Fifty Degrees Below

X. PRIMAVERA PORTEÑO

Kenzo had run the numbers and found that most seasonal weather manifestations varied by about eight percent, year to year— temperature, precipitation, wind speeds, and so on. Now all that was over. They had passed the point of criticality, they had tipped over the tipping point in the same way a kid running up a seesaw will get past the axis and somewhere beyond and above it plummet down on the falling board. They were in the next mode, and coming into the second winter of abrupt climate change.

The president announced on the campaign trail that he had inherited this problem from his Democratic predecessors, particularly Bill Clinton, and that only free markets and a strong national defense could battle this new threat, which he continued to call climactic terrorism. “Why, you can’t be sure you won’t wake up someday to find the world spitting in your face. It’s not okay, and I’m going to do something about it. My administration has been studying the problem and getting recommendations from our scientists, and I’m proud to say that on my watch the National Science Foundation initiated this great counterterrorist operation in the North Atlantic, which will soon restore the Gulf Stream to its rightful flow, and show how American know-how and technology is a match for anything.”

This played well, like most things the president did. He visited NSF for half an hour, and later appeared on the news in a briefing with Diane Chang, the heads of NOAA and the EPA, and his science advisor, Dr. Strengloft. The president got a great deal of credit for taking on the weather in such a forceful and market-based manner, bypassing the scientists and liberals and striking a blow for freedom and the salt industry. Anna, watching the TV news, hissed like a tea kettle; Charlie threw Joe’s dinosaurs at the radiator. The president’s numbers went up. Only Diane was calm. She said, “Don’t worry. It only means we’re winning. They’re all trying to get on our side now. So science is getting some leverage on the situation.” And Phil Chase blew through all the president’s claims with a laugh.

“The salt fleet is an international project, coordinated through the UN. The part of it we’re paying for comes from an appropriation Congress made because of a bill I wrote. The president tried to hamstring this great project up and down the line. Come on! You all know which candidate will work to protect the environment, and it’s me, me and my party. Let’s turn it into a big party. We can make things better for our kids, and that’ll be our fun. That’s the way it’s always been until now, so you can’t let the fear and greed guys scare you ’til you cut and run. The new climate is an opportunity. We needed to change, and now we will, because we have to. What could be more convenient?”

This played well too, much to the pundits’ private surprise (in public they always knew everything), and now Phil’s numbers went up. He was polling neck and neck with the president, and doing particularly well among the boomers and their children the echo boomers, the two biggest demographics.

The president’s team continued to transpose what was working for Chase into the president’s campaign. They began to proclaim the bad weather to be an economic opportunity of the first order. New businesses, even entire new industries, were there for the making! The bad weather was obviously another economic opportunity for market-driven reforms.

However, since he had been elected with the help of big oil and everything transnationally corporate, and had done more than any previous president to strip-mine the nation and use it as a dumping ground, he did not appear to be as convincing as Phil. It was getting hard to believe his assertions that the invisible hand of the market would solve everything, because, as Phil put it, the invisible hand never picked up the check.

So the election campaign wallowed along in its falsity and tedium, and surprise surprise, as the summer passed it became an ever-tightening race, just as all media hopeful for interested customers might have wished. These summer months were full enough of new weather anomalies and extreme events to keep Phil in the chase, as he liked to put it.

So his campaign was doing well, and he kept it up with campaign events all over the world, including a return to the North Pole a year after announcing his candidacy. It was a bit of a throwback to his old World’s Senator mode, but he claimed its effect was good, and his team could only follow his lead. “I have to run on my record, there’s no other way to do it. I am what I am.” He started saying that too. “I am what I am.”

“And that’s all what I am,” Roy always sang when he said it, “I’m Popeye the sailor man! Toot toot!” Phil was in fact like Popeye in enough important respects that his staff started calling him that.

And Charlie had to admit that since the climate problem was global, campaigning everywhere made a sort of sense. It made Phil and his career and his campaign all of a piece. Meanwhile the president remained resolutely nationalistic, it was always America this and freedom that, no matter how transnational and oppressive the content of his positions. Patriotism as xenophobia was part of his appeal to his base, and it worked for them. But Phil’s people had a different idea: the world was the world. Everyone was part of it.

One unexpected problem for his campaign was that the “Scientific Virtual Candidate” was polling pretty well, up to five percent in blue states, despite the fact that the candidate was nonexistent and would not appear on any ballots. And this of course was a problem for Phil. Most of those potential votes came from his natural constituency, and so it was accomplishing the usual third-party disaster of undercutting precisely the major party most closely allied to its views.

Phil looked to Charlie on this. “Charlie, you have to talk to your wife and her colleagues at NSF about this. I don’t want to be accidentally nadered by these good people. You tell them, whatever they want out of this campaign, I’m their best chance at it.”

“I don’t want to depress them that much,” Charlie deadpanned, which got a good Phil chuckle, rueful but pleased. His fear that running for president was going to lose him all real human contact (the unconscious goal of many a previous president), was so far proving unfounded. “Thanks for that thrust of rapierlike wit,” he replied. “There aren’t enough people saying deflationary things about me these late days of the campaign. You are indeed a brother, and we are a real foxhole fraternity, shelled daily as we are by Fox. But don’t forget to talk to NSF.” As far as Charlie could tell he was still enjoying himself enormously.

And Charlie did ask Anna and Frank what the plans were for the candidate experiment. They both shrugged and said it was out of their hands, the genie out of the bottle. At NSF they talked to the SSEEP team, who were of course already aware of the historical precedents and the negative ramifications of any partial real-world success of their hypothetical campaign. Until preferential voting was introduced, third parties could only be spoilers.

Frank got back to Charlie. “They’re on it.”

“How so, meaning what?”

“They’re waiting for their moment.”

“Ahhhhh.”

This moment came in late September, when a hurricane veered north at the last minute and hammered New Jersey, New York, Long Island, and Connecticut, and to a lesser extent the rest of New England. These were blue states already, but with big SSEEP numbers as well, so that after the first week of emergencies had passed, and the flooding subsided, a SSEEP conference was held in which representatives of 167 scientific organizations debated what to do in as measured and scientific a manner as they could manage—which in the event meant a perfect storm of statistics, chaos theory, sociology, econometrics, mass psychology, ecology, cascade mathematics, poll theory, historiography, and climate modeling. At the end of which a statement was crafted, approved, and released, informing the public that the “Scientific Virtual Candidate” was withdrawing from all campaigns, and suggesting that any voters who had planned to vote for it consider voting for Phil Chase as being an “electable first approximation of the scientific candidate,” and “best real current choice.” Support for preferential or instant run-off voting method was also strongly recommended, as giving future scientific candidates the chance actually to win representation proportional to the votes they got, improving democracy if judged by representational metrics.

This announcement was denounced by the president’s team as prearranged collusion and a gross sullying of the purity of science by an inappropriate and unscientific descent into partisan politics of the worst kind. The scientific candidate immediately issued a detailed reply to these charges in the form of all its calculations and a description of the analytic methods used to reach its conclusions, including point-by-point comparisons of the various planks of all the platforms, indicating that at this point Phil was closer to science than the president.

“You think?” Roy Anastophoulus said to Charlie over the phone. “I mean, duh. I hope this helps us, but isn’t it just another of those scientific studies that spends millions and makes a huge effort to prove the sky is blue or something? Of course Phil is more scientific, he’s running against a man aligned with rapture enthusiasts, people who are getting ready to take off and fly up to heaven!”

“Calm down Roy, this is a good thing. This is connect-the-dots.”

In public Phil welcomed the new endorsement, and he welcomed the voters attending to it, promising to do his best to adopt the planks of the scientific platform into his own. “CHASE PROMISES TO SEE WHAT HE CAN DO.”

“Try me and see,” Phil said. “Given the situation, it makes perfect sense. The president isn’t going to do anything. He and his oil-and-guns crowd will just try to find an island somewhere to skip to when they’re done raiding the world. They’ll leave us in the wreckage and build themselves bubble fortresses, that’s been their sick plan all along. Building a good world for our kids is our plan, and it’s scientific as can be, but only if you understand science as a way of being together, an ethical system and not just a method for seeing the world. What this political endorsement underlines is that science contains in it a plan for dealing with the world that we find ourselves in, a plan which aims to reduce human suffering and increase the quality of life on Earth for everyone. In other words science is a kind of politics already, and I’m proud to be endorsed by the scientific community, because its goals match the values of justice and fairness that we all were taught are the most important part of social life and government. So welcome aboard, and I appreciate the help, because there’s a lot to do!”

Thus ended the most active part of the first Social Science Experiment in Elective Politics. There would be much analysis, and the follow-up studies would suggest new experiments the next time around, presumably. The committee was there in place at the National Academy of Sciences, and it would have looked bad at that point if anyone inside or outside the Academy had tried to shut it down.

Diane, under stupendous heat from Republicans in Congress for appearing to have used a federal agency to support a political candidate, went to the hearings and shrugged. “We’ll study it,” she said. “We funded an experiment in our usual way.”

“Would you fund an experiment like that one again?” demanded Senator Winston.

“It would depend on its peer review,” she said. “If it was given a good ranking by a peer-review panel, it would be considered, yes.”

