The Undertakers Gift Read online

‘Hokrala Corp’s a big-shot law firm from the forty-ninth century,’ said Jack. ‘They have access to warp-shunt technology and they’ve been trying to land a writ on Torchwood for years.’

  ‘A writ?’ Gwen frowned. ‘What, you mean they’re trying to sue us? What for?’

  ‘Screwing up.’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘They want to sue us for mishandling the twenty-first century,’ Jack explained, giving the steering wheel a sudden yank and sending the SUV into a tight right hander. The big tyres snarled across the tarmac.

  ‘When it all changes,’ Ianto added helpfully.

  ‘But Torchwood’s been going for ages – I mean, since Queen Victoria’s time,’ argued Gwen.

  ‘Yeah,’ nodded Jack. ‘But aliens have been coming to Earth since the dawn of time. The Silurians, the Neolithics, Egyptians, Greeks, Aztecs, Incas, even the Spanish Inquisition – they’ve all claimed first contact at some point.’

  ‘So why are we the lucky ones then? And who the hell were the Silurians?’ Gwen grabbed an armrest as the SUV swerved through the traffic. ‘Why are these Hokrala people so interested in Torchwood?’

  ‘Could be because of the Rift,’ Ianto said. ‘Maybe it gives them access to the twenty-first century.’

  ‘Makes sense, I suppose.’

  ‘And then there’s me,’ Jack said.

  ‘You?’

  ‘Hokrala and I go back a long way. Or is that forward? It’s hard to say – but either way, it’s personal. They just don’t like me.’

  ‘Why? What’ve you done?’

  ‘Annoyed them, big time,’ Jack said. ‘You’ll see. It didn’t surprise me when Harold said they were gonna have me assassinated. They’ve been itching to do that for years.’

  ‘Who is this Harold person, exactly?’ Ianto asked.

  Jack grinned. ‘He’s a rogue. A hustler.’

  ‘So we’re taking the word of a conman?’ Ianto looked pained. ‘That doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence.’

  ‘Hey,’ Jack said. ‘Not all conmen are bad people. I used to be a bit of a grifter myself.’

  ‘Grifter?’

  ‘Haven’t you ever watched Hustle?’

  ‘No,’ Ianto replied carefully.

  Gwen tapped the GPS. ‘OK, boys. We’re nearly there. Ianto?’

  ‘Rift activity symptomatic of temporal incursion in the Leckwith area,’ Ianto reported, checking the monitors again. ‘It’s the Hokrala chronon-energy signature all right. They’re coming through. Sending the exact coordinates to the GPS now. . .’

  The dashboard computers chirruped and the satnav screen planned a route. Jack tooled the SUV down a side street and into a car park. They got out, but there didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary. Parked cars, Pay-and-Display machines, litter. The faint smell of engine oil and petrol.

  Jack’s shoulders flexed under his greatcoat. ‘Feel that?’

  Gwen and Ianto looked at him and shook their heads.

  ‘Static electricity. It’s in the air. It’s a warp shunt. They’re comin’.’

  Ianto was checking his PDA scanner. ‘Not picking up anything here – oh. Wait.’ His faced creased into a sudden frown. ‘Gosh, the reading’s gone off the scale.’

  ‘Can’t see anything,’ Gwen said, turning slowly in a circle. She pulled a strand of hair off her face and shuddered. There was something. A kind of tang in the air, like just before a storm.

  Suddenly all the parked cars sounded their horns at once. There was no one inside the cars; the horns blew by themselves, a long, screeching note of alarm. The headlights lit up and indicators flashed madly, as if all the cars were signalling urgently to them to get out of the way.

  ‘Just our luck,’ said Ianto, swallowing nervously. ‘A Herbie convention.’

  And then, with sudden, shocking force, about twenty cars were completely flattened as if a giant, invisible hand had smacked them all flat like matchboxes. The vehicles at the epicentre were squashed into tin foil and strips of rubber as an immense pressure wave of cold, oily air knocked Jack, Ianto and Gwen off their feet. Cars on the perimeter were half-crushed – their bonnets slapped down into the concrete, rear ends bouncing up into the air with a deafening clatter.

