by Goss, James
But the bloody door wouldn’t open. So I was throwing gravel at the window and shouting.
A hand touched me lightly on the shoulder.
‘Gah!’ I gasped, startled.
It was one of the Scions. A girl. She was just standing there, at three o’clock in the morning.
She spoke. ‘Good morning.’ Her voice was completely flat. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘It’s Jenny, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ she agreed.
‘What are you doing up at this hour?’
She considered the question. ‘I have not acquired the habit of sleeping.’ She shrugged. ‘So I walk. My mother does not like it. It rains at night. My clothes get wet. My mother says I will catch cold.’ A sudden slyness came in. ‘But I do not catch colds.’ A pause. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Trying to wake up a policeman.’
‘Have you phoned 999?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘That is what you are supposed to do,’ she confided.
‘Not in this case. This is private.’
‘I understand. Would you like to see the Police Constable?’
‘Bloody right I would.’
Jenny strode forward and looked at the frosted glass door. ‘You have tried knocking?’
‘Yes.’ I was impatient, desperately hoping she’d go away.
‘Do you think he is hurt?’
‘Hope so.’
‘Then he could be in trouble?’
‘Heaps.’
‘Heaps.’ Jenny repeated the word, considering this. While she did it, she twisted the door knob. The lock made a sudden pop and the door swung open. ‘There,’ she announced. ‘I am strong.’
I looked at the door. And wondered what to do. What to do. This was mad.
‘Would you like me to come with you?’ she asked.
‘No,’ I said. I made up my mind. ‘No. Thank you. Can you run along home now?
She nodded. ‘I can.’ But she didn’t move.
Not labouring the point, but the whole situation was a bit creepy. A bit? A lot.
Jenny was nice. She was helpful. But there was also something utterly, utterly wrong about her. Just standing there in the 3 a.m. drizzle. Placid. Unconcerned. A mannequin. I remembered Mrs Harries’s words. There was something not quite right about the children. Jenny stood there, her long locks impossibly neat around her. Her face mildly interested. Unconcerned.
I stepped towards the doorway, but a movement beyond startled me. The door swung open and a man stood there. Dishevelled. Bleary. Tired. Drunk. He blinked at me.
‘Ohhhh…’ he said.
I hit him.
I was a bit surprised by that. But it was absolutely the right thing to do. The odd thing is he didn’t fight back, he just dropped like a stone. I stood there. Feeling a bit odd. Like, what did I do now?
I realised he was crying. A large, ugly man curled up and sobbing.
‘I’m sorry,’ he bleated. His voice was wet and snotty. He didn’t seem anything other than pathetic. ‘I am so sorry.’
Jenny stepped forward, interested. ‘Why is Mr Brown sad? Why are you hitting him?’
‘Because he’s an arsehole,’ I said.
Brown looked up. Not at me, but at the child. And he flinched. ‘What are you doing here?’ he shouted.
‘Watching,’ Jenny replied. ‘You are sad and injured. Why is this?’
‘Because of you!’ he snarled, suddenly, leaping up, tottering on his feet. ‘You! This is what you’ve… you…’ He stopped and leaned back against a wall, sinking slightly. His breath wafted over to me, a drunk’s tangle of beer and spirits. He started crying again, wiping a hand across his eyes. ‘I am so sorry.’ His voice was thick with self-pity. ‘You don’t know… You don’t know what it’s like… You don’t understand.’
‘No, no I don’t. What were you trying to do to my wife?’ I said.
He stopped, mid snivel. ‘I only wanted… I wanted a cwtch, a cuddle.’ He went quiet. Cuddle. It’s one of those words, isn’t it? It’s a bit Hallmark at the best of times. But it really didn’t fit what he’d tried to do to Gwen.
As though sensing my rage boiling up again, Jenny stepped forward hurriedly. ‘You are lonely?’ she asked him, her face curious.
Tony didn’t look at the child, but carried on speaking, deflating with every word. ‘You just don’t get it, do you, mate? You don’t know what this place is like. There’s no escape. There is no hope here… But your wife. She is so beautiful. She’s a proper woman. A real woman. She’s… ripe.’
