by Matt Hammond
“I need to get the boat sorted,” said Hone. “You two go on. I’ll catch up.”
Ed began to stride up the beach towards the trees. David ran, trying to catch up, stopping and starting as he tried to slip on his footwear. Soft sand gave way to stony soil beneath the trees. They climbed up through the bush, jumping from one steep foothold to another. David considered for a moment that they might have sailed in a circle and were now retracing their steps back up the slope they had clambered down to get to the beach on the island.
He had to concentrate hard just to keep Ed’s back in sight. If he momentarily lost him, he had to listen out for the snapping of a twig or the scuff of a small stone, signalling his position somewhere in front.
In the darkness David felt dewy grass against his legs as the ground levelled out beneath his feet. They had no torch and, as they made their way across the open ground, he could just make out a faint light a short distance ahead.
Ed was making his way towards it. David felt somehow obliged to whisper, “Where are we going, Ed?”
Ed whispered back, his voice muffled by the dark cloak of nightfall. “See the light over there? Hone left it unlocked. It's pretty remote out here, so it should be alright. He’ll be up to join us as soon as he secures the boat.”
David could just make out a metal door handle just above head height. Ed reached up, opened it and climbed three small steps before going in. He followed.
A short narrow dimly lit corridor stretched out before them. As he turned to close the door, David noticed the sign above it.
EMERGENCY EXIT
He tapped the floor with his foot. It was hollow. Bracing both feet either side of the narrow corridor barely wider than his shoulders, he pushed, first left then right. The floor creaked and gently rocked under the pressure. Ed turned, startled, as the floor beneath him moved also;
“So this must be some kind of camper van, then?”
Ed smiled and nodded before flicking a switch. Three fluorescent tubes along the low ceiling hesitated and then flashed into life, wiping out the cosy glow from the unseen light source at the other end. “Well, yeah, I suppose basically it’s a bus. But it’s a bit more than just a bus. I’ll give you the guided tour in the morning. This is your bunk.” Ed pulled a curtain, revealing a small bed against a curtained window. Submariners had more room, David thought.
They continued towards what David had worked out was the front of the bus and into a small kitchen and sitting area. There was a full length curtain separating the living area from the driver. “We’ll have a cuppa before turning in, I think. Hone’s got the first driving shift. I’ll be up at three to take over, so no late night for me tonight.”
Hone climbed in through the driver’s door and appeared through the front curtain. He fell into a row of cushions strewn over the bench seats that ran down each side of the bus and lay there silently until Ed brought him his coffee.
He sat up, took the mug and began sipping in earnest silence as if it was medicine. David still felt uneasy in his presence and Hone made no attempt to even acknowledge him. David took his cue and made his way to bed. Moments later, Hone started the engine and, within minutes, the gentle throb of the engine beneath his head and the bounce of the chassis sent David into a deep sleep.
* * *
He woke and pushed aside the thin curtain, revealing the daylight outside. Through the condensation delta trickling down the glass, he could make out trees just a short distance away. The whooshing of vehicles indicated they were parked next to a highway, busy with early morning traffic. The bus shuddered several times as large trucks sped close by.
Making his way towards the front, he found Ed hunched over a small table, moving the mouse pointer around on a laptop computer. He acknowledged David without looking up. “Morning, Dave. Sleep ok?” He did not wait for a reply. “Just checking overnight emails. Apparently MAF had the milk samples from Waiheke analysed overnight. One of our people just sent through the data before MAF have had a chance to check the results for themselves. I’ll have a proper look once we get on the ferry. Hone’s getting some sleep now. He ended up driving until four this morning, so I’ll give him a shout once we get to Wellington.”
David was not sure why he was so surprised about the destination. After all, they had been driving for nearly nine hours; presumably not round in circles, so they must have covered a fair distance. “We need to catch the midday ferry to the South Island and then meet up with the rest of the guys. By the way, can I borrow the card? I need to make a ferry booking.”
It had been a while since he had thought about the card. Everything that had happened to him in the past few days was a direct result of the innocuous sliver of plastic he now carried. He casually handed it to Ed who keyed in the card number and expiry date, and handed it back, without comment.
“Doesn’t it bother you, using that money?”
“Not really. As soon as I hit ENTER, I know it's been logged that you’ve made a ferry booking. But this booking is for two days' time and we’ll be long gone by then. No, what really bothers me is the fact that I could have bought the whole bloody ferry company with the money on that card. Luckily they don’t offer that option on the website.”
Ed drove the bus the rest of the way into Wellington. Hone slept soundly until ten. The trio sat at the front of the bus as it entered the ferry terminal. Ed parked the bus in behind a line of commercial tour buses. “Grab your bag, Dave,” he said as he climbed down from the driver’s seat, ‘and follow me.”
He rushed back to his cabin, picked up his unopened bag and made his way out the back door, running to catch up with Ed.
“Why do I need my bag just to check us in?”
“Because we’re not going back to the bus, Dave, Hone is taking it across on a later sailing and we’re getting the Fast Cat. We need to travel across the Cook Strait undetected.”
