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

For the first time in the day he felt awake. It was a long hike.
Up on Wisconsin he came into the realm of the Persian rug shops, and slowed
down. It was still too early. Into a bar, afraid to drink, afraid to think. A whiskey for
courage. Out again into the bright night of Wisconsin, then west into the strange
tangle of streets backing it. The Metro stop had been like a fountain of money and
people and buildings pouring up out of the earth, overwhelming what had been here
before. Some of the old houses that still remained undemolished suggested a little
urban space of the 1930s, almost like the back streets of Georgetown.
This was the QuiblersтАЩ neighborhood, but he didnтАЩt want to intrude, nor was he in
the mood to be sociable. Too late for that, but not early enough for his task. Pass by
and on up Woodson, off to the left, now he was in the well-remembered
neighborhood of Caroline and her ex-husband. Finally it was late enough, and yet
not too late: midnight. His pulse was beginning to pound a little in his neck, and he
wished he hadnтАЩt had that whiskey. The streets were not entirely empty; in this city
that wouldnтАЩt happen until more like two. But that was okay. Up the steps of the
apartment building that CarolineтАЩs ex had gone into. The drape had been pulled back
at the top window of the building. He shone his penlight on the address list under its
glass, took a photo of it with his cell phone. Quite a few of the little slots had been
left blank. He photoed the street address above the door as well, then turned and
walked down the street, away from the streetlight he had stood under on that most
fateful election night. His own fate, CarolineтАЩs, the nationтАЩs, the worldтАЩsтАФbut who
knew? Probably it only felt that way. His heart was beating so hard. Fight or flight,
sure; but what happened if one could neither fight nor flee?
He turned a corner and ran.



Back in his office. Late in the day. He had given Edgardo his information from
Bethesda a few days before. Soon he would have to decide again what to do after
work.
Unable to face that, he continued to work. If only he could work all the time he
would never have to decide anything.
He typed up his notes from DianeтАЩs last two meetings. So, he thought as he looked
them over, it had come to this: they had fucked up the world so badly that only the
rapid invention and deployment of some kind of clean power generation much more
powerful than what they had now would be enough to extricate them from the mess.
If it could be done at all.
That meant solar, as Diane had concluded. Wind was too diffuse, waves and
currents too hard to extract energy from. Fusion was like a mirage on a desert road,
always the same distance away. Ordinary nuclearтАФwell, that was a possibility, as
Diane had pointed out. A very real possibility. It was dangerous and created waste
for the ages, but it might be done. Some kinds of cost-benefit analysis might favor it.
But it was hard to imagine making it really safe. To do so they would have to
become like the French (gasp!), who got ninety percent of their power from nuclear
plants, all built to the same stringent standards. Not the likeliest scenario for the rest
of the world, but not physically impossible. The U.S. Navy had run a safe nuclear
program ever since the 1950s. Frank wrote on his notepad: Is French nuclear power
safe? Is US Navy nuclear safe? What does safe mean? Can you recycle spent fuel
and guard the bomb-level plutonium that would finally reduce out of it? All that
would have to be investigated and discussed. Nothing could be taken off the table