by Guy Adams
‘Wait,’ said Gleason. ‘For all we know, cutting into it will trigger the damn thing. I don’t think it means harm.’
‘You’re talking like it’s alive.’
‘Yeah,’ said Gleason. ‘I am. I think it is.’
In fact he knew it was, but didn’t know how to express the fact. Not without sounding ridiculous. That same tingling he had felt on his hands now extended up his arms and towards his head. Like the creep of an anaesthetic injected through the back of the hand. When the sensation reached his head, fizzing at the base of his skull, it was impressions that flooded through him rather than unconsciousness. It was nothing so precise as communication. He couldn’t say that the rifle was talking to him. Still, he began to understand. He began to know.
Two years earlier…
‘That can’t be comfortable,’ said Jack Harkness, switching off the deep-fat fryer and helping the gelatinous creature to extricate its head from the submerged basket.
As it fell back onto the dirty floor tiles, it sighed with relief, though the noise that came out resembled a child imitating a motorcycle. This was probably because its lips had melted together, bloated purple slugs that dribbled onto its cheeks and formed a cat’s cradle over its black teeth like hot mozzarella.
‘Something tells me the safety buffers on your transmat are playing up,’ said Jack. ‘You really shouldn’t be hopping around the universe with faulty tech like that. You’re lucky you didn’t end up hanging out of a wall.’
‘Lucky?’ Gwen asked, looking at the state of the creature’s face.
Jack held his finger to his lips and walked over to her. ‘For all we know it was born that ugly,’ he whispered. ‘Now go help Ianto clear up out front.’
‘Ianto doesn’t need my help,’ Gwen scowled. ‘He’s perfectly capable of managing on his own.’
‘Keeping people out of Kool Fried Chicken late on a Saturday night?’ asked Jack. ‘Have you seen the streets out there? I give him five minutes before he’s bottled by a fat drunk or has his clothes bitten off by a Hen party. It’ll take both of you. With guns.’
Gwen sighed and headed out of the kitchen.
Jack looked closer at the creature, trying to define where hard shell and soft flesh began and ended. It looked like a turtle that had been roughly chopped then sculpted back together again. Perhaps that was also the fault of a faulty transmat?
Next to the body was a weapon of some sort, a long rifle festooned with organic elements. He nudged it to one side in case its owner should decide to turn nasty. He pulled a medical scanner out of his pocket and swept it over the creature’s body. He glanced at the numbers and gave a little mental shrug before turning the screen towards the creature. ‘You’ll have a better idea than me how you’re doing,’ he said. ‘Can’t say I’ve ever met your species before and, believe me, that’s a rarity.’
The creature gurgled, raised its hands and clapped the palms together.
‘Hang on,’ said Jack, tapping at the controls on his earpiece until he could understand what the creature was trying to say.
‘… lanet Ytraxor,’ it said in a surprisingly mellifluous tone, not dissimilar to Michael Hordern. ‘Am dying, can feel the wilting in my lung nodes.’
‘Never good,’ said Jack scratching his chin in some bemusement.
‘Must give last song,’ it continued. ‘Will you hear?’
‘As long as it’s not “Angels”, you have my full attention.’
Jack had been expecting a further round of guttural plosives and hand waving – a functional language for a species used to spending time in the water, he guessed. Instead, the creature opened its mouth as wide as it could and began to sing. It was a noise somewhere between bird and whale song, a low bass drone combined with complex trills of immense range. There was more to the noise than music. Contained within the sounds were images and impressions that flooded Jack’s mind so quickly he had to support himself against the wall. The species had an even more impressive method of communication, he realised, sitting down on the sticky tiles and closing his eyes to focus on the information the song relayed. It was a download of images and scenes, a compressed package of events channelled directly into the brain where it could slowly unpack and display itself to the recipient.
