“It’s a lengthy process?” Ben hazarded.
Daniel conceded this. “It’s a difficult one. Crystallising a protein can take months if you’re ridiculously lucky. A grad student’s career if you’re not. Worst case scenario, ten years, which puts working this KBV mess into at least a twenty-year time frame. You see, what happens is, you take the protein out of its usual environment. Out of the body, and you put it into this solution where it’s going to turn into a crystal. Are you with me?”
Ben tried not to think about the implications of this, failed, and was moved to stare fixedly at his Macbook screen for longer than was probably acceptable. He swallowed a couple of times, looked up, and said, “Surprisingly, yes, but don’t ask me to repeat back to you or I’ll just do the face again.”
“Anything but the look of dogged inability to understand.” Daniel finished the can of coke, thumped it on the table top, and folded his arms in a poor disguise of trying to stay warm. “After you’ve isolated the protein in the solution you have to wait weeks to see if it works, if it crystallises. And then if it doesn’t, you have to start all over again and change some of the variables. It’s hit-and-miss.”
“I’m beginning to get the picture,” Ben said, trying not to sound doleful. “Do you want to go inside?”
“No, and I doubt you are. I doubt that.” Daniel rubbed his arms again. “One last thing on the crystallising subject. Okay? After you’ve actually succeeded in forming a crystal, you then use x-ray diffraction to see what it looks like.”
“X-ray diffraction,” Ben repeated, to show that he was still paying attention, although he was in actual fact not.
“If you make me start again I will hurt you with this mug and I won’t stop hurting you until we get thrown out,” said Daniel, who had clearly given up on his brain-to-mouth barrier and was concentrating on not twitching visibly.
“It’s just the name, it’s just the name,” Ben insisted, raising his arms. “I’m not doing the face, am I? This is not the expression of terrible incomprehension?” He pointed, and was immediately struck by a tsunami of self-awareness. “Oh good. I sound completely unprofessional.”
“Good, you’re much nicer this way,” Daniel said, showing his teeth in the kind of smile Ben usually associated with cocaine. “Okay. When you’ve examined your hard-won crystal you have to model based off the results. Computer model, don’t start making that face. What follows is generally something like uh, I thiiiiink it’s going to look like this. And then does it? And the answer is invariably, No. Shit. Try again.” He reached behind him for the espresso cup, but it had been taken away. “That had better be your level because I’ve just had my weapon removed.”
“And all that is to…find out what the protein that…KBV attaches to,” Ben tried, shoving his earlier revelations down under the carpet of his mind.
Daniel waved an airy hand, and immediately clamped his arms back around each other again. “Yeah, this doesn’t even begin to take you close to working out, to working out what epitopes on the viral envelope are interacting with the receptor protein, how it’s endocytosed, what signalling cascades are triggered—”
“Excessively scientific,” Ben warned. “You may want to pick up another mug and prepare to hit me with it.”
“Oh my god, Were you actually dropped on your head as a child?”
“No, but I think my father tried to feed me rat poison once,” Ben carefully filleted the original story and checked the time on his laptop. “Anyway, what you’re saying is—”
“We don’t know how the, the puzzle pieces actually fit together,” Daniel interrupted, “just that they do.”
“Okay.”
“For infection to take place the cell has to swallow up the virus, and we don’t know which of the oodles of options available it uses to do this. Okay?” He clapped his hands together in a gesture of victory and pointed violently at Ben’s face. “Ahh, that unfamiliar expression must be comprehension. I am never, ever teaching undergrads. Also we don’t know what happens in the cell when it realises, that oh shit, this is a virus.”
“Okay, I got that,” Ben conceded, closing his Macbook. “That is indeed the look of understanding. Well, mostly.”
“It’s also very hard for the body to even try to fight a KBV infection, as I understand it. Because it’s like lyssavirus in this respect. Hrm.” He looked at the ceiling, and a leaf flew past quite close to his face. “How do I translate this into hack-language?”
