Risk Assessment Part 16

So he stood, watching the water run, sipping his beer.

His phone chirruped briefly, but he ignored it. He'd get a new one at the weekend. Something to do.

Gwen swung open the door of her room. She hadn't quite called it a cell, but that was what it was. On the other side of the door was the centre of the ship, a long metal tube of riveted bronze sheets. She pulled herself uncertainly along the walkway that was neither up nor along, feeling convinced that every echoing footstep was the sound of her foot hitting s.p.a.ce. She craned her neck to look out at the portholes and tried to work out how big the ship was. Not too big, she thought, feeling a bit dismissive. First s.p.a.ceship, so best not to be snippy. But it didn't feel like a ship for hundreds, or even ten. If anything, it felt a bit like a s.p.a.ce caravan, which was a whole notion she was convinced her mum would approve of. She hauled her way to a bulkhead, which looked like the most solid door she'd ever seen. For the last two days the door had remained shut. It had a solid wheel that refused to turn.

'I am sorry, ma'am, but this door remains sealed to you,' came the electronic voice.

Gwen sighed, trying to twist the wheel. 'I don't care,' she said.

'I appreciate that, ma'am. I regret I am unable to a.s.sist you.'

'What about the owner?' she said. 'Will I see them?'

'I am afraid the owner is not at home and cannot see you.'

'So they're off the ship?'

'Ah, no, ma'am.' A tiny, embarra.s.sed pause. 'The owner of the ship is not at home to to you you at this present time. If you would like, I could pa.s.s on a message for you.' at this present time. If you would like, I could pa.s.s on a message for you.'

'Really?' sighed Gwen. 'Well, it's the same as last time. I would like, very much like, to go back to Earth. I would like to speak to Captain Jack Harkness and my husband. And I would like to know why I am here. And. . . how long you plan on keeping me here? I don't know if this means anything to you, but I work for Torchwood.'

There was a pause, and a genteel click. 'Ah, yes, ma'am. We are aware of the Torchwood Inst.i.tute.'

'Oh,' said Gwen. And thought about it.

'Oh,' she said again.

The beach was eerie by tungsten torchlight. Jack and Ianto stood on the edge of the cliff, watching the men carry the last of the coffins ash.o.r.e.

'I'll say one thing about your Miss Havisham,' said Ianto. 'She arranges a mean funeral.'

'That she does,' said Jack. His tone was grim.

They picked their way down the path as the boat roared off into the night. All that remained were the coffins and Agnes.

'Captain Harkness, Mr Jones, good evening,' said Agnes, striding across the beach. 'I am pleased that you are here to help the fallen find peace.'

Jack nodded. Ianto could tell Jack was remembering something.

After a moment's pause, Agnes ventured, 'And I do confidently hope that we shall not have to prepare similar ceremonies for Mrs Cooper. Rest a.s.sured of that.'

Jack looked at her sharply.

'I've not really prepared a ceremony,' said Agnes simply. 'We know so little about them. I wouldn't wish to insult them by consecrating them to a G.o.d they knew nothing of, or comfort them with a salvation alien to them. Instead, all I can offer them is the ground they lie on.'

She spread her hands.

Gwen sat in her room, worried by what it reminded her of. For one thing, it wasn't really like a s.p.a.ceship. Or at least, not in the 'Houston, we have lift-off', tinfoil and goldfish-bowl sense. No s.p.a.ceship she'd ever heard of had a wooden bookcase crammed full of leather volumes with a padded leather chair in front of a working gas fire. The only incongruity was the camp bed she slept in.

'Computer,' she asked. 'What is this room?'

'Your bedroom and parlour, ma'am. Is there anything you require?'

'No, thank you. I meant, what is this room normally?'

'Ah, it is more usually the study. I am afraid the guest quarters aboard this rocket are sadly limited and it was decided, after some small consideration, that you would find this more comfortable than one of the storage areas.'

'Oh, there are storage areas, are there?'

'Indeed, ma'am. Handsomely provisioned for our flight.'

'Can I see them?'

'I am afraid not. They are, regrettably, in the area of the rocket that I am currently unable to conduct you around.'

'Very good,' said Gwen, thinking, I am beginning to sound like b.l.o.o.d.y Jeeves. I am beginning to sound like b.l.o.o.d.y Jeeves.

