Peter Anghelides - Another Life

Once clear of the bund, it was a straight run out across the Bay. There was no shipping to worry about, only the occasional surging cross-current to negotiate.

Eventually, Sandra heaved a huge sigh. For one dreadful moment, Owen feared that it was a death rattle, that distressing sound made by dying people as their level of consciousness decreased and they lost their ability to swallow properly. When he checked, he saw to his surprise that her eyes were more alive than ever. She was peering intently through the observation window, and delighted with what she saw. Owen followed her gaze, and had to gasp himself.

This wasn’t what Sandra had described to them in the hospital. This was more than just a simple hatch poking out of the sea bed. It was a curving expanse of dull metal, glinting with a soft inner glow even at this depth in the cloudy water. The silt at the base of it, where the vessel emerged from the sediment, was vibrating as though the whole edifice was juddering its way into reality.

Slowly forcing its way through the Rift.

The escape pod jolted, and Owen felt the controls resist his hands. He relinquished his grip, and watched the controls continue to move without his assistance. The autopilot was in operation, and the escape pod was still in motion.

They were going in.

‘I won’t be best pleased if my car gets washed away,’ Gwen told Toshiko. ‘I’ve only had it three weeks. And imagine what the insurance claim would read like.’

‘Relax. It’s well up the causeway. And how else were we going to get the trailer out here?’

‘Yeah, well you’ve seen how far up the water level is now.’ Gwen indicated the view from the starboard porthole of the submersible. A hundred metres away, the lights of Mermaid Quay sparkled in the rain. The murky late afternoon was so dark that the light detectors on the streetlamps had already activated.

Toshiko peered out too, and together they watched the waves from the Bay surge up over the wooden walkway around the Quay. The boards in front of Torchwood’s Tourist Information entrance were submerged by as much as a metre of water, completely covering Ianto’s overly optimistic pile of sandbags.

‘Look at that,’ pointed Gwen. ‘There’s so much water running off the Oval Basin that I bet you could go whitewater-rafting down it. When we get back, what d’you reckon we’ll only be to see the Pierhead clock tower poking out of the sea?’

‘The tidal barrage has already been breached,’ explained Toshiko. She was checking the computer display that fed her information from the local-authority computers she had hacked. ‘The sluice gates failed about an hour ago. The Bay area’s usually a couple of metres below spring tide. But even that can’t account for this much flooding.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Well, it’s not like the Bristol Channel has suddenly got a lot deeper. So how has the water level in the Bay risen by three metres? Or four metres in some places. It’s like a localised bubble of water, angled out of the sea.’

‘I didn’t think water behaved like that,’ said Gwen. ‘I don’t understand it, I’m…’

‘All at sea?’ suggested Toshiko. ‘You’re right, water isn’t supposed to behave that way. So let’s go and find out what’s causing this, and put a stop to it.’

She settled herself in front of the controls and prepared to dive. The large hemispherical window in front of her afforded them a view of the Bay’s heaving water. The whole vessel lurched as another large wave surged beneath them.

Gwen watched nervously as the nose of their vessel started to sink down. Dirty green seawater began to lap higher and higher against the large front window. She didn’t much enjoy confined spaces, and she wasn’t a particularly strong swimmer, so this combination was making her particularly nervous. Was it her imagination, or was the air getting thicker in here? She closed her eyes, and took slow, deep breaths. ‘What’s this thing called, then?’ she asked, hoping that conversation might divert her for a while. ‘A diving ship, probably. Or a bathyscaphe?’

‘What do you imagine?’ Toshiko smiled as the water covered them completely. ‘We call it the Torchwood sub, of course.’

It helped that he knew what to expect when the airlock opened. Owen remembered what Sandra had told them back in the A amp;E department. And it wasn’t like he hadn’t seen an alien spaceship before now, so he wasn’t completely nonplussed by it.

For Megan, it would be a different matter. He’d expected to offer her a slow build-up, a gradual introduction to the wonders and astonishments and, yes, the horrors of the extraterrestrial. That’s how Jack had made sure that Owen did not go bonkers. That he was open to the experience of things hitherto not imagined, not possible. That he wasn’t totally overwhelmed with the utter alien-ness of the world he was entering in Torchwood. Jack had described it as ‘inoculation’.

Owen had planned to do the same for Megan, his own protégée. Showing her the Bekaran device, to seed that thought in her mind. Introducing her to the grandeur of the Hub and its contents, a safe environment where she could face a Weevil safely from behind safety glass in the dungeon. And then a first simple foray in the field, for that adrenalin buzz you couldn’t get anywhere else.

Sandra’s unexpected arrival had put the mockers on that, hadn’t it? So here was Megan, learning it the hard way, seeing first-hand an alien spaceship that had crashed on her very doorstep. Owen took her by the hand to help her out of the escape pod, and continued to hold it tightly as they ventured deeper into the unknown corridors.

In stark contrast to the ship’s exterior, the inside was softly illuminated in a wide variety of green hues. It was as though the murky water of the Bay had been transformed into aquamarines and apple-green and viridian. Soft sage-coloured fronds dangled from a high, arched ceiling. Dark green walls pulsed with the arcane bright outlines of unknown symbols or images. A fizzing row of brilliance speared through the corridors at floor level, apparently steering them onwards. To either side, the corridor walls were punctuated by dark shafts leading downwards to who knew where, each hissing with the faintest wisp of steam.

Sandra shuffled ahead of them, as though drawn inexorably forward. When Owen asked her where the control room was, she merely beckoned him on with her hand without turning around.

After only a few minutes, they turned into large room. There was none of the brilliance of the corridors, only a subdued background illumination. Six scooped frames, each like an elongated letter J, were suspended by thick, olive-green tendrils from a darkened ceiling. They faced towards the centre of a circle. At its centre was a pale cylinder that might have been a table, and at the head of the circle was a closed cabinet fashioned from what looked like jade. Sandra staggered into the room, and slumped against the cylinder.

Owen took a quick look at Megan, who was still wide-eyed and speechless with amazement. He let go of her hand, and hurried across to Sandra. She shrugged him off, a feeble effort that seemed to wrack her with pain.

‘No,’ she insisted. ‘You must take up positions in the control frames.’

He looked at her, uncertain.

‘Hurry!’ she hissed. ‘Can’t you tell that the ship’s about to break through? It will…’ Her body was wracked with a huge cough. ‘It will destroy the Bay.’

She stepped awkwardly away from the cylinder, and indicated to Megan that she should use one of the scooped frames. Megan looked to Owen for confirmation. When he nodded to her, she leaned back and sat in the middle frame.

Owen took the one next to her. Sandra was already helping Megan to fasten the tendrils around her in the frame, like a seat belt. Next she did the same for Owen. The tendrils went taut, and he could feel them forcing him back against the hard frame.