‘Is that what it is? Anyway, I thought it was one of them. I thought you’d work it out as soon as you spoke to them and that would be that.’
‘But if you thought you knew the guilty ones, why call me in?’
Michael met my eyes again almost, if it hadn’t been Michael, I would have said imploringly. But Michael wasn’t the sort of person to implore.
‘So we could work together,’ he said. ‘Share at least…something. Get back just a little of what we had. Convince you to work as a consultant—we could have set up a Virtual system like Eleanor’s.’
Eleanor was right, I thought.
‘Michael.’ I tried to find the words. ‘I’m happy now.’
‘Happy? In a backwater Outland ‘topia designing play beaches with a tenth of your brain and a hundredth of your creativity?’
‘Maybe not fulfilled,’ I said. ‘But I am happy. And fulfillment—it’ll come. The beach is just a start. I’ll find another niche, other ways to create. Just give me time.’
‘You can have it all now,’ said Michael. ‘Accept re-engineering. Come back to the City. Create your Realities properly again.’
‘What? And give up half my brain? No. I made that decision when I thought I’d have nothing. Now I have…I have a life I love, and friends and Neil. And I make the same decision now.’
Michael moved closer to the bed. ‘Then do what Eleanor does—consult.’
‘Back to the City in Virtual? Michael, you forget, I can’t Link like Eleanor.’
‘You don’t have to. It can be done on manual. All right, it’d take a while to set up, but the earliest Virtuals were done manually anyway, before Linkage was even prototyped. We can still Link you in. There are always admin projects that need Virtual engineers.’
I hesitated. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps I could even do my old work again, once I was able to manipulate the Linkages. The images might not be quite as vivid as when I had my old abilities; I might lose most of the subliminals; I’d be slower, infinitely slower with everything I had to download, But I could work around that. Beethoven created music when he was deaf, when all he had were the notes that lingered in his mind. Surely I could do the same, and the images I created would be vivid for others, even if most of their effect was hidden from me.
Possibly. Probably. All at once I discovered I didn’t care if it were possible or not. I didn’t want it. I’d tasted reality and found it good. I had outgrown the Virtual world. Whatever I did now would be RealLife.
‘Thank you, Michael,’ I said gently. ‘But no thank you too.’
‘It would mean we could work together.’ He almost sounded desperate now.
‘No. I’m sorry. No.’
‘Well.’ He sat there, looking at me, and I stared back at him, examining every feature, comparing it to the man I’d known. He was the same: older, tireder, the lines of strain deeper round his eyes, but he was still Michael. Still the child I’d grown up with, the boy I’d played with, the youth I’d loved, the friend…
‘Still friends though, Michael,’ I said. ‘Not lovers any more. No longer Forest together. Not even work mates. But still friends.’
‘Friends,’ said Michael, as though he were tasting the word.
‘Friendship’s pretty good,’ I said. ‘Even if you have to be a Tree, not a Forest, friendship is pretty good.’
‘Maybe I should try it,’ said Michael lightly. Michael, who had lost the Forest, just like me. But I had Neil and all at Faith Hope and Charity and Black Stump. Who had Michael replaced the Forest with? None of us had any experience of normal friendship. It had taken me months to learn and I was still feeling my way.
‘Friendship is good,’ I repeated. ‘It’s worth working at, Michael. Really it is.’ I smiled, though it hurt the muscles in my neck. ‘You might even make friends with Neil.’
‘I wouldn’t bet on it,’ said Michael. ‘I think he wants to spray me with biocide, or whatever apple growers do with their pests.’
‘Integrated pest management,’ I said. ‘I’m sure Neil can fit you in.’
‘I might,’ said Neil, from the door. ‘Sorry, I just heard that last bit,’ he said.
I glanced at him and found that raising an eyebrow didn’t hurt. Neil must have been listening at the door. Rusty guarded his territory and I was Neil’s, and manners are irrelevant when you protect your own.
I held out my hand and Neil took it. His fingers were warm. Neil’s fingers were always warm. ‘Let’s go home,’ I said. ‘Please. Take me home.’
