Flesh and Blood (6 page)

I
t’s funny, but looking back I always think of the morning after the Centaur died as the point where life changed. Not the moment when Michael told me about the plague, not the precautions we took after that.

There have been five times so far when I have felt my life sliced away from the life that went before. That first morning in the creche with the other Forest children, when our minds Linked. The Proclamation and my banishment and the Forest’s death. The first morning I woke up with Neil, here in the house that had suddenly become ours, not mine.

This was the fourth time. I went to bed with one world, and woke up to another.

It was a lovely morning, I remember that. A cliché sort of morning, blue sky and autumn shadows and sunlight warming the cold breeze up the gully and every leaf shining, the way they do when the sun is lower in the sky.

It was one of the first things I’d noticed when I started Virtual engineering, how the sun angle changes shadow, light and colour. So many engineers don’t bother with sun angles at all; they have grown up with City light that radiates from a constant position no matter the season. But humans evolved in changing light, and even City people respond unconsciously when the light around them changes.

My arm was crisscrossed with a network of sealer webs, and it was bruised as well, though Elaine had done
something to minimise that. But there was no swelling, no pain either. I was still Linked to painbegone, but had a feeling I wouldn’t need it much longer.

We ate breakfast in our dressing gowns in the kitchen, then Neil went up to change into the clothes he wore to the orchards after I’d assured him I wasn’t scared to stay here by myself, what sort of twit did he think I was. (I carefully hadn’t asked what they had done with the Centaur’s body.)

I stayed at the table, nibbling on toast and raspberry jam, wondering whether to call Michael to report that I’d found nothing so far, and see how things were in the City.

Michael hadn’t called since he’d asked for help. It occurred to me suddenly that if he became sick, or even died, no-one would tell me. He might already be dead.

Stupid, I told myself. Michael could look after himself. The incident with the Centaur had upset me, that was all. But nonetheless I moved over to the screen, and was just reaching to turn it on when it lit up of its own accord, the callsig chiming in my mind. I opened the Link.

‘Theo! What’s wrong?’

Theo had never called the house before, had always chosen instead to walk over with any message.

Theo’s face was grim. ‘Is Neil there?’

‘Yes.’ Neil stepped up behind me, in his work clothes now.

‘Good.’ Theo stopped, as though trying to work out what to say.

‘Theo, what is it?’

Theo took a breath. I could hear it even over the Link. ‘Elaine ran some tests on the Centaur. It’s plague.’

‘But … but she said it was old age.’

‘Well, it wasn’t.’ It was hard to read Theo’s expression. ‘I’ve had someone check the boundaries. Thought he
might have got through the neuro fence somehow. But he didn’t. He must have been exposed before the fence went up.’

‘A twenty-one day incubation period,’ I said slowly.

‘Elaine’s put herself in quarantine, and the other centaurs. You need to be quarantined too.’ He looked helpless. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.’

‘I … I see.’ It was too much to take in. ‘How about you?’

‘She says not to worry. I didn’t get close to the centaurs. She’s been in contact with the Citytechs.’ A wry look. ‘They’re willing to talk to an Outlands technician now. She won’t be infectious for another week, probably more. This thing is most infectious just before symptoms start.’

‘When … when will we know if we’ve caught it?’ I found myself automatically pressing my hands to my stomach. I forced them away. I tried to keep my voice steady. Even if I survived, I thought, what would the effect of a high fever be on the foetus?

‘A blood test in ten to twelve days should show something, according to the Citytechs.’

‘And then?’

Theo’s face was carefully blank. ‘Nothing can be done except nursing. Dan, Neil, if it does come to that, I’ll won’t stay away. I’ll be with you as long as necessary. But till then …’

‘Till then the utopia needs you,’ I finished. I glanced at Neil. If it turned out we were infected, we’d argue with Theo then about his risking himself to nurse us.

‘So all you can do is sit in the house and wait,’ Theo was saying. ‘I’m sorry, I wish I could ——’

‘No,’ I said suddenly.

Theo blinked. ‘No?’

‘Theo,’ I said urgently, ‘do you trust us?’

An almost smile. ‘With my life. With others’ lives, which is probably more relevant.’

‘Then send a dikdik over with a couple of isolation skins. I know there are some in the Clinic; Elaine ordered them when all this started. We’ve got a clue now. We can try and trace this thing back: look for whoever infected the Centaur, trace it back from there. Don’t you see? There can’t have been many people in contact with the Centaur, and no one from the utopia could have infected him or they’d have died already. Michael said if we can find the source it might help them develop an antidote, or at least a vaccine.’

I saw the scepticism in his face. ‘Theo, it’s worth a try!’

I could almost read his thoughts. Hopeless, but better than waiting by themselves for infection to strike. And they’re trustworthy. They won’t expose anyone else to infection.

‘I’ll send the skins over,’ said Theo.

‘Thank you, Theo,’ I said.

T
he iso skins fitted like, well, skins. An almost translucent white over our entire bodies with a small mask, like a flattened mouth organ, to filter air in and out as we breathed. The skins were permeable too: they let sweat out and rain in, but allowed nothing living, virus or bacteria, either way.

