‘Well, that too. But something else as well.’
‘Our modifications?’
She nodded. ‘Yes. But not just the fact that we are modified—or that we’re both barred from the City. The main thing you and I have in common is that our modifications frighten the City because they instinctively realise we are superior to them. They are frightened of our ability.’
I shrugged. Suddenly she didn’t seem to be flattering me at all, or trying to ingratiate herself by showing that we were sisters under our skin, but perfectly sincere. ‘The reason they’re frightened doesn’t really change our situation, does it?’
‘Perhaps not.’ Eleanor was silent for a moment. ‘That’s what I have dedicated my life to, you see,’ she said. ‘Showing the City that it needs me. Needs people like my family, like you. People who are different. That wolf genes make us more able, not less. It’s what you should be fighting for too.’
I didn’t answer. She must have read something in my expression though, because she said more gently. ‘The City needs you too. Why do you think Michael has asked you to do this? Not just as a favour to me. He asked you because he realises you can be useful to him. In three years, five at the most, you’ll be like me…employed by the City, but not part of it. Unless you prove yourself so indispensable that if you threaten to withdraw your services they will have to—have to—give in to you.’
‘You mean you intend to blackmail them into letting your family live in the City? They’ll never do that!’
She smiled. It was a close-lipped smile. I wondered if she had practised smiling so those too-wide teeth didn’t show. ‘No, I’m realistic. There is no point being ambitious if it’s an unrealisable ambition. My immediate aim is simply to be allowed into the City in person on a permanent visa—a precedent, if you like—and one or two of my children to be allowed to use their Virtual nets to study there. Sound possible?’
‘Perhaps,’ I said. The more I thought about it the more possible it seemed. ‘I was let in on a temporary visa last year.’
Eleanor answered, ‘I know.’
And, I thought, the presence of modified students—even if their presence was only Virtual—would get the other students in their course used to working with the modified. I was sure Eleanor would choose the courses well too. Her children would be studying and making friends with the future leaders of the City. Eleanor was no fool.
She smiled at me. ‘No, I’m no fool,’ she said.
I blinked. She laughed delightedly. ‘I read it in your face. And in your smell. Another something from the wolf genes. Often you can tell as much from someone’s smell as from their words—hate, love, fear, envy, admiration. A lot of the scent clues are lost in Virtual of course—the receptors are sensitive enough to satisfy human noses. Not nearly enough for a wolf. A pity—scent is useful. It helps to be able to read your opponent, without them realising what you’ve done. But you and I aren’t opponents, are we?’ She smiled. ‘Despite the fact that we are both dominant females, who like to be…will you be insulted if I say “top dog”?’
It was impossible not to smile back. ‘I’m not insulted.’
‘Then you’ll help us?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ll help.’
She stood up slowly. ‘Well then, if you’ll excuse me, I need a rest before dinner.’ She grinned. ‘There are drawbacks to having kids, no matter what I said earlier. Pregnancy is one of them. I’ll get someone to show you to your room.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I’ll see you at dinner then. It’s in the living room at seven.’ I heard the unspoken word ‘promptly’. ‘And breakfast is at 6 a.m. in the kitchen.’
‘6 a.m.!’
She laughed. ‘You can’t keep the cubs in bed once it’s light! I’d like to say politely, do sleep as long as you like. But the cubs make so much noise…’ She shrugged that not-quite-human shrug. ‘You know what children are like. Or perhaps you don’t. Well, you will by tomorrow lunch time.’
Her smile was really very charming. ‘I’ll see you soon. Perhaps you’d like a nap too. You’ll find we werewolves have the most comfortable beds.’
Chapter 11
The curving staircase had been shaped as the Tree grew. Each stair was wide but almost imperceptibly uneven. I could see the veins of the Tree on either side, the grain of the wood, the striations that said this wood was still alive.
The Tree narrowed as I climbed. What had Eleanor said? The second branch…the first was a rounded hollow on my right, the low, brown corridor leading to three or four gaping shadows that must be rooms. Werewolves, I remembered, didn’t like doors.
