Flesh and Blood (16 page)

I
got stiffly onto the dikdik. For a moment I wondered if I should have asked him to swap, my dikdik for his floater. But the City could trace a floater, and somehow I couldn’t imagine Michael on a dikdik.

The dikdik began to putter along the sand again. I kept it low, not so much to avoid detection now as to conserve fuel.

So. He had known where I was, and to some extent what I had been doing, all along. Which also meant I had been able to trust him all along. Perhaps he would even have helped us escape. Or would he? That might have compromised his job. But at the very least he wouldn’t have hindered us.

I steered the dikdik round a cliff.

All at once I was hungry, and desperately thirsty. I should have asked Michael for food and water, at least. I wondered if there’d been food in the house where we’d stolen the dikdik, or a vegetable garden perhaps where we could have foraged. Surely there had been water there …

No time to worry about that now. Though, actually, for once there was plenty of time, nothing else to do till the next bit of navigation. But no time to search for food or water either. Possibly the rivers were safe to drink from, but I wouldn’t risk it. I would survive a night and part of a day without food or water. And sleep too. I wished desperately that I was in a floater. If I dozed at the dikdik’s controls it would, at best, stop. At worst, I’d fall off into the waves.

I kept on going.

Hours passed. I grew colder, stiffer. Hunger passed, but my thirst grew. The moon began to droop through the sky towards the ocean. I could hear the crash of waves, smell the clean salt of the sea, the undertang of seaweed. Cliffs, beach, rocks and inlets — they all smelt different. The night smelt different too, as it closed around me, the hot smells of day giving way to the fresher smells of night.

One river and then another, unmistakable in their size and blackness. And then the third.

I headed inland as the moon slid into the sea behind me and the sky began to grey, then even the grey faded and colours slipped into the world again.

I was beyond tiredness, drunk maybe on adrenaline — on terror for Neil, on fear for myself, for the baby I was carrying, on worry even for Michael. Had he got back safely? He risked plague going through the Burbs. Would he be blamed for our disappearance? I’m sorry Michael, I thought. So much fear, one body could hardly hold it all. Fear for Elaine, for Theo … who hadn’t I thought to be scared for? How was Black Stump? How was Ophelia? Had Melanie woken up yet …

Then there was the forest. Real forest, trees and more trees, not my Forest at all. Forest and trees, I thought, forest and trees, my tired brain too numb to throw away the words. I pressed the controls again and veered away from the river and headed north.

B
y mid-morning I knew I was lost. Neil, maybe, could have recognised the countryside below me. I simply hadn’t paid enough attention when I’d travelled through the Outlands, or perhaps I’d turned the wrong way accidentally and there was nothing here for me to recognise.

There was a stream below me. If I drank, I thought, maybe my mind would clear. Or maybe I’d die of mutated dysentery. At any rate, there was no point in continuing to head in what I was fairly sure was the wrong direction. I needed to get back to the river — if I could find it again — and try to work out where I had gone wrong.

I could wash my face, even if I couldn’t risk drinking the stream’s water.

I leant back slowly. The dikdik eased down to the ground. I lifted my leg over it, then found myself on my hands and knees. My legs had given way.

Cramp, exhaustion — who cared? I crawled over to the creek, and splashed my face, avoiding my lips and eyes — the last thing I needed now was to be out of action with diarrhoea. I’d rest five minutes, I decided, then I’d get back on the dikdik and …

The floater came out of nowhere. They’re quiet, floaters, and the chug of the dikdik was still in my ears. The floater hovered near the dikdik, then landed.

It had seen me, long before I had seen it.

What now? For a moment I thought it might be Michael. Had he decided to follow me after all? Or Neil … no. It was a stranger at the controls.

Run. That was the only possibility. Run and keep on running and hope — hopelessly — I could outrun the floater and the City officers in it, could find a place to hide, could find Green Trees then on foot.

I forced my body up. I even made a stumbling first few steps. Then a voice behind called, ‘Mistress Forester! Stop!’

I don’t know why I stopped. Or yes, I suppose I do. I suppose the voice of authority is unmistakable — and this wasn’t it.

I turned around.

He looked young, maybe twelve or thirteen. He wasn’t wearing white as City guards would have been, just farm clothes, the sort Neil wore out to his orchards. ‘Mistress Forester?’ It was a question now. I nodded shakily. ‘Grandma said to look out for you. She thought you might be heading this way.’

‘Look out for me?’ It was hard to keep my voice steady.

