This gave her a momentary pang, because these windows had always been filled by bright posters of tropical beaches and European castles, changing monthly like calendar photos, and Anna had often stood before them while eating her lunch, travelling mentally within them as a kind of replacement for the real travel that she and Charlie had given up when Nick was born. Sometimes it had occurred to her that given the kinds of political and bacterial violence that were often behind the scenes in those photos, mental travel was perhaps the best kind.
But now the windows were empty, the small room behind them likewise. In the doorway the Tibetanesque performers were now massing, in a crescendo of chant and brassy brass, the incredibly low notes vibrating the air almost visibly, like the cartoon soundtrack bassoon in Fantasia.
Anna moved closer, dismissing her small regret for the loss of the travel agency. New occupants, fogging the air with incense, chanting or blowing their hearts out: it was interesting.
In the midst of the celebrants stood an old man, his brown face a maze of deep wrinkles. He smiled, and Anna saw that the wrinkles mapped a lifetime of smiling that smile. He raised his right hand, and the music came to a ragged end in a hyperbass note that fluttered Annas stomach.
The old man stepped free of the group and bowed to the four walls of the atrium, his hands held together before him. His dipped his chin and sang, his chant as low as any of the horns, and split into two notes, with a resonant head tone distinctly audible over the deep clear bass, all very surprising coming out of such a slight man. Singing thus, he walked to the doorway of the travel agency and there touched the door jambs on each side, exclaiming something sharp each time.
Rig yal ba! Chos min gon pa!
The others all exclaimed, Jetsun Gyatso!
The old man bowed to them.
And then they all cried Om! and filed into the little office space, the brassmen angling their long horns to make it in the door.
A young monk came back out. He took a small rectangular card from the loose sleeve of his robe, pulled some protective backing from sticky strips on the back of the card, and affixed it carefully to the window next to the door. Then he retreated inside.
Anna approached the window. The little sign said
EMBASSY OF KHEMBALUNG
An embassy! And a country she had never heard of, not that that was particularly surprising, new countries were popping up all the time, they were one of the UNs favourite dispute-settlement strategies. Perhaps a deal had been cut in some troubled part of Asia, and this Khembalung created as a result.
But no matter where they were from, this was a strange place for an embassy. It was very far from Massachusetts Avenues ambassadorial stretch of unlikely architecture, unfamiliar flags and expensive landscaping; far from Georgetown, Dupont Circle, Adams-Morgan, Foggy Bottom, east Capitol Hill, or any of the other likely haunts for locating a respectable embassy. Not just Arlington, but the NSF building no less!
Maybe it was a scientific country.
Pleased at the thought, pleased to have something new in the building, Anna approached closer still. She tried to read some small print she saw at the bottom of the new sign.
The young man who had put out the sign reappeared. He had a round face, a shaved head, and a quick little mouth, like Betty Boops. His expressive black eyes met hers directly.
Can I help you? he said, in what sounded to her like an Indian accent.
Yes, Anna said. I saw your arrival ceremony, and I was just curious. I was wondering where you all come from.
Thank you for your interest, the youth said politely, ducking his head and smiling. We are from Khembalung.
Yes, I saw that, but
Ah. Our country is an island nation. We are living in the Bay of Bengal, near the mouth of the Ganges.
I see, Anna said, surprised; she had thought they would be from somewhere in the Himalayas. I hadnt heard of it.
It is not a big island. Nation status has been a recent development, you could say. Only now are we establishing a representation.
Good idea. Although, to tell the truth, Im surprised to see an embassy in here. I didnt think of this as being the right kind of space.
We chose it very carefully, the young monk said.
They regarded each other.
Well, Anna said, very interesting. Good luck moving in. Im glad youre here.
Thank you. Again he nodded.
Anna did the same and took her leave.
But as she turned to go, something caused her to look back. The young monk still stood there in the doorway, looking across at the pizza place, his face marked by a tiny grimace of distress.