“Shorter words,” Ben said, automatically, “and put all the information at the beginning. First paragraph contains everything you need to carry the story. Sorry, go on.”
“So you lead with an abstract? That’s structure, not content. Not helpful.” Daniel stared at the ceiling again. “One of the reasons neurotrophic infections, like lyssavirus, like KBV, are so devastating is that the central nervous system is what’s called a privileged site. The immune cells are not really floating around there. Things are supposed to run smoothly there. The lymphocytes are there to stop things from getting to the CNS.”
“And with KBV they don’t but the immune cells can’t access it?” Ben asked, his heart sinking even further. The hour was almost up. He had a lot of words to look up, and a lot of rereading to do, but as far as he could tell, Leah was beyond fucked.
A taxi stopped on the far side of the narrow road and disgorged two old women in bright red hats.
“That’s your lot,” Daniel said briskly. Ben had the peculiar feeling that he’d been getting younger and more human over the course of the conversation, but with this he snapped back to the brittle, sharp, unapproachable scientist he’d been at the start. He brushed his hands together as if getting rid of crumbs, and got out of his seat again. “I hope I’ve cast light on the dark waters of your impossibly vast ignorance but I’m not confident that I have.”
“Right, hold on,” said Ben, reaching in his shirt pocket. “If you, if you happen to want to bang your head against the brick wall of my ignorance again, here—” he retrieved a card and handed it to Daniel with the same move that had become ingrained after years of late-night clubs. “—you can enjoy the fruitlessness of trying to educate the uneducatable again.”
“Your card?” said Daniel, taking it the way someone might take a dead mouse.
“Yes,” Ben confirmed, putting his Macbook back in his bag.
“Your card.”
“Yes.”
Daniel looked at it. “You’re a DJ.”
“Sometimes.”
Daniel stared down at him, and blinked once or twice. “What a prick,” he announced, and left.
“Shit, you’re awake,” Ben said, letting himself in. His phone said it was two in the morning, and his body clock said it was time he was horizontal, but Kingsley was sitting on his rolled-out futon and watching Trollhunter.
“Bullshit,” said Kingsley, who was not only awake but also fully-dressed down to his cycling gear, and eating Ben’s bread out of the bag. “I’m not awake. You’re hallucinating.”
“So if I lie down on my bed I’m not going to have a no homo moment?”
Kingsley got up and spread his arms. “The No Homo futon is all yours.”
“Was that my bread?” Ben added, falling onto the futon.
“It was,” Kingsley agreed, easily. He removed one trainer and threw it towards the door. “Now it is communal bread.”
“Did you get any more communal bread?”
Kingsley looked down at him and shook his head in disgust. “Man, you are petty. No, I did not get any more communal bread. I made you dinner, it is on top of the microwave, and now I am saving you from living exclusively on peanut-butter sandwiches. Where is your gratitude, huh?”
“Up my arse,” said Ben, crawling under his duvet with his shoes still on. “Why are you still awake?”
“Covering for Pierre,” Kingsley elaborated, throwing his other trainer at the door. “I had a delivery at midnight and when I got back Minnie was watching the trolls, so
I had to keep her company in case it traumatised her.”
The cat in question was stretched out in front of the TV, snoring.
“Very noble,” said Ben, reaching for his phone to stop himself from falling asleep on it. “Weren’t you meant to be seeing Aisha tonight?”
Kingsley dropped the bread bag on him. “Man, do you think I’m sitting here in the dark watching horror movies with a bag of bread because Aisha wants to see me again or do you think I’m covering Pierre’s shifts because Aisha does not want to see me again?”
“Sorry,” said Ben, turning over to stare at the film just as the adverts came on. “That sucks.”
Kingsley shook his head, and four feet of magnificent, cycle-endangering dreadlocks shook with it. “Every fucking time. Enjoy your bread, I’m going to sleep.”
With this, he bent down, scooped up the cat like a fluffy cushion, and carried her out of the room, purring like a road drill.
