And there, revealed in all its glory, was the inside of the alien device.
And it was beautiful.
‘What the hell is that?’ Owen’s voice said from behind her.
‘It’s a composite image,’ she said without turning, ‘formed by combining the images from three separate sensors. By themselves, the sensors didn’t have enough resolution to be able to map out the interior of the device — each one could see a bit of the picture, but it was only when I combined them all that I could see the whole thing.’
‘Yeah,’ Owen said, dubious, ‘but what the hell is that?’
‘I don’t know,’ Toshiko said simply. ‘But it’s beautiful.’
The image on the screen was a multicoloured structure in which there were no straight lines at all. What appeared to be a series of flat oval plates of different sizes were linked to each other and to a constellation of small spheres by cobwebbed connections, and behind it all were hints of a larger irregular mass.
‘I was expecting wires,’ Owen said. ‘A battery, perhaps. Would a battery have been too much to ask? Circuit boards, maybe? Or am I being old fashioned here?’
‘They’re there,’ Toshiko said, running her fingers gently across the screen, following the contours of the inside of the shell, ‘but they aren’t obvious. They follow a different design logic to the one we’re used to.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘The devices we humans build tend to follow some simple rules,’ she continued, confident now that she was talking about the things she loved. ‘Wires carry current, but the current heats the wires up, which means that resistance increases and the current drops, so we make the wires as short as possible. That way we don’t lose too much power. The heat needs to dissipate, so we separate components as much as we can in order to allow some circulation of air. We use transistors to switch the current in different ways, and capacitors to store it up and discharge it in big chunks. But what if some alien devices were designed with a different set of rules? What if art was more important than power conservation? What if symmetry was more important than efficiency?’
‘That’s mad. Isn’t it?’
Toshiko shook her head. She couldn’t take her eyes off the screen. ‘Look at it, Owen. Really look at it. What do you see?’
‘A mess.’ He moved closer, screwing his eyes up as he concentrated. ‘No, wait. OK, it’s still a mess.’
‘Relax. Don’t try to look at the screen: try to look beyond it.’
‘What, like those dot pictures? I could never get them.’
‘Try.’
‘OK.’ There was silence for a few moments. Toshiko could imagine Owen screwing his face up like a small child. Perhaps his tongue was even poking out between his lips. ‘Oh. Oh shit. Is that what I think it is?’
‘What do you see, Owen?’
He sighed deeply. ‘This can’t be right, but I think I can see a face. Inside that piece of tech. A fucking face!’
As soon as Gwen walked into the Indian Summer, she knew that something had changed.
It wasn’t just the fact that the place was almost empty and the waiters were standing around with tea towels, waiting for the last few diners to leave: it was more the fact that Rhys and Lucy appeared to be holding hands and staring deep into each other’s eyes.
A farrago of feelings bubbled up within her, rooting her in the doorway. Her legs seemed to be operating independently from the rest of her: they simultaneously wanted to run across to the table so she could slap their silly faces inside out, turn and stride out of the restaurant in a massive hissy fit, and collapse on the floor. Part of her felt like she wanted to be sick. Another part was telling her that it was all a massive misunderstanding, some trick of perspective that made it look like their hands were touching when they were actually miles apart on the table.
Rhys’s face, when he turned his head and saw her in the doorway, put paid to the ‘trick of perspective’ theory. His eyes widened, and she saw — she actually saw — the colour drain from his face. He pulled his hand out from underneath Lucy’s and the girl looked surprised for a moment. Then she turned her head to follow Rhys’s horrified gaze, and she saw Gwen in the doorway.
And she smiled.
Gwen was surprised to find that a sudden flush of anger was powering her legs to carry her across the restaurant to the table. For a moment, when she arrived, she wasn’t even sure what she was going to say. Rhys, on the other hand, seemed pretty sure that he wasn’t going to say anything until he knew what tack she was going to take.
‘I don’t mind you eating my food,’ she said to Lucy. ‘But don’t think you can do the same to my boyfriend.’
Rhys, to his credit, smiled, although it was a cheesy, uncomfortable grin. Lucy’s face creased into an exaggerated look of concerned horror. ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘I can see how it looks, but no! No, I was just telling Rhys about the problems I’ve been having with my boyfriend.’ Her gaze dropped theatrically to the table. ‘It’s been terrible. Rhys was just comforting me. You’re lucky to have him. He’s very sensitive.’
Gwen was torn. On the one had, she didn’t believe a word of it. On the other hand, she wanted to. Partly because, after the events at the nightclub, she just didn’t have the energy for a fight. And partly because, if she and Rhys ended up having a heart-to-heart about the state of their relationship, lots of stuff was going to come spilling out. She just about had the moral high ground now, and she didn’t want Rhys to feel that he had a genuine grievance.
So she decided to do something that was, she had realised during her time with Torchwood, a defining human characteristic. She was going to pretend she hadn’t seen anything.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s been a long night. I need to get to bed. Lucy, can we put you in a cab?’
‘It’s OK,’ she said, forestalling Rhys who had opened his mouth to make some gallant offer to walk her home, or offer her use of the spare room for the night. ‘I parked round the corner. I’m OK to get back.’
She got up, and put her coat on. Looking at Rhys, she said, ‘Thanks for letting me talk. I needed someone to listen. See you in the office tomorrow?’
‘Er… yeah. Goodnight.’
And with that, she headed for the door. Rhys, to his credit, didn’t watch her elegantly skinny arse wiggling in her too-tight jeans as she went. Instead, he turned to Gwen and said something that gained him several brownie points in her eyes, and saved him from a night on the couch.
‘I feel like a man who’s just been pulled back from the edge of a cliff.’
‘You know, you really don’t want to be thinking about “going down” right now. Even in passing.’
He laughed, and it was a genuine laugh, not a forced one done for effect. ‘Gwen-’ he started.
‘Rhys, we don’t have to talk about it. We really don’t.’
‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ he said. ‘Which is probably why we need to talk.’