In the Blood (10 page)

If I’d been hoping for some sudden revelation I was due to be disappointed. Gloucester just said, ‘Sister Doris? I don’t remember her.’

‘Was she the ancient one who did yoga and circular breathing?’ asked Perdita.

‘That was Sister Rosemary,’ said Gloucester.

‘Doris was only fourteen when she left Nearer To Heaven,’ I said. ‘They thought that she came here for a while.’

Gloucester’s face cleared. ‘Oh,
Doris
. Now I remember her.’

‘Yes,’ said Perdita darkly. ‘You would.’

‘It was only for two weeks, Per,’ said Gloucester easily.

‘Three,’ said Perdita.

‘And anyway, it was years ago. She went off with that dark-haired chap, you know, the one with the ponytail who wouldn’t do any work.’

‘Neither would dear little Doris,’ said Perdita tartly.

‘Oh, Per, she wasn’t that bad. Anyway, she deserved a holiday after those ghouls up the coast. She’d had a horrible life up there.’

‘Ghouls?’ asked Neil.

‘Yes, ghouls. Always trying to get their hands on anyone with a bit of life left in them.’

‘What, to satisfy their desperate lusts?’ said Neil lightly.

‘Well, that too I suppose,’ said Perdita. ‘Just toss that cat off if she’s annoying you.’

‘
Definitely
Brother Perry,’ said Gloucester. ‘But I really meant, to work for them. That lot doesn’t like to raise a sweat. Devotees!’ he snorted. ‘The only way they get devotees is to pay them, and even then they don’t stay long. The devotees do all the work up there,’ he explained.

‘How do they get the credit to pay them?’ I asked.

‘
Cannabis magnifica microflora
,’ said Perdita with a grin. ‘It’s an engineered strain of marijuana that was outlawed in the City about a hundred years ago. I think old sister thingummie brought the seeds with her when she founded the place. The devotees grow it for them and dry it and then the initiates sell the leaves. Never the seeds, in case someone else tries to grow it.’

I wondered if Doris’s parents had been trying some of it when they’d been washed out to sea. ‘Do you trade for it too?’

Gloucester nodded. ‘Not for ourselves. Well, not much anyway,’ he added, in response to a glance from Perdita. ‘Spot, I said off the table! We trade it on to the City.’

‘I thought it was banned in the City?’

‘Sure. We hide it in the corn. No one does that tough a check on stuff that’s imported anyway.’

Perdita grinned. ‘And even if they found it, so what? There’s nothing they can do to us.’

I wondered if I should tell them exactly what the City might do, from Proclaiming them Outlawed so that no medical equipment, seeds or other technology ever reached them, to a limited but deadly flu-type virus that would remain infectious for a maximum of three days—time enough to wipe out a community, but not enough time to spread.

But I said nothing. Besides, they were right. A small amount of
Cannabis magnifica microflora
probably wasn’t worth any retaliation at all.

Perdita hauled out a bag of potatoes and put them on the table for Gloucester to peel. ‘It’s our turn to cook tonight,’ she explained. ‘Then kid duty. The others will be in later.’

‘Can I help?’ asked Neil.

Perdita shook her head. ‘Just sit and talk,’ she said. ‘What did you want to tell Heaven about Doris anyway?’

‘That she died,’ I said slowly.

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Perdita’s words were automatic. Gloucester didn’t even pause in his potato peeling. Evidently the memory of Doris was too faint for any real feelings of regret. ‘How did she die?’

I glanced at Neil. I didn’t want to bring the memory of blood and violence and terror into the messy happy kitchen. But on the other hand it was just possible that they might know something that would help.

‘She was attacked,’ I said slowly. ‘Whoever—whatever—it was tore her throat and her wrist. She said he drank her blood.’

I looked up. They were staring at me, the potato peeling forgotten. ‘You’re not serious?’ said Perdita shakily.

‘Yes,’ said Neil. ‘I’m afraid we are.’

‘But it’s…it’s like a vampire sort of thing!’

I nodded.

‘Fresh blood, that’s what I want,’ said Gloucester softly.

‘What?’ I asked.

Gloucester seemed to wake up. ‘It’s what she said when she left.’ He blushed. ‘She said, “I’m sick of little kids’ games. Fresh blood, that’s what I want.”’

‘What did she mean?’ asked Neil.

‘I don’t know,’ said Gloucester slowly. ‘I thought…I thought she just meant we were…well, too tame for her. She wanted some excitement. She said she’d been cooped up all her life and now she wanted fun, not weeding the cabbages and picking strawberries.’ He glanced at Perdita. ‘I was hurt at the time,’ he admitted.

