- 8 -
To say I was stunned by this revelation would be an understatement.
"When I took you into the Hub," I said, "the way you looked around..."
"I hadn't been back inside in a long time. I was impressed by what you'd done with the place."
"You quoted Samuel Taylor Coleridge."
"'In Xanadu did Kublai Khan a stately pleasure dome decree, where Alph the sacred river ran through caverns measureless to man, down to a sunless sea'. Yes, I remember. Before handing over to Emily in 1896, I removed all photos of myself from the files and destroyed them. After eight years in charge I'd finally accepted that I prefer operating alone, and that I hate doing administration work. Victoria was disappointed, of course, but she accepted my resignation and my reasons. Well, those I told her. It was also time for me to move on before my colleagues realised I wasn't aging. Victoria and I remained friends 'til the end, and I was a mourner at her state funeral in 1901."
When I later reported this to Jack he was equally stunned.
"Your Mary was Lady Mary Fortis?!" he said, shaking his head. "Wow, I did not see that coming."
"What do we know about Lady Mary?"
"Very little. A fire in the archives during the 1920s destroyed a lot of the files from Emily Holroyd's period as leader and virtually all those from Lady Mary's, such as they were. We know her authorization code and that she headed a team of four, but Emily Holroyd is the only name we know. No photos, of course."
Time passed. We brought Susie Costello back from the dead for a while using the resurrection gauntlet, which we had to destroy ("they come in pairs, gauntlets do," Ianto warned); a plane that took off in 1953 landed in the present; and we shut down a guy who was putting on Weevil fights. One thing you can say about working for Torchwood is that it's never dull. In between all that I continued to work on the reintegrator, and every night my ghostly girlfriend and I would make love in her dreamscape, after which she would tell me stories from her life. And what stories they were!
When it was finished, I took Mary to see the reintegrator. It wasn't a very impressive sight looking like nothing more than a lot of random electronics that had been lashed together.
"Unfortunately, it's going to be months before it's ready to use," I explained. "As I mentioned earlier, at its heart is a resonant crystal, and crystals take time to grow. Buried in all those electronics is the chemical solution in which it's growing. When it reaches the required size its growth will bring it into contact with a couple of electrodes which will then both turn on the power and activate the device. If everything goes to plan the pulses it sends out will then bring you back into phase with the world. You'll be flesh and blood again."
"What's the range?"
"If you're anywhere inside the Hub it will work on you."
It was shortly after this Torchwood got the call about a dance hall. I was getting ready for a trip to London to attend a family occasion when the call came in.
"C'mon, Tosh," said Jack, throwing on his coat and grabbing me, "looks like we're needed."
We took the Torchwood SUV to the address we'd been given, a grand, boarded up old building in what had once been a better part of town. I was just finishing a phone call in Japanese when we screeched to a halt outside it. As we climbed out of the car Jack commented on how smartly dressed I was.
"It's my grandfather's eighty eighth birthday today," I explained.
"And I thought you'd gone to all this trouble for me."
"Eighty eight is a joyous year for the Japanese. I'm off to London to watch grown men throw rice." "You can get that in the Balti after stop tap. Okay, down to business. What have we got?"
"The Ritz dance hall," I said as we entered the foyer. It's been derelict since 1989 but someone's complained about hearing music drifting out. Music from the 1940s."
"Shush. Listen." And there it was.
"You coming up?"
I nodded and we climbed the stairs to the dance floor level. It wasn't actually that big an area, nestled as it was between two staircases. There was dust and bric-a-brac everywhere.
"Wow. Look at the chandelier," said Jack. "No neon lights back then. Just dashing young soldiers and pretty young ladies. And as they danced, the girls would look into their partners' eyes, smile softly and say..."
He grabbed me and twirled me around.
"Jack, mind my laptop!"
"I was thinking more along the lines of, 'and how long before you head off to war'?"
We passed a lot of graffiti and went down another set of stairs.
"Come on," said Jack. "There's nothing here but memories and dust."
Then we heard laughter and swing music, so we went back up. Now the place was filled with young men in uniform, pretty girls, and a live band.
"They look so real," I commented as Jack checked his wrist band.
"They're not ghosts!" he said, delighted. "It's a simple temporal shift. Ha ha! And it's beautiful!"
"We should get out," I said, anything but delighted.
We did, but outside in the street everything had changed. Union Jack bunting was strung across the road, I could hear a steam train whistle in the distance, and the fresh new poster outside the Ritz read: '1941 Kiss The Boys Goodbye Dance, Saturday 20th January 1941 7.30pm'.
"It's night. Where's the SUV? Has it been stolen?" I asked, already knowing the answer, but in denial.
"No. We have," said Jack.
We were stranded in 1941.
- 9 -
I climbed the stairs from the cellar holding my bloody palm. I'd gashed it with the jagged edge of a tin can in order to write down the rest of the equations needed to open the Rift, dried blood having a better chance of surviving until 2006 than pencil has. Now we just have to hope our team mates up there will find them and can use them to open the Rift and bring us home.
Emerging from the cellar, I made my way to the dance hall bar - and my jaw dropped. There she was, sitting side on to me at the bar, my Mary, nursing a Scotch and smoking a cigarette. She looked magnificent in her calf-length red dress, short-heeled black shoes, and silk stockings with seams up the back. Her hair was styled in the elaborate 'Victory roll' that was fashionable at the time, her lipstick and nail polish ruby red. As I arrived she turned, our eyes met across that crowded room, and it was electric. She smiled, took a last, long drag on her cigarette before stubbing it out, threw back her Scotch, picked up her clutch purse, and made a beeline for me.
"That's Mary Milenski, the private investigator," I heard one woman whisper to another before she reached me.
"Have we met?" Mary asked me, puzzled. "No, we can't have. I'd have remembered meeting someone as pretty as you, and yet you do seem awfully familiar."
"We will meet," I said, "many years from now."
She frowned.
"Time-travel?"
I nodded.
"Torchwood?"
I nodded again. Then she spotted my hand.
"You're bleeding!" she said. "Here, let me do something about that."
She took a clean white handkerchief from her purse and wrapped it around my wounded hand.
"Did someone do this to you?"
"Self-inflicted, I'm afraid."
I then explained why.
"My, you are in a pretty pickle," she said. "I hope your friends get your message and can open the Rift. So, are we close where you're from?"
"Very," I replied, my mouth dry. "L'Quallha."
Her eyebrows rose at that, and her smile broke into a grin.
"That would explain why I have this overwhelming urge to take you in my arms and kiss you. There's a small room where we can have some privacy," she said, taking my elbow and guiding me down the short hallway leading to it. No sooner were we inside than we were all over each other and kissing passionately. For ten wonderful minutes no one else and nothing else mattered, then I had to gently push Mary away.
"I have to get back to Jack," I said. "He'll be wondering where I've got to."
"If he's the one I think he is he currently seems besotted by a certain handsome young airman. He probably hasn't even noticed you're missing yet."
We kissed again.
"So then, goodbye Toshiko Sato...," said Mary, gently stroking my cheek, "until we meet again."