by Goss, James
As she took the baby, Jenny smiled, a big radiant happiness that showed off her lovely teeth. She seemed much more like a real, actual human child. She cupped the baby to her, holding her up above her head and dangling her, then sweeping her to her shoulder. ‘You are Jenny’s favourite girl,’ she said warmly. Anwen cooed delightedly, flashing one of her lazy little smiles before settling back off to a firm sleep. ‘She is so warm,’ gushed Jenny.
‘Yeah,’ I forced a smile. I tried to ignore the horrible panic gnawing away at my stomach. That dream. That horrible dream…
Rhys came staggering in, wrapping me in a big hug. ‘Hey gorgeous,’ he grinned, ‘I’ve had a mad day – those bloody kids are…’ He caught sight of Jenny, stopped and stared. ‘Are you…’ he began, alarmed by something. ‘Gwen, is it OK for her to…?’
‘Do not worry.’ I realised Jenny was talking to me. ‘Mr Williams is afraid of us at the moment.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
Rhys looked stricken. ‘I’ve seen what they can do, Gwen.’
‘I see.’ Jenny nodded, unfussed. ‘You got caught in the storm, didn’t you?’
Rhys nodded.
‘The storm?’ I asked.
‘Brain storm, Mrs Harries calls it,’ she said. ‘Sometimes our thoughts get out of control.’ She held a hand out to Rhys. ‘I am sorry. It will not have been pleasant.’
‘No.’ Rhys shook his head. ‘It bloody wasn’t.’
On an impulse, I spoke up. ‘I just had this really odd dream…’
‘That will have been us.’ To Jenny this was the most normal thing in the world. ‘Sometimes we enter people’s thoughts. Yours.’
‘Why me?’ I asked.
‘Oh, just because,’ she said, airily. She suddenly looked sly. ‘You are dreaming a lot, aren’t you? Mothers have a high degree of empathy with their newborn children… It’s a bond that we could unconsciously intrude on. And you are very tired… the boundary between asleep and awake is so thin for you.’
‘Right.’ I didn’t feel much wiser.
‘Why?’ Jenny was painfully curious. ‘What did you see?’
‘The…’ I paused. I didn’t know. ‘The dream. It was Billy. Sasha was… hurting him.’
Jenny shrugged. ‘Sasha does that. She is not kind to her child.’
‘What?’ I cried, horrified. ‘Was that really happening?’
Jenny nodded. ‘She is cruel. He has to be repaired heaps.’
‘Repaired? But she was scalding her son!’ I cried.
Jenny sighed. ‘We do not interfere.’ Her eyes were so sad.
‘I bloody will interfere,’ I snapped. ‘We have to help him! I am fed up of this bloody place. Come on Rhys. We’re going over there. Now.’
‘But I’ve only just…’ he started. Then he saw the look in my eyes. Red Alert. ‘Fine.’
‘It is OK. I will look after the baby,’ offered Jenny.
I smiled at her, gratefully. If wishes were horses, I’d just got myself a stallion.
‘Thanks.’ I clasped her hands, briefly. ‘Don’t worry, you won’t break her. There’s a bag of nappies over there. Mind out for your clothes in case she goes all Banksy on them.’ I threw Rhys’s jacket at him. ‘Come on.’
We were too late. Kind of.
Sasha’s door was open, the lights were on. She was upstairs, curled up on the floor of the bathroom, sobbing. ‘He wouldn’t cry, he just wouldn’t cry,’ she whispered to herself.
Billy lay in the bath, lobster pink, like he had sunburn. His eyes were shut but he was still breathing.
I touched him, ever so gently. He shuddered, and let out a tiny moan. His skin… His skin felt wrong. Like it was lifting and melting under my touch. His eyes snapped open. ‘It hurts,’ he muttered. ‘Is Mother still cross with me?’
Sasha roused herself from her corner. ‘I am not your mother!’ she spat.
We dragged Billy out, ever so gently, terrified that the skin would fall off him.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I cradled him carefully in my arms. I emptied the bath and stuck him under the shower, turning cool water on him gently. It was all I could think of. He shuddered, twitching terribly.