One of the Democratic senators on the panel pointed out that this would not be the first federal agency to get involved in a political campaign, that in fact several were at this moment working explicitly and directly for the president’s campaign, including the Treasury Department and the Departments of Agriculture, Education, and Commerce. While on the other hand NSF had just funded an experiment that had happened to catch on with the public.

The debate of the day roared on. The National Science Foundation had jumped into politics and the culture wars. Its age of innocence was over at last.

Frank and Rudra Cakrin continued to spend the last hour of most nights out in their shed, talking. They talked about food, the events of the day, the contents of their shed, the garden, and the nature of reality. Most of their talk was in English, where Rudra continued to improve. Sometimes he gave Frank a Tibetan lesson.

Rudra liked to be outside. His health seemed to Frank poor, or else he was frail with age. On their trips out together Frank gave him an arm at the curbs, and once he even pushed him in a wheelchair that was stored inside the house underneath the stairwell. A few times they went for a drive in Frank’s van.

One day they drove out to see their future home. The Khembalis had finalized the purchase of the land in Maryland they had located, a property upstream on the Potomac that had been badly damaged in the great flood. A farmhouse on the high point of the acreage had been inundated to the ceiling of the first floor, and a passing rowboat crowded with refugees from other farms had hacked through the roof to get into the attic. Padma and Sucandra had decided that the building could be made habitable again, and in any case the land would be worth it; apparently it was zoned in a way that would allow most of the Khembalis in the metro area to live there.

So Frank drove out the George Washington Parkway to the Beltway, Rudra peering out from the passenger seat with a lively eye, talking in Tibetan. Frank tried to identify what words he could, but it didn’t add up to much—malam, highway; sgan, hill; sdon-po, tree. It occurred to him that maybe this was what conversation always was, two people talking to themselves in different languages, mostly in order to clarify themselves to themselves. Or else just filling the silence, singing ooop ooop.

He tried to resist this theory, so Edgardo-esque, by asking specific questions. “How old are you?”

“Eighty-one.”

“Where were you born?”

“Near Drepung.”

“Do you remember any of your past lives?”

“I remember many lives.”

“Lives before this life?”

Rudra looked down at the river as they crossed on the Beltway. “Yes.”

“Not interrupted by any deaths?”

“Many deaths.”

“Yes, but I mean, your own deaths?”

Rudra shrugged. “This does not seem to be the body I used to inhabit.”

Out on the farm, Rudra insisted on trudging slowly up to the land’s high point, a low ridge at the eastern edge of the property, just past the ruined farmhouse.

They looked around. “So you’ll make this your new Khembalung.”

“Same Khembalung,” Rudra said. “Khembalung is not a place” He waved his arm at the scene. “A name for a way.” He wiggled his hand forward like a fish, as if indicating passage through time.

“A moveable feast,” Frank suggested.

“Yes. Milarepa said this, that Khembalung moves from age to age. He said it will go north. Not until now have we seen what he meant. But here it is.”

“But Washington isn’t very north of Khembalung.”

“From Khembalung go north, keep going, over top of world and down the other side. Here you are!”

Frank laughed. “So now this is Khembalung?”

Rudra nodded. He said something in Tibetan that Frank didn’t understand.

“What’s that?”

“The first Khembalung was recently found, north of Kunlun Mountains. Ruins located, recently, under desert mountain in Takla Makan.”

“They found the original? How old was the site?”

“Very old.”

“Yes, but did they say a date by chance?”

Rudra frowned. “Eighth century in your calendar?”

“Wow. I bet you’d like to go see that.”

Rudra shook his head. “Stones.”

“I see. You like this better.” Indicating the broad sweep of grass and mud under their gaze.

“Sure. More lively. Live living.”

“That’s true. So, a great circle route, and Shambhala comes to us.”

“Good way to put it.”

Slowly they walked down to the riverbank, a broad swath of mud curving around the ridge and then away to the southeast. The curve, Frank thought, might be another reason the land had been for sale. The natural snake-slither of riverine erosion would perhaps eat away this mud bank, and then the devastated grass above it. Possibly a well-placed wall could stabilize the bank at certain critical points. “I’ll have to ask General Wracke out for your homecoming party,” Frank said as he observed it. “He’ll have suggestions for a wall.”

“More dikes, very good idea.”

On their way back to the van they passed under a stand of trees, and Frank parked Rudra under one to take a quick survey of the grove. Two sycamores, a truly giant oak; even a stand of pines.

“This looks good,” he said to Rudra as he came walking back over the grass. “Those are really good trees, you could build in several of them.”

“Like your tree house.”

“Yes, but you could do it here. Bigger, and lower.”

“Good idea.”

Many remote underwater vehicles were cruising the North Atlantic, sending back data that quickly became front page news about the status of the stalled Gulf Stream. At the end of September a hurricane lashed Central America, dumping a great deal of rain in the Pacific, which would increase the salinity of the Gulf Stream further. All systems were go for the salt fleet now converging in the ocean west of Ireland; but in the meantime, with nothing more happening in the Atlantic, the news shifted its attention south, where the West Antarctic Ice Sheet continued to detach, in small but frequent icebergs at its new margin. The big fragment was adrift in the Antarctic Ocean, a tabular berg as big as Germany and thicker than any ice shelf had ever been, so that it had in fact raised sea level by several inches. Tuvalu was being evacuated; further ramifications of this event were almost too large to be grasped. Through October it remained just one more bit of bad news among the rest. Sea-level rise, oh my; but what could anyone do?

Frank sat in a room at NSF with Kenzo and Edgardo, looking at data in from NOAA. He had some ideas about sea-level-rise mitigation, in fact. But now the topic of the hour switched back to the International North Atlantic Current Mitigation Project. Data coming back from the RUVs, white whales, ships, and buoys scattered throughout the Atlantic were encouraging. It was becoming apparent, Kenzo said, that the predictions made by some that a stall in the thermohaline circulation would create negative feedbacks to its continuance had been correct. With the heat of the Gulf Stream not reaching the far North Atlantic, there had been a resulting southward movement of the Hadley circulation in the atmosphere; this meant a southerly shift in the Atlantic’s intertropical convergence zone. Normally the convergence zone was a high precipitation zone, and so with its shift south the rain had diminished in the midlatitudes where it used to fall, so that the salinity of the balked mass at the north end of the stall had been rising. Even the fresh-water cap north of Iceland was not as fresh as it had been back in the spring.

So conditions were ripe; everything was shaping up well for their intervention. The fleet of single-hulled VLCC tankers had been loaded at the many salt pans and ports around the Caribbean and North Africa that had been called upon, and they were almost all at the rendezvous point. The fleet headed north moving into formation, and the photos coming in over the internet were hard to believe, the sheer number of ships making it look like a sure artifact of Photoshopping.

Then the dispersal of the salt began, and the photos got even stranger. It was scheduled to last two weeks, the last of October and the first of November; and halfway through it, three days before the presidential election, Frank got a call from Diane.

“Hey, do you want to go out and see the salting in person?”

“You bet I do!”

“There’s an empty seat you can have, but you’ll have to get ready fast.”

“I’m ready now.”

“Good for you. Meet me at Dulles at nine.”

Ooooop! A voyage to the high North Atlantic, to see the salt fleet with Diane!

Their trip to Manhattan came to mind; and since then of course he and Diane had spent a million hours together, both at work and in the gym. So when they sat down that night in adjoining seats on Icelandic Air’s plane, and Diane put her head on his shoulder and fell asleep even before it took off, it felt very natural, like part of the rest of their interaction.

They came down on Reykjavik just before dawn. The surface of the sea lay around the black bulk of Iceland like a vast sheet of silver. By then Diane was awake; back in D.C. this was her usual waking hour, unearthly though that seemed to Frank, who had just gotten tired enough to lean his head on hers. These little intimacies were shaken off when the seatbacks returned to their upright position. Diane leaned across Frank to look out the window, Frank leaned back to let her see. Then they were landing, and out of the plane into the airport. Neither of them had checked luggage, and they weren’t there long before it was time to join a group of passengers trammed out to a big helicopter. On board, earplugs in, they rose slowly and then chuntered north over empty blue ocean.

The northern horizon grew hazy, and soon after that those passengers with a view were able to distinguish the tankers themselves, long and narrow, like Mississippi river barges in their proportions, but immensely bigger. The fleet was moving in a rough convoy formation, and as they flew north and slowly descended, there came a moment when the tankers dotted the ocean’s surface for as far as they could see in all directions, spread out like iron filings in a magnetic field, all pointing north. Lower still: black syringes, lined in rows on a blue table, ready to give their “long injections of pure oil.”

They dropped yet again, toward a big landing pad on a tanker called the Hugo Chavez an Ultra Large Crude Carrier with a gigantic bridge at its stern. From this height the ships around them looked longer than ever, all plowing broad white wakes into a swell from the north that seemed miniature in proportion to the ships, but began to look substantial the lower they got. Hovering just over the Hugo Chavez’s landing pad, it became clear from the windcaps and spray that the salt armada was in fact crashing through high seas and a stiff wind, almost a gale. Looking in the direction of the sun the scene turned black-and-white, like one of those characteristically windblown chiaroscuro moments in Victory At Sea.

When they got out of the helo the wind blasted through their clothes, and chased them upstairs to the bridge’s control quarters. There a crowd of visitors larger than the crew of the ship had a fine view over a broad expanse of ocean, crowded with immense ships all carrying salt.

