Flesh and Blood (2 page)

T
here was pumpkin bread with caraway seeds for breakfast, and poached eggs. Neil’s Link anaesthesia had been withdrawn. He hadn’t woken.

I could walk now, though unsteadily. I found Dr Meredith where I had expected to find her, in the kitchen, buttering toast for a couple of the boys. She raised her eyebrows at them as I came in. They nodded to me politely, took their toast in their hands and left us alone.

‘Something’s gone wrong, hasn’t it?’

‘I have no idea,’ said Dr Meredith, calmly putting the lid back on a jar of blueberry jelly. ‘There’s no need for concern …’ she glanced at me and added honestly, ‘… yet. An operation like that causes considerable trauma. I wouldn’t be surprised by at least a 48-hour recovery period.’

‘Neil’s foster parents — Theo and Elaine — do they know?’

‘Yes. One of the boys is keeping in touch with them with a Realtime Virtual Link. There is a Virtual monitor in Neil’s room. They can see him, speak to him. I asked them not to come here in person.’

‘Why not?’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘This is an illegal clinic. Too many visitors would be conspicuous.’

I wanted to say, to hell with being conspicuous. Theo and Elaine SHOULD be here. I wanted them here. I wanted them with me while I watched Neil unmoving on the bed. Dr Meredith had no right …

But she had every right. She had risked discovery to restore my Link, to operate on Neil. It was I who had no right to criticise her.

I spent the morning searching the Clinic’s Net for anything that might have a possible bearing on Neil’s case. Part of me revelled in being able to Link again, match my brain exactly to the computer’s power. The other part felt turned to stone. I couldn’t allow myself to think — or feel — what it might be like if Neil didn’t recover.

One of Dr Meredith’s boys brought lunch to my room — jellied turkey sausage with tarragon and a dish of fresh peas — and checked my incision briefly. I assumed my medical state was being monitored electronically; I could have Linked in to the monitors, if I cared.

I didn’t.

I spent the afternoon with Neil, watching him sleep. But it wasn’t sleep. I knew how Neil slept, his mouth open, a touch of drool at the corner, a gentle snuffle sometimes that would probably grow to a fully fledged snore as we both grew older.

This was too tidy for true sleep.

Occasionally I looked at the Virtual terminal. Presumably it was Linking Theo and Elaine to the room where I now sat. They’d be gazing at their adopted son, just as I was gazing at him. Perhaps they were even speaking to him, touching his hand in case he could hear them, feel them.

If I wished I could Link into the Virtual, have company while I watched.

But I couldn’t bear it. It was my fault their son lay there. If he had never met me …

Venison — not turkey — for dinner.

S
crambled eggs on poppyseed bread; mushrooms on toast; fried eggs and the farm’s smoked turkey bacon — for three days Neil lay there, and I waited.

On the fourth day I sought out Dr Meredith. She was in the kitchen, as she had been the first time we’d met her, two years before, rolling pastry on the wide wooden table. She looked up as I came in. There was no recipe screen beside her. Dr Meredith rarely bothered with recipes, either in her cooking or her surgery.

‘Spice biscuits. Made with a flaky pastry dough. Should be interesting.’

‘There’s no change,’ I said.

‘No.’ She rolled the dough again. ‘I’m sorry my dear. I warned you.’

‘It’s bad then, isn’t it?’

‘That he still hasn’t woken? Possibly. Even probably.’ She brushed the hair from her forehead, leaving a floury smudge. ‘If I had any more data to give you, I would. All we can do now is wait.’

‘For how long?’

‘We can keep him alive indefinitely. You know that.’

‘There’s absolutely nothing you can do?’ I saw her hesitate. ‘There is, isn’t there?’

‘Not yet. But in a week perhaps, if there’s no change. We can try to wake him artificially — the same process as Link anaesthesia, but sending wake brain rhythms instead.’

‘Why not now?’

‘Because this may be what he needs now,’ she said patiently. ‘Often the body knows what it needs best. Even with all our technology the body still has to heal itself. We can only help. I know it’s frustrating doing nothing, waiting. But at this stage that’s all we can do.’

I walked back slowly to Neil’s room, sat by his bed, watched him, felt the pull of the Virtual terminal till finally I stared at it, undecided. Then I shut my eyes briefly and Linked my comsig into the Virtual receiver.

When I opened them Theo and Elaine were there, hovering over the floor as though they sat in an invisible chair — the sofa they must be sitting on back at the utopia.

‘Danny,’ said Theo softly, and I began to cry. Instantly Elaine’s arms were around me and even if they were Virtual arms I could still feel their warmth, smell the Elaine scent that was partly disinfectant, partly hand cream and partly just Elaine.