Chapter 38
We opened my beach on a day bright with sunlight and excitement a month later. There were no signs of ethereal Water Sprites wafting through the waves. I wondered if Neil knew about them? There was no need, I thought, to tell him if he didn’t.
The gulls screamed and rolled in the wind, and no one on the beach would ever have guessed they were Virtual, unless like me they had been part of their programming and creation.
The far horizon was a hologram, and the scent of sea and seaweed and the breath of ozone were transmitted subliminals that I alone was shut off from and had to assume were working to plan.
But the shadows were real as they crept between trees, and the laughter and excitement as the crowd waited for me to turn on the waves.
I stood under the trees, with Neil at my side. ‘Ready?’ I asked Theo. I had asked him to press the symbolic switch, but he had insisted it be me.
‘Ready,’ said Theo. He seemed to be enjoying himself, his sallow wrinkled face lit with the first wholehearted pleasure I had seen him show for months.
I leant down and pressed the bulge on the tree. We had decided that the controls should be here by the beach, in case anyone got into trouble and the waves needed to be switched off.
The flat sea shivered. The first wave bulged, then lapped tentatively at the shore. Then suddenly the foreshore was filled with waves, each one leaping up as though rolling was contagious—great arches splashing satisfactorily onto the sand, creeping up towards the crowd then slithering back.
The kids shrieked; the adults yelled; Neil hugged me and Theo watched it all with that pure and thorough happiness.
‘Going to swim?’ asked Elaine, as the first kids splashed into the waves.
I shook my head. ‘Neil and I have been testing the blasted thing all week. Give me a few days and I’ll be able to try it simply for pleasure and stop calculating the timing and strength of each wave. But not today.’
‘It’s wonderful,’ said Neil. ‘Just what a beach should be, but no undertows or jellyfish, no rips or danger.’
‘No danger at all,’ I said. ‘If anyone is in trouble out there the sea will register their pulse rate. The waves will stop and an alarm will sound up in the office and the labs.’
‘What if someone with high blood pressure goes surfing?’ asked Theo curiously. ‘Won’t the sensors stop the waves then too?’
I grinned up at him. ‘Probably. A good warning to go to Elaine for a check up.’
‘Thank you,’ said Elaine dryly. ‘Maybe you could set up something so the waves can give vaccinations too.’
‘A shark,’ suggested Theo, ‘with hypodermic teeth. Every time it bites someone they get their six-in-one.’
‘Nah,’ said Neil. ‘The fastest swimmers wouldn’t get chomped and the slow ones would get an overdose. What we really need is…’
Someone screamed out in the water. There was a second shriek, and then another. Something reared out of the water, out beyond the waves.
‘What the…?’ said Theo, gazing out to sea.
‘An opening treat,’ I said. ‘Giant octopus.’
Theo laughed. ‘Perfect,’ he said. ‘Absolutely perfect.’
‘It’s only holo,’ I explained. ‘Not even Virtual. The tentacles will pass right through you if you’re not quick enough to get out of its way.’
‘Not much danger of that,’ said Neil. The kids were leaping back in happy terror. The octopus was satisfyingly menacing enou
gh for even the adults to edge backwards through the waves.
I wondered suddenly if I should program in a few more holograms, just to add a bit of freshness for the kids. Not every day of course. Too much unreality loses its punch.
Once a week, maybe, but randomly, so the visitors to the beach would never know quite what to expect. Portia’s pirate ship firing cannons maybe, or a glimpse of a mermaid, (if it didn’t put the Water Sprites’ noses out of joint) or sunken treasure washed up on the shore…
I rejected that one. Treasure should be real and touchable. You could do a lot with holos, but not that.
Holos…something niggled at my mind.
‘Happy?’ Neil touched my shoulder.
‘Mmm.’ I watched as Theo ran to catch a child running wet and giggling from the waves and pick her up, damp against his shirt. Theo looked more fragile lately, I thought, as he carried the child up to her parents, sitting in the shade beneath the trees. We were all UV shielded, of course, but the morning was still hot.
