"Kim Stanley Robinson - Forty Signs of Rain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

Their next Metro car reached the Smithsonian station, and Charlie put Joe into the backpack and on his
back, and rode the escalator up and out, into the kiln blaze of the Mall.

The sky was milky white everywhere. It felt like the inside of a sauna. Charlie fought his way through the
heat to an open patch of grass in the shade of the Washington Monument. He sat them down and got out
some food. The big views up to the Capitol and down to the Lincoln Memorial pleased him. Out from
under the great forest. It was like escaping Mirkwood. This in CharlieтАЩs opinion accounted for the great
popularity of the Mall; the monuments and the big Smithsonian buildings were nice but supplementary, it
was really a matter of getting out into the open. The ordinary reality of the American West was like a
glimpse of heaven here in the green depths of the swamp.

Charlie knew and cherished the old story: how the first thirteen states had needed a capital, and so
someone had to give up some land for it, or else one particular state would nab the honor; and Virginia
and the other southern states were particularly concerned it would go to Philadelphia or New York. And
so they had bickered, you give up some land, no you give it. No bureaucracy ever wanted to give up
sovereignty over anything whatsoever, be it the smallest patch of sand in the sea; and so finally Virginia
had said to Maryland, look, where the Potomac meets the Anacostia thereтАЩs a big nasty swamp. ItтАЩs
worthless, dreadful, pestilent land. YouтАЩll never be able to make anything out of a festering pit like that.

True, Maryland had said, youтАЩre right. Okay, weтАЩll give that land to the nation for its capital. But not too
much! Just a section of the worst part. And good luck draining it!

And so here they were. Charlie sat on grass, drowsing. Joe gamboled about him like a bumblebee,
investigating things. The diffuse midday light lay on them like asthma. Big white clouds mushroomed to the
west, and the scene turned glossy, bulging with internal light, like a computer photo with more pixels than
the human eye could process. The ductile world, everything bursting with light. He really had to try to
remember to bring his sunglasses on these trips.

To get a good long nap from Joe, he needed to tank him up. Charlie fought his own sleep, got the food
bag out of the backpackтАЩs undercarriage pocket, waved it so Joe could see it. Joe trundled over, eyelids
at half-mast; there was no time to lose. He settled into CharlieтАЩs lap and Charlie popped a bottle of
AnnaтАЩs milk into his mouth just as his head was snapping to the side.

They were like zombies together: Joe sucked himself unconscious while Charlie slumped over him, chin
on chest, comatose. Snuggling an infant in mind-numbing heat, what could be cozier.

Clouds over the White House were billowing up like the spirit of the buildingтАЩs feisty inhabitant, round,
dense, shiny white. In the other direction, over the Supreme CourtтАЩs neighborhood, stood a black
nine-lobed cloud, dangerously laden with incipient lightning. Yes, the powers of Washington were casting
up thermals and forming clouds over themselves, clouds that filled out precisely the shapes and colors of
their spirits. Charlie saw that each cumulobureaucracy transcended the individuals who temporarily
performed its functions in the world. These transhuman spirits all had inborn characters, and biographies,
and abilities and desires and habits all their own; and in the sky over the city they contested their fates
with one another. Humans were like cells in their bodies. Probably oneтАЩs cells also thought their lives
were important and under their individual control. But the great bodies knew better.

Thus Charlie now saw that the White House was a great white thunderhead of a spirit, like an old
emperor or a small-town sheriff, dominating the landscape and the other players. The Supreme Court on
the other hand was dangerously dark and low, like a multiheaded minotaur, brooding and powerful. Over