Finally I looked up. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

Neither of them asked me what I was sorry for. Neither said, ‘If he’d never met you he wouldn’t have tried this stupid, hopeless thing.’

They didn’t need to say the words. I knew it too.

Elaine just said, ‘Hush now. Hush.’ She looked pale and dark-eyed, as though she, too, hadn’t slept for days. Theo looked frail and tired. He was the same age as Elaine, but the vampire modification he had been cursed with made him resistant to regeneration and even rejuve. He was only 86, but looked infinitely old.

He made a move as though to touch me too, then checked it. Since the tragic time his blood lust had killed a girl two years ago, he had never touched me. I had never seen him touch Elaine since that time either. He just said, ‘I wish you’d come to us before.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said again. ‘I didn’t … I thought you’d …’

‘No,’ said Elaine. And said no more.

We watched together after that, apart from brief intervals when I slept or ate, and even then either Theo or Elaine was with him: mostly Theo, as Elaine’s duties as the utopia’s Meditech meant she was on call. Theo was the utopia’s Administrator; he was able to do most of his work from the same terminal that Linked him to us in Virtual.

Tubes ran into Neil’s arm and more tubes took waste from his body. Machinery kept his breathing even, his temperature slightly lowered to help healing, the oxygen mix in the air slightly richer than Norm.

On the sixth night I fled to Dr Meredith’s kitchen and found her stuffing turkey with green herbs.

‘Grow another clone!’ I yelled at her. ‘A Norm clone! If this fails at least you can transplant its brain to him.’

‘No,’ she said calmly. ‘I won’t do that. A clone’s brain wouldn’t be Neil.’

‘But …’ I began. I had been going to say that at least a new Neil would be something to give Theo and Elaine. But suddenly I knew they would find no consolation in a child’s brain in the body of their son.

Seven days from our meeting in the kitchen, Dr Meredith nodded at her son–grandson–descendant and he switched the Link into wake mode.

I sat beside the bed, with Theo and Elaine next to me. Elaine held my hand; my other hand held Neil’s. For a moment I thought his eyelids flickered. But they didn’t. The screen by the bed showed no difference in his brain waves.

‘Not getting through,’ said the son–grandson–descendant.

Part of my mind frantically searched the Clinic’s Net for more data; the other half heard Dr Meredith say to me and to the Realtime images of Theo and Elaine, ‘We’ll try again tomorrow.’

‘He’s brain dead!’ I cried. Elaine flinched. Theo’s arms went round her automatically, then broke away. I don’t think she even noticed.

‘No,’ said Dr Meredith. ‘There’s still mental activity. He just isn’t responding to the Link.’

‘But he should! He responded to Link anaesthesia!’

‘Yes. This could be a good sign or a bad. Perhaps he has gained enough control to be able to counteract the Link.’

‘Or?’ whispered Elaine.

‘Or brain function has deteriorated. But I’m optimistic,’ said Dr Meredith.

She left the room.

I sat watching Neil, trying not to look at Theo and Elaine. We didn’t speak. Finally Theo broke the silence. ‘Danny.’

‘Yes?’

‘Come home.’

I looked up. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Come back to the utopia. They’ll let you know if there is any change.’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Danny, please.’ It was Elaine’s voice now.

‘I’m staying here.’

I felt rather than saw them glance at each other. Theo spoke clearly. ‘We love you very much, Danny. We wouldn’t want you to think … to feel … not to think you aren’t welcome here. No matter what happens …’ his voice broke off.

‘Come home. Please,’ said Elaine.

‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘I can’t.’

‘You know,’ said Theo, almost conversationally, ‘since I have lived here at the utopia I believe I have found one thing that makes humans stand apart from animals. No, two things. Humans keep going, even when it seems they can’t. And they come together when things are bad. That is how they keep on going.’

I looked at him. Dear Theo, who spoke of humans as a race apart, a species he could never completely reach. Theo, the most human of all humans, even if he was a vampire too.

I looked at Elaine. Yes, she would always blame me for what had happened to her son. But you can love and blame too. For the first time I realised how much I loved them as well. I’d been part of the Forest, able to scan data with the speed of a computer, communicate with my peers more closely than any humans had before. But I’d never quite understood love.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ll come home. Soon. For a little while, anyway.’

But there was something I had to do first.

‘A
baby?’ Dr Meredith stared at me.

‘Yes. A baby. You know, goo-goo, bub-bub. It’s possible, isn’t it?’

