Risk Assessment by James Goss Read Free Book Online

to it. Slightly reluctantly, it unfolded itself from the carcass, laying it out on glorious display. Look at this, said the Vam, lovely bones for you to come and have a pick at.
    And it waited for the carrion feeders.
    By the time it made it off the beach, the Vam had learned a lot about this world. It had also grown pleasingly. Now the size of a deflated football, the sticky black mass rolled and crawled its way up the beach. Now it was mobile, it was easily able to locate tiny moving insects. Some of them were even blown onto it by the breeze. Breeze, it thought. It would be nice to eat something that couldn’t fly. It had pretty much had its fill. It would like something more intelligent. Something from which it could learn. The Vam enjoyed learning almost as much as it enjoyed eating.
    The Vam reached the top of an incline and extruded a basic visual sensor. Hmm, interesting. Much of what was around it was artificial in construction. Promising. Still, in the distance, beyond all the regularity, was a certain amount of natural life. Tasty. The Vam let itself look forward to eating all this new knowledge. Hey!
    It recoiled, much to its surprise, as a moving box slid past it. Ahhh. A craft. It had been a while since the Vam had seen a craft, and then it had been something far more complex and deadly, a battle cruiser throwing itself at the Vam in a futile suicide run.
    The Vam was transfixed both by the motion and the occupant of the vehicle. It would, it decided, very much like one of them. Another craft slid past, and the Vam wondered how to get inside one. It posited that they probably stopped somewhere to unseal their precious cargo. Ah well. The Vam rolled down the road in steady pursuit of the. . . Fiat Punto.
    An hour later, the Vam had feasted on its first human victim. Engorged at such wonders, the Vam paused in its consumption, just long enough to learn the victim’s name (Suzanne), all about the profession of estate agency, that it was squatting on what remained of her face in a car park, that she really wished that she owned a more reliable car, some worries about being late for work, an unresolved romantic attachment to a man called Brian and, while it was at it, all of her knowledge. Goodness, thought the Vam, what a meal, what a civilisation.
    It drew itself up slightly and looked around. It was unobserved. Which was good, as it was still vulnerable. But still, it had to be said. ‘Fear me, humanity, for I am the Vam!’ it whispered, trying out a human language for the first time. It remains to be known whether the National Assembly would have been proud that the Vam’s first words were in Welsh. But there we go.
    And then the Vam looked at the remains of Suzanne. And decided the best thing to do would be to make sure that no trace remained. For the moment, it must remain unknown. It looked down at the beach and thought, ‘Hello beach! Hello birds! Hello sky!’ etc. And then it looked at the small cluster of ‘buildings’ and laughed. ‘Hello Penarth.’
    And then the Vam had a very clever idea.

VII
    THE PROGRESS
    OF AN EPIDEMIC
    In which Captain Harkness makes a rash promise, and Miss Havisham visits the luxurious dwellings of the urban poor
    When Agnes and Jack got back from the graveyard, Ianto and Gwen were waiting for them in the harbour. Agnes was all silence. She stepped neatly out of the new Torchwood speedboat, the Sea Queen II , and strode away from the jetty without a word.
    Ianto tied the boat up with an efficient knot. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘she’s very cross.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Gwen, helping Jack out of the boat.
    ‘Hmmm,’ sighed Jack. ‘And she may even be right. I hate it when she’s right. It’s not just my pride at stake, although that’s obviously enormously important.’
    ‘Obviously,’ said Ianto.
    ‘No,’ continued Jack. ‘It’s that when she’s right, lots of people die.’
    The artillery shell fell too close to the window, blowing glass against the hastily