"Kim Stanley Robinson - Fifty Degrees Below" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

had become something of a no-man's land, "a return to wilderness," as the article had
put it.
Frank surveyed the apartment. It held no more memories for him than a hotel room,
as he had done nothing but sleep there. That was all he had needed out of a home, his
life proper having been put on hold until his return to San Diego. Now, well... it was like
some kind of premature resuscitation, on a voyage between the stars. Time to wake up,
time to leave the deep freeze and find out where he was.
He got up and went down to his car.

Out to the Beltway to circle north and then east, past the elongated Mormon temple
and the great overpass graffiti referencing it: go home dorothy! Get off on Wisconsin,
drive in toward the city. There was no particular reason for him to visit this part of town.
Of course the Quiblers lived over here, but that couldn't be it.
He kept thinking: Homeless person, homeless person. You are a homeless person. A
song from Paul Simon's Graceland came to him, the one where one of the South African
groups kept singing, Homeless; homeless, Da da da, da da da da da da ... something like,
Midnight come, and then you wanna go home. Or maybe it was a Zulu phrase. Or maybe, as
he seemed to hear now: Homeless; homeless; he go down to find another home.
Something like that. He came to the intersection at the Bethesda Metro stop, and
suddenly it occurred to him why he might be there. Of courseтАФthis was where he had
met the woman in the elevator. They had gotten stuck together coming up from the
Metro: alone together underground, minute after minute, until after a long talk they had
started kissing, much to Frank's surprise. And then when the repair team had arrived
and they were let out, the woman had disappeared without Frank learning anything
about her, even her name. It made his heart pound just to remember it. Up there on the
sidewalk to the right, beyond the red lightтАФthere stood the very elevator box they had
emerged from. And then she had appeared to him again, on a boat in the Potomac
during the height of the great flood. He had called her boat on his cell phone, and she
had answered, had said, "I'll call. I don't know when."
The red light turned green. She had not called and yet here he was, driving back to
where they had met as if he might catch sight of her. Maybe he had even been thinking
that if he found her, he would have a place to stay.
That was silly: an example of magical thinking at its most unrealistic. And he had to
admit that in the past couple of weeks he had been looking for apartments in this area.
So it was not just an isolated impulse, but a pattern of behavior.
Just past the intersection he turned into the Hyatt driveway. A valet approached and
Frank said, "Do you know if there are any rooms available here?"
"Not if you don't got a reservation."
Frank hurried into the lobby to check anyway. A receptionist shook her head: no
vacancies. She wasn't aware of the situation at any other hotel. The ones in their chain
were full all over the metropolitan area.
Frank got back in his car and drove onto Wisconsin heading south, peering at the
elevator kiosk when he passed it. She had given a fake name on the Metro forms they
had been asked to fill out. She would not be there now.
Down Wisconsin, past the Quiblers' house a couple of blocks over to the right. That
was what had brought him to this part of town, on the night he and the woman got stuck
in the elevator. Anna Quibler, one of his colleagues at NSF, had hosted a party for the
Khembali ambassador, who had given a lecture at NSF earlier that day. A nice party. An
excess of reason is itself a form of madness, the old ambassador had said to Frank. Frank
was still pondering what that meant, and if it were true, how he might act on it.