Ed paid cash for two foot passenger tickets for the next sailing, due to depart in twenty minutes' time. He handed a ticket to David. “You board now. I’ll be up in about five minutes. Walk on with a family or a group. That way you’ll be harder to spot when they look back at the CCTV in a few days when they realise you weren’t on the bus. I’ll meet you in the café.”
David made his way towards the gently sloping tunnel and latched onto a group of eight other passengers. Only then did he realise that they were Japanese, half his height and age, and were chattering and pointing at him, laughing as he so blatantly invaded their communal space. If anything was calculated to highlight his presence to a bored security guard reviewing hours of video footage, this was probably it.
He smiled back, trying to look as if the animated laughter and talking was mutual and he was just engaging in friendly conversation. He pushed his way into the middle of the group and handed his ticket to a crew member who didn’t even acknowledge him.
Stepping through the small doorway, he was surprised to find himself in a small shopping mall. There was no indication he was now afloat, compared to the tiny vessel he had found himself in the previous evening. Following the sign to the café, he positioned himself next to the window. Only then did the sight of open sea beyond the harbour give any clue to the journey to come.
He thought of Katherine, took his mobile phone from his bag, switched it on, and composed a text message. Ed sat opposite, placing a tray of coffee and sandwiches on the table between them. He shuffled a heavy-looking pack from his back and placed it on the empty seat next to him. “Texting the missus?”
“Yes.”
“Make it quick and make it general - no times or places. When it’s intercepted, it needs to have been transmitted from one of the beacons on top of one of those tower blocks in the city, not from the transponder onboard. That way at least they won’t realise you are actually afloat already.”
All OK & on track
The sound of the engines could now be heard above the piped music and excited chatter of tourists, instilling David with a sense of urg
ency as the catamaran moved sideways, away from the dockside.
Spk to u soon luv u xx
He clicked send, cursing himself for not saying how he really felt, thinking of Katherine’s reaction to such a bland, meaningless message having been suddenly torn apart from each other only the day before.
Ed sat, coffee in one hand, the other on the keyboard of his laptop perched on a dangerous slant on his knees. Katherine must have been waiting for any contact. Before he could put the phone down, David received a reply.
Luv u 2 xx
“Better turn that off now,” Ed said, without looking up, “We are just going past dock head. Any more messages going through that phone will be transmitted from the aerial on the roof of this thing.”
David turned the phone off and sat aimlessly eating and drinking, focussing on the back of the laptop as Ed stared intently at it from the other side. Suddenly he sat back, closing the screen, the look on his face a mixture of triumph and concern. “This is it! This is bloody IT!”
“What is?”
He leant across and pushed his back pack from the seat next to him and onto the floor. “Come over here and have a look at this.” David moved next to him. Ed lifted the screen again and angled it towards him as if looking at it would somehow help David understand what he was about to be told.
“Ok, Dave, I’ll try and explain in simple terms. The Ministry has taken a sample from a single cow from each of the herds on Waiheke that have been injected with the enzyme supplied by Cowood. The data has been emailed to three labs around the country for analysis and interpretation. Now, if my reading of it is correct, it’s showing the milk these cows are producing contains at least five thousand times the level of gamma casein that is found in regular milk.”
“Which means what?”
“When it’s processed using the method that Cowood is trying to perfect, the by-product is a particularly pure form of ethanol.”
David looked confused. Katherine was the science teacher. This was beyond him. Ed noted his blank expression. “Processing milk down into its component parts produces, amongst other things, whey which can then be refined into low grade ethanol, the kind used in perfumes, ink, that kind of thing. By introducing a mutated form of the normally present beta casein, the overall casein level is increased. The whey retains a greater proportion of the casein which is usually lost in the distillation process and that means the whey is able to yield a much purer form of ethanol relative to the original volume of milk.”
“Which means?” David was already lost on mutated beta casein.
“This confirms that Cowood is aiming to distil commercial quantities of fuel grade ethanol from milk.”
David nodded slowly, still barely comprehending.
“Ok, here’s the science. Up until now only about 4% of the lactose could be harvested from the whey, the rest is lost in the form of lactic acid. From this remaining lactose, only 20% of the raw solids can be distilled into ethanol, but with the mutated casein present in the milk, there is virtually no lactic acid conversion. 95% of the solids are usable and the resultant ethanol is perfectly viable as liquid fuel with very little, if any, further refining needed.”
Ed sat back, running his fingers through his thick grey hair, shaking his head. “It looks like this is the breakthrough they‘ve been working towards and, if it’s true, nothing can stop them now. This is big, I mean really big.”
David was still confused. He appreciated the marvel of being able to mass–produce fuel from milk, but he still couldn’t understand why it was a bad thing.
