Torchwood: Exodus Code

it, Jack! People are dying. More will. At the rate those chimneys are forming, they’ll be spewing toxins into the air in…?’ Eva turned and looked at Shelley.
    ‘In exactly four days and forty-seven minutes,’ said Shelley.
    Jack flipped his braces over his shirt and ran his hands through his bed hair. ‘It’s enough time.’
    ‘For what?’
    ‘My plan.’
    ‘Oh good. You have a plan.’
    Jack put his hands on Eva’s shoulders. ‘You really need to get laid. You’re very tense.’
    She shrugged Jack away. ‘I’m not sure it matters, but what exactly is androstenal?’
    ‘It explains a lot,’ Jack grabbed a towel. ‘The heightened synaesthesia among women, the extreme physical responses to their loved ones and the increase in desire to those,’ he looked at Eva, ‘who are in need of sexual release.’
    ‘I agree,’ said Shelley, throwing a graph up displaying the amounts per unit of both elements in the water. ‘The quantities are significant and they are building.’
    ‘Would one of you please tell me what androstenal is?’
    ‘Androstenal,’ said Jack, ‘is not just an ecto-hormone, Eva, it’s a female pheromone.’

53
    WHEN HE’D FINISHED eating breakfast, Cash set the ship’s course for the day with Sam, then came back below deck, joining Jack, Vlad and Eva in the communication room. Cash was glad he’d eaten a hearty breakfast to shore up against what was coming because he knew that the information Jack planned to share with the crew wasn’t going to be easy to hear.
    In the comms room, Jack was watching a CNN feed of the black geyser off the coast of Wales whose chimney was now visible above the surface of the water. Since it was the first geyser to appear and had remained the one closest to a populated area, it had garnered the most attention from the media, the scientific community and the public.
    The geyser was almost fifty metres in diameter, and was spewing black steam 15 metres into the air, its rock chimney already constructing itself at sea level. From above, the chimney looked like a clay pot spinning on a potter’s wheel, a tower of water surging from its centre.
    Although the Royal Navy and the coastguard had set a five-mile no-sail no-fly zone around the Welsh geyser, the sea traffic on the Bristol channel had never been heavier and so many helicopters were now swarming in the sky, it looked like an invasion force of massive buzzing insects was hovering above Wales and the south-west of England.
    Cash joined Jack. ‘The media are reporting almost all of the country’s psychiatric hospitals are full,’ he told him. ‘Most women are being sent home with prescriptions for sedatives. The numbers in the other parts of the world where the geysers have erupted and chimneys are forming are stabilising. I think the Welsh chimney is worse because of the geyser’s proximity to a population mass.’
    ‘And then there’s that reaction,’ said Jack, watching as the news camera zoomed in on a coastguard cruiser off the coast of Weston-super-Mare, escorting a yacht out of the no-sail zone, its naked female passengers romping to loud music, thoroughly enjoying each other’s company.
    Cash stepped closer to the screen, grinning broadly. ‘I’m liking that reaction to the geyser much more than what happened off the coast of New Zealand.’
    ‘So are they,’ smiled Jack.
    ‘Any idea what makes the difference in the way a woman responds to the pheromones the geysers are releasing?’ asked Vlad.
    ‘If I may,’ replied Shelley, looking at Eva for permission. Despite being a creation of hers and Vlad’s, Jack noticed that Shelley deferred to Eva more than Vlad.
    ‘Of course,’ said Eva, whose sexual desire had diminished the further south in the Atlantic the
Ice Maiden
sailed, a fact that she had to admit annoyed her a little, even though she knew she was reacting to the pheromones as much as she was reacting to Vlad.
    ‘Scientists generally type pheromones in multiple categories,’ said Shelley, ‘the most common are obviously sex pheromones, then receptor, trail and signal pheromones, each one triggering a response through a behaviour change or a mood change in one or both members of the species affected . The pheromone that I detected in the hydrothermal vents is an ecto-hormone, a combination of two or three categories which is why it’s triggering changes in mood and behaviour in women, particularly fertile women, and the changes seem tied to internal