Forty signs of rain - Kim Stanley Robinson [131]
And not just there. The flood had filled Rock Creek to the top of its deep but narrow ravine, and now water was pouring over at the sharp bends the gorge took while dropping through the city to the Potomac. Cameras on the bridges at M Street caught the awesome sight of the creek roaring around its final turn west, upstream from M Street, and pouring over Francis Junior High School and straight south on 23rd Street into Foggy Bottom, joining the lake covering the Mall.
Then on to a different channel, a different camera. The Watergate Building was indeed a curving water gate, like a remnant portion of a dam. The wave-tossed spate of the Potomac poured around its big bend looking as if it could knock the building down. Likewise the Kennedy Center just south of it. The Lincoln Memorial, despite its pedestal mound, appeared to be flooded up to about Lincoln’s feet. Across the Potomac the water was going to inundate the lower levels of Arlington National Cemetery. Reagan Airport was completely gone.
“Unbelievable.”
Charlie went back to the view out their window. The water was still there. A voice on the TV was saying something about a million acre-feet of water converging in the metropolitan area, partially blocked in its flow downstream by the high tide. With more rain predicted.
Out the window Charlie saw that people were already taking to the streets around them in small watercraft, despite the wind and drizzle. Zodiacs, kayaks, a waterski boat, canoes, rowboats; he saw examples of them all. Then as the evening wore on, and the dim light left the air below the black clouds, the rain returned with its earlier intensity. It poured down in a way that surely made it dangerous to be on the water. Most of the small craft had appeared to be occupied by men who it did not seem had any good reason to be out there. Out for a lark—thrill-seekers, already!
“It looks like Venice,” Andrea said, echoing Charlie’s earlier thought. “I wonder what it would be like if it were like this all the time.”
“Maybe we’ll get to find out.”
“How high above sea level are we here?”
No one knew, but Evelyn quickly found and clicked a topographical map to her screen. They jammed around her to look at it, or to get the address to bring it up on their own screens.
“Look at that.”
“Ten feet above sea level? Can that be true?”
“That’s why they call it the Tidal Basin.”
“But isn’t the ocean like what, fifty miles away? A hundred?”
“Ninety miles downstream to Chesapeake Bay,” Evelyn said.
“I wonder if the Metro has flooded.”
“How could it not?”
“True. I suppose it must have in some places.”
“And if in some places, wouldn’t it spread?”
“Well, there are higher and lower sections. Seems like the lower ones would for sure. And anywhere the entries are flooded.”
“Well, yes.”
“Wow. What a mess.”
“Shit, I got here by Metro.”
Charlie said, “Me too.”
They thought about that for a while. Taxis weren’t going to be running either.
“I wonder how long it takes to walk home.”
But then again, Rock Creek ran between the Mall and Bethesda.
Hours passed. Charlie checked his e-mail frequently, and finally there was a note from Anna: we’re fine here glad to hear you’re set in the office, be sure to stay there until it’s safe, let’s talk as soon as the phones will get through love, A and