Neil took my hand as we wandered back towards the refreshments; the jugs of juice, the bottles of cold wine, cakes and fried things on small pieces of bread lay on trestles in the shade.
‘I thought you might have invited Michael to the opening,’ he said, carefully not watching me as he took a couple of stuffed olives then offered the plate to me.
I took an olive. ‘Michael? I don’t suppose he would have wanted to come.’
‘You know that’s not true,’ said Neil
I looked into Neil’s face, open and sweating slightly in the heat. ‘You mean Michael would have liked to come to see me? Maybe. But I don’t suppose he’d have enjoyed all this.’
I waved my hand at the sand, the waves. Two hopeful teenagers wrestled with new surfboards among the spray. I’d have to install a holo, my mind whispered, two hours of a champion surfboard rider strutting his stuff every morning for a few weeks would show them how. There had to be file copies of surfboarding somewhere, if someone could dig them up for me.
‘You could have introduced him to people.’
‘That’s not what I meant. Michael…well, he’s not like you.’ Not like I was beginning to be, either, I thought. ‘Michael never had much time for social gatherings. They were places to work the crowd, that’s all. Places where you might gain support, political advantage…for anything more personal there was the Forest.’
‘And you.’
‘And me. And Mel and Tom and…it’s hard to explain the Forest, Neil. Yes, Michael and I were a couple, but that meant less if you were Forest. There were always echoes of the others too. Anyway, even if Michael had wanted to come here, he wouldn’t have. A rising young administrator—especially one who is already looked at warily because he once had a Proclaimed modification—can’t risk his reputation cavorting with Outlanders. Michael’s ambitious. He won’t do anything that might make them think he’s still Forest at heart.’
‘But he came to see you. He even called a doctor from the City. That must have been conspicuous enough.’
‘Yes, he did, didn’t he?’ I said slowly. ‘I suppose I don’t really know what Michael’s up to nowadays.’ You should have added, ‘or care’, said the voice in my mind. But I couldn’t; it wasn’t true.
‘Fruit cup?’ It was Theo again. Elaine stood next to him, ostensibly a couple, but I noticed that even as they stood side by side, neither even accidentally brushed the other’s arm.
‘Thanks,’ I took the cup from him. It was sweet and sour at the same time, with a range of subtle flavours that no Basic drink could ever have, no matter how enhanced by Virtual subliminals. I was definitely getting hooked on RealLife, I decided, then laughed at myself. It was a strange thought, with my half-real beach in front of us. But the real half, I thought, was the best…
‘What’s so funny?’ Elaine looked at me curiously.
‘Nothing. Just a silly idea. I was wondering about maybe keeping the giant octopus, or maybe other holos to give the kids a thrill.’
‘I’d like an underwater city,’ said Elaine dreamily. ‘I always fantasised about those when I was a kid. I’d dive under the waves, and there it’d be. An Atlantis sort of thing.’
‘Well, it’s possible,’ I said slowly.
Elaine looked startled. ‘I was joking!’
‘It wouldn’t be difficult. We’ve got the water already and the sandy bottom. I could programme it in either Virtual or holo, though holo’s difficult underwater, because the light bends…yes, it’d have to be Virtual.’
‘No, really!’ protested Elaine. She was laughing now. I caught Theo’s eye. A birthday present for Elaine then, her very own Atlantis…
Theo looked thoughtful suddenly. ‘You can receive holo and Virtual here?’ he asked.
‘Yes, of course.’
Theo grinned at me. ‘Then you can receive calls here too.’
‘Sure. I just have to put it on open receive instead of info link. But I think I’ll still keep the manual Terminal up at the house.’
The manual Terminal had been delivered only two days before. I’d used it to call Black Stump, but that was all. Neil had used it far more than I had; it had a Link capacity too, and the fixed screen had better reception than his portable.
Someone came up to ask Elaine something; Theo turned to talk with them too. I finished my fruit cup and placed it on the trestle table.
‘Had enough?’ asked Neil.
I nodded. ‘More than. I’d forgotten how much glare sand and water reflect. Let’s go.’