Perdita smiled at him. ‘Stupid,’ she said affectionately, then shrugged. ‘I think that bloke promised to take her some place. Some place exciting, but she wouldn’t tell me where. Just looked superior. Little Doris was good at that.’

‘She was pretty, that’s all,’ said Gloucester.

‘Pretty unbearable. I wish I could remember his name. They left together.’

‘You don’t know where he came from? Or where they were going?’

Perdita and Gloucester shook their heads. ‘One of the others might know,’ Gloucester suggested. He looked troubled for a moment. ‘You don’t think that chap was a…a vampire or something do you?’

I shook my head. ‘That was what? Four years ago? Five? If he was going to do something like that to her, he’d have done it long ago.’

Neil looked at me strangely. ‘He might just have…restrained himself.’

‘A restrained vampire?’ Perdita shoved the potato peelings under the sink, then handed Gloucester the grater. ‘You grate the spuds, I’ll peel the onions,’ she said. ‘I want to make potato cakes.’

N
o one else remembered anything worthwhile about Doris.

‘She had red hair, didn’t she?’ said Ophelia vaguely, pouring plum sauce on her potato cakes.

‘Fair hair,’ corrected Hippolyta, but without much interest.

It seemed that only two in the whole community had even been temporarily marked by her presence: Gloucester, by what I assumed was a short affair, and Perdita, who resented it and then forgot it, except as a joke for later years.

Poor forgotten Doris. No regret so far for a life cut short, for the loss of whomever, whatever she was. Except for my regret, of course, and Neil’s, and Elaine’s and Theo’s, too—but ours was abstract and resulted more from the horror of her death than any real feelings for her. How could we regret the loss of someone we’d never known?

Dinner was a happy messy affair of hot potato cakes and leftover cold spaghetti. The leftover salad was thrown to the hens while Gloucester made a new one, slightly gritty.

The children spilled food and yelled questions into the conversation, but were otherwise surprisingly well mannered. The adults talked to Neil about apple trees, milk production and Utopias they knew in common; it seemed that most of the members of Black Stump had
also wandered from Utopia to Utopia in their early years, before deciding to come home.

They did make some attempt to talk to me, but once they had established that I knew nothing about mastitis and that the only places I knew were Nearer To Heaven and Faith Hope and Charity (I had no intention of letting them know of my life in the City, and certainly not about the Proclamation) they mostly left me alone, apart from offers of more food.

‘…and considerable resistance to codlin moth.’ Neil concluded a short dissertation on his last three years of experiments. One of the older Black Stump members (Yorick, I think his name was…no, it couldn’t possibly have been Yorick) nodded.

‘We mostly juice the later apples,’ he said. ‘It’s easier than spraying.’

‘Yes, but that way you’re perpetuating the problem,’ said Neil eagerly.

‘Not if it’s not a problem,’ said Couldn’t Possibly Be Yorick. ‘The trouble with you youngsters is…’

I nudged Neil. ‘We’d better be getting back,’ I said.

There was no hope of getting back to Faith Hope and Charity before dark—the stars were now bright through the window. (It was still hard to get used to the views out the window matching each other. In the City one window might look out on a beach, another on Moon Base 3. But if we left now we’d at least be back by midnight.

Neil looked disappointed. Not Possibly Yorick said, ‘Why bother? There are plenty of beds.’

Neil raised his eyebrows at me.

I nodded. To be honest I was glad of the excuse not to go back to my too-quiet house, with the dark stains still
on the sofa and the smell of blood that no amount of scrubbing seemed to remove—an image that made me grin faintly, for a reason I couldn’t possibly explain to the rest of the company. At least there was no Lady Macbeth!

It was late when we finally got to bed. The children had been settled long ago, and a bottle of home-distilled blackberry brandy had been brought out, tasting like sweet cough mixture and with enough fire to burn your toes.

We sat round the table and I let the talk flow around me, until the lights began to flicker and Perdita said, ‘Blast, Hippolyta, you forgot to check the regulator again,’ but without any particular heat, and the party began to break up, Gloucester and Perdita to the children’s room, and the others to smaller cottages among the trees towards the creek.

Not Possibly Yorick escorted us past the chook shed and opened a door in the back of the main shed. ‘Sorry about the accommodation,’ he said. ‘We had a guest cottage until last year, when Romeo and Juliet moved in.’

‘You didn’t really call some poor child Romeo,’ I said, slightly fuzzily.

Not Possibly Yorick grinned. ‘No, of course not. We renamed him when he and Juliet decided they were in love. Sickeningly romantic.’

‘Good,’ I said.

