wind ripped through the branches with a sound like tearing cloth. A big sound. Under it the city hummed almost inaudibly. Snow cracked as he stepped on it. There was no way to walk quietly now. The branches overhead were like black fireworks, flailing the sky. He moved under them toward the gorge, shifting his weight one pound at a time.
Eventually he came to one of the heated shelters. Little square hut, its open side facing south. Hot box; all interior surfaces emanated heat. Like a big toaster oven left open. A bad thought, given the way toaster ovens worked.
Inside, and scattered around the opening, they stood or sat or lay. Rabbits, raccoons, deer, elands, tapirs, even foxes, even a bobcat. Two ibex. None meeting the eye of any other; all pretending they were each alone, or with only their own kind. As on an island created in a flood, it was a case of stay there or die. Truce. Time out.
Very slowly he approached. He kept his head down, his eyes to the side. He sidled. He crabbed. Shoulders hunched lower and lower. He turned his back to them entirely as he closed on them, and sat down in the lee of the shelter, about fifteen feet out from it, in a little hollow floored with snow. He shifted back toward them to get off the snow, onto a decomposed black log. Fairly dry, fairly comfortable. The heat from the shelter was palpable, it rushed over him intermittently on the wind, like a stream. He rested his head on his chest, arms around his knees. A long time passed; he wasn’t sleepy, but long intervals passed during which no thoughts came to him. A gust of chill air roused him, and he shifted so he could see more of the shelter out of the corner of his eye. At the very edge of his peripheral vision lay what could have been the jaguar.
The animals were not happy. They all stared at him, wary, affronted. He was messing up a good situation. The lion had lain down with the lamb, but the man was not welcome. He wanted to reassure them, to explain to them that he meant no harm, that he was one of them. But there were no words.
Much later there was a crack, a branch breaking. In a sudden flurry many animals slipped away.
Frank looked up. It was Drepung, and Charlie Quibler. They approached him, crouched by his side. “Come with us, Frank,” Drepung said.
The scientific literature on the effects of damage to the prefrontal cortex was vast. Its existence bespoke a variety and quantity of human suffering that was horrible to contemplate, but never mind; it was rehearsed here in the course of attempting to reduce that suffering. Among the cases discussed were traumas so much worse than what Frank had experienced that he felt chastened, abashed, lucky, frightened. He wasn’t even sure his brain had been injured. He wasn’t sure it wasn’t just a broken nose and the taste of blood at the back of his throat. Not much compared to an iron spike through the skull.
Nevertheless it was his injury, and how he felt about it was now also part of the symptomatology,