He saw Ytraxor, as if from above, a mass of ice, a planet slowly freezing as its sun grew cold. He saw its people, once ocean dwellers, now huddled in caves, avoiding the encroaching glaciers and fighting over the diminishing space that was left. Some of the creatures were, like the specimen before him, bulky and armoured, others taller and thinner wearing light robes. This was a caste system, Jack realised, a race genetically engineered for their role in life: the warriors and the elite. He saw a third Ytraxorian, thin like the elite but with gleaming, non-organic elements built into their flesh. These were the scientists he understood, the technicians, the thinkers.
One of these technicians was holding up a rifle, much like the one this creature had carried, showing it to one of the Ytraxorian elite.
The two of them began to talk and, though the barking and gestures meant nothing to Jack, their meaning seeped into his head along with the images.
‘What’s this?’ asked the elite.
‘A weapon, sire,’ the technician replied, ‘bred by the time-travel research team.’
The elite – ArchDuke, thought Jack, they think of him as the ArchDuke – tilted its head on one side in a manner that Jack understood to be sceptical. ‘What does it do?’ it asked.
‘Removes its target from its current position in space/time and sends it elsewhere.’
‘Really?’ the ArchDuke replied. ‘If we can do that then why don’t we just shoot ourselves back a few thousand years, before the ice?’
‘Ytraxorian tissue still isn’t stable when exposed to Chronon radiation, sire,’ the technician replied, and Jack suddenly experienced a mental picture of an Ytraxorian technician exploding as the rifle’s beam was turned on it, showering the lab in guts, sucker and fin. ‘Also there is a question of aim.’
‘Aim?’
‘While it’s possible to control the degree of time shift, the physical location is hard to fix. Put simply the target could end up anywhere, and the odds of them arriving somewhere safe, not way above our heads or embedded in the rock beneath our feet, are impossible to predict. Of course when using it as a weapon…’
‘Who cares?’
‘Precisely. It can also project a far weaker beam that temporally alters the matter it’s aimed at.’
‘Temporally alters?’
‘Ages or rejuvenates it, sire.’
‘I could shoot myself with it and have the body of a podling?’
‘You could, sire, but considering the likely life span of our planet, I wouldn’t recommend it. What would be the point?’
‘So it’s just a vicious bastard of a gun then, really?’
‘A very vicious bastard, sire, yes. Programmed as always, with the appropriate Honour Filters.’
‘Oh yes, heaven forbid we should kill in cold blood.’
The concept of honour filters circled around Jack’s head for a moment before coalescing in a concept he understood. The Ytraxorians, once a proud feudal race, believed that the burgeoning potential of technology shouldn’t entirely rob the battlefield of skill. All weaponry came preloaded with software that graded the payload according to the bloodthirsty intent of the Ytraxorian holding it. A soldier on an Ytraxorian battlefield couldn’t just pull the trigger. He had to be really good at pulling the trigger.
‘Ytraxorians are crazy,’ said Jack. ‘It’s a wonder you have a planet left.’
And then the dying alien’s song built in volume, and Jack flinched as the image of Ytraxor burning filled his head. Line after line of Ytraxorians marched on rival factions, the air filling with the dull throb of rifle fire as the population swiftly eradicated itself.
‘Oh God…’ Jack cried, the roar of battle so loud in his head he could swear the tiles beneath him wer
e rattling themselves loose.
In no time, there were only two Ytraxorians left, facing one another across the battle-ravaged cavern of their long-dead ruling elite.
‘Look,’ said one of them, the Ytraxorian that was now singing to him, Jack realised. ‘Maybe this has gone a bit far.’
‘Arrgghh!’ screamed the other and shot his fellow being so hard and so successfully that it ended up several parsecs away in Cardiff, its head in a dirty deep-fat fryer in the sort of nasty fast-food dive you needed to be drunk to eat from. All things considered, a good shot.
The song finished. The creature died.
Jack looked at the rifle that had, indirectly, caused the death of its owner. After taking a moment to get his thoughts together, he got to his feet and picked it up. A light electric charge passed through his fingers and the fronds of seaweed appeared to writhe of their own volition, reaching for his fingers.