Ben stared blearily through his notifications: Ina was opening next week and wanted to make sure no one stepped on her toes when she was promoting; Molly apologising for still owing him ten quid which he’d actually forgotten about; Tasneen telling him to do his work; Jack asking if he or the rest of their entire class had a copy of class notes because he’d lost his Moodle login; and one email from an address he didn’t recognise.
To: "Ben M"
From: "Khoo, Daniel"
Subj: Treasure this, they’re fucking rare.
Since you gave me your card: sorry I was a dickbag for most of your interview. As you’ve probably guessed, I hate journalists with the cold-blooded fury of a thousand wronged and vengeful scientists and wouldn’t have actually agreed to doing something that stupid if Rebecca wasn’t my boss. She thinks she’s hilarious, which you also probably noticed, alongside the glaring empirical fact that she’s not.
Anyway, shouldn’t have taken that out on you or been deliberately obtuse to fuck with you. Also, I probably owe you for a large number of coffees, so if you want to hit me up for apology-caffeine (or apology-booze) at some point I promise I will not actually kill you with an espresso mug, probably.
Daniel. (Dr Khoo).
Bright and to his mind far too early in the morning, Ben sat on his futon with his back to the TV and his phone in his hand. The TV had been muted, but the current spate of images from possibly-Algeria — he’d been half-asleep when the noise from Kingsley’s insatiable curiosity started up — was distracting, and he had loins to gird.
Minnie took his sitting up as an invitation, and came over to push her arse into his face, purring as if nothing in life had ever been more satisfying than putting a huge fluffy grey tail into someone’s eyes. Ben tried to push her away, but she persisted.
“Thanks, cat,” said Ben, picking her up and throwing her a few feet.
Rrrp, said Minnie, sitting on his Macbook.
Ben gave up — the Macbook had been cat-sat enough times before — and made an effort to stop procrastinating on his phone call.
The line rang for so long he began to wonder if he’d misdialled, and when a breathless voice picked up he wished he had, because for a moment he completely blanked on what to say.
“Hi, er, my name’s Ben Martin, I’m doing a piece on KBV, and I was wondering if there was anyone I could—” was as far as he got before he was met with a bright, sparkling refusal.
“All the information we have available for the press is available on the press release section of the website,” said the press officer, pleasantly but with the right inflection to suggest she’d already used this phrase a hundred times this week. “I’m afraid we’re very, very busy at the moment, and we have a brief to provide the information in the press release packs only. When that policy changes and we have some more concrete information it will be put on the website.”
“Okay,” said Ben, pushing away the approaching Minnie with his bare toe, “but I actually, I was wondering, about the processes you have in place, and—”
“Every single piece of information regarding HPA Colindale,” said the press officer in a less friendly voice, “which is for public use is publicly available on our website, under the sections marked ‘press releases’ and ‘further information’, which is where I presume you got this number.”
“Yes,” said Ben, “and I’ve read them, but—”
“Then I’m afraid,” said the press officer grimly, “that I can’t help you.”
She hung up.
Ben looked at his phone for a while, fished out his Macbook before the cat could sit on it again, and opened the page titled ‘press releases’. He opened the one from a couple of months ago, titled, “Natalya Yagoda and team create more accurate blood screening test for KBV”, and reread it.
“You need a new press department,” Ben said, halfway through. “Most of this doesn’t even read like English.”
Minnie began licking his toe. Ben levered himself off the futon, Macbook in hand, and shoved past Kingsley’s bike to get into the kitchen. There was a post-it on the bread bin.
I O U 1 loaf shitty white bread
He opened the cupboard directly above the breadbin. There were three different brands of peanut butter, which meant that at least Kingsley had made an effort to replace that, even if he had turned it into an uncomfortable joke about the amount of variety in his diet.
He took down the right jar, pulled a tablespoon out of the sink, and retreated back to the living room-cum-bedroom.
