Читать книгу Green Earth - Kim Stanley Robinson - Страница 32

Afterward, the bioinformatics group sat in Anna and Frank’s rooms on the sixth floor, sipping cold coffee and looking into the atrium.

Edgardo came in. “So,” he said cheerily, “I take it the meeting was a total waste of time.”

“No,” Anna snapped.

Edgardo laughed. “Diane changed NSF top to bottom?”

“No.”

They sat there. Edgardo went and poured himself some coffee.

Anna said to Frank, “It sounded like you were telling Diane you would stay another year.”

“Yep.”

Edgardo came back in, amazed. “Will wonders never cease! I hope you didn’t give up your apartment yet!”

“I did.”

“Oh no! Too bad!”

Frank flicked that away with his burned hand. “The guy who owns it is coming back anyway.”

Anna regarded him. “So you really are changing your mind.”

“Well …”

The lights went out, computers too. Power failure.

“Ah shit.”

A blackout. No doubt a result of the storm.

Now the atrium was truly dark, all the offices lit only by the dim green glow of the emergency exit signs. EXIT. The shadow of the future.

Then the emergency generator came on, making an audible hum through the building. With a buzz and several computer pings, electricity returned.

Anna went down the hall to look north out the corner window. Arlington was dark to the rain-fuzzed horizon. Many emergency generators had already kicked in, and more did so as she watched, powering glows that in the dark rain looked like little campfires. The cloud over the Pentagon caught the light from below and gleamed blackly.

Frank came out and looked over her shoulder. “This is what it’s going to be like all the time,” he predicted gloomily. “We might as well get used to it.”

Anna said, “How would that work?”

He smiled briefly. But it was a real smile, a tiny version of the one Anna had seen at her house. “Don’t ask me.” He stared out the window at the darkened city. The low thrum of rain was cut by the muffled sound of a siren below.