Another Life

by Peter Anghelides

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ Megan said. ‘Who made that? Where’s it from?’

  ‘It’s Bekaran,’ said Owen from behind her, his lips close to her ear. ‘We don’t know where they come from. Ugly things they are. But they have some pretty neat gadgets.’

  In the display, Megan’s nipple was now erect. ‘Can it go further?’ Megan giggled. ‘I mean, can it scan deeper? Show the lactiferous ducts? Or as far as the pectoralis muscles?’

  Owen thumbed the device and the skin disappeared as the scan displayed a subcutaneous layer, but quickly flicked it back again. ‘I’d rather not.’

  Megan turned to face him, eager to see the device for herself. He showed her how to adjust it, the touch-sensitive plates at its rear that looked and felt so unlike any human design. ‘I can show you more,’ he urged her. ‘I can take you to Torchwood now, show you everything.’

  ‘Steady on, Owen,’ she told him, ‘I’m on duty again in an hour. Let’s see how this thing works, then…’

  She ran the device over his jacket. Owen could see the display reflected in the mirror, over her shoulder. He helped her position her palm and fingers on the device, holding the back of her hand like a caress.

  After a few false starts, Megan was able to adjust the scan. Owen watched his jacket dissolve in the display, then his crumpled shirt. She focused on his nipple with its little halo of short dark hairs. He felt her hand move down, until he could no longer see the display reflected. He could feel the device pressed lightly against his body. Slowly down his midriff. Over his navel. Below his belt now, pressing against his crotch.

  Megan smiled as she studied the display. ‘I see this thing has a zoom facility.’

  Owen raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘I didn’t know the scanner could do that.’

  ‘I wasn’t talking about the scanner,’ said Megan.

  Owen lifted up her hand and took the Bekaran device from her. ‘When does your shift start?’

  ‘About an hour,’ said Megan, and took his free hand in hers. Guided it over her breast. ‘So we still have time for a shag. For old times’ sake.’

  TWENTY

  How did you come to be here? Everything recently seems to be a blur of noise and lights and the stink of early evening. Even at the best of times, no one in the city is going to stop to ask ‘Are you OK?’ or ‘Are you lost?’ or ‘You seem hurt, is there anything I can do?’ The usual crush of people on a Sunday has thinned anyway, and nobody gives you a second glance when they’re already too busy hurrying past to get to their car or bus or train, to get away from the city, to get home to their family, to get out of this foul evening weather.

  The gunshot wound throbs. You’ve never been shot before, though you’ve shot others on service in Kunduz Province. They told you it was nothing like you’d expect, and they were right. At the moment of impact, there had been no pain; it was instead as though you received a violent shove in the shoulder that spun you around. The landing’s window had loomed in front of you as you turned, and you raised your arms in an instinctive survival gesture before the frame and glass gave way and you tumbled over and through and down, down.

  A drop of that distance into the rubbish skip might have killed you. That would have been a definitive end, no respite, no escape, no one else to go to. And you couldn’t allow that to happen, not now, not after getting this far. But the black bags of decaying waste were bloated, and cushioned your fall. The stench of rotting vegetables still clings to you now like some foul perfume. You could pass yourself off as one of the homeless vagrants who in the day clustered around the station steps for financial scraps, except that the rain has driven even them into deep cover.

  Your first thought was to run for Caerdydd Canolog, the obvious escape route for a train out to Cefn Onn where your parents used to live. That childhood memory has brought you here as another kind of survival instinct. You can’t really remember how you got here from Guy’s apartment, the pain of your wound and the shock of the fall must have confused you up to this point. And now, faced with the stark reality of your impossible situation and the grey façade of Cardiff Central, you’re able to compose yourself a bit, to reassess things.

  You look up, half-blinded by the rain that tumbles at you ceaselessly. Huge capitals declare ‘Great Western Railway’, dwarfing the station’s newer name. Above these carved letters, the station clock shows 8.30 p.m.

