Exodus Code (14 page)

Cash had already secured the computer gear in the wheelhouse with two of the trawler’s crew, Nick Finley and Byron Austin. Both had been dishonourably discharged from the US Navy for dealing in contraband prescription drugs.

Finn was a wiry Irish-American, whose nickname was not only a natural result of his surname, but also because he’d spent most of his young adult life negotiating the treacherous waters of the Baltimore docks, where only sharks survived. Using a brick-sized remote control, Finn was now locking down and securing the satel ite dish.

His col eague Byron was an African-American from Chicago, whose grandfather had served with Cash’s father in the Second World War. He was double-checking their munitions hold. Given the increase in piracy in many of the oceans in which the
Ice Maiden
had sailed recently, their weapons were as important as any of their sophisticated sonar and computer equipment.

Below deck, the ship’s cook, a dangerous-looking ex-shrimp boater from New Orleans named Hol is, and the head engineer, a lithe Canadian named Sam, were ignoring the boat’s increasingly rol ing gait. They were watching a footbal match on the flat screen bolted to the wal . When Finn shut down the satel ite dish, a wave of static rippled across the television and the picture went black.

‘Wel , Jesus, marry my mother and have a cow,’ said Hol is, his southern accent at its thickest when he was pissed. He pushed away from the table and walked to the door, his legs steady despite the ship’s rocking movement.

He looked both ways down the empty passageway, then lifted the com unit from the wal and depressed the button. He listened for a few seconds.

‘No one in the wheel house,’ he said, returning to his beer and to Sam, who was shuffling a deck of cards.

‘A storm,’ said Sam, who’d been raised in a commune outside San Francisco, cultivating hemp and sixteen varieties of tomatoes. Sam had a chip on his shoulder the size of Mount Rushmore and hated any conversations that required he talk about his hippy family or his mixed racial ethnicity. He was the perfect recruit for this crew, a man with no real ties to a country and a conscience easily adapted to the needs of a situation. ‘I heard the whistle in the boiler room. Could be a long cold night.’

‘So what’l it be, then?’ asked Sam, arching his eyebrows. ‘Poker, a movie or what?’

Hol is grinned at him, a smile that could sink ships. ‘Oh, ah’m thinking the “or what”.’

‘Or what, nothing,’ said Dana, stepping into the room, stripping off her wet gear until she stood in front of them in damp long-johns, her short hair plastered to her head. ‘Cash and I haven’t eaten since breakfast and this storm’s already on us. We need al hands on deck, boys, not on each other.’

‘Dana, darlin’,’ said Hol is, stepping around Sam but not without giving him a light slap on his cheek. ‘Your meal’s right here, hon, hot and delicious,’ he turned and winked at Sam, ‘like me.’ He slid two lidded plates from the gal ey’s top oven. ‘Anyway, Cash always thinks the worst of any storm.’

Sam began shuffling the cards as Cash stepped into the mess, handed Dana a thick towel and accepted his plate from Hol is.

‘Poker, it is,’ said Sam.

*

While at sea, the
Ice Maiden
flew under the research flag of the United Nations, a banner that afforded her a certain camouflaged mobility, but when they docked for supplies they displayed either the New Zealand stars or the Canadian maple leaf, both about the most friendly non-combative symbols and nations’ flags under which you could fly.

With the exception of Cash, and, so everyone in the crew assumed, Dana too, the rest of the group did not know what (or who) was funding this latest enterprise. Since the mission began, the crew’s wages had been deposited into their accounts from an organisation cal ed the International Institute of Geological Defense with an IP address and a PO Box that suggested headquarters in the Faroe Islands and Puerto Rico. The benefits were generous, and although the ship’s shel and hul had seen better days, the deposit from this current mission had meant Cash could afford a long overdue upgrade to his crew’s quarters, the facilities in the kitchen, and one or two pieces of sophisticated (and once again il egal) trawling equipment he’d been eyeing for a long time.