Presently, the computer served her afternoon tea. It arrived through a dumb waiter a Wedgwood pot with matching cup and saucer and a plate full of b.u.t.tered scones.

Gwen ate, thinking. Then she got up, crossed to the library and selected a volume at random. In truth, she'd found the selection a little dull. The books were very heavy, curiously c.u.mbersome, and the print quite intensely small. They'd obviously been much read, and ranged from impenetrable works of science, pompous history (mostly about the Romans), a couple of slim volumes of Greek, far too much poetry (Robert b.l.o.o.d.y Browning), and a few works of fiction. About the only one of which she'd heard was Jane Eyre Jane Eyre. She was steadily persevering with it, but her mind really wasn't on it.

She found herself in a curious state. On the one hand, she was locked up, had no one to talk to, couldn't chat to Rhys, and had only a set of Improving Works to read. On the other hand, she was in s.p.a.ce. She couldn't get over how beautiful the Earth looked from this vantage point. It had all the magic of being in a plane above the clouds, only a lot more so. Sunrise looked amazing and sunset oddly heartbreaking. She spent hours just staring out of the window in a daydream.

By craning her head, she could make out some of the shape of the ship she was in. Pleasingly, like Tintin's rocket, it appeared to have fins and a tapering nose. It wasn't red the surface appeared to be a worn copper and bronze, beaten about like an antique kettle.

All in all, she wasn't bored.

She thumbed through the book again, and then flicked back to the name plate. Ex Libris. . . Ex Libris. . . She struggled again to make out the handsome signature, with its dashing array of loops and curls. She was no handwriting expert, but it appeared to belong to someone jolly pleased with themselves. But fair's fair, she thought. Rocket ship. That deserves a bit of smug. She struggled again to make out the handsome signature, with its dashing array of loops and curls. She was no handwriting expert, but it appeared to belong to someone jolly pleased with themselves. But fair's fair, she thought. Rocket ship. That deserves a bit of smug.

She had a theory, all right, just no evidence to back it up.

It was Ianto who detected the energy signal. An alarm went off on his PDA, causing Agnes to shoot him an annoyed glance. The three of them were standing in front of the coffins. Jack was solemn, Agnes reverential, and Ianto was, truth be told, a tiny bit nonplussed. He'd been to enough funerals of people he loved that he didn't quite see the point in standing around the last rites of some people he didn't know.

Before the alarm went off, he did catch himself wondering exactly how Agnes was proposing to bury the coffins. There wasn't much sign of a pit in evidence, and he didn't relish having to dig one himself. He suspected the usual Torchwood solution of paperwork would be called upon and he'd find himself lumbered with the job of issuing docket numbers and placing all the coffins in storage. On reflection, probably much better. There was a new industrial estate in Barry he'd noticed, and, once they'd made absolutely sure the coffins posed no further threat, he'd probably rent a nice little warehouse and seal them up there.

It wouldn't be the first time he'd done that. A land registry search for 'I. Jones' would have uncovered quite a complicated array of property in his name, ranging from a disused electronics warehouse in Newport and a Wool Museum in Cilau Aeron through to an old carpet factory in Gabalfa. There was even an abandoned manse in the Brecon Beacons, which had once, briefly, been occupied by a lesbian squatters collective, who'd ignored his letters begging them to move out for their own good. He'd not felt like visiting to find out what grisly fate had befallen them.

On the whole, though, Ianto Jones preferred hiding secrets in warehouses, in neat rows, with a disarmingly tedious phrase, such as 'Geological Survey Implements' or 'International Gazetteer of Accountancy: Research Doc.u.ments'. He was amusing himself by devising a suitable alias for the coffins when his PDA started to bleep.

He looked at it in embarra.s.sed alarm, trying to work out what it was doing. At the same time, Jack's wrist-strap computer chirruped like an underfed house cat.

They both looked at their respective screens and then at Agnes.

'Agnes,' said Jack, worried. 'Something's up.'

She didn't bother to turn around, or to disguise the annoyance in her voice. 'What kind of something, Captain Harkness?'

'We're getting an energy build-up.'

'Indeed?'

'From the coffins.'

