Forty signs of rain - Kim Stanley Robinson [138]
The Khembali passengers advised the driver and zookeeper. They nodded and continued north on Connecticut. Any big dip would make a road impassably flooded, but Connecticut ran steadily uphill to the northwest. Then Bradley Lane allowed the driver to get most of the way west to Wisconsin. When a dip stopped him, he retreated and worked his way farther north, following streets without dips, until they made it to Wisconsin Avenue, now something like a wide smooth stream, flowing hard south, but at a depth of only six inches. They crept along against this flow until they could make an illegal left onto Woodson, and thus around the corner, into the driveway of a small house backed by a big apartment complex.
In the dark air the Khembalis got out, knocked on the kitchen door. A woman appeared, and after a brief conversation, disappeared.
Soon afterward, if anyone in the apartment complex had looked out of their window, they would have seen a curious sight: a group of men, some in maroon robes, others in National Park khakis, coaxing a tiger out of the back of a truck. It was wearing a collar to which three leashes were attached. When it was out the men quickly closed the truck door. The oldest man stood before the tiger, hand upraised. He took up one of the leashes, led the wet beast across the driveway to steps leading down to an open cellar door. Rain fell as the tiger stopped on the steps and looked around. The old man spoke urgently to it. From the house’s kitchen window over them, two little faces stared out round-eyed. For a moment nothing seemed to move but the rain. Then the tiger ducked in the door.
SOMETIME DURING that second night the rain stopped, and though dawn of the third morning arrived sodden and gray, the clouds scattered as the day progressed, flying north at speed. By nine the sun blazed down between big puffball clouds onto the flooded city. The air was breezy and unsettled.
Charlie had again spent this second night in the office, and when he woke he looked out the window hoping that conditions would have eased enough for him to be able to attempt getting home. The phones were still down, although e-mails from Anna had kept him informed and reassured—at least until the previous evening’s news about the arrival of the Khembalis, which had caused him some alarm, not just because of the tiger in the basement, but because of their interest in Joe. He had not expressed any of this in his e-mail replies, of course. But he most definitely wanted to get home.
Helicopters and blimps had already taken to the air in great numbers. Now all the TV channels in the world could reveal the extent of the flood from on high. Much of downtown Washington, D.C., remained awash. A giant shallow lake occupied precisely the most famous and public parts of the city; it looked like someone had decided to expand the Mall’s reflecting pool beyond all reason. The rivers and streams that converged on this larger tidal basin were still in spate, which kept the new lake topped up. In the washed sunlight the flat expanse of water was the color of caffe latte, with foam.
Standing in the lake, of course, were hundreds of buildings-become-islands, and a few real islands, and even some freeway viaducts, now acting as bridges over the Anacostia Valley. The Potomac continued to pour through the west edge of the lake, overspilling its banks both upstream and down, whenever lowlands flanked it. Its surface was studded with floating junk which moved slower the farther downstream it got. Apparently the ebb tides had only begun to draw this vast bolus of water out to sea.
As the morning wore on, more and more boats appeared. The