Torchwood_First Born

by James Goss

  Paul nodded, looking down at the ground. ‘But we know that he will be fine now. He is recovering.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mrs Harries’s voice was firm. ‘Thanks to Mrs Williams. She left her baby behind to help Billy. And now she’s lost her little girl because of that. Will you help her find her daughter?’

  Nothing from the circle.

  Mrs Harries slid her hand off her son’s shoulder like it was cold stone. She walked over and held me. Gently. ‘I’m sorry, Gwen,’ she murmured. ‘I just thought… I just thought they’d learned to be better than this.’ She kicked out at the spindly leg of a plastic chair. ‘I’m so sorry, dear. I sound so stupid. I’m just a stupid old woman. Silly.’ Her voice cracked. I wondered what she’d have been like. If she’d been allowed to have children, to grow up properly. Not this strange steel wool mixture of desperation and hope.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, steering me towards the door. ‘Let’s leave them to it.’

  We headed to the exit.

  ‘Wait.’ Peter’s voice called back to us. ‘Mother, please.’

  Mrs Harries looked at me. Triumph flashed in her eyes. ‘Gotcha,’ she whispered.

  Rhys

  Gwen and I didn’t speak much. We just held each other really tightly as we walked through the fields. We started off running, but after a while… well, there’s only so much of that you can do. And she was exhausted. I felt utterly shattered. Like I just wanted to lay my head down on the sofa and sleep for a week.

  How long was it since I’d had eight hours of pure sleep?

  You know how it is when someone says, ‘Ooh, I feel literally gutted.’ Well yeah, that was how I felt. Literally. Exhausted. Empty. But also sick, deep inside. I was beyond worried and into this whole weird place. Where I just wanted to sleep.

  My little head was running the same programme over and over again. It’ll be OK. It won’t be OK. Anwen will be waiting at home. You will never see Anwen again. It’s all your fault. It’s all Gwen’s fault. Oh, I’ll do anything just to get her back. Maybe, just maybe, that baby was ruining our life and we’d be better off without… No, don’t think that last one.

  If it wasn’t for the worry, I could have used the peace to get a really good night’s sleep.

  Gwen squeezed my hand. Not ‘I love you’. Just ‘you’re still here, and so am I’. Truthfully, she looked shocking. It wasn’t just worry, although god knows, she looked ten years older. It was pain.

  ‘You’ve not fed her, have you?’

  Gwen shook her head, grimacing. ‘All this milk. I feel like I’m going to burst.’

  ‘It’s OK, love,’ I said. ‘We’ll see her in a minute.’

  Platitude. Mistake. They never worked on Gwen. She scowled at me. ‘We are traipsing through a bloody field at midnight, Rhys. She could be anywhere.’

  ‘We’re not on our own,’ I said. ‘The whole village is walking behind us.’

  A hand tapped me on the shoulder. It was Peter. The Scion looked alert, his eyes flashing. ‘She is over there… I think.’ He gestured. ‘She is on the beach.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘The sea. And something else. Yes.’

  Gwen came back to life. ‘Leave it to us,’ she said. Making the decision. But I really wanted her to. Somehow the world felt better with Gwen in charge.

  The beach wasn’t much. A figure was sat there in silhouette, crouched on a rock. Our shoes slapped on the wet sand as we ran towards it, but it just didn’t seem to get any closer, a mirage in the desert.

  ‘Anwen!’ screamed Gwen. She was shouting as she ran. The sand was so rigid and hard beneath our feet and the figure so far away. But Gwen sounded so desperate.

  Jenny looked up. Not startled, not frightened, threatening or ashamed. Blank. Puzzled in the moonlight.

  ‘Hello, Gwen,’ she said simply. She held up a little bundle. My bundle. Making little still-alive murmuring and whimpering noises of complaint. That’s my girl.

  There was a moment. A nasty moment. Gwen’s hands were all claws and nails, and she made a noise – a screech of pure rage. Just for that moment, it looked like she was going to shred Jenny. But she didn’t. Mind you, I felt like knocking her block off.

  Still furious, Gwen snatched our baby out of Jenny’s arms like she was a rugby ball. Jenny didn’t even put up a fight. She just continued to sit there. She didn’t react.