The second branch seemed to be the last of the Engineered living space, as the stairs stopped there. I imagined the great height of the Tree above me, swaying above the valley.
I stepped along the corridor. No attempt had been made here to do more than make the floor roughly even. I had to be careful I didn’t trip on gnarls and twists of wood.
The first room…and yes, as Eleanor promised, it did have a door. It even had a doorhandle. Doors and handles for those with hands, I thought, and the floor below for paws…
Something—someone scurried behind me. I turned to see one of the cubs, Bonnie? No, Connie, scrambling up the stairs on all fours with her ball in her mouth. She stood up hurriedly and removed it. ‘Mummy said I was to show you to your room! But you found it!’
She grinned at me. I had to resist scratching her ears. Cubs were cuter than kids. ‘I found it,’ I agreed. ‘But thanks anyway.’
She raced down the stairs again, this time on two legs, throwing the ball into the air as she went. I wondered if she caught it with paws or mouth or both…
As I opened the door, I could hear the happy yelps of cubs playing catch below.
Chapter 12
We ate in the cavernous living room, at the low table by the unnecessary fire. The room was still dim; neither the firelight nor the round, moon-like lamps above us seemed to do more than make the shadows darker as they danced about the walls. Wolves, I assumed, had better night vision than human beings. Or maybe they liked the leaping shadows.
Dinner was meat, as Yorik had promised. A giant haunch of roasted venison, dripping bloody juices onto its platter, with potatoes and pumpkin around it, but there was a salad on the table too, and even bread and butter plates each with its neat hot roll. But somehow though, they were all subordinate to that lovely glistening roast.
I didn’t speak much. I listened and I watched and saw Eleanor watching me watch, with the faint half smile that meant she knew just what I was doing and how and why.
The cubs chattered about their lessons on NetSchool, and Great Uncle Rex, an elderly charmer with grey hair swept back in a pony tail, told me all about a walk to the waterfall I might enjoy if I cared to take a stroll in the moonlight after dinner.
And Emerald limped silently from place to place, serving more slices of meat (it seemed no one except Eleanor and I really wanted more pumpkin or potatoes). Uncle Dusty concentrated on his dinner, or rather on manipulating his paws to cut up his meat and place it on his fork, till Eleanor leant over and cut it for him.
Which told me two things. This happy human dinner table was for my benefit—Dusty wasn’t used to cutlery. And secondly, they rarely had visitors for a formal dinner, or someone would have cut his meat up for him before it was served.
I gazed around the table. In one more generation, or two perhaps, the family might be human again—in appearance, at any rate. Assuming, I added in my mind, that Rusty also looked human. It was his genes as well as Eleanor’s, after all, that were shaping the family now.
‘And it’s almost a full moon, too. You should see the moonlight on the water.’ Great Uncle Rex laid an arthritic paw on my knee.
I blinked.
Was an elderly werewolf really trying to seduce me? But only one pair ever mated at a time…
But these weren’t really wolves, were they? They were human too.
I
glanced at Eleanor. She laid her knife and fork elegantly on her plate. ‘Darling Uncle Rex,’ she said. ‘She’s already mated! To a lovely young man called Neil. At least I assume he’s lovely. And there is an interesting man called Michael too, in case she ever decides to change her mind.’
‘There is nothing between me and Michael,’ I said too quickly.
‘No? I just got the impression…never mind. I am sure, though, that you don’t want a walk in the moonlight with Uncle Rex.’
‘I…I am rather tired,’ I said.
‘Exactly.’ Eleanor smiled at Uncle Rex. ‘Don’t tempt her, darling. We really mustn’t seduce our guests.’
As though I could have found Rex attractive. I caught Eleanor’s eye. No, she hadn’t for one moment thought he might seduce me, but Rex was digging into his dinner contentedly, a small smile on his face. Management, I thought. She knows how to manage people well.
It was the moon that woke me. It shone through the curtainless window, a clear butter yellow now, its fullness only reduced by a tiny slice off the top.