For this mission, the crew of the
Ice Maiden
had been tasked to monitor the earth’s oceans like a newborn, checking her temperatures from every possible geological angle, observing the slightest changes in wind currents, charting weather patterns and tidal changes, migration shifts and marine population fluctuations. In the past months the crew had sunk so many devices deep into the oceans and recorded so many sonograms from the Indian Ocean to the South Pacific from the Antarctic to the North Atlantic that the
Ice Maiden
had gathered an overwhelming mass of data. Cash had been transmitting their findings to the Institute for Geological Defense, but he doubted that anyone, even there, could possibly be making any sense of it.

Cash was convinced that, although the world had shifted out of crisis mode, countries and their governments had slid back into neutral, cruising along as before, trusting that everything and everyone had returned to normal, turning a blind eye to anything that might suggest trouble was once again looming.

He hoped that al the data they were gathering was suggesting nothing too far out of the ordinary, but he doubted that.

He was right, and he was terribly wrong.

Gwen

GWEN’S SHOULDER HAD been cleaned and dressed. Seeing her flailing like a maniac on a hospital bed, her wrists strapped to the bed’s safety bars, her hair matted and oily and her arms bruised and bandaged – it was al more than Rhys could stand. He went into the corridor to wait for Jack.

Thankful y, the detectives from CID investigating the other incidents of violence and disorderly conduct had gone. They had decided that Gwen, like the other affected women, should be restrained and sedated until the doctors could figure out what had caused their mental breakdowns and their severe self-mutilations.

Stepping out of the lift onto the psychiatric care floor, Jack was immediately assaulted by Gwen’s anger. He felt it in his knees, a shooting pain, and he tasted it in his mouth – like onions. Gwen’s shouts of profanity and her screaming insults were being directed at someone named ‘Suzie’.

Rhys was crouched against the wal opposite the Plexiglas screens of the secure ward, the guard at the enclosed desk near the lift watching his every move. Rhys’s head was buried in his hands, but when he saw Jack he slowly stood up.

‘How is she?’ asked Jack looking into the ward, a headache beginning behind his eyes. Gwen was in the first of four beds, writhing against the ministrations of two nurses and a burly male orderly while the doctor, a petite woman in a white lab coat, keyed notes into a tablet. Jack noticed that the other three beds were each occupied with seriously injured women, al sedated, their IV drips standing at attention next to their beds like thin alien sentinels.

‘She’s bad, Jack,’ said Rhys, his voice catching in his throat. ‘Because of her concussion, the doctor didn’t want to put her completely under, but they may have no choice. Her anger is out of control. She’s a danger to herself. To everyone.’

The doctor swiped her ID card at the panel inside the room. She came out and stepped over to them. Jack figured her to be in her early forties, her caramel-coloured skin flawless. She was short, attractive and professional in a pale green blouse and a navy pencil skirt that showed enough of her legs to make Jack and Rhys notice. The badge on her white lab coat identified her as Dr Olivia Steele.

‘Mr Wil iams, I’m Dr Steele. May I have a word?’ She proffered her arm, guiding Rhys down the hal for privacy.

Rhys nodded his head towards Jack. ‘He’s family… brother-in-law. He can hear whatever you have to say.’

Jack smiled warmly at Rhys, despite the worsening headache, and the intensity of the sour taste in his mouth.

Dr Steele nodded. ‘Very wel , but to be honest, I don’t have much to tel you, Mr Wil iams. Your wife is experiencing a kind of hysterical neurosis and it may be a while before we understand what triggered it.’ She looked from Rhys to Jack. ‘Is there any history of mental il ness in your family?’

‘Not that I know of,’ answered Jack before Rhys could process the question. ‘And if there is or was, I’d know…’

‘There’s none,’ said Rhys, emphatical y, glaring at Jack who rol ed his eyes and shrugged. ‘But what did you mean, it may take a while? How long is a while exactly?’