I hit him again. It seemed the right thing to do. Again.
Jenny blinked with surprise.
He stood up after that, trying to straighten himself out. I suddenly realised how beefy and strong he was when he stood up to his full height. A meaty plate of a hand landed gently on my shoulder. ‘Strictly speaking,’ he said, his voice thick with booze and exhaustion, ‘you shouldn’t hit a policeman.’ He smiled a crooked smile. ‘But I bloody deserve it. I… I just… She was there and she was so… You only realise what’s missing when you suddenly see the real thing.’ He shook his head. ‘Is she OK?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Right,’ he nodded. Then he groaned and started to cry again, grizzling away. ‘What have I done?’ He swung back to Jenny. ‘What have you made me do?’
‘I have made you do nothing,’ she seemed puzzled.
Tony stumbled forward. We were both standing on his porch, in the damp and the freezing cold. He was wearing a rumpled T-shirt and a bloody hideous pair of boxer shorts. He looked pathetic. Utterly. His bunched hand pointed at the girl.
‘You… you remind me that this place…’ he slurred, repeating himself. ‘This place is so wrong. That we are wrong. And every bloody day we have to look at you. The best thing we can manage.’ He took another step towards her, and then, with a sudden snarl, lashed out.
Jenny didn’t blink. She just reached out with a hand, closing on his wrist. ‘Mrs Harries says I am not to let other people hit me,’ she announced. Tony gave a yell as she turned her hand slightly and his arm twisted a little wrong. Then she let go.
Tony crumpled back against his front door. ‘See?’ he hissed at me. ‘See? What kind of a bloody child is that?’ He cradled his arm in his other hand. ‘You’ve broken my arm!’ he wailed.
‘No more than you deserve, mate,’ I said, feeling a terrible satisfaction.
‘I have not broken your arm,’ said Jenny. ‘There is merely mild tearing in the rotator cuff. That is all.’
The policeman swore at her, straightening unsteadily. ‘I need a bloody drink,’ he announced, wobbling back inside. ‘You want one?’ he asked, with a woozy kind of hospitality.
‘No.’
‘No thank you,’ said Jenny politely.
‘I wasn’t asking you,’ snapped Tony. His paw wiped at the sweat on his brow as he frowned, staring and thinking and staring some more. ‘What a bloody mess, eh? Think I’d better go back to bed. Look, are we done? Are we OK?’
‘Don’t come near my wife again.’ I couldn’t think what else to say. There are situations where even the best words you can come up with are a bit lame.
He smiled a little. ‘I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. You are such a lucky man. She is perfect.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘She bloody is.’
‘I am so sorry.’ His voice had become a whine. ‘I am so sorry for what I’ve done.’ He vanished inside his house and started to crawl up the stairs like an old dog.
‘Shall I close the door?’ asked Jenny.
I shrugged, indifferent.
‘Do you still wish to make sure that he is all right?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m going home.’
‘I see,’ she replied. ‘I shall continue to walk. There are still two and a half hours until my mother wakes up. I may go and pick some flowers.’
‘Right then,’ I said, ‘Good night.’
‘Yes,’ she
said. I walked away. She stood there in the rain. Her eyes open. I couldn’t tell if she was watching me or not.
Gwen was still fast asleep. Anwen stirred slightly in her cot. She made a noise that could have meant Is that you, Daddy? or Is there food?
‘Hush,’ I said, lifting her up, ever so gently. ‘Let’s not wake Mum, eh?’ I went to the fridge and gave her some milk. Then I plonked her back in the cot and settled down in the chair, staring at her through the bars. She looked so peaceful, so innocent, her little tiny baby snores the only sound in the world.
I fell asleep.
Eloise
So, another shitty day at work.
Tom was hung over, which was a great help. He sat there, cradling a ‘World’s Worst Boss’ mug. Some toast was on the table next to him, along with a game on his phone that was commanding most of his attention. In front of him, the massed processors of the monitoring station churned away, performing countless thousands of computations a second. And the only screen he was looking at was a gossip site about Angelina Jolie.
