SIX
Monday morning, with a sky like a dirty fleece above Cardiff.
As the kettle boiled, Davey Morgan fed the cat, and then made up his flask.
‘So, anyway, I left it in the shed,’ he said, bringing his story up to date. ‘It didn’t seem to want to be disturbed, so I thought, it’s doing no harm here, I thought, and left it there.’
He took his digging jacket down off the door-peg in the little back kitchen. It was the top half of an old suit. He reckoned he’d been married in it, in ’48, but Glynis had always insisted he’d been wearing it when they’d first met, at the social in Porthcawl, which would have been ’46. Glynis had always had a keen memory for such details, either that, or she had always been better at asserting her version of the truth. He missed her.
The jacket had been pretty done in by the mid 1950s, but she’d refused to let him throw it out, for ‘sentimental reasons’. So it had become his digging jacket, her name for it, reserved for the allotment in cold weather. Pretty good run it had had since then, for a demob suit with feeble stitching.
‘I suppose I’d better check on it,’ he said. The cat was as indifferent to this remark as it had been to the rest of his story. Bowl cleared, it sat down like a Degas ballerina, toes en point, and began to lick its arse.
‘You be all right here for an hour or two?’ Davey asked. The cat looked up briefly, the tip of its tongue slightly protruding, then went back to its ablutions. He wasn’t talking to the cat anyway. He was talking to the picture on the hall table. But he always pretended he was talking to the cat, because if you talked to pictures, you had to be bonkers, didn’t you?
He put on his cap and patted the pockets of his digging jacket. Glynis had died in 1978. Complications, the doctor had said, which had seemed a reasonable diagnosis. As complications went, dying was a considerable one.
Every Friday night, she’d slipped a packet of mints into the pocket of the digging jacket for him to find every Saturday morning out on the allotment. He still checked, even though there hadn’t been a packet of mints to discover in twenty-nine years. There was a wrapper, though. A twenty-nine-year-old scrap of foil and paper. He’d never had the heart to throw it away.
He went out into the yard, and locked his backdoor. Leaning against the wall, he put on his wellies, then walked off down the backyard to the lane behind the houses that joined with the allotment path.
A pneumatic drill stammered like a frantic blacksmith. They were building new homes on Connault Way. The land buy-out had included a large swathe of the allotment space that had once surrounded the streets of Cathays. Madness. Jim French, who grew winter veg on the plot three over from Davey’s, had told him on the nod that the council were considering selling off their patches to the developers too. How could that be right, in any man’s world? What would he do for lettuce and spuds and marrows then?
He could smell brick dust and rain on the air. The new houses looked like box skeletons over the hedge. Prefab rubbish, like Airfix kits, thrown up in a month, the speed of weeds. Not like the front-and-backs on his street. Decent brick, wooden doors. Course, his could use a lick of paint, but still.
There was no one on the allotments, not on a Monday morning. The iron gate squealed as he let himself through. More than half the plots had gone back to the wild. Nobody wanted the toil of an allotment any more, not when there were Kwik-Saves full of guavas and broccoli and pre-washed beans.
That was why he’d been digging in the plot next to his. He hadn’t paid the annual fee for it, but it had been abandoned more than ten years ago, and he hadn’t seen the harm of it. And that’s when he’d found it. Just that last Saturday, forking the cleared earth while the stripped weeds crackled lazily in his brazier. He’d just had the clearest taste of a mint in his mouth, just for a second, the memory of a mint, when the tines of his fork struck it.
The boys had been there again, Sunday night. Empty beer cans on the path, a cloche kicked over. Davey still had the tub of black paint ready, in case they ever took it upon themselves to decorate his shed again, the way they had in the spring. Foulmouth buggers couldn’t even spell. Taff Morgan iz a old purv.
Davey went up to the shed and undid the padlock. It was still there, where he had left it, propped up in his wheelbarrow, angled slightly as if it was looking out of the grimy window.
‘All right, then?’ he asked.
It made no more response than his cat had done.
‘I was wondering if you had a name,’ Davey said. ‘Just to put us on civil terms. I’m Davey, but they all call me Taff. The wife even called me Taff.’
A little hum: no more response than that.
‘Daft name, I agree. What do you call it now? A stereotype, is that it? Had it since ’42. Royal Fusiliers, boys from all over, no older than me. Boys from Liverpool and Birmingham and Luton. Jock, see, he came from Aberdeen, so naturally, he was Jock. And I was Taff. Taff Morgan. The Welsh lad. Oh, it was a simple thing. You didn’t argue. You were glad to be noticed.’
Another hum. A slight change in pitch.
Davey took out his flask. ‘How about a cup of tea?’ he asked.
Monday morning, rain-clouds like bruises over the Bay.