‘Of course it’s possible. His sperm, your egg.’ Her eyes were watchful suddenly. ‘Neil’s sperm are still Norm, despite the modification to his brain. If you have a baby by him the child won’t inherit your abilities.’

‘But if I had a child by his modified clone, it would,’ I said slowly. Did I want that? Yes, absolutely. I refused to be ashamed of what I had been, what I was again. Illegal modification or not, what I had was good. That was why I had been restored, why Neil had tried to gain the same abilities.

‘A normal child? Not bio-Engineered?’

I thought briefly about that. ‘Any defectives removed, the usual enhancers. Eyesight, immunity to whatever diseases you can manage and UV overload. That sort of thing. Nothing more.’ I smiled briefly. ‘No wings or gills.’

‘Very well.’ She spoke slowly. ‘I’ll call Andrew in. He’s the best at that type of procedure. He’ll need to see …’

‘I’m fertile today,’ I said.

‘How do you …’ she stopped. ‘I suppose you can Link in and check your own biofeedback now?’

I nodded.

‘Very well then,’ Dr Meredith said again. ‘We’ll do it now.’

I
t didn’t feel any different. A few new cells, nestling in my uterus. But some of them were Neil’s.

No, I couldn’t give Theo and Elaine their son back. But I could give them a grandchild. Somehow I knew that a grandchild — a natural grandchild, or what this century accepted as natural anyway — would be a far greater gift than his clone.

They had moved my bed into Neil’s room now. I would have liked to share his bed, feel his warmth against me, feel that just by being close I might give some of my strength to him. But he needed to remain as still as possible. A bed next to his was the best they could do.

The room was dim. The screens were Link sensitive; they only lit up when someone looked at them. I could hear Neil’s breathing soft and steady beside me. It was a comfort of a sort.

I shut my eyes. I tried to sleep. Sleep was necessary, like eating. You had to sleep and eat to go on. And I had a reason to go on now.

I wondered what she would look like. It would be a girl, Dr Andrew had said. Tall and fair like Neil? Small and dark like me? Or tall and dark or small and fair, scientist or artist?

I’d wait a month before I told Theo and Elaine, I thought drowsily. How big would she be by then …

I was almost asleep when the voice reached me.

‘Dan … Dan …’

For a moment I thought Neil had woken. Then I realised the voice was in my brain — a mental Link, the sort I’d never had since the Forest died and left me alone.

‘Neil,’ I whispered, because that is the only way to put it, the only way to explain to someone who has never felt a Link like mine. ‘It’s you, isn’t it?’

‘Me,’ whispered Neil.

‘What the shit did you think you were doing! How dare you take that risk? It wasn’t fair to me, to Theo or Elaine.’

‘Danny …’

Suddenly my fury disappeared. ‘You
are
there, aren’t you?’ I whispered. ‘You’re alive!’

‘Tired,’ said Neil’s voice. ‘See you in the morning …’

‘Neil? Neil?’

No answer. I flung myself out of bed, stared at the brightening screens. There was no need to Link with the Clinic’s data to interpret the new peaks.

The door swung open. Dr Meredith, a short oval shape in a purple dressing gown and slippers with rabbits’ ears. They looked like they’d been made by a great-something-grandchild.

‘Good,’ she said with great satisfaction.

‘I heard …’ I said. ‘I thought I heard …’

‘He Linked with you?’

I nodded.

‘Good, I thought that might happen first,’ she said.

‘Then why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because it mightn’t’ve. Didn’t want you Linking and probing at him either. You can now though, if you like. Not too much.’

I let my mind wander to his again. No words came back, or images. But there was a presence, a warm and glowing presence that was unmistakably Neil.

S
he called one of the boys to help me from the room. The sobs were too strong for me to walk, much less talk.

They took me to the kitchen. She held the cup of hot sweet tea to my lips till I sipped, and sipped again. Gradually the sobs lessened.

‘I thought … I thought I’d killed him.’ I took another sip. ‘I thought I’d never Link like that again. Feel someone else’s mind with mine. You don’t know … you can’t know.’

‘No, my dear,’ said Dr Meredith, and there was a touch of sadness in her voice, ‘I can’t know.’ She smiled at me, and opened a tin of raspberry shortbread. She handed me a piece. I bit it under her sharp gaze.

‘But the next generation will know.’ She caught my shocked look. ‘I’ve given three embryos your modification so far. The first one should be born in about two months. You’ll have your Forest again, if you can wait for them to grow up.’ She nodded at my stomach, ‘Your daughter will have company too.’

My daughter. I’d got myself pregnant and Neil didn’t know.

How the hell was I going to explain this?