He began to get the feeling there was something going on that he wasn’t wholly aware of.
Ben knocked on the open door.
Dr Khoo continued to dance.
He knocked on the door a little more loudly.
“WHAT,” said Dr Khoo, not turning around. He pulled out one headphone with his pinky, and slammed another drawer shut with his knee.
“Hi,” Ben said, lurking in the doorway. “Rebecca Lordes said you’d talk to me about KBV.”
“Oh fucking did she,” said Dr Knoo, wheeling around. He looked like a man on the brink of murder. He also looked somewhat younger than Ben had been expecting, although he was also acutely aware that his ability to judge the age of East Asian men had always been somewhat wanting, and knowing that made him feel like a dick. “Did she. I KNOW YOU’RE OUT THERE, YOU SWAMP FIEND.”
Slightly further down the corridor, Rebecca called back, “Protect the reputation of your employer and talk nicely to the journalist, Daniel.”
Ben began to feel extremely uncomfortable.
Rebecca laughed into her hand.
“Jour-nal-ist,” Dr Khoo said, raising both eyebrows at Ben with a display of incredulous bitchiness that he hadn’t seen since he went to a terrible drag show in his first year at university. “Really.”
“I’m your bo-oss,” Rebecca reminded him, out of his line of sight, and clearly enjoying herself. One of the heads in the corridor vanished back into its room, only to return with two more heads.
“Not for lo-ong,” Dr Khoo said under his breath.
“You’re just making busywork,” Rebecca trilled, from outside.
The suspiciously young Dr Khoo peeled off the final pair of nitrile gloves and threw them to one side, in the vague direction of the receptacle that had taken the other pairs. “Who are you?”
“Ben,” said Ben, “Ben Martin.”
“Alright, Ben Martin,” said Daniel, with a taut smile. “Why have you come to talk to a BDV specialist about KBV?”
“Because,” said Ben, glancing back at Rebecca Lordes and a corridor full of sniggering virologists, “I don’t have a chance of getting anyone at Colindale to talk to me.”
Dr Khoo shrugged his assent at this and, much to Ben’s surprise, began taking off his lab coat. “I have to give these samples a shittonne of time in that thing,” he explained, throwing the coat at the pile of papers. “And that machine makes noises that sound like hell is breaking through the wall. JENNY!”
One of the sniggering heads made a startled face and popped out of the doorway. “Wh—”
“Hail, minion, you’re looking after the centrifuge,” said Dr Khoo, shoving past her. “I’m going to talk to the jour-nal-ist.”
Jenny, who to Ben’s eyes looked about twelve, and who was probably around twenty-one, blinked. “What, really?”
“Really,” Dr Khoo said with an unpleasant smile. “Also, that wasn’t my responsibility.” He squeezed between the doorway and Ben, who stepped back to let him out, and pointed two fingers at Rebecca, who was leaning on a noticeboard, floppy with laughter. “One day I am going to end either your life or your career,” he said, “preferably both.”
“Good luck,” said Rebecca, and Ben couldn’t tell whether she was talking to him or to Dr Khoo.
“This way,” barked Dr Khoo, leading Ben back the way he’d just come. “You’ve got an hour and you have to buy me coffee.”
When they’d left the building Dr Khoo slowed down and calmed down somewhat. He said, “There’s that shit Italian place down on the corner,” and it was a testament more to Ben’s memory of the area than Dr Khoo’s descriptive skills that he knew precisely the place he meant.
It was crowded, and despite the cold wind which had finally crept up they were forced to huddle over the white, cast-iron table outside, which had been mysteriously quarantined away from the other, more inviting tables under the roof. Dr Khoo, clad only in his t-shirt and abruptly covered in goosebumps, looked as if he was regretting the decision already.
“I’m going to die of hypothermia,” he said flatly, when Ben asked if he was alright. “Go and get me the blackest coffee imaginable. Black like the soul of a Tory.”
Ben gave him a hesitant smile at this, and went.
When he returned Dr Khoo had successfully chased a family away from one of the more sheltered tables and was holding the territory with aggression and his feet up on Ben’s chair.
“How did you manage that?” Ben asked, putting a cardboard cup of inky coffee in front of the virologist.
