Forty signs of rain - Kim Stanley Robinson [69]
Drepung spoke for the Khembalis, although Sucandra and Padma also pitched in with questions from time to time. They all consulted with Rudra Cakrin, who asked them a lot of questions in Tibetan. Charlie began to think he had been wrong about the old man understanding English; it was too cumbersome to be a trick, just as Anna had said.
All the Khembalis stared intently at Sridar or Charlie whenever they spoke. They made for a very attentive audience. They definitely had a presence. It had gotten to the point where Charlie felt that their Calcutta cottons, maroon vests, and sandals were normal, and that it was the room itself that was rather strange, so smooth and spotlessly gray. Suddenly it looked to him like the inside of a Gymboree crawl space.
“So you’ve been a sovereign country since 1960?” Sridar was saying.
“The relationship with India is a little more…complicated than that. We have had sovereignty in the sense you suggest since about 1993.” Drepung rehearsed the history of Khembalung, while Sridar asked questions and took notes.
“So—fifteen feet above sea level at high tide,” Sridar said at the end of this recital. “Listen, one thing I have to say at the start—we are not going to be able to promise you anything much in the way of results on this global warming thing. That’s been given up on by Congress—” He glanced at Charlie: “Sorry, Charlie. Maybe not so much given up on as swept under the rug.”
Charlie glowered despite himself. “Not by Senator Chase or anyone else who’s really paying attention to the world. And we’re still working on it, we’ve got a big bill coming up and—”
“Yes yes, of course,” Sridar said, holding up a hand to stop him before he got into rant mode. “You’re doing what you can. But let’s put it this way—there are quite a few members of Congress who think of it as being too late to do anything.”
“Better late than never!” Charlie insisted, almost waking Joe.
“We understand,” Drepung said to Sridar, after a glance at the old man. “We won’t have any unrealistic expectations of you. We only hope to engage help that is experienced in the procedures used, the usual protocols you see. We ourselves will be responsible for the content of our appeals to the reluctant bodies, trusting you to arrange the meetings with them.”
Sridar kept his face blank, but Charlie knew what he was thinking. Sridar said, “We do our best to give our clients all the benefits of our expertise. I’m just reminding you that we are not miracle workers.”
The Khembalis nodded.
“The miracles will be our department,” Drepung said, face as blank as Sridar’s.
Charlie thought, these two jokers might get along fine.
Slowly they worked out what they would expect from one another, and Sridar wrote down the details of an agreement. The Khembalis were happy to have him write up what in essence was their request for a proposal. “That sure makes it easier,” Sridar remarked. “A clever way to make me write you a fair deal.” During this part of the negotiation (for such it was) Joe finished waking up, so Charlie left them to it.
Later that day Sridar gave Charlie a call. Charlie was sitting on a bench in Dupont Circle, feeding Joe a bottle and watching two of the local chess hustlers practice on each other. They played too fast for Charlie to follow the game.
“Look, Charlie, this is a bit ingrown, since you put me in touch with these guys, but really it’s your man that the lamas ought to be meeting first, or at least early on. The Foreign Relations Committee is one of the main ones we’ll have to work on, so it all begins with Chase. Can you set us up with a good chunk of the senator’s quality time?”
“I can with some lead time,” Charlie said, glancing at Phil’s master calendar on his wrist screen. “How about next Thursday, he’s had a cancellation?”
“Is that late morning, so he’s at his best?”
“He’s always at his best.”
“Yeah right.”
“No I’m serious. You don’t know Phil.”
“I’ll take your word for it. Thursday at?…”
“Ten to ten-twenty.”
“Perfect.”
Charlie could have made a good