Rhys rang 999, called an ambulance and went hunting for bandages.
I stood in the shower with Billy, holding him like he was made of snow. Sasha stayed on the floor, ignoring us, whimpering to herself.
‘Mother,’ asked Billy, ‘why do you not like me?’
‘You are nothing to do with me!’ she screamed, standing up and going downstairs. I found out later she’d poured herself a drink and microwaved a meal. I’d like to say she’d gone into shock… but I don’t know. People are really, really odd. That’s the only way to put it.
The ambulance never came. Instead there was a knock at the door. Sasha didn’t bother opening it – she was watching television and turned the volume up. I could hear the strange applause and laughter of some stupid pointless show. Rhys went down and answered the door. People came upstairs. It was Tom and a woman.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Tom, staring in horror at Billy’s blistering flesh.
The woman made a noise and started cursing.
‘We’re here to look after him,’ she said, gently, professionally. ‘We know what to do.’ Her voice had a strong American twang. Funny how when Americans sound pissed off, they sound more pissed off than anyone else on the planet. She looked at me, and climbed under the shower with us, unfazed by the water on her clothes. Of all things, she smiled. ‘Hi, you must be Gwen. It’s nice to meet you. I’m Eloise.’
‘You must be from the airbase,’ was all I could think of saying. ‘Tell me you’ve come to help him.’
She nodded. Then she dismissed me and gently, ever so gently, took Billy out of my arms. ‘Come on you,’ she said, her voice low and motherly. ‘Come on baby, we’re going to look after you.’
‘Where are you taking him?’ I demanded.
Tom shot me a look that said, ‘Not Now,’ but I stood my ground. Well, actually, I stood under a shower, fully clothed, holding a sodden towel.
‘We’re taking him home,’ said Eloise, helping me onto the dripping floor.
‘I’m coming with you,’ I said very firmly.
Eloise paused, looking me up and down. ‘You want to see it, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
We carried Billy into the back of the jeep. The garden path was a startling sight. It was lined with Scions. All stood at a distance. Mute. Sad. Watching us. They’d known.
Rhys followed me out. He’d brought out some blankets. He spread them out in the back of the jeep, and we lifted Billy in.
‘Will he be OK?’ Rhys asked me.
‘I’m going to find out,’ I told him.
He shook his head, but said, ‘Fine.’ It wasn’t his most convincing. I knew what he was thinking. It’s starting all over again.
‘Please,’ I said. ‘I have to make sure he’s all right.’
‘Is that all?’ Rhys asked. Eloise climbed into the front of the car, and Tom edged closer.
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I just want to make sure.’
Rhys shook his head again, sadly. ‘Saving the world.’
‘Make sure Anwen’s OK,’ I told him, and climbed into the back of the jeep with Billy. Because I was going to look after him.
The jeep started up, and I saw Rhys there, with the Scions standing behind him. All of them, blankly watching us go.
Eloise drove us over the bumpy roads like she was driving on cotton wool. Billy was shaking. Tom and I didn’t speak.
We pulled up at the Weather Station, driving up to the gates. Standing there was a man. A really familiar man. He looked early twenties, but I’d seen him somewhere before. He was wearing a suit.
‘Sebastian,’ cried Eloise. ‘Help me with him.’
The man called Sebastian stepped forward, picking Billy up and carrying him like he was made of tissue.
‘Right then.’ Eloise stuck her hands on her hips. ‘We’re
going to find you some dry clothes, Gwen.’
‘Where’s Billy gone?’ I asked a few minutes later. Inside the building looked like an office from an old film. Ancient computers spun reels of tape backwards and forwards while an old printer chugged out a long serpent of paper.
This was Eloise’s kingdom. She smiled, like it was a brilliant and exciting thing.
‘I’ll show you around, Gwen. It’s what you’d like, isn’t it? Well, you’re part of this now. Come on. Let’s go and look at the hangar.’
I was being shown into a private world. The last time someone had said that to me, it was a tall, handsome man in a military greatcoat. I suddenly missed my old life.
Eloise swung open the door of the hangar.
Oh. Oh my god.
Rhys
I remember taking the baby to meet Gwen’s folks.
