Forty signs of rain - Kim Stanley Robinson [42]
In this case, the problem was the Khembalis’ little island (fifty-two square kilometers, their website said), which was clearly in all-too-good a location to contribute to ongoing studies of Gangean flooding and tidal storms in the Indian Ocean. Anna tapped at her keyboard, bookmarking for an e-mail to Drepung, cc-ing also the Khembalung Institute for Higher Studies, which he had told her about. This institute’s website indicated it was devoted to medicinal and religious studies (whatever those were, she didn’t want to know) but that would be all right—if the Khembalis could get a good proposal together, the need for a wider range of fields among their researchers could become part of its “broader impacts” element, and thus an advantage.
She searched the web further. USGCRP, the “U.S. Global Change Research Program,” two billion dollars a year; the South Asian START Regional Research Centre (SAS-RRC), based at the National Physical Laboratory in New Delhi, stations in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Mauritius…China and Thailand, aerosol study…INDOEX, the Indian Ocean Experiment, also concerned with aerosols, as was its offspring, Project Asian Brown Cloud. These studied the ever-thickening haze covering South Asia and making the monsoon irregular, with disastrous results. Certainly Khembalung was well-situated to join that study. Also ALGAS, the “Asia Least Cost Greenhouse Gas Abatement Strategy”; and LOICZ, “Land Ocean Interaction in the Coastal Zones.” That one had to be right on the money. Sri Lanka was the leader there, lots of estuarine modeling—Khembalung would make a perfect study site. Training, networking, bio-geo-chemical cycle budgeting, socioeconomic modeling, impacts on the coastal systems of South Asia. Bookmark the site, add to the e-mail. A research facility in the mouth of the Ganges would be a very useful thing for all concerned.
“Ah shit.”
She had overflowed the milk bottle. Not the first time for that mistake. She turned off the pump, poured off some of the milk from the full bottle into a four-ounce sack. She always filled quite a few four-ouncers, for use as snacks or supplements when Joe was feeling extra hungry; she had never told Charlie that most of these were the result of her inattention. Since Joe often was extra hungry, Charlie said, they were useful.
As for herself, she was starving. It was always that way after pumping sessions. Each twenty ounces of milk she gave was the result of some thousand calories burned by her in the previous day, as far as she had been able to calculate; the analyses she had found had been pretty rough. In any case, she could with a clear conscience (and great pleasure) run down to the pizza place and eat till she was stuffed. Indeed she needed to eat or she would get light-headed.
But first she had to pump the other breast at least a little, because let-down happened in both when she pumped, and she would end up uncomfortable if she didn’t. So she put the ten-ouncer in the little refrigerator, then got the other side going into the four-ouncer, while printing out a list of all the sites she had visited, so that over her lunch she could write notes on them before she forgot what she had learned.
She called Drepung, who answered his cell phone number.
“Drepung, can you meet for lunch? I’ve got some ideas for how you might get some science support there in Khembalung. Some of it’s from NSF, some from elsewhere.”
“Yes, of course Anna, thanks very much. I’ll meet you at the Food Factory in twenty minutes, if that’s all right, I’m just trying to buy some shoes for Rudra down the street here.”
“Perfect. What kind are you getting him?”
“Running shoes. He’ll love them.”
On her way out she ran into Frank, also headed for the elevator.
“What you got?” he asked, gesturing at her list.
“Some stuff for the Khembalis,” she said. “Various programs we run or take part in that might help them out.”
“So they can study how to adapt to higher sea levels?”
She frowned. “No, it’s more than that. We can get them a lot of infrastructural help if it’s configured right.”
“Good. But,