Gwen let herself into the Hub via the little information centre on the Quay. She could smell Ianto’s coffee even before the cog-door rolled open.
‘All right?’ Owen asked her. His face had bruised up well since she’d last seen him on Saturday. He had even more of a pouty expression than usual.
‘It looks like you’ve had collagen implants,’ she observed.
‘Thanks for that.’ He paused. ‘How’s the head?’
Gwen shrugged. The weekend had been a serious unwind, though she knew there would be consequences. It was only come Sunday night, when she’d simply crashed, that she’d realised how deeply the effects of primary and secondary contact with the Amok had worked her over. They’d been so bothered at the time by their bruises and cuts and contusions, the physical cost of the operation.
Bruises would fade. Skinned fingers would heal. The mind was where the real harm had been done. It had eased, the tram-tracks of pain snowing over, but she still felt sick from time to time, and she kept getting a stabbing pain behind her left eye. She shuddered to think what they had all been exposed to, shuddered to imagine what it had all been about.
‘My head’s screwed,’ she replied, ‘to be perfectly frank. But it’s getting better. Like an ache that’s going away.’
‘Like the day after the day after a bad hangover,’ Owen agreed, nodding.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Though in your case, it was a bad hangover. You were putting it away, Saturday.’
‘It was a laugh, though,’ said Owen.
She smiled and nodded. ‘It was a laugh,’ she agreed.
It had been a laugh, the four of them at James’s place. A necessary venting, like safety measures at an overcooking reactor. Without downtime like that, the ‘job’ would do them in.
Gwen wondered how long she’d been putting inverted commas around the word job, and how much longer she’d keep doing it.
‘Coffee?’ asked Ianto, appearing like a genie from an expertly rubbed lamp.
‘I love you,’ said Gwen, taking hers.
‘I love you more,’ Owen told Ianto, ‘and I’m prepared to have your babies.’
Ianto smiled patiently.
Owen went back to his work station and sat down. ‘Hey, Ianto?’
Ianto came over.
Owen picked up the side-arm from the clutter on his station. ‘This had better go back into the Armoury. Could you?’
‘Of course.’
Ianto took the weapon and looked at it. ‘It’s mangled,’ he said.
‘I guess I dropped it,’ Owen replied, punching up newsgroups on his screen.
‘From what? Orbit?’
‘No, I just dropped it. Why?’
Ianto shrugged and went off about his business.
‘Jack in his office?’ Gwen asked Toshiko as she came over to the lab space.
‘I guess. I haven’t seen him.’
‘What are you doing?’ Gwen asked. ‘Isn’t that...?’
Toshiko sat back, removed her eye-guards, and took a sip of her coffee.
‘Yes, it is,’ she said. ‘Mmm, I love that man.’
‘It’s me he’s marrying,’ Gwen said. She peered at the pulsing suspension field the containment console was generating.
‘The Amok.’
‘Jack said I could run the numbers on it. Basic probes and diagnostic tests.’
‘I thought you said you hadn’t seen him?’
‘He left me a Post-it. “Tosh – take the Amok and run the numbers on it, please, basic probes and diagnostic tests.”’ She showed Gwen the Post-it, the beautiful copperplate handwriting that nobody did any more.
‘Can you tell what it is yet?’ asked a bad Rolf Harris impression.
James was standing behind them. Gwen tried to act casual, but it was hard not to make the sort of eye contact that would set off sirens.
‘No,’ said Toshiko.
‘OK. Is it safe?’ James asked, peering at the thing suspended in the glowing field.
‘Eight levels of safeguard insulation,’ said Toshiko. ‘Ward screens. Focus blockers. Chastity belt.’
‘Good,’ said James. ‘I don’t want another mind-screw like that.’
‘Yeah, me neither,’ said Toshiko. ‘I’m still not thinking straight. I’ve got what my father used to call “hand-me-down head”. Nasty. Befuddled. How are you?’
‘Fine,’ James said.
‘How’re the ribs?’
‘Fine. No heavy lifting, Owen said.’
‘What?’ Toshiko asked, glancing at Gwen. Gwen had involuntarily sniggered.
‘Nothing.’
‘What?’ Toshiko asked again, eyeing Gwen inquisitively.
Gwen shook her head. A memory, unbidden. James hoisting her up against his fridge-freezer in the small hours of Friday morning. Carrying her weight, lost in passion.
‘Nothing. Well, that thing was a real twenty-seven, wasn’t it?’ Gwen said.
‘Twenty-seven,’ said James.
‘Absolutely,’ said Toshiko. She made to replace her eye-guards. ‘Thanks for Saturday, by the way. I haven’t laughed so much in ages. The Andy stuff was priceless.’
‘My pleasure,’ said James. He and Gwen walked away, leaving Toshiko to her work.