  Gwen and I held Anwen. She looked so pretty and contented, like she knew the secrets of universal happiness and would gradually forget them as she grew older. We just gloried in the moment. Then Anwen sensed milk and started to cry loudly. Normal service was resumed.

  Gwen fed her. You know when you come in from a night out on the lash and the last two hundred metres you’ve been hopping from side to side desperate to pee, dancing with your keys and finally bolting in through the door and into the bathroom? That was pretty much the sound Gwen made. Pure amazed relief. Anwen made echoing gurgles of delight.

  Jenny sat there. If anything she looked mildly disappointed. ‘She was hungry,’ she sighed, wistfully. ‘I tried to feed her. But I couldn’t.’

  I started to shout at her then. Loudly. I was so cross. The louder I shouted the blanker Jenny became. Just less and less of her. Genuinely like shouting at a wall, a concrete wall – blank and grey, cold and solid. Her face upturned, looking at me, calm and casual and empty. Like she was just waiting for me to run out of steam. I wasn’t going to. For the first time, I noticed she was wearing a beautiful flower in her hair – one of the stink thistles had bloomed.

  ‘Rhys.’ Gwen pulled me up, firm but gentle. She sat down on the rock next to Jenny. The two of them looked out to the sea.

  When Gwen spoke, her voice was soft and encouraging. ‘Jenny, why did you do it?’

  The reply, when it eventually came, was so sad. ‘I just wanted to grow up,’ she sighed. The sea washed in, the sea washed out. ‘I have been like this for twenty years. Not grown up. Never growing up. Always like this. I can feel my body changing, but too slowly. I would like to be an adult. I would like a child of my own. I figured if I had one, then maybe it would finally happen. I saw you with your baby and I thought that if I took it then I would grow up. That I would change if I had a baby.’ She sounded wistful. ‘I just wanted to be real.’

  None of us said anything for a bit. We were all waiting for Jenny to finish, the silence punctuated by Anwen’s gentle snuffling. Then Jenny continued.

  ‘So I took your baby. But nothing happened. Nothing changed. I didn’t grow up.’ She sighed, and it was longest, saddest sigh. ‘I am not real. I did not even feel anything. She was not mine.’ She laid a hand on Gwen’s shoulder, and Gwen didn’t flinch. ‘I am sorry that I caused you pain. I figured it would be worth it. I just did not think it through.’

  Gwen looked at her and there was a little kindness at the edges of her lips and eyes. ‘You didn’t think it through. You just did something selfish and stupid and cruel. Because you felt like it.’

  ‘Yes,’ Jenny nodded.

  And then Gwen said something quite remarkable. ‘You’re more human than you think, Jenny.’

  Eloise

  Hey Eloise

  Just catching up, really. Thanks so much for your last report. I couldn’t quite get the PDF to print, but I’m sure it’s quite detailed and very thorough and up to your usual standard. So, well done you!

  Running through the summary in your last email, a few things jumped out at me. Nothing we haven’t spoken of before. But it certainly looks like you’ve had a busy few days!

  One big thing is that the latest round of Efficiency Savings are beginning to bite, and it’s up to me to ask projects to step up to the plate and deliver. It’s time to kick the Rawbone Project into the next stage so that we can see some solid ROI. Sorry, but it seems painfully clear to me that the environment for the experiment is no longer tenable. Assaults and kidnapping tell me the balance between the Scions and the humans is broken beyond restoration. I’ve spoken to the higher ups and they all agree it’s the right t
ime to make this exciting move. I know it’s a risk, but I genuinely think it will be brilliant.

  So… I think, mebbe stop playing around and really change the gear on this one, ok?

  Obv, totally up to you, but I really do think that’s best, yeah? Your call!

  Over to you,

  xJasx

  I read the email a few more times. I don’t know what I’d expected it to say. I don’t know, maybe somehow in my head, I’d hoped that Jasmine would just once… ease back. No. Instead she had, in her own unique way, ordered me to commit murder.

  I sat in my chair, feeling sick. Sebastian had brought me a cup of tea a few minutes earlier. I couldn’t bear to drink it.

  I wondered about asking Tom for help. Of making this somehow his problem too. But that wasn’t fair. It wasn’t kind. And I also didn’t want him to know what I was about to do.