He let it grasp him, felt it communicating with him just as its dying owner had, connecting directly with his brain and making him understand what it was that he held in his hands. The power it represented was chilling. He tore his hands free and wedged the gun beneath his arm so that it wasn’t in contact with his skin.
He looked at the creature on the floor, bubbling and popping as its flesh began to lose cohesion. Whether it was natural for an Ytraxorian upon death or a delayed reaction to the effect of being blasted so far across time and space, Jack couldn’t tell.
He stuck his head around the serving hatch and grinned at Ianto and Gwen as they wrestled a ‘glandular’ lady in a plastic tiara back out of the doors and away from her precious buckets of fried bird. ‘Having fun?’ he asked, then chuckled at the expressive hand gestures they offered.
‘I have bruises,’ said Ianto, ‘on places that have never been bruised in the line of duty before.’
‘That rather depends on what you consider your duty,’ said Jack, kissing him on the cheek and waving at the large lady now stuck on the outside of the glass.
‘Never eat something that comes in a bucket!’ he shouted to her.
‘And he’s not talking about chicken,’ Ianto added.
‘Gentlemen, please,’ said Gwen. ‘Have you finished back there or what?’
‘Nearly,’ said Jack. ‘Don’t suppose either have you have seen a mop?’
Six
Mr Wynter sat in the shade of a bougainvillea bush in the central courtyard of the Hostal Moraira. He ordered a coffee which arrived just as Rex appeared on the upper balcony, having changed into a short-sleeved shirt and a pair of jeans. First you’ll go to the docks, thought Mr Wynter, because you know they arrived by boat and someone must remember them hiring transport to ferry several packing crates as well as themselves. It was a logical first step but not one that Mr Wynter felt it necessary to duplicate. After all, he already had a good idea of where Gleason and company would be.
Once upon a time, the CIA had had a reasonable presence in Cuba. These days they preferred to concentrate efforts elsewhere and leave it to border control. Gleason had come here because it was close but also because he knew somewhere here that would suit their purpose as a temporary base. He knew somewhere big and empty enough to accommodate a handful of men and their cargo. Somewhere that was secluded so that their business would go unregarded. Somewhere that had never appeared on any official CIA paperwork – Gleason wasn’t to know that his presence in Havana was compromised, but he still wouldn’t turn up at an active CIA residence, the man was a professional. Was being the operative term, Mr Wynter thought, sipping his coffee. Now Gleason was just a dead man walking.
Mr Wynter knew of a place that fitted all the necessary requirements and a glance at Gleason’s operation history suggested he might know of it too.
Finishing his coffee, Mr Wynter went to reception and booked a room.
He dropped his holdall on the bed inside and then left the building, working his way through the streets of old Havana in search of the right sort of bar. Eventually he settled on a small place called Club Excalibur at the end of a gloomy side street. Why it deemed itself worthy of such mythological grandeur was not obvious. As Mr Wynter entered the building, he had to wave his hands in front of his face to dispel enough cigar smoke to see. The clientele was predictably questionable. Anyone found enjoying an early-afternoon drink in a dark, cancerous lung of a place like this was bound to be a member of the gutterati.
Mr Wynter pulled up a stool at the bar and ordered a Daiquiri Natural.
He was approached before the barman could even begin making his drink. Possibly this was a gentleman’s agreement so the establishment didn’t waste rum on customers that would soon be too dead to drink it.
‘You are American,’ said the voice at his shoulder.
‘Is that a question or are you just showing off?’ Mr Wynter turned around and smiled at the large Cuban behind him. The man looked to have been built from butcher’s offcuts. His face was lumpen with scar tissue and, when he smiled, he showed Mr Wynter little but gums. ‘You look perfect,’ Mr Wynter said.
‘Your eyesight must be bad for you to come in here in the first place,’ said the Cuban, ‘but you must be completely blind if you like my face. Maybe I’ll give you one to match?’
‘Then you wouldn’t earn all the money I plan on paying you for a few jobs I’d like taking care of,’ Mr Wynter replied. ‘Which seems a shame really.’ He turned to the barman. ‘Where’s my drink?’ he asked. ‘I haven’t got all day.’ The barman, looking somewhat surprised, turned away and began mixing.
