They crossed to the desk. The day before, Toshiko had locked the Amok away in its containment box. They could hear it. It was tapping against the metal insides of the container.
‘Wow,’ said Jack.
‘I heard it when I came in. At first, I thought Owen had got himself locked in the cells again.’
Toshiko peered at the box. ‘It was dormant when we first got it contained.’
‘It’s not dormant now,’ returned Jack. ‘It’s sounding quite feisty.’
‘We should check it,’ Toshiko said, shooting a sidelong look at Jack. He nodded.
She popped on her eye-guards and slid the containment box back into the field zone of the containment console. Stainless-steel clamps automatically gripped the base of the box and rotated it into alignment with a whine. Toshiko closed the Lexan cover. The touch of a switch brought suspension fields up, bathing the box in a pulsing blue glow. Graphic analysis display projected across the dome of the Lexan hemisphere.
‘I’m setting level ten safeguards. Maximum focus blockers, everything we have, and additional inhibitors. Grade K firewalls, Ianto. We know how aggressive this thing can be.’
Ianto nodded. At a neighbouring sub-console, he ran his fingers over the keyboard. Graphics scrolled on his relay screen.
‘OK,’ said Toshiko. She depressed a switch. The interlock collar of the containment box unbolted magnetically, and slid back. The suspension field flickered.
The Amok, manipulated by delicate hawsers of gravity, rose up out of the box and hung in the blue glow, revolving slowly. The graphics on the Lexan dome, and those on Toshiko and Ianto’s screens, went into overdrive.
‘The Killer Sudoku from the Planet Mind-Screw is not happy,’ noted Toshiko.
‘That much is obvious,’ said Jack, staring.
‘Firewalls?’ Toshiko called out to Ianto.
‘It’s eaten through three, but we’re holding it now.’
Toshiko pointed at the projection display. ‘Elevated energetic behaviour. Some heat dissipation. There’s some edge-spectrum stuff there I don’t begin to understand. Nasty. Very agitated. Very angry.’
Jack nodded. ‘I don’t think it likes the fact we spoiled its games. I don’t think it likes the fact we locked it up in a box that deprived it of all external sensory input.’ He looked at Toshiko. ‘I think it wants someone to play with it.’
Toshiko shuddered. ‘I know we’ve got bleeding-edge inhibitors screening us from its effect, but I’m feeling ill just looking at it.’
Ianto raised a hand. ‘Headache,’ he reported.
‘Psychosomatic,’ said Jack. ‘It’s just freaking us out. It can’t stand the fact it can’t get to us.’ He leaned closer and grinned at the rotating metal solid. ‘Can you?’
He glanced back at Toshiko. ‘Even so, box it up, lock it tight, and put it in an isoclave in the vault until we’ve got time to deactivate it or even disassemble it.’
‘We don’t have that time now?’ asked Toshiko.
‘No,’ Jack replied. ‘Pressing matters.’ He handed her the sheet of paper Ianto had give him.
Toshiko read it. ‘I don’t understand this…’
‘Seeing as no one else has turned up for work, looks like this one’s down to you and me. Ianto, maybe you could give everyone a call and remind them they work for me?’
‘On it,’ said Ianto, reaching for his cell.
‘I still don’t get it.’ said Toshiko. ‘Where are we going?’
‘We’re going to the chapel, baby,’ said Jack.
Despite careful oiling, the barrow’s wheel still squeaked.
Davey trundled it up the path to the allotments. The sky was bare and white, like plain paper. A nothing day, caught in a trough between bits of weather. At least there was no rain yet.
The ground smelled strongly of the overnight downpour: rich earth smells and raw vegetation. Drains gurgled as they drank down the overspill. Birds sang in the hedges with sharp, whetted voices.
He’d intended to evict his guest in the small hours, after the dream. The storm had blown out around four thirty, and the sky had cleared so suddenly there had been stars. Davey, dressed in readiness by then, had put on his digging jacket and gone out into the wet blackness.
But it had been a cold, sinister hour. A dome of sky like polished jet, the prickle of stars, the amber glow of Cardiff. Roofs and chimneys were key-tooth silhouettes against the air. Somewhere, a dog-fox was barking her pitiful saw-edged yap. It was coming from streets away across the plots, the baleful cry of winter’s onset.
It had made Davey feel solitary and vulnerable. He went back indoors and decided to wait for morning.
He flicked on the light in the bathroom and sat down again.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I’ll have to move you back tomorrow. I can’t-’
He had paused. The hum intoned softly.
‘I can’t have you in the house, I don’t think. Sorry. I need my sleep, and I can’t be having dreams like that. Your dreams, weren’t they?’
No answer.
‘I think they were. I think I just brushed against them. Anyway, sorry.’
In the cold daylight, he wheeled the barrow up to the shed and unlocked the door. A few things had blown over in the night, but nothing had suffered human disturbance.
He took it inside, and propped it up carefully, the way it had been before.
‘You’ll be safe in here, I promise. You won’t get disturbed. I’ll be back to check on you.’
Davey turned to go. ‘You can dream all you like in here,’ he said.
Back in his kitchen, the kettle and the radio on, Davey rummaged around in a drawer for his bus pass. He had already decided on a trip to the lending library.
He put a bowl of food down, and banged the tin with a fork, but the cat did not appear.
The flat was a mess, frankly, and smelled a bit stale. Dirty dishes were lined up on the counter, as if Rhys was in training for some washing-up record attempt, and the bins needed emptying. A carrier bag full of overflow hung from a drawer handle.
Gwen started in the bedroom, and filled a hold-all with a few clothes, some clean undies, two pairs of shoes, and a few personal items from the dresser.
She’d decided not to take much, just a handful of essentials to begin with. Clearing her stuff out wholesale while his back was turned would have been plain nasty. Besides, she didn’t have very long. She was late as it was. They’d overslept.
Some favourite earrings from her jewellery box, a necklace her mother had given her, a locket that had belong to her nan. From the bathroom, her favourite soap and shampoo, her expensive perfume. Not the one Rhys had bought her duty free that time, which she wore to please him. The other one, the one she treated herself to because she really loved the scent.
Gwen carried the hold-all back into the lounge. Books, DVDs, CDs… sorting through them seemed particularly petty. She knelt down and slid her trinket box off a lower shelf. Her box of lovelies.
It was an old shoebox, covered in pretty gift wrap, and adorned with coloured twine and faded petals glued on with Pritt Stick.
She took off the lid.
Birthday cards, Christmas cards, congratulations-on-your-new-job cards; a dried flower from a wedding they’d been to; some photos; a week-to-view diary from 1994 with a kitten on the cover; old invites, still in their envelopes, clamped in a bulldog clip; a champagne cork with a coin cut into it; postcards from here and there; an interlock puzzle out of a cracker; a dead watch she’d worn in her teens; a charm bracelet that she’d been given when she was eight; some foreign coins; three old letters from a boy she’d loved a long time before Rhys, tied up with now-colourless ribbon; glitter-edged gift tags, ‘To Gwen, with love’; a shell she’d kept for reasons that now escaped her; a broken fountain pen; some keys that no longer fitted anything; a tacky little