‘No, his real name is Caliban. And Juliet is really Julius. It seemed to fit. See you in the morning. Breakfast is any time you’re ready.’ And he was gone.

I looked around the shed. Then I looked at Neil.

‘It’s not that bad,’ he said encouragingly.

Actually it wasn’t too bad at all. A small room had been partitioned off from the main shed and if the timber
was rough and unpainted it would still keep out the draughts. The floor was plasticrete, but mostly covered by the same sort of matting that was in the hallway of the main house. And the bed looked as though the sheets had been changed recently, although it would still be wise to check the blankets for spiders.

The bed…

One bed, even if it was a double.

‘I guess they assumed we were together,’ said Neil. He didn’t seem very upset about it. He began to unbutton his shirt.

‘Neil,’ I said.

‘Mmmm?’ He looked at me, then blinked. He’d had a fair bit of the blackberry brandy too. ‘We can put a bolster down the middle if you like,’ he offered.

‘We don’t have a bolster.’

‘Don’t we?’ he asked vaguely. ‘I don’t even know what a bolster is.’

I could have told him, but didn’t bother. I didn’t think he really wanted to know. Neil arranged his shirt over the back of a chair.

‘Neil,’ I said again.

‘What?’ He untied his trousers and stepped out of them. He wore thermoshorts underneath. Blue ones. ‘It’s no big deal, you know,’ he said gently. ‘I don’t suppose they have another spare bed anyway. They don’t get many visitors, and Wanderers mostly carry bedrolls.’

‘I know. It’s just…’

‘Don’t think about it,’ said Neil, slipping into the left side of the bed without checking for spiders and settling himself comfortably on the pillows.

I considered him for a moment. Then I switched off the light (a steady glow—it must have been powered
from a different source than the house lights), undid my dress and hung it as neatly as I could in the darkness of the chair. Then I slid into bed beside him.

I tried to be still. But it’s hard to cry without shaking and the more I tried the harder the sobs came.

There was a rustle beside me in the bed.

‘Danielle?’

I didn’t answer.

‘Danielle? Oh, darling one, don’t cry. What are you crying about?’

He put his arm around me so I was gathered in to his shoulder, the rest of his body arched slightly away. His armpit smelt slightly of sweat and slightly of the homemade greasy soap in Black Stump’s bathroom, and he felt wonderfully warm and solid.

‘Are you crying about Doris? We’ll find who did it. I’m sure we will.’

I shook my head against his shoulder.

His voice grew slightly harder. ‘About Michael then?’

‘About who? Oh, Michael. No.’ Michael seemed another world away. I hadn’t even thought of him since we’d arrived at Nearer To Heaven, half a lifetime ago.

I felt his shoulder relax a little. ‘Why are you crying then?’

I shook my head. I was crying because I was lonely, because the Black Stump laughter had reminded me of the Forest and all that I’d lost. I was crying because Neil thought it was no big deal to share a bed with me.

I felt his hand stroke my back. ‘Go to sleep,’ he said. ‘I’m here if you need me.’

To my surprise, eventually I did.

B
reakfast was subdued. There was only one adult in the kitchen when I arrived, Ophelia, an older woman with deep wrinkles from either sun or laughter (or maybe both), who I’d hardly spoken to the night before. She offered me cornbread and mulberry jam, cold cobs of corn or corn muffins, and any sort of tea as long as I picked it myself. She also offered me a Painbegone.

‘Bloody blackberry brandy,’ she said, swallowing two herself. ‘I swear, one day we’re all going to wake up blind. Or dead, instead of just wishing we were.’

‘Where are the kids?’

‘Down the creek. Gloucester’s taken them all, sweet man that he is. He had kid duty last night too, and your man went with them, what’s his name?’

‘Neil,’ I said. He’d vanished by the time I woke up, for which I’d been grateful. Possibly. Definitely. Almost certainly.

‘He’s pretty sweet as well,’ she said. ‘He took the kids for a floater ride to shut them up before breakfast, in spite of the effects of the brandy. God, I’d kill for a cup of coffee. But there won’t be any till the autumn trade.’

‘I think there’s some in the floater,’ I said. ‘In fact I’m sure of it. You’re welcome to it. I don’t know how you could get it out of the dispenser though.’

‘I have my trusty screwdriver,’ she said, brightening, and galloped out.

I helped myself to a gritty muffin and quite excellent mulberry jam, and settled for a glass of cordial instead of trusting my Virtual-gained knowledge of herbs in the garden. Then I sat and wondered exactly I was going to do next.

I was still wondering when Neil came in, happily unencumbered with children. I’d quite enjoyed them the night before, but this was morning and my head ached and it’s hard to concentrate with children around.

