Exodus Code (26 page)

The three of them stood next to each other, watching the map light up as one by one, the dates of the outbreaks of synaesthesia flashed in orange next to the already pulsing red of the deep-water vents.

Vlad looked from one to the other. ‘That’s not good, right?’

‘It’s not good at al ,’ said Jack. ‘Shel ey, we need to know exactly what these hydrothermal chimneys are spewing into the oceans and quickly.’

‘It wil take me a little more time to analyse ful y, but on a superficial glance I would say that it’s iron, sulphur, carbonic acid, hydrogen and something else that I cannot categorise yet from my samples.’

‘Run the data as quickly as you can.’

‘It would help if I didn’t need to use part of my program for projection.’

‘Of course.’ Jack tapped the disc, and Shel ey disappeared.

Southern Ocean, a week before Isela’s shot
THE FIRST HYDROTHERMAL chimney erupted from the ocean’s surface and became visible a hundred miles off the southern coast of New Zealand, forming a shel around one of the smal er geysers to erupt.

A charter fishing cruiser was the only boat close enough to witness the event, but the passengers on board, a honeymooning couple from California and two retired lawyers had no chance to report it, photograph it, tweet it, or even comment about it among themselves.

Along with their four passengers, the cruiser’s first and second mates watched in awe as an uneven rocky shel began to encase the geyser as if the water was shooting out rocks and building a wal around itself.

In 10 minutes and 42 seconds the geyser was encased completely, leaving a massive conical structure visible above sea level, thin veins of pulsing silver flashing across its ribbed uneven surface.

‘Jesus Christ! What the hel is that?’ said one of the lawyers, digging around under his seat for his camera. He never reached it.

Seconds before the hydrothermal vent was sealed, his new wife let out a low anguished howl, picked up her fishing spear and stabbed her husband through his back.

‘You should have taken me to Rome,’ she mumbled.

She whipped round and slashed the throats of the two retirees with her husband’s fil et knife before they knew what was happening.

‘I hate the stink of fish.’

The first mate saw the young wife charge at his friend with a bloody spear.

‘Danny! Look out,’ he screamed, pushing his friend away from the control panel as the woman stabbed the harpoon through the back of his chair.

While Danny scrambled across the floor in a desperate attempt to get away from the woman, his mate darted down to the cabin tearing open al the cabinets, pul ing everything from drawers in a panicked search for the hand gun that he knew the owner kept hidden for emergencies. He was tossing books from the locker above one of the spare bunks when he heard his friend’s dying screams from above.

Then silence.

Dropping to his knees, he dragged the extra fishing gear from a metal storage locker from beneath the lower bunk.

‘Please be here. Please be here.’

‘It’s not,’ the woman said, a beat before she shot him.

Blood-splattered and muttering angrily to herself, the new wife climbed up on deck, surveyed her carnage, then with a trembling hand lifted the gun to her own head and fired.

JACK PUSHED OPEN the iron door of Dana’s cabin, stepping quietly inside. He stood over Gwen’s bunk, brushing a wisp of hair from her forehead, watching the steady rise and fal of her chest, hearing the slow drip of the IV sedative, hanging from the bunk above. Gwen’s arms were covered in bruises and she had a purple target around her eye, but the wound on her arm was healing, the image no longer as visible as it had been.

‘You are one tough lady,’ Jack whispered.

Lifting her hand, Jack checked her pulse. Normal. He’d been checking every couple of hours, not only afraid of a reaction to the IV sedative but also afraid she might break through the sedation and hurt herself again.

Jack kissed her forehead, tucked her arm under the blankets and backed out into the passageway where he bumped into Hol is.

‘Bon ami, perfect timing,’ said Hol is, fol owing close behind Jack as he navigated the tight passage to his cabin.

‘What can I do for you?’ asked Jack when he got to his door.

‘I wanted to offer you dessert,’ said Hol is.

‘I appreciate that, Hol is, but I don’t think I could eat another slice of your grandmother’s pecan pie no matter how delicious it was.’

Hol is stepped directly in front of Jack, placing his hand flat on Jack’s chest.

‘Ah wasn’t offerin’ pie.’