I rolled away from its brightness and shut my eyes firmly again. Eleanor was correct. It was a comfortable bed, wide and very soft, though lower than my bed at home. The pillows were soft too. It was still hard to escape the feeling that this was a bed you turned round and round on until you’d stomped out a comfortable nest, then flopped down and curled up in its softness, rather than stretching out neatly along its length.
Despite the comfort though, I couldn’t sleep. Maybe it was indigestion. The meat had been richer—and bloodier—than I was used to and even the roast vegetables had a certain meaty quality. Perhaps I missed Neil, the wide comfort of the bed only emphasising its emptiness. Or maybe…
It had been the moonlight that had woken me, hadn’t it?
I slid out of bed and slipped on a dressing gown. I had a sudden image of Eleanor, naked and furry in her bed. I doubted that Eleanor ever wore a dressing gown.
Did she and Rusty sleep alone, as a Truenorm couple might do? Or did the ‘cubs’ sleep with them, a warm friendly wolf-like mass of arms and legs and furry ears. Or—the thought suddenly struck me—perhaps the whole clan slept together by the light of the fire downstairs or in another room with soft floors and cushions and a fire for light and comfort.
The moon was bright enough to make out the main features of the garden—tall trees, squat trees, the green of the grass almost purple now. Night colours are different from those of daylight, but they are colours none the less, not simply shades of black and grey.
No, it hadn’t been the moonlight that woke me. Now I was awake, I could remember the sound of a door banging below my room. A deeper shadow moved in the dappled shadows of the Tree.
Someone was out there in the night.
I was half tempted to call out ‘Hey!’ or ‘Hello’ or simply ‘What are you doing?’ But somehow the very silence of the night stopped me. It was as though the gold and black of night were smiling at me, just like Eleanor, all red and black, had smiled at me before. You are a creature of daylight, the night whispered. This is not your time. Be still.
The shadow moved again. A creature on all fours, shaggy and wolf-like. The face lifted up into the light and I saw that it was human too.
Werewolf. I don’t think I had really understood the term before. Not with my heart, not in the instinctive depths where most emotion still comes from.
I felt the hairs on the back of my neck shiver, my hands stiffen slightly as though to fight. I willed them to relax.
The figure below had stopped. It sat on its haunches, facing away from me, its head on one side as though considering.
What was it thinking? Was it just enjoying the moonlight? Or was it wondering which ‘topia to lope to next, which throat to rip out, whose life to tear from their body?
For a moment I frantically considered throwing my clothes on and padding down the stairs and outside, following it into the darkness and across the countryside to catch it in the act.
But the whole idea was ridiculous. I was in a house of werewolves. They would hear me before I was halfway down the stairs, no matter how quiet I tried to be. The first wandering breeze would carry my scent to my quarry in the moonlight. Nor was there any way I could keep up with whoever it was down there—my two legs versus their four.
No. If the wolf below me slipped away into the darkness all I could do would be to call Eleanor so we could face the culprit together when they came home, blood around their mouth perhaps or other stains on their fur. Perhaps I should ask Eleanor to open the Link to Black Stump for me too, so I could warn them that…
That what? That a perfectly innocent neighbour was taking a run in the moonlight? Suddenly I realised that I too had been doing exactly what Black Stump had warned me all their neighbours—the bigots at Nearer to Heaven, the narrow minds at the Patriach’s—had done. I was letting my prejudices rule my mind. Not even my own prejudices, but lingering racial memories that screamed ‘Beware the semi-human! Beware the animal that smiles into the night!’
The members of this family were not werewolves, even though Eleanor might mockingly use the term. They were different, modified, as I was modified. Part wolf, yes, but that should make them gentler than humanity, not crueller…
The creature below me lifted his head. The sudden noise raised the hairs on my neck again, even as it reassured my mind.
I took off my dressing gown and crept into the too-soft bed again. There was nothing to worry about. No one in the Tree even seemed to stir at the sound.
It was only Uncle Dusty, howling at the moon.
Chapter 13
Breakfast was meat. Cooked meat, as at dinner, but still meat. A pot of porridge sat on the table, but no one seemed interested in it, except me.