  Now that you’re here, you only know that there’s no way out for you. The rain lashes down pitilessly, a stinging wash of sound all around. The noise and fury of this downpour outside hides everything – your smell, your small, muffled noises of pain, the blood that soaks your blouse and skirt. Inside the building you will have no money, no cards, no hope of getting into a train carriage unobserved. You need to get back to the Bay. If your body can survive that far.

  You step away from the station and cross the road, staring enviously at the taxis that swirl away into the traffic. You stumble on, unwilling or unable to enter the Welcome Centre, and into St Mary Street. The shops have long emptied, and the rain is now like a curtain falling over the tall redbrick building. A stab of pain in your shoulder twists a stifled scream from you, and you slump awkwardly against a travel agency window. The grinning display of a holiday scene mocks you from beyond the plate glass, and light spills out around you and into the street. By your feet, a gurgling drain has failed, and larger puddles are lapping over the edges of the pavement.

  The pain has spread over your whole upper back now. Pressing your hand against the wound hasn’t staunched the blood, and you’re beginning to feel dizzy. As you lie against the shop window, you consider how you’re going to get medical attention.

  You can’t let it finish here. There must be someone to go to. But first, you have to survive this.

  You stumble on past the glass and iron of the indoor market. Someone has piled sandbags across the entrance to stem the flow of rainwater. In the distance, the ululating wail of a police siren cuts across the noise of the rain storm. And you have your answer.

  Your vision starts to blur as you stagger along the pedestrianised Queen Street. Its cafés and pubs and restaurants are either closed or forlornly empty under the storm, but you barely notice as you make your way, step by painful step. As a girl, you watched an 8mm film show of a school outing to Jodrell Bank, and the film had stuck in the projector. The image of waving children in front of the radio telescope had juddered, frozen and then burnt until the film snapped and the screen showed only white. The people hurrying past you through the rain seem to be slowing down, the sound of the rain and the traffic is merging into a background hiss, and your surroundings are fading… not to white, but black.

  So you fight to stay awake. You heard that siren. There must still be a chance here, you tell yourself. There has to be something up towards the Millennium Stadium.

  And there is. The startling blue flash of an ambulance is visible in the middle distance, back towards St Mary Street. The siren is not sounding, but the emergency vehicle is making swift progress towards you. It slows as it approaches the corner of North Road and Duke Street, and that is your opportunity.

  To step out into the road in front of it.

  There’s a buzz of activity, a flurry of half-glimpsed movement and impressionistic images.

  You were luckier than you knew. There was a doctor in the back of this ambulance. Pretty, short dark hair. She has given you morphine for the pain, and is conducting an inventory of your injuries with a paramedic beside her. No broken limbs. A gash to the side of the head. To start with, they think you are a drunk who has stumbled in front of their ambulance. Your erratic movements, the disgusting smell of you, and your inability to speak clearly have led them to this conclusion. But their demeanour changes now that they find the gunshot wound. Even in your haze of dizziness and pain, you can see the doctor is startled by her discovery. But she stays professional. Radios it ahead. Starts to treat it.

  It was Guy Wildman who got you here, in more w
ays than one. He told you a joke, as you were setting out for the sub-aqua trip, about how he could always get hold of the police in any emergency. A story he said he’d read in the paper. Some bloke phoned them to say his shed was being burgled. Cops didn’t wanna know, said they had no one available in his area.

  So he rang them back five minutes later, told them not to bother because he’d gone and shot the intruders. Course, in another five minutes flat, his house is surrounded by armed cops. And they catch the bastards who were burgling the bloke’s shed. Cops weren’t too happy, of course. ‘I thought you said you’d shot the burglars,’ said the arresting officer. ‘And I thought you said you had no one available in my area,’ said the bloke.

  So, the best way to get to hospital? Get knocked over by an ambulance.

  The pain in your shoulder has eased. The other, old pain is coming back, though. The need. The hunger.

  Can’t do anything about that now. Not just at the moment.

  You need to rest. Recuperate. Sleep.

