He paused to collect himself. ‘We have a huge opportunity here.’
Howell’s testing group at Porton Down had been what remained of the elderly. The cancer drugs were not as effective on them, their DNA having given up, their own bodies feeding off themselves. It made him sick to think of the mess they had created. And there wasn’t enough expired stock now to help the fires burn for even one more winter.
Howell took a sip of his tea and continued, ‘Let’s look at the drugs that failed to make it to market due to fatalities. Toby, I bet there’s a weapon or two in there. Christ, can you imagine what the US would pay for live trials?’
Suddenly, he saw just how many possibilities there were. He banged his hand down on the table, making Toby flinch, and continued, excitedly, ‘We had a promising cryo preservation product from the Middle East that just needed a stronger test pool. They were desperate for larger trials; they have deep pockets, Toby. They have oil.’
Toby said nothing.
Howell was driving the conversation now. ‘Think of this; we flood a mine with cryo preservant. What damage can we repair? That’s the longer game here; we use the population as a continual testing bed, a flooded mine this month, tainted tobacco the next. Let’s use them for a few months before we recycle them.’
A flash of lightning danced across the skyline, snapping Howell back to the present. He regretted that Toby was not here to share his victory but you were either a progressive or a problem. Toby had let him down, had betrayed the spirit of ’28 and allowed himself to become paralysed by bureaucracy and fear. Afterwards, Howell’s ascension in Whitehall had been swift and easy.
Sitting down behind his stately dark oak desk, Howell stroked the paperweight on the blotter. Beautiful white incisors sparkled, suspended inside the glass, smiling up at him as they had always done.
the end About the author
Robin lives in the North East of the UK but he’d always rather be exploring deep space. While he is necessarily earth bound, he lives with his family by the sea and uses the region’s industrial heritage and environment as a rich source of inspiration for his imagined new worlds.
FROST FIRES
Pierre Le Gué
From track level the southbound platform looked high and safe. Shunters and permanent way men worked down here all the time, but I always felt it was forbidden territory, especially on a cold dark winter night like this. A ‘here be dragons’ feeling. Stone flags gave way to crunching cinders under my feet and the sharp tang of smoke grew stronger. Reaching the bottom of the platform slope, I stood with a bucket of coal in each hand looking warily up the tracks in both directions. Porter means carrier and that’s what we did, feeding Lancaster Castle Station’s trackside frost fires regularly during twelve-hour night shifts in those days of steam.
The eleven-oh-eight passenger train had just left for London and I could see its red light through the smoke as it chuffed away up the gradient toward Preston. From the open door of Lancaster Number One signal box with its gas lit windows sounded the ting-ting of a bell, signifying that the eleven-oh-eight had cleared the section. It was safe to cross the lines.
Trackside cables whispered on the platform retaining wall, counterweights creaked and a home signal clunked down on the gantry beyond the box. Light filters changed from green to red. I had two tracks to cross to get to the fire so I looked north – and south too. Occasionally an engine had startled me by creeping up silently with only a stealthy chuff and a clank of rods when it had gone past, so I wasn’t taking any chances.
Between the main north and southbound through lines was the eighteen-foot high water column, a nine-inch diameter steel pipe with a swivel top and long leather end for locomotive firemen to fill their tanks. Next to it a thin column of smoke indicated that the frost fire was still alive, warming the surrounding air just enough to stop the wheel valve control from freezing on January nights. Some fires were open braziers but this was a large cylindrical stove with a tall chimney and a door for stoking. I opened the hatch, tipped in the coal one bucket at a time with a whoof of flame and a belch of smoke from the chimney.
The stove clanged shut and I listened, standing still and alert with breath steaming. Through the steel of the northbound through line a faint eerie whisper had begun, quickly turning to a persistent hissing and then an urgent thrum. They had just laid the long sections of welded track and we were not yet used to this new sound of a train’s approach that replaced the familiar clickety-clack.
Now, above the swishing and humming in the rails sounded a rumbling throb, soon recognisable as the deep rhythmic mutter of a Type 40 diesel approaching fast down Ripley Bank. Then, beneath the twinkling signal gantries on the southbound line a dimmer light appeared, quickly resolving itself into the letters OZOO, the code for a light engine – one travelling without a train. I stood enthralled, with that great dark entity, ‘OZOO’ homing in on me. Then it was past, looming high above the rails with a blast of horns and a buffeting thud of wind, leaving a spiral of litter down the track in a swirl of diesel-scented air. Seconds later the northbound train was a red light in the distance on its way to Carlisle. The whistling thrum of its motor receded and the rails hissed back down into silence.
I let go the standpipe wheel and headed back toward the safety of the platform with empty buckets clanking. Inside Number One box a figure heaved on a long red and white painted wooden lever. Cables under the northbound platform creaked; far up the line a signal clumped and green changed again to red. I looked along the two tracks I had to cross and saw Bill, one of the signalmen, at the top of his long wooden staircase taking a breath of air.
‘Anything coming?’ I hailed him.
‘Nay, lad. You’re all right,’ he called back.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Course I’m sure. We don’t want thee haunting t’ place for t’ next twenty years.’
Come to think of it, neither did I, so as Bill went back inside the box I stepped gingerly out on to the track. Something was strange. Half a mile south up the bank, the signal lamps shimmered as if through a heat haze, and the icy winter night suddenly felt warmer with a breath of wind from the south. Was I imagining it? Nothing was scheduled, but an eerie faint thrumming sounded in the rails. A train, certainly, but the now fast-approaching sound resolved into a now-familiar persistent hiss. This was one for the signalmen.
‘Bill! There’s something coming!’
Bill appeared at the head of the staircase.
‘Can’t be.’
‘There is. Listen.’
‘Well, I’ll–’
He hurried down to join me.
Colour lights on the northbound signal gantry dimmed, flickered and steadied again at ‘Clear’. A brilliant headlight was nearly upon us. Bill bounded up the box stairs toward the phone, only to stop half way as the air filled with light and sound. And then it was past. Not with the sudden blast and firebox glare of a steamer or diesel exhaust thunder here, but a high-pitched whine accompanied by the familiar thud of air that could knock a man over.
Bill stopped half way up the steps. The office door opened over on Platform 4 and Gordon the duty foreman ran out in time to see two red lights disappearing north toward Carlisle Bridge, leaving behind them the traditional dusty swirl of drink cartons, crisp packets and cigarette ends.
Then it was gone, the sound muting suddenly and not fading gradually. All the signals looked normal, but over nearby Carlisle Bridge there hung a pale luminous fog. Perhaps it had seeped up from the River Lune below, but I’d never seen it before.