‘Hey!’ he called. Even his hair was hung over, the curl quite gone.
‘Rough night?’ I asked.
‘Oh, nothing deadly,’ he assured me. ‘Just a little bit full of beer and pizza. But all in a good cause. Listen, there’s something I need to talk to you about…’
‘Is it about Angelina? Is she adopting another orphan?’
‘No, it’s actually quite different.’
Then Sebastian came in. Sebastian is as unlike Tom as you could hope for. Sebastian is younger, and altogether more efficient. Tom was sat there in a rumpled-yet-fashionable T-shirt, pale, interesting, bored. Sebastian was wearing a suit. I’ve told him there’s really no need, but he insists. He says he likes it. He always greets me in the morning with a freshly made coffee.
When you’re from Seattle, you grow up to appreciate a good cup of coffee. Of course, there is no such thing as a good cup of coffee in Wales. Scratch that. There is no such thing as a good cup of coffee in Great Britain. I sometimes wonder if it’s the water, or if they just don’t quite get it. But it’s like they’ve all missed a memo. Or just want you to drink more tea.
Sebastian, however, really gets coffee. I don’t know what we’d do without him. We’re lucky to have him.
He also does most of the work. Tom, sadly, is mostly window dressing. Pretty window dressing. But all the same.
It’s odd, but there I was in the middle of bloody nowhere, working with two men who could probably get work as male models. When I was young, I always wanted to work abroad. Somewhere exciting and foreign. I never dreamt it would be Wales. But there I was, and the work was utterly fascinating.
The whole idea of a controlled village was just… I mean, clearly it occasionally gave me the ethical heebie-jeebies. But the Scions were the best hope these poor people had. It’s fascinating, and at the same time just utterly thunder-facing. The nice thing about Sebastian and Tom is that they don’t challenge me morally. Sebastian agrees with me, and Tom doesn’t really care. He just likes the work. Well, the pretty much total lack of work.
I wander through the office, past the banks of frankly so-obsolete-it’s-ha-ha-funny computer terminals. They’re still working. Still watching. Still whirring away. Over the years we’ve brought in new systems, but we’ve not taken away the old ones. They’re still there.
The thing is… stuff was robust back then. When NASA launched their Voyager probes, they were expecting the things to be a joy for a fortnight – but they’re still going over thirty years later, still beaming back to us from the fringes of the solar system.
It’s like that with these computers. I may own a more intelligent hairdryer, but those beauties belonged to an era where you designed a computer for a single purpose and built it to last. These old girls just sit there, churning away, each one with an elephantine carbon footprint (actually, what is the carbon footprint of elephants?), but still, after thirty years, doing their duty. Sentinels. Keeping watch.
I paused at the door of my office. I’d have loved nothing more than to go down to the hangar that morning. Every morning. The hangar always felt like proper work. Real and genuine ‘frontiers-of-science’ stuff. Whereas my office was… oh, if it wasn’t emails it was database tables, spreadsheets, forecasts and answering questions I’ve answered countless times before.
My PC was already on. Sebastian always boots it up for me every morning. He’s just being helpful, but it simply means that my inbox is staring at me, waiting. Like a boring, pitiless eye.
And there it was. An email from Jasmine.
I remember my first meeting with her. It’s the only time I’d ever actually seen her. She pretty much met me off the plane. Trouser suit. Always a bad sign. Delighted I had come over, lucky to have me, it would be a privilege, she’d be very hands-off but always fight my corner, nod-nod-nod, open smile, warm body language. Clearly, I thought, she’s been on a lot of courses.
Mind you, what a poetic name, I thought. Turns out it was the only poetic thing about her. Of course, she was really a corporal or something. So she was actually Corp. J. Bailey. Maybe having such a sweet name is what made her decide to become a trained killing machine. Anyhow, it was a quick meet-and-greet and then she packed us onto the six-hour train journey here, almost before I’d had a chance to take a picture of the London Eye or the Palace or anything much really. Slicing out of London on a giant modern train. Then changing at Wolverhampton (don’t ask) onto a smaller and grubbier train that smelt of dog. Then changing again at a place with a name that was mostly ‘Ms’, ‘Y’s and ‘DD’s onto a couple of damp carriages that took forever to rattle along some breathtakingly grey coast. Wales is so damn beautiful, but I wonder what it would look like if they ever turned on the sun?
