In the Blood (6 page)

‘I see.’ Theo rubbed his palms together, not looking at me. At least he wasn’t incredulous now. At least he seemed to be taking me seriously. Finally he looked up. ‘So what now?’

‘I have to tell the City authorities. Not the police. The police aren’t trained to deal with something like this and, again, why should they bother? One death, one unimportant girl—they’d think, all right, let’s wait and see if it happens again before we get concerned.’

‘But you’re worried…’

‘I’m worried that if it is a side effect of a modification, this might just be the first. That there’ll be more victims like that poor child lying dead on my sofa.’

‘So what do you want me to do?’ He gave his gentle smile again. ‘You haven’t come here for advice.’

‘I…I want to use your Terminal.’

‘But…’

‘Yes, I know. I should have said I want you to do it for me. I want you to call someone up for me. A friend…he used to be a friend.’

‘One of the…’ he paused. ‘One of the Forest?’

‘How did you guess?’

‘It was simple. Only members of the Forest are your friends.’

‘He…he had the operation. I haven’t seen him since the Proclamation. He was special assistant to the mayor. I think he still must be. That was why he had the operation, he had so much to lose.’

‘Didn’t you all?’

‘I was an artist. It’s not the same.’

He accepted this. ‘So—I call up this friend of yours. How do I know he’ll talk to me?’

‘Mention my name. Say you have a message from me. Then put it on high amplification and he’ll hear my voice through your Link.’

Another hesitation. Then: ‘Very well,’ he said.

I
t wasn’t as hard as I’d thought to watch Theo Link. Not hard, but not easy either.

‘The name is Michael Forest,’ I said, and gave him the Link code. ‘Or maybe it’s Michael Doddens again now. It doesn’t matter. That’s his private code.’

‘What if he’s changed it?’

I shrugged. ‘Why should he? Apart from me, anyone who might embarrass him is dead.’

Theo nodded and shifted the control on the monitor. I could just hear the code as he pulsed it in, bat-like and far away.

Ten seconds, eleven, twelve…for a moment I thought Michael wasn’t going to answer, that the number was void or he’d switched to message mode. Then suddenly Theo blinked and a second later Michael’s image was on the screen.

I had thought he would look different. But of course it had been only two months since I’d seen him, Linked with him, made love with him. He looked the same as he always did at work. Also nonplussed, then irritated.

‘How did you get this code?’ he barked. Michael was never one for pleasantries.

‘I have a message for you,’ said Theo gently. ‘From Danielle.’

Michael’s eyes widened. ‘Danielle.’ The tone was impossible to read.

I moved in front of the monitor. ‘It’s me, Michael.’

‘Danielle, for freedom’s sake, what do you think you’re doing?’

There was no need to interpret the tone now. Anger, shock and growing fury.

‘Michael, I’m not calling on a whim. Believe me, I wouldn’t call you if this weren’t serious. Trust me. You always could trust me, remember? I need to speak to you.’

A hesitation. ‘Well, go on then.’

‘Not like this. Michael, I’ve discovered something. Something that might be very bad. I need to bring the evidence in with me.’

‘Come here? Danielle are you insane? If this is some kind of trick to get access to…’

The rejection stung. I glanced at Theo, ashamed that he’d seen a friend, someone who had been a friend, treat me like this.

‘It’s no trick, Michael. I promise you. I just need, let’s say, two hours. Ten minutes to explain it to you, two hours tops of lab time. Believe me, I wouldn’t bother you,’ the bitterness seeped into my voice here, ‘if it wasn’t urgent.’

His face looked more dubious now. ‘I’m not sure…’

‘Remember the water contamination scare two years ago? Finchel wouldn’t have been elected mayor if I hadn’t spotted the possibility, if I hadn’t given you the data.’

‘Are you telling me I owe you?’

‘No, I’m telling you to trust my judgment.’

‘You always were the best of us at correlations,’ he said slowly.

‘That’s because I never specialised,’ I said lightly. ‘Well, Michael?’

He bit his lip. ‘I’ll see what I can do. Give me your code,’ he said to Theo. ‘I’ll call you back.’ The screen went blank.

I discovered I was shaking. I sat back down on the sofa. Theo sat beside me. He hesitated, but didn’t touch me. ‘I’m sorry…’ he began.

I tried to smile. ‘You’re always comforting me.’

