Slow Decay

FIVE

‘So what have we got so far?’ Jack asked.

They were back in the Hub. It was late on Thursday afternoon, and he’d called a council of war, pulling everyone back from whatever they were doing. In Gwen’s case that had been interviewing the friends and relatives of the dead boy, Craig Sutherland: a depressing process, combining one part grief with four parts suspicion, to which she had become depressingly familiar during her time with the police and thought she had managed to escape when she joined Torchwood. No such luck.

Jack was standing at the head of the Boardroom table, the LCD screen behind him showing a rotating Torchwood logo, providing a dramatic backdrop to his muscular frame: constantly changing and yet constantly the same, moving and seemingly at rest.

‘Well,’ Toshiko said, and looked around at the others, ‘I could go first.’ She was sitting there, legs crossed, arms folded carefully in front of her. ‘I have been working on the alien device, and I have discovered what it is. Or at least, I believe I have determined a part of its function.’

‘I’ll bite,’ said Jack. ‘What is it?’

‘I haven’t completed my tests yet, but I believe that it is an emotional amplifier. It can detect emotions some distance away and amplify them locally, or detect them nearby and amplify them at a point some distance away.’ Seeing their blank faces, she continued: ‘It works in much the same way as a loudhailer, for instance. That picks up quiet sounds and amplifies them so people can hear them a long way away.’

‘Or a directional microphone,’ Owen added. ‘That picks up quiet sounds a long way away and amplifies them so you can listen to them.’ He looked around the room. ‘Not that I would ever try that outside Torchwood, of course. That kind of thing is wrong. Especially at three o’clock in the morning, when you think the girl across the street is having it off with her boyfriend. Completely wrong.’

‘Moving rapidly on from Owen’s dodgy moral sense,’ Jack said, ‘can anyone suggest what such a device might be for?’

Fidgeting, Owen said, ‘I can think of one straight away. There might be alien races that communicate via some kind of short-range empathic sense. As they developed technologically, they might invent things that enabled them to communicate at longer ranges; let their friends know what they were feeling across the other side of the valley, or whatever. It’s like an emotional mobile phone.’

‘It’s a theory,’ Jack said. ‘Tosh, what do we know about the construction of the device?’

‘It’s small, and built with a lot of artistry and care. More a piece of craftsmanship than a mass-produced item. I would deduce from this that the civilisation that built it puts great store by art and artisans. The internal circuitry serves two purposes: not only does it produce the emotional amplification effect, but it also contains a picture within its structure. An image. I believe it might be a portrait of the device’s owner, or its designer.’

‘What’s the purpose of that?’ Gwen asked. ‘Bill Gates doesn’t put his picture inside every computer he sells.’

‘Doesn’t he?’ Owen asked, darkly. ‘Has anybody looked hard enough?’

‘I’m still trying to work out the purpose of the image,’ Toshiko replied. ‘But I will keep trying.’

‘Do we know when the device arrived in Cardiff?’ Jack asked. ‘Or on Earth, if that’s different.’

Toshiko shook her head. ‘The external design of the device matches several others we have in the Archive,’ she said. ‘I am assuming they all arrived at more or less the same time, but I haven’t tied it down any further than that.’

‘Which raises the question: do we have all of the devices, or are there missing ones?’ said Jack.

‘There are symbols, incised into the circuitry,’ Toshiko answered. ‘They could be serial numbers. I’m attempting to determine whether they allow us to tell how many different devices there are, or whether they’re just the alien equivalent of bar codes, scanned at the point of purchase. A price, perhaps.’

‘OK,’ Jack continued, ‘we have the device, and we know what it does. Do we know how its last owner, its late owner, got hold of it?’

‘My turn,’ Gwen said. ‘We identified who had it from the video footage in the nightclub. It was the kid named Craig Sutherland. He was a student at Cardiff University. I talked to some of his friends. He used to spend a lot of time in the junk shops, picking up old electrical devices and scavenging them for valves, transistors and other stuff. Apparently he had a thing for electronic music, and believed he couldn’t get the right sounds out of digital instruments — synthesizers, computers and so on. He built his own analogue keyboards using old components-’

‘Fascinating though this is,’ Jack interjected, ‘time flies. And if you’ve ever seen time flies, you’ll know you don’t want to mess with them. Big things, all covered in hair, wings the size of tennis rackets.’

‘Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana,’ Owen said quietly.

