Forty signs of rain - Kim Stanley Robinson [56]
Clouds over the White House were billowing up like the spirit of the building’s feisty inhabitant, round, dense, shiny white. In the other direction, over the Supreme Court’s neighborhood, stood a black nine-lobed cloud, dangerously laden with incipient lightning. Yes, the powers of Washington were casting up thermals and forming clouds over themselves, clouds that filled out precisely the shapes and colors of their spirits. Charlie saw that each cumulobureaucracy transcended the individuals who temporarily performed its functions in the world. These transhuman spirits all had inborn characters, and biographies, and abilities and desires and habits all their own; and in the sky over the city they contested their fates with one another. Humans were like cells in their bodies. Probably one’s cells also thought their lives were important and under their individual control. But the great bodies knew better.
Thus Charlie now saw that the White House was a great white thunderhead of a spirit, like an old emperor or a small-town sheriff, dominating the landscape and the other players. The Supreme Court on the other hand was dangerously dark and low, like a multiheaded minotaur, brooding and powerful. Over the white dome of the Capitol, the air shimmered; Congress was a roaring thermal so hot that no cloud could form in it.
Oh yes—there were big spirits above this low city, hammering one another like Zeus and his crowd, or Odin, or Krishna, or all of them at once. To make one’s way in a world like that one had to blow like the North Wind.
He had fallen into a slumber as deep as Joe’s when his phone rang. He answered it before waking, his head snapping dangerously on his neck.
“Wha.”
“Charlie? Charlie, where are you? We need you down here right now.”
“I’m already down here.”
“Really? That’s great. Charlie?”
“Yes, Roy?”
“Look, Charlie, sorry to bother you, but Phil is out of town and I’ve got to meet with Senator Ellington in twenty minutes, and we just got a call from the White House saying that Dr. Strangelove wants to meet with us to talk about Phil’s climate bill. It sounds like they’re ready to listen, maybe ready to talk too, or even to deal. We need someone to get over there.”
“Now?”
“Now. You’ve got to get over there.”
“I’m already over there, but look, I can’t. I’ve got Joe here with me. Where is Phil again?”
“San Francisco.”
“Wasn’t Wade supposed to get back?”
“No he’s still in Antarctica. Listen Charlie, there’s no one here who can do this right but you.”
“What about Andrea?” Andrea Palmer was Phil’s legislative director, the person in charge of all his bills.
“She’s in New York today. Besides you’re the point man on this, it’s your bill more than anyone else’s and you know it inside and out.”
“But I’ve got Joe!”
“Maybe you can take Joe along.”
“Yeah right.”
“Hey, why not? Won’t he be taking a nap soon?”
“He is right now.”
Charlie could see the trees backing the White House, there on the other side of the Ellipse. He could walk over there in ten minutes. Theoretically Joe would stay asleep a couple of hours. And certainly they should seize the moment on this, because so far the President and his people had shown no interest whatsoever in dealing on this issue.
“Listen,” Roy cajoled, “I’ve had entire lunches with you where Joe is asleep on your back, and believe me, no one can tell the difference. I mean you hold yourself upright like you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders, but you did that before you had Joe, so now he just fills up that space and makes you look more normal, I swear to God. You’ve voted with him on your back, you’ve shopped, you’ve showered, hey once you even made love with your wife while Joe was on your back, didn’t you tell me that?”
“What!”
“You told me that, Charlie.”
“I must have been drunk to tell you that, and it wasn’t really sex anyway. I couldn’t even move.”
Roy laughed his raucous laugh. “Since when does that make it not sex?