Forty Signs of Rain

  “And how would this affect the targeted delivery system you’re working on?”

  “Well, right now it’s helping us to find proteins with ligands that bind better to their receptor ligands in target organ cells. It’s also helping us test for proteins that we can more successfully shove across cell walls, using the hydrodynamic methods we’ve been investigating for the past few months.” He clicked ahead to the slide that displayed this work’s results, trying to banish Brian’s and Marta’s names from his mind, he definitely did not want to be calling it the Popping Eyeball Method, the Exploding Mouse Method. “As you can see,” pointing to the relevant results, “saturation has been good in certain conditions.” This seemed a little weak, and so he added, “The algorithm is also proving to be very successful in guiding work we’ve been doing with botanists on campus, on algal designs.”

  “How does that connect with this?”

  “Well, it’s for plant engineering.”

  Bannet looked at Derek.

  Derek said, “We plan to use it to pursue the improvement of targeted delivery. Clearly the method is robust, and people can use it in a wide variety of applications.”

  But there was no hiding it, really. Their best results so far were in an area that would not necessarily ever become useful to human medicine. And yet human medicine was what Torrey Pines Generique was organized to do. Biocal also.

  “It looks really promising, eh?” Derek said. “It could be that it’s an algorithm that is more than just a mathematical exercise, more like a law of nature. The grammar of how genes express themselves. It could mean a whole suite of patents when the applications are all worked out.”

  “Um-hmmm,” Bannet said, looking down again at Derek’s laptop, which was still at the financial page. Almost pathetic, really; except it must have been a fairly common story, so that Bannet would not necessarily be shocked or put off. He would simply be considering the investment on a risk-adjusted basis, which would take the present situation into account.

  Finally he said, “It looks very interesting. Of course it’s always a bit of a sketchy feeling, when you’ve gotten to the point of having all your eggs in one basket like this. But sometimes one is all you need. The truth is, I don’t really know yet.”

  Derek nodded in reluctant agreement. “Well, you know. We believe very strongly in the importance of therapies for the most serious diseases, and so we concentrated on that, and now we kind of have to, you know, go on from there with our best ideas. That’s why we’ve focused on the HDL upgrade. With this targeted delivery, it could be worth billions.”

  “And the HDL upgrade …”

  “We haven’t published yet. We’re still looking into the patent situation there.”

  Leo’s stomach tightened, but he kept his face blank.

  Bannet was even blanker; still friendly and sympathetic enough, but with that piercing eye. “Send me the rest of your business plan, and all the scientific publications that relate to this. All the data. I’ll discuss it with some of my partners here. It seems like the kind of thing that I’d like to get my partners’ inputs on. That’s not unusual, it’s just that it’s bigger than what I usually do on my own. And some of my colleagues are into agropharmacy stuff.”

  “Sure,” Derek said, handing over a glossy folder of material he had already prepared. “I understand. We can come back and talk to them too if you like, answer any questions.”

  “That’s good, thanks.” Bannet put the folder on the table. With a few more pleasantries and a round of handshaking, Derek and Leo were ushered out.

  Leo found he had no idea whether the meeting had gone well or poorly. And would that be a good sign or a bad one?

  The Earth’s atmosphere now contains a percentage of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that is higher than it has been since the end of the Cretaceous. This means more heat from the sun is being trapped in our air, and the high-pressure cells we saw this year are bigger, warmer, and loft higher in the tropical atmosphere. Many common jet-stream patterns have been disrupted, and the storms spiraling out of the Tropics have gained in both frequency and intensity. The hurricane season in the Atlantic ran from April to November, and there were eight hurricanes and six tropical storms. Typhoons in the East Pacific happened all year, twenty-two all told. Mass flooding resulted, but it should be noted that in other regions droughts have been breaking records.

  So the effects have been various, but the changes are general and pervasive, and the damage for the year was recently estimated at six hundred billion dollars, with deaths in the thousands. So far the United States has escaped major catastrophe, and attention to the problem has not been one of the administration’s central concerns. “In a healthy economy the weather isn’t important,” the President remarked. But the possibility is there that the added energy in the atmosphere could trigger what climatologists call abrupt climate change. How that might begin, no one can be sure.

  ANNA FLEW through the blur of a midweek day. Up and off, Metro to the office; pound the keys, wrestling with some faulty data from an NSF educational outreach program, the spreadsheet work eating up hours like minutes. Stop to pump, then to eat at her desk (it felt a little too weird to eat and pump at the same time), all the while data wrangling. Then a look at an e-mail from Drepung and Sucandra about their grant proposals.