Looking away from the sun the sea was a cobalt color, a deep and pure Adriatic blue, without any hint of the blackness that mysteriously seeped into both the polar seas.

The Hugo Chavez seen from its bridge, looked like an aircraft carrier with the landing deck removed. The quarterdeck or sterncastle under the bridge was tall, but only a tiny part of the craft; the forecastle looked like it was a mile away. The intervening distance was interrupted by a skeletal rig that resembled a loading crane, but also reminded Frank of the giant irrigation sprayers one saw in California’s central valley. The salt in the hold was being vacuumed into this device, then cast out in powerful white jets, a couple hundred meters to both sides. The hardrock salt had been milled to sizes ranging from table salt to rock salt to bowling balls, but because most of it came from salt pans, it was mostly crystalline and pretty fine. In the holds it looked like dirty white gravel and sand. In the air it looked almost like dirty water or slush, arching out and splashing in a satisfyingly broad swath. Between the salt fall and the ship’s wakes, and the whitecaps, the deep blue of the ocean surface was infinitely mottled by white. Looking aft, in the direction of the sun, it turned to silver on pewter and lead.

Diane watched the scene with her nose almost on the glass, deeply hooded in a blue heavy jacket. She smiled at Frank. “You can smell the salt.”

“The ocean always smells like this.”

“It seems like more today.”

“Maybe so.” She had grown up in San Francisco, he remembered. “It must smell like home.” She nodded happily.

They followed their hosts up a metal staircase to a higher deck of the bridge, a room with windows on all sides that had a view like that from an airport control tower. It was this room that made the Hugo Chavez the designated visitor or party ship, and now the big glass-walled room was crowded with dignitaries and officials of all kinds. Here they could best view the long ships on all sides of them, all the way out to the horizon, where more ships were visible only at fore and stern, or by the white jets of salt. Each ship cast two long curving jets out to the sides from its bow, like the spouts of right whales; and every element was repeated so symmetrically that it seemed as if they had fallen into an M. C. Escher world.

The tankers flanking theirs seemed nearer than they really were because of their great size. They were completely steady in the long swells. The air around the ships was filled with a white haze that drifted down the wake for a kilometer or so before sinking away. Diane pointed out that the diesel exhaust stayed in the air while the salt mist did not. “They look so dirty. I wonder if we couldn’t go back to sails again someday, and just let everything go slower by sea.”

“Labor costs,” Frank suggested. “Uncertainty. Maybe even danger.”

“Would they be more dangerous? I bet you could make them so big and solid they wouldn’t be any more dangerous than these.”

“These were reckoned pretty dangerous.”

“I don’t hear of many accidents, given that there are thousands of them out all the time.”

They moved from one set of big windows to the next, taking in the views.

“It’s like the San Joaquin Valley,” Frank said. “There are these huge irrigation rigs that roll around spraying stuff.”

Diane nodded. “I wonder if this will work.”

“Me too. If it doesn’t…”

“I know. It would be hard to talk people into trying anything else.”

“True.”

Around and around the bridge they walked. Everyone else was doing the same, in a circulation like that at any other party. Blue sky, blue sea, the horizon ticked by tiny wavelets, as in a pattern on wallpaper; and then the fleet, each ship haloed by a wind-tossed cloud of white mist. Frank and Diane caught each other by the shoulder to point things out, just as they would have in Optimodal. A bird; a fin in the distance.

Then another group arrived in the room, and soon they were escorted to Diane: the Secretary-General of the UN, Germany’s environmental minister, who was the head of their Green Party and a friend of Diane’s from earlier times; lastly the prime minister of Great Britain, who had done a kind of Winston Churchill during their hard winter, and who now shook Diane’s hand and said, “So this is the face that launched a thousand ships,” looking very pleased with himself. Frank couldn’t be sure Diane caught the reference; she was already smiling, and distracted by the introduction of others in the new group. They all chatted as they circled the room, and after a while Diane and Frank stood in a big circle listening to the others, their upper arms just barely touching as they stood side by side.

Alter another hour of this, during which nothing varied outside except a shift west in the angle of the sun, it was declared time to go; one didn’t want the helicopters to get too far from Reykjavik, and there were other visitors waiting in Iceland for their turns to visit; and the truth was, they had seen what there was to see. The ship’s crew therefore halted the Hugo Chavez’s prodigious launching of salt, and they braved the chilly blast downstairs and got back in their helo. Up it soared, higher and higher. Again the astonishing sight of a thousand tankers on the huge burnished plate spreading below them, an astonishing sight, instantly grasped as unprecedented: the first major act of planetary engineering ever attempted, and by God it looked like it.

But then the helo pilot ascended higher and higher, higher and higher, until they could see a much bigger stretch of ocean, water extending as far as the eye could see, for hundreds of miles in all directions—and all of it blank, except for their now tiny column of ships, looking like a line of toys. And then ants. In a world so vast, could anything humans do make a difference?

Diane thought so. “We should celebrate,” she said, smiling her little smile. “Do you want to go out to dinner when we get back?”

“Sure. That would be great.”

Election day saw winter return to Washington in force. It was icy everywhere, in places black ice, so that even though everything seemed to have congealed to a state of slow motion, cars still suddenly took to flight like hockey pucks, gliding majestically over the roads and looking stately until they hit something. Sirens dopplered hither and yon, defining the space of the city that was otherwise invisible in its trees. Again there were scheduled brownouts, and the wood smoke of a million fireplace fires rose with the diesel smoke of a million generators, their gray and brown strands weaving in the northwest wind.

The polls were open, however, and the voters lined up all bundled in their winter best—a best that was much better than it had been the year before. The story of the day became the story of the impact of the cold on the vote, and which party’s faithful would brave it most successfully, and which would benefit most from this clear harbinger of another long winter. The first exit polls showed a tight race, and as no one believed in exit polls anymore anyway, anything was possible. It felt like Christmas.

And in fact it was the Buddhist holiday celebrating Dorje Totrengtsel, as it turned out. To celebrate it, and perform a dedication ceremony for their new home in the country, the Khembalis had scheduled a big party for that very day.

Possibly some of those they invited did not make it, because of the meteorological or political complications; but a couple hundred of them did. They gathered in a big crowd under a large unwalled pavilion tent, set up next to the old farmhouse, still empty and in need of renovation.

It took well over an hour for the Quiblers to drive out to the farm, Charlie at the wheel of their Volvo station wagon inching along, Anna in the back with the boys. Joe declaimed a long monologue remarking on the snowy view, and his displeasure that they were not stopping to investigate it: “Look! Stop! Look! Stop the car!”

When they got to the farm they found Frank was just arriving himself. They parked next to his van and walked around the farmhouse.

Drepung and Rudra were out back on the snowy lawn, steam pouring from their mouths and noses. They were kicking patterns of frosty green out of the thick flock of new snow on the grass. At the center of this improvised mandala stood a blocky shapeless snowman with a demon mask hung on its head, grinning maniacally into the wind. Before it lay a lower block of snow, like the altar stone at Stonehenge. On the flattish top of this mass some of Joe’s building blocks were stacked, in two little towers. Two red then green, two red then yellow.

The two men waved cheerily when they saw the Quiblers. They pointed at their handiwork, and watched with pleasure as Joe in his thick snowsuit and boots trundled over ahead of the rest to investigate. They lifted him between them the better to see the two towers his blocks now made. He kicked reflexively at the stacks, and Rudra and Drepung laughed and swung him back and forth, each holding with both hands one of the toddler’s mittened fists. When he kicked over one of them, they put him down with many congratulations. “Ooooh! Karmapa!”

Frank went inside to check on lunch, and came back out carrying two paper cups of a hot mulled cider that he reported had no yak butter in it. He gave one to Anna, who wrapped her hands around it gratefully. Charlie sniffed the steam pouring off it and went in to get one of his own. He spent a while in there talking to Sridar, his old lobbying partner, who had taken on the Khembalis as a client the year before, and was now representing them to Congress and other powers in the capital, with some success and a great deal of amusement. They exchanged the usual sentiments on the election taking place, shaking their heads in the attempt to pretend they did not hope very much.

When Charlie went back outside, he felt again how frigid the day was. Anna huddled against him, nearly shivering despite her bulky coat. The Khembalis and Joe did not seem to mind. Now they were walking around the snow figure in a little march, chanting nonsense together, a string of syllables followed by a big “HA,” repeated again and again. Joe stomped into the snow as deeply as Drepung, his eyes ablaze under his hood, his cheeks bright red.

“He’s getting too hot in his suit,” Charlie said.

“Well, he can’t take it off.”

“I guess not.”

“They’re having fun,” Frank observed.

“Yes.”

“Joe must be heavy the way he sinks into that snow.”

“Yeah,” Charlie said. “He’s like made out of lead.”

Frank saw Nick standing off to one side and called, “Hey Nick, do you want to go down to the river and see if there are any beavers or anything?”

“Sure!” They took off down the lawn, talking animals.

Now Rudra stood still, facing Joe. Joe stopped to peer up at him, looking surprised that their march had halted. “Ho,” he said.

Rudra leaned down and gently rubbed a handful of snow in Joe’s face. Joe spluttered and then shook his head like a dog.