  The damage described a perfect hemisphere, as if the underside of a super-dense, invisible ball had landed right in the middle of the car park. At the very centre of the sphere were three men in silvery-grey suits. The central, taller figure was flanked by two brutish, ape-like thugs. They were carrying huge automatic weapons in long, powerful arms. They walked calmly down from six metres in the air until they were standing directly in front of the Torchwood operatives.

  Jack was helping Gwen to her feet. She always hated it when he did that, but there was a strong whiff of the old-fashioned about Jack that said more about him than the Second World War RAF look.

  Ianto was trying to scan with the PDA but the equipment now seemed to be faulty.

  The leader of the dark men stepped slowly forward, peeling off a pair of thin black gloves from white hands. He looked human – but only just. His skin was so pale that it was almost transparent. Blue veins and pink muscle could be seen moving under his pallid flesh. His eyes were hidden behind mirrored sunglasses, but his attention was clearly focused on Jack.

  ‘Harkness.’

  Jack straightened up. ‘That’s Captain Harkness to you.’

  ‘You know why we’re here. Pursuant to Section 4 Paragraph 25 of the Future Time Edict dated E5150 pro-Hok Gibbon slash Kulkana, we are suing you – personally – for mishandling the twenty-first century.’

  ‘It’s barely begun.’

  The alien shrugged, unmoved. ‘Face it, Harkness. You’ve blown it already. Our records show a catalogue of failures leading right up to this moment – the time of your greatest fiasco.’ He reached inside his coat and produced a slim envelope, which he proffered towards Jack.

  ‘Surely we can appeal?’ asked Ianto, stepping forward to take the envelope.

  The lawyer shook his head. ‘There is no appeal process.’

  ‘Sure there is,’ said Jack, drawing his Webley and aiming it at the lawyer’s forehead. Gwen and Ianto produced their own automatics on cue, aiming at the two henchmen.

  The lawyer waved his hand dismissively and Jack’s pistol glowed red hot, forcing him to release it. ‘Ow!’

  ‘What a pathetic piece of ironmongery,’ said the lawyer, prodding the gun with the toe of his boot. ‘A relic even in this time period. A symbol of your failed attempt to integrate with this era, Harkness.’

  Gwen and Ianto were quietly holstering their own weapons. ‘You wouldn’t be so tough if it wasn’t for those two gorillas,’ muttered Ianto.

  ‘Yeah,’ agreed Gwen. ‘And those big guns – they’ve got to be compensating for something. Am I right, boys?’

  The apes leered at her.

  ‘We come only lightly armed,’ the leader informed her. ‘If we meant you any physical harm, we would simply sink this island.’

  It took Gwen a moment or two to realise what he meant. And then the scale of the threat almost overwhelmed her.

  ‘It’s been done before,’ shrugged the lawyer, noting her look of incredulity.

  ‘Let’s leave Atlantis out of this,’ said Jack. ‘I think we’re all agreed it wasn’t exactly the Time Agency’s greatest success.’

  ‘You should know,’ retorted the lawyer archly.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Gwen. ‘If we can’t appeal against this writ thing then surely we can negotiate?’

  ‘Negotiate?’ repeated the lawyer. ‘Don’t understand the word.’

  Ianto said, ‘It means. . .’

  He realised that the apes were laughing at him and their leader was smiling indulgently.

  ‘Hold it,’ said Jack. ‘OK, so we may not be on top of absolutely everything. But we’ve done some pretty good stuff. We saw off Abaddon for a start. Your records show that?’

  The lawyer rolled his eyes impatiently. ‘You were lu
cky.’

  ‘What about the alien sleepers, then? Cell 114?’ asked Gwen. ‘They were going to nuke the whole of South Wales. And what about the Pharm?’

  ‘And don’t forget that CERN business,’ added Ianto. ‘Did you hear about that?’

  ‘Minor successes owing more to luck than judgement,’ responded the lawyer tartly. ‘What about the things left undone? There is a spatial rupture on the seabed two miles off the coast that continues to spew proto-organic waste into the ocean. It’s an environmental disaster happening while you stand here and you’ve done absolutely nothing to stop it.’

  Gwen pulled a disgusted face. ‘Oh, don’t start playing the green card. That’s so cheap.’