No one seemd to know where the Centaur had been before they’d come in to the paddocks. None of the remaining centaurs had enough language to help us either. But no-one from the surrounding utopias reported meeting the centaurs in the past month.

‘Where first?’ I asked. ‘Just fly in ever-increasing circles around the utopia till we find something?’

Neil shook his head. ‘Crows,’ he said.

‘Crows?’

‘Crows go for dead bodies.’

‘But what if the person the Centaur caught it from died indoors?’

‘Unlikely. If anyone in any of the utopias near here had caught the disease they’d have told us. The Centaur most likely came in contact with a Wanderer who didn’t manage to make it to a utopia before dying. Or another Animal.’

‘But if they died, what, twenty-one days ago. Surely the crows would have …’ I tried to keep my voice firm, ‘… have finished feeding now.’

‘Crows hang around,’ said Neil.

We packed the floater with enough food for several days — it had its own water supply — and bedding too, in case we were too far from home to return at night. Normally most utopias would shelter travellers for a night, but somehow I doubted that two alien-looking beings in iso skins, possibly carrying the plague, would be welcome.

The motor hummed, as floaters always do for a few seconds when you start them up, some deep vibration in the machinery. I switched the controls onto look-see so whenever I kept the control button pressed the floater would follow the direction of my gaze. The floater rose half a metre then gathered speed down to the creek, then up the hill and along the ridge.

You could see the main buildings from here, the long solid community centre with Elaine’s and Theo’s house at one end; the clusters of two-storey houses; the orchards, dotted with sheds and workshops; the gleam of dams. And then the paddocks, the pale blue cows grazing the dark green grass, and my beach with the three Water Sprites surfing through the waves.

Normal. Quiet. Safe.

The purple flicker of the neuro fence grew closer. Neil buzzed Theo; the flicker stopped while we went through, then started up again behind us.

It was strangely frightening beyond the fence. Back there, if we grew ill, they’d look after us. Out here we were on our own.

The trees crowded like a green wall in front of us.

‘Crow,’ I said. ‘Over there.’

I pressed the look-see button down. The floater veered in a narrow curve and zoomed through the trees up the next hill.

It was a kangaroo, or had been once. A Norm roo, no human genes to carry the plague. Now the skeleton was brown and stained, the flesh dried strips of meat. The solitary crow glanced at us, screamed once and flew away.

‘Not a likely plague vector,’ I said.

Neil nodded.

I sent the floater up and vaguely in the direction the crow had flown.

Then we saw them. A black crowd on a gum tree by a gully. They screamed and fled as we approached. I hovered the floater almost at ground level and looked around.

‘Down there,’ said Neil shortly.

I followed his gaze.

It was human, or had been. The clothes were scarcely torn, a tough unisuit of stained blue. I tried not to think what had caused the stains. The arms still stretched towards the trickle of water in the gully. The hands held something round and dappled dark and white. But their flesh was gone.

I reached for the toilet chute and retched uncontrollably. ‘I’m sorry,’ I choked.

Neil shook his head without speaking. He passed me his handkerchief and I wiped my mouth.

‘I’m not usually squeamish,’ I began, then swallowed my gorge again. ‘It must be the pregnancy.’

‘Probably,’ said Neil. He looked a bit white himself. ‘You stay here.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘See if there’s any way of identifying the body. See where the poor bugger came from.’

‘Neil look! Up the hill. It’s a tent.’

‘And a dikdik,’ said Neil softly. ‘This will be easy then.’ He gave me a half-smile. ‘Don’t look,’ he instructed.

But I did. I watched as his iso-suited hands rolled the body over, checked the pockets, shook his head. He walked up to the dikdik next, switched it on to do a check through of its memory, then turned it off. He crossed over to the tent.

It was the sort most Wanderers use — an inflatable bubble pegged to the ground that didn’t need trees or poles to tie to, that kept out heat and cold if it was too far for your dikdik to make the next utopia or you felt like camping by a stream. Humans seem to have an inbuilt need for trees and water. In the City people relaxed into Virtuals. Out here they took tents when they wanted a change of scene.

Neil pulled open the door and stuck his head inside. Suddenly he stepped back and pressed the tent closed again.

He didn’t look at me. He looked at the body by the creek, then back at the closed tent. Then he stepped slowly and deliberately towards the floater.

‘Neil, what is it?’ His face was white.

‘Just give me a minute.’ He pulsed for coffee. I heard the gurgle as it gushed into the cup, the swish as sugar swirled in too.

There was no-one here we might infect, so Neil slid open his mask, then sipped the coffee, holding the cup in both hands as though he needed its warmth.

‘Neil!’

‘I’ve got the coordinates from the dikdik,’ he said quietly. ‘The last place they stopped. It’s west a fair way. Just let me key them in.’

‘All right.’

Something was badly wrong. I knew it. But I also knew he’d tell me in his own time.

The floater rose. I took a last look at the tent, at the body by the creek. Neil didn’t look back.

Suddenly something struck me. ‘You said “they” — the last place “they” stopped.’

Another sip of coffee. ‘There was someone in the tent.’

‘Dead?’

