Flesh and Blood

by French, Jackie

  I pulsed myself into Virtual again, then our home system with its Links to the utopia’s Net. Yes, it was there — an image from the Green Trees Clinic, sent the day before. I’d hoped there would be one, but couldn’t ask and alert the City.

  It was only a nanosecond of image: Theo must have put the terminal on wide scan so that thousands of images would have been taken from a thousand comsigs — too many places for the City to investigate each one. But even a nanosecond was enough.

  It must have been taken in daytime — the light out the window matched the daylight from my Virtual window in the City. I had always kept my window Virtuals linked to Realtime. Atavistic, Michael had said. He lived in daylight all the time.

  Leaf shadows from the giant oaks that shielded the Clinic from too much satellite surveillance; the sound of turkeys; the beep of the equipment.

  She was sleeping. She looked like Mel, but not the Mel I’d known, not the Mel I’d just Linked off. This was an older Mel, her face marked by that instant of brainwipe horror, by the two lost years since, by the operation. Even if you don’t feel pain, it marks you.

  The screens by her bedside showed an even pulse, even transpiration, even heartwaves, electrolyte balance — the whole host of them were normal. But the brain waves showed something that even I could interpret.

  Dreams.

  I smiled at her. There was life there, where there hadn’t been before.

  ‘I love you,’ I said.

  Then I pulsed my Virtual self to Neil.

  chapter 49

  He was at the terminal, Linked. His face was pale, with the two lines on his forehead that meant he had a headache. I stroked his back, then kissed the bare skin of his neck.

  ‘It’s me,’ I said. ‘Virtual me anyway.’

  He came out of Link slowly and blinked at me. ‘I hate this,’ he said. ‘The total Link. I mean I keep trying, but it’s as though the data’s going to overpower me.’

  ‘Then stop doing it. Damn Virtual anyway.’ I kissed him again, lightly on the lips. ‘Be back in a minute.’ I cut the Link and I was out of Virtual, sitting by the terminal in my apartment. I stood up and crossed to the door.

  It wouldn’t open. I Linked again.

  ‘Virtual Michael three spea——’

  ‘I want this door open. Now.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘No buts. I’m immune. Neil’s immune. Give me the access codes to all doors between us. Now!’

  His image froze. This was more than Virtual Michael three could deal with. Then the face on the screen flickered and it was Michael, the RealMichael, although he didn’t announce himself.

  He said, ‘Okay, Danny. You’ve got it.’

  ‘The door co——’ I began, then stopped as they pulsed into my head. ‘What about Elaine?’

  ‘She’ll be here in two days’ time. She wants to keep working as long as she can.’ There was a trace of admiration in Michael’s voice.

  ‘Is Theo coming too?’ Theo had never had a temp pass to the City nor were his specs available on any Net the City might access. Vampires aren’t a Proclaimed modification in the City simply because no-one has ever thought of trying to get one passed.

  But neither the City nor Michael knew that Theo was a vampire.

  ‘He’s coming too.’

  I nodded. I wasn’t going to say ‘thank you. It was no more than our due.

  ‘Dan?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I should have told you that you were free to see Neil before. Put it down to jealousy. No.’ He cut me off before I could speak. ‘I don’t mean I’m jealous of you and him. I am, but it’s not that. I’m jealous that you share at least a hint of what we had. I’m jealous …’ He shut his eyes. ‘Sometimes … sometimes I think I can’t stand it any more. Pretending I am happy as Tree.’

  ‘Then take restoration.’

  ‘No. One day, when this is over, they’ll banish you again.’

  I nodded. I’d accepted the likelihood.

  ‘It’s either that or make the modification compulsory. The Forest are just too good for others to compete with on anything like equal terms. Which means if I accept restoration I’m exiled, like you.’

  ‘Exile’s not so bad, Michael. In fact it’s bloody good.’

  ‘For you. Not for me. I love the City, Danny. I love its complexity, its challenges. I want to be the one who guides it, changes it for the next hundred years at least.’ He met my eyes. ‘It’s my life.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Michael.’