‘We’ve had the floaters out patrolling the last few days. Mistress Forester? Are you all right?’

T
en minutes later I was safe in the floater with the dikdik bolted on behind, a cup of coffee in one hand and a smoked turkey sandwich in the other. The floater gently carried us back over the rough country I’d strayed into, then swerved to the west. No, I thought, I would never have found the way. ‘You said you were looking for me?’

A grin. ‘Grandma said she’d give you a week to work it out. She said you’d come by dikdik so they couldn’t trace you, and she said odds on the girl will get lost …’

‘Did she say what “it” was that I’d figure out?’

A shake of the head. He looked too young to be a doctor, but then who knew what tinkering Dr Meredith had added to his genes. Maybe he was 104 … No, I thought, the bounciness was definitely youth.

‘Would you like more coffee? Or fruit juice?’

‘Juice. Please. And coffee too. Everything.’

He looked a bit surprised, but filled my cup again anyway, and then a glass of some red juice.

The farmlands were green and neat below us now. The Clinic’s giant oaks loomed on the horizon. We landed under the largest, cut off from probing satellites by the thick canopy of leaves.

The boy helped me out; my legs were shaky. I stepped across the fallen leaves and climbed the stairs to the house.

I
t was a repeat of the first time Neil and I had come here: the door opened and Dr Meredith stood there in her shabby overalls and worn red slippers, the warmth of the kitchen spilling out around her.

‘Well timed,’ she said. ‘I’ve just put the kettle on.’ She peered past me. ‘Your young man not with you?’

‘No.’

‘I didn’t think he would be. He’d decide to be the decoy. He did, didn’t he?’

I nodded.

‘Thought so. Sit down.’

I sat. I wanted a shower, to rest, to sleep. I wanted Neil, to see Mel. And I had to have answers to questions, then do something about them.

But I didn’t have the strength for any of it.

‘Drink this.’ She offered the mug in her hand. ‘It isn’t coffee.’

I sipped it. The bitter taste wrinkled my tongue. Suddenly I felt strength surge through me.

She watched me, amused. ‘Illegal,’ she said. ‘Also addictive. But one mug won’t harm you or the baby, and it’ll keep you going for another twelve hours. Long enough.’

I managed to make my tongue move again. ‘Long enough for what?’

‘To take me into the City of course,’ she said gently. ‘What else would I mean?’

S
he allowed me to see Mel first, briefly. Mel was sleeping, as I’d seen her last. ‘But I’m confident, my dear,’ said Dr Meredith. ‘Those brain waves look quite good.’

No time for a shower though. Instead her grandson — a different grandson, or great-great-great-grandson perhaps — lugged a hamper into the floater and then a bag of clothes and a miniterminal. Dr Meredith set the coordinates, while I sat back and tried to force my overactive mind to slow down and work out what was happening.

‘Where are we going?’

‘To another floater.’ She smiled at me. ‘And then to a boat, a pair of dikdiks and then another floater. Enough changes to cover our trail so when you call the City they won’t trace us back here.’

‘But … but why not just do it yourself? Why wait for me?’

She laughed delightedly. ‘Just roll up to the doors of a sealed-off City and say, “Hello, you don’t know me but I’m a sweet defenceless old woman and I have a cure for the plague!” They wouldn’t bother to listen. Couldn’t listen in the first place; I don’t have a City comsig to call.’

She was right, I thought. ‘But you do have a cure?’

‘No. Not a cure. A vaccine. Quite accidental. In fact I hadn’t realised it till ten days ago. We were doing some tests with the plague virus on one of our nullbrain clones
and noticed an immune response. I wasn’t the one who worked it out, as a matter of fact, but I’ll take the credit for it. The family have no wish to have the City know who or what or where we are and I’m,’ she shrugged, ‘I’m old enough to be expendable.’

‘But …’

‘I don’t suppose they’re going to torture me, girl. After all, I’m giving them what they want. They won’t even brain probe me — not at my age, too great a risk of haemorrhage and stroke, and then they’d lose everything I might tell them. But they are going to be curious and I’ve reached a point where I’m not much use for anything else. So I’ll sit in luxury in the City and be waited on while they question me and I’ll tell them only what I want them to know. I suppose they’ll give me my own lab, and even a kitchen if I ask for it. I gather the City treats its captives well.’

‘But your family …’

‘I am 148, my dear,’ she said gently. ‘They’ll have to cope with my loss soon enough anyway.’ She smiled, with only a touch of sadness. ‘I think the boys will miss my cooking most. But someone else will take over. Someone always does. Nature abhors a vacuum, even in a kitchen. Maybe especially in a kitchen.’

