Sixty days and counting - Kim Stanley Robinson [8]
That night he wandered north up Connecticut Avenue, past the hotel where Reagan had been shot, past the Chinese embassy with its Tibetan and Falun Gong protesters in front singing, until he crossed the big bridge over Rock Creek, guarded by its four Disneyesque lion statues. Out on the middle of the bridge there was a tiny relief from the claustrophobia of the city and forest. It was one of the only places where Rock Creek seemed like a big gorge.
He continued to the clutch of little restaurants on the far side of the bridge and chose one of the Indian ones. Ate a meal thinking about the names on the wine list. Vineyards in Bangalore, why was this surprising? He read his laptop over milk tea.
When it was late enough, he struck off to the northwest, toward Bethesda. Back streets, residential, the forest taking over. Night in the city, sound of distant sirens. For the first time in the day he felt awake. It was a long hike.
Up on Wisconsin he came into the realm of the Persian rug shops, and slowed down. It was still too early. Into a bar, afraid to drink, afraid to think. A whiskey for courage. Out again into the bright night of Wisconsin, then west into the strange tangle of streets backing it. The Metro stop had been like a fountain of money and people and buildings pouring up out of the earth, overwhelming what had been here before. Some of the old houses that still remained undemolished suggested a little urban space of the 1930s, almost like the back streets of Georgetown.
This was the Quiblers’ neighborhood, but he didn’t want to intrude, nor was he in the mood to be sociable. Too late for that, but not early enough for his task. Pass by and on up Woodson, off to the left, now he was in the well-remembered neighborhood of Caroline and her ex-husband. Finally it was late enough, and yet not too late: midnight. His pulse was beginning to pound a little in his neck, and he wished he hadn’t had that whiskey. The streets were not entirely empty; in this city that wouldn’t happen until more like two. But that was okay. Up the steps of the apartment building that Caroline’s ex had gone into. The drape had been pulled back at the top window of the building. He shone his penlight on the address list under its glass, took a photo of it with his cell phone. Quite a few of the little slots had been left blank. He photoed the street address above the door as well, then turned and walked down the street, away from the streetlight he had stood under on that most fateful election night. His own fate, Caroline’s, the nation’s, the world’s—but who knew? Probably it only felt that way. His heart was beating so hard. Fight or flight, sure; but what happened if one could neither fight nor flee?
He turned a corner and ran.
Back in his office. Late in the day. He had given Edgardo his information from Bethesda a few days before. Soon he would have to decide again what to do after work.
Unable to face that, he continued to work. If only he could work all the time he would never have to decide anything.
He typed up his notes from Diane’s last two meetings. So, he thought as he looked them over, it had come to this: they had fucked up the world so badly that only the rapid invention and deployment of some kind of clean power generation much more powerful than what they had now would be enough to extricate them from the mess. If it could be done at all.
That meant solar, as Diane had concluded. Wind was too diffuse, waves and currents too hard to extract energy from. Fusion was like a mirage on a desert road, always the same distance away. Ordinary nuclear—well, that was a possibility, as Diane had pointed out. A very real possibility. It was dangerous and created waste for the ages, but it might be done. Some kinds of cost-benefit analysis might favor it.
But it was hard to imagine making it really safe. To do so they