Jack grinned. ‘In that case, you’d better come inside.’

*

A ship at dawn is never a quiet place. Every space is smal , every sound big, every voice amplified.

Cash thumped on Jack’s cabin door at 6.15 the next morning.

‘Hol is Jefferson Albert the third,’ cal ed Cash, thumping again, ‘this is your captain speaking. The one you work for not the one you’re screwing. If you don’t get your worn-out ass into the kitchen and feed me, you’l be sorry you ever set foot on my ship.’

Hol is rol ed away from Jack, grabbed his clothes and headed for the door.

‘Later, mon cher. He’s just cranky because Dana’s not here and he had to sleep alone.’ Hol is blew Jack a kiss and darted down the passageway naked, his clothes bundled in his arms.

‘I can see where you’ve been, you know,’ yel ed Sam, sticking his head out of his cabin.

‘I’m wil ing to share,’ laughed Hol is.

Jack was climbing off his bunk when Eva pushed into his cabin. She sounded breathless and looked exhausted.

Jack grabbed the sheet, wrapping it around his waist.

‘Oh, sorry,’ she said. ‘I saw Hol is head to the showers. I figured you were free.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s a smal ship.’

Jack took two quick strides towards her. She backed into the door. Jack leaned closer, his hip brushing against hers, his hand trailing along her bare arm, lifting her head to his. She exhaled, but she didn’t move.

‘What can I do for you?’ Jack whispered.

‘Not that.’ She blushed, but didn’t duck out of his way.

Jack grinned and backed off, sitting on the edge of the bunk. ‘Are you always this easy to embarrass?’

‘Not usual y,’ she admitted, looking away from Jack’s piercing stare.

‘Been a while, has it? Vlad not fast on the uptake?’

This time even her ears burned. ‘Vlad might be if I looked like Shel ey.’

‘Hmm. Don’t confuse Vlad’s fantasy with what he real y wants; otherwise, it wouldn’t be a fantasy.’ Jack pul ed on his trousers, letting his braces hang loose. ‘What brought you charging along here so early this morning?’

‘Shel ey did.’

Eva set the Torchwood disc on the cabin’s smal desk and tapped it. Shel ey appeared in front of Jack.

‘Good morning, Captain. You slept wel , I hope?’

‘I did.’

For a fleeting moment Jack wondered if Shel ey had been in his cabin during the night. He’d left his laptop on in case Rhys or Andy had tried to get in touch and some of Shel ey’s intel igence was from an alien program, after al .

Nah, he thought. She’d not been sentient long enough to think ful y for herself. Had she?

Jack decided he’d need to monitor her evolution. He knew that when you lived in a world with so many powerful machines wired together eventual y a consciousness develops. He’d have to keep an eye on Shel ey.

‘Captain, I wanted to inform you of the results of my analysis from the water that has been surging from the hydrothermal vents.’

‘Which,’ added Eva, leaning on the door jamb, ‘have increased significantly in number.’

‘How many more?’ asked Jack.

‘At least seven additional ones in the clusters we’re monitoring, and they’re growing as quickly as the others.’

‘That’s not good news,’ said Jack, sitting back on the bed. ‘Is my friend stil monitoring them, too?’

‘Yes, Captain.’

‘We may have to do something about that, Shel ey.’

‘Yes, Captain.’

‘Tel him what you’ve learned, Shel ey,’ said Eva, wary of hearing too many covert details from this man; after a thorough web search, she’d found only two significant things about him: he’d disappeared after the funeral of a CIA agent and he liked to read.

‘Three critical points, Captain,’ said Shel ey. ‘First, I’ve pinpointed the elements that were proving difficult to detect last night. The first is an ecto-hormone with a high density of androstenal, and the second element is carnosine.’

‘Carnosine is a toxic hormone that affects the nervous system,’ said Eva. ‘It can create birth defects if you’re not born with the genetic inhibiter, which has to come from both parents. Geologists wil have a field day with this. Who knew it was percolating beneath the ocean? We’ve never found anything like carnosine in the Earth’s crust before.’