‘Do they know you’re going for good?’ No-one had tried to stop us leaving; there had been no-one pleading, ‘Grandma, stay!’

‘They’ll know by now. I left a message for each of them.’ The smile grew a little sadder. ‘I have 127 descendants. It took a while.’

I tried to get back to the point. ‘A vaccine? You said it was accidental?’

‘Totally.’ She opened the hamper. ‘Stuffed scone?’

I took it absently, bit into it. There were dates in some sort of sour jam inside.

‘You see,’ said Dr Meredith, ‘one of the reasons way back in the Declines that I chose to raise turkeys is that their tissue is a useful carrier for … other things.’

‘Your little tinkerings?’

‘Exactly. So I had to Engineer resistance to any turkey diseases, just in case … I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice to say that — accidentally, as I said — I have vaccinated everyone who has gone through the Clinic with something that appears to have given immunity to this disease, as well as any others that turkeys might carry.’

‘The plague is a zoonosis,’ I said. ‘Bird derived.’

‘So I assumed. So, there it is. No cure, but prevention at least.’ She gestured to the hamper. ‘And a good quantity of vaccine to be going on with.’

‘Dr Meredith … Elaine — Neil’s stepmother — she’s been nursing the sick and she’s infected. No symptoms yet. I asked a friend if it might be possible to use my antibodies, or Neil’s, on her …’

She smiled at me, a comfortable smile. ‘Of course it’s possible, my dear. If those conservative asses in the City don’t know how to do it I can show them. Elaine will be an excellent demonstration model.’

She sat back and considered her scone. ‘Too much sour cherry,’ she decided. ‘I hope — oh, I do hope — they know what a proper kitchen’s like in the City.’ She smiled at me. ‘I’ll pretend my boys are waiting. And surely there’ll be someone who’ll want to eat Realfood.’

A
nd there is where the story ends. But stories never really end; only Virtuals fade out with a perfect closer — the coming of rain after drought, the death-bed scene.

It’s not even the end of the plague, of course. The world has changed because of it. Humans have always feared the stranger. But now with every unknown face at the utopia doors we have to ask: are you alive or walking dead? Will you wake tomorrow or will you die in fever in the night?

No vaccine is perfect. The plague will never threaten the City again, though the odd inhabitant may succumb. And there are places the vaccine will never reach. Places that for religious or other reasons will never be vaccinated, and of course there will be other plagues. Humans have subdued the earth but never quite mastered — or even comprehended — its many mysteries.

If this were a Virtual or vid I’d have us all living happily at the end of it. But there’s nothing tidy about Realife.

Dr Meredith died of a stroke three weeks after she reached the City. She was a brilliant enough physician to have known how near to death she was. She was sincere when she said she was sacrificing very little to keep her family’s secrets secure.

Michael was with her. He had let her bake chocolate croissants for him and corn casserole and caraway scones in the kitchen that, yes, the City did provide. Michael,
who never cared what he ate. I am glad someone who appreciated the complexity of Dr Meredith was with her when she died.

Her death benefited the City in a way she must have foreseen: the City kept her body. I am quite sure Dr Meredith’s corpse has never been sent to the incinerators. Perhaps it is still technically kept alive with tubes and monitors; perhaps it has been frozen. Either way the secrets of her tinkering — the ones encoded in her flesh — will be learnt by Citytechs and, Administrators willing, be available more widely.

A century and a half ago she could have published in academic journals. Now her work is proscribed, but some of the results, I hope, will spread.

No-one at Black Stump died or even sickened during the plague. I took one of the first lots of vaccine manufactured out to them and found them harvesting the corn.

‘Plague?’ said Ophelia vaguely. ‘Yes, Cleo said it had been pretty bad down south. We’ve been too busy with the harvest to Net lately.’

Cleo was the Wanderer Portia had told me about. I don’t know what her name had been before. But she and Gloucester were happy — ‘She’s going to have a baby!’ Portia told me importantly — and that was that.

Closer to home, the young male has taken over the centaur herd, as I thought he would. He doesn’t understand as much language as the old stallion did, but last Sunday one of the young females greeted me, and even said ‘Cold wind’. It’s still a comfort that the Centaur was dead when we left him, that he didn’t turn on us in his final moments, feeling abandoned, with rage and despair.

