Fifty Degrees Below - Kim Stanley Robinson [90]
This was a bad thought. Diane said, “We can’t afford to get caught on one side in the so-called culture wars.”
Anna said, “But what if we are on one side? What if we’ve been put there by others?”
They thought about this.
“Even so,” Diane said. “Getting tagged as leaning Democrat could be really dangerous for science. We have to stay above that fray.”
“But we may already be tagged. And we are trying to affect policy, right? Isn’t that what this committee is about?”
“Yes. But we have to be jumping on the fray. Squashing it from above.”
They laughed at this image. Edgardo said, “Beyond good and evil! Beyond Marx and Jesus! Prometheus unbound! Science über alles!”
Even Anna had to laugh. It was funny even though it wasn’t; and less so the more she thought about it; and yet she laughed. As did the others.
Diane shook her head ruefully. “Oh well,” she said. “Let’s give it a try. Time for science in the capital.”
Afterward the situation did not seem so funny. It did not help of course to come home to Joe’s low-grade fever, after which nothing seemed funny. Charlie had already given in and taken him to the doctor; but they hadn’t found anything.
It wasn’t a matter of energy levels. Joe was as energetic as ever, if not more so. Hectic, irritable, ceaselessly in motion, complaining, interrupting . . . but had he ever been any different, really? This was what Charlie seemed to be implying, that Joe was perhaps just a little hotter now, more flushed and sweaty, but otherwise much the same feisty little guy.
But she wasn’t buying it. Something was different. He was not himself.
Sometimes she worried so intensely that she could not talk to Charlie about it at all. What if she convinced him to join her in her worry, what good would that do him or any of them?
The best way to prevent worry was to be so busy by day that there was no time for it. Then, at night, to go to bed so exhausted that sleep hit like a wall falling on her, giving her several hours of oblivion. It was heavy and somehow unrestful sleep; she woke with the gears of her mind already engaged in something—memory, dream, work calculation—on it ran, unstoppable, thoroughly awake at 4:30 in the morning. Miserable.
And no matter where her night thoughts began, they always came back to Joe. When she remembered the situation her pulse would shoot up. Eventually she would get up, with a brief touch to the sleeping Charlie, and go stand in the shower for twenty minutes, trying to relax. What was worry, after all, but a kind of fear? It was fear for the future. And in fact the future was bound to bring its share of bad things, there was no avoiding that. So worry was really a hopeless enterprise, in that it could not do anything. It was an anticipation of grief, a nightmare of the future. A species of fear; and she was determined not to be afraid.
So she would steel herself and turn off the shower, and motor through her preparations for work, thinking about how to sequence the day’s activities. But before she left she had to go up and nurse Joe, and so all her plans were overthrown by his hot little body lying cradled in her arms. His mouth was hot. The world was hotter, Joe was hotter, even Charlie was hotter. Everything seemed to have had more energy poured into it than it could handle. All but Anna, and her Nick. She put her sleeping wild man back in his crib and went to Nick’s room and kissed her firstborn on his head, inhaling him gratefully, his cool curly hair—her soulmate in this chaos, her fellow stoic, her cool calculator—imperturbable, unflappable, amused by his hectic brother and everything else: amused where others would be enraged. Who could imagine a better older brother, or a better son, a kind of young twin to her. In a sudden blaze of maternal affection she held his shoulder, squeezed it as he slept; then clumped down the stairs and walked up Wisconsin to the re-opened Metro, shaking her wet locks from side to side to feel their cool damp in the cool air.
Then meeting with Diane, wet-haired herself. Session with