“Yes, absolutely,” said Director Swenson. “Now, to what do we owe the honor of this visit?”
“To get a little background, make sure we’re on the same page and everything, you remember my sister, Georgia Carolyn Mason?” Becks winced at the sound of George’s name, probably thinking of my recent tendency to fly off the handle whenever George came up in conversation. In the back of my head, George snorted with brief amusement but didn’t say anything. This was my party. She was going to let me be the one to send out the invitations.
Director Swenson nodded. “I’ve seen her file. Her death was—any death is tragic, but what she accomplished, even after the point of initial amplification, was—it was amazing. You must be very proud.”
“She died in the field,” I said, as flatly as I could. “Just the way she would have wanted to go.”
“I’m sure that must be a great comfort to you.” He sounded like he meant it, too. My hand clenched tighter on Becks’s thigh. It took every inch of self-control I had to peel my fingers away. She didn’t make a sound, even though the way I was squeezing must have hurt.
“To be honest, I’d rather have her alive and pissed off than dead and happy,” I said, putting my hands flat on the table before I could grab hold of Becks again. “If you’ve seen her file, you must know she suffered from retinal Kellis-Amberlee.”
“Yes, I saw that. It’s amazingshe accomplished so much, given her disability.”
I somehow managed to smile at him. I may never know how I did that. “She did a lot with her life, it’s true. Now I’ve got to soldier on and take care of the things she wasn’t able to finish.”
“Oh?” Director Swenson gave me an attentive look. “What was she working on?”
“Reservoir conditions. See, she knew a lot of people through her support groups and mailing lists—”
Support groups? asked George, sounding horrified. I never joined a support group in my life.
I ignored her. “—and she started noticing this crazy pattern.” Was it my imagination, or was Director Swenson going still? “It was like her friends died faster than anybody else’s. I mean, even faster than my friends, and most of my friends are Irwins, which is sort of like waving a big red flag in the face of Darwinism. So she started to dig.”
“Funny, I don’t remember seeing any received queries in her file,” said Director Swenson. His voice had gone completely blank, neither excited nor cold. The voice of a man in the process of disconnecting.
“She didn’t query the CDC,” said Becks, before I could open my mouth. I decided to let her take the conversation and run. Her training was better for this bluff than mine was. “She figured that if there wasn’t a pattern, she didn’t want to bother you, and if there was…” She let the sentence trail off before lifting her shoulders in a “What are you going to do?” shrug, and said, “It was a pretty big scoop. If the reservoir conditions were that dangerous, and somebody was going to break the story, why couldn’t it be her?”
“I suppose her notes were lost along with your address book,” said Director Swenson, looking at me.
“Oh, no, not at all,” I replied. “I’ve been studying them, actually. I mean, they’re a little outside my reading level, but hey, what’s life without learning? She’s right, too. The death rate is, like, crazy. Some of these people, statistically, should have lived to see their great-grandkids. Which means either the overall mortality rates for the country need to be recalculated, because we’re calibrating something really, really wrong, or folks with reservoir conditions are dying at a really accelerated rate.” I gave him my best big-dumb-Irwin face, and asked, “Which do you think it is?”
“Well, now that you bring it up, there is some documentation to support your sister’s conclusions. I only wish she’d brought them to us before she died. It would have been a real pleasure working with her.” Director Swenson stood, motioning for Becks and me to stay where we were. “If you two will excuse me for just a moment, I’ll go and get the files that relate to this particular issue. I think you’ll find them very enlightening.”
“We’ll chill here,” I said, offering him a half-salute. Director Swenson mustered a wan smile and turned, walking quickly out of the conference room. He shut the door as he exited. Probably another of those crazy CDC security precautions… or he wanted us to think so, anyway.