By Wolverhampton, Jasmine and I had already run out of things to say to each other. I tried pulling out some of my notes, but she frowned at me. Clearly, too secret to read on the train, so I thumbed through a battered paperback. Jasmine pecked away at her laptop. How that was somehow less secret, I don’t know. But then, that year, spies were always leaving laptops and secrets on trains – maybe it was standard practice for the Brits?
At the end of the line, it was dark and raining. Jasmine had the keys to an old jeep parked outside the station. We climbed in, and Jasmine bounced me along the dirt tracks to the Monitoring Station. I’d expected it to be dusty or something, but it was spotless.
‘That’s Sebastian,’ she said. ‘We couldn’t manage without him.’
He met us, courteous and polite and all smiles. He was wearing a suit, even then.
‘Sebastian?’ I said, staring at him. He was strikingly handsome. ‘I have heard so much about you!’ I felt stupid saying that. ‘It’s… a privilege to meet you,’ I gushed. Jeez, button it.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said politely and went to put the kettle on.
Jasmine gave me the tour. The hangar was the most exciting bit, naturally. Even now I can’t quite believe it… but no.
Then she checked her watch, frowned slightly and announced ‘Well, it’s all yours now. Any questions, you’ve got my email and my direct line. It’s been so good to get you on board. Don’t be a stranger.’ Then Sebastian drove her back to the station.
I was left alone in the building. Very excited. Scared witless.
That was the only time I’d ever seen Jasmine. I couldn’t even remember what she looked like really. Doll-like, porcelain pale. But there was nothing fragile about her.
Back to that morning, and the inevitable email from Jasmine. At first it seemed no worse than the others, but it was. It was the start of something dreadful.
Hey,
Thanks for the report! Looks great at first glance. 99% there for me first time, so hooray!
There’s a few tiny things that just aren’t working for me, though, sorry. Maybe I’m just being slow, but there appears to be no progress on the issues we discussed last time. Should we not try and get them dealt
with in the next work cycle? I’ve had a brief look in the shared folder, but there doesn’t seem to be any info there. Am I looking in the wrong place?!? If you could perhaps ping over some data asap on those two topics that are outstanding, then I know that everyone here would be really thrilled.
Hope that’s not bombarding you! Let me know if it’s getting too much for you, won’t you?’
xx Jas x
I stared at the email. Then at two buff folders on my desk. I kept a lot of stuff as hard copy only. After a few early incidents, I knew better than to leave files lying around on the server. Jasmine had a habit of seizing on raw data and twisting it to suit her purposes. That’s why I liked those decades-old computers that lined the corridor. They did their job marvellously and just couldn’t be linked up to a network. They wouldn’t understand what the internet was. They just did their job and issued their reports, burning the information onto ancient sheetfold paper with a reassuring rasp.
I stared again at the two cardboard folders. ‘Mind control’, said one. ‘Aggression’, said the other.
I stood up. Jasmine could wait. I was going to the hangar.
I made it as far as the corridor. Sebastian was collecting printouts, folding them neatly and immaculately tearing off the serrated edges. He would do this for most of the morning, then go and spend an hour checking on the flowers that grew around the village.
Tom slouched into the corridor and stood at my elbow, humming and harring, hovering like a fart in a bath. He clearly wanted to say something. I folded away the printout and looked at him.
‘Seriously, boss,’ he said. ‘Can I have a word?’ He’d pocketed his phone. Clearly he was giving me his undivided attention.
I nodded. Sometimes you have to accept fate. Fate did not want me to go to the hangar today.
‘What is it?’ I tried to be businesslike.
‘Right,’ he began, stumbling a little. ‘That family that have turned up in the village?’
‘The Williamses?’ I nodded. ‘Has there been any progress?’
