Fifty Degrees Below by Robinson Kim Stanley

Fifty Degrees Below by Robinson Kim Stanley

Author:Robinson, Kim Stanley [Robinson, Kim Stanley]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Spectra
Published: 2005-10-24T16:00:00+00:00


They were on a date in the big city, the world’s great city, paradigmatic and incomparable. Manhattan always boggled Frank; he had spent very little time in it, and that spread out over the years. Here the primate mind had to be stunned by the verticality of the cliffs and canyons and towers. Add to those unnatural landforms the rivers of cars and taxis, and the omnipresence of people, hundreds in view at every moment, and the cumulative effect was staggering—literally so for Frank, as he had no inhibitions about spinning down the sidewalks, head swiveling like an owl’s to see more. Diane had to grab his arm and pull him out of traffic when he tried to get a better view of the Chrysler building. Yes, there they were, arm in arm on the streets of Manhattan, laughing at Frank’s hick amazement, his window-washer’s euphoria. West through midtown, then up toward Central Park, where Diane knew of a good restaurant. In the crowd at the next red light she slipped her arm out of his, which released him from an awkward position, in which his forearm had hung as if from an invisible sling to give her forearm something to rest on. These old postures. And yet the touch had coursed through him as he walked, like a light charge of electricity, or a new idea. Oooooooop.

The restaurant proved to be run by Chinese or east Asians of some other kind, Frank didn’t inquire because in every other respect the restaurant was pure Provençal. It was jammed into an archetypal Manhattan restaurant space, two stories of narrow rooms with a patio in the airshaft out back, a deep brick-walled enclosure, home to a hardy old tree; the whole burnished to a mysterious black-brick and battered-wood perfection.

Two faces in candlelight over a restaurant table: an old situation, and they both knew it. Although probably only Frank was also helplessly theorizing the event in terms of its million-year-old tradition. Two faces in the light of a fire, one male one female: eat, drink, man, woman. Big parts of the brain were no doubt ignited by the candlelight alone, not to mention the smells and tastes. A million years.

They talked about the day, the work in hand. Frank admitted to being impressed by the IPCC group and the work they had done. “Still, I’d like to do something faster, if we could. I think we’ll need it.”

“You think so?”

He told her about seeing Khembalung go under. Then his notions for dealing with the changing ocean, for clean energy, for really serious carbon drawdown from the atmosphere.

“So,” Diane said, “really you’re talking about global cooling.”

“Well, if we can warm it, maybe we can cool it too.”

“But the warming took a lot. The whole world’s economy, two hundred years.”

“Well, but just by accident though. The economy wasn’t dedicated to warming. It was just a byproduct.”

“Making things cooler might be harder than warming.”

“But if we actually direct part of the economy to that project. Like as if paying for a war or something.



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