  Anna had helped them to write a small raft of proposals, and it had indeed been a pleasure, as they did all the real work—and very well too—while she just added her expertise in grant writing, honed through some tens of thousands of grant evaluations. She definitely knew that world, how to sequence the information, what to emphasize, what language to use, what supporting documents, what arguments—all of it. Every word and punctuation mark of a grant proposal she had a feel for, one way or the other. It had been a pleasure to apply that expertise to the Khembalis’ attempts.

  Now she was pleased again to find that they had heard back from three of them, two positively. NSF had awarded them a quick temporary starter grant in the “Tropical Oceans, Global Atmosphere” effort; and the INDOEX countries had agreed informally to expand their Project Asian Brown Cloud (ABC) to include a big new monitoring facility on Khembalung, including researchers. This would cement a partnership with the START units already scattered all over South Asia. Altogether it meant funding streams for several years to come—tens of millions of dollars all told, with infrastructure built, and relationships with neighboring countries established. Allies in the struggle.

  “Oh that’s very nice,” Anna said, and hit the PRINT button. She cc’d the news to Charlie, sent congratulations to Drepung, and then got back to work on the spreadsheet.

  After a while she remembered about the printouts, and went around the corner to the Department of Unfortunate Statistics to get the hard copies.

  She found Frank inside, shaking his head over the latest.

  “Have you seen this one?” he said, gesturing with his nose at a taped-up printout of yet another spreadsheet.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “It’s the latest Gini figures, do you know those?”

  “No?”

  “They’re a measurement of income distribution in a population, so an index of the gap between rich and poor. Most industrialized democracies rate at between 2.5 and 3.5, that’s where we were in the 1950’s, see, but our numbers started to shoot up in the 1980’s, and now we’re worse than the worst third world countries. 4.0 or greater is considered to be very inequitable, and we’re at 5.2 and rising.”

  Anna looked briefly at the graph, interested in the statistical method. A Lorenz curve, plotting the distance away from perfect equality’s straight line tilted at forty-five degrees.

  “Interesting … So this is for annual incomes?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So if it were for capital holdings—”

  “It would be worse, I should think. Sure.” Frank shook his head, disgusted. He had come back from San Diego in a permanently
foul mood. No doubt anxious to finish and go home.

  “Well,” Anna said, looking at her printout, “maybe the Khembalis aren’t so bad off after all.”

  “How’s that?”

  Anna showed him the pages. “They’ve gotten a couple grants. It’ll make them some good contacts.”

  “Very nice, did you do this?” Frank took the pages.

  “I just pointed them at things. They’re turning out to be good at following through. And I helped Drepung rewrite the grant proposals. You know how it is, after doing this job for a few years you do know how to write a grant proposal.”

  “No lie. Nice job.” He handed the pages back to her. “Good to see someone doing something.”

  Anna returned to her desk, glancing after him. He was definitely edgy these days. He had always been that way, of course, ever since the day he arrived. Dissatisfied, cynical, sharp-tongued; it was hard not to contrast him to the Khembalis. Here he was, about to go home to one of the best departments in one of the best universities in one of the nicest cities in the world’s richest country, and he was unhappy. Meanwhile the Khembalis were essentially multigenerational exiles, occupying a tidal sandbar in near poverty, and they were happy.

  Or at least cheerful. She did not mean to downplay their situation, but these days she never saw that unhappy look that had so struck her the first time she had seen Drepung. No, they were cheerful, which was different than happy; a policy perhaps, rather than a feeling. But that only made it more admirable.

  Well, everyone was different. She got back to the tedious grind of changing data. Then Drepung called, and they shared the pleasure of the good news about the grant proposals. They discussed the details, and then Drepung said, “We have you to thank for this, Anna. So thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, but it wasn’t really me, it’s the Foundation and all the other organizations.”

  “But you are the one who piloted us through the maze. We owe you big time.”

  Anna laughed despite herself.

  “What?”

  “Nothing, it’s just that you sound like Charlie. You sound like you’ve been watching sports on TV.”

  “I do like watching basketball, I must admit.”

  “That’s fine. Just don’t start listening to that rap music okay? I don’t think I could handle that.”

  “I won’t. You know me, I like Bollywood. Anyway, you must let us thank you somehow for this. We will have you to dinner.”

  “That would be nice.”

