Dave picked up the line again, “…although there is one party determined that the fewer people visit the country now, the better. Barry Spivens, UKIP representative for Torridge in North Devon, points out: ‘it’s not as if we don’t know where this came from; letting immigrants into this country without proper health tests is a mistake’.”
“Oh shut up,” Ben mumbled, from around some bread.
“Glenda Phelps, from Warwick, is concerned that,” said Katy, picking up a sheet of paper, “‘people who’ve lived good lives and taken proper precautions will be losing out as the NHS focuses on this degenerates’ plague’. Well, not sure if the spread of it entirely agrees with your views there, Glenda, but it is a concern that the health service might not be able to cope with all the cases being identified. Dave.”
“In West Bromwich, a hospital previously marked for demolition is now in the process of being converted into a secure ward for advanced cases — human rights groups say that ‘shoving patients into a condemned building is in breach of their right to adequate care’, the local papers say ‘they’re going to die anyway’, and local residents associations have raised the question of whether the hospital is adequately secure to prevent infection from making it into the local community; Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council would like to make it clear that the hospital is not condemned, it was merely marked for demolition in order to update the premises, which has now had to be postponed.”
“Our news special this Sunday evening,” said Katy, reading off the date, “Sputum tests, quarantine wards, the inexorable spread of an Uzbek disease: has KBV affected you or your family? Please call in on 08XX XXX XXXX, or visit our website, at www.XXX.com/KBV. Or you can tweet, @newsbackXXX”
“One final request, from the NHS and from us here at XXX,” said Dave, “if you suspect you may have been exposed to KBV — if you have any concerns about it — please follow standard safety precautions: don’t kiss, don’t share toothbrushes, don’t engage in unprotected sex, sterilise any area you may have bled, cover any open wounds or sores, and see a pharmacist for a sputum test as soon as you can.”
As the adverts came on, Kingsley said, “You missed a bit earlier where France were talking about border controls, Sweden was talking about quarantine encampments in the woods, and America had a man shooting people who came within spitting distance because they were gonna infect him.”
“Surprise,” Ben muttered, pushing more bread into his mouth.
“Yeah,” Kingsley said, “he wasn’t exactly shooting indiscriminately either.”
“Let me guess,” Ben said, swallowing. “Not shooting white people?”
“Ding ding. You win dinner.” Kingsley got up, and took the bag of bread with him.
Ben gave a feeble punch to the air. “Hooray, everything’s awful.”
“Where’d you go?”
“Dalston.”
“D’you meet any girls?”
“None I hadn’t met before and none I want to meet again,” Ben slumped back on the futon. “Also, did you not just see that on TV? What’s the point in meeting anyone? It’s like, nineteen-fifties teen romance. No kissing. Just hold hands and hope.”
After a vaping session outside the college building which extended from “nerve-steadying” to “procrastinating”, Ben fished out his phone and felt around in his pockets for the scrap of paper on which he’d written a phone number for a leading light in an industry he’d not been aware existed until earlier that week.
“Bleh,” Ben said, after a minute of searching failed to turn up the piece of paper. He laid his phone down on the bench in front of him with the Londoner’s habitual stab of anxiety that someone was going to come and scoop it up in the five seconds he wasn’t in skin contact with it.
The scrap of paper turned out to be, against all reason but in accordance with every article of Sod’s law, inside the pocket he’d checked in first.
“What I don’t get,” Tasneen said, as Ben picked up his phone again, “is why you can’t just email them like a normal person.”
“Phone calls get a better rate of response,” Ben muttered, trying to copy out the number from the scrap of paper onto his phone.
“You mean they talk to you to make you stop calling them,” Tasneen snorted, leaning against the wall. “You know it’s going to snow next week?”
“I’ll stock up on soup,” Ben said, missing a digit. “Fuck.”
“D’you even eat soup?”
“God. Tasneen, can you just…dial that, please?” Ben passed her the phone and the scrap of paper. “I’ve fucked it up about ten times, there’s too many bloody numbers.”
