Fifty Degrees Below - Kim Stanley Robinson [81]
Well—it could be worse. It was not such a bad prospect, really. Up in the night and the wind, swaying slightly north and south; how bad was that?
He lay down on his bed. In the mellow glow of his battery-powered Coleman lantern, he opened a paperback copy of Italo Calvino’s The Baron In the Trees. He had seen the book in Second Story and bought it, thinking it might teach him something. But so far it had been short on logistical detail, and lacking also the explanatory power he was hoping for. The young baron had barged into the trees one day after a fight with his father, which was believable enough, but unilluminating. And his decision to stay up there the rest of his life, without ever coming down at all, was simply unreasonable. Cosimo could have done everything he had done and still come down from time to time. Not coming down made it more of a parable than a program. An allegory, perhaps, for staying in nature no matter what. Well, in that sense Cosimo was a hero, his story a good fable.
But Frank was content to be up here when he was, without wanting more. Around him the aging leaves clattered, and in the distance the cry of a loon, or maybe even a coyote—in any case one of those crazies who would not shut up at night. Like certain of the bros. Every animal trait had its echo in some human quality. “Owwww,” he howled quietly. “Owwwwwww.” The tree rocked him in its slight syncopation against the wind.
He wanted Caroline to call him. He was tired of waiting for her to call, why didn’t she call? Surely she knew he was waiting. Even if she had trouble at home, even if she couldn’t get away, surely she could call? Could she be in trouble? Could her husband (an awful phrase) have her under surveillance? Such tight surveillance that she couldn’t get away to call? Could he have that same kind of surveillance trained on Frank, making it doubly hard for her to call? Was there some reason why she couldn’t get loose like she had before? After all, she had both called and appeared in the Bethesda park. Perhaps it required a stay with her friends. Who were these friends she had stayed with? Whose boat had she been on during the flood? Had she been under surveillance then? Why didn’t she . . . but maybe she couldn’t— but why didn’t she call?
He was getting sleepy. There were so many questions he couldn’t answer, couldn’t ask. So much he didn’t know. There were so many times when he wanted to touch her again. Kiss her. Have his face in her hair. In her absence this specific desire was becoming a general desire, diffusing into the landscape itself. In D.C. that could be quite an experience; the women of Washington were gorgeous. All the exiled goddesses of Earth passed you by on the street. Every woman metamorphosed into the movie star who would have played her on screen; every woman became the avatar of her particular type and yet remained completely herself. Why didn’t she call?
Voices below. Frank hung like a spirit above them. No way people would see him in the dark, even infrared wouldn’t work through the plywood and the branch-camouflaged insulation tacked to its underside; he had tested that to be sure.
The voices were discussing something, it sounded like plans. He surveiled until they moved off and were lost in the sound of the creek.
She didn’t call because of surveillance. Frank had looked into this a little, what this might mean to be under surveillance in this day and age. But he had been using his computer at work to make the search, at first, and that began to seem like it might put out a flag of some kind. He had felt constrained, and started to do his research in the NSF library, a very different resource. Maybe he had already given himself away. Would they become suspicious (if they