“Ancient Chinese magic,” said Dr Khoo, dryly. He took his feet down. “You appear to have a milkshake.”
“It’s a cappuccino,” said Ben, a little defensive.
“Milkshake,” Dr Khoo said. “Right, what do you want to know about KBV? Bearing in mind that we have almost no information, it’s not my specialty, most of what you’ll have read already is pure speculation, and I don’t know what level of dumb I have to pitch this to.”
“Fairly dumb,” Ben admitted, as Dr Khoo took a sip of molten, night-dark coffee. “I failed GCSE biology twice.”
“Jesus Christ,” Dr Khoo said, either of the coffee or of Ben’s freely-given admission of scientific ignorance. “How do you even fail a GCSE?”
Ben refrained from excuses, or reasons, or saying anything to effect of having been in therapy. He also ignored his cappuccino, and checked the lights on the Kapture.
“Do you have some sort of a Dictaphone or something?” Dr Khoo added, gesturing at the empty table. “A notebook? Or have you got a photographic memory for things you don’t actually understand? I don’t want this conversation going into a newspaper full of bullshit inaccuracies that make me look like a moron.”
Ben pointed at the Kapture. “This is basically a Dictaphone.”
“Is it?” Dr Khoo looked non-plussed. “I thought it was a Fitbit. Anyway.” He inhaled more of the coffee. “Where should I start? What do you actually know? Actually, fuck that, you have basically just told me you know literally nothing about anything.”
“That’s not quite what I said,” Ben snorted. “But for the record: you don’t mind if I record this?”
Dr Khoo held up the coffee in benediction. “What are you going to do if I mind?”
“Panic and try shorthand, probably,” Ben suggested, wondering if he actually knew how to switch off the Kapture.
Dr Khoo raised his eyebrows again. “That sounds messy. Can you actually use shorthand?”
“In theory.”
“All right, keep recording it.” Dr Khoo pointed at Ben’s face the same way he’d pointed at Rebecca’s, but with a coffee in his hand adding further peril. “I want a copy of the transcript though.”
“You can have a copy of the article as well if you want,” said Ben, recklessly, and tried to remind himself to actually make a transcript of the recording. The wind picked up and blew a disconcerted couple into the seats they’d vacated.
“Can I leave snotty comments on it in red pen?”
“Don’t you get to do that anyway?” Ben asked, thinking back to Minion Jenny. “Students and that?”
“God no, they don’t let me teach,” Dr Khoo snorted, taken aback. “And I don’t want to. Students are horrible annoying idiots who can’t handle their own hangovers yet and think you won’t notice them copying-and-pasting from Wikipedia.”
“True. And yes, I would appreciate any corrections you have.” Ben took a deep breath. “Right, for the record again, this interview is with Dr Daniel Khoo from UCLH Virology department, the date is…automatically included in the file, good, because I can’t remember what day it is. Dr Khoo—”
“Daniel, for fuck’s sake,” said Dr Khoo, nearly spitting coffee. “Is this nineteen fifty-two? I’m twenty-six, not sixty, no one is required to call me Dr anything unless they’re from HMRC or my racist next door neighbour.”
“Twenty-six,” Ben repeated, fascinated. By his reckoning, that meant Dr Khoo had started his degree
at an age most people were still banging their heads against their GCSEs. He took out his Macbook and opened it with an apologetic look. “Right. Um. To recap for my notes…from my notes — there’s been some suggestion that there are superficial similarities between rabies and KBV, is there…is there any water in that theory, I mean, does it…work?”
“Oh, please.” Daniel finished his coffee and gave the bottom of the cup a disappointed look.
“You can have mine, if you want.”
“And get diabetes? No.” He took the cup anyway. “It’s complete bollocks. Well, not wrong per se, just misleading reporting, and an incomplete understanding of how they work. I mean, take lyssavirus — rabies to you hacks — it’s a completely different shape to what’s been isolated as potentially the KBV.”
“Shape?” said Ben, who hadn’t been expecting this.
Daniel drank some of his cappuccino and made an expressive face. He opened his mouth once or twice, sighed, and said, “Yes, shape. Lyssavirus infectious particles are vaguely cylindrical, they have helical symmetry.”