‘You’re never heavy lifting,’ James whispered to her.
‘Stop it!’
‘You left this at my place,’ he added, handing over her MP3 player.
‘Oh, sorry. Thanks.’
‘New listings,’ he said as he walked away.
Gwen put her right earpiece in, and selected menu. Music began. He’d loaded ‘Coming Up For Air’ and eight other tracks by Torn Curtain, his favourite band. ‘Coming Up For Air’ had been playing during the fridge-freezer moment.
‘Heads up.’
Jack appeared on the walkway above the work areas. ‘Morning, all. I trust you’ve had your coffee. Busy week. James, can you get onto your source in the Land Registry and background check that commune in Rhondda? It could be nothing, but I’ve got an itch says it’s a cult, and that web page you found doesn’t fill me with confidence that it’s entirely, you know, terrestrial?’
‘On it,’ James said.
‘Good. Owen?’
Owen swung around on his chair. ‘Still nothing on the missing pets in Cathays. I’m cross-referencing a police report of small bones found in a skip behind a youth club. Weevil-watch is clean for the last week. Oh, and the flying saucer seen over Barry turned out to be an escaped windsock. I’m also keeping tabs on that man in Fairwater who rang the Samaritans and told them a Baycar bus had eaten his wife. I think it’s a Care in the Community issue, but you never know.’
‘You never do,’ Jack agreed. ‘And the Mr and Mrs Peeters thing?’
‘I’m still watching that one,’ Owen said. ‘You’ll know as soon as I do.’
‘If they start hatching, I’ll want to know before you know,’ Jack said. ‘Tosh?’
‘Still busy analysing the Amok,’ Toshiko replied.
‘Yeah, well, skip that for now. I’ve sent a file to your station. Check it out. Either I’m wrong – and please God, I am – or an auto mechanic in Grangetown is blogging on how to make a portable meson gun. In Sumarian.’
‘I’ll look into that.’
‘Would you?’ Jack looked around. ‘Gwen?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Got a minute?’
Gwen walked into his office. Jack had newspapers spread out on his desk.
‘Did we make the front page, then?’ she asked.
Jack shook his head. ‘Best we got was two inches on page eighteen.’
‘So, that’s good, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah. It’s good. Everybody caught up in The Amok Incident was too damaged to remember anything coherent.’
‘Well, that’s kind of good.’
‘Best we could hope for.’
Gwen waited. Then she said, ‘I think I’d better apologise.’
‘Really?’
‘I was harsh, on Thursday. Really very harsh. I’m sorry.’
Jack sat back and sighed. ‘No, you’re all right. I should apologise. I was out of line. I didn’t realise how ... how insidious the Amok was. I think it affected me more than I knew. Made me act—’
‘It’s OK.’
‘It’s not OK. It deserves an apology,’ Jack said.
‘Accepted.’
Jack nodded. ‘We friends again, Gwen Cooper?’
‘Always were.’
He nodded again. ‘You have a good weekend?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Hang out with the others?’
‘Yeah,’ she said. There was no point lying.
Jack stood up. ‘Andy Pinkus, Rhamphorhynchus. The lost season. As good as James claimed?’
‘Yeah, it was.’ How did he know?
‘I know everything, Gwen,’ Jack said. ‘Maybe I could borrow the disks sometime. I do like Andy. Smart-funny, like Ren and Stimpy, you know what I mean.’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Well, let’s get to work,’ Jack said.
‘The Amok,’ Gwen said. ‘Do you know what it was?’
‘That? Oh, yeah,’ Jack replied.
He flipped over one of the newspapers on his desk and tapped a finger on the back-page word search.
‘A puzzle?’ James said.
‘Yeah.’
‘We were nearly killed by a word search?’
Jack nodded. ‘Kinda.’
‘People died because of a word search?’ Toshiko asked.
‘OK,’ Jack said, ‘hurry up and get over that part. I was making an analogy. A Jamesian analogy. The Amok is a puzzle, a mental exercise. Like a crossword or – yes – a word search. Trouble is, it was built by and for a species who exist in more dimensions than we do. Their idea of a simple puzzle invaded our minds in ways we couldn’t cope with. We weren’t made for logic challenges on that scale. We are simple, sturdy, four-dimensional beings. An eleven-dimensional sudoku is going to be a bit of a head-melt to the likes of us. Addictive, inviting, perplexing, infuriating, involving... but beyond our feeble means to solve.’
‘You’re saying I was mullahed by a sudoku?’ Owen asked, joining them.
‘Yes,’ said Jack. ‘What news?’
‘This just in. The Peeters are hatching,’ Owen said.
‘Damn! Fighter Command!’ said James.
‘Exactly. Let’s roll,’ said Jack.