  ‘Yes. Well. This isn’t getting work done.’ He cut the Link suddenly. I opened the door, crossed the anteroom and opened the door to the next apartment.

  ‘Hi,’ I said. ‘It’s me. Real me, finally. There’s something you need to know.’

  chapter 50

  It seemed strange to be in bed with silence around us. No birds, no possums in the roof. But not true silence, of course. Air-conditioning is never totally silent and I suppose pipes have gurgled since the first water pipe back in ancient Mesopotamia.

  ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ said Neil, stroking my shoulder idly.

  ‘Yes it does. We’re twin souls, so our immune systems match. I’m immune, you’re immune.’

  Neil snorted.

  ‘You’ve no romance,’ I said.

  ‘Romance be blowed. It’s too big a coincidence.’

  ‘I know.’ I cuddled closer to him. No Virtual ever quite gets it right, the full range of subtle smells on the skin.

  ‘You know what the obvious answer is, don’t you?’

  I spoke quickly, before he could mention that we had both been treated by Dr Meredith at Green Trees. ‘Yes. Don’t say anything more. They’ll be listening. We’ve been recorded since we came here.’

  And watched too, I thought, but he didn’t need to know that. I was used to it — I’d grown up in a creche, where you take surveillance for granted, and being part of the Forest was pretty much to have your whole life accessible too, except when you took deliberate precautions to Link off and we rarely bothered with that. But having someone monitor us making love would bother Neil.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I forgot you wouldn’t know.’

  I looked up to the ceiling as I spoke, though the cameras were probably in several places around the walls. ‘So now you know that we know that you know that we have some idea about how we got our immunity …’

  I immediately felt a pulse in my mind. Michael’s comsig. I shoved it over to my Virtual.

  So he had been watching me all the time. We had to get out of here, before they questioned or probed us. We owed that much to Dr Meredith. Whatever she had done to us — however she had made us immune — we couldn’t bring the City down on her and her family.

  We also — somehow — had to find out what she’d done and if it could be done to others.

  A call any longer than a nanosecond could be traced. Which meant we had to get to Green Trees without the City knowing. Which was impossible as satellite could trace us, a floater and any Link we made. Neil looked at me questioningly. I winked at him, I hoped too subtly for any camera to pick up, then lay back beside him to think.

  chapter 51

  It had to be done quickly. Any moment now a pulse might seek out the sleep centres in our brains, so we could be probed while we slept. Or perhaps there was some way to make us believe, utterly and totally, that what the City wanted was right.

  And people were dying.

  I could, of course, just ask Michael to let us go. But he wouldn’t. Michael was a friend, but he had other loyalties too. Which was the trouble. He would do what he could for us but he wanted to save the world — his world — too.

  It is impossible to break in to the City. It’s been that way since the Declines. Which means it’s impossible to break out too.

  But surely something must leave the City? Something we could hide in? The City still received deliveries. But while this crisis continued they’d all be automated, the
floaters sterilised before they left the City to return to the Outlands, a process that would kill us as well as viruses. Anyway, if I tried accessing City records to check the floater bays I’d be discovered in a blink of an electrode.

  No, nothing left the City alive.

  Nothing.

  And suddenly I had it.

  Nothing. We had to turn ourselves into nothing.

  Speed, that’s what I had that no Tree in the City could match. And programming experience. No-one could create a Virtual like me. And no-one would suspect what I planned to do, as no-one had ever thought to do it before, maybe because no-one had ever thought it possible.

  Maybe it was impossible. But if anyone could do it, it was me. It was lucky, I thought, that private thoughts need not be modest.

  Okay, where to start? Shit, shit, shit, shit … there’d be a million problems. But I could face those as they came. The beauty of Virtual programming is that you can do it anywhere, even as you run.

