by Kit Pedler
‘Will you get it working?’
‘Well I can, but it’s a complete waste of time – besides I don’t …’
‘Will you do it?’ Gerrard was almost shouting. Wright stared at him openly hostile. Suddenly, he looked down away from Gerrard.
‘Yes,’ he said flatly, ‘yes, I’ll do it.’
Outside in the freezing winter air, the stench of Ainslie’s bacillus lay over the deserted streets.
Snow was falling heavily and the only sounds were from small squads of soldiers in full protective clothing, marching through the deserted streets like spacemen exploring a new planet. Their heavy boots scrunched in the snow.
Outside the sealed perimeter, broadcast television vans were crowded around the exit points and the decontamination station. With arc-lights glaring, interviewers tried to talk to bemused people who staggered out of the area either dressed in overall smocks or ill-fitting clothing.
Anxious relatives gathered at the exit gates for news.
An ambulance, its blue light flashing, skidded around a deserted Trafalgar Square and tore off up the Charing Cross Road, the untrodden snow billowing up behind it in a fine, white cloud.
Overhead a helicopter hovered. A cameraman hung dangerously out of its open door, recording the story of a lifetime.
Ainslie’s fifty-ninth variant probed into new areas, searching for food. Some growths died on metal or stone surfaces. Others found new continuities of growth in plastic cables and wires underground.
Slowly and efficiently, the bacillus ate the heart out of the city.
At the Kramer laboratories Gerrard, his face grey with fatigue, was standing by the blackboard writing up complex mathematical expressions and checking them on a desk calculator which whirred and clicked its answers as he punched in information. It was 3 AM. On a bench in the main lab, Wright, Scanlon and Buchan were tending a mass of interwoven glass apparatus mounted on a make-shift metal scaffold. Inside the apparatus, coloured fluids travelled through jointed glass tubing and at one end, a viscous brown fluid dripped slowly into a conical flask.
There was about an inch of fluid in the flask. Wright turned off a glass tap above the flask, picked it up and carried it to the desk next to Gerrard and sat down wearily. He spoke in a flat, off-hand tone:
‘That should be it – polyaminostyrene with fangs.’
Gerrard turned off the calculator. ‘You absolutely sure?’
‘Of course, but well check it on the chromatograph. We should have inserted a cyanide radical in place of the nitrosamine group on side chain four.’
‘Will it be active? You might have shielded all its valency.’
‘Our chemistry is excellent, thank you,’ Wright replied edgily. ‘It’s you who wants to test it.’
Gerrard eyed him carefully for a minute, then replied: ‘I put four subcultures of the variant in the incubator when we got here, they should be going like a bomb now, I’ll get them.’ He walked over to the incubator and took out three large open-topped beakers.
In the bottom of each one, there was a flat, lidded Petri dish. He carried them gingerly through into the main lab. Wright followed, bringing the conical flask containing the poisoned plastic. Gerrard then wiped a flat, square porcelain dish until it was quite dry, put it down on the bench and poured a little of the sticky brown fluid from the flask into one end of the dish. He then tipped the dish to and fro until the fluid spread out in a thin layer over one half of its surface. Then from one of the beakers he took out a Petri dish and held it to the light carefully not tipping it out of the horizontal.
In the light they could all plainly see that the inside of the dish was a semi-liquid bubbling mass. Taking the lid off the dish he slowly poured the foaming contents into the other end of the dish away from the cyanide containing plastic; then tipped the dish so that the edge of the foaming bacterial culture was about an inch away from the edge of the spread out layer of plastic. All three men were unpleasantly aware of the dank ammoniacal odour. Finally, Gerrard put a glass plate over the dish, started a stop watch going and adjusted a bench light over the glass cover and sat down to watch.
As the minutes ticked by the three men sat completely immobile, their gaze fixed on the slowly writhing line of bubbles as they approached the edge of the plastic.
After what seemed like an age, the edge of the foaming bubbles touched the brown layer. Gerrard leaned forward, every muscle in his body taut. The bubbling showed no sign of reduction as the growing variant spread out over the plastic.