‘Not very successfully. He was a close friend, wasn’t he?’

‘Was it obvious? Yes, very close. All of us were close. But he was closer than most.’

Theo looked like he was trying to choose his words. ‘I was surprised when you came alone. I expected more of you. I would have thought that those who chose exile would have stayed together.’

I shook my head. ‘There was no one left to join me.’

His eyes widened. ‘You mean they all chose alteration?’

‘No. I mean they are all dead, or as good as dead. Brain wiped, except me, and Michael.’

‘I didn’t know,’ said Theo slowly. ‘They didn’t give details on the vid.’

‘No. They never do. Just that such and such modification has been Proclaimed, an interview or two, and then that’s all.’

‘What happened?’ asked Theo quietly.

‘There were twelve of us. Standard experimental test group. Three agreed to the mind slice with tissue replacement from unmodified clones. Michael was one of the three. The rest of us…’ I forced myself to speak calmly. ‘We refused to give a decision. We decided to fight the Proclamation. We would have won too, if it had got to the courts. We’re…people with our ability can be
persuasive. There’s no legal precedent a good Forest can’t dig up, no trick of persuasion we can’t access and, when we work together, it’s a million times as effective…’

I stopped and steadied my voice. ‘But it didn’t come to that. The day after the Proclamation they put a brain-wipe on the Net while we were having a conference on tactics. Three seconds of unpleasant electric tingle if you were a Tree. But if you were enhanced…’

‘Death?’ Theo said gently

‘If you were lucky. Brainless if you weren’t.’

Theo was silent for a moment. ‘It didn’t affect you?’

‘I was lucky. I was in the kitchen, making a cup of tea. I called to Melanie that it was ready. Voice mode, not Link.’

‘Melanie?’

‘A friend. We shared an apartment. We had since we left creche. Friends as well as Forest. Another two minutes and I’d have been wiped too.’

I shrugged. ‘I was lucky. I just heard a scream and there she was. White face, a trickle of blood where she’d bit her lip. But then the trickle stopped. I…I guessed what had happened then. Had known it was possible, of course, but I just hadn’t thought they would. There is a great difference sometimes between having knowledge and knowing when it’s needed. So I didn’t…I didn’t Link for help. I went out into the corridor and I screamed…two days later I was here.’

‘I gather this Michael wasn’t affected either?’

‘No. He was the only other one of us who hadn’t joined the conference.’

‘So,’ said Theo flatly. ‘And was the timing accidental? Did they know you would all be Linked?’

‘They must have. It’s not hard to monitor who is on the Net. But if you mean was it an accident that Michael
wasn’t affected?’ I looked out the window at the dapples of the trees. Real trees. ‘I don’t know,’ I said at last. ‘I never asked him. I wouldn’t even know how to ask him. How can you say, “Hey, Michael, did you betray us all to show that you were loyal?”’

‘You just take a breath and let the words flow out,’ said Theo.

‘Would you do that? Could you do that?’

‘Could I ask a friend—someone whose loyalty I’d taken for granted—if they’d betrayed me? Oh, yes,’ said Theo.

I suddenly felt very cold. Even the Cat would have been welcome to join me on the sofa now, for its warmth. ‘Maybe I will one day,’ I said tiredly. ‘But not now.’

‘And this is the man you want to see? You still trust him?’

‘I trust him with this. He’s no fool. If it’s as real a problem as I think it is, then he’ll be even more eager than I am to see action taken.’

We sat in silence for a while, with only the faint squish below us to break the quiet. Finally he said, ‘Melanie died?’

‘No. I gave her mouth to mouth, heart massage.’ I grimaced. ‘A little first-aid data I’d scrolled sometime and it had stuck. She revived. Mostly.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘Michael promised she’d be looked after.’

‘That wasn’t what I…’ began Theo, when the ding of the Terminal interrupted him.

He pulsed it on. The amplifier was still on high. Michael’s face flooded the screen. He didn’t even glance at Theo.

‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘A floater will arrive at nine o’clock. I’ve arranged a temporary City pass. You’ll have two hours exactly.’

‘And the lab facilities?’

‘There’ll be people on standby. Whatever you need will be done. But two hours only, Danielle. That’s it.’

‘Michael…’ I couldn’t understand his vehemence. His hatred. ‘I’m not a threat to you.’