Anna recognized the expression at once. When her older son Nick was born she had stayed home with him, and those first several months of his life were a kind of blur to her. She had missed her work, and doing it from home had not been possible. By the time maternity leave was over they had clearly needed her at the office, and so she had started working again, sharing the care of Nick with Charlie and some baby-sitters, and eventually a daycare centre in a building in Bethesda, near the Metro stop. At first Nick had cried furiously whenever she left for any reason, which she found excruciating; but then he had seemed to get used to it. And so did she, adjusting as everyone must to the small pains of the daily departure. It was just the way it was.
Then one day she had taken Nick down to the daycare centre it was the routine by then and he didnt cry when she said good-bye, didnt even seem to care or to notice. But for some reason she had paused to look back into the window of the place, and there on his face she saw a look of unhappy, stoical determination determination not to cry, determination to get through another long lonely boring day a look which on the face of a toddler was simply heartbreaking. It had pierced her like an arrow. She had cried out involuntarily, even started to rush back inside to take him in her arms and comfort him. Then she reconsidered how another goodbye would affect him, and with a horrible wrenching feeling, a sort of despair at all the world, she had left.
Now here was that very same look again, on the face of this young man. Anna stopped in her tracks, feeling again that stab from five years before. Who knew what had caused these people to come halfway around the world? Who knew what they had left behind?
She walked back over to him.
He saw her coming, composed his features. Yes?
If you want, she said, later on, when its convenient, I could show you some of the good lunch spots in this neighbourhood. Ive worked here a long time.
Why, thank you, he said. That would be most kind.
Is there a particular day that would be good?
Well we will be getting hungry today, he said, and smiled. He had a sweet smile, not unlike Nicks.
She smiled too, feeling pleased. Ill come back down at one oclock and take you to a good one then, if you like.
That would be most welcome. Very kind.
She nodded. At one, then, already recalibrating her work schedule for the day. The boxed sandwich could be stored in her offices little refrigerator.
Anna completed her journey to the south elevators. Waiting there she was joined by Frank Vanderwal, one of her programme officers. They greeted each other, and she said, Hey Ive got an interesting jacket for you.
Anna completed her journey to the south elevators. Waiting there she was joined by Frank Vanderwal, one of her programme officers. They greeted each other, and she said, Hey Ive got an interesting jacket for you.
He mock-rolled his eyes. Is there any such thing for a burnt-out case like me?
Oh I think so. She gestured back at the atrium. Did you see our new neighbour? We lost the travel agency but gained an embassy, from a little country in Asia.
An embassy, here?
Im not sure they know much about Washington.
I see. Frank grinned his crooked grin, a completely different thing than the young monks sweet smile, sardonic and knowing. Ambassadors from Shangri-La, eh? One of the UP arrows lit, and the elevator door next to it opened. Well, we can use them.
Primates in elevators. People stood in silence looking up at the lit numbers on the display console, as per custom.
Again the experience caused Frank Vanderwal to contemplate the nature of their species, in his usual sociobiologists mode. They were mammals, social primates: a kind of hairless chimp. Their bodies, brains, minds and societies had grown to their current state in east Africa over a period of about two million years, while the climate was shifting in such a way that forest cover was giving way to open savannah.
Much was explained by this. Naturally they were distressed to be trapped in a small moving box. No savannah experience could be compared to it. The closest analogue might have been crawling into a cave, no doubt behind a shaman carrying a torch, everyone filled with great awe and very possibly under the influence of psychotropic drugs and religious rituals. An earthquake during such a visit to the underworld would be about all the savannah mind could contrive as an explanation for a modern trip in an elevator. No wonder an uneasy silence reigned; they were in the presence of the sacred. And the last five thousand years of civilization had not been anywhere near enough time for any evolutionary adaptations to alter these mental reactions. They were still only good at the things they had been good at on the savannah.
Anna Quibler broke the taboo on speech, as people would when all the fellow-passengers were cohorts. She said to Frank, continuing her story, I went over and introduced myself. Theyre from an island country in the Bay of Bengal.
Did they say why they rented the space here?
They said they had picked it very carefully.