I knew he wanted to work on some project he’d brought back from the City. And, besides, after so many weeks of testing, waves weren’t a novelty any more.
The beach would still be here tomorrow, I thought, and the day after and the day after that…
Chapter 39
I left Neil at his laboratory and wandered back to the house alone, through the neat orchards, each tree exactly in its place, pruned to the correct number of buds, watered to the perfect depth of moisture.
Then up through the cow paddock, (the pale-purple beasts gazing at me, faintly curious in case I’d brought some treat) then over the ridge through the trees to home.
The bark crackled underfoot. The leaves drooped in their oily haze above me. It looked a good house from up here—solid stone that had weathered almost two centuries, the fall of one society and the rise of another, and countless lives within it.
No, not countless, I thought. I could count the generations that had lived in my house if I wanted to. There must be records of all the past inhabitants. But it was my house now, and Neil’s, the man who lay beside me in the night, and for now at least that was all I wanted to know.
The garden had flopped somewhat in the heat. I’d planted more than we had water for, so Neil had informed me, but I’d ignored his advice because I hadn’t really understood it. There had never been a water shortage in the Virtual gardens I’d designed. You never even thought of water as something that might run short in the City. Water was just there, running out of the tap or seeping through the permeable membrane of your splash tub.
I’d ordered more water storage tanks from the City. They were sitting in the sheds up at the farm. We’d have to install them ourselves. While I could hire specialised labour to build my beach, no City dweller was going to work on such a low prestige project as installing Outlander water tanks, and while there was plenty of labour in the ‘burbs, no one with sense employed a ‘burbs’ gang if they couldn’t keep up extreme supervision. And in this season everyone at Faith Hope and Charity seemed to have too much work to bother them with my not-absolutely-necessary tanks—after all, they wouldn’t fill until the drought broke and it rained again.
I’d water the garden in the evening, when the soil was cooler, I thought. Neil had explained that was the best time: less evaporation, more uptake from the roots. The garden looked dusty too. It would be lovely if it rained.
It was still a jolt, sometimes, to realise that I couldn’t just progr
am up a rainstorm. This was RealLife, and the rain would have to be RealLife too.
I clicked the gate shut behind me, as a disincentive to the Wombat (he could call at the back door now without going through the garden and eating the bits he fancied on the way) and made my way into the house.
It was cool in the house, that bone-deep coolness that only stone houses seem to have, storing the cold in their walls to breathe it out into the heat of the day. I made myself a cup of tea in the Ultrawave and took it into the living room, where I could look out over the garden and up the hill. And see Neil perhaps, if I stayed there long enough, as he strolled back from his laboratory and orchards.
Something was bothering me, niggling me. Pieces of information floated around in my brain, but my mind no longer worked fast enough, enhanced with the databases of the whole city, to put them together.
It didn’t feel right. The whole affair at the Tree had left a bitter taste, and it wasn’t just that Len had died. Len who I had feared, then liked, then feared again. I felt I’d betrayed them, though that was ridiculous. I couldn’t possibly have betrayed them by failing to find an outside killer, when it was one of their own to blame.
Sometimes, at four o’clock in the morning, with the moon hanging like a pale-faced accuser outside the window, and Neil snoring beside me, I wondered what Len’s final moments had been like. Who had killed him? How? Was Gloucester just the grim accuser? Or had he slain the slayer too, as he had done with Tam? Did Eleanor look on? And Dusty and Emerald? Please God, I thought, let the cubs have been asleep.
What was it like—what unbearable horror was it—to see your son accused and executed? But it was bearable. You had to bear it. Did Eleanor still consult in her Virtual island in her study? Did Emerald still make scones? Or were they grieving, grieving, grieving for the dead?
Perhaps, I thought, cradling my tea in both my hands as though to warm them although the afternoon was still hot, if I’d been conscious I could have persuaded Gloucester and the others to spare Len. But to what end? What did you do with a werewolf killer? There are no prisons in the Outlands, nor could his family be relied upon to keep him locked in a room for the rest of his life.
Blood Moon Page 17
