The Undertakers Gift

by Trevor Baxendale

  Torchwood had stumbled across the creature on a building site. Two workmen had died when they had poked the thing with their shovels – the jelly appeared to be electrically charged to a lethal degree.

  Dressed head-to-foot in rubber – and probably not for the first time, thought Gwen wryly – Jack and Ianto had manoeuvred the creature to the Hub and led it, completely unprotesting, to Cell One. And there it had stayed ever since.

  ‘Still no response?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Gwen shook her head. ‘Just a big, fat zero. Not a word or a peep or a squeak. I’m not even sure it can make a sound. Maybe it’s mute. Maybe it only communicates by telepathy, but I’ve run an ESP scan on it and it just doesn’t register, so it’s unlikely. I’ve tried talking to it, shouting at it, whispering, singing, signing, playing music, tapping, even reading the Daily Mail out loud, everything. . . But no reaction. It just sits there like a. . . like a great big jelly.’

  ‘Marmalade,’ said Jack. ‘Ianto reckons it looks like it’s made from orange marmalade.’

  ‘Shredless,’ Gwen agreed. ‘Shredless marmalade that carries a 50,000-volt electrical charge.’

  ‘Hey – maybe that’s what we should call it: Marmalade.’

  ‘Nope. I had a cat called that. Besides, Ianto wants to call it Eja.’

  ‘Eja?’

  ‘E-J-A. Electric Jelly Alien. Cute, don’t you think?’

  ‘He is, but the name isn’t.’ Jack tilted his head to one side, watching the strange, silent creature. ‘Anyway, I think I prefer your idea.’

  Gwen was puzzled. ‘My idea?’

  ‘Zero. As in we know zero about it; it tells us zero; and the chances of anyone surviving contact with it are zero.’

  They stood in silence for a few more moments until Jack cleared his throat. Gwen looked questioningly at him. ‘How are you, Gwen?’ he asked, with only slight hesitation.

  ‘Fine. Why?’

  ‘Missing Rhys?’

  ‘Of course. But at least the flat is tidy.’

  He smiled. ‘How’s the Glock?’

  Gwen raised an eyebrow, not expecting the question. ‘It’s OK. Good. Light weight, which is a bonus. Smooth. Easy to handle. Laser sights work OK. Ianto says he wants me to try it with some different ammo. Hollow points, thermium impact rounds, that kind of thing. Why?’

  ‘I want to make sure we’re all armed all the time right now.’

  For the first time Gwen noticed that Jack’s Webley was in its holster. He never usually carried his gun in the Hub. ‘Worried about the assassin?’

  ‘I need to know that when it really counts we can all do the job.’

  Gwen blinked. ‘You mean with a gun? You know I can.’

  ‘Sometimes it ain’t that easy.’ Jack took a deep breath. ‘Sometimes it isn’t in the heat of the action that you have to do it. Sometimes you’ve gotta look the enemy right in the eye when you pull the trigger.’

  ‘I know.’ Gwen frowned. ‘What’s this all about, Jack?’

  ‘It’s about being able to make the right choice. Between life and death. I need to know that we can all do that when it really matters.’

  Gwen stared at him. Her eyes were big and deep and black, just like they had been in the dream.

  ELEVEN

  ‘Hey, Ianto. Anything on that writ yet?’

  ‘Still working on it.’ Ianto looked up from a workstation and his eyes narrowed as he watched Jack sweep across the Hub. ‘Is that a tear in your coat sleeve?’

  Jack looked down at his arm and fingered the thick grey material of his greatcoat. There was a short, rough slit next to his elbow. ‘Knife cut,’ he said, shrugging. ‘Blowfish fancied himself in a fight.’

  ‘Leave it with me,’ said Ianto with a tut. ‘I’ll fix it.’

  Gwen followed Jack into his office. ‘What’s got into you, Jack? You’ve not been the same since the Greenway funeral.’

  ‘Leave it.’ Jack threw his coat down and slumped into the seat behind his desk. It overlooked the rest of the Hub via a large circular window. He stared out of it, pointedly not looking at Ianto, who was quietly and neatly carrying on with his work.

  ‘No.’ Gwen folded her arms. ‘I won’t leave it. All that business about making a choice – whether we could look someone in the eye and kill them. If you meant could I shoot someone in cold blood, then I’m not sure I could. It depends. It’s a decision you can only make at the time.’

