‘It could have been something else!’ I insisted.
‘What else would kill so many so fast?’ Neil shrugged. ‘Okay, we’ll test them.’
It didn’t take long. I warned at first that the diagnostic might not work on sun-dried skeletons.
But it did.
Plague.
Neil glanced at me. We headed back to the floater without speaking. I Linked the control to ‘rise’ and gazed back at the bodies. There were so many …
‘Why are they out here?’ I tried to keep my voice steady. ‘They had water tanks at the camp. Even if they were delirious they didn’t need to come out here for water.’ I shook my head. Sick people died in bed, nursed by remotes or other people. They didn’t wander down a river bank. And surely not all had sickened at the same time. Why hadn’t someone called for help?
Perhaps they had, I thought, and we just didn’t know it. Or maybe the ones who didn’t sicken took a floater and escaped.
No. We had counted the floaters. Unless the camp had one they hadn’t logged into the inventory, they were all there.
I peered down at the bodies again, then averted my eyes. Even the quick glance had shown heads separated from the necks. Wild dogs, I thought. Goannas.
I had a sudden vision of the Centaur, tearing at my flesh. ‘Suppose,’ I said, ‘the disease makes people violent at the end. They might attack their nurses.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Neil. ‘But surely Michael would have mentioned it. Elaine’s been in contact with the Citytechs too. They’d have told her, surely.’
‘Maybe it doesn’t matter so much in the City. Humans don’t nurse the sick there; it’s all done by remotes and Virtual. The sick see and feel human hands, but really they’re just waldoes. Less chance of cross-infection. Maybe when the patients turn violent the remotes restrain them.’
‘But they’re still observed. Someone would notice.’
‘Yes, you’re right.’ I glanced down at the bodies again. ‘Let’s go. Now. Fast.’ I felt out to him in MindLink, wanting to share the horror, find some comfort, then felt his mind flinch away. I broke the Link.
‘Sorry,’ I said.
‘No, I’m sorry,’ he said awkwardly. ‘It’ll get easier. I’m sure it will.’
I took his hand, and we watched the river flow below us in silence.
chapter 29
‘Come to the City,’ said Michael.
I stared at his face on the floater terminal. He was in his office, or at least he’d programmed his image to make it appear that he was. I suspected that most of the City Admin now worked from their safe sealed quarters, rather than take the trek in to work and risk infection. ‘Why on earth should we come to the City?’
‘Better medical facilities here if you’re infected.’
‘You said there was no cure yet.’
‘There isn’t. But you’ve still got a better chance of survival with TotalMed here than haphazard treatment by an Outlands Meditech.’
I considered. There was something in what he said. Even though part of me would far rather have been treated by Elaine, she didn’t have the qualifications or resources of a City doctor. And what if she too were infected …
‘If we come in to the City, will you send a team out to follow up the camp’s contacts?’
‘When I can. If I can.’
I raised an eyebrow.
‘The news has got out,’ said Michael briefly. ‘People are panicking. Resources are strained at the moment, to put it mildly. The plague’s spread to the Burbs too. We should be able to get you in here safely now. In a few days … I don’t know.’
I glanced at Neil. He nodded.
‘Look, give us another forty-eight hours.’ I tried to keep my voice matter-of-fact. ‘We’ve got a diagnostic, we’ll test ourselves. If either of us shows signs of infection, we’ll come on in straight away. Otherwise, we’ll keep looking for another two days. Okay?’
‘I hope …’ began Michael, then stopped. I had never had difficulty reading his face before. But then for most of my life I’d been able to read the emotions that lay behind it too.
‘You hope what?’
‘Nothing.’ He hesitated. ‘Good luck. To both of you.’
The screen went blank. The floater headed to the nearest of the hunting camp’s most recent non-City customers.
chapter 30
The kitchen was frilly. Frilled blue tablecloth, frilled cream and blue curtains and a doily under the teapot. Even the shelves and picture frames had wooden crenellations. Through the frilly curtains hens clucked and scratched among the flowers.
‘Have another pikelet.’ Our hostess pushed the plate towards me anxiously. ‘You’ve hardly eaten anything.’
