Green Earth. Kim Stanley Robinson
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by these words Frank took off, first walking fast, then, after he turned right on the street she had taken, running. He looked forward down the street for her black skirt, white blouse, short brown hair; there was no sign of her. He began sweating hard again, a kind of panic response. How far could she have gotten? What had she said she was late for? He couldn’t remember—horribly, his mind seemed to have blurred on much that she had said before they started kissing. He needed to know all that now! It was like some memory experiment foisted on undergraduates, how much could you remember of the incidents right before a shock? Not much! The experiment had worked like a charm.
But then he found the memory, and realized that it was not blurred at all, that on the contrary it was intensely detailed, at least up until the point when their legs had touched, at which point he could still remember perfectly, but only the feel on the outside of his knee, not their words. He went back before that, rehearsed it, relived it—cyclist, triathlon, one mile, twenty mile, 10K. Good for the legs, oh my God was it. He had to find her!
There was no sign of her at all. By now he was on Woodson, running left and right, looking down all the little side streets and into shop windows, feeling more and more desperate. She wasn’t anywhere to be seen. He had lost her.
It started to rain.
The doorbell rang. Anna went to it and opened it.
“Frank! Wow, you’re soaked.”
He must have been caught in the downpour that had begun about half an hour before, and was already finished. It was odd he hadn’t taken shelter during the worst of it. He looked like he had dived into a swimming pool with all his clothes on.
“Don’t worry,” she said as he hesitated on the porch, dripping like a statue in a fountain. “Here, you need a towel for your face.” She provided one from the vestibule’s coat closet. “The rain really got you.”
“Yeah.”
She was somewhat surprised to see him. She had thought he was uninterested in the Khembalis, even slightly dismissive of them. And he had sat through the afternoon’s lecture wearing one of his signature looks; he had a face able to express twenty minute gradations of displeasure, and the one at the lecture had been the one that said, “I’m keeping my eyes from rolling in my head only by the greatest of efforts.” Not the most pleasant of expressions on anyone’s face, and it had only gotten worse as the lecture went on, until eventually he had looked stunned and off in his own world.
On the other hand, he had gone to it. He had left in silence, obviously thinking something over. And now here he was.
So Anna was pleased. If the Khembalis could capture Frank’s interest, they should be able to do it with any scientist. Frank was the hardest case she knew.
Now he seemed slightly disoriented by his drenching. He was shaking his head ruefully.
Anna said, “Do you want to change into one of Charlie’s shirts?”
“No, I’ll be all right. I’ll steam dry.” Then he lifted his arms and looked down. “Well—maybe a shirt I guess. Will his fit me?”
“Sure, you’re only just a bit bigger than he is.”
She went upstairs to get one, calling down, “The others should be here any minute. There was flooding on Wisconsin, apparently, and some problems with the Metro.”
“I know about those, I got caught in one!”
“You’re kidding! What happened?” She came down with one of Charlie’s bigger T-shirts.
“The elevator I was in got stuck halfway up.”
“Oh no! For how long?”
“About half an hour I guess.”
“Jesus. That must have been spooky. Were you by yourself?”
“No, there was someone else, a woman. We got to talking, and so the time passed fast. It was interesting.”
“That’s nice.”
“Yes. It was. Only I didn’t get her name, and then when we got out they had forms for us to fill out and, and she took off while I was doing mine, so I never caught what hers was. And then the guy from the Metro wouldn’t give it to me from her form, so now I’m kicking myself, because—well. I’d like to talk to her again.”
Anna inspected him, startled by this story. He was looking past her abstractedly, perhaps remembering the incident. He noticed her gaze and grinned, and this startled her once again, because it was a real smile. Always before Frank’s smile had been a skeptical thing, so ironic and knowing that only one side of his mouth tugged back. Now he was like a stroke victim who had recovered the use of the damaged side of his face.
It was a nice sight, and it had to have been because of this woman he had met. Anna felt a sudden surge of affection for him. They had worked together for quite some time, and that kind of collaboration can take two people into a realm of shared experience that is not like family or marriage but rather some other kind of bond that can be quite deep. A friendship formed in the world of thought. Maybe they were always that way. Anyway he looked happy, and she was happy to see it.
“This woman filled out a form, you say?”
“Yeah.”
“So you can find out.”
“They wouldn’t let me look at it.”
“No, but you’ll be able to get to it somehow.”
“You think so?”
Now she had his complete attention. “Sure. Get a reporter from the Post to help you, or an archival detective, or someone from the Metro. Or from Homeland Security for that matter. The fact you were in there with her, that might be the way to get it, I don’t know. But as long as it’s written down, something will work. That’s informatics, right?”
“True.” He smiled again, looking quite happy. Then he took Charlie’s shirt from her and walked around toward the kitchen while changing into it. He took a towel from her and toweled off his head. “Thanks. Here, can I put this in your dryer? Down in the basement, right?” He stepped over the baby gate, went downstairs. “Thanks Anna,” he called back up to her. “I feel better now.” When he came back up, the sound of the dryer on behind him, he smiled again. “A lot better.”
“You must have liked this woman!”
“I did. It’s true, I did. I can’t believe I didn’t get her name!”
“You will. Want a beer?”
“You bet I do.”
“In the door of the fridge. Oops, there’s the door again, here come the rest.”
Soon the Khembalis and many other friends and acquaintances from NSF filled the Quiblers’ little living room, and the dining room flanking it, and the kitchen beyond the dining room. Anna rushed back and forth, carrying drinks and trays of food. She enjoyed this, and was doing it more than usual to keep Charlie from inflaming his poison ivy. As she hurried around she enjoyed seeing Joe playing with Drepung, and Nick discussing Antarctic dinosaurs with Curt from the office right above hers; he was one of the U.S. Antarctic Program managers. That NSF also ran one of the continents of the world was something she tended to forget, but Curt had come to the talk, and liked it. “These Buddhist guys would go over big in McMurdo,” he told Nick. Meanwhile Charlie, skin devastated to a brown crust across wide regions of his neck and face, eyes brilliantly bloodshot with sleep deprivation and steroids, was absorbed in conversation with Sucandra. Then he noticed her running around and joined her in the kitchen to help. “I gave Frank one of your shirts,” she told him.
“I saw. He said he got soaked.”
“Yes. I think he was chasing around after a woman he met on the Metro.”
“What?”
She laughed. “I think it’s