  I smiled at Neil, brushed my hair from my eyes, I hoped seductively, and rolled on top of him. I bent my mouth to his ear and breathed, ‘We’re leaving. Don’t let them know.’

  Clever man. Lovely man. He rolled me over again and kissed me, then rolled off the bed and said, ‘I’m hungry. Do you think we could have some proper food again this time?’

  I grinned at him. ‘Sick of ancient Chinese banquets?’

  ‘I,’ said Neil, ‘am not ancient Chinese.’ He pulled his unisuit on casually and pushed his feet into his trakbaks. ‘Will you call it up or will I?’

  Wonderful man. I hadn’t thought of that. The perfect cover. But then my last five minutes had been taken up with precious nanoseconds of programming.

  ‘You do it. Just add some Realfruit for me.’

  I slid into my own clothes, programming again as I did so. Michael would know I’d done something, of course. But he wouldn’t be able to follow it — not Michael the Tree. It would take hours for anyone to follow it. And with luck we’d be gone.

  A chime sounded in the food delivery chute. I walked out to the kitchen, opened the hatch, then walked back into the living room.

  ‘Give me a kiss first,’ I said and pressed my body to Neil’s.

  One second, two … this had to be timed exactly right.

  I stepped away, pulling Neil with me. Behind us Virtual Neil and Virtual Danielle still embraced. But Neil and I — I hoped — had vanished, as I programmed over us.

  I nodded at Neil. His eyes were wide. I took his hand and opened the door to the anteroom.

  No-one there. For a heart-stopping second I’d thought they might have put a Realguard onto us. Perhaps that would come. But not yet.

  Through the anteroom. I opened the door to the corridor.

  No-one walked down corridors. You called a floater or took the public trak.

  I shut the door behind us. Neil raised an eyebrow as though to say, how the hell can we get away with this.

  I tried to smile at him encouragingly. It didn’t work. I was too scared. Too preoccupied. Even as we walked I had to keep the illusion going, had to keep the Virtual Neil, the Virtual Danielle, behaving naturally in the apartment.

  Even more importantly, I had to program around where we were as well.

  How do you hide two people?

  You program up nothingness to take their place. Or not really nothingness — you take images of what should be there and relay them back.

  No, it wasn’t easy. It was the most difficult thing I had ever done in my life and it stretched me to the limit.

  I knew, in fact, that even I couldn’t do this perfectly. I had to assume that the surveillance of the corridors was perfunctory, that no-one was looking closely — or no program was looking closely — at a wall that didn’t quite match a ceiling, or a shadow in slightly the wrong place.

  When they studied the records later they’d see where we had gone. But just at the moment the illusion seemed to be working.

  A floater headed towards us. For a moment I tensed, wondering if it held guards. We stood to one side and it passed us in a puff of warm air and was gone.

  It was hot in the corridor. Why air-condition corridors when floaters are air-conditioned?

  Back in the apartment Virtual Danielle logged onto the Net again; my Links would be taken for hers. Let them think I was trying to find a way out. Virtual Neil was having a nap, which left me free to focus on other things. It’s easy to set up a program to imitate someone sleeping. Breathe for ninety seconds, snore and turn, repeat …

  The corridor forked. I called up the map briefly, pulled Neil down the right-hand fork. I estimated it would take us just under an hour to get to the gates. An hour is a long time to keep up double illusions.

  Michael’s comsig pulsed in my head. I hesitated. It would look suspicious if I didn’t answer it. But there was no way I could keep up the illusions and talk to him and project the image of my Virtual onto his screen.

  Impossible. I did it anyway.

  ‘Michael?’

  ‘You know why I’m calling.’

  I hoped I did. I truly hoped I did.

  ‘Yes. But I can’t give you an answer now. Give me an hour Michael, that’s all I ask. Just an hour.’

  ‘And you’ll let me know what you and Neil were referring to then?’

  Too suspicious if I said yes. ‘I don’t know. Maybe. I need to be sure of something first.’

  ‘An hour,’ he said. He hesitated. ‘Danny … do you really think you might have an answer to all this?’