“What?” Ben said, gamely.
“Please pretend to be a vaguely intelligent human being.”
“Er,” said Ben. From the look on Daniel’s face, he also realised that his brain-to-mouth barrier wasn’t functioning at full power, but to his credit he simply ploughed on regardless.
“The possible KBV particles aren’t bullet-shaped, they’re not polyhedral like most other human-infecting viruses — they’re more similar to HIV, which is — like that, a knobbly sphere. Like a football with warts.” Daniel took a larger gulp of the coffee. “Is that dumb enough for you?”
“I…I didn’t realise they were all flat-sided…al,” Ben said, at last. “I think the only thing I’ve seen a picture of is—”
“Ebola?”
“Yeah.” Ben thought about it. “Okay, I mean, I’ve seen those plush virus things they do in museums but I didn’t know if those were even slightly accurate.”
“The only reason you’ve seen a picture of ebola is because ebola is a fucking weird shape for a human virus,” said Daniel, and he knocked back most of the cappuccino in one go. “Also, you generally start with a classification. That was disgusting.”
“So,” Ben said, trying to get him back on track. “Football with warts?”
Daniel nodded. “Only with a whippy little tail. Basically, a fat-headed sperm with warts.” He shoved the cappuccino cup inside the coffee cup and stared at Ben for a moment. “You’re looking at me like I have something on my face, can I guess you’re not following me?”
“No, I think I am. Sorry, go on. I’m just not used to the terminology.”
“You’re going to need to get used to it PDQ if you’re writing this thing,” Daniel said, pointing the empty cups at him. “Also, I’m going to need a lot more coffee. I am dumbing this down to idiot-level, if it gets any more simplified I will have to start drawing cartoons. I can’t get onto RNA vs DNA and — oh God, it’s like talking to a dog.”
Obediently, Ben got up and ordered more coffee. This time he got himself a black coffee, and left it in front of him like a question.
“Ugh. Alright.” Daniel swilled coffee briefly around his mouth. “I hate milk. God. Do you know how long it’s been since I slept? Right. The superficial similarities are very misleading. KBV is probably neurotrophic, sure, and it’s transmitted in part via the salivary gland but, but,” he stopped, and took off his sunglasses. “Shit, did I bring these with me? Okay, it’s a large genome, again like HIV — encoding more information, proteins no one’s yet identified, ones which are probably synthesised after the — you’re not going to follow me. But that’s more conjecture, so if you include it I will find you and I will hurt you.”
Ben said blandly, “Just a note for the recording, I am indeed giving Dr Khoo—”
“Daniel will do fine, thank you.”
“Giving Daniel the same look of blank incomprehension I was earlier, and he looks like he wants to strangle me.” He pushed his own coffee towards the frustrated scientist, and waited. The wind changed direction momentarily, throwing an empty plastic bag against their legs along with a vanguard of early fallen leaves.
“I was thinking actually I’d like to hit you on the head with a textbook,” Daniel corrected. “One of the bigger ones I was reserving for giving Lordes a permanent medical leave with.”
“I cannot imagine why science reporting is described as fraught,” Ben muttered.
Daniel stopped with the coffee cup raised to his face, and pointed at Ben’s again. “Because you typewriter-monkeys just write down whatever occurs to them after a night on cheap meth and then ascribe it to some poor fucker who has the appropriate letters after his name and then ruin his reputation.”
“Anyway, I’m not a science journalist.” Ben said, feebly. He didn’t continue with the explanation, and Daniel didn’t appear to be listening anyway.
“Yes,” he said eventually, after studying Ben for a minute. “I can tell. So, where was I?”
“Explaining that KBV is more like HIV than rab—lyssavirus.”
He heaved an enormous, put-upon sigh. “There you go, putting words in my mouth. I didn’t say that, did I? You can rewind your recording and check, I’ll wait here. Go ahead. That isn’t what I said.
“Evidently I wasn’t following you,” said Ben, who hadn’t figured out the playback function yet and was hoping he’d be able to get the hang of it before he actually needed to laboriously type up a transcript.