“Hey what is he doing?” Anna demanded.

“He’s helping him,” Charlie said, holding her arm.

“What do you mean helping? That doesn’t help him!”

“It doesn’t hurt him. It’s part of their little ceremony.”

“Well it’s not okay!”

“Leave them alone,” Charlie said. “Joe doesn’t mind it, see?”

“But what are they doing?”

“It’s just a little ceremony they have.”

“But why?”

“Well you know. Maybe he’s just trying to lower his temperature.”

“Oh come on!”

“Come on yourself. Just let them do it. Joe is loving it, and they think they’re helping.”

Anna glowered. “They’re only going to give him a cold.”

“You know perfectly well being cold has nothing to do with catching a cold. What an old wives’ tale.”

“Old wives’ tales usually contained real observations, smart guy. It turns out when you get cold your immune system is suppressed, so if there happens to be a virus around you’ve got more of a chance of catching it, so there is a connection.”

“But he’s not getting too cold. Leave them alone. They’re having fun.”

Except then Joe howled a quick protest. Rudra and Drepung looked star-tied; then Drepung turned Joe by the shoulder, so that he faced the snowman. Seeing the mask again Joe quietened. He tilted his head, scowled hideously at the snowman, gave the mask back vibe for vibe: no mere piece of wood was going to outscowl him.

Straightening up beside him, Rudra pointed at the demon mask, then up at the low clouds purling overhead. Suddenly he twisted and as it were corkscrewed upward, thrusting himself up and back until he looked straight up at the sky. He shouted, “Dei tugs-la ydon ysol! Ton pa, gye ba! Ton pa, gye ba!”

Startled, Joe looked up at Rudra so quickly that he plumped onto his butt. Rudra leaned over him and shouted “Gye ba!” with a sudden ferocity. Joe scrambled away, then jumped up to trundle down the slope of the lawn as fast as he could.

“Hey!” Anna cried.

Charlie held her arm again. “Let them be!”

“What do you mean? Joe!” And with a quick spasm she was away and running through the snow. “Joe! Joe!”

Joe, still running for the river, did not appear to hear her. Then he tripped and fell in a perfect faceplant, sprawling down the snow slope and leaving behind a long snow angel. Anna reached him and slipped herself trying to stop. Down she went too; then Drepung joined them and helped them both up, saying “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

Rudra stayed up by the snowman, swaying and jerking. He staggered to the snowman, pulled off its demon mask, threw it at his feet and stomped on it. “HA! TON PA! HA! GYE BA! HAAAAAA!”

Hearing this Joe wailed, beating at the snow and then at Anna’s outstretched arms. Drepung ventured to touch him once lightly on the shoulder. Joe buried his head in Anna’s embrace. Rudra, now sitting on the ground next to the flattened mask, watched them; he waved at Joe when Joe looked over Anna’s shoulder. Joe blinked big tears down his cheeks, shuddering as he calmed. For a long time Joe and Rudra stared blankly at each other.

Charlie walked over to help the old man to his feet. Both Rudra and Drepung seemed satisfied now, relaxed and ready to get on with other things; and seeing it, Charlie felt a certain calmness fill him too. He and Rudra went down and flanked Joe and Anna, took Joe’s mittened and snow-caked little hands, squeezed them. Joe looked around at the farmhouse and the tent filling with guests, the expanse of snow falling down to the river. Charlie clapped Drepung on the shoulder, held it briefly.

“What?” Anna demanded.

“Nothing. Nothing. Let’s go in and see what they have to eat, shall we?”

Late that afternoon, when the Khembalis’ party was breaking up, and they had heard all about the trip out to see the salt fleet, the Quiblers asked Frank if he wanted to come over for dinner and watch the election returns.

“Thanks,” he said, “but I’m going to go to dinner with Diane.”

“Oh I see.”

“Maybe I can drop by afterward, see the late returns.”

“Sure, whatever.”

Frank went to his van, drove carefully back to the Khembali house in Arlington. Out in the cold garden shed he changed clothes, trying to think what would look nice. He was going out to dinner with his boss, who would not be his boss for much longer, so that different kinds of hypothetical possibilities might then open. It was interesting, no matter how uneasy he felt whenever he thought of Caroline.

Then one of the kitchen girls called out to the shed from the house door: phone call. He went inside, picked up the house’s phone apprehensively. “Hello?”

“Frank is that you?”

“Yes. Caroline?”

“Yes.”

“Is everything okay?”

“No, everything is not okay. I need to see you, now.”

“Well, but I’ve got something, I’m really sorry—”

“Frank, please! I think he found out about me taking that disk. So I’ve only got a little time. I’ve got to initiate Plan B or else. I need your help.”

“You’re leaving him?”

“Yes! That’s what I’m telling you. I’ve left already. That’s done. But I need help getting away and—you’re the only one I trust.” Her voice twisted at the end, and suddenly Frank understood that she was afraid. He had never heard it like that in her before, and had not recognized it.

Frank clutched the phone hard. “Where are you?”

“I’m in Chevy Chase. I’ll meet you at your tree.”

“Okay. It’ll take me half an hour or so. Maybe longer with the ice on the roads.”

“Okay good. Good. Thanks. I love you Frank.” She hung up.

Frank groaned. He stared at the embassy’s phone in his hand. “Shit,” he said. That someone as bold and competent as her should be afraid… “I love you too,” he whispered.

His stomach had shrunk to the size of a baseball. What would this husband of hers do? He picked up the house phone and called Diane’s cell phone number.

Maybe she was bugged too. She was doing the same kind of thing Frank was, wasn’t she?

“Hello, Diane? It’s Frank. Listen I’m really sorry about this, but something has come up here and I just have to help out, it’s a kind of emergency. So I need to, I mean can we take a rain check, and do our dinner tomorrow or whenever you can?”

Very short pause. “Sure, of course. No problem.”

“Thanks, I’m really sorry about this. See there’s this,” but he hadn’t thought anything up, a stupid mistake, and he was going to say “something at the embassy” when she heard the pause and cut him off:

“No it’s fine, don’t worry. We’ll do it another time.”

“Thanks Diane. I appreciate it. How about tomorrow then?”

“Um, no—tomorrow won’t work, my daughter is coming in. Here—oh, wait. I don’t see my calendar. Tell you what, let’s just say soon.”

“Okay, soon. Thanks. Sorry.”

“No problem.”

End of call. He put the receiver down, stood there.

“Ah fuck.”

He drove over to Van Ness, parked in one of his old spots on Brandywine, walked east into the forest. Slowly he approached his tree, coming to it on the remains of Ross Drive. He saw no one. But then there she was, stepping out from behind a thick oak between site 22 and his tree. He went to her and they hugged hard, clinging tightly to each other.

She pulled back and looked at him. Even in the dark he could see that her nose was red, her eyes red-rimmed.

She sniffed, shook her head. “Sorry. It’s been a very bad day.” She handed him another paper sleeve of CDs. “Here. This is more of their shit. It’s a new superblack, working between Homeland Security and DOD. Another strategic support branch.”

Frank took the disks, put them in his jacket pocket. “What happened?”

“We had a fight. I mean that used to happen a lot, but this time it was—I don’t know. Bad. Scary. I’m sick of feeling this way. Really, being around him— it’s bad for me. I know better. I can’t stand it anymore.”

“He didn’t find something out?”

“He didn’t say anything directly, but I think he did, yes. I don’t know. If he found out about me taking the election program …” She shuddered, thinking about it. Then: “It might explain some things. I mean he chipped me again, since I last saw you. New kinds that he thought I didn’t know about. They hop on you. When I found them I left them in until today, but I took them out, and then I used his code to get what I could about this superblack onto disk. I don’t know how much it’ll tell anyone. Then I left.”

“Are you sure you found all the chips?”

“Yes. The bastard. He is so … He spies and spies and spies.”

“So, I mean, can you be sure you found everything he’s doing?”

“Yes, I ran all the diagnostics, and I saw what he had on me. Now I’m out of there. He’ll never see me again.”

The bitter twist to her mouth was one Frank had not seen before, but it was familiar in his own muscles from certain moments of his own breakup with Marta. The wars of the heart, so bitter and pointless.

“Where will you go?” he said.

“I have a Plan B. I’ve got an ID all set up, a place, even a job. It’s not too far away, but far enough I won’t run into him.”

“I’ll be able to see you?”

“Of course. Once I get settled. That’s why I set it up this way. If I were on my own I’d go, oh I don’t know. Tibet or something. The other end of the Earth.”

Frank shook his head. “I want you closer than that.”

“I know.”

They hugged harder. In the darkness of the park it was almost quiet: the sound of the creek, the hum of the city. Two against the world. Frank felt her body, her heat, the pulse in her neck. The scent of her hair filled him. Don’t disappear, he thought. Stay where I can find you. Stay where I can be with you.

Frank felt her shudder. It was cold again, not as cold as in the depths of last winter, but well below freezing. The creek rang with the tinkling bell-like sound it took on when all its eddies were frozen over. Caroline’s body was quivering under his hands, shivering with cold, or tension, or both. He held her, tried to calm her with his hands. But he too was shivering.

Downstream on the path he saw a brief movement. Black into black.

Involuntarily he pulled her to him and around to the other side of the oak next to them.

“What?”