Tasneen raised her eyebrows. “I thought,” she said, dialling, “it had more to do with your hands shaking. You want to see a doctor.”
“I do,” Ben said, “regularly. It’s just fucking cold.”
“It’s not that cold.”
“Yeah, says the girl wearing a fucking…Wookiee hide or whatever that coat’s lined with.”
Tasneen passed his phone back as it began to ring, and gave him a smug look. “We could just go inside.”
He shook his head. Someone too close to where he was standing was having an animated and ill-informed conversation about the difference between KBV and AIDS; their friends were shouting them down, hung up on how, like, no one had AIDS any more but everyone could have KBV even if they weren’t—
The person on the end of the line picked up.
“Roger Parsons.” It was phrased somewhere between a question and a statement.
“Hello, Mr Parsons, Ben Martin here, just kind of wanted to talk to you a bit about strategy.”
“Uh-huh. What…kind of strategy, exactly?”
Ben leaned back against the massive windows, and shivered. “Well, I’m really interested in some of your previous work — how effective less publically-advertised approaches to ‘need creation’ have been, whether you have a kind of structure to, say, crisis-engineering and how much of what you do is improvisation on the spot?”
“Right. Who are you, exactly?”
“Ben Martin,” said Ben, for a second time.
“I’m sorry, that name doesn’t ring any bells. How did you get this number?”
“One of your former colleagues gave it to me,” Ben said. He didn’t mention that the colleague in question had done it mainly to stop Ben from calling him every hour when he was trying to sleep, and that it had come very close to being, instead, a change of phone number and a conversation with the police.
“Did they.” Roger Parsons did not sound impressed. “And why exactly did you want to know this?”
“I’m a business psychology student,” said Ben, thinking of Molly, “and I’m supposed to be writing about real-life applications of crisis-engineering for my final project. If I’m honest, I think I’m struggling with this a bit, and everyone kind of agreed that you were the man to talk to about …”
Tasneen leaned in closer to listen.
“You want to know about improvisation,” said Roger Parsons. “Under what circumstances?”
“When you’re given,” Ben said, pushing Tasneen away, “a portfolio of possibilities for, say, engineering a, oh, a minor outbreak of, of mumps or chickenpox, how do you go about ensuring a good spread without really endangering the truly vulnerable, what do you do if things get out of hand a bit?”
There was a very long silence.
“Mr Martin,” said Roger Parsons, icily. “To begin with, no one in their right mind would take a crisis-engineering approach to mumps. It still kills children in the developing world. It would be wildly unethical to use a disease in this line of work, and too unpredictable. As for improvisation: no. Under no circumstances would anyone — it’s the opposite of what this job is for. We create training situations and at XXX we do not put participants under unacceptable levels of risk.”
“That’s interesting, Mr Parsons,” Ben said with a mild, bald-sounding triumph, studiously borrowed from Phil Jacy’s TV appeara
nces, “because I have some documents from XXXXX/XXXXXXX which suggest they’ve very much got the wrong end of the stick about what your company does.”
Roger Parsons hung up.
“Whoops,” said Tasneen. “Didn’t quite get that one.”
Ben shrugged. “I dunno, I think I’m starting to get the hang of this.”
February’s parting gift to the city of London was an abrupt, three-day sneeze of snow which closed everything in the way that snow in the south of England always did. Ben used this as a further excuse to remain indoors and call more increasingly annoyed professionals in fields which he hadn’t previously known existed, much to Kingsley’s disgust.
“I still go out,” Kingsley said, kicking snow off the tires of his bike.
“College is closed,” Ben said, cross-legged in front of the silent news and leafing through an industry catalogue for XXXXXX, ‘trial designers with experience’. “Got a dry spell on bookings because Molly’s putting in extra hours with the crazy cat ladies.”
“You could book yourself some gigs,” Kingsley snorted, removing his gloves.
“Gareth’s very politely been telling people I’m unreliable and unprofessional,” said Ben. His stomach gurgled. “Molly is generally good at counteracting the Gareth Effect, but while she’s fondling kittens I can’t really do anything.”