“I could handcuff you to my belt and you still wouldn’t follow me,” Daniel lamented. “Come on, a child could grasp this. It’s not complicated.”
“Beg to differ,” Ben said, “but you explain and I’ll try and fill the gaps in my knowledge with Google when I get home.”
Daniel raised his eyebrows yet again. “Google is not big enough for the task.” He massaged his face briefly, and shoved his sunglasses back into his hair in defiance of the rain which had just begun to fall. “Okay. KBV is not more like HIV than lyssavirus. It is like itself, which isn’t the best description but…fuck you, you’re the one with a deficit in his intellect.”
“Scientific education.”
“No, I think you have a very serious problem with your brain,” said Daniel without apparent malice. “Okay. It has been more or less impossible to get a firm idea of what KBV is because it is a complete whore to work with in lab conditions. Very fragile, very temperamental — I’m working with BDV, and — bornavirus, before you give me that look again — I’m working with borna, and it is a fiddly impossible nightmare to grow and hates being in-lab.” He squinted at the falling rain, as if remembering something, and went on, “KBV is an even bigger pig. Partly because you have to factor in all the Racal stuff, and partly because — you’re doing it again.”
Ben couldn’t help making an exasperated noise. “I am not, I swear, this is just my face.”
A very loud and very large motorbike passed them on the road, throwing up a cloud of smoke the same colour as the sky, and scaring a pigeon into the café. Two small children immediately rose to chase it out.
“Okay,” said Daniel, conversationally, as if the interruption hadn’t happened, “I think I have discerned your level now.”
“If you make caveman noises at me I’m going to be very disappointed,” said Ben. He hadn’t really envisioned his first proper journalistic interview being either this long, or this full of complaints about what he’d previously considered to be an at least functional level of intelligence.
“See now you’re flirting,” said Daniel, getting to his feet. “Tragically, I have to pee. Stay put.”
“This is not how I flirt. I. I. What? Stop it,” Ben mumbled, confused and more than a little annoyed, but Daniel had already gone inside, leaving him alone with the laptop and several people staring at him.
He was gone longer than Ben would have expected, and he contemplated asking any one of the seven people he could see online how e
xactly it was that he flirted with people, before realising that none of them would have a clue because they’d never met him before he started seeing Maggie.
Daniel returned, replete with a can of coke. How much caffeine he felt his body needed was something Ben was beginning to find a concern, and he’d only been speaking to the man for under an hour.
“Polycistronic transcription?” Daniel suggested, sliding back into his seat.
“No. Not a clue.”
“Receptors?” Daniel hugged his own upper arms as the wind picked up again.
“Sort of?” Ben lied. “Locks and keys?”
The face Daniel made suggested strongly that Ben hadn’t been very convincing, but what he said was: “I’ll try. Lyssavirus and konebogetvirus infect some of the same cells. That is their only similarity at viral level. The symptoms at a macro level are in some respects similar but that doesn’t mean the causes are; ascribe otherwise and you might as well be a homeopath.”
“…I’m not going to go there.”
“I will murder you with this mug,” said Daniel, referring to an espresso cup abandoned on the table behind them, “if you profess to there being ‘something in’ homeopathy.”
“Not even considering it, I promise,” said Ben, thinking guiltily of his mother and his step-mother.
“In theory it might be more like borna, which is what I’m working with.” Daniel pointed the coke can at his sternum. “But it attaches to different receptors. KBV attaches to a heat-shock protein. At least, there’s a theory that it does, so possibly ‘allegedly’ attaches. Not one anyone’s identified yet, unfortunately, so once again, this is all conjecture. And not one anyone’s likely to for a while — did I kick you?”
“No?” Ben said, surprised.
“You look like someone just kicked you,” said Daniel, with a somewhat mean smile.
Ben groaned. “It’s just my face. Go on.”
“Your face is disconcerting.”
“I’ve been called worse. Go on.”
Daniel dropped the subject with apparent reluctance. “The last I heard, there was a group of biochemists at CDC trying to crystallise it, which is the kind of process which is not going to happen overnight, if you fo—you don’t follow me, why am I even asking.”
The Next Big One Page 4