“Look,” he said very quietly, “are you sure you aren’t still chipped somehow?”

“I don’t think so, why?”

“Because I think there’s someone watching us.”

“Oh my God.”

“Don’t try to look. Here, I’ve got the scanner you gave me.” He thought it over, images of one scenario then another. “Would he have other people helping him?”

“Not for this,” she said. “I don’t think so anyway. Not unless he figured out that I copied the vote program.”

“Shit. Let’s check you right here, okay?”

“Sure.”

He pulled the wand from his pocket, so much like an airport security device. Bar codes in the body. He ran it over her. When he had it against the top of her back it beeped.

“Shit,” she said under her breath. She whipped off her jacket, laid it on the ground, ran the wand over it. It beeped again. “God damn it.”

“At least it isn’t in your skin.”

“Yeah well.”

“You checked before you left your place?”

“Yes I did, and there wasn’t anything. I wonder if there’s something about me leaving the house. A tick, they call these. Set to jump when motion sensors go off. Something stuck to the doorframe or someplace. God damn him.”

Frank was trying to see over her shoulder, down the path where he had seen movement. Nothing. Feeling grim, he pulled out his FOG phone and called up Zeno’s.

It rang twice. “How does this thing work? Hey, Joe’s Bar and Grill! Who the fuck are you?”

“Zeno it’s Frank.”

“Who?”

“Frank. Professor Nosebleed.”

“Oh hey, Nosey! What’s happening man? Did you spot the jaguar?”

It sounded like he’d downed a couple of beers. “Worse than that,” Frank said, thinking hard. “Look Zeno, I’ve got a problem and I’m wondering if you could give me a hand.”

“What you got in mind?”

“The thing is, it might be kind of dangerous. I don’t want to get you into it without telling you that.”

“What kind of danger?”

“I’ve got a jacket here that people are using to tail me with. People I really need to get away from. What I want to do is have them follow the jacket away from me, while I clear out of here.”

“Where are ya?”

“I’m in the park. Are you at your usual spot?”

“Where else.”

“What I was hoping is that I could run by you guys, like I’m playing frisbee golf, and hand off the jacket to you and keep on running. Then if one of you would hustle the jacket out to Connecticut, and leave it in the laundromat next to Delhi Dhaba, I could turn the tables on these people, pick them up when they follow the jacket, and then tail them back to where they came from.”

“Shit, Noseman, it sounds like you must be some kind of a spook after all! So you been out here hiding among us, is that it?”

“Sort of, sure.”

“Harrrrrr. I knew it musta been something.”

“So are you up for it? While you’ve got the jacket you’ll have to move fast, but I don’t think they’ll do anything to you, especially out on Connecticut. It’s more a surveillance kind of thing.”

“Ah fuck that.” Zeno brayed his harsh bray. “It won’t be no worse than the cops. Parole officers stick that shit right into your skin.”

“Yeah that’s right. Okay, well thanks then. We’ll come through in about ten minutes.”

“We? Who’s this we?”

“Another spook. You know how it is.”

“A lady spook? You got a lady in distress there maybe?”

Sometimes it was alarming how quick Zeno guessed things. “Are the rest of the bros there with you?”

“Of course.”

“Good. Maybe they can add to the confusion. When we pass through and hand off the jacket, have them—”

“We’ll beat the shit out of them!”

“No no no.” Frank felt a chill. “They could be armed. You don’t want to fuck with that. Maybe just go off in two or three groups. Give you some cover, create some confusion.”

“Yeah sure. We’ll deal with it.”

“Okay, thanks. See you soon. We’ll come in from the creek side and just pass right on through.”

Frank pushed the end button. He looked at the chip wand. “Could this wand be chipped itself?”

“I don’t know. I guess so.”

“We’ll leave it here. You said in the elevator you were training for a triathlon, right?”

“Yes?”

“Is your husband a runner?”

“What? No.”

“Okay.” He took her by the arm and led her off the path, up into the trees. “Let’s run. We’ll go past my park friends and give them your jacket, then take off on the ridge trail north. He won’t be able to keep up with us, and after a while he won’t know where you are.”

“Okay.”

Off they ran, Caroline fast on Frank’s heels. He ran up Ross to site 22, then turned up the trail that ran to the Nature Center, hurrying the pace so that they would gain some time. Behind him he heard the faint crackle of the pursuit.

They crossed the frisbee golf course, and then Frank really pushed it. At a certain point her husband wouldn’t be able to keep up. Once you were winded the will counted for nothing, you had to slow down. As animals he and Caroline were stronger, and out here they were animals. Down the narrow fairway of hole five, leading her between the trees to the left so they wouldn’t be seen. Running almost as hard as he could in the dark, Caroline right behind.

Then he was in site 21 and the bros were all standing around, wide-eyed and agog at the sight of them. Even in the midst of his adrenaline rush Frank saw that he would never hear the end of this.

He gestured to Caroline, helped her out of her jacket.

“Hi guys.” He met Zeno’s eye. Now more than ever Zeno looked impressive, like Lee Marvin in his moment of truth.

“Thanks,” Frank said, tossing the jacket at him in their usual aggro style.

“Where do you want me to go again?”

“Delhi Dhaba. Drop the jacket in the laundromat next door and get the fuck out of there.”

“Sure thing.”

“The rest of you wait a second and then wander off. Stick together though.”

“Yeah man.”

“We’ll beat the fuck out of him.”

“Just keep moving. Thanks boys.”

And with that Frank took Caroline by the hand and they were off again into the dark.

Running down the hole seven fairway he pulled off his down jacket, then passed it back to her. “Here, put this on.”

“No I’m okay.”

“No you’re not, you were shivering already.”

“What about you?”

“We run the course out here in T-shirts all the time. I’m used to it. Besides you’ve got to keep on going after this, right? Whereas I can go home.”

“Are you sure this isn’t chipped too?”

“Yes. I’ve owned it for twenty years, and no one else has been anywhere near it.”

“Okay, thanks.”

She pulled it on as they jogged, and then they started running at full speed again.

“You okay?” Frank said over his shoulder.

“Yeah fine. You?”

“I’m good,” Frank said. And he was; his spirits were rising as he got on the ridge path and led her north on it. Frozen mud underfoot, frigid air rushing past him; there was no way anyone without chips to aid them could track them for long when they were moving like this.

He passed hole eight and turned up cross trail 7, and soon they were out onto Brandywine, and rising to Connecticut.

Just short of the avenue, where there was still some darkness to huddle in, he stopped her, held her. As they hugged he felt for the Acheulian hand axe, there in his jacket pocket against her side.

“What is that?” she asked.

“My lucky charm.”

“Pretty heavy for a lucky charm.”

“Yeah, it’s a rock. I like rocks.”

They stood there, arms around each other, poorly lit by a distant streetlight. Her face twisted with distress; why couldn’t it be simple? her look seemed to say. Why couldn’t they just be here?

But it wasn’t simple.

“The Van Ness Metro is just down there,” Frank said, pointing south on Connecticut.

“Thanks.”

“And where will you go?”

“I’ve got a place set up.” Then: “Listen, I heard what you said to those guys, but don’t you stick around and mess with him,” she said, waving to the east. “He’s dangerous. He really is. And we don’t want him to know you had anything to do with this.”

“I know,” Frank said. They hugged again. Briefly they kissed. He liked the feel of her in his jacket.

“Here,” she said, “you should take your jacket back. I’m going to get in the Metro, and then I’ll be into my little underground railroad setup, and I won’t need it. I’ll be fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” He took the jacket from her, put it on, put the hand axe back in its pocket. “Where will you go?”

“I’ll contact you as soon as I can,” she said. “We’ll set up a system.”

“But—”

“I’ll let you know! Just let me go—I have to go!”

“Okay!” Frank said, frustrated.

Then she was off. Watching her turn the corner and disappear he felt a sudden stab of fear. God damn this guy, he thought.

He walked north to Delhi Dhaba and passed it, glanced into the laundromat next door. It was almost empty, only a couple of young women folding clothes together at the tables, no doubt UDC undergrads. Caroline’s black ski jacket was already there, hanging from the open door of a dryer. No sight of Zeno or any of the rest of the bros. Frank walked down to the corner and stood at the bus stop, then sat on the bench in its little shelter, consciously working to slow his breathing and pulse.

Ten minutes passed. Then three men in black leather jackets approached the laundromat, hands in their pockets. One, a tall, heavyset blond man, appeared to be checking a very heavy watch. He looked at the other men, gestured inside the laundromat. One turned and settled at the door, looking up and down Connecticut. The others went in. Frank sat there looking across the street away from them. The man guarding the door registered him along with the three others waiting at the bus stop, then he turned his attention to the various people walking up and down the sidewalks.

The two men reappeared in the doorway, the blond man holding Caroline’s jacket. That was him, then. Frank’s teeth clenched. The three men conferred. They all surveyed the street, and the blond man appeared to check his watch again. He looked up, toward Frank; said something to the others. They began to walk down the sidewalk toward him.

Shocked at this turn of events, Frank got up and hustled around the corner of Davenport. As soon as the buildings at the corner blocked their view of him he bolted, running hard east toward the park. Looking back once, he saw that they were there on Davenport, also running; chasing him down. The blond man ran with his right hand in his jacket pocket.