Only a buttered scone, a cream cheese and tomato sandwich and a slice of cherry cake, I thought. But it obviously meant a lot to her. She’d disappeared in the direction of the kitchen as soon as we’d arrived, to start our feast, while her husband showed us around the milking shed, the automated cheese factory and the storage rooms, and watched while we tasted eleven varieties of cheese: blue vein, brown-skin nettle, cream — all the cheeses the small farm produced except for the wattleseed cheddar.
Neither had commented on our iso skins or the fact that we put our food into the airlock by our mouths before we ate. Either they believed the skins were a new City fashion or were too impressed by a visit from Truenorms to comment.
‘Sent off the last of the wattleseed cheddar to the City day before yesterday,’ said our host apologetically. ‘One of our best sellers. Sorry you had to miss it.’
‘Do you make the deliveries yourself?’ I asked. ‘I’ve heard there’s been some … trouble in the City. They’re not letting anyone in even on temporary passes.’
Our host flushed. I’d been tactless. Neither he nor his wife would be given even a temporary pass into the City. Only Truenorms visited the city. ‘We send it in on automatic,’ he muttered. ‘No need to waste time doing it ourselves.’
Their names were Mr and Mrs Holstein. They had lived here ever since they’d married, on their forty hectares with their cows. They had two daughters, Daisybelle and Myrtle, but the girls were off in the family floater buying a new stud bull.
‘A bit of new blood,’ said Mr Holstein, and I wondered guiltily if he meant for their cows or their family.
Mrs Holstein passed me the apricot jam. I tried not to stare at her hands. They were so nearly hooves, the stumpy fingers jutting out awkwardly. But they held things well enough.
‘It’s delicious,’ I said, hoping I didn’t sound too enthusiastic or condescending. But it seemed so obvious that the Holsteins rarely entertained Truenorms, and that, for Mrs Holstein especially, this was a big occasion.
Mrs Holstein’s smile lit up her slightly hairy face. Her teeth were enormous — true cow teeth. But her jaw was human enough to allow speech. ‘It’s my mother’s recipe. Would you like a jar? We’ve got plenty.’ She gestured to a door that evidently led to the pantry. It had chickens painted on it.
‘Thank you. If you’re sure you can spare it, I’d love to.’ I glanced helplessly at Neil. The Holsteins hadn’t asked why we’d called in to see them yet. Perhaps they’d just assumed we wanted to buy cheese. I tried to act as though their hooves and cow-like faces were as invisible as our iso skins. ‘Mr Holstein, Mrs Holstein …’
‘Call me Bluebelle,’ said Mrs Holstein hopefully.
‘Bluebelle then. I’m afraid we have some bad news for you.’
‘It’s not Daisybelle and Myrtle is it?’ asked Mrs Holstein worriedly.
‘No, no, of course not. It’s just, well, there’s a new sickness about.’ (I avoided using the word ‘plague’.) ‘The roo hunters you purchase meat from had it. We’re trying to track down where it may have come from.’
‘No illness here,’ said Mr Holstein belligerently. ‘None at all.’
‘I can see that,’ I said reassuringly. ‘I just wondered … would you mind if we used a diagnostic? Please? If y
ou are infected we might be able to help. It’ll only take a minute …’
Mr Holstein glanced at his wife, his shaggy eyebrows drawn together like a brush across his face. For a moment I thought he was going to refuse, angry at the thought that their spotless farm could harbour bacteria or viruses. But he shrugged — quite a sight with the massive bull shoulders in their overalls. ‘Do what you like,’ he said gracelessly.
Neil pulled out the diagnostic. He pressed it to Mrs Holstein’s arm, then to her husband’s. He shook his head. ‘No virus. No antibodies,’ he said.
‘Told you so,’ said Mr Holstein. He still looked angry.
‘I don’t suppose,’ I ventured, ‘that you’ve heard of illness anywhere else?’
‘No,’ said Mrs Holstein awkwardly. She clearly didn’t know whether to be insulted like her husband. ‘We’d never have let Daisybelle and Myrtle go if we thought there was illness about.’
