Forty signs of rain - Kim Stanley Robinson [130]
“How extensive is it?” he asked.
Evelyn switched to a local news channel, where a very cheerful woman was saying that a big tidal surge had been predicted, because the tides were at the height of an eleven-year cycle. She went on to say that this tide was cresting higher than it would have normally because Tropical Storm Sandy’s surge was now pushing up Chesapeake Bay. The combined tidal and storm surges were moving up the Potomac toward Washington, losing height and momentum all the while, but impeding the outflow of the river, which had a watershed of “fourteen thousand square miles” as Charlie had heard in the Iranian deli—a watershed which had that morning experienced record-shattering rainfall. In the last four hours ten inches of rain had fallen in several widely separated parts of the watershed, and now all that was pouring downstream and encountering the tidal bore, right in the metropolitan area. The four inches of rain that had fallen on Washington during its midday squall, while spectacular in itself, had only added to the larger problem; for the moment, there was nowhere for any of the water to go. All this the reporter explained with a happy smile.
Outside, the rain was falling no more violently than during many a summer evening’s shower. But it was coming down steadily, and striking water when it hit.
“Amazing,” Andrea said.
“I hope this washes the International Monetary Fund away.”
This remark opened the floodgates, so to speak, on a loud listing of all the buildings and agencies the people in the room most wanted to see wiped off the face of the earth. Someone shouted “the Capitol,” but of course it was located on its hill to the east of them, high ground that stayed high for a good distance to the east before dipping down to the Anacostia. The people up there probably wouldn’t even get stranded, as there should be a strip of high ground running to the east and north.
Unlike them, situated below the Capitol by about forty vertical feet:
“We’re here for a while.”
“The trains will be stopped for sure.”
“What about the Metro? Oh my God.”
“I’ve gotta call home.”
Several people said this at once, Charlie among them. People scattered to their desks and their phones. Charlie said, “Phone, get me Anna.”
He got a quick reply: “All circuits are busy. Please try again.” This was a recording he hadn’t heard in many years, and it gave him a bad start. Of course it would happen now if at any time, everyone would be trying to call someone, and lines would be down. But what if it stayed like that for hours—or days? Or even longer? It was a sickening thought; he felt hot, and the itchiness blazed anew across his broken skin. He was almost overcome by something like dizziness, as if some invisible limb were being threatened with immediate amputation—his sixth sense, in effect, which was his link to Anna. All of a sudden he understood how completely he took his state of permanent communication with her for granted. They talked a dozen times a day, and he relied on those talks to know what he was doing, sometimes literally.
Now he was cut off from her. Judging by the voices in the offices, no one’s connection was working. They regathered; had anyone gotten an open line? No. Was there an emergency phone system they could tap into? No.
There was, however, e-mail. Everyone sat down at their keyboards to type out messages home, and for a while it was like an office of secretaries or telegraph operators.
After that there was nothing to do but watch screens, or look out windows. They did that, milling about restlessly, saying the same things over and over, trying the phones, typing, looking out the windows or checking out the channels and sites. The usual news channels’ helicopter shots and all other overhead views lower than satellite level were impossible in the violence of the storm, but almost every channel had cobbled together or transferred direct images from various cameras around town, and one of the weather stations was flying drone camera balloons and blimps into the storm and showing whatever it