Bilis Manger smiled, and pointed to the tea. ‘A companion? To discuss life, the universe and the imminent destruction of this planet. Thanks to you.’
Bilis threw Idris Hopper’s envelope across to him.
‘One of your lesser minions delivered this to you last night. I intercepted it, but it’s all nonsense.’
Jack tore open the envelope. It was a sheaf of papers, marked, ‘TRANSLATION OF JACK’S (or whoever’s) DIARY’. Typed beneath that, Jack read, ‘Done extremely under protest by Idris Hopper who, God forbid he might actually have a life of his own, is actually bored by this. Oh, and Jack, you owe me £12.62 for lemon juice.’
Jack smiled and sifted through the translation. But it was just a series of notes about Victorian Cardiff, circa 1871.
‘There’s a note,’ Bilis waved towards the envelope as he poured tea. ‘Nice boy, by the way. One of your conquests? Looked the type. Thin. Breakable. Desperate for love and attention. Needing a father figure.’ He passed the tea to Jack. ‘Bit like your Ianto Jones, really.’
Jack ignored Bilis and shoved his hand into the envelope, tugging out the sticky Post-It that had got caught on the inside: ‘Jack, mae’r boi’n siarad trwy’i din ac mae popeth fi’n ysgrifennu yma’n rwtsh llwyr. Mae’r dyddiadur dal gen i.’
Jack pulled a face. His Welsh was rusty. ‘Can you translate this? You know, being a man of the world?’
Bilis shrugged. ‘As I told the lovely Mr Hopper last night, languages are not my speciality.’ But he frowned. ‘I assumed you’d be able to understand it though.’
Jack looked at the notes again, and then at Bilis. ‘I get the gist. Thank you. For, you know, passing this on.’
‘I don’t like you, Captain, and I’m fairly sure you don’t like me. But we are drawn together and, strange as it may seem, we are on the same side.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh yes, indeed.’ Bilis sipped his tea. ‘What do you know about consequences?’
‘Lots. You?’
Bilis smiled. ‘Yes. Many years ago, two demon beasts fought for control of the Rift. Pwccm versus Abaddon. You are, of course, familiar with the latter.’
Jack just sniffed at the tea.
Bilis laughed. ‘It’s not poisoned, Jack. Really, how dull do you think I am?’
‘What have you done with my team?’
‘Honestly? Nothing. I needed to put them in a transient state, so they could dream the future.’
Jack stood up. ‘I’m hearing words, Bilis. Sounds and nonsense. I’m not hearing explanations.’
Bilis sipped his tea again. ‘You have lived for a long time, Jack. And by my reckoning, you will for a long time yet. You may even outdo me, who knows. I can’t predict my own future, none of us can. But what I can do is see the possibilities. It’s my gift. Or curse – that depends on one’s point of view.’
‘And you needed them why?’
‘Because you are the future I’m concerned about Jack – and I can’t read you. There, I’ve said it. You are a barrier to me, as Tretarri was to you until I was ready to let you in. Which today I did.’
Jack pointed outside. ‘Why the party?’
‘There’s always a price to pay for freedom. I need to know how far you’ll go to protect these ridiculous people and their corrupt world.’
‘What is going on?’
‘Consequences. Abaddon had a task, a significant place in the structure of things.’
‘He destroyed lives.’
‘He did that no more consciously than you and I breathe the air. It’s what he did. He is… he was perfection. A purity so immaculate, so delicate because your evil was his good. He did what he did to survive. And, to protect.’ Bilis poured more tea. ‘What you fail to grasp, Jack Harkness, is the consequences of your actions. The people of this era, this time, they irradiate their crops with insecticides, because the tiny creatures they hate destroy their crops. When they destroy the insects, the things the insects feed on then live, flourish and grow stronger. With no natural predators, they mutate.’
Jack moved to pull the drapes open, to let some light in.
Bilis clicked his fingers, and suddenly Jack wasn’t facing the window, he was facing the opposite wall. Angrily he turned around again.
Bilis just smiled at him, a teacher addressing a slightly dim pupil. ‘You have to understand, everything in this house is mine to control, even you. You will listen to me because, out there, I can’t control anything, but in here we can talk. We are… protected.’
He pointed to the box on the table.
‘The essence of what I am here to protect. It was dying, spent and exhausted, trying to fight a battle it could no longer win because someone had taken away its insects. Or its demons, to use your vernacular, gauche as it is.’
Jack sat in the armchair and tried to open the box.
‘Jack?’
‘Greg?’
The apparition of Greg Bishop was facing him and, in the room, able to see it clearly, he realised the outline of his old friend and lover was constructed from tiny lights.
‘Natural halogens,’ Bilis said. ‘Back in 1941, I needed a vessel to keep them from dying, to give them something to focus upon, to construct a new existence around. Mr Bishop had the diary in his hands, he became their vessel.’ He clapped his hands. ‘Lemon juice! Of course, Mr Hopper has the diary, and you asked him to find out what it said. I never managed that, you see.’
Bilis reached for the papers Idris had given Jack, flicked through them, and angrily tossed them to the floor. He swung around to Jack, suddenly angry, light blazing literally in his eyes. ‘I need that diary, Jack. It contains the solution.’
‘It contains words, Bilis. That’s all. You had it when you gave it to Tilda Brennan.’
‘No, you fool. I never had it. The Torchwood Institute had it, they defiled a grave to acquire it, because they wanted to release what was in it. That’s why it took Greg Bishop here. I didn’t do that, Abaddon didn’t do that. Greg’s death is entirely on your conscience because none of this need have happened if you hadn’t destroyed Abaddon.’
‘I destroyed Abaddon this year. What happened to Greg was in 1941.’
‘Revenge for the future! It was a message. Contained in the ink the diary was written in. It is not in the words, it’s in the ink. I gave the diary to a trustworthy man who owned the area where the Lords fought for control of the Rift, where my Lord Abaddon faked defeat so he could prepare and gain strength. This place, Tretarri.’
Jack stood again. ‘So let me get this straight. A fight in the nineteenth century between two creatures for supremacy over the Rift. Abaddon was one of those. And he apparently lost. You gave some guy the secret to releasing Rift energies that foretold the future and, when Torchwood got in the way, you needed me to sort it out. By lying, deceiving and killing my friends, you got me here, today, in the hope that somehow I’d do what? Bring Abaddon back?’
Bilis shook his head. ‘Abaddon was the Devourer. His role in life, in eternity, was to destroy the Darkness. You stopped that.’
‘He killed hundreds.’
‘They were irrelevant!’ Bilis was almost shouting now. ‘Insignificant insects, food to keep him sated so he could achieve the apotheosis of his mission. To protect the Rift from the Dark.’
And Jack remembered the lights he’d seen in the Rift storm the previous night. Blobs of light and dark.
‘They live in the Rift, Jack. Beings of pure halogen, elements of intelligence, at war for millennia. Abaddon was protecting the Light from the invasion of the Dark. And you stopped it.’
Jack thought about this. ‘Where is the Light now, other than here creating images of Greg Bishop?’
Greg’s ghostly form turned to Jack. ‘I saw the future, Jack. I saw all those potential ifs, maybes and buts. The Dark will be released by your team in the future. Corrupting your people until they build an empire of Darkness over this world, so they can feed. I’m sorry, Jack, I couldn’t intervene, the Light is so weak. It needs hosts, otherwise it will die. And the Dark will live.’