Kim Robinson - Sixty Days and Counting

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 you lose Dad?”

“Yeah, I did!”

“Oh my,” Anna muttered.

Actually Charlie was not far below Joe, although on a different catwalk; he had gotten lost at an intersection. He retraced his last steps, and turned a corner—and there was Roy Anastophoulus.

“Roy!”

“Charlie!”

They gave each other a hug.

Over Roy’s shoulder, Charlie saw Andrea Blackwell. Charlie had not been aware that they were on again, but by her smile it appeared to be so.

“It’s good to see you!” Charlie said. “I didn’t know you were going to be here.”

“No, well, when we heard about Phil and Diane coming out to get a marriage blessing from the Dalai Lama, we asked if we could tag along and join in.”

“So—you mean—”

Roy nodded. “Yes. We got married yesterday at the courthouse.” They showed him their shiny new wedding bands. “Now we’re here for the blessing.”

“Wonderful!” Charlie said. “Wait till Anna hears!”

He yelled down to the ground: “Hey Anna!” Then: “Just a second, I have to catch up to Joe. In fact, if you could take this catwalk across to over there, and wait? Maybe you can help me cut him off.”

“Sure.”

Back on the ground Anna was indeed delighted with their news. They gathered with the rest of the guests on the lawn in front of the main house, and cheered the appearance of the Dalai Lama, entering the big tent with Drepung, and followed by Phil and Diane, then Roy and Andrea. A troop of Khembalis in their best Tibetan finery performed a brief dance, accompanied by the drums, horns, and swirls of incense that reminded Anna all of a sudden of the first time she had seen the Khembalis, performing a similar ceremony before their little office in the NSF building.

The Dalai Lama, cheerfully sublime as always, led Phil and Diane through a brief set of Buddhist wedding vows; then did the same for Roy and Andrea. While they were still up there, Drepung gestured to Frank and Caroline to come up to the front, and they came out of the crowd to applause. Diane gave Frank a quick high five.

Drepung was the one who led Frank and Caroline through their vows, ending with a blessing on them:

Then he and the Dalai Lama stood side by side, and reached out together to join the hands of the three couples. For a moment everything was still; then with a blast on the long Tibetan horns, the party began in earnest.

“Here,” Nick said as the Quiblers prepared to leave, and he shoved an envelope into Frank’s hand. “FOG made a going-away card out of your phone log. Almost everybody signed it. Jason was out of town.”

“Thanks,” Frank said. Most of those people he had never met in person; they had been voices over the phone, or names on the sighting board. “Tell them I’ll miss them. Tell them I’ll try to get something like this started out in San Diego.”

“Will there be any animals to see out there?”

“No, not really. You’re lucky with what you have here. Out there it’s down to birds and rabbits, I’m afraid. Maybe I’ll have to arrange a breakout at the San Diego Zoo.”

Joe, nearly asleep on Charlie’s shoulder, heard the word “zoo” and rolled his head to the side.

“Tiger,” he murmured, and pounded Charlie’s chest with a single solid tap.

Charlie put his chin on the round blond head. “You’re my tiger,” he said. Joe drifted back off.

WHEN THE QUIBLERS GOT HOMEthey changed out of their party clothes and went out in the yard to work on the garden. At five their doorbell rang, and Frank’s friend Cutter appeared at their door, a burly black man with big scarred hands and a friendly smile. Behind him his crew were already unloading gear from their truck. The PV panels had arrived at last. Joe ran around the house to investigate, and he and Charlie watched fascinated as the ladders were assembled and scaled. The nimble climbers disappeared onto the roof and then dropped ropes beside the ladder, to help stabilize their climb and also to haul things up. The struts and wiring had been installed weeks ago, but there was a waiting list for the solar panels themselves. Now they were hooking them to a hoist line. Soon what Charlie and Joe could see of the south side of the roof was covered with gear. It was going to be a grid of sixteen photovoltaic panels, capable of generating all the house’s electricity when the sun was shining. Whenever more electricity was generated by the panels than they used in the house, the excess would be fed back into the grid, and they would be paid for it by the utility district that had recently replaced the private company as their power provider. This was going to give them a big drop in their carbon-burn numbers, and Charlie was sure Anna and Nick would be very pleased.

With a wave to Joe, Cutter and his team took off.

The photovoltaics were indeed very good for their carbon-burn score, and their garden helped a little; but still they were scoring pretty high, and Anna was getting frustrated. “You just can’t do it in a suburban home, when you own a car and a phone and all the stuff.”