Kingsley shoved a carrier bag under the front wheel of his bike, and pulled off his scarf. “Fuck are those for?”
“I have to bother these people about some trials they ran in Tashkent,” said Ben, talking mostly into the neck of his hoodie. He made a conscious effort to imitate Dr Bill’s voice: “It will be fun.”
“Yeah,” Kingsley said dubiously. “Alright then.”
“So in the area of records-keeping on your trial data,” Ben asked, his hoodie balled up in his stomach and Minnie rolling about by his feet, entranced by nothing, “what’s the statute of limitations on having it readily accessible for future use?”
“We don’t make that information available to the public, Mr Martin,” said the PR wonk, with a smooth, false laugh.
“No, I mean for the security of the data itself, so you can refer back to it in future,” said Ben, trying to keep a wince out of his voice as the cat seized upon his foot. “Is it on-site? Is there a backup off-site?”
“You’re not trying to sell us Cloud services are you, Mr Martin? We have a very good deal already.”
Ben tried to pry Minnie off his foot. “Just curious as to the redundancy levels associated with finished trials, and how long you keep information after you’ve made the report—”
“Well,” said the PR wonk, audibly ruffled, “XXXXXX does follow up on all experimental trials to ensure the wellbeing of our volunteers—”
The phrase since that lawsuit ate into the silence that followed.
“Was that fun?” Kingsley asked him, emerging from the bathroom without bothering to look even a little like he hadn’t been eavesdropping.
March had come in less like a lion and more like an incontinent water buffalo, and, currently freed of any obligation to stand in the rain waiting for buses or stand outside pubs feeling irritated, Ben slept the sleep of the satisfied and unusually soundly-fed.
Bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep
“Whuzhghfuck,” Ben said, reaching for his phone. It was still very much dark.
Bleep bleep bleep
“SHUT UP,” Kingsley groaned, audible from his bedroom.
Ben successfully located his phone and slapped the little green telephone symbol without registering anything other than the end of the horrendous noise. He had every intention of snapping no at whichever idiot friend wanted him to go out and then hanging up, but the opportunity didn’t arise.
“Morning,” rasped DeWalt.
“It’s fucking half-past three,” said Ben, who’d only just grasped what time it was himself.
“SHUT UP,” Kingsley repeated.
“Time for a little conference,” DeWalt said, as if they were best friends and had been planning this conversation all along. “Progress update, Ben, tell me: have you actually done anything about your sad little conspiracy theory or are you wallowing in self-pity? I don’t see any of your articles on the Graun but perhaps I’m just not quick enough to catch them.”
“Fuck off,” Ben growled.
“All in due time,” DeWalt said, apparently amused. “I’ll trade you: I’ve got a nice house and a nice car and you have an extant shut-up offer. How’d you like to be in the same boat as me?”
“I’d rather be in a fucking sewer,” Ben snapped.
“See, I called around first,” said DeWalt, happily. “I hear you have a sister in the secure wards. So all this dogged digging is just some delusional grudge match against the industry for not saving your beloved little sis, am I right?”
“She’s older than me and fuck off,” Ben said, feeling his arms shake.
“JUST FUCKING HANG UP I’M TRYING TO SLEEP,” Kingsley complained. The sound of his aggravation was oddly comforting: at least Ben could be sure he hadn’t just imagined the entire phone call. “I CAN HEAR EVERY BLOODY WORD.”
Ben tasted bile in the back of his throat and felt his face growing hotter.
“The truth is,” DeWalt said, clearly enjoying herself, “you don’t have anything because there’s nothing to be had. You’re as mad as she is and probably just as infected. I’d get myself tested, if I were you, if you can face increasing the caseload like some selfish, whiny baby. Or just skip to the part where you abandon all responsibilities and roam around hospital corridors feeling sorry for yourself.”
“Nothing?” Ben asked, hearing his own voice shake.
“Mm.”
“I’ve got nothing?” Ben repeated, slightly louder.
“Right now,” said DeWalt, “you don’t even have a name for yourself.”
