Forty signs of rain - Kim Stanley Robinson [84]
“How was your day?” Charlie said.
“I fixed a data error all day long.”
“That’s good dear.”
She gave him a look. “I swore I wasn’t going to do it,” she said darkly, “but I just couldn’t bring myself to ignore it.”
“No, I’m sure you couldn’t.”
He kept a straight face, but she punched him on the arm anyway. “Smartass. Is there any beer in the fridge?”
“I think so.”
She hunted for one. “There was some good news that came in, did you see that? I forwarded it. The Khembalis got a couple of grants.”
“Really! That is good news.” He was sniffing at a yellow curry bubbling in the frying pan.
“Something new?”
“Yeah, I’m trying something out of the paper.”
“You’re being careful?”
He grinned. “Yeah, no blackened redfish.”
“Blackened redfish?” Nick repeated, alarmed.
“Don’t worry, even I wouldn’t try it on you.”
“He wouldn’t want you to catch fire.”
“Hey, it was in the recipe. It was right out of the recipe!”
“So? A tablespoon each of black pepper, white pepper, cayenne and chili powder?”
“How was I supposed to know?”
“What do you mean, you use pepper. You should have known what a tablespoon of pepper would taste like, and that was the least hot of them.”
“I guess I didn’t know it would all stick to the fish.”
Nick was looking appalled. “I wouldn’t eat that.”
“You aren’t kidding.” Anna laughed. “One touch with your tongue and you would spontaneously combust.”
“It was in a cookbook.”
“Even going in the kitchen the next day was enough to burn your eyes out.”
Charlie was giggling at his folly, holding the stirring spoon down to Nick to gross him out, although now he had a very light touch with the spices. The curry would be fine. Anna left him to it and went out to play with Joe.
She sat down on the couch, relaxed. Joe began to pummel her knees with blocks, babbling energetically. At the same time Nick was telling her something about something. She had to interrupt him, almost, to tell him about the coming of the Swimming Tigers. He nodded and took off again with his account. She heaved a great sigh of relief, took a sip of the beer. Another day flown past like a dream.
ANOTHER HEAT wave struck, the worst so far. People had thought it was hot before, but now it was July, and one day the temperature in the metropolitan area climbed to 105 degrees, with the humidity over ninety percent. The combination had all the Indians in town waxing nostalgic about Uttar Pradesh just before the monsoon broke, “Oh very much yes, just like this in Delhi, actually it would be a blessing if it were to be like this in Delhi, it would be a great improvement over what they have now, third year of drought you see, they are needing the monsoon to be coming very badly.”
The morning Post included an article informing Charlie that a chunk of the Ross Ice Shelf had broken off, a chunk more than half the size of France. The news was buried in the last pages of the international section. So many pieces of Antarctica had fallen off that it wasn’t big news anymore.
It wasn’t big news, but it was a big iceberg. Researchers joked about moving onto it and declaring it a new nation. It contained more fresh water than all the Great Lakes combined. It had come off near a Roosevelt Island, a low black rock that had been buried under the ice and known only to radar probes, and so was exposed to the air for the first time in either two or fifteen million years, depending on which research team you believed. Although it might not be exposed for long; pouring down toward it, researchers said, was the rapid ice of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, unimpeded now that the Ross Shelf in that region had embarked, and therefore moving faster than ever.
This accelerated flow of ice toward the sea had big ramifications. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet was much bigger than the Ross Ice Shelf, and had been resting on ground that