Trevor Baxendale - Something in the Water

Gwen flinched. ‘What do you mean?’

‘It was small, newborn, looked a bit helpless,’ Owen said matter-of-factly. ‘Classic infant survival technique. The maternal instinct in you wouldn’t allow you to shoot.’

‘Is that so wrong?’

Now Owen turned to look at her, staring straight into her eyes. ‘That wasn’t a baby, Gwen. It didn’t even look like a baby.’

‘OK. So what was it?’

‘I dunno, yet.’

‘So why’d you shoot it?’

‘Because I could tell — I could feel it — the way it looked, the way it sounded. It was all wrong. Unnatural.’

Gwen took a deep breath, pulling her hair away from her face as the bay wind flapped it around her head. ‘Well, it’s dead now. So you can come back, take a proper look. Maybe come up with something a bit more useful than “unnatural”. That’s what we deal with every day, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah. But this was … something else. I can’t explain it. It was just instinct.’

‘Well, now your instincts should tell you that we need to find out what it was, and try to explain it.’ She touched him on the arm. ‘What’s done is done, Owen. You shot it. It’s dead. Let’s move on.’

‘May as well,’ Owen grunted. He hunched up his shoulders. ‘Besides, it’s freezing out here.’

Toshiko, wearing surgical gloves, placed what remained of the creature on a tray. The bullet had blown it into fragments, but, picking up what looked like pieces of hardened mucus she’d found on the floor of the Autopsy Room, she had been able to complete part of the jigsaw. She had a surgical mask over her nose and mouth to keep out the stench. Ianto had already complained that it had filled the room with a smell like a compost heap.

‘What are you going to do?’ Jack asked as he watched Toshiko work, his face stony with distaste as the putrid smell reached his nose. ‘Sew the pieces back together and run a couple of thousand volts through it?’

Toshiko gave him a cool look and then returned to her examination.

The creature would have been about eighteen inches high when stretched out. It was humanoid, with a tough, fibrous green skin. The head had been completely disintegrated by Owen’s shot, so there was no way of seeing that properly again, but there had been scraps of the weed-like substance left. Toshiko put them on slides and checked them out under a microscope along with strips of flesh.

‘This is quite extraordinary,’ she said, looking up over the top of her glasses at Jack. ‘I’ve made a chemical analysis of the flesh. It’s actually a hardened slime made up from various inorganic salts, desquamated cells and leucocytes. In other words, it appears to be made primarily from mucus.’

‘S’not very nice.’

‘There are traces of vegetable matter here, too, though,’ Toshiko reported thoughtfully. ‘Actually part of the flesh.’

‘You mean it could be a vegetable life form?’ Jack didn’t seem amazed by this. It was a genuine query. Sometimes the depth of his knowledge about alien life still took Toshiko by surprise.

‘No,’ she replied. ‘I’m not sure. It’s neither plant nor animal nor wholly mucoid; just a bit of everything. It would explain the smell, though — bacteria at work in rotting vegetation.’

Jack was staring at the remains with a deep frown on his otherwise smooth features, and Toshiko noticed when she looked up. ‘It’s kind of familiar,’ he said quietly, in response to her quizzical look.

‘The smell?’

‘No. The look of it. Reminds me of something …’ Jack still seemed to be turning it over in his mind, as if he was sorting through a hundred thousand different experiences, searching for a tiny scrap of useful information. He approached the examination tray and reached out towards the remains, but he made sure he didn’t touch it. His lips parted slightly, and then he said, ‘Homunculus.’

‘Latin, meaning literally, “little man” or “manikin”,’ said Toshiko, nodding. ‘I see what you mean.’

‘There’s something about it,’ mused Jack, as if he hadn’t heard her. ‘Something at the back of my mind. That word — homunculus — I dunno why, but it just fits. I know it does.’

‘Something you remember?’

‘Wish I could.’

‘Relax. It’ll come to you.’ Toshiko smiled at him. ‘You need a rest.’

Jack ran a hand through his hair and said, ‘What I need is more coffee. Ianto!’

‘A man’s work is never done in Torchwood,’ said Ianto, peeling off his rubber gloves. ‘If you want coffee on demand, you’ll have to stop mucking the place up first.’

‘Get to it before I put you over my knee.’ Jack grinned at him and turned back to Toshiko. ‘Tosh, what was this thing doing inside that corpse? How’d it get in there?’

‘I think our original idea was close to the truth,’ she replied. ‘It had been growing in there. I don’t think it had reached full maturity, but it was clearly ready to emerge — I’m wondering if it may have been responsible for keeping the corpse in a state of suspended animation for the last forty years in the marsh.’

‘And that’s why it suddenly woke up?’

‘Well, there’s still plenty of chronon discharge registering, but it’s still a more likely explanation than some kind of fallout from the Rift.’

‘OK, I’ll buy that. Still don’t know what it is, though.’

‘Homunculus?’

Jack shrugged. ‘I’m working on it.’

There was a clatter of footsteps on the flooring, and they looked up to see Owen approaching. He was trying to conceal his sheepishness behind an arrogant façade, and almost — but not quite — failing.

‘I know, I know,’ he said, holding up his hands. ‘Don’t all rush to hug me, you’ll only embarrass me.’

‘Hug you?’ queried Jack. ‘Hey, even I have standards.’

‘Thank you, Captain.’ Owen raised both eyebrows in a look of pure innocence that almost — but not quite — succeeded. ‘Anyway, back now, sulk over. What’s next?’

‘Tosh has been examining what’s left of the …’

‘The …?’

‘The whatever-it-is.’

‘Ugly-looking thing, isn’t it?’ said Owen. ‘The whatever-itis ain’t much better either.’ He flashed a grin at Toshiko and winked. ‘You know I’m only joking.’

‘I think it’s some kind of infant,’ Toshiko said shortly.

‘I’ve already had this conversation. That’s no baby, Tosh.’ He leant over her to examine the readings on the monitor and raised his eyebrows. ‘For one thing it’s made out of snot, according to this.’

‘And by infant I mean it may not be fully grown.’ Toshiko indicated the series of computer analysis screens by her workstation. ‘Look at these molecular spectroscopy readings. The concentration levels are incredible. It’s like there’s so much energy contained within each cell, just waiting for a release.’

‘Any chance of that happening now?’ asked Jack warily.

‘No. It’s dead, not dormant.’

‘Good job I shot it, then,’ said Owen.

Jack paced around the workstation thoughtfully. ‘So we have a dead body acting as an incubator for this thing, lying at the bottom of a peat bog for over forty years until Tosh found it.’

‘Lucky old me,’ said Toshiko.

Gwen approached the huddle with a sheaf of paperwork in her hand. ‘I’ve done some research on water hags,’ she announced. ‘I did try phoning Professor Len, but he’s not picking up.’

Toshiko smiled. ‘Pity. I liked him.’

‘Well, he did save your life.’

‘That always does it for me.’

Owen looked up. ‘So you typed “water hag” into Google and pressed enter. I don’t know … With all your police training and dedication to duty I’d have expected more. Whatever happened to the plod’s meticulous fact-finding and slow-but-sure attitude? I think you could have gone that extra mile and tried Wikipedia.’