"Kim Stanley Robinson - Sixty Days and Counting" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

Well, more grist for the mill. Over the past year Frank had been giving alternative
energy about a quarter of his working time, and now he saw he was going to have to
bump that up. Everything from now on would be jacked to emergency levels. Not a
comfortable feeling, but there was no avoiding it. It was like an existential condition,
as if he had become Alice’s White Rabbit: I’m late! I’m late! I’m late! And most of
the time he managed to obscure from his conscious train of thought the true source
of his anxiety.



One day, later that week, when he was deep in work’s oblivion, Diane appeared in
his doorway, startling him. He was pleased, then nervous; they had not yet found a
new balance. After Caroline had called Frank with her emergency situation, Frank
had hastily called Diane to cancel before thinking of any plausible
non-other-woman-related reason for doing so, and so had given no explanation at
all—which opacity was suspicious, and probably more impolite than the cancellation
per se. Opacity was seldom conducive to rapport.
“Hi, Diane,” he said now, aping normality. “What’s happening?”
She looked at him with a curious expression. “I just got a call from Phil Chase.”
“Wow, what did he want?”
“He asked me if I would be his science advisor.”
Frank found he was standing. He reached out and shook Diane’s hand, then hugged
her. “Now that is news we have to celebrate,” he declared, seizing the bull by the
horns. “I’m sorry about that the other night, I still owe you dinner! Can I take you
out tonight?”
“Sure,” she said easily, as if there had been no problem. She was so cool; maybe
there never had been a problem. Frank couldn’t be sure. “Meet you at,” she checked
her watch, “at six, okay? Now I’m going to go call my kids.”
But then she stopped on her way out, and again looked at him oddly. “You must
have had something to do with this,” she said suddenly.
“Me? I don’t think so. What do you mean?”
“Talking to Charlie Quibler, maybe?”
“Oh, no. I mean, of course I’ve talked to Charlie about some of our stuff,
generally—”
“And he’s been Chase’s environment guy.”
“Well yes, but you know, Charlie’s just part of a large staff, and he’s been staying at
home with Joe, so he hasn’t been a major factor with Chase for some time, as I
understand it. Mostly just a voice on the phone. He says he doesn’t get listened to.
He says he’s kind of like Jiminy Cricket was to Pinocchio, when Pinocchio’s nose
was at its longest.”
Diane laughed. “Yeah sure. Let’s meet over at Optimodal, shall we? Let’s say seven
instead of six. I want to run some of this off.”
Now that was something he could understand. “Sure. See you there.”
Frank sat in his chair feeling his chest puffed out: another cliché revealed to be an
accurate account of emotion’s effects on the body. Everyone was the same. It
occurred to him that maybe Charlie had had something to do with it, after all.
Someone had to have advised Chase whom to choose for this post, and as far as
Frank knew, Chase and Diane had never met. So—that was interesting.
Frank went over to the Optimodal Health Club just after six, waved to Diane on the
elliptical in the next room, and stomped up the Stairmaster for the equivalent of