We sat at another low table in the kitchen this time. Apart from the table the kitchen was an almost human room, with its benches and Ultrawave. On a small shelf above the bench a hologram of the cubs grinned and wriggled on the sofa, just like the baby holo of Neil with his first apple tree that Elaine kept on her desk.
But this room had a fireplace too, the Truewood charred and smoky around it. Even on this warm morning the hot coals snickered and flared and, as Emerald limped out to fetch the milk, I caught a glimpse of the long room beyond which evidently served as both commercial cool room and kitchen larder.
Long headless bodies of what I assumed—hoped—were deer hung from metal hooks in the ceiling, then thankfully the door shut itself again as Aunt Emerald limped back in to the room, carrying the milk in a tall jug and a tray of chops.
The cubs sat on cushions and wriggled their noses into their milk; apart from Dusty, we adults sat on stoollike low chairs.
‘How many chops?’ Aunt Emerald smiled above me, the bloody tray in her hands.
‘Er…just one. Thank you.’
‘Are you sure? You’re going to have a busy day…Bonnie, Johnnie you stop that at once!’
The cubs ignored her.
‘No really. Just the one.’ I was tempted to say, the cereal is plenty, but was afraid it would seem wimpish in this house of meat.
‘Six for me,’ growled Uncle Dusty beside me. He moved even more stiffly today after his moonlight singsong. He saw me looking—or perhaps he smelled my emotions—because he smiled endearingly and said, ‘Arthritis! Ten years ago I’d have been prowling through the valley in the moonlight. Now a howl in the night is about all that I can manage.’
Aunt Emerald sniffed. ‘You know Eleanor has forbidden any prowling in the moonlight till the murderer is caught. You’ll get yourself shot. And you’ll have three chops as you always do. Six! My word, the way some people fancy themselves.’
Dusty glanced at me. He lifted his chin. His ears pricked up. ‘If I say six, woman, then I mean…’
‘Good morning everyone!’ Eleanor strode into the room. Again I was struck by her elegance, her confidence, even with the bulge of pregnancy. I wondered suddenly how many cubs she carried. Three a
gain? Wolves had multiple nipples to feed their young…
I gazed at her breasts automatically. Two breasts, not six to feed a litter of three. I blushed, and looked up to see Dusty watching me with genuine anger, Eleanor with amusement, and Emerald with something too hard to define.
Then the tableau was broken. Eleanor bent down to kiss the cubs, who straightened their backs and their bowls. She kissed Dusty’s cheek, and his confrontational chin dropped and his ears seemed to droop as well.
‘Bonnie, darling, porridge first then chops. No, don’t argue. No chops till you’ve had your porridge, no play till you’ve had your chops. Johnnie, we eat our meat cooked, don’t we? Emerald, sweet, where is the orange juice?’
‘I’m just about to put it out.’ Emerald placed the jug on the table (it was genuine stuff, I noticed, not drypak; Rusty must trade for oranges when he did the venison run) then limped over to the fire and picked up a plate of chops. She began to thread several onto a long metal pole across the fireplace. It was already laden, the fresh fat spluttered on the coals below and a faint haze of smoke filled the kitchen.
I stood up. ‘Can I give you a hand?’
‘Sit down!’ Eleanor slid into the seat beside me. She was wearing something long, velvety and dark green this morning. The colour suited her. ‘Emerald is quite capable. Aren’t you, darling?’
Emerald’s smile, showed her long teeth. ‘Very capable,’ she said, but she said it to Eleanor, not me.
Eleanor held her gaze for perhaps a moment too long. Emerald’s eyes dropped back to the chops. Eleanor turned to me.
‘Did you sleep well?’ she enquired.
‘Perfectly,’ I lied.
Eleanor’s eyes ran over my face—undoubtedly slightly hollow-eyed. But she said nothing. ‘Pass me the porridge, darling,’ she said to Dusty. Then to me. ‘Did his song wake you last night? I suppose it’s not what you’re used to.’
‘Not exactly,’ I admitted.
Dusty looked embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
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