  ‘You’ve got your time lines crossed, anyway,’ said Jack. ‘It’s already sorted. I checked that out a year ago. There’s a fissure at the bottom of the bay regurgitating calcified amino-acids from the Palaeocene era. We ran a complete chemical composition analysis on it last year – the complex nutrients and bio-chemicals contained in the stuff breaks down industrial oil and pollutants. So it’s actually improving the quality of the seawater. By our calculations, in another hundred years or so the South Wales coastline will have the purest saltwater anywhere on the planet since before the Industrial Revolution.’

  The lawyer snorted. ‘Your time’s up, Harkness. The twenty-first century is when it all ends.’

  ‘Wait a sec. What do you mean by that, exactly?’

  ‘Don’t you know?’

  Jack raised an eyebrow. ‘Give me a clue.’

  The lawyer seemed highly amused. ‘Haven’t you heard of the Undertaker’s Gift?’

  Both Gwen and Ianto saw the minute change that came over Jack then: not a flinch, as such, but an imperceptible stiffening of the shoulders. It is doubtful whether anyone else would have noticed it. And then, after the barest pause, Jack’s eyes narrowed. ‘Is this some kind of test?’

  ‘Test?’ The lawyer looked appalled. ‘The Undertaker’s Gift isn’t a test, Harkness. It’s far too serious for that. But let’s say that if it were a test, then you’ve already failed it. And the consequences will be disastrous. Catastrophic, in fact.’

  ‘Meaning what, exactly?’ Gwen demanded. She could see that, for whatever reason, Jack had been momentarily thrown by the merest mention of this Undertaker’s Gift. She guessed that he knew exactly what it meant, but she had no idea. And she wanted to know. Because anything that could throw Jack Harkness off his stride had to be something bad. She looked squarely at the lawyer and repeated her question: ‘I said what does it mean? What is the Undertaker’s Gift?’

  The lawyer touched a finger to his lips. ‘A world of suffering.’

  And with that, the legal team disappeared in a fizz of energy, and several squashed cars gave a pathetic rattle.

  ‘They’ve gone,’ said Ianto, a little awed.

  ‘People keep doing that to me these days,’ complained Jack.

  Ianto was looking at the envelope in his hand. ‘And they served us with a writ.’

  ‘Yeah.’ A hard, slightly anxious look had clouded Jack’s sky-blue eyes. ‘I would have preferred an assassin.’

  SIX

  And the nightmares keep on coming!

  It’s getting to be a real bugger cos I’m not even asleep.

  It’s the same thing all the time:

  I’m on my way to a home I can’t find and don’t know where it is. I’m lost and cold. And then I come across a funeral. For tramps. It’s like a procession, creepy and almost Victorian, but these guys are wearing scuzzy old clothes and rags and I can’t see their faces at all. This is way weird, but the pallbearers are wearing masks. Well, not masks but sort of bandages. Like the Invisible Man.

  They look at me, right, even though I can’t see their eyes cos their faces are just blank and some of them are wearing stupid little sunglasses. But then they just kind of ignore me and the procession goes on. And the casket draws up level with me and it’s made of glass or something cos I can see right inside it.

  By now I’m completely freaked out. I’m sweating just typing it up now. I’m sweating when I wake up and I’m shivering too and my heart’s racing like mad.

  But I never wake up in time.

  I never wake up before I see what’s inside the casket.

  And that’s the thing that stays with me even when I’m awake, like it’s been burned into my brain or something. It’s like the image has been branded onto my optic nerves. OK, so that’s a bit on the melodramatic side, but it’s so getting on my tits now. Like it won’t give up till I’m completely mad.

  Wynnie thinks I should see someone – a psychologist probably. He hasn’t said it out loud but I know that’s what he’s thinking. Soft sod means well but he’s a bloke at the end of the day and what does he know? He says there’s a special force called Torchwood that looks into all this kind of crap. A bit like the X-Files I suppose but in Cardiff. Yeah! Right!

  I’m supposed to be going to a lecture this morning but somehow ‘Landfill Waste and Ecology’ just doesn’t seem so important or interesting right now. I need to get my head around last night.

  So maybe you’re reading this and think I’m nuts – or worse, just an attention-seeking drama queen. But those who actually know me won’t think either.

  Cheerio till next time.

  Ray.

  She hit Enter, and the blog entry uploaded. She didn’t feel any better for it, but at least getting it out there in the public domain felt like she had responded in some way. The thought of keeping it all to herself – or even just Wynnie – was pretty much unbearable.