  For now.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Ianto wondered whether he should knock. He stood by the office door and listened for a moment, thinking that he might determine from the sound of Jack’s breathing whether he was asleep. Maybe, like Owen yesterday, Jack had dozed off at his desk after a hard night. Maybe, but not likely, Ianto acknowledged. His knuckles hesitated beside the door jamb, while he balanced the tray of coffee things in the other hand.

  The office was in semi-darkness, most of the light pooling from under the angled head of an old-fashioned gooseneck desk lamp. It eerily illuminated a creepy display of glass specimen jars that Jack had arranged on a low table. Two alien claws floated in formaldehyde; the scaled fingers seemed to beckon Ianto from across the room.

  He studied Jack. Deep, regular and rhythmic would indicate sleep. In the unlikely event that the boss wasn’t awake, Ianto thought he himself could sneak back to the kitchen for breakfast alone, plus maybe an extra quarter of an hour of his own research down in the basement. He’d come into the Hub early this morning, a 7 a.m. start. That was in part because he was worried that the unceasing rain might flood the local roads on his way in from Radyr, and in part because he didn’t entirely trust the sandbags around the Hub entrance. Even Llan-Duffred hill was streaming as he drove in, and the way the rainwater was sluicing around the city centre he could well imagine it pouring into the underground Hub complex and wreaking havoc.

  Jack was slumped down in his office chair, his back to Ianto, exactly as he’d left him the previous night. Maybe he’d fallen asleep working there. With his head on his chest, the back of Jack’s neck showed above his blue shirt collar. His greatcoat was neatly folded on top of a table beside a towering pile of pamphlets, printouts, scuffed old books, and a few leathery old apples. Jack’s RAF cap still hung from a makeshift wall hook, its gold oak leaf motif faintly catching the lamp’s light. Ianto had once made the mistake of asking if the hat was fancy dress, and Jack had teased him for a whole week about men in uniform. He’d eventually let Ianto try it on (further gentle mockery), but explained with what sounded like considerable pride that he’d had it custom-made by Tranter the Hatter in Jermyn Street, St James. It had been no more than a moment’s Googling for Ianto to discover that this was more teasing – Tranter’s had never reopened after a V1 had razed the business to the ground in 1944.

  Ianto blinked in surprise. A hand was beckoning him, waggling its fingers. He worked out a fraction of a second later that it wasn’t an alien claw, it was Jack’s arm, the shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbow, waving him into the room. ‘Excellent timing,’ said Jack. There was no sound of tiredness in his voice, but he stretched both arms wide, shrugged his shoulders, as though starting to get the stiffness out. Even from the doorway, Ianto heard him breathe in deeply through his nose. ‘That’s a new blend, isn’t it? What magic have you worked with those beans, Ianto?’ Another deep inhalation. ‘Same old aftershave, though.’

  ‘Good morning.’ Ianto moved forward into the office, his eyes growing accustomed to the lamp light. He didn’t ask whether Jack had slept well. Jack frequently stayed overnight here in his office, and although there was a bed in the room, Ianto had never once found him asleep. Come to think of it, he’d never seen Jack dozing off in meetings either, or exhausted at the end of a long day.

  Jack moved the formaldehyde jar into a deep desk drawer, scooped up a pile of papers from the desk, and locked those in the drawer with it. This made space for the coffee tray, which held a cafetière and two cups, plus a notebook with phone messages annotated neatly in Ianto’s meticulous handwriting.

  Ianto pressed the cafetière to pour one cup, ‘I thought you’d like to try the kopi luwak today,’ Ianto told him.

  Jack sat up straight in his chair. ‘You’re kidding me! The stuff made from beans eaten by a civet and then pooped out?’

  Ianto poured him a cup. ‘Yes…’

  ‘The stuff the Indonesians go wild for? The stuff that costs, like, a hundred pounds a kilo?’ Jack sniffed his cup suspiciously. His lips hovered, uncertain, at the rim. ‘You didn’t get this from Waitrose. Boy, I never thought I’d be quaffing cat-shit coffee.’

  ‘I meant “yes, I am kidding you”.’

  Jack clucked in disapproval, but he was smiling.