Melanie still sleeps, though Dr Meredith’s grandsons are hopeful that one day she’ll wake. But sometimes it’s
as though she only dozes. I can hear her voice, sleepy, but aware. I’ll be laughing at a kookaburra yelling in a tree and I’ll feel Mel laugh with me. Sometimes when I’m sitting quietly I feel her mind merge with mine. Only for a moment, and I have never mentioned it to Neil. Maybe she is conscious for brief nanoseconds, but that is enough if you are Forest or maybe it’s just my imagination. It’s a comfort, nonetheless.

Elaine? She had a bad time of it. I was not allowed to donate blood, because of my pregnancy, so it was Neil’s blood that saved her — something that I think gives him great content. Many years ago Elaine and Theo took in a Proclaimed family, gave the doomed parents succour and adopted their child, who grew up to save Elaine’s life in turn. This is one time when Realife has been tidy enough to let the debt be paid. Yes, Elaine survived. But she’s still lonely.

Theo died that winter. The frost sparkled from the barbed-wire fences and even the centaur droppings had tufts of ice each morning. Neil and I were sitting in the dining room, as the sun spilled through the window. The baby had been kicking most of the night and my bladder had been working overtime the rest of it. Bioscience still hasn’t found a way to make pregnancy more efficient or comfortable. Small personal floaters on each ankle, I thought sourly, would be a start.

‘Tea?’ Neil lifted the pot.

I wrinkled my nose. I’d given up caffeine on Elaine’s advice. This tea was herbal, a mix of lemongrass and rosehip that Ophelia assured me was delicious as she’d sipped her third cup of extra strong Realcoffee the last time she and Portia visited.

Of course if I went Virtual I’d taste coffee while I
drank my tea. But even avoiding herbal tea couldn’t tempt me to Virtual now.

I held my mug out to him. ‘Thanks. Not that there’s much point. A minute on the lips then it’ll disappear in the bathroom five minutes later …’

We’d left the terminal on trickle. It brightened behind us. Elaine’s face said, ‘Neil. Danny. It’s Theo. Please come.’

She looked white and frightened. The screen faded before we could speak.

We took the floater over to the utopia’s main building, then ran up the stairs and along the corridor to Elaine’s and Theo’s living quarters at the end.

Theo was in bed. Priss, his Engineered Cat, lay on the chair by the wall. She glared at us, then ignored us.

Theo smiled at us weakly. ‘Heart,’ he whispered. ‘They say you need to plunge a stake into a vampire’s heart. I don’t think it will be necessary.’ Elaine sat beside him, his hand in both hers. Tears slid down her face. She didn’t bother to wipe them.

We sat beside her. Theo beckoned me closer. He rested his free hand on my stomach for a moment, then lay back. ‘I can feel the life,’ he said. ‘So good.’

Elaine gave a small snuffle. She let go his hand and reached for her handkerchief.

Theo tried to whisper again. I could see what even that small effort cost him. ‘My favourite book when I was small,’ he said, ‘in that hideous castle where they gloated and despised me, was
MORTE D’ ARTHUR
. Death of the King. It’s in the end somewhere … Lancelot says, “In thee I’ve had mine earthly joy.”’ He shut his eyes, as though the lids were too heavy to keep open. For a moment I thought he slept, and then he said, ‘You three … in thee I’ve had mine earthly joy.’

Theo was very like Lancelot, I thought. The hero with the fatal flaw — Lancelot’s passion for Guinevere, Theo’s vampire heritage that he could never quite shake off. Both of them good men, both of them betraying those they loved with pain and death.

Elaine said, ‘Leave us for a minute, please.’

Neil nodded. As we left the room I caught a glimpse in the mirror of Elaine holding her wrist up to Theo’s fangs.

We each have our epiphany, I thought. This was something I couldn’t judge.

Theo was barely conscious when we came back in. He drifted into sleep soon after. His breathing grew laboured as we sat there, as members of the community came in to say goodbye, to hug Elaine and Neil and me, to remember good things that he had done.

Sometime in that afternoon, slowly and without warning, Neil’s mind merged with mine, and we sat with our grief — but comforted because we were together.

At five o’clock or thereabouts Theo died, and Priss howled, over and over, and I wished that I could howl as well.

We buried him next day.

Since the plague most bodies are incinerated, in case they walk again. But Theo’s body is part of the soil of the utopia that he loved, where he found at least partial peace and happiness. Elaine and I have planted a garden on his grave, daffodils and primulas that grow under the apple tree that Neil planted as a headstone.

I miss him. I don’t suppose there is an ending to that either.