‘Not so fast, Eva. You can’t share any of this until we can stop what’s happening. If the world learns the oceans are fil ing with a toxic hormone we’l have global panic, and we don’t behave so wel towards each other when that happens.’

‘But you can’t ignore it, Jack! People are dying. More wil . At the rate those chimneys are forming, they’l be spewing toxins into the air in…?’ Eva turned and looked at Shel ey.

‘In exactly four days and forty-seven minutes,’ said Shel ey.

Jack flipped his braces over his shirt and ran his hands through his bed hair.

‘It’s enough time.’

‘For what?’

‘My plan.’

‘Oh good. You have a plan.’

Jack put his hands on Eva’s shoulders. ‘You real y need to get laid. You’re very tense.’

She shrugged Jack away. ‘I’m not sure it matters, but what exactly is androstenal?’

‘It explains a lot,’ Jack grabbed a towel. ‘The heightened synaesthesia among women, the extreme physical responses to their loved ones and the increase in desire to those,’ he looked at Eva, ‘who are in need of sexual release.’

‘I agree,’ said Shel ey, throwing a graph up displaying the amounts per unit of both elements in the water. ‘The quantities are significant and they are building.’

‘Would one of you please tel me what androstenal is?’

‘Androstenal,’ said Jack, ‘is not just an ecto-hormone, Eva, it’s a female pheromone.’

WHEN HE’D FINISHED eating breakfast, Cash set the ship’s course for the day with Sam, then came back below deck, joining Jack, Vlad and Eva in the communication room. Cash was glad he’d eaten a hearty breakfast to shore up against what was coming because he knew that the information Jack planned to share with the crew wasn’t going to be easy to hear.

In the comms room, Jack was watching a CNN feed of the black geyser off the coast of Wales whose chimney was now visible above the surface of the water. Since it was the first geyser to appear and had remained the one closest to a populated area, it had garnered the most attention from the media, the scientific community and the public.

The geyser was almost fifty metres in diameter, and was spewing black steam 15 metres into the air, its rock chimney already constructing itself at sea level. From above, the chimney looked like a clay pot spinning on a potter’s wheel, a tower of water surging from its centre.

Although the Royal Navy and the coastguard had set a five-mile no-sail no-fly zone around the Welsh geyser, the sea traffic on the Bristol channel had never been heavier and so many helicopters were now swarming in the sky, it looked like an invasion force of massive buzzing insects was hovering above Wales and the south-west of England.

Cash joined Jack. ‘The media are reporting almost al of the country’s psychiatric hospitals are ful ,’ he told him. ‘Most women are being sent home with prescriptions for sedatives. The numbers in the other parts of the world where the geysers have erupted and chimneys are forming are stabilising. I think the Welsh chimney is worse because of the geyser’s proximity to a population mass.’

‘And then there’s that reaction,’ said Jack, watching as the news camera zoomed in on a coastguard cruiser off the coast of Weston-super-Mare, escorting a yacht out of the no-sail zone, its naked female passengers romping to loud music, thoroughly enjoying each other’s company.

Cash stepped closer to the screen, grinning broadly. ‘I’m liking that reaction to the geyser much more than what happened off the coast of New Zealand.’

‘So are they,’ smiled Jack.

‘Any idea what makes the difference in the way a woman responds to the pheromones the geysers are releasing?’ asked Vlad.

‘If I may,’ replied Shel ey, looking at Eva for permission. Despite being a creation of hers and Vlad’s, Jack noticed that Shel ey deferred to Eva more than Vlad.

‘Of course,’ said Eva, whose sexual desire had diminished the further south in the Atlantic the
Ice Maiden
sailed, a fact that she had to admit annoyed her a little, even though she knew she was reacting to the pheromones as much as she was reacting to Vlad.

‘Scientists general y type pheromones in multiple categories,’ said Shel ey, ‘the most common are obviously sex pheromones, then receptor, trail and signal pheromones, each one triggering a response through a behaviour change or a mood change in one or both members of the species affected.

The pheromone that I detected in the hydrothermal vents is an ecto-hormone, a combination of two or three categories which is why it’s triggering changes in mood and behaviour in women, particularly fertile women, and the changes seem tied to internal hormonal conflicts the women are already experiencing.’