  ‘You didn’t mention that stuff about Torchwood, did you?’ Wynnie asked from his position on the sofa. He had his acoustic guitar on his knee, and he was plucking out the chords for ‘Unforgiven’ by Metallica.

  ‘Um,’ said Ray. ‘You did say it was just a rumour. Internet scuttlebutt.’

  ‘And I also said don’t mention it in your blog.’

  ‘No you didn’t.’

  ‘Well I should have told you not to mention it in your blog.’ His shoulders slumped a little. ‘Never mind. It’s all rubbish anyway, probably.’

  ‘Probably?’

  Wynnie shrugged. ‘It’s something Nina mentioned to me.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You know, Nina Rogers – Jessica Montague’s best mate. She was doing a load of research into this Torchwood thing on the net.’

  ‘Big deal.’

  ‘Yeah. But I reckon if anything like Torchwood really did exist then they’d have got us by now.’

  ‘What do you mean, “got us”?’

  ‘You know. Taken us away. Made us disappear.’ A little light went on inside Wynnie’s head as an idea struck him, and he put his guitar down, warming to this new subject. ‘Or else they’d have just made us forget. Wiped our memories – like in Men In Black.’

  ‘But I don’t know anything about Torchwood, so there’s nothing for me to forget.’ She smiled. Then frowned. ‘Unless they’ve already got to me, of course.’

  ‘Good point. Maybe I should mention that to Nina.’ He stood up. ‘How are you feeling now, anyway?’

  Ray sighed, thinking. ‘Better, I think. I keep getting these flashbacks though. The things I saw. I can’t seem to forget them.’

  ‘It’ll take time. Bound to. The images will fade, eventually. I’m sure of it.’

  Ray wasn’t convinced. She rubbed at the goose bumps on her arms.

  ‘I dunno. This doesn’t feel like something I’ll ever forget. It’s right there in my head, every minute. It’s not like a memory. . . It’s more like a mental link or something. A direct, permanent connection to that moment in time and space.’

  Wynnie raised his eyebrows. ‘OK, now you’re sounding weird even by my standards. Drink the tea and let’s go.’

  Ray nodded, but in her mind’s eye she kept seeing the pallbearers, their bandaged faces turning to look at her. The glass casket.

  The thing inside.


  Nothing was going to make it go away.

  SEVEN

  Gwen was driving the SUV back to the Hub. ‘This Undertaker’s Gift. . . ‘She shot a fast, questioning look at Jack in the passenger seat. ‘You know what it is, don’t you?’

  Jack shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. If it’s what I think it is, then we’re in trouble.’

  ‘Well, I sort of guessed it wouldn’t be good news.’

  Jack’s eyes were cloudy again. ‘It’s been a Torchwood rumour for as long as I can remember. The people who ran Torchwood in the old days – and I mean the old days – used to talk about it in whispers. It was one of those things we were always supposed to be on the lookout for, according to Gerald Kneale. Thankfully, it never came my way.’

  ‘Until now,’ Gwen said.

  ‘Maybe.’ Jack pulled a face. ‘The Undertaker’s Gift is almost mythical – I was never convinced it really existed. It was the bogeyman. A threat that was never substantiated.’

  ‘Hokrala seemed very sure about it.’

  ‘Well, they would. It’s their job to be very sure about everything. That’s their problem – no creativity, no room for inspired guesswork. Hopeless gamblers.’

  ‘What is the Undertaker’s Gift, then?’ asked Ianto. ‘According to legend?’

  ‘It was generally considered to be some kind of planetary threat – the end of the world. The big bad daddy of all atomic bombs – at least that’s what we used to think, back in the fifties, until we realised it was more than that. A whole lot more.’

  Jack fell silent for a moment and Gwen glanced across at him. He was looking unusually drawn; although he was keeping his tone light, she guessed that he was trying to disguise how rattled he was.

  ‘I think it’s some kind of temporal fusion device,’ he said. ‘Literally, a Time Bomb. I’ve got no proof of that, by the way. It’s just a theory. But it’s just about the only thing that could turn this planet inside out – if it was strategically detonated near the Rift, it would split the local time-space continuum wide open. Earth would be wiped out in a temporal spasm that would leave the entire solar system irradiated with fast-decay chronon fallout. Not good.’