Border Princes

streaked face. ‘This is still serious. Something’s affecting these people. And us, or am I the only one whose head feels like it’s about to pop?’

‘What do you know, Tosh?’ Jack asked.

Toshiko coughed, tryng to clear her voice. ‘Whatever Torchwood has been tracking this last week is here, in this vicinity. It’s aggressive and it’s spiking. It’s driving people in range out of their minds. Background cerebral flooding. We’re all feeling it. It’s killed one boy already. His name was Huw.’

She gestured back up the path at the pale, tangled heap of limbs.

‘Huw,’ said Gwen, with a glance at James. He was dabbing at his split lip.

‘The victim was talking about abstract numbers before he died,’ said Toshiko. She pulled a compact digital recorder from the pocket of her coat and sourced the right playback with expert flicks of her gloved thumb. ‘Here…’

‘There are… there are numbers, and there are two blue lights and they move, and they move about, like this,’ a tinny voice said through a background rustling of rain and pocket lining. ‘They move. They move. They move about. They’re big lights. Big big big.’

‘Lights? And numbers?’ Toshiko’s voice asked.

‘Big big big. Flashing and moving. Blue. Oh, sometimes red. Red is dead. Blue is true. Big big big.’

‘Big big big,’ echoed Jack, mimicking the emphasis.

‘That’s what his girlfriend said too,’ said Gwen.

‘Along with a load of old bollocks,’ James added.

‘Then the tramp there arrived,’ said Toshiko, ‘and said-’

She thumbed the playback again. ‘Huw had the Amok, but he lost,’ the ragged voice recording declared. ‘Donny had it before him, and he lost too. Before Donny, Terry. Before Terry, Malcolm. Before Malcolm, Bob. Before Bob, Ash’ahvath.’

‘Before Bob who?’ they heard Toshiko ask.

‘Ash’ahvath.’

‘As in the Middlesex Ash’ahvath’s?’

There was a spluttery, sniggery sound on the playback ‘You’re funny. I don’t know no Ash’ahvath. It was just the last name on the list.’

Toshiko clicked the device off.

‘Huw had the Amok, but he lost,’ repeated Jack, deep in thought. ‘Donny had it before him, and he lost too. Strange.’

‘Yeah,’ said Owen. He frowned. ‘Uh, how?’

‘He said “lost”, not “lost it”,’ said Jack. ‘If it was an object, they’d have lost “it”. But they just “lost”, as if-’

‘As if it was a game,’ said Gwen.

‘Exactly as if it was a game,’ Jack agreed.

Toshiko held the recorder out again and clicked it on. They all heard the tramp’s voice crying ‘You can’t have it! It’s not your go! It’s my go!’ She clicked it silent.

‘The lumberjack told me it was his turn,’ Jack said. ‘I didn’t really understand what he meant at the time.’

‘So…?’ asked Owen.

Toshiko turned away from them and stared at the tramp. He was still cowering in the overhang of the slack chain link.

‘Where is the Amok, Mr Norris?’ she asked.

‘Shooo! Shoo!’ he cackled back, spitting and warding them off.

‘Well, he’s no sodding use,’ said Owen.

Toshiko aimed her index finger at the pile of garbage they were huddled around. ‘Shoe,’ she said.

Jack picked up the child’s trainer, sensing at once the weight of it. He tipped it up, and something rolled out of it.

It was a geometric solid about five centimetres wide that looked as if it had been stamped or cast out of copper. It had the look, colour and patina of the twopence pieces that had been in circulation since Decimalisation. It clinked as it rolled across the path on its geometric corners. Staring at it, they all felt a sudden revulsion.

Though it was perfectly symmetrical in every aspect, none of them could sufficiently explain its geometry.

Or even bear to look at it.

‘Is that a…’ James began. ‘What is that? A dodecahedron? No, a… a…’

‘I can’t describe it,’ Toshiko began.

‘I’m gonna be sick,’ said Owen.

‘Don’t,’ said Jack.

‘I really can’t describe it,’ Toshiko repeated.

‘I really am gonna be sick,’ said Owen.

‘I meant don’t to either of you!’ Jack demanded. He closed his hand around the object. ‘You can’t describe it because it’s got more than four dimensions. You can’t stand looking at it for the same reason.’

Owen nodded, wagging a finger in agreement, and turned aside to be sick anyway.

‘Jack?’ whispered Gwen.

‘Oh,’ said Jack, smiling broadly. ‘Oh, I see what they meant about the two blue lights. Moving.’

His smile melted away. He sat back on the path, cupping the object in both hands. He was staring into the rain-swept distance.

‘Moving,’ he said. His voice had dropped to a dull sound they could barely hear. ‘Moving about. Big, blue, flashing lights. Oh.’

Toshiko reached towards him. ‘Jack? Let it go and let us-’

Still staring into the distance, Jack pulled away from Toshiko’s touch. ‘It’s my turn,’ he said.

‘Jack?’

‘Big,’ said Jack Harkness. ‘Big, big,’ he added, stressing the middle ‘big’.

Then he fell back and went into convulsions.

‘Jack!’ Gwen screamed.

‘Bugger Jack!’ cried James. Gwen turned. They all turned. They saw what James had noticed.

Dozens of people were shuffling and twitching down the overgrown bank towards them, coming up smack into the rattling chain link and still trying to plod forwards, dead-eyed and grasping. Others were hobbling along the path from both directions. The patrons of the empty pub, Owen was sure, staff from the late shop, families from the nearby row of houses. It was all far too George A. Romero to be remotely funny.

‘Oh bollocks,’ said Owen. The shambling figures were all muttering as they bore down, their voices overlapping in the rain. They were all saying the same thing.

‘Big big big. Big big big.’

Emphasis on every middle ‘big’.

THREE

Shiznay rather fancied Mr Dine. He’d been eating in the Mughal Dynasty for sixth months, every Monday and every Thursday, like his life was regimented. Always the same thing: shashlik, followed by a lamb pasanda, then a bowl of chocolate ice cream. He drank one bottle of lager with his meal. He paid with a card, signing Dine.

He was a lean, straight-backed man, with hard cheekbones and a head of white-blond hair cropped back like flock across his skull. He always wore a suit, sometimes grey, sometimes black and occasionally blue, and a tie with some club insignia repeat-embroidered on the jet-black field. A crisp white shirt. He was always respectful, though never talkative. Shiznay imagined an IT job, a nice car parked in the nearby Pay-and-Display, a regular run to Bristol and Bath and Swansea, whatever was in his area. She wondered who he visited. Big offices in the Bay most likely.