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. New European businesses probably. Yeah.
Two weeks before, on a Thursday night like this one, although lacking the rain, Mr Dine had come in and sat down at his usual table. When she’d brought him the menu, he’d looked up at her, and smiled, and asked her, if she didn’t mind, what her name was.
‘I’ve been coming in here for such a long time, and I don’t know what you’re called,’ he had said.
‘Shiznay,’ she replied, blushing.
‘Shiznay,’ he repeated, turning the word over and over.
This Thursday, she produced the bottle of lager he hadn’t asked for yet, and set it down next to the upturned glass.
Mr Dine smiled. ‘Thank you. You read my mind, Shiznay.’
‘My pleasure. Have you decided yet, sir?’
‘A moment.’
Shiznay retreated to the kitchen door and waited. As ever, the restaurant was nothing like busy.
‘What are you doing?’ her father asked, bustling out of the kitchen. ‘Are you loitering?’
‘I am waiting for Mr Dine, Father,’ Shiznay replied.
Her father looked out across the empty restaurant and spotted Mr Dine at the distant table.
‘You favour him,’ he observed.
‘He’s a customer, Father, and a regular. What do you want me to do?’
‘Not get any ideas,’ her father said.
Shiznay had plenty of ideas. Mr Dine knew her name. Mr Dine had smiled at her. He had wanted to know what her name was. He liked her.
She caught sight of herself in the floor-length mirrors beside the restaurant door. Her father insisted they all wore authentic clothing at work — even though neither of her parents had ever been out of South Wales in their lives. Authentic clothing revealed her midriff, and also revealed what the local white boys called a ‘muffin top’. But authentic clothing also accentuated her bosom.
Shiznay was proud of her bosom, but she was also fairly sure she had a pretty face.
‘He’s a breast man,’ her mother had told her.
‘Mother, what?’
‘That Mr Dine. I’ve seen the way he looks at you. He’s a breast man.’
‘What is a “breast man”?’ she had wondered.
‘There are four kinds of men… the breast men, the backside men, the leg men, and the others.’
‘The others?’
‘The ones who’ll go for anything. Mr Dine-’
‘Mr Dine is a very nice man, and a regular customer.’
‘Mr Dine is a breast man, Shiznay, you mark my words.’
Shiznay turned way from her reflection and looked across the Mughal Dynasty at Mr Dine. Are you a breast man? she wondered. What exactly does that entail, being a breast man?
Mr Dine had put his menu down.
She crossed the floor to him, breathing in to minimise her muffin top and push out her bosom. Maybe, maybe, he’d ask her out on a date. What would that be like? A walk down to the Pay-and-Display, him holding the door of his nice car open so she could get in. A trip to-But, no. Revise that fantasy. He’d have eaten, of course, he’d already have eaten. No fancy restaurant on the Bay for the two of them. Unless, of course, he asked her out on an evening that wasn’t a Monday or a Thursday…
She wondered what French food was like. What Welsh food was like. How would it taste if Mr Dine was sitting opposite her?
Shiznay didn’t really care if he was a breast man. He was a nice man, and he’d smiled at her, and he knew her name, and-‘Are you ready to order?’ she asked.
He looked up at her and smiled. ‘Yes, I am, Shiznay. Shaslik, and a-’
‘-lamb pasanda?’ she finished.
He frowned. ‘Am I so predictable?’
‘You know what you like.’
‘I study the menu,’ he confessed, picking the tri-fold card up again, ‘and I look, but always the same things seem agreeable. Meat, spiced, then meat and carbohydrates. The alcohol is a treat for me.’