Gwen, indecently full of seed cake, set out along the corridor again, hauling herself along by the guy ropes. The corridor was the only bit of the ship that reminded her of all that stuff about artificial gravity. Somehow (and she wasn't quite sure how it worked without her brain giving notice) the door of her parlour became the floor of the corridor, allowing her to walk up the twenty metres or so to the hatchway. She couldn't work out what was up or down, and even thinking about it made her dizzy.

As she neared the hatchway, the computer spoke. 'I am afraid-'

'Oh, shove it,' she growled, and knocked heavily on the door.

'- the master is unable to-'

'h.e.l.lo!' she shouted.

'- at this present-'

'h.e.l.lo!'

'- and that, if you'd care to-'

'Oi!'

'- I shall make best endeavours-'

'Open up!'

'- pa.s.s on at the earliest-'

'Open! The! b.l.o.o.d.y! Door!'

Gwen had tried this a couple of times before, with the firm sense that she was being icily ignored. But it was either do this, or slump back to the parlour for sardines on toast. Whoever else was on board, they were probably the size of a house by now.

Gwen continued banging and yelling and the computer continued to protest politely.

'I know who you are!' she bawled.

There was a click and a creak.

Gwen leapt back, and grabbed a handrail before she suffered the ironic fate of being the first human in orbit to fall twenty metres to her death.

With a steady, slow grinding of metal, the door groaned open and a figure was revealed.

Jack ran forward, waving his wrist-strap. 'Correction. There's an enormous energy build-up from these coffins!'

Agnes stood her ground. 'Hadn't you better keep back, then? What kind?'

'I don't know,' yelled Jack with frustration.

Ianto joined them, cross-checking the information from his PDA with Jack's computer.

'Not good, not good,' shouted Jack.

Agnes arched an eyebrow. 'Bang?' she said.

'Not exactly,' groaned Jack. 'But it's... See. . .!'

The coffins began to glow.

'Glowing coffins. Never going to be good.'

Agnes placed her hands on her hips.

'I think,' said Ianto, with the care and calm of a bomb disposal expert choosing between the red and the green wire, 'I think we've been operating under false principles. What if these aren't coffins at all?'

'Then what do you suggest?' asked Agnes.

'Er,' said Ianto, weakly. 'I was thinking pods. Survival pods.'

The man on the other side of the door wore a smoking jacket and a worried expression. He was a slender man of late middle age with quite comical sideburns, remarkably elaborate spectacles and a stiffly pressed white shirt.

'Oh, h.e.l.lo,' he said with an air of forced jocularity. 'Were you knocking?' It was an amazingly feeble lie. 'I am afraid I'm most extraordinarily busy just at the moment. How'd'y'do?'

'Right,' said Gwen, tired of this already. 'And you are?'

'Ah,' said the man, clearly embarra.s.sed. He stretched out a hand. 'George Herbert Sanderson.'

Gwen nodded. 'Agnes's fiance?'

The first coffin clicked open, spilling out a harsh blue light. An instant later, a hundred echoing clicks sounded across the beach, and the night was lit up an entirely wrong shade of blue. The figures that sat up, stood up and stepped out were initially silhouetted by the glare, but Jack could see that they were barely humanoid.

They looked like toadstools, or the kind of unpleasant stick dogs find for you on walks all k.n.o.bbles and whorls and glandular protuberances, like nightmare trees. They were about two metres tall, a clicking, whirling bulk of bark and moss and twitching branches without any obvious faces.

They weren't wearing uniforms, or clothing of any kind. Normally Jack liked nothing more than a naked alien, but these were the wrong kind of naked alien. Whether it was the harsh lighting, the sticky ugliness, the horrid way they slithered across the sand, or just the enormous guns they were holding, there was something about them that was threatening.

Jack pulled his own revolver and aimed it. 'Hi there!' He began, 'I'm from Tor-'

The first alien spoke, hardly aware of him, its horrible voice filling the beach with a noise like walls tumbling in a flood. 'We are xXltttxtolxtol. We have arrived.'

Agnes Harkness strode forward, arm outstretched. 'Greetings,' she said. 'Agnes Havisham. I have heard so much about you. Welcome to your new home.'

'What?' hissed Jack.

Ianto leaned close to him. 'This is an invasion. And she's organised it.'

Jack groaned.

XV.