That was the signal for everyone to start grabbing plates, utensils, and whatever combination of things they were planning to eat for dinner. Mahir ate like he was starving, and the rest of us weren’t much better. I wasn’t the only one who understood what Mahir’s arrival meant. This might be the last peaceful meal we had for a while, and none of us wanted to be the one to disrupt it.
Cramming six people around Maggie’s table was surprisingly easy. I’ve never known anyone who entertained as much as she does, or was as willing to adjust for strangers on a moment’s notice. Being in her kitchen was almost like being in one of those old pre-Rising TV shows, the ones where everyone seemed to wind up sitting around eating from the same bowl of mashed potatoes and talking about their day. We didn’t have mashed potatoes, and I wasn’t interested in sharing the Aloo Gobi, but we did have rice and samosas and other things to pass around. Mahir turned out to be surprisingly good at talking to Kelly, who got a little more relaxed with every minute that passed.
The best intentions weren’t enough to stop the clock. All too soon, we were putting down our forks, finishing our drinks, and falling into an expectant silence. Maggie stood, starting to clear the table; Alaric and I moved to help her. She waved me back to my seat. “Stay where you are,” she said. “You’re going to need to ride herd on this madhouse, and that works better when you don’t have something to distract yourself.” She didn’t wave Alaric back down. I guess she figured he could do his part from the sink if he had to.
Mahir cleared his throat. “I’ll just go get a few things, shall I?”
“I think it’s about that time,” I agreed. “Get ready to explain some crazy science, Doc.”
Kelly smiled a little. “It’ll be my pleasure.”
Maggie returned to the table, handing me a Coke as she sat down to my left. Alaric sat next to Becks, leaving a space between us for Mahir. The air in the kitchen seemed to be getting heavy, pressing down on us like a lead weight.
It was almost a relief when Mahir returned with an armload of manila file folders, their contents bristling with multicolored tab dividers. At least this meant that we weren’t going to be waiting anymore. “I have virtual copies of everything here,” he said, dropping the files onto the table without any preamble. “I didn’t want to e-mail things, since there was a chance I was being watched after what happened with Dr. Christopher.”
“The Australian?” I asked.
Mahir nodded. “Precisely. I might not have been under surveillance before that, but the odds increased rather substantially after I got someone deported. That’s when I realized it might be best for everyone if I came here.”
“Makes sense.” I glanced toward Alaric and Becks, saying, “One of the scientists Mahir went to talk to about Dr. Abbey’s research got kicked out of the country.”
Alaric whistled, long and low. “That’s not fooling around.”
“No, it’s not,” said Mahir, with dry gravity. “What we have here is a combination of the material that was originally sent to me, the material provided by Doctors Tiwari and Christopher, some supplemental research I was able to request from Dr. Shoji of the Kauai Institute of Virology before I felt it was unsafe to make any further out-of-country contacts, and finally, the files I was able to retrieve from Professor Brannon’s mail drop before it was shut down. I don’t have copies for everyone, but there’s enough here to keep us all predicting the end of the world until well past dawn.”
“Who’s Professor Brannon?” asked Becks. “Because I’m feeling a bit like I missed a memo somewhere.”
“Professor Brannon…” Alaric frowned. “He was a world-renowned expert in the behavior of Kellis-Amberlee. He spent his entire professional career identifying and studying viral substrains. He…” Alaric’s eyes went wide. “He shot himself last week. It was a devastating blow to the epidemiological community. No one saw it coming.”
“I’m afraid that was my fault.” Mahir handed him one of the file folders. “He’d been studying the virus in lab conditions. He’d never had the time to devote to studying it in the wild. I suppose we all require some measure of specialization in order to keep our heads above water.”
Alaric started flipping through the folder in his hand, eyes narrowing in a focused “the rest of the world might as well not be here” way. I used to see that look on George’s face a lot.
Kelly, meanwhile, looked horrified. “Professor Brannon is dead?” she asked. She sounded genuinely stunned. “But… but… Professor Brannon can’t be dead. He can’t be.”