Frank turned on Linnaean, running harder. East again on Brandywine, a real burst of speed, unsustainable, but he wanted to get into the trees again as soon as he could. As he pounded along, gasping, he thought about the man spotting him by way of his wrist device, and decided that his down jacket must be compromised now too. Caroline had worn it, she had been chipped with a tick, these ticks were probably not used alone but in little swarms; she could have had some in her hair, who knew, but if one or more had fallen or migrated from say her hair onto his jacket, he would be chipped himself. That had to be it.

Or maybe he had just been chipped all along.

He flew down the slope to site 21, found it empty, the neglected fire still flickering. Off with his jacket, off with his shirt. The frigid air hit him and he growled. He took the hand axe out of the jacket and put it into his pants pocket.

He ran up into the mass of trees west of the site, stopped and rubbed his hands over his neck, gently and then roughly; felt nothing. He ran his hands through his hair again, leaning forward and down, pulling at his locks and shaking his head like a wet dog. Tearing at his scalp. Best he could do. Now he had to move again, just in case; he circled around the site and ducked behind one of the big flood windrows, crouched and got a view of the picnic table, between two branches.

He heard them before he saw them, all three men crashing down Ross into the site. They stopped when they saw his jacket and shirt, turned quickly and looked around them, surveying their surroundings like a team that had done it before. Frank felt the tousled hair rise on the back of his neck. His teeth were clenched.

The blond man’s hair caught a gleam of firelight. He picked up the jacket, hefted it. Then the shirt. Now came the test. Was there still a tick on Frank? The three men turned in circles, looking outward, and as they did the blond man checked his wrist. Frank stayed frozen in place, waiting for a sign. The blond man’s chest rose and fell, rose and fell. He was winded. Frank tried to imagine his thoughts, then fell squeamishly away. He didn’t want to know what went on in a mind like that. Plots, counterplots, chipping people—spying on his own wife—out here in Rock Creek Park in the middle of the night, chasing people down. It was an ugly thing to contemplate.

Frank felt the frozen air as if he were clothed in an invisible shirt made of his own heat. Outside that it was obviously cold, but inside his shell he seemed okay, at least for now. When he moved he pushed through the shell, out into the chill.

Up on Ross came the sound of people walking, then Zeno’s nicotine voice. Frank shifted down, pulled his phone from his pocket and punched the “repeat call” function.

“Hey Blood, wassup?”

“Zeno they’re back at your picnic table,” Frank whispered. “They’ve got guns.”

“Oh ho.”

“Don’t go down there.”

“Don’t you worry. Do you need help?”

“No.”

“We’ll deploy anyway. Ha—too bad you can’t call the jaguar out on these guys, eh?”

“Yeah,” Frank said, and thought to add that he was going to be the jaguar tonight; but Zeno wasn’t listening. Frank could hear over the phone that he was telling the bros the situation. In the open air their noise had abruptly died away.

Then: “Hey fuck that!” Andy exclaimed, carrying both over the phone and through the air.

On the phone Frank heard Zeno say, “Fucking a, Blood, here comes the cavalry—”

Then the forest filled with howls, the crash of people through the forest— and from down near the creek, BANG BANG BANG!

The men at the picnic tables had dropped out of sight. But their conference was brief; after about five seconds they burst to their feet and ran away, south on Ross. Shrieks and howls in the darkness behind them.

Frank took off after them. High howling marked where the bros were in their pursuit on Ross, and thunks and crashes made it clear rocks were being thrown.

Frank darted from tree to windrow to tree, keeping above and abreast of the running men. When they came down the slope to Glover, two of them turned left, while the blond man turned right. Frank followed him, worrying briefly that the two others would come back and jump on the tail of any pursuit. Hopefully Zeno and the bros had already laid off. Nothing to be done about that now. He needed to concentrate on following the blond man.

Stalking prey at night, in the forest. How big the world got when you could taste blood. The frigid air cut through the radiance of his body heat, it drove into him, but it was only part of the chase, part of what made him utterly on point. All the hours he had spent out here filled him now, he knew where he was and what he needed to do. It all came down to pursuit.

The trees lining Glover were thick, the ground covered with branches, leaves, patches of new snow. He had trailed feral animals along here before. A human would be both more aware and more oblivious. The blond man was striding rapidly up the road, stopping from time to time to look back. He appeared to be holding a pistol in his right hand. Frank froze when he looked around, then darted from tree to tree, moving only when the man’s back was to him. Stay parallel to him but always behind his peripheral vision; be ready to freeze, stop when his head turned; it was like a game, feet lightly thrusting forward, feeling their way to silent landings, over and over, on and on, freezing to check the quarry from behind a trunk, one eye out, as in all the hide-and-seek games any child has ever played, but now performed with total concentration. On the hunt, yes, huge areas opening inside him—he could see in the dark, he could gazelle through the forest over downed branches without a sound, freeze faster than a head could whip around, all with a fierce cold focus. When the man whipped his head around Frank found himself as still as a statue before the blond head had moved even an inch, before Frank himself knew it had moved; and he could barely see it in the dark, just a gleam reflecting distant streetlights through the trees.

At Grant Road the man turned west. He walked out on the street, to Davenport and west toward Connecticut. Now they were under streetlights again, and very few people were out at this hour—none visible at this moment. Frank had to drop back, move across people’s front lawns. The man continued to whip his head around to look back from time to time. Frank lagged as far as he could while still keeping him in sight, but still, if he could see the man, the man could see him. His van was one block over, on Brandywine; he could drop down to it on 30th, unlock by remote as he approached, snatch out a sweater and windbreaker, put them on as he walked, then continue out to Connecticut and hope to relocate the man on his way to the Metro station. He was out of sight for the moment, so Frank crossed the street and took off in a dash, tearing around the corner and ripping open his van door, getting the clothes on as he took off again west on Brandywine.

He slowed as he approached Connecticut. And there was the blond man, hurrying past him down the big avenue, glowering.

Frank fell in behind him. They were approaching the Van Ness/UDC Metro station. At the top of the escalator the man glanced one last time over his shoulder, a sneer twisting his face, the petulant sneer of a man who always got what he wanted—

Frank snatched the hand axe from his pocket and threw it as hard as he could. The stone spun through the air on a line and flashed past the man’s head so close to his left ear that the man lurched reflexively to the right, disappearing abruptly from view as the stone whacked into the concrete wall backing the escalator hole.

Frank ran to it, slowed, looked down into the big oval tunnel, caught sight of the blond man running down the last risers into the station below. Around the opening, pick up his hand axe lying on the sidewalk. It looked the same, maybe a new chip on one edge. There was a deep gash in the concrete wall. He felt it with a finger, found his hand was trembling.

Back to the escalator, down behind a pair of students, pass them on the left. Windbreaker hood over his head? No. Nothing unusual. But it was cold. He pulled the hood over his head, put his hands in the windbreaker’s pockets, axe cradled in the right hand. His hands were cold, ears too. Nose running.

Down into the station, buy ticket, through the turnstiles. Look over the metal rail, assuming that the blond man would be going toward Shady Grove: yes. There he was, blond hair gleaming in the dim light of the station.

Frank grabbed a free paper from a trash can, descended to trackside, sat on one of the concrete benches pretending to read. The blond man stood by the track. The lights in the floor flashed on and off. In the dim warmth they felt the first blast of wind from the coming train.

Frank got on the car ahead of the one the man entered. He was pretty sure the man would get off at Bethesda, as Caroline had that first time. So when they rolled into Bethesda he got off a little before the man did, walked to the up escalator ahead of him, took it up without looking back. Through the turnstiles, up the last long escalator, standing to the right as so many people did.

Near the top the blond man brushed by him on the left, already talking on his cell phone. “We’ll find her,” he said as he passed. “I know she did it.”

Frank stayed on his big riser, teeth clenched. He followed the man across the bus level of the station to the last short escalator, up that. Then south on Wisconsin, yes, just the way Caroline had gone that first time, right on a side street, yes. The man was still talking on his phone, not looking around at all. Barking an order, laughing once. An ugly sound. Frank tried to relax his jaw, he was going to break a tooth. He was hot inside his windbreaker. Breaking a sweat. A few blocks west of Wisconsin the man clapped his phone shut and soon after that turned up the broad stairs of a small apartment building on Hagar, pulling keys from his pocket and shaking his head. He entered the building without looking back.

Frank waited for a few minutes, looking at the building and the street outside. He didn’t want it to be over. Suddenly he saw what to do. He went up the steps to the apartment door, jabbed every little black doorbell on the panel to the left of the door, then hustled across the street and stood under a streetlight casting a cone of orange light on the sidewalk and part of the street. He stood under one edge of the light, pulling the hood of his windbreaker far forward. His face was sure to be in shadow, a black absence, like a gangster hit man or Death itself. He thrust the pointed end of the hand axe forward in the windbreaker pocket until it pushed at the cloth.

The curtain in the window on the top floor twitched. His quarry was looking down at him. Frank tilted his head up just enough to show that he was returning the gaze. He held the pose for a few seconds, long enough to make his point: The hunter hunted. Hunted by a murderous watcher, always there to haunt one’s dreams. Then he stepped back and out of the cone of light, into dark shadows and away.

After that Frank walked back out to Wisconsin.