Wright glanced up at Gerrard, the suspicion of a smile hovering on his thin lips. Scanlon sat silent, his lips pursed with concentration. Buchan, inscrutable as ever, puffed away at his pipe.
The foaming continued and even seemed to increase in rate. Gerrard was swearing under his breath. Each one of them was fully aware that the fate of an entire city, perhaps of the whole civilized world, was being played out under the glass in front of them. As the three craned forward over the glass, the reflections from the light underlit their faces in the semi-darkened laboratory, making them look like ancient sorcerers.
Suddenly Gerrard gave a cry: ‘It’s slowing – I’m sure – yes look it’s slowing down.’ The others peered into the dish. The line of bubbles on the edge of the advancing bacteria was smaller, the movement of the edge was slower. As they watched, fascinated, the groping movement of the culture stopped. As each bubble broke, it was not replaced.
Finally, the variant bacilli in the dish gorged themselves to death. As they advanced, mindlessly searching for more food, they absorbed molecules of polyaminostyrene through their individual cell walls. But with a difference. As the molecules became part of each cell’s internal structure, the cyanide went to work, poisoning essential enzyme systems until the biochemical perfection of the variant – hand tailored by Ainslie – lay wrecked and useless.
‘We’ve only made ten grains,’ Wright said. ‘There’s a whole city out there – they’ll need tons of the stuff.’
Gerrard was beside himself with relief: ‘I know. We’ll get Neoplas to mass produce. They’ve got all the large equipment. Then we put it down all over the area. In the tunnels, in the sewers – it’ll be like rat poison.’ He flopped back in the chair allowing total exhaustion to soak up through his body.
Scanlon looked at him carefully: ‘We’ll have to do a field test, we’ll have to go where there’s been a recent outbreak and see whether it works there.’
‘All right,’ Gerrard agreed. ‘Let’s do that.’ He turned to Wright. ‘How much more can you make in – say – the next six hours?’ Wright thought for a moment then replied: ‘Using that gear in there, about another three hundred grammes.’
‘Not enough to do anything,’ Scanlon said.
‘It is if we can dilute it – with a volatile agent, then spray it,’ Gerrard replied. ‘Then the volatile will evaporate and the stuff will be available for the variant.’ He turned to Scanlon. ‘Get on to Neoplas, get them to set up their gear for a major production effort.’ He turned to Wright:
‘We’ll need every gramme you can make. I’ll get on to the control centre and tell them we’ve busted it. Then we’d better look and see whether we’ve got enough volatile – toluene should do it – enough to make a suspension for spraying.’ He broke off for a moment and looked at the inside of the dish again as if to reassure himself. The last of the bubbles had gone. Goddammit – it really worked!
Buchan spoke for the first time: ‘What do you want – a Nobel Prize?’
Eighteen
The air in the great underground control complex was humid and stale. Three out of the four giant fans feeding its tunnels and concrete chambers had been turned off as they were drawing in air from the affected zone and were liable to spread an aerosol of infection throughout the system. The fourth fan, working at full blast behind a grille beyond the danger zone, was just able to provide enough fresh air for safety, but not enough to dispel the stench of the fifty-ninth variant which had already b
een pumped in.
The smell – a mixture of ammonia and rotting meat – had nauseated everyone to a point where the prefabricated food constantly available in the canteens was left almost untouched. It clung tenaciously to clothing and soft furnishings.
Above, on the surface, the smell lay in the still, cold air like a wall of death.
Slayter was sitting at one of the coffee stained tables, trying to appear interested in the conversation of the man sitting opposite him who was talking about the anatomy of the watermains in the area and how they were controlled. As he half listened, his imagination was away back down in the tube tunnels.
Suddenly he heard the tone of the man’s voice coming to a conclusion and realized that he hadn’t taken anything in at all.