‘Yes. But not of plague.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Plague doesn’t usually rip your body into pieces.’

‘Oh my …’

‘It wasn’t … nice,’ said Neil.

‘But what could have done it? An animal? Maybe the person by the creek was attacked too. Maybe it wasn’t plague at all.’

‘Not an animal,’ said Neil flatly. ‘Animals don’t do up tents after they’ve killed.’

‘But people don’t …’ I was going to say, people don’t rip each other into pieces either. Even the vampire and werewolf I’d sought before hadn’t done that. But I saw the whiteness of Neil’s face and said nothing.

‘There was something else,’ he said at last, as the floater veered around a dark stone bluff and onto an almost treeless plain.

Something in his voice told me I didn’t want to know. But it also said I needed to know.

‘What?’

‘The body by the creek. It was holding something.’

‘Yes?’

‘It was a skull,’ said Neil. ‘It still had a hat on. It was the skull from the body in the tent.’

T
he grass was thin and pale below us. Even the trees were skinny. I recognised them vaguely from some long-past data retrieval. They were salt-resistant, bio-Engineered before the Declines to give life to the slowly spreading salt pans. I vaguely thought the grass was some salt-resistant species too.

‘Maybe one of them was delirious,’ I said, thinking of the horror of the Centaur’s death. ‘Maybe they killed the other in their delirium and then staggered down to find water …’ I bit my lip. ‘Was it plague?’ I asked. ‘Did you test the body by the creek?’

‘Yes. It was plague,’ said Neil.

‘I suppose the Centaur investigated their tent before the neuro fence went on. Checking his territory or something.’

‘Maybe,’ said Neil.

I tried to imagine what it had been like. Peaceful. Friendly. The two in their tent by the creek, a fire in the blackened stones to one side, the Centaur trotting by, lifting a hand in greeting perhaps, then cantering off.

The imagined scene didn’t seem to fit the horror by the creek or the anguish of the Centaur’s final moments. But it had probably been like that.

‘We should have buried them,’ I said.

‘No spade,’ said Neil.

After that we said nothing for a long time.

G
rass, trees, a sky that had forgotten clouds. I could almost feel the dryness on my skin, even here in the air-conditioned floater.

Now I was Linked again I could have tuned into a City Reality, have called friends (‘Hi! Excuse my isolation suit. I may have contracted plague’), called up a ballet or a vid.

Or we could have played ‘I spy’. But we did none of those. The outside was too barren, the task we were on too horrific for escapism to have had a chance.

‘Nearly there,’ said Neil at last. They were the first words either of us had spoken in over an hour. ‘Hungry?’

‘No.’

‘Still, we’d better eat.’

I nodded. The floater had a store of Basics, and an even larger store of sealpacked luxury Realfoods. If you could afford a floater you’d expect luxury. I supposed the Basics were there in case the floater broke down. Basics last indefinitely. I pulsed for the first thing I thought of: a cheese sandwich. Something clicked a few times inside the wall. The sandwich — plus plate and paper doily and a sprig of parsley — slid out of the slot.

I bit it. The bread was reasonable, City bread. I had grown used to Elaine’s baking, loaves higher on one side than the other that tasted of friendship and love. The cheese was cheese.

‘You eating anything?’

‘I’m not pregnant.’

‘Still need to eat,’ I said.

‘Yes.’ There was a brief pause as he pulsed. Another sandwich slid out of the slot. ‘Sorry. I’m being a pig.’

‘No, you’re not.’

‘Yes, I am,’ he grinned faintly. ‘Don’t argue when I say I’m being a pig, woman.’

‘All right,’ I said mildly. ‘You’re being a pig. I’ll wait till you’re not being a pig to argue about it.’

The grin faded, instead of growing wider as I’d hoped. ‘I feel guilty,’ he said quietly.

‘Guilty? Why?’

‘For not protecting you. And the baby.’

I blinked. I hadn’t been expecting this. ‘You mean because we’ve been exposed to the plague? But that was my fault too.’

‘If it hadn’t been for me you’d have …’ he hesitated.

‘What? Gone back to the City when they revoked my banishment? Have a heart. They already had plague there. Have gone off and married Yorick at Black Stump?’

‘Yorick?’ He frowned at that. ‘Do you mean you and Yorick?’

‘Nope. Never occurred to me. Or him probably. Just trying to work out any possible desirable future you might have interfered with.’

He did grin at that. ‘I’m being stupid.’

‘Yes,’ I said gently. ‘But if you want to blame yourself for not being able to zap a virus out of the air, go right ahead.’ I took his hand. ‘I’m where I want to be. With the person I want to be with.’

‘Really?’

I considered. ‘Well, come to think of it, no. I’d rather not be on a floater in an iso skin heading into the desert to
find victims of a plague. I’d rather you were somewhere else too. Somewhere safe. A beach maybe …’

‘Tsunamis, blue-ringed octopus, mutant algae, who can fight fate?’ intoned Neil. ‘I could be floating out to sea drowned on my surfboard now.’

‘I didn’t know you could ride a surfboard,’ I said.

‘I can’t. That’s why I drowned,’ said Neil. His grin was almost genuine now.