Sixty days and counting - Kim Stanley Robinson [162]
As she read, she wished she had stayed in the office so she could make an instant reply. The letter was from Fengzhen, but he made it clear he was speaking for a group in the Chinese Academy of Sciences that wasn’t able to get word out officially, as their work had been declared sensitive by the government and was now fully classified, not to say eliminated. The group wanted Anna and the NSF to know that the ongoing drought in western China had started what they called an ecological chain reaction at the headwaters of the Yangtze and the Yellow Rivers; the “general systems crash” that Fengzhen had mentioned in his last e-mail was very close to beginning. All the indicator species in the affected areas were extinct, and dead zones were appearing in the upper reaches of several watersheds. Fengzhen mentioned maps, but the e-mail had not had any attachments. He referenced her previous question, and said that as far as the group could tell, clean coal plants, a greatly reduced pesticide load, and a re-engineered waterway system, were three things that must be done immediately. But as he had said before, it was a matter of cumulative impacts, and everything was implicated. The coming spring might not come. His study group, he went on, wanted to go beyond the diagnostic level and make an appeal for help. Could the U.S. National Science Foundation offer any aid, or any suggestions, in this emergency?
“Shit,” Anna said, and shut down her laptop.
In Bethesda, she made sure Nick was okay and then walked on to the grocery store to see if there were any vegetables left from the day’s farmers’ market, thinking furiously. In the grocery store’s parking lot she called Diane Chang’s number at work. No answer. Then her cell-phone number. No answer there either. Maybe she was hanging with the president. Anna left a message: “Diane, this is Anna Quibler. I need to talk to you at your soonest convenience about reports I’m getting from a contact in the Chinese Academy of Sciences concerning environmental problems they’re seeing there. I think we need to make some kind of response to this, so let’s talk about it as soon as we can, thanks, bye.”
She had just gotten home from the grocery store with the fixings for goulash (paprika was good at masking the taste of slightly elderly veggies), and was boiling water and badgering Nick to get to his homework, when Charlie and Joe burst in the door shouting their greetings, and at the same moment the power went out.
“Ah shit!”
“Mom!”
“I mean shoot, of course. Dang it!”
“Karmapa!”
“Heavens to Betsy. I can’t make dinner without power!”
“And I can’t do my homework,” Nick said cheerfully.
“Yes you can.”
“I can’t, the assignment is online!”
“You’ve got a syllabus page in your notebook.”
“Yeah but tonight was added on, it’s only online.”
“You can do the next thing on the syllabus.”
“Ah Mom!”
“Don’t Ah Mom me! I’m trying to find the candles here, Charlie can you help get them out?”
“Sure. Wow, these feel funny.”
“I hope they aren’t all—yep, they are. Melted like the Wicked Witch of the West. Dang it. Why—”
“Did you find matches there too?”
Charlie shuffled into the dark kitchen and gave her a hug from the side. Joe suddenly limpeted onto her legs, moaning “Momma Momma Momma.”
“Hi guys,” she said resignedly. “Help and get some candles lit. Some of these should work. Come on you guys, we’re in the dark here.”
They got some misshapen candles lit and placed them in the living room and the kitchen, and on the dining room table in between. Anna cooked spaghetti on their Coleman stove, heating a jar of sauce, and Charlie got a fire going in the fireplace. They settled in to eat. Nick ran down the batteries in his Gameboy, then read by the light of two candles. Charlie typed on his laptop and Anna did the same. The laptop screens were like directional lanterns, adding blue light to the candles’ yellow light. They ate yogurt and ice cream for dessert. Anna tried to restrict how many times they opened the refrigerator door, but it didn