  ‘I just want to make sure we’re all on the same wavelength, that’s all.’

  ‘You mean that I’m on the same wavelength. Or don’t you trust Ianto to make the right choice either?’

  ‘I trust both of you. You know that.’

  ‘Really? Then why did you go after those Blowfish alone?’

  ‘There were only two of them and they were just kids. Didn’t seem worth risking everyone.’

  ‘Just yourself, you mean.’

  ‘Not the same kind of risk. You know that.’ He blew out a sigh and sat back. He folded his arms, mirroring her. He looked at her for a long time and then broke out a grin.

  ‘Not working,’ Gwen stated. She leaned on the desk. ‘Just tell me the truth, Jack. What’s the matter? What’s worrying you? Is it the Undertaker’s Gift?’

  He had the decency to blink. The brilliant blue of his eyes looked steely now as the shutters came down, but she’d got him. Sometimes Gwen could really get under his skin.

  Jack sat back, thinking what to say. Gwen waited. It was basic police interview stuff – let the silence do the work; people could never stand the silence. They felt compelled to fill it.

  ‘I’m losing too many people, Gwen,’ he said at last. He spoke very quietly. ‘Too many.’

  ‘So – what’s the plan? You take all the risks because you can’t be killed, and leave us to do the office work?’

  ‘How many more people do I have to lose, Gwen? Tell me that. When’s it going to stop?’

  ‘You know it’s not going to.’

  ‘And how much more can I take? How many more deaths are gonna pile up in my memory? I’m running out of room in here.’ Jack tapped the side of his head. ‘Something’s got to give.’

  Gwen thought for a moment. She wasn’t used to seeing Jack distraught. He was trying his best to hide it in that slightly cocky, slightly old-fashioned way of his, but she still felt her heart aching for him. Immortality had its price. ‘Maybe,’ she said carefully, ‘you just need a break.’

  ‘There aren’t any holidays in this job. You know that.’

  ‘Everyone needs some downtime.’

  ‘The Rift never takes a break. Right now it’s busier than ever. And, yes, we’ve got the Undertaker’s Gift to deal with on top of that – maybe. We can’t afford to stop. I can’t afford to stop.’

  ‘We managed without you for a while before.’

  ‘That was different. And there were more of you then.’ Jack turned and let his gaze rest on the back of Ianto’s head as he worked at his station. ‘I just can’t bear the thought of losing you. Either of you.’

  ‘If this Undertaker thing is real then you may be losing everyone – not just us.’ Gwen sat on the edge of his desk and smiled at him. ‘Besides, not even Captain Jack can do this job all by himself.’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ he said, with a sad smile of his own. His eyes were staring into the past. Maybe even to a time before she had been born.

  ‘If there is a temporal fusion device buried somewhere in Cardiff,’ Jack began, ‘then we are truly staring into the abyss, Gwen. If it’s activated, then the chain reaction will destroy everything and everyone. The lifetime of this planet could be measured in hours, minutes, seconds and I can’t do a damn thing about it.’

  Gwen swallowed. ‘Will it be quick?’ she asked quietly.

  He shook his head. ‘No.’

  TWELVE

  Ianto called it the Hokrala Document.

  It was a fairly ordinary-looking letter, until you inspected it really closely.

&n
bsp; On one side, beneath the Hokrala corporate logo, were several lines of alien script. The markings looked like a series of tiny, jagged dots and dashes and slashes, all tied together in endless knots, varying in size and boldness. Which was probably what English looked like to aliens, Ianto guessed.

  Ianto was about to scan the letter into the translator when he noticed something that made him raise the letter up to the light of one of his monitor screens.

  A watermark.

  It wasn’t the Hokrala logo. This was an altogether different symbol: it was like nothing Ianto had ever seen before, or wanted to see again. A weird, convoluted design that reminded him of a Celtic knot, although there was something distinctly biological about the design, and something utterly violent. He tried turning the paper this way and that in the light, but he couldn’t make any real sense of the mark at all. All he knew was that it left him feeling slightly queasy.

  He was feeding the document into the translator machine as Jack and Gwen came out of the office.

  ‘How’s it going?’ Jack called over. ‘What’s that bad boy got to tell us?’

  ‘Maybe we’ll just get away with a fine,’ said Gwen, and Jack smiled dutifully.