‘What jobs?’ asked the Cuban.
‘Oh, you know,’ said Mr Wynter. ‘All the usual stuff – driving me around, sharing your local knowledge, beating people up.’
‘I’m good at that,’ the Cuban replied, offering another gummy smile.
‘I just bet you are,’ said Mr Wynter.
Rex moved through the busy harbour until he found a relatively quiet spot. Sitting down on a coil of rope, he called Esther.
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘You found anything yet?’
‘Patience, woman,’ he replied. ‘I only just got here.’
‘Sorry,’ Esther replied ‘I’m just…’
‘What is it?’ asked Rex.
‘Penelope Lupé was found dead in her apartment.’
‘Dead how?’
‘Heart attack, apparently.’
‘Apparently?’
‘Well, what do you think?’
‘I think that if Gleason and his unit are here in Cuba but someone’s killing people that are connected, then you should keep your mouth shut, especially on an open line.’
‘Sorry.’
‘It’s OK. Don’t worry, I’m on this, and I’ll find out who killed her. For now I need you focused, yes?’
‘Of course.’ A slight pause as she tried to put a little more steel in her voice. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Damn right you are. Now… first problem: he’s going to call her, so… we have her cell?’
‘No, and guess what, according to company records she never had one. They are tidying this up so tight…’
‘Tight enough I can’t believe S.O.G.’s not involved. Seriously, Esther, this stinks worse by the minute.’
‘I know. Sorry. There is one piece of good news: I cleared things with Broderick. You have sanction in this until someone from higher up slaps his wrists.’
‘Broderick actually approved this?’
‘I know. I think it’s because he’s always had the hots for me.’
‘Not that he really likes and respects my work?’
‘He hates you, Rex.’
‘Can’t think why.’
‘You refused to hand over the route mapping in Venezuela.’
‘I suggested he would be better not interfering and let me get on with my job. I was perfectly friendly.’
‘You told him to suck your balls.’
‘The very definition of friendly. I don’t let just anyone suck them.’
‘He didn�
��t take it that way.’
‘His loss, they’re nice balls. Succulent.’
‘I’m hanging up on you now.’
‘I told you to do that five minutes ago.’
The phone went dead in his ear.
Rex got up and made his way towards where a collection of men were hauling crates onto the quayside.
‘Hey,’ he called. ‘Where can I hire a truck?’
They looked at him as if he was speaking Dutch.
‘My Spanish isn’t that bad,’ he said. ‘Where can I hire some transport?’
Eventually, one of the men pointed further up the quay and so began a slow game of tag as he worked his way from one group to another until eventually he found himself, by a general consensus of the people working at the harbour, face to face with Juan de Marcos Rodriguez.
Rodriguez was a small man, sat on a tatty deckchair in the far corner of the harbour. He was looking out over the water, scratching at a stained patch on his vest and puffing on the ubiquitous cigar. From the smell of him, it wasn’t all he liked to smoke and Rex spotted pinprick burn holes in the fabric of the unbuttoned shirt he wore. Rodriguez, in turn, had Rex pegged as Customs from the off, and no matter how often the agent tried to convince him otherwise he was defensive to all his questions.
‘I just want to know if you hired out a truck,’ Rex insisted. ‘I don’t care how much you charged, what checks you made—’
‘I didn’t break any law,’ Rodriguez insisted. ‘It’s not my business where a boat comes from or what it carries.’
‘Of course not,’ Rex agreed. ‘You just hire out transport. That’s OK. I get that.’
‘I know, that’s what I tell you.’
‘So did you?’
‘Did I what?’
Rex restrained himself from shooting the man. It was broad daylight and there would be witnesses. ‘Did you hire out a truck to some Americans?’
‘I might have done, who can say?’ said Rodriguez. ‘I’d have to check my files.’
Rex sighed and reached for his wallet. He had already loaded up on local currency knowing full well he would have ample opportunity to spend it. He pulled out a couple of notes. ‘So check your files.’