Dr Steele gently touched Rhys’s forearm. ‘With the right combination of drugs, a few days if we’re lucky, and that wil al ow us to talk with Gwen and examine her without such acute physical symptoms. Her real treatment wil depend on how severe the roots of her neurosis are.’ The doctor continued talking to Rhys, but her eyes were fol owing Jack as he shifted to stand at the security glass, staring into the busy ward, his jaw clenched, his hands deep in his pockets.

‘If your wife has experienced some kind of trauma that has led to this breakdown,’ she went on, turning back to Rhys, ‘then that wil have to be addressed, too, and that may take years.’

‘What about these other women?’ interrupted Jack. ‘Are they also suffering from some kind of hysterical neurosis?’

The doctor walked over next to Jack and fol owed his gaze into the room.

‘I’m afraid I can’t discuss my other patients with you.’

‘Even if they may al be suffering from a similar hysteria? Could this be related to… you know, them al being female?’ asked Jack, looking directly at Dr Steele.

The doctor looked at Jack, anger flashed in her eyes. ‘This is not the nineteenth century, Mr…?’

‘Harkness. Captain Jack Harkness.’

‘Captain Harkness, your sister isn’t a character in a Brontë novel. She’s suffering from a very real mental il ness that has affected an organ in her body and not, quite frankly, her uterus. The kind of female hysteria you’re implying was nothing more than the patriarchal repressive sexual fantasies of the Victorian medical establishment. Your sister’s brain, like these other women, is suffering from something quite real. The fact that it’s her mind we’re dealing with makes it more complicated and more frightening, but I’m more than equipped to help her.’

‘So you’re convinced there’s no pattern to be determined,’ continued Jack, folding his arms, noting the doctor’s mouth twitch slightly. ‘That there’s no related causes in the fact that four females from the same immediate area have experienced a similar hysteria?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ continued the doctor, her rant picking up steam. ‘Freud might have believed that Gwen was suffering from some uncontrol able emotional tantrum and just because of timing and one or two similarities among these women,’ she swept her hand along the window, ‘that they’re somehow sharing in that suffering. But, Captain Harkness, let me tel you that, despite what you may have read in the media about what happened to these women and to Gwen, mental il ness is not contagious and your sister and these other women are not simply hysterical women.’

Jack nodded and tried to look appropriately contrite.

‘If you’l excuse me.’ She turned back to Rhys. ‘Mr Wil iams, I’l keep you posted on your wife’s condition. For now, I’d suggest you get some rest, the days and months ahead could be long ones for you and your family.’

The door opened again, this time to let one of the nurses out. Gwen’s screams were muted, but Jack could stil hear her cal ing for what now sounded like ‘Schoozie’.

‘May I speak to my sister?’

‘If you must,’ said the doctor, as she headed towards the elevator, ‘but make it brief. I need her to rest. The medication wil help her sleep, but I also need to see her blood pressure and her adrenalin levels come down to much safer levels.’

When the elevator closed on the doctor, Jack pul ed his mobile from the inside of his coat pocket.

The guard at the desk glared at him. ‘Hey, you can’t use a mobile in here.

Give that over.’

Jack ignored him.

Rhys was staring sadly through the security glass at Gwen, who was slowly becoming less agitated. ‘Who’re you cal ing?’ he asked.

‘Dr Steele is wrong, Rhys. There’s a pattern to al this. These woman are not just some kind of statistical anomaly. The doctor confirmed that al these woman are suffering from similar delusions, from similar mental breakdowns, to say nothing of the fact that al of them mutilated themselves in some way.’

Both men looked more closely at each of the women in the ward, this time paying more attention to their other injuries. The woman in the bed closest to Gwen had her head bandaged, the dressing covering the entire left side of her face. Opposite her, a woman in her late twenties had her arm in a cast, only three fingers visible. The third, a heavy middle-aged woman with untidy curls of hair had a thick white patch dressed on her left eye, raw pink welts and lines of scratches covering her cheeks.

Gwen’s right shoulder was bound in bandages, soft leather straps fastened across her chest and restraints on her legs to keep her frenetic movements restricted. She looked smal and frail, and as he looked at her Jack’s heart cracked a little more.