Gwen scowled, and looked away. Don’t encourage him, she thought. ‘I found a receipt in his room for something he bought at one of these junk shops,’ she said quickly, before Jack could snap at Owen. ‘Judging by the description, it’s probably the alien device. It was part of a job lot of stuff. Tosh and I will go back to the shop and see if there’s anything else there, but I think we can just put this one down to coincidence, rather than anything more sinister.’

Jack nodded. ‘Agreed. Good work. But remember, the device caused five deaths. It’s dangerous. Do we know what happened at the nightclub yet?’

‘Me again,’ Gwen said. ‘Checking the video footage from the nightclub, I reckon young Craig was demonstrating the device to his friends. If you ask me — which you did — my best guess is that he’d worked out what it did, and was using it to chat up girls: finding out which ones were lonely, which ones were vulnerable, which ones were up for a shag — that kind of thing. They may even have been trying to project their own randy feelings across the room in the hope that it might influence some girl they were targeting.’

‘Like a tuning fork inducing sympathetic vibrations in a wine glass,’ Toshiko said, nodding.

Owen suddenly perked up. ‘I could do with one of those.’

‘You already have one of those,’ Jack said. ‘It’s called “common sense”. You ask yourself the question “Does she want a shag?” And your common sense chips in with the answer: “No, of course she doesn’t. I’m unshaven and seedy. She would rather stick knitting needles in her eyes.”’

‘Moving on, before there’s blood on the floor,’ Gwen continued, ‘the video footage is ambiguous, but my best guess is that someone walked across the beam: some local kids looking for a fight. The experiments Tosh did suggest that the device has quite a wide beam. Their aggression got amplified locally. Craig and his mate, Rick Dennis, suddenly got wound up. The emotions might even have got fed back to the local youths, who found themselves getting angrier and angrier. The whole thing just spiralled out of control. Someone made a comment, someone else threw a punch, and within moments there were knives out and beer bottles being smashed. They probably didn’t even realise what they were doing.’

‘Positive feedback,’ Toshiko said. ‘The device probably has some kind of safety cut-out to prevent that kind of unstable situation, but they just didn’t know enough about the device to activate it.’

‘All in all,’ Jack concluded, ‘raging hormones compounded by a badly understood alien device. If I had a nickel for every time that’s happened around here…’ He sighed. ‘OK. Once Toshiko’s finished her investigations, and once Toshiko and Gwen have visited that junk shop to check for other tech, we write it all up and file it all away. Case closed. Good work everyone. Now, what about the other thing — the dead Weevil? Owen?’

‘I’ve concluded my remote autopsy, based on a close examination of the photos,’ Owen said, straightening up. ‘The creature exsanguinated — it bled to death. The wounds on its face and neck were almost certainly responsible. Someone or something had been chewing chunks of flesh from it, both before and after it died. Something quick and strong.’

‘Another alien life form?’ Gwen asked. ‘Some kind of super-predator?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Owen said. ‘I’ve done some sculptures of the tooth-marks, based on an extrapolation of what’s in the photographs. You’d expect a super-predator, especially an alien one, to have large, sharp teeth, for ripping and tearing. What I’ve got looks remarkably like human teeth. Small incisors.’

‘Human teeth?’ Toshiko was shocked. ‘You mean, a human being took down a Weevil with its bare hands?’

‘Bare teeth,’ Owen corrected. ‘That’s the way it looks.’

‘I doubt that any of us could take a Weevil by ourselves,’ Gwen said. ‘Are we looking for a gang who hold it down while one of them has a feast? Or was it wounded, or sick?’

‘I don’t think Weevils get sick,’ Owen said. ‘They have an amazing physiology. They can digest almost anything, and their immune system is in some strange way an expansion of their digestive system into the rest of the body. Anything that gets inside their tough skin — bacteria, viruses, bullets, knives, stakes, whatever — gets digested. Rapidly.’

‘Which doesn’t answer the question,’ Jack said grimly. ‘What killed and ate this particular Weevil? If there’s something out there that’s rougher and tougher, even if it’s human — especially if it’s human — we need to know about it.’ He turned to Toshiko. ‘When we found the body, you said that the Weevil we have in captivity here in the Hub somehow knew that one of its compatriots had died. D’you really think that’s possible?’

Toshiko shrugged. ‘Owen and I were here last night, and the Weevil down in the cells started whistling. That’s all we know.’