  I toyed with sending Jasmine a threatening, abusive reply. But I didn’t want to do that, either. I speculated briefly if she really had all that much support in the office. An office I’d never even seen. I ran through all sorts of helpless, half-formed ideas. Protest. Refuse. Go over her head. But… I had no idea who was above her head.

  The one thing I did not think, not out loud, was the terrible truth of my situation – that I was a weak woman about to do a terrible thing because I had no other choice. I balled my fists and drummed and drummed them against my legs. There was nothing else I could do, really.

  Finally, when everything else was exhausted, I went to find Sebastian.

  I passed Tom, who was engrossed in his PC. ‘Anything I can do, boss?’ he said, as sincere as a kid offering to help with the washing-up.

  ‘No, it’s OK. Farmville needs you more than I do.’ I heard the crack in my voice.

  ‘Cheeky arse,’ muttered Tom as I left.

  I found Sebastian looking after the printouts. ‘We’re almost out of paper,’ he said. ‘I will go and get a fresh ream.’

  ‘It’s OK, Sebastian,’ I said. ‘There’s something else I’d like you to do.’

  ‘All right,’ he said, patient. ‘Would you like something to drink?’

  ‘No thanks,’ I said. ‘Can you come with me?’

  We went through to the hangar, and stood in there. Sebastian always loved that room. It was hard to describe the effect it had on him, as he was always kind and pleasant, but he was at his most kind, most pleasant in that room, as though absorbing the warmth of the heat lamps. Involuntarily, his deep blue eyes shifted from me to the giant plant, adoringly.

  ‘She looks so beautiful,’ he sighed.

  ‘She?’ I asked.

  ‘I think of her as she. Mothers are she, are they not?’

  He turned to me, and smiled a radiant smile.

  I pulled out a wheeled chair that had seen better days. ‘Sit down, please,’ I said.

  He sat down without question, and waited patiently, staring up at the Juniper Tree. I crossed to a cupboard and reached for the equipment.

  ‘Could you roll up your sleeve?’ I said to him, and he complied, all the time smiling placidly at the giant plant. ‘Now then, you’ll feel a slight scratch,’ I said, hoping my hand wasn’t trembling too much.

  ‘OK,’ he said, but didn’t even react as the needle pricked into his flesh. Soon I had the IV hooked up. For a second his gaze shifted, squinting as though trying to watch the plant through the distortion of the plastic tube with its gently dripping liquid.

  Sebastian didn’t ask why, he didn’t question me. He never did. He simply sat there, smiling calmly. Until he blinked.

  ‘It feels odd, Mother.’

  ‘Don’t call me that,’ I snapped.

  ‘I am sorry. It feels odd, though, Eloise.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ I said, reaching out to stroke him. Then I hugged him, briefly. Feeling then how beautiful, how warm he was. There was a smell around him, like a freshly mown meadow. ‘You’re so wonderful,’ I said to him. ‘How do you feel?’

  Sebastian reached out an arm, staring at his hand, first the back, then the palm, then the back again. ‘My vision is remarkably clear,’ he said.

  I just stood there, gripping an empty plastic water cup, feeling how solid it was, but how fragile it was – if I gripped too tightly, it would break.

  Sebastian continued sitting in the chair, examining his hand. ‘Can I get you a cup of tea?’ he asked, absently. His voice was thick and slurring. Suddenly the hand, the whole arm jerked up and spasmed. Then he fell silent.

  When the end came it was very quick.

  Sebastian gasped, his whole body sagging. His head fell back and his whole body slipped out of the chair, falling against the plant. I ran to his side, holding him.

  ‘I am not well,’ he whispered.

  ‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ I told him. ‘Oh baby, I love you, I love you.’

  ‘I am so tired,’ he said.

  ‘Just rest. You’ve worked so hard. It’s time for a break.’

  ‘OK,’ he said.

  There was a noise. A whispering. I realised what it was. The leaves of the Juniper Tree were stirring and rustling. The branches were twisting.

  Sebastian’s eyelids fluttered. ‘The plant… the plant is ill.’

  ‘It will pass,’ I assured him.

  He struggled to sit up, but couldn’t.

