In the Blood (16 page)

I
t was dark. It was totally dark. Yet Neil must be seeing something, something that was being picked up on the Linkages that I was shielded from. I could hear his footsteps in front of me, going further and further away.

‘Neil!’ I called urgently. ‘Neil!’

‘Danielle? What…’

‘Please, Neil. Come back. Don’t go any further!’

‘But…’ And then he screamed.

It didn’t sound like Neil at all. It sounded like Doris, all those nights before. It sounded like something hunted, terrified, in pain.

‘Neil!’ I yelled again and stumbled forwards in the darkness.

‘No…no…oh, God! No! For God’s sake, Danny, get out of here! Run!’

The heart-wrenching scream came again.

‘Neil…’

‘She’s sucking my blood! Can’t you hear her? Danny, just get out…’ His voice became a moan.

I finally found him, writhing on the floor. I grabbed his arm and tried to hold him still. ‘Neil, there’s no one here!’

‘There is…she’s got my throat, my wrist’

I felt around his body, up his arms, his neck, his head. ‘Neil, I’m the only one here! Can you hear me? Neil, can you feel my hands?’

No answer. His skin was cold and damp to touch, his
pulse very fast. I felt his wrist again and felt the stickiness of blood.

It was like Doris all over again, but this time the darkness was total, this time it was Neil sobbing under my hands. And this time there was no one there at all.

I had to stop it! There had to be someone watching, someone orchestrating this. But how to find them in the darkness? Even if I crawled the entire circumference of the room, they might be watching via remote.

‘Neil.’ He was quiet now, his breath a rapid hiccup, even more terrifying than his former sobs. ‘Neil, listen to me. Please!’

No response. Whatever signal dominated him was probably so strong there was little I could do to break into it. I spread myself as much across his body as I could, then screamed into the darkness. ‘Stop it! You’re killing him! You understand?’

No answer.

‘Look, if this is a game, you’ve gone too far. And if this isn’t a game…’ I hesitated, then went on. ‘We’ve left instructions. If anything happens to us, I guarantee you’ll have the City down on you by tomorrow morning.’

Still no answer. I was just gathering my voice to scream into the blackness again when the lights went on, a too white flash that left me temporarily blinded. I shut my eyes then opened them slowly.

We were in a small room, as I’d expected, blank walled, blank floored, blank ceilinged. Presumably both door and walls had been hologram, the rest transmitted illusion to Neil alone. The door behind me must lead to the hall—or supposed hall—where we’d entered.

I rolled off Neil and sat up. He wasn’t unconscious, as I’d feared, but his eyes were staring, unseeing, and his
breathing was still shallow. I lifted his wrist and examined it.

There was a small nick, a few centimetres long at most. On his other hand a bloody fingernail showed how he had torn it. No vampire. Just illusion and feedback terror.

There was no sign of window or camera, but I was sure we were observed. I spoke to the wall in front of me for want of any other direction. ‘He’s in shock. I need blankets and something hot and sweet.’

There was a giggle above me. It sounded like a child’s, high and excited. ‘Hot and sweet? Well, sweetie, you can try me if you like.’

I felt my throat almost close with rage. ‘I am not joking! He needs help!’

‘Well, sweetie, I can give you blankets. But if it’s hot sweet tea you want, I just hope you’ve brought your own.’

‘You must have some hot drink!’

‘No, I haven’t.’ The voice sounded petulant now. ‘I don’t have anything like that. And it’s no use yelling at me. You’ll just make me angry. I really am not nice when I’m angry.’

I lugged Neil’s head and shoulders onto my lap and tried to warm him as best I could. ‘You call this being nice?’

‘Sweetie, I was just playing. You know how it is. There you were all scared at the door talking about vampires, so I thought, well, that’s what I’ll give them.’ The giggle came again. ‘So I did.’

‘Feedback loop?’

‘You know feedbacks?’ The childlike voice sounded surprised now.

‘I work with them. Used to work with them.’

‘Oooh, I am impressed. I don’t suppose you brought one of your designs with you? No? What a pity. I would so like something new. Yes, that poor boy was just seeing whatever he expected to see, with a little
little
bit of extra help from me.’ The voice sounded faintly…not apologetic, but perhaps slightly surprised. ‘I really didn’t expect the feedback to be quite so strong.’

‘He was remembering something he’d seen quite recently. Something we’d both seen.’

‘But it didn’t affect you?’ The high young voice was genuinely curious now.

I saw no reason to give details. ‘No.’