‘They’ve never whistled before,’ Jack said. ‘Not that I’ve heard, anyway.’

‘It was weird,’ Owen said, shivering. ‘Mournful.’

‘Beware of ascribing human feelings to aliens,’ Jack said. ‘It’s a classic mistake. They don’t think like us, they don’t feel like us, they don’t react like us. It’s hard enough working out what a cat is thinking, let alone something from another planet. Anthropomorphise at your peril.’

‘That should be our motto,’ Owen said. ‘I’ll get some T-shirts made up.’

‘It’s been a hectic twenty-four hours,’ Jack continued as if Owen had said nothing. ‘The alien tech thing is over, as far as I can see, so we can concentrate on the dead Weevil. With the autopsy over, there’s no obvious plan of action apart from keep an eye on the situation, and intervene if we think there’s something developing. The worry is that whatever ate the Weevil doesn’t stop there. I doubt that the taste of Weevil is enough to keep a gourmet coming back for more. The nightmare scenario is that whatever this predator is gets a taste for human flesh and decides to move upmarket, preying on people in the city — and don’t forget, there are an awful lot of those. So — I suggest everyone gets some rest until we have more to go on. Go home, get your heads down, and get ready for the next big bout of action.’

‘Doctor Scotus — I have Rhys Williams for you.’

Rhys smiled at the twig-thin receptionist as she gestured for him to enter the office, wondering as he did so where on the spectrum of pleasantly plump to morbidly obese she was mentally placing him. She smiled back. Surely that meant he wasn’t too far gone. Not compared to the other people she saw.

She was a good advert for the Scotus Clinic — thin and elegant, with blonde hair that shimmered in the light. Rhys smiled casually at her, and she smiled a professional smile back.

‘Mr Williams.’ The voice was deep and confident, with a veneer of good fellowship. ‘Can I offer you a glass of water? I never offer tea or coffee, I’m afraid — the toxins they contain build up in the system, blocking the normal nutritional channels and preventing the breakdown of fat.’

‘Right,’ Rhys said, as the door closed behind him. He wondered what Doctor Scotus’s opinion of eight pints of Murphy’s Irish Stout was, and decided that he didn’t want to find out.

Doctor Scotus was tall and reassuringly thin. He wore a black suit with a high, round collar, the kind Rhys wished he could get away with, and a shirt so white and uncreased that he might have put it on just moments before. He had blond hair, brushed straight back from his forehead, but a lock or two had escaped and hung over his eyes. He looked to Rhys to be about forty, but there was something about his healthily ruddy face that made Rhys wonder if he was actually a lot older.

‘Nothing for me, thanks,’ Rhys said, extending his hand toward Scotus. ‘But thank you for seeing me at such short notice.’

‘It’s no trouble.’ Scotus’s hand was warm, hot even, but dry. ‘Well, Mr Williams, please, take a seat.’ He walked around the side of his desk, a massive slab of stone on top of an impressively architectural mass of wood. Apart from a laptop and a photograph in a frame, facing away from Rhys, the desk was free of all clutter. A broad window behind him showed nothing but bright blue sky. ‘Fifteen years of research has allowed me to develop an entirely natural process that works with the body, unblocking the nutritional channels and encouraging the toxins to drain away, taking the fat with them.’

‘Sounds great,’ Rhys said, looking at the chair in front of the desk. If it was a chair. It had no back, and looked more like a knot of pine with a padded seat and what might have been a knee rest. Gingerly, he slid into it. The knee rest took the weight of his body, stopping him from sliding forward. It was oddly comfortable, if undignified.

‘How did you come to hear about the Scotus Clinic, by the way?’

‘You were recommended by a… friend of mine.’

‘What was this friend’s name?’

‘Lucy Sobel.’

Scotus’s fingers danced across the laptop’s keyboard. He gazed at the screen, and nodded. ‘Ah, yes. Lucy Sobel. She responded well to our treatments. Very well. I presume you’ve seen her since?’

‘Yeah.’ Rhys shook his head. ‘It’s almost unbelievable. She used to be… big. Very big. Now she’s…’

‘Healthy,’ Scotus said, ‘and she will probably live for ten to fifteen years longer than she would have done before she came to see us. And those years will be good years. Years of mobility and clear thinking. It all links together, Mr Williams: heart disease, cancer, senility — all a result of the body becoming clogged up with fats and toxins. Material that it cannot use but has to carry around like a rucksack filled with rocks. My job is to remove that rucksack from your back and throw away those rocks.’