  ‘Make sure the plant… the plant…’ He stopped speaking, his lips formed into a little ‘oh’.

  Then his eyes closed and he sank back.

  The rustling of the leaves stopped.

  I crouched there for a while, holding him. Until I felt a cramp in my leg. So I stood up gently and walked away, wiping the tears from my eyes.

  I left the hangar and walked across the wet tarmac, over to a small shed. The padlock was rusted and ice cold to the touch, sucking the feeling from my hand and I wrestled to get it open. For a moment I thought it wouldn’t open, and I felt the rich irony – that I had taken a life, the life of someone I really cared for, and it had all been for nothing – that all Jasmine’s plans would be frustrated because of a cheap old padlock. Suddenly the day seemed somehow better and easier. I’d just go back and email her. Tell her I’d tried. And that only Sebastian had known where the bolt cutters were. Sebastian…

  The padlock opened at last, the hasp catching my knuckle. It stung, but I deserved it. I sucked it, opening the shed door. Inside it glowed the same greeny-blue as the Juniper Tree. But all that was in the shed was a single pod, sealed in bubble wrap and kept warm under a gently glowing sun lamp. There was a bench with a pair of scissors on it. Odd that. I was always running short of scissors, always losing them, always getting Sebastian to go and find me some. But I never came here.

  I turned the sunlamp up to full heat. And waited.

  Rhys

  It was nearly dawn.

  Josh and I sat outside the pub on a little wet bench. He sipped at a can of coke, and wearily checked his watch.

  ‘Great. In three hours’ time I have to go and cut the hair of some mildly racist old ladies. Hardly seems worth going to sleep.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Thanks for staying up. For helping.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Josh sighed. ‘Bit of drama. Wouldn’t have missed it for anything. Glad it worked out OK.’

  ‘Me too,’ I admitted. ‘Just when I was starting to think I knew all the surprises a baby could offer.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Josh tipped the coke back. ‘You must be shattered.’

  ‘Beyond tired, mate,’ I admitted.

  I just wanted Gwen to get back from chatting to Mrs Harries. I didn’t want to let Anwen out of my sight, but Gwen had said it was important. She wanted to thank the children. Well, wanted is the wrong word – she felt it was the right thing to do.

  ‘Never fancied kids of your own?’ I asked Josh.

  He shook his head. ‘Tom is more than enough child for me.’

  ‘Where is he?’ I asked.

  ‘Working,’ he murmured. ‘They work odd hours… You know what the Weather is lik
e.’

  ‘I see,’ I said.

  ‘Funny really. I’m sure it’s nothing.’

  I wrinkled my nose at something distasteful. ‘Can you smell that?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Josh laughed. ‘Pure stink thistle fart. Those bloody flowers.’

  ‘But there aren’t any around here, are there?’

  Josh looked around. ‘Don’t think so. Still bloody reeks, though.’

  He stood up and yawned theatrically. ‘Right. I am going to go and wash this tired face.’ He punched me on the arm, gently. ‘Get some rest, tiger.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. I sat alone on the picnic bench, waiting for Gwen and Anwen to come back.

  Eloise

  They say we come screaming into the world.

  The weird thing about watching a birth is how it’s never the same. When I was birthing the Children of Rawbone, I was amazed at how silent it all was. How calm they were, even from the start.

  It had been a long night. A night I hadn’t wanted to spend alone with my thoughts.

  I watched the pod twist and collapse, splitting apart like a time-lapse film of a rotting avocado. Steadily and gently. When I was a girl, I loved spring when the snowdrops and daffodils would poke through the ground, growing so fast you could almost see them moving. Almost. Almost. The times I would spend as a little girl, hunkered down, staring at plants, just seeing if I could detect their movement. I’d even shut my eyes and then open them again, seeing if there was any change. There must be. There absolutely must be. I knew that. I just couldn’t measure it. But I knew that that plant was pushing its way up and out of the world, budding and opening.

  The same thing was happening here, but now there was all the change you could want. The pod’s flesh bubbled and shivered. There was a whispering on the air that went with the steady rattling of rain on the corrugated tin roof. Then the pod split apart with a sigh, the firm green skin of the pod going soft and falling away, releasing a terrible whiff of gas.