  ‘I think so,’ I said truthfully. ‘My God, I hope so. But I have to think it through. Just give me time.’

  He looked at me oddly. I realised I’d made a mistake. It would have to be a very complex question indeed for me to need a whole hour to explore it and Michael knew it. But he just said, ‘An hour then. But call me sooner, if you can.’

  ‘I will.’ I cut the Link.

  An elevator shaft. Only floaters can get down elevator shafts. But there are always maintenance stairs next to them. Any creche kid knows these things. Not all my exploring had been done in Virtual.

  Down the stairs and down another set. This wasn’t the way we’d come. It was shorter; more direct, I hoped.

  Time, time, time. Time to get out of here. Time to do what we had to do before Elaine was due to come to the City, time to get back here to give her the antibodies she needed.

  Not for the first time I wished I could speed up my life as fast as I could speed up Virtual.

  Back in the apartment Virtual Danielle still sat at the terminal. I scanned the anteroom briefly.

  There were two guards wearing white uniforms of the City.

  I hadn’t seen guards since I’d been banished. The City doesn’t flaunt the people who keep control. Nor had these two interrupted whatever was going on in the apartment. They just sat on the sofa, the terminals in their hands flickering as our images were transmitted from the apartment.

  My first feeling was terror. Michael suspected I planned to escape. The second was reassurance. He didn’t know we’d left.

  I wondered if we should start running. But running makes noise. I couldn’t cover the noise; couldn’t risk that we might be heard.

  Another corridor. More floaters, one every few minutes now. At least the plague had thinned the traffic, otherwise it would have slowed us enormously if we’d had to step back more often.

  One of the guards back in the anteroom said something to the other. Michael’s image flashed onto their screens.

  ‘Shit,’ I muttered.

  Neil glanced at me, but said nothing.

  Another five-hundred metres. We should have been able to see the door by now.

  Nothing. I wondered desperately if we’d gone the wrong way, were on the wrong level. Then the corridor curved slightly and I saw the square of light that was the door to the outside.

  Suddenly the Link with the Virtuals back at the apartment snapped. I tried to Link it back. It was gone.

 
; Michael knew we were gone then. No point tracking us when all they had to do was monitor the doors so we couldn’t escape. I had hoped that the doors too would be fooled by my illusion. They would let us through because they’d see no-one to block. I had to hope that Michael still hadn’t realised how I’d got us away.

  I didn’t bother telling Neil what had happened. I just ran, felt Neil break into a run beside me.

  No, they hadn’t worked out how I’d done it yet. Twenty more steps, ten, three, one, and we were through the doors, into the sunlight.

  Not safe yet, not by any means. They’d be behind us; might even assume that as they couldn’t see us we were already far from the City. We had to …

  ‘No,’ whispered Neil. And then again, ‘No!’

  They were coming up the ramp. Women in grubby unisuits. Children. Men. The people of the Burbs.

  No, not the people, not the desperate, frightened people who had chased us before. These were expressionless, or rather there was one expression. Anger. These were the dead, who had died and walked again.

  What is your last emotion when you die, outcast from the City that has let you work there but never accepted you as part of it? That has left you to die and your children to die, with no help or comfort?

  Anger is far too cool a word for it.

  The zombies were heading for the door.

  They’d be stopped before they entered the City of course. The City’s defences would hold. We could either run back into the City or face the zombies, let them tear us to pieces because anger was all they felt, all they could feel, and we would be all they could vent their fury on. And they would see us. I couldn’t possibly maintain the illusion out here.

  I took Neil’s hand. There was no choice. None at all. If we were dead we could help no-one. Everyone depending on us would die. We had to go back. And then it hit me.

  I had been thinking of the crowd just as automatons, but they were City workers too. They’d be chipped, even the children would be chipped, because without a microchip you can’t Link into SchoolNet, can’t have your health scans.

  We were still close enough for me to use the power of the City terminals.