Tasneen had, after a couple of days, progressed from bludgeoning him with emails to bludgeoning him with GTalk, which had the added advantage of popping up into whatever else he was doing to tell him to stop being lazy and do more work. Ben wasn’t yet sure how much he appreciated this, particularly when the notification came up in the middle of a conversation.
“I was out running and I tripped over a dog,” Molly explained, as soon as she sat down opposite him. The Princess had just opened, but Gareth — who was overseeing the whole afternoon and evening — wanted everyone there at the start, including the DJs who were closing the evening. Molly had a black eye and a crow’s wing headband sitting in her dyed-peach hair, and looked even further away with the fairies than usual.”
“You tripped over a dog?”
“He was okay!” Molly assured him, missing the point somewhat. “A really cute little black American cocker spaniel and so so friendly. He was called Butter.”
Blonk
“Was that you?” Molly added, looking at her own phone. “Mine doesn’t go blonk any more, it plays the Dogtanian theme, Ina changed it and I don’t know how to change it back, and it goes on forever, and I’ve forgotten how you put it in flight mode so it went off in the middle of the cinema yesterday. Oh.”
“No, it’s me,” Ben said, staring at his own phone. As agreed, they’d laid them face-down on the table and weren’t going to touch them unless someone actually called.
“I’m going to the loo-oo,” Molly added, getting up again and scooping up her phone. She’d worn a dress that once again made her look about fifteen, which didn’t go at all well with the blooming black eye and scraped knee in terms of getting her served at the bar, to Ben’s mind. She pointed her phone at him. “Will you get this stupid music off my phone when I get back though? I don’t even remember Dogtanian, Ina just found it on Youtube and said it was my life.”
“Sure,” said Ben, who was old enough to remember the show. “And if you see Gareth try to talk him out of this ‘keeping us here from three’ bullshit? He likes you, he’ll listen to you.”
“I’ll try-ee,” Molly said, nearly walking into the next table along.
Ben picked up his phone.
TASNEEN ALI: Did you call HPA?
BEN M: They basically told me to fuck off.
It wasn’t, Ben felt, an entirely inaccurate representation of the conversation.
TASNEEN ALI: Boo, you whore. What happened last time you just backed down, you got stuck with
the plague instead of getting Cat Fanciers or something.
BEN M: Not sure it would have worked on HPA. They’re not obligated.
Ben looked up: Molly had found Gareth in a corner, and was pointing at her black eye. He assumed she was giving him the full dog-tripping story in preparation for the ‘do we really need to be here before midnight’ approach, but she could just as easily be using it to illustrate why he ought to get his hair cut. Molly’s methods were not always the most linear.
TASNEEN ALI: Plenty of other people you could talk to.
BEN M: How many of them are going to tell me it’s already in the press release?
TASNEEN ALI: Try a different angle then. Talk to the patients.
Ben turned his phone back down to face the beer-sticky table and tapped his lower teeth with the edge of his thumbnail. Molly turned to him from her corner and made an exaggerated face of sadness and woe, reinforced with a thumbs down. Apparently Gareth was, today, immune to her.
Try a different angle, said Tasneen. Talk to patients.
Great.
Trapped in The Princess for an entire day, Ben had plenty of time to consider whether or not to follow his Study Buddy’s advice. By four he and Molly had exhausted every possible avenue of conversation, including whether or not Business Psych was more demanding than Journalism, whether volunteering at a cat sanctuary made up for the fact that she’d hitched her star to studying Business Psych in the first place, whether or not Ben would actually even try a dried apricot before determining them ‘inedible mummified hell fruit’, and whether or not Ben should make another attempt at growing a moustache considering how badly the last one had gone.
While one of the earlier bands set up around them, Molly perched herself on one of the high drinks tables and read one of her textbooks on her phone — or claimed she did — and Ben squatted under the table, wondering where the hell all the chairs had gone, and scrolled through Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Behance, Ello, and Scrapr trying to find something to hold his attention.
The Next Big One Page 5