We meet in a service station car park. That’s how we roll these days. In the distance a motorway roars past. To the left are some truckers. To the right a load of shops that smell of farts.
In the middle, parked behind a camper van, Gwen introduces Anwen to her grandparents.
Gwen’s mum Mary’s dressed up for the occasion, even stuck on a new hat. She’s crying a lot, and Gwen’s dad is holding her shoulder, gripping it. He’s wearing driving gloves (who wears driving gloves?) and we’re not really saying that much. There is some talk about B-roads.
The traffic goes past, making that neow-neow-neow noise that traffic makes when you’re playing at cars as a kid.
Mary’s face has lit up, but she’s crying so much as she holds that kid. Holds Anwen like she’s something wonderful. Which she is. Gwen’s leaning, just a little, back against the car. She’s not quite steady on her feet, but she doesn’t want to show it. She wants to seem so normal. She wants to say that everything is OK.
Which it is definitely not.
Geraint lets go of Mary. His hand eases off her shoulder gently. I imagine he changes gear like that. Ever so soft. He’s a quiet man. I suspect the Cooper men all are. His glance is shifty, he wants to confide in me, and we step just slightly away from the three generations of Cooper Women.
We are standing next to someone else’s mobile home.
‘The mileage on these things always worried me,’ he says.
I agree with him. There’s little you can do other than agree with Geraint. He’s never really held an awkward opinion in his life. He’s never really disapproved of me, but then he’s never really approved of me, either. He just gives me that little, nearly shy smile, like we’re two people with the same problem, or the same brilliant secret. Gwen Cooper.
‘How was it?’ he asks. I’m guessing he means the birth.
‘Bloody horrible,’ I say. I don’t go into detail.
‘Right enough,’ he grins.
We both pull a face. He sucks his teeth in. Like we’re talking about a plumbing bill and not the miracle of childbirth.
‘How is she?’
‘Tired. Brilliant.’
‘Good,’ he says. He casts a drifting eye over at Anwen. ‘Bit tiny, isn’t she?’
‘She’ll grow up quick,’ I say.
‘Right,’ Geraint nods. ‘Gwen was a big baby.’
‘Oh.’
‘They do grow up. Takes you by surprise.’
We talk like that for a bit. Baby chit-chat. I’m standing there, trying not to cast an eye around too obviously, making sure the camper van shields us from any CCTV, watching out for any big black cars gliding silently along the slip road. Anything really.
At any minute, they’re coming for us. I know this. But maybe not now. Not in a service station. Not behind a camper van with an amusing bumper sticker.
‘Proud?’ asks Geraint suddenly.
Startled, I say nothing, and he studies me closely. Guardedly. For an instant, I think he’s going to say something wise. But he just nods.
‘Don’t worry,’ I say to him. ‘We’re safe now. We’ve left it all behind.’
Geraint doesn’t blink. ‘Have you?’
‘I hope so,’ I say. ‘I bloody hope so.’
‘For her sake?’ he asks. Looking towards Gwen. Or Anwen. I’m not sure who.
But I know that we’re starting a new life. I’m so bloody relieved about that. Sure, we’ll be hiding in the shadows, but we’ll be safe. Anwen will be safe.
Gwen
The hangar was full of a vast and growing plant, spilling from a bed of mulch into the furthest corners of the room. It twisted and stretched like something impossibly wonderful in Kew Gardens. Yet it was here, in a dark and draughty hangar in North Wales.
‘We call it the Juniper Tree,’ said Eloise. ‘You know, after those fairy tales where babies are found lying under Juniper Bushes.’
‘Yes… but what is it?’
Eloise smiled. ‘Would you believe me if I told you it was alien?’
I nodded.
‘Very good. That saves us some time. Well, it’s more than alien. It’s an alien spaceship. Of sorts. Or the remains of one. We don’t quite know. I think…’ Eloise had warmed to her subject, and was leaning back against a bench. ‘Many years ago we sent the Voyager probes out into space – complete with a little primer about the human race. Some drawings, a bit of art, maths and a few seeds. So that maybe, just maybe, if another alien species encountered us… they would know us. I think this is like that. Another species’ version of a probe. Or what they’d send back. This –’ she gestured at the vast plant – ‘is their way of saying hello.’
