Sixty days and counting - Kim Stanley Robinson [204]
“Yes,” Qang said, “I will talk to them. If we can make investments that help health, it’s a good thing. But Sucandra is our doctor, so he will have to take a look too.”
Sucandra nodded. “What about you, will you be investing in this new company?”
Frank laughed. “I might if I had anything to invest. Right now all I have is my salary. Which is fine. But we’re buying a house, so there won’t be much extra. But that’s okay. If it works there’ll be enough for everybody.”
“A nice thought.”
Then Drepung joined them. He was wearing his Wizards basketball shirt and his enormous Reeboks, and the cord to his iPod was entangled in his turquoise and coral necklaces.
“What about you, Drepung?” Frank asked. “Will you be moving back to Tibet?”
“Oh no, I don’t think so!” Drepung grinned. “Only room for one lama in Lhasa! Besides, I like it here. And I am obliged to stay in any case. It’s part of the deal with the Chinese, more or less. And besides, this is Khembalung now! And not just the farm, but really the whole D.C. area. So I have work to do here as an ambassador.”
“Good,” Frank said. “They can use you.”
“Thank you, I will give it a good try. What about you, Frank? Won’t you miss this place when you go back to San Diego?”
“Yes, I will. But I need to get back. And people always visit D.C. All kinds of reasons bring you back.”
“So true.”
“Maybe I’ll see you out there too.”
“I hope so. I’ll try to visit.”
Neither man was under any illusion as to how frequently this was likely to happen.
Frank looked around at the crowd. He knew a lot of the people there. If he had stuck to his plan and stayed just a year, and lived that year like a ghost, he would have passed through and gone home without regrets. No one would even have been aware of his passing. But it had not happened that way. It all came down to the people you ran into.
This was accentuated when the Quiblers arrived. Charlie pretended to be cheery about Frank’s departure, but he also shook his head painfully—“I don’t know who’ll get us out on the river now.”
Anna was simply sad. “We’ll miss you,” she said, and gave him a hug. “The boys will miss you.”
Nick was noncommittal. He looked off to the side. He spoke of the latest developments in their feral research program, steadfastly focused on the details of a new spreadsheet Anna had helped him set up, on which he could record all their sightings by species, and not only keep an inventory, but enter range parameters, to gauge which species might be able to go truly feral. There was also a GIS program that let you identify or design habitat corridors. It was very interesting.
Frank nodded and made some suggestions. “We’ll keep in touch by e-mail,” he said at one point when he saw Nick looking away. “Then hey—maybe when you go off to college, you can come to UCSD. It’s a really fun school.”
“Oh yeah,” Nick said, brightening. “Good idea.”
Anna was startled at this suggestion, and Charlie actually winced. Neither were used to the idea of Nick growing up. But there he stood, almost as tall as Anna, and four or five inches taller than when Frank had met him. He was changing by the day, almost by the hour.
The Quiblers wandered the party. Nick and Anna talked about the swimming tigers with Sucandra as they all stood under the treehouse, looking up to watch Charlie chase Joe around the various catwalks.
“It’s gotten so big.”
“Yes, people like to live up there. People like to work on it too.”
“It would be cool,” Nick said.
Sucandra nodded. “You all should consider moving out here with us,” he said to them. “We would be so happy to have you here with us. You are already Khembalis, as far as we are concerned. And I think you would like it. A community like this is a kind of extended family. And of course group living is very thrifty,” he added with a smile at Anna. “Energy consumption would be only a fraction of that used by an ordinary suburban house.”
“That’s true,” Anna said.
“Hey MOMMA!” Joe shouted down at her from the highest catwalk.
“Hi monkey,” she called up. “Did