He took a risk: ‘Really, that’s most extraordinary,’ he said, hoping the comment would fit. To his relief he saw no surprise on the man’s face, who went on: ‘Yes it is and do you know there’s no complete map of the area showing all the services, really it’s quite …’ Slayter suddenly looked up as Buchan rushed into the room. ‘Dr Buchan! How did you get here?’
‘Never mind. I must talk to you.’ The great angular Scot could hardly contain himself: ‘I’ve got it man!’
‘What?’
‘The link, the common factor – the nucleus!’
‘Steady,’ Slayter waved to a chair. ‘Sit down. This is Mr Parkin by the way – from the water board research labs. Mr Parkin – Dr Buchan from the Kramer laboratories.’ The two men nodded briefly to each other.
‘What’s it all about?’
‘Now!’ Buchán said. ‘You remember you found a faulty component in the computer in your roads system and there was a faulty pump monitor in the Heathrow smash?’
‘Yes.’
‘The playback showed insulation failure, is that not so?’
‘Yes, I remember perfectly well. We’d got farther than that in fact, we found the same thing in the Heathrow crash and the Navy think it was probably the cause of the sub – the Triton – going down.’
‘Exactly,’ Buchan continued. ‘Three events, one common cause!’
‘Not at all.’ Slayter shook his head. ‘That doesn’t make a case. Very well I admit insulation failure is a common factor but …’
Buchan broke in: ‘I agree, but a case can be made if it’s the same insulation failure.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘If it’s the same component that lost insulation.’
‘I’d be more impressed, yes.’
‘Well, for the last three days, I’ve more or less been living on the telephone – I’ve done more checking and …’
‘Go on.’
‘Well,’ Buchan was gesticulating. ‘It is the same component. It is! In the fuel pump monitor in the plane there was a small integrated circuit element – a logic gate. In your computer the same circuit element also forms a vital part of the adaptive network and – I’ve checked this with Naval Research at Portsmouth – the same component was built into the missile range computers on HMS Triton.’
‘All right, so you’ve got a common component, but it’s not a case. You might as well say they’ve all got nuts and bolts made by the same people, it doesn’t prove anything.’
‘I agree. Post hoc rationalization and all that’ – Buchan was in full flight – ‘but there’s more. The Apollo nineteen disaster – you read about it?’
‘Yes.’
‘It was in the command module! I’ve checked with NASA.’
‘Dr Buchan. I’m sorry to be so persistent, but it really doesn’t matter how many places you find it, you still …’
‘You admit a strong circumstantial link, anyway?’
‘Not strong, but it’s odd, I agree.’
Buchan was unpacking a briefcase: ‘Now for proof,’ he said, extracting a small metal box from the case. From it he took out a sealed polythene envelope containing a small plastic cube with ten short wires protruding from it; he put it down on the table.
‘Logic gate M13,’ he said, ‘that is to say before use – just as it comes off the shelf.’
‘What do you mean, before use?’
Buchan swept on, pointing to the small electronic cube: ‘When I found this thing was built in to all the three disasters I rang up the makers and asked them to send me a few to look at. I took one apart in fact and shipped it off to Baron.’
‘Baron?’
‘Public Health laddie at Colindale.’
‘I don’t see …’
‘He examined it for the bug!’
Slayter looked up in amazement.
‘The inside contained several spores!’
Slayter sat back slowly, staring straight at Buchan: ‘Now, you have a case.’
‘Exactly so. The spores belong to the plastic eating organism.’
‘You’ve nothing like proved it!’ Slayter exclaimed. ‘You see, what you’ve said is this – one electronic component common to three disasters and in some examples of the component you’ve found the spores of the plastic eating bacteria – no good at all. Spores are like seeds; they have to germinate. How do you get round that?’
Buchan was grinning, enjoying Slayter’s attempts to unseat his case: ‘What do bugs need to grow?’
‘Well,’ Slayter began, ‘I’m no bacteriologist but – let’s think – food and warmth and …’
‘Excellent!’ Buchan almost shouted. ‘Warmth. What happens to most circuit units when they start to work?’