His eyes were hard. You’d have to know him well to see the anguish behind them. ‘Of course you are a threat,’ he told me flatly. ‘You’re a living memory of what I was.’

‘You mean I’ll remind other people?’

‘I mean you’ll remind me,’ he said.

And with that the screen went blank.

W
e buried her that afternoon. Poor nameless child, small and thin in my clean nightdress, the bruises on her flesh even starker now in death.

The community provided flowers for the grave, and a coffin. I’d expected an old-fashioned wooden one, the sort you saw in ancient vids. This was some paper product, beautifully painted and finished, but it looked too flimsy to keep the earth off her.

‘It’s meant to help us join the earth more quickly,’ said a voice behind me.

I turned. It was Neil, watching me seriously. He still held a flower in one hand, a full-bodied rose, pink and soft and opulent, the petals almost but not quite at the point of falling.

‘You guessed what I was thinking?’

‘It wasn’t hard.’ He tossed the rose onto the other flowers on the grave. His fingers were all the same size, I noticed absently. I wondered if it was inherited, or a side effect of his parents’ modification, one of those small side effects that no one notices or cares about…

I forced my mind away and glanced around. The rest of the community was wandering off, the grave filled in, their flowers laid, the song sung. Across the grave Samantha gave me a look of concentrated dislike. Then Theo said something to her. She shrugged and followed him up to the Hall.

I looked back at Neil. ‘I wanted to…I’ve been
meaning to apologise to you. When you came over to the house that first time. I misunderstood…’

‘No, you didn’t,’ said Neil calmly. Suddenly he didn’t look puppy-like at all.

‘But I didn’t know about…’

‘About my family? About being Proclaimed too? That had nothing to do with it. You understood well enough.’

I gazed at him, puzzled.

‘You understood exactly. I saw you on the vid. I thought you were beautiful. I thought you were going through, well, something similar to what I went through. And, yes, I thought it possible we might be soulmates, to use your term. That’s why I asked Theo to offer the house to the authorities.’

‘I suppose they grabbed the offer with both hands,’ I said, for something to say.

‘Exactly. A perfect solution. A place of exile that fitted the letter of the law, but near enough to a welcoming group of ferals. Hopefully, you’d be content with our company and leave the City alone.’

A hint of music drifted down from the Hall. It was the same tune that had been sung at the grave, but this was instrumental, a piano perhaps. My mind clicked through the data so I didn’t have to feel…

‘I would still like to apologise,’ I said at last.

‘Apology accepted. I’ll see you at nine o’clock then.’

I stared at him.

‘Theo explained it all to me. We agreed you shouldn’t go alone.’ He nodded up to the Hall. ‘There’s a meal ready up there, if you’d like to join us.’

‘No. I think…no.’

‘As you wish,’ said Neil. And with that he walked away, up the hill to the Hall.

T
he house was empty without her. Elaine had already been up to collect the rest of her equipment. The floater must have been and gone by another route while I was still walking up the hill.

Elaine had hugged me at the funeral. She had cried, too. She’d done her best, and failed, as I had. The failure must hurt her as well.

Someone had stripped the stained bedding from the sofa. There were clean sheets folded on the armchair; replacement of the ones they had taken. The sheets looked City made, used but still serviceable. I picked them up and took them out to the hall to the linen press.

I should pick lavender to keep in the linen press, I thought vaguely. Wasn’t that what you did with linen presses? You perfumed them with herbs. A chain of references scrolled by, ready to be examined. I ignored them.

Elaine—or was it someone else—had stocked the fridge too. There were eggs again, a small roast chicken stuffed with pine nuts and herbs, more apples, three peaches, butter, cheese, lettuce, cucumber, potatoes, green beans, purple beans (which I would have assumed were modified if I hadn’t found an old reference to purple beans in my research), onions, carrots…

I would keep the carrots for myself this time, I thought, not give them to the Wombat. He could make do with a slice of bread.

The bread this time was yellow, smelt savoury and was dotted through with caraway seeds. Pumpkin, I decided, purely on the basis of its colour.

The wood stove had gone out. I lit it again, more for the comfort of its warmth than any real need of it, and used the ultrawave to cook the vegetables to eat with the bread and cold chicken.

I ate slowly, watching the outline of the roses fuzz into darkness. They were the same colour as the rose that Neil had held in his broad, square-fingered hand. I supposed my bush was a parent of the rose at the community. Or the other way around.

I went to bed.