‘I’m sure they’ll be fine,’ I said soothingly. Also, I thought, maybe they had the wrong genes for the plague to infect them. Three roo hunters had delivered meat here just days before the illness struck them down. The Holsteins must have been exposed to infection. It seemed they had escaped.
Suddenly Mrs Holstein frowned. ‘You said the roo camp “had” the disease. Not has. You mean … you mean the hunters are all right now?’
Her face pleaded with me to say yes.
‘No,’ I said gently.
‘You mean they’re …’ She was reluctant to say the word ‘dead’.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘Not … not all of them?’
‘I think so. We didn’t find anyone alive. All their floaters are there too, so I don’t think anyone escaped.’
‘Maybe someone collected them to make them better …’
‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ I admitted. ‘It’s possible.’ But unlikely. The Outlands simply didn’t have large clinics. Illness was treated by Meditechs in one’s own utopia and the few illegal clinics discreetly treated one or two patients for rejuve or regeneration.
Neil went to admire the farm’s latest autofloater — it seemed only polite after their hospitality — and Mrs Holstein shyly and proudly showed me a holo of Myrtle’s fiancé.
He looked Truenorm. I wondered how he could possibly be attracted to an Animal. Then Mrs Holstein showed me a holo of Myrtle too.
Big brown eyes, slightly coarse blond hair, a too large jaw — but if I hadn’t been looking for evidence of cow genes I might not have noticed. I wondered if Myrtle had been Engineered and shorn of as many cow genes as practicable. There was no way I could ask. Or could I?
I’d never even met an Animal before I came to the Outlands, never even considered what the etiquette might be. Perhaps Mrs Holstein was longing to tell me all about the Engineering procedure that had left her daughter looking Truenorm. The only other Animals I had known well were the werewolf clan last year, the centaurs, who had too little language for etiquette to be a problem, and the Wombat. Was the fiance an Animal too, despite his appearance?
I must ask Neil about etiquette with Animals, I thought. He’ll know.
They saw us to our floater. Mr Holstein, his temper restored, pressed a giant triangle of aged cheddar on us, its rind covered in yellow wax, while Mrs Holstein offered us the apricot jam and a loaf of her bread. ‘Fresh this morning,’ she told us anxiously, as though we might think her bread wasn’t good enough for our Truenorm palates.
‘It’s wonderful,’ I said sincerely. ‘The best bread I’ve ever had.’ And watched her face flush with pleasure.
The floater rose and skimmed across the paddocks and up the hill. From here we could see the neat, well-repaired fences, the farmhouse like a child’s toy, the dairy cows that looked Truenorm from up here, apart from the pale blue of UV protection. I wondered if any of the Holstein family genes had spread into the herd, then shut my mind away from how that might have happened.
‘I wonder why they bothered to buy roo meat,’ said Neil, as the floater changed direction and headed off to the next lot of coordinates. ‘You’d think they’d have enough home-grown meat.’
I stared at him. ‘That’d be like cannibalism. I mean cows eating cow meat.’
‘I suppose,’ said Neil. ‘It’s a bit sad, isn’t it? They’re trying so very hard to be human. I wonder if they really like meat, or just eat it because they think they should?’
I couldn’t answer that one. ‘Where next?’
‘Dunghill,’ said Neil. ‘Lovely name, isn’t it?’
chapter 31
Dunghill was to the north-west of the Holsteins’. While the Holsteins had been regular purchasers of roo meat (they in turn sold the roo hunters cheese, milk, butter and fresh vegetables), Dunghill appeared only once in the roo camp’s recent records, but the date was a possible fit for the original source of infection.
We were back to the dry grasslands now, an ocean of gold, dusty at the horizon. The floater zoomed over flat plains and stunted trees. Occasionally a mob of roos bounded off as our shadow spooked them; once a herd of brown and tan shoats, the sheep–goat crosses that had gone feral long before the Declines, scattered as we approached.
Gradually the land grew hilly but even the hills looked tired, poor rocky protuberances that looked as though they didn’t have the energy to be higher. But at least the hills grew trees, not just the stunted trees of the plain but taller ones with small tight green tops, and shaggy bushes whose flowers glowed deep yellow.