‘My God,’ Slayter was sitting bolt upright. ‘My God, yes!’
‘You see,’ Buchan was triumphant, ‘once the unit started to work, whatever computer or system it was built into – once it started to work, it warmed up – the spores germinated and started to eat …’
‘… the plastic inside the unit,’ Slayter finished.
‘Yes, but that’s not all. I checked this with Baron and with the makers of the unit. Baron says that the germinating spores would need water very quickly. Now I’m not absolutely certain, but when the unit starts to work it gets warm and we think now that there must have been just enough condensation on this cadmium plate here’ – he pointed – ‘to provide a few droplets of water. Just enough to give the spores enough water to start dividing. Once they had started to live and divide again, they made their way along the insulation of the wires leading out of the unit here.’ He pointed to the short wires protruding from the unit. ‘And from there, along the wires to whatever other wires the unit was connected to.’
Slayter sat very still: ‘So once it started operation the bugs spread out into any system the unit was connected with.’
‘That’s it.’ Buchan eased his bulk back into the chair.
‘How can you prove all this?’ Slayter asked.
Buchan silently took a second metal box from his briefcase and put it carefully down on the table. Out of it, he took a sealed glass jar and put it down gingerly beside the box.
‘This is another unit, we gave it five hours’ continuous operation.’ He pushed the jar towards Slay ter.
Inside, the small cubical circuit element was distorted and misshapen. The yellow insulation on one of the wires leading out of it was slowly falling away from the gleaming copper core.
‘A biological time bomb!’ Slay ter said softly. ‘Once it starts work, it starts infecting.’
‘One thing that worried me,’ Buchan went on, ‘is that nobody apparently saw any evidence of softening in the earlier investigations, they only found bare wires. I checked this with Baron and he reckons that when this bug – wherever it came from – started to eat plastic – it probably did so very slowly, and as each generation came along it began to consume more rapidly.’
‘So the earlier outbreaks were relatively mild,’ said Slayter.
‘Yes,’ said Buchan, ‘it gradually adapted and increased its efficiency until it got completely out of control. Now we have the centre of London dying.’
‘One little component,’ Slayter mused. ‘It’s u
nbelievable.’
‘So far we’ve managed to do quite a lot. The firm – quite a small one near King’s Cross – have managed to trace most of their sales, it’ll take a few days yet, but it all fits. They made large sales to the aircraft makers, to your road-computer makers and to NASA. There’s only one they can’t do anything about though.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘They exported it to the California Rocket Corporation, you know – the people who are building Argonaut one, the unmanned Mars probe.’
‘Don’t understand. Why can’t they do anything about it?’
Buchsn spoke evenly: ‘Because it took off six weeks ago.’
* * *
Gerrard was feeling awkward and uncomfortable inside the Beeston protective suit. His body still ached from the climb out of the underground.
Behind the transparent face visor there was a strong smell of rubber and disinfectant. And as he walked stiffly along the street with the other three men, the folds of the hard fabric caught in his armpits, and behind his knees. The sound of his breath was harsh and exaggerated in the steamy envelope of the suit.
Their footsteps squeaked dryly in the snow as they walked. A soldier trudged along beside him carrying the portable spray unit filled with the poisoned plastic. Two other uniformed men were consulting a map, one of them bore lieutenant’s pips on a shoulder tag. He turned to Gerrard.
‘It’s just down here off Gerrard Street.’ He pointed on the map and looked up, then turned and walked over to a corner shop with a sign in Roman Purple letters: ‘Gear trend’. In the window there was a display of brilliantly coloured shirts, mock-leather jackets and posters. Behind the shirts pinned on the blackboard of the window were ‘wet-look’ PVC coats and boots, unisex outfits and an array of record labels. Above, there were two rows of picture windows. At one, a face appeared briefly from behind a curtain, looked down at the suited figures approaching and disappeared. The lieutenant walked firmly up to the glass door and thumped hard on it with his gloved fist.