I stared at the plant. ‘Hello,’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ drawled Eloise, nodding. ‘But what a greeting! It’s a viable, intelligent organism. When it landed… well, it was tiny. But from an acorn grew all this… And it became, well, an institution acquired it, and gave it to your government. They discovered what it could do. It makes the Scions, Gwen. The good Lord above knows how or why, but it does. What are little girls made of? Sugar spice and all things nice.’
‘Slugs and snails and puppy dog’s tails,’ I finished.
We smiled at each other.
‘My life is a bit odd,’ laughed Eloise. ‘But it’s kinda beautiful.’
We stood in that room, looking up at the plant. I’m not sure for how long. It invited you to just stare at it, like the first snowdrops in spring, or a budding rose about to push out its first flower. You could almost see it growing. Eloise walked around it, telling me how she could even use it to talk to the Tree’s home species. ‘But what would we say to them?’ she laughed.
‘Is it anything to do with the stink thistles?’ I asked.
Eloise nodded, approvingly. ‘No one quite knows what they are. When they first started showing up, we were quite worried that they’d grow into more Juniper Trees. But they don’t. They never do much – don’t even flower. We tried getting rid of them and they just grew back.’
‘How did it all start?’ I asked. My voice was quiet, almost a whisper, like I didn’t want to disturb the plant.
She shrugged. ‘I think, like all government projects, the origins are lost in a muddle of paperwork and balls-up. All I know is that someone, somewhere, got me in a few years ago to take charge.’
‘What had gone wrong?’
‘Oh, nothing really.’ Bullshit. Eloise was a bad liar. She was evasive, her gaze sliding off anything rather than look you in the eye. ‘Just… well, it was quite an undertaking.’
‘But why does the plant make the children?’
Eloise clapped her hands together. ‘Oh there’s the question. Maybe just because it wants to.’
‘Yeah, but… but why are you letting it do it?’
Eloise’s smile faded a bit. ‘This is a village without children. We are giving them—’
Yeah, yeah, yeah. ‘The next best thing. But why are you doing it?’
Eloise looked away.
‘Come on, let’s see how poor Billy is doing.’
He was lying on a cold slab, wrapped in leaves. Leaves from the plant.
His skin was no longer horrifically blistered, but instead a ghostly pale.
The calm and collected Sebastian was walking around the body, painting a thick green paste on the kid’s flesh.
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘Pulp from the stink thistle plant,’ he answered. ‘It is stimulating the healing process and should stave off any long-term damage to the tissue.’
I stared at him. Handsome. Neat. Professional. Utterly artificial.
‘You’re a Scion!’ I realised.
‘Yes.’ He didn’t look up from brushing the paste on like it was gold leaf.
‘But you’re not a child.’
‘No. I am older.’
‘But how much older? The kids don’t grow up…’
‘Not at the normal rate. I am 30 years old.’
‘So what’s your story?’
Sebastian
I woke up on 3 March 1981. I could see the date on a calendar on the wall. The room was white and smelt of disinfectant. It was bright, lit by electricity. I was lying on a metal table. Standing over me was a woman. She was smiling.
‘Well, that went rather well,’ she said.
‘Good morning,’ I said to her, pleased with how my voice sounded.
She shook her head. Wrong. ‘It is afternoon.’
‘I see,’ I said. I did not yet understand. ‘Why am I here?’ I asked her.
‘That’s what we’re both going to find out.’
Her name was Elena Hilda Al-Qatari, although she never used her middle name. She was 36 years of age and from a place called Iran. She had studied at the University of Cambridge before coming here. ‘Here’ was, she admitted, ‘going to take some explaining’.
‘Can I get off this table?’ I asked her.
‘Are you going to kill me?’ she replied.
I considered. ‘No. Why would I want to do that?’
‘Oh, you might,’ she said. ‘We just don’t know.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked her.
‘We’re different from you. So very different.’
Again, I paused.
‘Why? Is it because we have differently coloured skin? Is that it? Does your darker skin mean that you are superior to me, or that I am superior to you?’