The Gastropoda Imperative by Peter Barns (parable of the sower read online txt) 📕

Drewsbeck’s eyebrows bunched across his nose and he slowly raised his head from studying the CCTV screen. His eyes had turned flinty and Conal could see how suffused with blood his face was, the tiny capillaries standing out.

“I beg your pardon?” he growled.

Conal realised the mistake he’d made and tried to recover. “I just can’t guarantee how safe it will be down there, sir. You’ve seen for yourself what they can do.”

Walking over to the lift, his boss harrumphed. “What’s the damned code!” he snapped.

Walking over to the keypad, Conal punched in the number and stood back as the lift doors opened. Following his boss into the car, he watched him push the ‘Down’ button. His fingers were no longer trembling, in fact, as the minutes ticked by, Drewsbeck was looking more and more like his old self.

“I’ve left the lighting on high,” Conal said as they exited the lift. “To keep the little bastards in The Pit.”

The Old Man just grunted and strode off down the corridor. Conal had to hurry to keep up with him.

Conal opened The Pit door and stood back. “Be careful. There’s glass all over the floor. Looks like some of the shelving has collapsed.”

Drewsbeck carefully picked his way over the mounds of dark soil and glass from a broken breeding tank, walking over to the bones piled in one corner. He squatted down beside them, his knees cracking with the effort. Picking up a large femur, he ran the tip of his finger along it.

“See,” he said quietly, almost as though talking to himself, “it’s been stripped clean. No blood, no tissue, nothing. And look here,” he continued, holding the bone out to Conal, clicking his fingernail along some fine indentations. “Just like a large rasp had been taken to it.” Dropping the bone, he suddenly dived his hand into the pile, scattering them in all directions, obviously looking for something.

Conal couldn’t be sure, but it looked to him as though the Old Man was picking some things out of the pile. His boss had his back to him so he couldn’t see what he was doing that well. Getting up, Drewsbeck walked to the pit in the middle of the floor and looked over, staring intently into the mess. Bending over, he held his arm just above the surface and moved it sideways, dropping whatever he’d got in his hand into the pit.

Something shifted just beneath the crusted surface, following his movements. Conal was about to run over and pull his boss away from the danger, but the Old Man turned to face him, a big smile on his face.

“She did it, Conal,” he said, the admiration clear in his voice. “She actually pulled it off. Damn it, she said she would. I never did really believe she would though.”

Conal walked over to all that was left of the project staff and squatted by the bones, just as his boss had. When he’d been down here before on his own, he hadn’t wanted to hang about. Now he was curious.

Picking up what looked to him might be a ulna, or maybe a radius - he was having trouble remembering his childhood biology lessons - he saw that the joint at one end was missing. It looked as though it had been attacked by thousands of tiny chisels. Poking through the rest of the skeletons, he saw that the smaller bones were missing. The phalanges was it? Something like that.

The Old Man was on the other side of the pit, looking at some glass tanks along one wall.

Conal felt that coldness on the back of his neck - the sign that something was not as it seemed. It had served him well in the Special Forces, saving his life more than once. Conal rubbed his neck, wondering what was bothering him. He wandered out into the corridor, looking up and down.

“Hey, Mr Drewsbeck,” he called a moment later, “come and look at this.”

Drewsbeck found his PA kneeling on the floor, the overhead lights reflecting from his bald head. His nose almost touched the tiles as he squinted along the corridor. Standing up, he brushed off his trousers and nodded at the floor. “Take a look for yourself,” he said.

Getting to his knees, Drewsbeck took a look. He could just make out the long scuff marks on the tiles, as though something had been dragged along the corridor. He stood up and shrugged, as though saying, “So what?”

“They were all jumbled up together in the corner when I got down here,” Conal said.

Drewsbeck nodded. “You’re saying that they were dragged to the one place and eaten. Is that it?”

“No doubt about it. A lot of the bones are missing. If I’d arrived half-an-hour later, I reckon we wouldn’t have had found a thing.”

Drewsbeck firmly closed the door to The Pit and nodded. “I think I saw a canteen farther down the corridor. You can make me that cup of coffee now. We need to talk.”

Conal followed the Old Man’s bobbing back as he hurried down the corridor. He seemed to have suddenly come alive, all signs of his tiredness now gone. Shaking his head, Conal crossed to the coffee maker and switched it on, grabbing a couple of cups from under the counter.

Coffee steaming gently in front of them, the two men looked at each other. “A right bloody mess,” Drewsbeck said.

Conal just nodded. Words weren’t needed.

“Okay Conal, I’ll give it to you straight. This could be the end of everything I’ve built up over the years.” Holding his hand up as Conal started to speak, Drewsbeck shook his head. “No, let me finish.” He took a moment to think. “You’ve been with me a long time Conal, you know what’s involved here, the thousands of jobs that would be lost if this ever gets out. I can’t let that happen. I really can’t.”

There was a long, drawn out silence as the two men sat and thought about that. Conal’s brain was buzzing. Everything he now had, everything he’d become in the past five years, was due to the faith the Old Man had put in him. He’d always admired his boss, amazed at the long hours he put in, and how he managed to come up with new investments and projects to keep the organisation growing year on year. Now all that was threatened. But this was too big a thing to hide.