‘How interesting. You must tell me…’

‘Dan?’ Neil’s eyes shut for a moment, then opened again. For the first time he seemed to see me. ‘Dan? What happened? I…’

‘Shhh. You got caught in a feedback illusion. It seems we have a friend watching us.’

‘What?’ He tried to sit up. ‘I thought, I thought someone was sucking my blood.’ He caught sight of the blood on his wrist and began to shudder again.

‘Neil, it’s all right. It’s just a small cut. You did it yourself. I told you, none of it ever happened.’

‘It happened,’ said Neil.

‘It just happened inside your head, and your body reacted to it. For pete’s sake, don’t try to stand up yet. Here, lean on me for a bit.’

The high-pitched giggle sounded again above us. ‘I do so apologise,’ said the voice. ‘It seems my little game got quite out of hand. Would you like me to give you a
nice
game now?’

‘No,’ said Neil.

‘But I promise you this time you’ll love it!’ said the voice disarmingly. ‘A romantic desert island with waterfall, just for the two of you? How would you like that?’

‘Falk Kennedy design I suppose, with volcanic eruption eight point three minutes into the field?’ I asked.

The voice tittered. ‘No, no, sweetie, nothing like that. No nasty things at all, I promise you. Not even a virgin sacrifice. It’s so
hard
to get good virgins nowadays.’ It sounded like the joke had been made many times before.

‘You try anything like that, and I’ll rip your intestines out and wrap them round your throat. Neil, do you think you can stand up? Let’s get out of here.’

Neil nodded. I draped his arm round my shoulders and helped him up.

‘Don’t go,’ said the voice.

I ignored it.

‘Please.’ The voice sounded almost genuine now. ‘We could have such a nice little visit.’

‘You can take your visit and stuff it up—’ I stopped. There was a sound outside the door. A real sound, an almost puttering noise. Suddenly a dikdik appeared around the corner—a two-seater, a soft-fabric covered model much like the ones used in the City corridors, although this one looked chunkier and more old-fashioned than those in City use now.

‘Just a little visit,’ cajoled the voice. ‘Uncle Bertie sees so few people now.’

‘Why don’t you come to us?’ I asked.

‘I can’t,’ said the voice, it had a ring of truth now. ‘I would if I could.’

I glanced at Neil. His face was still white but his
breathing had recovered. I suspected that he wasn’t far from full recovery and then embarrassment. ‘Will we try it?’

‘May as well,’ said Neil, too lightly. ‘I suspect we’ve had the worst already.’

‘There’s a sensible boy,’ said the voice approvingly. ‘Come on now, sweeties, hop up and come to Uncle Bertie.’

I let Neil get on first, so he could hold the handlebars, then climbed on behind him and wrapped my arms around his waist. The dikdik rose slightly off the ground and began to puttputt back across the room and out into what had been the main hall.

It was now, as I suspected it had been, simply a long narrow cylinder, with the same blank features as the room we had just been in. We puttputted along it. A door at the far end opened automatically and took us into another room, as featureless as the first.

‘None of this place was designed to be RealLife,’ I muttered to Neil. ‘It’s always been fake, the whole lot of it.’

‘What’s real?’ said the voice airily. It seemed to have followed us. ‘The world of our imagination or the world our imagination creates?’

Another doorway, and then a set of stairs that I supposed could be manipulated into a range of 3D designs. The dikdik puttputted up them, our feet almost touching the ground.

He was in a room at the top of the stairs. If it had had a window, it would have looked out over the river and the trees. But there was no window. Just the same bare walls, with a small table and an armchair. The child was tethered to the armchair by tubes that ran into his wrist
and under his clothes to his protruding belly. A bag of clear liquid hung on a harness by his side.

‘Hello,’ said the child, and then he giggled and I saw that he was not a child at all.

‘Who are you?’ I demanded.

The child—or not-child—gave a familiar giggle. ‘I’m Uncle Bertie!’ he said. ‘I told you I was.’

It was a child’s face, round chinned and snub nosed and even lightly freckled, with the too wide eyes that you always program into an appealing child design. A child’s body too, chubby wristed under a child’s teddy bear patterned shirt and plump-legged in short pants. But they weren’t a child’s eyes, and the mouth at rest settled into lines that no child would ever have.

‘Good afternoon, Uncle Bertie,’ I said grimly, sliding off the dikdik. Neil stayed seated. He looked at Uncle Bertie, but said nothing.

‘Oh, you mustn’t sulk,’ said Uncle Bertie beguilingly. ‘Was I a naughty boy then? I didn’t mean to be. Truly ruly. How was I to know your feedback would be as strong as that?’