  Ianto smiled back. ‘They said they were fresh out of cat-shit coffee this week. Something to do with their trucks can’t through in this weather. So it’s the usual.’ He leaned over the desk to pick the notepad off the tray.

  Jack leaned back in the chair to appraise him. ‘Such a pert ass, Ianto. Were you ever an Italian waiter?’

  ‘I’m more of a French Press man myself.’ He handed Jack the phone messages. ‘That question may constitute work-based sexual harassment.’

  ‘Only if you ask me real nice.’ Jack waggled the notebook. ‘What is this?’

  ‘Bit short on detail. Said they had a problem, and would you please call him back at Blaidd Drwg.’

  ‘What sort of problem?’

  Ianto shook his head. ‘Didn’t want to give me any more details. He sounded a bit upset, but was still apologetic about calling. Bit strange, really.’

  Jack drained his coffee. He jumped up from his chair, loped across the room and hit the main lights. Ianto blinked away the painful contrast as they flickered on overhead. Jack dragged a conference phone onto one table, and threw the notebook and then the phone handset at Ianto. ‘Dial’em in while I get changed. No, no,’ he said as Ianto gestured that he could step outside, ‘I’m not real shy.’ From a nearby cupboard he pulled out one of half a dozen identical blue shirts, split the cellophane with his thumbnail, and discarded the packaging in the bin with the old shirt.

  Ianto finished dialling. The phone’s ringtone hummed briefly around the office, and then a voice: ‘Hello? Jonathan Meadows.’

  ‘Direct line?’ Jack said quietly to Ianto as he buttoned his shirt. ‘No secretarial shelter. Must be important.’ He yelled into the air in the direction of the phone: ‘Jonathan! It seems like we were talking only yesterday. So, early shift for you?’

  ‘Under the circumstances…’ Even in those brief words, it was clear that Meadows was trying to hold back some rebuke. The quality of the sound was good enough for Ianto to hear the scientist take a calming breath. ‘Mr Harkness, we’re most grateful…’

  ‘Captain Harkness,’ he interrupted. ‘But call me Jack.’

  Another calming breath. ‘Captain Harkness. We are, of course, most grateful that you’ve returned those four fuel packs.’

  ‘All part of the service, Jonathan. If we can’t help our Blaidd Drwg colleagues recover their carelessly mislaid nuclear equipment, then what are we in business for?’ Jack grinned hugely at Ianto.

  Meadows persevered. ‘Most grateful, yes. And we… well, we know that you Torchwood people like to lay claim to things you come across.’

  ‘Let me assure you, Jonathan, we have no use for nuclear fuel. Everything here works off triple-A
batteries, believe me.’

  ‘Then what have you done with the other ones?’ asked Meadow plaintively.

  Jack looked at Ianto.

  Ianto looked at the notebook as though the original message might contain a clue. It didn’t.

  ‘The other what?’ asked Jack.

  ‘The other two nuclear fuel packs,’ Meadows replied in an exasperated tone. There was a long pause. ‘You do realise, don’t you, that Wildman took six of them?’

  The thunder disturbed Gwen during the night, its rumbling a constant presence for most of the early hours. At first she did that childhood thing of counting between the flash and the boom, but it was quickly obvious that the lightning strikes were already very close. The susurration of rain on the roof wasn’t soothing her to sleep as it had when she was a child. In the end she got out of bed and went to the bathroom, and then for a glass of water. Rhys had snored through the whole night’s storm, of course, oblivious to its noise and her wakefulness. She found him sprawled across three-quarters of the bed by the time she got back.

  The half-light of early morning was breaking through their bedroom curtain. She was starting to think she’d finally get some proper sleep when the phone rang and shattered that hope.

  Rhys mumbled from underneath his pillow, and reached out blindly for the bedside phone. He misjudged the distance, and the phone clattered to the carpet in a jangling mess of coiled wire. He emerged from under the sheets, grumbling, scowling through his tangle of bed hair. ‘Gwen, that’s your mobile. Get your mobile.’ He slumped back onto his pillow.