“Fuck you,” Ben snapped. “I have a crisis-engineering company with links to your sodding benefactors and a trial management company. I have people who remember taking on misfiled trial data and trial nurses who remember treating people with KBV-symptoms in XXXXX/XXXXXX wards and an unpublished pile of fucking papers on replicating hybridisation and consultations with filo and lyssa experts and funding for latency work with Dr Crawford and a source from XXXXXX who remembers being told not to follow up on the Tashkent trial and I have every fucking intention of RAMMING IT INTO XXXXX/XXXXXXX’s FUCKING ARSE.”
“Good,” said DeWalt, pleasantly. “I’d hurry, if I were you. Goodnight.”
Kingsley’s door banged open. “Ben I don’t give a fuck if you’ve got evidence the moon landings were fucking faked I AM TRYING TO SLEEP.”
When he’d gone, Ben lay awake on the futon, staring up at the blurry ceiling.
He had the horrible feeling he’d just done something incredibly stupid, and he wasn’t quite sure who he ought to tell.
In the morning, Ben walked around the kitchen in a tight circle, Minnie following him like an aggressively fluffy comet, with an untouched cup of tea in his hand. Should he call Dr Bill? It seemed, despite the age gap between them hitting only a decade, a little like calling his dad — if Ben’s dad had been the kind of person he actually ever called in a crisis. Daniel would call him an idiot. Molly would sympathise, and provide no helpful advice, and probably call him an idiot.
As his circle came to a stuttering halt and Ben mentally scrolled through his contacts list, he realised that there wasn’t actually anyone who wouldn’t call him an idiot, possibly because he had, in fact, been a spectacular idiot. In the end, smarting with a hot-cheeked sense of humiliation that refused to go away, Ben decided to take his usual course of action, and not to tell anyone.
For the next three days it seemed to vanish: Dr Bill was busy fighting people on TV; Daniel was complaining about the impossibility of making Borna do anything at all; Natalya appeared to be gone and as far as Ben knew was still trying to contrive some kind of a solution with nothing but theory. Kingsley complained ab
out the noise but eventually settled. Molly got them a gig with someone who wasn’t Gareth and didn’t care what Gareth said and coincidentally paid slightly better than Gareth. News of increased demands for sputum tests failed to go away, apparently just to make Ben feel guilty about his refusal; extra testing facilities opened in Newcastle.
Amanda DeWalt published nothing.
Ben was contemplating exhaling some of his held breath when he reached college and found Sherazi waiting by the front doors.
“You.”
“What?” Ben stopped in the middle of the street.
“Get out of the road, you idiot.”
Ben inched onto the pavement before anything could run him over.
“Come on.” Sherazi led him up the stairs, two at a time, and he struggled to keep up. He wasn’t quite sure he wanted to keep up at all. There was a horrible animation in Sherazi’s face and the omnipresent coffee was absent from her hands.
When they reached her office — the journalism staff room — Sherazi jerked her head at Victoria. “Go on.”
She gave Ben a friendly smirk as she left, which did nothing but accelerate the liquefaction of his bowels.
“What,” Ben repeated, remaining by the door. “What’s happened, what have—”
Sherazi picked up a copy of something with a red top and large letters.
“EXCLUSIVE: KBV AN ENGINEERED TRAINING DISEASE ACCIDENTALLY RELEASED ON UNSUSPECTING STUDENTS,” Sherazi read.
“What,” said Ben, leaning on the door. “What. The what?”
Amanda DeWalt had been chasing sources.
“Have a seat,” said Sherazi, shoving one at him.
Ben collapsed onto it and hugged his bag onto his lap.
“A source close to the company calls it ‘Not so much a web of conspiracy as a series of endless cock-ups’,” Sherazi read, “and we call it irresponsible. The failure at any level to check what XXXXX/XXXXXXX were working with shines a damning light on lack of regulation in the pharmaceutical industry. The government must act to ensure these greedy drug-sellers are brought to account for endangering our lives.”
The Next Big One Page 41