He started to shiver in his thin sweater and windbreaker. Up Wisconsin, back to the Metro.

He felt stunned. Some of what he had done in the heat of the moment now shocked him, and he reeled a bit as he remembered, growing more and more appalled—throwing the hand axe at him? What had he been thinking? He could have killed the guy! Good, good riddance, that would have taught him— except not! It would have been terrible. The police would have hunted for Caroline. They would have been hunting for him too, without knowing they were; but Caroline when she heard about it would have known, and who knew what her reaction might be, he couldn’t actually be sure but it was bound to be bad. No matter what, it would have been terrible. Crazy. Leap before you look, sure, but what if your leaps were crazy? He didn’t even want to be out there! He had broken a date with Diane to do this shit!

On Wisconsin again. He didn’t know what to do. He wondered if he would ever see Caroline again. Maybe she had used him to help her get away, the same way he had used the bros to help him. Well sure. That was what had happened, in effect. And he had offered to do it. But still…

Down into the Metro, nervous waiting, down to Van Ness, out of the Metro. Back in his van Frank changed clothes again. Despite the cold his shirt was soaked with sweat. Pull on his capilene undershirt, thick sweater; in the van’s side mirror he could see that once again he looked fairly normal. Incredible.

He sat in the driver’s seat. He didn’t know what to do. His hands were still shaking. He felt sick.

Eventually the cold drove him to start the engine. Then, driving north on Connecticut, he thought of going to the Quiblers. He could sit there and drink a beer and watch the fucking election results. No one would care if he didn’t say anything. Warm up. Play chess or Scrabble with Nick and watch the TV.

He got in the left-turn lane at Bradley. Waiting for the light he remembered the bros and pulled out his FOG phone, hit resend.

“Hey Nosey.”

“Zeno are you guys okay?”

“Yeah sure. Are you?”

“I’m okay. Hey listen, my clothes I left there at the tables are chipped with some kind of microwave transmitter.”

“We figured as much. So you got parole officers too, eh?”

“Yeah I guess.”

“Ha. We’ll dee-ex your stuff. But what was with that gal, eh? Don’t you know not to mess with parole officers?”

“Yeah yeah. What about you, what was that shooting, who did that? I didn’t think you guys were carrying.”

“Yeah right.” Zeno snorted. “We kill those deer with our teeth.”

“Well there is that.”

“Shit’s dangerous out here. I can’t hardly keep Andy from popping people in situations like that. Everyone’s a gook when he gets excited.”

“Well, it did put those guys on the run.”

“Sure. Better than getting hit in the face with a two-by-four.”

“Yeah, sure. Thanks for the help.”

“That’s okay. But don’t do shit like that to us anymore. We get enough excitement as it is.”

“Yeah okay.”

Charlie answered the doorbell and was happy to see Frank. “Hey Frank, good to see you, come on in! The Khembalis came over on their way home too, and the early returns are looking pretty good.”

“My fingers are crossed,” Frank said, but as he took off his windbreaker he looked unhopeful. Inside the entryway he stopped as he saw people sitting in the living room by the fire. He went over and greeted Drepung and Sucandra and Padma, done with their own party, and then Charlie introduced him to Sridar. Again it seemed to Charlie that Frank was unusually subdued. No doubt many of his big programs at NSF were riding on the election results.

Charlie went out to the kitchen to get drinks, and circulating as he did in the next hour, he only occasionally noticed Frank, talking or playing with Joe, or watching the TV. Results were coming in more quickly now. The voting in every state was tight, the results as predicted: the red states went to the president, the blue states to Phil Chase. The exceptions tended to balance out, and it became clear that this time it was going to come down to the western states and whoever was delayed in reporting a winner due to the closeness of the results. Chase had a decent chance of winning the whole West Coast, and if some of the late-reporting states went his way, the election too. It was all hanging in the balance.

Charlie sat above Nick on the couch, watching the colored maps on the TV, talking sometimes on the phone with Roy. Joe was sitting on the floor, putting together the wooden train tracks and babbling to himself. Charlie watched him very curiously, not sure what he was seeing yet. Anna had taken Joe’s temperature when they got home, curious at the effect of the snow, Charlie assumed. It had been 98.2; she had shaken her head, said nothing.

Charlie felt a bit drained, perhaps even a bit exorcised, as it were—as if something strange had been inside him as well as in Joe, and Drepung and Rudra’s ceremony designed to remove them both. That was a new thought for Charlie—he had not considered the matter in any such light before—but it was certainly true that a feeling of oppression that had been weighing on him for a long time had lifted somehow, leaving a lightness that felt also a bit empty perhaps. He didn’t know what he felt.

He saw that Drepung too was keeping an eye on Joe.

Frank sat on the couch across from them, chewing a toothpick and looking tense. The evening wore on. Eventually the Khembalis said their goodbyes and left. “I’ll be home in a bit,” Frank said to them.

When they were gone, Frank glanced at Charlie. “Mind if I stay and see it out?”

“Not at all. As long as it doesn’t go on for three months.”

“Ha. It is looking close.”

“I think California will put us over the top.”

“Maybe so.”

They watched on. Eastern states, central states, mountain states. Joe fell asleep on the floor; Nick read a book, lying sleepily on the couch. Charlie went to the bathroom, came back downstairs. “Any more states?”

Anna and Frank shook their heads. Things appeared to be hung up out west. Frank sat hunched over, eating his toothpick fragment by fragment. Anna sighed, went out to the kitchen to clean up. She did not like to hope for things, Charlie knew, because she feared the disappointment if her hopes were dashed. You should hope anyway, Charlie had told her more than once. We have to hope.

Hopes are just wishes we doubt will come true, she always replied. She preferred waiting, then dealing with whatever happened. Work on the moment.

But of course it was impossible not to hope, no matter what one resolved. Now she clattered dishes nervously in the kitchen, hoping despite herself. Therefore irritated.

“I wonder what’s up,” Charlie said.

“Hnn.”

Frank was never a big talker, but tonight the cat seemed to have got his tongue. Charlie always tried to fill silences made by other people, it was a bad habit but he was helpless to stop it, as he never noticed it was happening until afterward. “Okay, here’s what’s going to happen,” he said now. “All the west is going to go for the president except California and Oregon, but that’ll be enough for Phil to win.”

“Maybe.”

They watched the numbers on the screens get bigger, barely attending to what they were saying. The minutes dragged by. Anna came back in and sat by Charlie, began falling asleep. Even before the boys had arrived nothing had been able to keep her awake past her bedtime, and now she had ten years of sleep deprivation to catch up on.

Then Charlie clicked away from a commercial to find that NBC was declaring California had gone for Phil Chase, which gave him 275 electoral votes and made him the winner. They got to their feet, cheering. Anna woke up confused, “What? What? Can it be? Can it be real?” She made them click around and confirm it on the other channels, and they all confirmed it; “Oh my God,” she cried, and started to weep with joy. Charlie and Frank toasted with beer, got Nick a soda to toast with them. Joe woke up and climbed into Anna’s lap as she channel-surfed, being suddenly eager to soak in all the information that she could. “How did this happen?” There were claims of irregularities in Oregon voting machines, apparently, where the margin of victory was especially tight. But Oregon, like California, had voting machine safeguards in place, and the officials there were confident the result would be validated.

Charlie gave Roy a call, and in the middle of the first ring Roy came on singing “Ding dong, the witch is dead, the witch is dead, the witch is dead, ding dong, the wicked witch is dead!”

“Jeez Roy I could be a Republican staffer calling to congratulate you—”

“And I wouldn’t give a damn! The wicked witch is dead! And our boss is president!”

“Yes, we’re in for it now.”

“Yes we are! You’re going to have to come back to work, Chucker! No more Mr. Mom for you!”

“I don’t know about that,” Charlie said, glancing over at Joe, who was burbling happily at Anna as she leaned forward to hear the TV better. A traitorous thought sprang into his mind: That isn’t my Joe.

“—get yourself down to the convention center and celebrate! Bring the whole family!”

“I don’t know,” Charlie said. “Should we go down to the headquarters and celebrate?”

“No,” Anna and Frank said together.

“Maybe I’ll go down there later,” Charlie told Roy.

“Later, later, what’s with later? This is the moment!”

“True. But it’s a party that will last a while.”

“All night my friend. I wouldn’t mind seeing you in the flesh, we need to confer big time now! Everyone in the office is going to get a new job, you realize that.”

“Yes,” Charlie said. “Advisor to the president.”

“Friend of the president! We’re his friends, Charlie.”

“Us and twenty thousand other people.”

“Yes but no, we’re in the God-damned White House.”

“I guess we are. Jesus. Well, Phil will be great. If anyone can stay human in that job, he can.”

“Oh sure, sure. He’ll be human, he’ll be all too human.”

“He’ll be more than human.”

“That’s right! So get your ass down here and party!”

“Maybe I will.”

Charlie let him get back to it. The house suddenly seemed quiet. Joe was still playing cheerfully on the couch next to Anna. She got up, grinning now, and started to clean up. Frank got up to help her.

“This should help all your projects big time,” Charlie said to him. “Phil is really into them.”

“That’s good. We’ll need it.”

“He’ll probably appoint Diane Chang to a second term at NSF.”

“Huhn,” Frank said, looking over at him. “Really?”