  “And maybe you can join us at the zoo when our tigers arrive. Recently a pair of Bengal tigers were rescued off Khembalung after a flood. The papers in India call them the Swimming Tigers, and they are coming for a stay at the National Zoo here. We will have a small ceremony when they arrive.”

  “That would be great. The boys would love that. And also—” An idea had occurred to her.

  “Yes?”

  “Maybe you could come upstairs and visit us here, and give one of our lunchtime lectures. That would be a great way to return a favor. We could learn more about your situation, and, you know, your approach to science, or to life, or whatever. Something like that. Do you think Rudra would be interested?”

  “I’m sure he would. It would be a great opportunity.”

  “Well not exactly, it’s just a lunchtime series of talks that Aleesha runs, but I do think it would be interesting. We could use some of your attitude here, I think, and you could talk about these programs too, if you wanted.”

  “I’ll talk to the rimpoche about it.”

  “Okay good. I’ll put Aleesha in touch.”

  After that Anna worked on the stats again, until she saw the time and realized it was her day to visit Nick’s class and help them with math hour. “Ah shit.” Throw together a bag of work stuff, shut down, heft the shoulder bag of chilled milk bottles, and off she went. Down into the Metro, working as she sat, then standing on the crowded Red Line, Shady Grove train; out and up and into a taxi, of all things, to get to Nick’s school on time.

  She arrived just a little late, dumped her stuff, and settled down to work with the kids. Nick was in third grade now, but had been put in an advanced math group. In general the class did things in math that Anna found surprising for their age. She liked working with them; there were twenty-eight kids in the class, and Mrs. Wilkins, their teacher, was grateful for the help.

  Anna wandered from group to group, helping with multipart problems that involved multiplication, division, and rounding off. When she came to Nick’s group she sat down on one of the tiny chairs next to him, and they elbowed each other playfully for room at the round low table. He loved it when she came to his class, which she had tried to do on a semiregular basis every year since he had started school.

  “All right Nick quit that, show the gang here how you’re going to solve this problem.”

  “Okay.” He furrowed his brow in a way she recognized inside the muscles of her own forehead. “Thirty-nine divided by two, that’s … nineteen and a half … round that up to twenty—”

  “No, don’t round off in the middle of the process.”

  “Mom, come on.”

  “Hey, you shouldn’t.”

  “Mom, you’re quibbling again!” Nick exclaimed.

  The group cackled at this old joke.

  “It’s not quibbling,” Anna insisted. “It’s a very important distinction.”

  “What, the difference between nineteen and a half and twenty?”

  “Yes,” over their squeals of laughter, “because you should never round off in the middle of an operation, because then the things you do later will exaggerate the inaccuracy! It’s an important principle!”

  “Mrs. Quibler is a quibbler, Mrs. Quibler is a quibbler!”

  Anna gave in and gave them The Eye, a squinting, one-eyed glare that she had worked up long ago when playing Lady Bracknell in high school. It never failed to crack them up. She growled, “That’s Quibler with one b,” melting them with laughter, as always, until Mrs. Wilkins came over to join the party and quiet it down.

  After school Anna and Nick walked home together. It took about half an hour, and was one of the treasured rituals of their week—the only time they got to spend together just the two of them. Past the big public pool where they would go swimming in the summers, past the grocery store, then down their quiet street. It was hot, of course, but bearable in the shade. They talked about whatever came into their heads.

  Then they entered the coolness of their house, and returned to the wilder world of Joe and Charlie. Charlie was bellowing as he cooked in the kitchen, an off-key, wordless aria. Joe was killing dinosaurs in the living room. As they entered he froze, considering how he was going to signify his displeasure at Anna’s treasonous absence for the day. When younger this had been a genuine emotion, and sometimes when he saw her come in the door he had simply burst into tears. Now it was calculated, and she was immune.

  He smacked himself in the forehead with a compsognathus, then collapsed to the rug face first.

  “Oh come on,” Anna said. “Give me a break Joe.” She started to unbutton her blouse. “You better be nice if you want to nurse.”

  Joe popped right up and ran over to give her a hug.

  “Right,” Anna said. “Blackmail will get you everywhere. Hi hon!” she yelled in at Charlie.

  “Hi babe.” Charlie came out to give her a kiss. For a second all her boys hung on her. Then Joe was latched on, and Charlie and Nick went into the kitchen. From there Charlie shouted out from time to time, but Anna couldn’t yell back without making Joe mad enough to bite her, so she waited until he was done and then walked around the corner into the kitchen.

  “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 yo
u 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.