Slow Decay

TWENTY

The sky was bright and clear, a wash of purest azure from horizon to horizon. Penarth Head stood out crisply against the sky, almost as if the whole scene were a collage and the headland had been cut out of a picture in a magazine and stuck onto blue card. Even the water of the bay seemed purer than usual, sparkling in the sunshine.

Standing at the quay that led down to the ferry, Jack and Gwen were comfortably silent. They had shared life and death together, and although they had plenty they wanted to say to one another, for the moment they were content.

‘What happened to the patients in Scotus’s medical facility?’ Gwen asked eventually.

‘Owen brought them out of sedation, one by one, and spun them some story that they’d been drugged in a bar. He’s very fond of that story. I think it has some kind of resonance for him.’

‘How did he explain the dressings and the scars?’

‘Told them they were missing a kidney, which was probably on its way to the Middle East to be transplanted into a billionaire oil tycoon. Hey, if it means they’re more careful about what they eat and drink in future then it’s a plus as far as I’m concerned.’

‘And they bought it?’

Jack smiled. ‘Owen can be very convincing, when he wants to be. I think he’s taken four of them out for dinner so far, and he’s working on the rest.’

Far out across the bay a small boat was bobbing around. Normally, Gwen wouldn’t have been able to see even half that distance, but the air was so clear she felt she could see all the way across to Weston-super-Mare if she tried.

‘What about Doctor Scotus?’ she asked.

‘Owen and I talked about that. In the end, it wasn’t our job to punish him. We suggested he try one of the “Stop” pills, under medical supervision, to see whether it would get rid of the thing that was inside him, infiltrating its way through his flesh. He couldn’t take it himself, of course — the thing wouldn’t let itself be harmed — so Owen dissolved it in solution and injected it.’

‘OK. And..?’

‘And Scotus was right. The creature had wound itself too tightly around him. He didn’t survive the process.’

‘Oh.’ A moment’s pause. ‘And Lucy?’

‘Returned to full physical health.’

Gwen thought for a moment. ‘She killed her boyfriend, you know. She ate her boyfriend. There’s got to be some kind of payback for that.’

‘I said full physical health. She’s under psychiatric supervision. I doubt she’ll ever come to terms with what she did.’

‘Hmm.’ She didn’t sound convinced. ‘I know Toshiko will survive,’ she said eventually, ‘but what about Owen? He took that thing with Marianne pretty hard.’

‘He always does. He’ll get over it.’ Jack looked sideways at Gwen. ‘And what about you? We haven’t seen you around for a while?’

‘You haven’t texted me.’

Jack grinned. ‘I mislaid the number. Everything OK at home?’

Gwen nodded. ‘Everything’s fine. Well, as fine as it’ll ever be. After I got the police to raid that factory and arrest the gang members, we went away for a few days. Rhys wanted to go to Portmeirion, but I held out for Shrewsbury.’

‘Very nice.’ He paused, weighing up whether to continue. ‘You know,’ he said eventually, ‘those diet pills weren’t the answer. They just address the symptom, not the cause. Changing your body isn’t the point. You have to change the behaviour that’s changing your body.’

‘Very wise,’ she said. ‘You should go on TV. Maybe write a book. Change Your Tack With Captain Jack. You’d sell a million.’

‘Too much like setting up a religion, and I’m not going that route again.’ He noticed Gwen shiver. ‘Cold?’

‘Getting that way. Shall we go back?’

‘Let’s.’ On a whim, Jack slipped his greatcoat off and placed it around Gwen’s shoulders.

‘What’s that for?’ she asked, surprised.

‘Because you earned it,’ he said.

All of the alien tech was safely in storage back in the Hub, sitting in boxes in the Archive, but Toshiko couldn’t stop thinking about them. Not about the devices per se, but about the information they contained. The images. The story.

Sitting cross-legged on the futon in her flat, candles burning on shelves and tables, Toshiko laid out the nine photographs in a line on the tatami mat in front of her, moving them around until they were in the order she wanted.

The image on the left showed the alien — the designer, as she thought of it — at what she guessed was its youngest age. The skin, from what she could make out, was unlined, the eyes bright and firm. As she looked from left to right, the alien got older. Its skin became more wrinkled, more pachydermous, and the hammerhead-like extrusions which housed its eyes began to droop. In the last but one image, it looked sad and old.

Hidden within the devices it had made, had been the story of its life; of how it had grown, developed and aged. Perhaps it had happened a few decades ago, perhaps a few million years, but the story was as real as if it had happened yesterday.

The last image of all was different. It had come from one of the pieces of tech found at the scene of an alien spaceship crash near Mynach Hengoed. It had also, coincidentally, been the last one Toshiko had examined.

It was a long shot, showing the designer from head to toe, if those concepts had any meaning. Toshiko found it difficult to tell, but she thought it had three massive legs and two arms that emerged from either side of a thick neck. She didn’t know where in the sequence the picture came, except that the designer looked neither young nor old. Middle-aged, perhaps.

What made the image unique was the other alien with the designer: a smaller version, with deer-thin legs and eye-extensions that pointed upwards, like a ‘Y’.

A son? A daughter? Something for which there was no word in any Earth language, perhaps, but Toshiko got the impression that it was an offspring of some kind. And that the designer was very proud.

In the end, she thought, the slow decay of the body didn’t matter. We all continue on, renewing ourselves, through our offspring.

They are what matter.

They are what survive.