‘Don’t worry about the sales pitch,’ Rhys said, ‘I’m convinced. That’s why I’m here.’

Scotus glanced at Rhys’s body. ‘To be frank, you are not in as bad a state as many of the people I see. You’re probably two or three stone overweight. Regular sessions at the gym would probably shift that for you. And it would be cheaper.’

‘Considerably cheaper,’ Rhys admitted, looking away. ‘But it’s not that easy. I’ve thought about going to the gym, but I don’t really get the time. Not on a regular basis. And…’

‘And you are embarrassed,’ Scotus said. ‘I understand, Mr Williams. And I can help. I presume you were taken through the standard set of tests before you were brought to see me?’

Rhys shuddered, thinking back over the previous hour or so. The poking, prodding, weighing and measuring. The big pair of callipers that had pinched the spare tyre around his waist, measuring how much fat there was. The things he’d had to hold and push and pull to check his muscle mass. The tube he’d had to breathe into to see what his lung volume was. And all by professional young men and women who hadn’t even made eye contact while they were talking to him. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘I was taken through them.’

‘Good. It’s important that we calibrate your physical attributes before we start the process.’ He moved the mouse slightly, gazing at the screen on his desk, and clicked a few times. ‘Let me just see what the results are. Body mass index… weight… height… lung capacity… Oh my.’ He sneaked a quick glance at Rhys. The sunlight streaming in through the window behind him highlighted what looked like a halo of stray blond hairs around his head. They seemed to be waving gently in the breeze, although the window was closed. Scotus reached beneath his desk. Rhys heard the sound of a drawer sliding out. ‘The good news is that, according to your physical profile, you will react well to the treatment. You have not yet travelled too far down the wrong path, and you should find the weight leaving your body rapidly, with no side effects.’ His hand reappeared above the surface of the desk, holding a small blister pack. He slid it across the desk towards Rhys. The pack contained two tablets, each about the size of a large mint. One of the tablets was yellow; the other was purple. Printed above the yellow tablet was the word ‘Start’. Printed above the purple tablet was the word ‘Stop’.

‘Does it come with instructions?’ Rhys asked.

Scotus laughed. ‘At least you’ve retained your sense of humour,’ he said. ‘I appreciate that. Too many people come through that door having lost all hope. They sit there, grey and dull, pleading with me to help them. You, on the other hand, still have a spark.’ He gestured towards the blister pack. ‘You take one tablet, with water, when you want to start losing weight, and the process will start. You take the other tablet when you have achieved the weight you find most aesthetically pleasing, and the process will stop. It really is that easy. You don’t have to avoid anything, like alcohol or drugs, but I would advise some changes in your dietary patterns if you wish the weight to stay off after you’ve taken the second tablet. My receptionist will provide you with a diet sheet when you leave.’

‘How does it work?’ Rhys asked. ‘I’m assuming… some kind of steroid?’

Doctor Scotus shook his head, and Rhys was struck again by those thin wisps of hair that seemed to float around his head like a halo. ‘Ah, trade secret, I’m afraid. The Scotus Clinic needs to protect its intellectual property rights in our revolutionary dietary treatment. It’s a cut-throat business, Mr Williams, and I do not intend that our competitors get a jump on us. Suffice it to say that they are a combination of plant-based esters and sterols distilled from a rare orchid that I discovered in the upper reaches of the Zambesi river. The orchid has yet to be classified by science.’

‘You’re an explorer?’

Scotus reached out for the framed photograph on the desk in front of him, and turned it around so that Rhys could see it. ‘I was, once,’ he said. The photograph showed a young man with long blond hair in a light khaki jacket and trousers. He was squinting, as if staring into the sun, and his face was glossy with sweat. Behind him, the background was a patchwork of different hues of green: leaves, vines, bushes, an explosion of plant life.

It took a few seconds for Rhys to realise that the man in the picture was Scotus. He looked only a few years younger than he was now, but he was at least twice the weight: his jacket and trousers were straining to contain the flesh inside, and his face ballooned out into a series of curves: cheeks, chin, forehead, all fighting for space on his skull.

‘My mission is to make people thin,’ Scotus said, ‘and my reputation is your guarantee. You’ve seen, from your friend Lucy, that the tablets work.’ He paused for a moment. ‘I couldn’t help but note from her records that the address we have for Miss Sobel is wrong. Do you know if she has moved recently?’