‘Bio-Engineered,’ said Neil, looking at them professionally. ‘Haven’t ever seen natural flowers like that before.’
‘Look!’ I pointed down. ‘What are those?’
‘Beehives. Haven’t you ever seen beehives before?’
‘Only on the Net. They didn’t look like those.’ I peered down at the bright blue semicircles.
Neil grinned. ‘CityNets are out of date then. Beekeepers have been using these, oh, for at least fifty years. They’re UV stable, and the bees like the shape better. There are some in the south orchard at home. Haven’t you seen them?’
‘Haven’t been down that way.’ I found orchards boring, at least Neil’s sort of orchard, all tame trees in ordered rows.
‘Where did you think we got our honey then?’
‘Traded for it I suppose. Look, there are buildings.’ I glanced down at the coordinates displayed on the floater’s terminal. ‘We’re not at Dunghill yet though.’
‘Where? Oh, I see. I thought they were hills.’ Neil peered over my shoulder at the round, earth-coloured structures below, then glanced at me. ‘We should go down,’ he said.
‘Why,’ I began, then nodded. ‘Of course. They’re near enough to Dunghill to have caught the plague too, if Dunghill has it. There’s no sign of anyone down there though. Maybe the buildings are just storage huts for bee equipment.’
‘Maybe.’ Neil sounded unconvinced. He reset the program to manual. The floater landed between the hills.
This time Neil didn’t ask if I wanted to come or not.
The air smelt dusty and sweet at the same time. I wondered if the vegetation had been Engineered for maximum perfume as well as maximum nectar — or did the two go together — but I didn’t care enough to scroll through the data to find out. Bees sang around us.
‘Which building?’ I whispered, then wondered why I was whispering. But the hum of bees only accentuated the lack of other sounds.
‘That one,’ Neil pointed to the largest. ‘I bet the others are just sheds.’
There were paths to the buildings — not plasticrete or even gravel, just hard-packed dirt pressed solid by years of being walked on. A small solar roof covered a bore well with a tap next to the casing dripping into a wide dish where bees clustered and sipped. I wondered if the bore was their only source of water.
Beyond the tap a small garden wilted on the shaly soil: tall leafy plants I didn’t recognise, three tomato bushes and then the unexpected lushness of rows of corn, tall and green an
d evidently Engineered to tolerate the harsh conditions.
Close up the building looked even more like a mound of dirt. In fact it was dirt, mixed with some stabiliser and pressed over a plasticrete structure perhaps, with tussocks and grass achieving a precarious foothold in the covering of soil. There was no sign of solar paint — you can’t paint dirt, after all — or even ancient solar panels, so I presumed the inhabitants, if there were any, did without electric power apart from the solar pump for their bore.
There was no door either. Instead a badly tanned shoat skin hung from the lintel.
‘Will you yell or will I?’ I whispered.
‘Anyone there?’ Neil’s voice echoed from the hills.
The bees’ buzzing grew more frantic. But no-one answered.
‘Hello?’
Still silence.
Neil shrugged. ‘Didn’t really expect an answer,’ he said quietly. ‘If there’d been anyone to see us they’d have come out when the floater landed.’
‘Maybe they’re out tending more hives somewhere else.’
Neil shook his head. He gestured wordlessly towards one of the other earth mounds. The door on this one was wide enough to see a shabby floater in its shadows. I could just make out the plasticrete roof beams too.
Neil pulled the curtain aside.
The smell struck me first — a mix of sweetness and decay. Then my eyes adjusted to the dimness.
One large room, domed ceiling, roughly rounded walls, the dirt evidently packed hard and sealed with something waterproof but colourless, so the walls were still their original orange-grey.
A table to one side, near the door, with a many branched candlestick, the candles melted into stalagmites of wax on the table. Rough pottery bowls, one containing honeycomb where a few stray bees busily sucked. A slab-like loaf of corn bread with slices cut from one end. A knife, and two clay beakers, the same colour as the soil and house.
A bookcase stood next to the table. There were Realbooks too, not modern synthies with feelie and music additions. The covers looked faded and worn. I thought of my own books at home. I’d grown fond of Realbooks during the time I wasn’t able to receive Virtuals or the subtitles on vid.
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