“Yeah, I think so. I’ve heard that discussed. He likes what she’s been doing, of course. How could you not?”

“I hadn’t thought of that.” Frank picked up a plate, looking distracted.

They finished cleaning up. “I guess I’ll be off,” Frank said. “Thanks for having me over.”

The drive back to Khembali house took a long time. Frank chose to drive down Wisconsin and cross the Potomac on the Key Bridge, the shortest route by far, but it was a mistake; the streets were packed with people, literally packed, so that cars had to inch along, nudging their way forward through a mass of celebrating humanity. The District of Columbia had voted nine to one for Democratic candidates for many years, and now a good proportion of the ninety percent were in the streets partying, and cars be damned. Frank had seen this once long before, when he had happened to visit an old girlfriend in D.C. on the Fourth of July, and they had gone down to the Mall to see the Beach Boys. The crowd that day was estimated at seven hundred thousand, and when the concert and fireworks were over everyone had left at once. The Metro being overwhelmed, Frank and his friend had walked up 17th and then Connecticut to her place near Dupont Circle, and the entire way they had strolled with the rest of the crowd right down the middle of the street, forcing the helpless cars among them to creep at a pedestrian pace.

This was just like that—a sudden Carnavale, bursting onto Wisconsin. It had the feel of that day in the cold snap when everyone had gone out on the frozen Potomac. The city surprised by joy.

Frank watched through the windows of his van, feeling detached. No doubt it was good news—parts of him knew it was very good news—but he could not feel it. He was still too disturbed by what had happened with Caroline and her husband.

Inching forward, he gave Edgardo a call.

When Edgardo picked up, Frank’s ear was blasted by the sound of one of Astor Piazzolla’s wild tangos, the bandoneon leading the charge with such scrunching dissonances that Franks phone howled. “LET ME TURN IT DOWN” he heard as he held the phone at arm’s length.

“Sure.”

“Okay I’m back! Who is it?”

“It’s Frank.”

“Ah, Frank! How are you!”

“I’m okay. So, what happened?”

Edgardo laughed. “Didn’t you hear?” he said. “Phil Chase won the election!”

Behind his voice the tango kept charging along, and the shifting static in the phone led Frank to think that he might be dancing around his apartment.

“I know that, but how?”

“We will certainly be talking about how this happened for a long time, Frank, and I’m sure it will keep us entertained on our runs. But I predict right now that no one will ever be able to say exactly why this election came out the way it did.” He laughed again, seemingly at the way he could use such innocuous pundit clichés to convey exactly what he meant: not now. Of course. And maybe never. “Meanwhile just enjoy yourself, Frank. Celebrate.”

In the background the tango band twirled on. Frank pushed End on his phone; he could tell Edgardo about the new set of disks later. Best not to use phones anymore, as Edgardo had reminded him. He shook his head: his leap-before-you-look strategy was not capable of noticing all the possible consequences of an act. It was not working.

He dropped into Georgetown. It was even more crowded than upper Wisconsin had been; but soon he would cross to Arlington, and presumably over there it wouldn’t be like this. Frank wasn’t certain Arlington would be celebrating at all. That would be all right with Frank.

Then just before the Key Bridge traffic came to a complete halt. Downstream to the left he could see fireworks, shooting up off the levee next to the Lincoln Memorial, bursting over their own reflections in the black Potomac. All the celebrants crowding the street and sidewalk were cheering, many jumping up and down. Drivers of cars in front of Frank were giving up and getting out to stretch their legs or join the party. Some of them climbed on the roofs of their cars.

Frank got out too, smacked by the cold into a new awareness of the night and the crowd. Every boom of the fireworks brought another cheer, and all the skyward-tipped faces shone with the succession of mineral colors splashing over them. Frank was seized by the arms by two young women, pulled into their dance as they sang, “Happy Days Are Here Again,” kicking out in time before him. To keep step he started kicking as well, adding gibbon hoots to the general din. So what if sea level was rapidly rising, so what if there were lichen out there sucking carbon out of the sky—so what if the whole world had just seized the tiger by the tail! They were under a new dispensation, they were entering a new age! Oooooooooooop!

Then traffic was moving again, and Frank had to smooch his dancers and dash to his van. Into its warmth and over the bridge, creeping forward slowly, the fireworks still showering sparks into the river.

Over in Arlington it was entirely different: dark, empty, a little bit spooky. Streetside trees bounced and flailed on the wind. Snow blanketed the big open spaces downtown. Wilson Boulevard was deserted, just as he had thought it might be. There were two countries bound together now, and one of them was not celebrating. A cold and windy night to be sure. Hard to sustain being out on such a night, if one were not in Carnavale mode. Where would the knitting woman be tonight, for instance? And where was Chessman? Where would the bros sleep on this night? Did it matter to any of them that Phil Chase had won the election? In a system that demanded five percent unemployment, so that fifteen million people were going hungry, without jobs or homes, and an ice age coming on—did any election matter?

By the time Frank drove up to the curb outside Khembali House it was well after midnight, and he was exhausted. All was dark, the wind hooting around the eaves. The house had a presence in the night—big, solid, and he had to say comforting. It was not his home, but it did feel like a place he could come to. Inside were people he trusted.

Through the gate and around the back. Thank God they did not go in for those great Tibetan mastiffs that terrorized Himalayan villages. All was peaceful in the snowed-over autumn garden. Little scraps of prayer flag flapped on a string in the breeze.

The light was on in their shed. He turned the doorknob gently and urged the door in with its most silent twist.

Rudra was sitting up in bed reading. “It’s okay,” he said. “No need to be quiet.”

“Thanks.”

Inside it was nice and warm. Frank was still shivering, though it was not visible on the surface. He sat down on his bed, cold hands between his legs and tucked under his thighs. Like sitting on two lumps of snow.

His main cell phone was on his bedside table, blinking. He pulled a hand out and flipped it open to check it. Message from Diane. Called; would call back. He stared at it.

“You also got call tonight on phone in house.”

“What? I did?”

“Yes.”

“Did they leave a message?”

“Qang say, a woman call, very late. Said, tell Frank she is okay. She will call again.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Frank sat there. He didn’t know what to think. He could think this, he could think that. Could, could, could, could, could. Diane had called. Caroline had called.

“Windy.”

“Sure is.”

“Good night?”

“I guess so.”

“You are not happy at election result?”

“Yeah, sure. It’s great. If it holds.”

“Good for Khembalung, I think.”

“Yes, probably so. Good for everyone.” Except for fifteen million of us, he didn’t say.

“And your voyage, out to the salt fleet? Went well?”

“Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah, it was very interesting. We seeded the ocean. Poured five hundred million tons of salt in it.”

“You put salt in ocean?”

“That’s right.”

Rudra grinned. Once again the thousand wrinkles in his face reconfigured into their particular map of delight. How often he must have smiled—

“I know I know!” Frank interrupted. “Good idea!”

Rudra laughed his helpless deep belly laugh. “Salt to ocean! Oh, very good idea!”

“Well, it was. We may have saved the world with that salt. Saved it from more winters like the last one, and this one too.”

“Good.”

Rudra considered it. “And yet you do not seem happy, my friend.”

“No. Well.” A deep, deep breath. “… I don’t know. I’m cold. I’m afraid we’re in for another bad winter, whether the salt works or not. I don’t think any of the feral animals left will make it if that happens.”

“You put out shelters?”

“Yes.” An image: “I was in one of those myself, when Drepung found me and brought me here.”

“You told me that.”

“It was filled with all kinds of different animals, all in there together.”

“That must have looked strange.”

“Yes. And they saw me, too. I sat right down by them. But they didn’t like it. They didn’t like me being there.”

Rudra shook his head regretfully. “No. The animals don’t love us anymore.”

“Well. You can see why.”

“Yes.”

They sat there, staring at the orange glow of the space heater.

Rudra said, “If winter is all that is troubling you, then you are okay, I think.”

“Ah well. I don’t know.”

The taste of blood. Frank gestured at his cell phone, put his cold hand back under his thigh, rocked forward and back, forward and back. Warm up, warm up. Don’t bleed inside. “There’s too many… different things going on at once. I go from thing to thing, you know. Hour to hour. I see people, I do different things with them, and I’m not… I don’t feel like the same person with these different people. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what to do. If anyone were watching they’d think I had some kind of mental disorder. I don’t make any sense.”

“But no one is watching.”

“Except what if they are?”

Rudra shook his head. “No one can see inside you. So no matter what they see, they don’t know. Everyone only judges themself.”

“That’s not good!” Frank said. “I need someone more generous than that!”

“Ha ha. You are funny.”

“I’m serious!”

“A good thing to know, then. You are the judge. A place to start.”

Frank shuddered, rubbed his face. Cold hands, cold face; and dead behind the nose. “I don’t see how I can. I’m so different in these different situations. It’s like living multiple lives. I mean I just act the parts. People believe me. But I don’t know what I feel. I don’t know what I mean.”

“Of course. This is always true. To some you are like this, to others like that. Sometimes a spirit comes down. Voices take over inside you. People take away what they see, they think that is all there is. And sometimes you want to fool them in just that way. But want to or not, you fool them. And they fool you! And on it goes—everyone in their own life, everyone fooling all the others— No! It is easy to live multiple lives! What is hard is to be a whole person.”