Fifty Degrees Below - Kim Stanley Robinson [60]
Nick had finished all his books, and now he listened as Charlie told Frank about Phil Chase running for president. Frank said, “What about you, Nick? Who do you think should be president?”
Nick’s brow furrowed, and Frank glanced at Anna—yes, she could feel that same frown in the muscles of her own forehead. Nick was often his mother’s son. Now Frank watched him ponder, and Anna thought, It’s the oblivious confronting the oblivious: Frank unaware of being condescending, Nick unaware of being condescended to. Maybe that meant it wasn’t happening.
“Well you see,” Nick said, “in Switzerland the executive branch is a seven-person council? And its members are voted in by the legislature. It means there’s diverse views in the executive branch, and it doesn’t dominate the other branches as much. Most Swiss people don’t even know the actual president’s name! He just like runs the council meetings.”
“That’s a good idea,” Frank said.
“The Swiss have lots of good ideas. We’ve been studying them in world gee.”
“Oh I see. You’ll have to tell me more about them.”
“It isn’t easy to amend the Constitution,” Charlie warned them.
Nick and Frank knew this. Nick said, “Maybe someone could run for president and tell everybody that if he won, he was going to like appoint a council to do his job.”
“Like Reagan!” Charlie said, laughing.
“It’s still a good idea,” Frank said.
Then their plane was descending again.
In Calcutta they zombied through a reception at the Khembali legation, dreaming on their feet; all except Joe, who slept on Charlie’s back; then they tumbled into beds, feeling the joy of horizontality; then the alarm went off again. “Ah God.” It was almost like being at home.
Back to the airport, off in a little sixteen-seater so loud that it made Joe squeal with joy. Up and east, over the mind-boggling combined delta of the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, the world’s largest delta, also a good percentage of Bangladesh. Looking down at it, Charlie shouted to Anna, “I’ll never call Washington, D.C., a swamp again!” Green-brown islands in a brown-green sea. The delta patterns ran south, and they flew down one brown-green channel until the islands lay more diffusely, also lower, many half-submerged, with drowned coastlines visible in shallows. The water ahead shifted in distinct jumps from brown-green to jade to sea blue.
One of the outermost islands, right on the border of the jade sea and the blue, had a shoreline accentuated by a brown ring. As they descended, the interior of this island differentiated into patterns of color, then into fields, roads, rooftops. In the final approach they saw that the brown ring was a dike, quite broad and fairly high. Suddenly it appeared to Anna as if the land inside the dike was slightly lower than the ocean around it. She hoped it was only an optical illusion.
Joe had mashed his face and hands against the window, looking down at the island and burbling: “Oh! My! Big truck! Big house! Ah fah. Oh! My!”
Frank, who had successfully slept through three-quarters of the flight, sat up on the other side of Joe, regarding him with a smile. “Ooooooooop!” he gibboned, egging him on. Joe cackled to hear it.
Touchdown.
They were greeted as they came off the plane by a large group of men, women, and children, all dressed in their finery, which meant ceremonial garb better suited to the roof of the world than the Bay of Bengal; and on closer examination Anna saw that the fabrics of many of the robes and headdresses wafted on the stiff hot sea breeze, being diaphanous cotton, silk, and nylon, though they were Tibetan in color and