  The Hokrala Document was held beneath a transparent plastic screen. Above it was a monitor unit with a number of words all jostling around into position, as if they were hurriedly trying to line up for an inspection.

  ‘This is the computer’s best guess at a translation,’ Ianto said. ‘The programme is based on a series of interpolative linguistics algorithms that—’

  ‘It’s a covenant,’ said Jack tersely. He tapped the screen as a series of words assembled. In the light of the workstation his face looked drawn and white. ‘An agreement if you like, or an arrangement. . .’

  The words kept shifting as the computer tried to assimilate the alien language and suggest the appropriate corresponding words in English. Sometimes it failed to settle on a word and the letters kept fluctuating.

  ‘Who with?’ Gwen asked.

  Jack’s finger traced a line. ‘It says here: the Supreme Powers.’

  ‘Supreme Powers?’

  ‘That’s what it says.’

  ‘And who or what are the Supreme Powers?’

  ‘I’ve no idea, but they sound kind of important.’

  ‘It could be a translation glitch,’ suggested Ianto. He rattled a few keys. ‘It could simply refer to an umbrella organisation, perhaps – the body which controls Hokrala Corp?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Jack flatly. He pointed at another section. ‘What’s that say?’

  Ianto peered closer as the letters jiggled around and the words danced in and out of sense.

  ‘Unbounded. . . unending. . . No – limitless. Erm. . . vengeance. Retaliation. Retribution.’

  ‘Limitless retribution?’ Gwen echoed.

  ‘Not a fine, then,’ said Ianto.

  Gwen pointed at the translator screen. ‘Wait a second. Look. It goes on. . . It’s more specific: it’s a warning. Is that “murder”? It moved too quick.’

  Ianto tapped some keys again and squinted. ‘No, it’s “assassination”. Oh. Your conman friend was right after all, Jack. They are sending an assassin to kill you.’

  Jack straightened up. ‘That just doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘True – you can’t assassinate someone who’s indestructible,’ Ianto agreed.

  ‘Actually, I was thinking that there’s no one who could possibly want to assassinate me, but. . .’

  ‘But surely it’s impossible anyway, like Ianto says,’ Gwen offered.

  ‘Well, if someone was to teleport in here and shoot me with a focused solar-beam plasma rifle, then that could be tricky. How do I come back to life if I’ve been vaporised into a cloud of positively charged ions?’

  ‘Could you?’ Ianto asked.

  ‘I really, really don’t want to find out.’

  ‘But could they actually teleport someone in here?’ asked Gwen. ‘Into the Hub?’

  Jack pulled a non-committal face, trying on a smile that didn’t seem as confident as usual. ‘Well, we’ve got defences, but. . .’

  ‘Nothing’s foolproof,’ finished Ianto.

  ‘All right,’ Gwen said, trying to sound confident and businesslike. ‘At least we have a definite warning. They’re out to get Jack. They’re sending an assassin – possibly hiring some kind of hitman.’

  ‘But why now?’ wondered Ianto. ‘Hokrala tipped us off about the Undertaker’s Gift. If there is a temporal fusion device hidden in Cardiff, why would they have you assassinated? Surely they’d want you to try to find it and stop it.’

  ‘Unless it’s just a decoy,’ Jack mused. ‘A distraction. Keep me off my guard, running around Cardiff like a madman looking for a non-existent Time Bomb. Then – pow!’

  ‘I still can’t help thinking it would take more than one man, even with a focused solar-beam whatever-it-was,’ Gwen said.

  ‘Could be a team,’ said Jack.

  ‘A team?’

  ‘Yeah, I once had a whole squadron of execution robots sent after me.’ Jack’s brows furrowed. ‘But let’s not go into that. Things were very different then. And I came to an agreement with the robots anyway.’

  ‘An agreement?’ Ianto echoed, raising an eyebrow.

  Jack grinned at the memory. ‘What a night that was.’

  Ianto’s eyebrows dipped. ‘With execution robots.’

  ‘Well, the squad leader, really. Top of the range, touch-sensitive bearings and micromesh skin. A bit uptight, of course, but me and a can of Brasso soon taught him how to relax.’

  ‘I think I’ve heard enough,’ Gwen interjected.