“I really need your help here Conal,” the Old Man said quietly. “If this terrible accident gets out it’ll finish me.” He sat quietly for a moment, then looked at his PA, his eyes drilling into him. “These people knew the dangers of working here on this project. That’s the reason I looked for people who didn’t have any families when I employed them, and paid them so much money.”

“Even so, you can’t cover up six deaths,” Conal said.

“With your help, I think I can. I have an idea,” he said quietly, “but it’ll depend on my being able to bribe a senior Civil Servant. I have something on him that we can use to get his help.”

“We?”

Ignoring Conal’s comment, Drewsbeck pushed on. “The biggest problem we have here is the six missing staff. How to account for the fact that there are no bodies to bury,” he said.

Conal allowed himself a small smile at the repeated, ‘we’. “Go on,” he said.

“So, here’s what we do.”

Conal listened hard. The Old Man seemed to have thought of everything, covered every base. It was almost as though he’d already had it all worked out before they’d entered the laboratories. He had to admire the Old Man’s quick mind.

Conal was uncomfortable about covering up the tragedy, but it was an accident and nobody would suffer, except his boss if the newspapers ever found out what had gone on here.

Conal finally nodded his agreement, pushing the sudden cold spot on his neck to the back of his mind.

When Conal and Drewsbeck got back to the boat, the boatman was sitting on a pile of old sacks, snoring fit to bust, his loose upper lip flapping at each exhalation. Conal jumped aboard and helped Drewsbeck over the gunwale. Their thumping entrance woke the boatman from his sleep and he’s eyes suddenly shot open.

“Wha—” he mumbled, shaking himself awake before struggling to his feet. “Oh, you’re back then,” he grumbled. “Thought you were going to be there all bloody night.”

Conal and Drewsbeck smiled at each other. Then finding somewhere to sit amongst the crates and lobster pots littering the deck, they made themselves as comfortable as they could. The boat set out for the mainland, its noisy engine belching out more thick black smoke. Conal hoped it would make it all the way to the quayside. The sea was choppier now, the boat rolling alarmingly on the waves, and he didn’t like the prospect of being stuck out here waiting for the coastguard to rescue them.

“You never did tell me how it all started?” Conal said, trying to push the picture of them all floundering in the sea from his mind. “The project,” he added, nodding back at the island.

Drewsbeck looked over his shoulder for a moment and gave a soft smile, as though his PA’s question had brought back fond memories. “Well that’s quite a story,” he said. “I was approached by a young woman, fresh out of university with her new Ph.D. She’d been working on this environmental idea she’d had since she was thirteen or so. Real dedicated. You know the type?”

Conal nodded. “Met a few,” he said.

“She spent weeks trying to get to see me.”

Conal shook his head. “Don’t recall anyone like that.”

“Before your time, Conal. Anyway, she finally gets past Mrs Hamter. She was your predecessor.” He chuckled. “A formidable lady indeed. So Mrs H set her up an appointment, and here she is, sitting in front of me, asking for money to develop this crazy scheme of hers. She told me that, because my companies produce so much waste, it was only reasonable that I should find a method of cleaning it up.

“She’d gone to the trouble of preparing a presentation, so I felt I had no option but to sit through it. Thing was, I knew after the first overhead that it would never work, but I let her carry on anyway. Felt a bit sorry for her I suppose, all the years of hard work she’d already put into it.”

“You felt sorry for her?” The incredulity in Conal’s voice brought a flicker of a smile to Drewsbeck’s lips.

“I have got a heart, you know Conal,” he said.

“Yeah. Sorry. So what happened?”

“I said I’d look into it. Asked Mrs H to take the young woman’s details. Then, after she’d left, dropped her proposal into the drawer marked ‘Rejects’. That was that, or so I thought. Hell, how wrong can a man be.” Drewsbeck paused, staring out into the night, lost in his own thoughts for a moment.

Conal coughed, raising his eyebrows as Drewsbeck’s gaze turned back to him. “So?” he prompted.

Drewsbeck chuckled, shaking his head slightly. “She wasn’t about to take no for an answer. She came back, again and again, almost camping out in the office at one point. Drove poor Mrs H to distraction. In the end I had to get the police to kick her out and make sure reception never let her into the building again.

“Then she started showing up at places I went. Restaurants, the theatre, places like that. God knows how she found out where I’d be. Wouldn’t surprise me if she hadn’t spent a fortune on having me followed. She never said a damned word. Just sat there staring. Do you know how bloody annoying that can be, Conal? Having someone staring at you that way everywhere you go?”

Conal shook his head and smiled to himself. He just couldn’t see the Old Man in that situation.

“This went on for . . . oh, perhaps six months. Then she changed tactics.”

Conal could see that the Old Man was back in his memories again, but more than that, was wearing a slightly embarrassed expression.

“You can’t stop there. What the hell happened?” Conal prompted.

“She dumped three bins full of stinking refuse through the sunroof of my Mercedes. Then stuck a