Using what criteria?
I didnt ask. On the face of it, youd have to say proximity to NSF, wouldnt you?
Frank snorted. Thats like the joke about the starlet and the Hollywood writer, isnt it?
Anna wrinkled her nose at this, surprising Frank; although she was proper, she was not prudish. Then he got it: her disapproval was not at the joke, but at the idea that these new arrivals would be that hapless. She said, I think theyre more together than that. I think theyll be interesting to have here.
Homo sapiens is a species that exhibits sexual dimorphism. And its more than a matter of bodies; the archaeological record seemed to Frank to support the notion that the social roles of the two sexes had diverged early on. These differing roles could have led to differing thought processes, such that it would be possible to characterize plausibly the existence of unlike approaches even to ostensibly non-gender-differentiated activities, such as science. So that there could be a male practice of science and a female practice of science, in other words, and these could be substantially different activities.
These thoughts flitted through Franks mind as their elevator ride ended and he and Anna walked down the hall to their offices. Anna was as tall as he was, with a nice figure, but the dimorphism differentiating them extended to their habits of mind and their scientific practice, and that might explain why he was a bit uncomfortable with her. Not that this was a full characterization of his attitude. But she did science in a way that he found annoying. It was not a matter of her being warm and fuzzy, as you might expect from the usual characterizations of feminine thought on the contrary, Annas scientific work (she still often co-authored papers in statistics, despite her bureaucratic load) often displayed a finicky perfectionism that made her a very meticulous scientist, a first-rate statistician smart, quick, competent in a range of fields and really excellent in more than one. As good a scientist as one could find for the rather odd job of running the bioinformatics division at NSF, good almost to the point of exaggeration too precise, too interrogatory it kept her from pursuing a course of action with drive. Then again, at NSF maybe that was an advantage.
In any case she was so intense about it. A kind of Puritan of science, rational to an extreme. And yet of course at the same time that was all such a front, as with the early Puritans; the hyper-rational co-existed in her with all the emotional openness, intensity and variability that was the American female interactional paradigm and social role. Every female scientist was therefore potentially a kind of Mr Spock, the rational side foregrounded and emphasized while the emotional side was denied, and the two co-existing at odds with one another.
On the other hand, judged on that basis, Frank had to admit that Anna seemed less split-natured than many women scientists he had known. Pretty well integrated, really. He had spent many hours of the past year working with her, engaged in interesting discussions in the pursuit of their shared work. No, he liked her. The discomfort came not from any of her irritating habits, not even the nit-picking or hairsplitting that made her so strikingly eponymous (though no one dared joke about that to her), habits that she couldnt seem to help and didnt seem to notice no it was more the way her hyper-scientific attitude combined with her passionate female expressiveness to suggest a complete science, or even a complete humanity. It reminded Frank of himself.
Not of the social self that he allowed others to see, admittedly; but of his internal life as he alone experienced it. He too was stuffed with extreme aspects of both rationality and emotionality. This was what made him uncomfortable: Anna was too much like him. She reminded him of things about himself he did not want to think about. But he was helpless to stop his trains of thought. That was one of his problems.
Halfway around the circumference of the sixth floor, they came to their offices. Franks was one of a number of cubicles carving up a larger space; Annas was a true office right across from his cubicle, a room of her own, with a foyer for her secretary Aleesha. Both their spaces, and all the others in the maze of crannies and rooms, were filled with the computers, tables, filing cabinets and crammed bookshelves that one found in scientific offices everywhere. The decor was standard degree-zero beige for everything, indicating the purity of science.
In this case it was all rendered human, and even handsome, by the omnipresent big windows on the interior sides of the rooms, allowing everyone to look across the central atrium and into all the other offices. This combination of open space and the sight of fifty to a hundred other humans made each office a slice or echo of the savannah. The occupants were correspondingly more comfortable at the primate level. Frank did not suffer the illusion that anyone had consciously planned this effect, but he admired the instinctive grasp on the architects part of what would get the best work out of the buildings occupants.