else.’ He shook his head. ‘It should be a fairly simple process to adjust the dosage to ensure that my customers can miss one or two tablets in a row without the creature becoming agitated.’
‘But you need the eggs,’ Gwen rasped, rubbing her throat. ‘You need lots of eggs if you’re going to develop an efficient business model.’ She spotted Jack’s sceptical glance, and shrugged. ‘Rhys bought a book called Fifteen Ways to be an Effective Manager,’ she said. ‘I had a flick through, one night, when I was bored.’ Turning back to Scotus, she said, ‘So where do all these eggs come from? As I understand it, a host needs to be implanted by one of those flying things, and I doubt you got more than a few dozen eggs from that dog of yours. You’re going to need thousands, even tens of thousands, if this thing takes off. What’s the secret? Where are the eggs going to come from?’
Scotus looked away, discomfited. ‘There are… possibilities,’ he said. ‘I have identified a new source of supply.’
‘No.’ Jack felt a rage building within him, burning through his heart and brain. ‘This stops, here, now.’
Scotus shook his head. ‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘The potential impact of my diet pills is immense. They could literally change the world. They are the only diet pills guaranteed to make you lose weight. Not “help”. Not “assist”. Not “only in conjunction with a calorie-controlled diet”. No, if people stick to the regime, then the pills actually make them lose weight. Overnight, there’s no more obesity epidemic in the western world. The National Health Service can turn its resources away from treating heart disease and diabetes, and all the other things that obesity causes, and start working on the things that matter, like curing cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. The government can redirect its resources to fighting global warming. Just one simple thing, like making people slim, and the effects are incredible. Is it so much to ask that a few people sacrifice their lives in the early stages of testing?’
‘Yes,’ Jack said. He could feel the rage darkening his voice. ‘It is.’
Scotus was almost pleading now. ‘But there are always risks in drug tests. Do you think that antibiotics came for free? Do you think that drugs for controlling blood pressure didn’t cause any problems during testing? Even when new drugs go into a few years of double-blind tests to check their efficacy, the people given the placebos have to suffer a continuation of their symptoms when the other people on the trial are being given a cure. Is that fair? All medical research is built on pain and death. We accept it, when we think about it at all, because the potential benefits are so great!’
‘There is a difference,’ Jack said, ‘between research that may have an unfortunate side effect and research that’s guaranteed to kill your test subjects.’
‘It’s no good,’ Gwen said. She was staring at Scotus. ‘You won’t convince him. He will keep on going, producing his pills, whatever arguments you make.’
‘She recognises the truth in what I’m saying,’ Scotus proclaimed. ‘She recognises the passion behind my words.’
‘No,’ Gwen said. ‘I recognise the fact that you’ve been infected yourself. There’s one of these creatures inside you, and it’s controlling your thoughts.’
Halfway along the corridor, past the door they had come in by, Toshiko stopped by the first of the massive riveted metal slabs.
‘What’s this?’ she asked Owen.
He rushed past her. ‘Cold store,’ he said. ‘It’s where they would have kept the frozen carcasses they offloaded from the ships, before canning them and taking them away to the shops. Transport area’s back that way,’ he gestured over his shoulder, ‘so the canning area is probably up ahead.’
‘The power is on,’ Toshiko said simply.
Owen stopped. ‘It can’t be. This place has been deserted since the 1970s.’
‘There’s a generator,’ Toshiko pointed out.
‘But that was set up to keep the medical monitoring equipment running, and provide lighting.’ Owen was getting irritated; Toshiko could tell from his tone of voice. He didn’t like people disagreeing with him. ‘There’s no point cooling the cold store down to some ludicrous temperature. That’s just a waste of energy,’
‘It would be,’ Toshiko said, ‘if there wasn’t anything in here.’ She pressed her face against the thick glass. ‘But I think there is.’
She turned her attention to the control box by the side of the door. It had a thermostat on it, plus a couple of buttons that turned the cooling on