Forty signs of rain - Kim Stanley Robinson [40]
Anna frowned. Charlie watched her, fascinated. This was a basic part of her self, this stuff, but largely unconsidered. Self-definition by function. She was a scientist. And science was science, unlike anything else.
Rudra Cakrin leaned forward to say something to Sucandra, who listened to him, then asked him a question in Tibetan. Rudra answered, gesturing at Anna.
Charlie shot a quick look at her—see, he was following things! Evidence!
Rudra Cakrin insisted on something to Sucandra, who then said to Anna, “Rudra wants to say, ‘What do you believe in?’”
“Me?”
“Yes. ‘What do you believe in?’ he says.”
“I don’t know,” she said, surprised. “I believe in the double blind study.”
Charlie laughed, he couldn’t help it. Anna blushed and beat on his arm, crying “Stop it! It’s true.”
“I know it is,” Charlie said, laughing harder, until she started laughing too, along with everyone else, the Khembalis looking delighted—everyone so amused that Joe got mad and stomped his foot to make them stop. But this only made them laugh more. In the end they had to stop so he would not throw a fit.
Rudra Cakrin restored his mood by diving back into the blocks. Soon he and Joe sat half-buried in them, absorbed in their play. Stack them up, knock them down. They certainly spoke the same language.
The others watched them, sipping tea and offering particular blocks to them at certain moments in the construction process. Sucandra and Padma and Anna and Charlie and Nick sat on the couches, talking about Khembalung and Washington D.C. and how much they were alike.
Then one tower of cubes and beams stood longer than the others had. Rudra Cakrin had constructed it with care, and the repetition of basic colors was pretty: blue, red, yellow, green, blue, yellow, red, green, blue, red, green, red. It was tall enough that ordinarily Joe would have already knocked it over, but he seemed to like this one. He stared at it, mouth hanging open in a less-than-brilliant expression. Rudra Cakrin looked over at Sucandra, said something. Sucandra replied quickly, sounding displeased, which surprised Charlie. Drepung and Padma were suddenly paying attention. Rudra Cakrin picked out a yellow cube, showed it to Sucandra and said something more. He put it on the top of the tower.
“Oooh,” Joe said. He tilted his head to one side, then the other, observing it.
“He likes that one,” Charlie noted.
At first no one answered. Then Drepung said, “It’s an old Tibetan pattern. You see it in mandalas.” He looked to Sucandra, who said something sharp in Tibetan. Rudra Cakrin replied easily, shifted so that his knee knocked a long blue cylinder into the tower, collapsing it. Joe shuddered as if startled by a noise on the street.
“Ah ga,” he declared.
The Tibetans resumed the conversation. Nick was now explaining to Padma the distinction between whales and dolphins. Sucandra went out and helped Charlie a bit with the cleanup in the kitchen; finally Charlie shooed him out, feeling embarrassed that their pots were going to end up substantially cleaner after this visit than they had been before; Sucandra had been expertly scrubbing their bottoms with a wire pad found under the sink.
Around nine-thirty they took their leave. Anna offered to call a cab, but they said the Metro was fine. They did not need guidance back to the station: “Very easy. Interesting too. There are many fine carpets in the windows of this part of town.”
Charlie was about to explain that this was the work of Iranians who had come to Washington after the fall of the Shah, but then he thought better of it. Not a happy precedent: the Iranians had never left.
Instead he said to Sucandra, “I’ll give my friend Sridar a call and ask him to meet with you. He’ll be very helpful, even if you don’t end up hiring his firm.”
“I’m sure. Many thanks.” And they were off into the balmy