• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1281 0

on the shore, wearily hauled himself in. Undid his apron and struggled to follow his paddle up onto the rocky jumble at the bottom of the bluff. Stiff and sore. Sweat poured out from his head. He stumbled back into the shallows and sat down in the river, then lay back and let the water pour over him. Ahhh, cool water. Just what he needed. Up again, spluttering and gasping. Cooler already.

He hiked up the steep little cleft in the bluff. Sat beside Caroline with a squish. Dripped river water. He was still sweating.

Caroline regarded him. “So,” she said. “You came back.”

“What do you mean?” Frank said. “I never left.”

“I guess that’s true.”

They sat there, looking down at the river. Below them a pair of kayakers were putting in; one paddled backwards upstream. A wind threw a quick cat’s paw across the surface of the river, and on the opposite shore the wall of green trees bobbed and flailed. In the sky to the north a cloud was rearing high into the sky, its white lobes aquiver with the promise of storms to come.

“I love you.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks for help this time from:

Charles V. Brown, Joy Chamberlain, Rita Colwell, William Fox, Doug Fratz, Anne Groell, Jennifer Holland, Jane Johnson, Mark Lewis, Rich Lynch, Lisa Nowell, Michael Schlesinger, Jim Shea, Darko Suvin, Ralph Vicinanza, Paul J. Werbos, and Donald Wesling.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

KIM STANLEY ROBINSON is a winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards. He is the author of nineteen previous books, including the bestselling Mars trilogy and the critically acclaimed Forty Signs of Rain, The Years of Rice and Salt, and Antarctica—for which he was sent to the Antarctic by the U.S. National Science Foundation as part of their Antarctic Artists and Writers’ Program. He lives in Davis, California.

ALSO BY

KIM STANLEY ROBINSON

Fiction

The Mars Trilogy

Red Mars

Green Mars

Blue Mars

Three Californias

The Wild Shore

The Gold Coast

Pacific Edge

Escape from Kathmandu

A Short, Sharp Shock

Green Mars (novella)

The Blind Geometer

The Memory of Whiteness

Icehenge

The Planet on the Table

Remaking History

Antarctica

The Martians

The Years of Rice and Salt

Forty Signs of Rain

Fifty Degrees Below

Nonfiction

The Novels of Philip K. Dick

SIXTY DAYS AND COUNTING

A Bantam Spectra Book / March 2007

Published by Bantam Dell

A Division of Random House, Inc.

New York, New York

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved.

Copyright © 2007 by Kim Stanley Robinson

* * *

Bantam Books, the rooster colophon, Spectra, and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

* * *

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Robinson, Kim Stanley.

Sixty days and counting / Kim Stanley Robinson.

p. cm.

eISBN: 978-0-553-90350-8

1. Global warming—Fiction. 2. Climatic changes—Fiction. 3. Scientists—Fiction. 4. Presidents—Fiction. 5. Legislators—Fiction. 6. Washington (D.C.)—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3568.O2893S59 2007

813'.54—dc22

2006029903

www.bantamdell.com

v1.0