  Jack suddenly seemed to remember what they had been talking about. ‘Anyway,’ he said, dropping the smile. ‘Execution squad, hit team, lone gunman – does it really matter? They wanna whack Captain Jack.’

  ‘There is another explanation,’ Ianto said. ‘Hokrala said you’re going to fail to stop the Undertaker’s Gift. What if this is their way of guaranteeing that?’

  ‘You mean they want me to fail?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Ianto, ‘they need you to?’

  ‘That’s a nasty thought.’

  ‘OK, until we get to the bottom of this I think you should be grounded,’ Gwen told Jack.

  ‘Grounded?’

  ‘Confined to the Hub. As of now.’

  ‘We need to protect you, Jack,’ said Ianto. ‘You’ll be safer here.’

  ‘But I’m indestructible,’ protested Jack indignantly.

  ‘As in unsinkable,’ Ianto noted.

  ‘That’s right,’ Jack agreed.

  ‘Like the Titanic,’ added Ianto.

  ‘We don’t know what Hokrala are capable of,’ Gwen put in. ‘And they seemed pretty certain you’ll fail to stop the Undertaker’s Gift.’

  Jack nodded slowly. ‘All right. . . There is stuff I can do here. I can stay busy.’

  ‘I’m going to recheck the Rift monitors,’ Gwen said. ‘You can interview the Blowfish.’

  Jack saluted. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  Gwen smiled sweetly back at him and then turned to speak to Ianto. ‘You need to make sure the Hub defences are working properly – especially the matter transmission screening.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Ianto nodded. He had picked up the Hokrala Document again, intending to fold it and store it, but something new caught his attention. He held the paper up to the bright desk light again to inspect the watermark. He turned it over and looked again, puzzled.

  ‘That’s odd,’ he said. ‘It’s gone.’

  ‘What has?’

  ‘The watermark. This paper had a watermark before, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ said Gwen, ‘but not urgent.’

  Ianto shrugged, replaced the letter in its envelope, and left it on the desk. He stared at it a moment longer and shivered. He couldn’t think why, but it made his skin crawl.

  THIRTEEN

  Ray was sitting with Wynnie on the
hard metal perch seats in the bus shelter on Plas y Parc, huddled against the cold, blustery weather. They were waiting for a bus to take them back up towards Cyncoed, and hopefully retrace Ray’s steps of the night before.

  ‘You’re determined to get to the bottom of this, aren’t you?’ Wynnie asked, wincing as another icy gust of wind battered the shelter.

  ‘Too right,’ said Ray.

  ‘And to think I gave up a lecture on heterogeneous catalysis for this.’

  Ray’s mobile rang, filling the shelter with the tinny strains of ‘Where Did All The Love Go’. She answered it awkwardly, glancing quickly at the display. ‘Hi Gillian. How’s things?’ She looked at Wynnie and shrugged.

  ‘Hey Ray.’ This was Gillian’s habitual greeting. ‘Glad I’ve got you. Didn’t want to text this, it’s too weird. But you know the funeral cortège—’

  Ray felt a deep shiver run through her guts. ‘What did you say? How do you know about the funeral. . .?’

  ‘Your blog of course, silly cow. Someone’s got to read it! D’uh!’

  Ray shut her eyes in relief. Of course! The stupid bloody blog!

  ‘Are you listening?’ Gillian’s voice was excited.

  ‘What? Yeah. Go on. The blog. Stupid, really.’ Ray couldn’t think why she was lying, but it came easily. ‘It’s nothing, really. Take no notice of it.’

  ‘No, no, don’t be daft. I was at the party, remember. You’d been drinking but you definitely weren’t pissed. Not that much anyway. But it was the blog you see, I couldn’t believe it when I read it. Is it true? Did you see it as well?’

  Ray was suddenly tuned in, her mind cutting through the chatter to the one salient fact. ‘What do you mean, “as well”?’

  ‘I saw it too! I saw the funeral!’

  ‘How?’

  ‘After you left I came out for some air – it was really stuffy in that house, wasn’t it? – and I ended up looking for you. I was worried that you’d get lost or something, and I felt a bit guilty that I’d left you to walk home on your own.’

  ‘That’s sweet.’

  ‘Whatever. I tried to follow you and then I found this stupid funeral thing, full of these horrible, dirty-looking men. I mean, they were awful. . . Just like you said in your blog. Someone pointed it out to me, and I thought oh my God that’s them—’