‘Morning,’ said Neil. He looked around hopefully. ‘Any chance of a cup of something?’

‘Herbal tea if you pick it yourself, cordial on the bench, or coffee if Ophelia managed to take the floater apart to get to it.’

‘Is that what she’s doing? I wondered what the banging was.’

‘Aren’t you worried she’ll damage it?’

‘No,’ said Neil, pulling up a chair beside me. ‘It’s leased in your friend’s name. Michael whatsit. Any damage’ll come out of his bond.’

‘Oh,’ I said, wondering if I should feel guilty. ‘I suppose he just assumed I’d send it back on automatic. I wonder when he’ll realise.’

‘When he gets the bill,’ said Neil. ‘Are the muffins any good?’

‘Probably excellent for the digestion,’ I told him.

‘That bad?’

‘No, not really. Just slather them with jam. Neil, I’ve been thinking…’

‘Mmmm? Theo always said that when he decided to increase my chores when I was a kid. “You know, Neil,
I’ve been thinking it’s time you had more responsibility around here,”’ he mimicked. The imitation was surprisingly good.

I smiled in spite of myself. ‘I’ve realised I need your help,’ I said.

‘Well, thank goodness for that,’ said Neil.

‘Why?’

‘I thought you were going to say: I’ve been thinking that you are no help whatsoever in this investigation, so I’m taking the floater and you can walk home. Something like that anyway.’

‘Neil, really. Be serious.’

‘I was. Sort of, anyway.’ He met my eyes.

‘I…I need access to some data,’ I said hurriedly. ‘I can’t get it myself any more.’

‘So you need me.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Ah, my daughter or my data!’

‘What?’

‘A parody on
Merchant of Venice
,’ explained Neil. ‘Theo loves that play. Not a very good parody I admit. This place is getting to me. How did the whole Shakespeare thing begin anyway?’

‘No one can remember,’ I said. ‘I asked Ophelia this morning. Look, what I need is to find out if there are any Outlander clinics.’

‘You don’t mean rip, tear and repair type clinics, do you?’ said Neil slowly.

I shook my head. ‘No. Ones that are capable of at least basic manipulation.’

Neil raised an eyebrow. ‘I don’t think you’ll find that in the databanks,’ he said. ‘Those things are usually word
of mouth. The City tends to be pretty unfriendly to Outlander clinics, even innocent ones. They like to keep the expertise to themselves.’

‘I know we can’t just scroll it up. But there are ways. It means accessing more data than just doing a subject or name search. It’s the sort of stuff I used to specialise in.’

He looked at me expressionlessly. ‘Go on,’ he said.

‘Well, you can’t do what I used to do, of course. You don’t have the speed. But I can show you how to do a basic browse. That’s if you’ll do it.’

‘I’ll do it,’ said Neil.

‘It won’t be easy,’ I warned. ‘It never is the first time.’

‘I said I’ll do it,’ said Neil shortly. He met my eyes. ‘Look, I know this is frustrating for you. Having to make do with me must be like…like being the only eight tentacled octopus in a world of one armers. But…’

‘Neil, no, I don’t think that at all. It’s just…’

‘Got it!’ cried Ophelia triumphantly, holding a beaker of ground coffee aloft. ‘And it’s double distilled, extra strength, Realcoffee extract too. Now, as long as Juliet doesn’t decide to make one of his coffee cakes…Hope you don’t mind, I had to take the dispenser apart. But I’m sure they’ll be able to fit it back together in no time back in the City.’

‘No problem at all,’ said Neil.

‘I could ask Hippolyta to have a go,’ Ophelia offered dubiously. ‘She does all our electrical stuff. She’s not desperately good at it though. It’s that weed from Nearer To Heaven. She says it helps her concentrate. I reckon it burns out brain cells.’

She stuck a mug of water into the antique microwave, pressed the controls, then gave it a swift bang when
nothing happened. The mechanism whirred slowly into life. ‘Hey, I forgot…would you like a cup too?’

‘No, thanks,’ said Neil. ‘You keep it all.’

‘There’s tea left in the floater if you’d rather that,’ said Ophelia. ‘It wouldn’t be any trouble at all to get it now that the front’s off the dispenser.’

The microwave pinged. Ophelia opened the door, grabbed the coffee and sipped ecstatically. ‘Oh, that’s good,’ she said, her eyes closed in bliss. ‘That’s really good.’

She opened her eyes again. ‘What do you two plan to do now?’ she asked. ‘Not that you’re not welcome to stay here, of course.’

‘I think we need to analyse some data,’ I said. ‘And then we’ll see.’