‘You could have stopped it as soon as it got serious,’ I said.

‘But it was so interesting!’ Uncle Bertie smiled charmingly. ‘Uncle Bertie has been so bored. I just wanted to see what would happen, that was all.’

‘Well, you did,’ said Neil.

‘I’m a naughty, naughty boy,’ said Uncle Bertie, smacking one fat hand against the other, so that his tubing snaked and wriggled. He gestured at it apologetically. ‘You see why I can’t offer you any tea? Now if I’d known you were coming…’

‘You’d have baked a cake,’ I said.

Uncle Bertie blinked at me.

‘Old twentieth-century saying,’ I added.

‘Yes. Well,’ said Uncle Bertie. ‘Now sit yourselves down and tell me all about yourselves.’

‘Sit on what?’ asked Neil, looking around the bare room.

Uncle Bertie’s fingers fumbled at a half-hidden switch on his chair. ‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ I said. ‘No more illusions.’

‘But this would be a nice one!’ protested Uncle Bertie. ‘Just some furniture to make you comfortable…but then it wouldn’t work with you, would it?’

‘Only holo,’ I agreed. ‘And you can’t pretend to sit on holo.’

‘Now do tell me why,’ cajoled Uncle Bertie.

‘No,’ I said

Uncle Bertie pouted. The plump fingers moved, he shut his eyes briefly and suddenly the room stretched upwards to a pale blue sky, balloon-like and arching, while around us was hard red desert sand. I assumed that Neil could smell the subliminals of dry air and lizards, feel the heat on his skin that I missed.

‘Anabelle Scott,’ I said. ‘Early this century.’

‘You clever girl,’ exclaimed Uncle Bertie as admiringly as a child watching a juggler at a birthday party. ‘Now tell me why you’ve come to Uncle Bertie. It’s not for one of my parties, is it?’

I shook my head.

Uncle Bertie sighed. ‘It has been years since anyone came to my parties. You can’t have a party by yourself. It isn’t the same.’

‘You’re the only person here?’ asked Neil.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Uncle Bertie sadly. ‘Unless you count Banana.’

‘Banana?’ I asked.

‘His real name is Fig and Banana,’ said Uncle Bertie. ‘But that’s such a mouthful isn’t it?’ He blinked, and his lips moved soundlessly, then he opened his eyes again and stared straight at me. His eyes were blue and very wide; the whites were streaked with yellow, like old pale linen that had been too long in the sun. ‘Banana’s coming now.’ Uncle Bertie giggled, just as someone entered the room.

He was short, black haired, black eyed. His too white cheek was scarred and his shoulder hunched under the robe. ‘Yeees, Maaarster?’ he muttered.

‘Stop it,’ I said. ‘We’ve had enough!’

Uncle Bertie’s lower lip protruded. ‘It’s only Igor,’ he said. ‘Don’t you want an Igor? You said you did when you first came in.’

‘No,’ said Neil. I could feel him trembling against me.

‘Spoilsports,’ said Uncle Bertie. He blinked again and Igor was gone.

In his place was a ModPlod, tall and blank faced as ModPlods always are. But this one was naked, his shoulders muscled but with a hint of softening, almost breastlike, and…

‘Oh, my God,’ muttered Neil.

Uncle Bertie smiled charmingly. ‘Isn’t he cute? Fig and banana.’

‘A hermaphrodite ModPlod,’ I said. ‘My God. who did it?’

Uncle Bertie ignored me. ‘He can even prod himself if I turn him on,’ he said. ‘Just a little pulse to the pleasure centres and off he goes. Would you like to watch?’

The ModPlod gave a start in front of us. It was impossible not to watch as the penis shivered, then began
to lengthen. The nipples on the almost-breasts began to rise.

Neil’s arm came round me. I hadn’t realised I was shivering. ‘Send him away,’ I said.

‘No,’ said Uncle Bertie petulantly.

‘If you don’t, we’ll go,’ said Neil. ‘And leave you all alone.’

Uncle Bertie pursed his lips. This time I didn’t see him blink, but he must have pulsed nonetheless. The ModPlod turned, still with his absurdly large erection, and shuffled from the room.

‘There!’ said Uncle Bertie. ‘Now you have to do something for me!’

‘Like what?’ demanded Neil.

‘A little game,’ said Uncle Bertie, his too blue eyes shining. ‘You just have to promise to play along.’

I glanced at Neil. He gave a slight nod. ‘We’ll play your game,’ I said. ‘As long as you answer some questions first.’