“There are a couple of really negative issues here, Dave. Firstly, fuel from milk means we need vast quantities of the stuff to make it commercially viable. Imagine for a moment barrels of oil. The United States alone consumes about twenty million barrels a day, or nearly a million litres a minute, twenty-four / seven. New Zealand milk production currently amounts to about fifteen billion litres a year, which works out roughly three times as much oil as milk. But, for every litre of milk, still only 5% can be distilled into ethanol which means a colossal increase in dairy capacity will be needed to satisfy the demand.”
“So why not just raise the capacity by producing the milk around the world?”
“Cowood will need to raise production to meet the demand but it means turning over vast tracts of otherwise productive land to grazing. Every field and paddock on both islands that isn’t already given over to forestry, which is of course the other prime source of ethanol we haven’t even touched on yet, will be given over to dairy farming. The reason the milk can only be produced here is simple; it’s to do with the Gamma Casein that the herds will carry in order to produce the right kind of milk. Beta Casein, the regular kind, which occurs naturally in milk, has been scientifically linked to diabetes, autism and heart disease. Gamma casein is five thousand times more potent. It’s more powerful and more harmful in every respect to humans than the Beta variety. If this modified milk is allowed to enter the human food chain, the results will be catastrophic. Just half a litre, even as an ingredient in some other food, will be enough to put huge numbers of people at risk, especially those with an inherent susceptibility to things like heart disease. In some cases it could kill someone outright. Apart from raw milk, cheese and butter, any food product containing dairy derivatives originating from New Zealand would be instantly banned worldwide. The dairy industry in this country, at least as we know it, would simply wither and die overnight as soon as the first modified herd becomes public knowledge. The export market will literally dry up. Those remaining farmers will plead with Cowood to be allowed to produce the modified milk in order to stay in business or, one-by-one, they would be bought out until there is a single national dairy herd, isolated from the rest of the world, geographically and genetically. This ‘super herd’ will be owned and controlled solely by Cowood. They own the patent; they have the sole rights to the Gamma Casein and therefore the monopoly on the grade and quality of the bovine ethanol. They will have complete control over its distribution via the Trans-Pacific pipeline, and ultimately be able to dictate the price to the rest of the world. America will finally be in the position it has coveted from the Arab states since the nineteen seventies.”
David was still not convinced by Ed’s apocalyptic vision. “So remind me again why the government can’t just stop them right now?”
“What Cowood are doing at the moment, controlled and monitored research, is perfectly within the law. There is no legal justification for shutting them down. Commercial sensitivity protects them from having to reveal their results and hence the true nature of the research remains secret. Of course there are elements of the Government who have been made aware of the negative potential of the outcome of this research. That’s why we saw the foot and mouth cover story yesterday. Unfortunately, as I said the other day, the environmentalists are being heavily lobbied in all this. Their political wing has already been infiltrated to the point where their official line is that bovine ethanol is good for the environment and for the economy. They are not concerned with the chemistry involved. They have absolutely no idea of the potential massive human cost of all this. All the time the process is being developed and refined, the Ecological Political Assembly is gradually being been bought and paid for by Cowood, and their leader, Pat O’Sullivan, could potentially be our next Prime Minister.”
The catamaran was clear of Wellington Harbour, and in open water, heading across the Cook Strait towards Picton Harbour, and the South Island. David had read this was one of the most treacherous ferry crossings in the world. The southern Pacific Ocean in the east, and its accompanying winds, try to squeeze through the narrow space between the two separated halves of the country, whilst the Tasman Sea fights to do the same from the west.
Today they were lucky. The waves were slight and the vessel seemed ideally suited to slicing through the small crests that undulated across the water’s surface. Unfortunately, the design meant it was a giant floating box, with no th
ought given to the idea of an external deck from which to admire the spectacular views as they entered the Marlborough Sounds, a complicated series of twisting channels through which the captain had to slowly navigate to reach Picton which, looking at the map on the café wall, appeared to be several miles inland.
Chapter 11
The Cat slowed to a sedate cruising speed as it entered The Sounds. Through the salt–spray encrusted windows, David saw green mountains rising from an emerald sea, now glassy smooth. It was as if the water had flooded a primeval jungle and only the tallest peaks had escaped the surge.
Ed’s comments preyed on his mind. The modified milk was poisonous. It could kill people. The most powerful country in the world was intent on producing the stuff in huge quantities. As far as he knew, none of this was public information. He was one of only a handful of people in the entire world who knew about any of this, and as far as he was concerned that made him vulnerable. A man had died at Heathrow because of this and Cowood seemed prepared to risk the lives of millions of people.
What had started as an intriguing diversion to the start of their new life had developed into a life-threatening predicament. David no longer wanted to be part of it. He wanted to escape, not just from Ed and whatever it was he was planning, but also from the whole situation. For now, he was stuck on a boat.
The vessel negotiated the winding channel. The mountains seemed to close in behind it, sealing it in, forcing it to sail onward. After an hour of meandering, the catamaran rounded the final bend. In the distance David could see colours other than green and blue. He could make out a small town resting in a valley between two of the hills. In another half an hour they would be alongside in Picton and he could start looking for his opportunity.