‘She moved in with her boyfriend,’ Rhys replied, ‘but I think she might be moving out soon. Is there a problem?’

‘No problem.’ Scotus smiled reassuringly. ‘It’s part of our regular follow-up process. We wanted to check that she was happy with the weight that she had lost. We do offer a money-back guarantee, you know.’

‘That’s good to know.’

‘Do you have Miss Sobel’s current address?’

‘I’ll get her to get in touch with you,’ Rhys said, cautiously. He thought he’d better check with Lucy first that she was happy with her address being given out.

‘Of course, she works with you, doesn’t she? Which reminds me — I forgot to ask. For the records. Where is it that you work?’

Rhys gave Doctor Scotus the name and address of the transport and shipping company, wondering why he felt faintly uneasy about it. Perhaps it was the eagerness with which Scotus typed the address into his computer, a half-smile on his face. Eventually, the Doctor looked up.

‘Thank you, Mr Williams. It’s been a pleasure meeting you. The tablets are yours — please feel free to call if you have any questions, or need any advice. You can settle up with my receptionist on the way out: we accept all main credit and debit cards. It’s a one-off payment — no ongoing commitment required. And, as I said, we do offer a no-quibble money-back guarantee. So far, nobody has taken advantage of it.’

‘Thanks for your time.’ Rhys reached out to shake Doctor Scotus’s hand.

He could feel Doctor Scotus watching him all the way to the door.

‘All right — what is it?’ Mitch said, weighing the alien technology in his hand.

‘It’s not a gun,’ Gwen said, ‘and it’s got nothing to do with drugs.’ She took a sip from her cappuccino. They were both sitting in a small Italian-run café not too far away from the police station. Mitch had a large mug of milky coffee in front of him. He’d asked for a strong white coffee several times, getting louder and louder, until Gwen translated it into a venti latte with an extra shot. The world was changing in ways that people like Mitch found it difficult to keep up with.

‘I’d already worked both of those out,’ Mitch said. His face still looked naked to Gwen, without that bushy moustache he used to have. ‘The question is: what is it?’

‘Some kind of games platform is the best we can come up with,’ Gwen lied smoothly. ‘We think one of the kids built it himself. You can see the design is completely different from anything Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo are putting out. It’s possible that the fight started over this, but it’s much more likely it started over a girl, or drugs, or something.’

Mitch grunted, still weighing the smooth, lavender-coloured object in his hand. ‘So why are Torchwood hanging on to it?’ he asked eventually.

‘We think it might contain some proprietary software. We need to download what it contains and check who the owner is.’

‘And that’s what Torchwood does?’ Mitch said, his face expressing his disbelief. ‘Investigates copyright theft?’

‘It’s a big problem,’ Gwen said, evading the question. ‘Lots of new software and Internet start-ups in Cardiff.’

‘All right. Keep us informed, luv. Did the video footage from the nightclub make sense?’

‘Just about,’ Gwen said. ‘I could see the device clearly, but not what they did with it or what they were saying. But it’s all grist to the mill. Thanks for making that copy for me.’

Mitch drained his venti latte in one go. ‘Warm milk,’ he complained. ‘They always make it with warm milk, these days. Tastes like something from a kids’ nursery. Look, I’ve got to get back. There’s a briefing on. Keep in touch, and if you ever want to come back…’

‘Thanks, Mitch. I appreciate it.’ She watched him weave through the closely packed tables. He’d been a colleague, and she hated to take advantage of him.

She turned her attention back to the device on the table. An emotional amplifier, Toshiko had said. Something that took emotions and boosted them.

She and Rhys could do with a bit of boosting. Everything between them seemed trivial these days. Where was the grand passion they had started off with? When they made love, it was comfortable, nice, friendly. When they argued it was as if they just didn’t have the energy any more.

Gwen ran her hand across the blistered surface of the device. She should be getting it back to the Hub before Jack realised she had taken it. She’d had a good reason, of course, and Mitch had learned nothing from it about aliens, or about Torchwood — but Jack frowned on Torchwood staff taking alien technology out of the Hub once it had been booked in.

And yet…

Gwen wondered what it would be like to make love with this device amplifying every feeling, every caress. What would an orgasm be like with this device accentuating the rush of sensation? What would it do to her? What would it do to Rhys?

Would it, could it, save their relationship?

She slipped the device into her handbag.

She was sure Jack wouldn’t miss it for another few hours.