Fifty Degrees Below - Kim Stanley Robinson [65]
Frank was gone; they didn’t know how he was spending his time, although once in passing Anna saw him in conversation with Sucandra and some of the local monks. Later she saw him on the dike, walking the berm path with Rudra Cakrin. Judging from his talk at dinner, he had also spent time discussing agriculture out in the fields. But mostly he seemed to Anna like a religious pilgrim, eager for instruction and enlightenment, absorbed, distant, relaxed; very unlike his manner back in Washington.
Next afternoon they visited the zoo, located in a big park at the northwest quadrant of the island. Many of the animals and birds of the Sundarbans were represented. The elephants had a large enclosure, but the largest enclosure of all was the tigers’. Many of the big cats had been swept to sea by one flood or another, and rescued by Khembali patrol boats. Now they lived in an enclosure thick with stands of elephant grass and saal trees, fronted by a big pond cut by a curving glass retaining wall, so that when the tigers went swimming they could be seen underwater. Their abrupt foursquare dives and subsequent splayed strokes turned feline grace unexpectedly aquatic, and underwater their fur streamed like seaweed. “Tiger! Tiger! Big big tiger!”
At the end of that wet day they sat in a big hall and ate a meal anchored by curried rice. Nick was served a special order of plain rice, arranged by Drepung, but Joe was fine with the curry. Or so it seemed during the meal; but that night in their room he was fractious, and then, after a long nursing session, wide awake. Jet lag, perhaps. The monsoon rains were coming down hard, the drumming of it on the roof quite loud. Joe began to complain. Anna was asleep on her feet, but Charlie was out entirely, so she had to zombie on, hour after hour, mumbling replies to Joe’s cheerful jabberwocking. She was on the verge of a collapse when a knock came at the door, and Frank looked in.
“I can’t sleep, and I could hear you were up with Joe. I wondered if you wanted me to play with him for a while.”
“Oh God bless you,” she cried. “I was just about to melt.” She fell on the couch and shut her sandy eyes. For a while her brain continued to turn, as her body dove into sleep and dragged her consciousness down with it.
“Nick sleeping. Da sleeping. Mama sleeping.”
“That’s right.”
“Wanna play?”
“Sure. What you got here, trains? What about some airplanes, shouldn’t you have some airplanes?”
“Got planes.”
“Good. Let’s fly, let’s fly and fly.”
“Fly!”
“Hey, those are your tigers! Well, that’s okay. Flying tigers are just right for here. Watch out, here he comes!”
“Tiger fly!”
Anna stitched the meandering border between sleep and dreams, in and out, up and down. Frank and Joe passed toys back and forth.
In the hour before dawn a hard knock battered their door, throwing Anna convulsively to her feet. She had been dreaming of the tigers’ fluid swimming, up in the sky—
It was Drepung, looking agitated. “I’m sorry to disturb you, my friends, but a decision has been made that we must all evacuate the island.”
This woke them all, even Charlie who was usually so slow to rouse. Frank turned on all the lights, and they packed their bags while Drepung explained the situation.
“The monsoon has returned, as you have seen,” he said. “This is a good thing, but unfortunately it has come at a time of especially high tides, and together with the storm surge, and the low air pressure, sea level is extremely high.” He helped the comatose Nick into a shirt. “It’s already higher on