‘What were they?’ I tried scrolling for information, but nothing appeared. ‘Surely the fact that you were free of the modification was enough?’
‘Not exactly. My children might still have inherited it. It turns out that the characteristic won’t reappear, unless I mate with a woman with the same recessive and even then of course it can be bioengineered away. But I wanted to know if there was some way to engineer the characteristic away completely.’
‘It’s possible with a woman,’ I said slowly. ‘Though I don’t think it will ever be done routinely. The eggs are removed, some are engineered and replaced, the others destroyed. But a man produces sperm continually. I know there were experiments a few years ago.’
‘I know,’ he said matter of factly. ‘I volunteered for them. But they weren’t successful.’
‘So you were denied permanent residency?’
‘No. It was granted.’ He grinned at me. ‘Or I wouldn’t be accompanying you today. After all, any child of mine conceived in the City would be routinely tested. Even if I failed to have them bioengineered, any problem would be picked up. And the risk of my conceiving a child with someone with the same modification is very small. I don’t even know if any others of my generation have survived.’
I shut my eyes for a moment and scanned my memory. ‘No.’ I said.
He seemed to take my ability to offer him the information in his stride. Nor did he ask me to name the fifty most common varieties of apples or some other feat of memory, as trees so often did on first encountering my abilities. ‘Really? That’s about what I thought.’
‘Why didn’t you stay?’
‘I didn’t like the City much, that’s all.’
‘Few job openings?’
He blinked. ‘No, that wasn’t a problem. There were plenty of openings. I’m a qualified Biotech, Level B access. Probably even get Level A now, if I applied for it.’
I was sure he would, if what he said was true. Level A is as high as you go, apart from added admin and service gradings. ‘How did you qualify?’
‘Net school is as available in the Outlands as it is in the City,’ he said dryly.
‘Of course,’ I said, embarrassed.
‘How do you think Elaine trained? Or Tavish? Or Theo for that matter?’
‘Tavish?’
‘The BioTech I did my early prac with. You’ve met him. Tall, dark eyes, thin face, grey hair.’
Which might describe half a dozen men at the community, Theo included. I nodded noncommittally.
The floater had left the hill country now. We were following an oldtime highway, the bitumen still basically intact though stunted shrubs penetrated its cracked edges. Only rarely did the floater have to curve past a tree grown strong enough to crack the central paving, or to avoid a fallen log or storm debris.
‘Feel like a drink?’ asked Neil. ‘There should be a dispenser behind that panelling. Probably biscuits of some sort too. They usually stock these long distance machines fairly well.’
It seemed strange to have an Outlander tell me about a City machine. But, of course, he was far more used to them than I.
‘You said you’d been to the City several times.’
‘Sure. Once as a child, once for the tests, twice in the last three years. Tavish and I are working on something—a UV-resistant apple strain, as a matter of fact, not modification, just straight selective breeding.’ Suddenly the eager puppy voice was back. It was hard not to grin at his enthusiasm. ‘It’s really coming along fantastically. We wanted to compare our results with similar work in the City. I suppose we could have done it over the Net. But it’s always better to see these things in person.’
‘Did Tavish go too?’
‘Just me. You’d need a wheelbarrow to get Tavish away from his orchards. Afraid the light brown apple moth might carry them away if his back was turned.’
My mind started scrolling automatically for ‘light brown apple moth’. I clamped down on the thought.
‘But you’ve never been tempted to stay?’
‘No.’ He raised an eyebrow at me. ‘What about you? You were quite content till the Proclamation?’
Content? It didn’t begin to describe it. Happy, fulfilled…yes, that was the word. Totally, wonderfully fulfilled. A creative and intellectual life, a network of friendship within the Forest that would be impossible to explain, impossible for him to understand. Soulmates? The very idea was ludicrous.
‘Yes, I was content,’ I said at last. ‘I had my work and my friends…’ My voice trailed away. ‘I was happy,’ I added honestly. ‘I never gave any thought at all to leaving the City. I think most teenagers at one time or another dream of a finding a community of like-minded souls, one that will truly understand them. But not me. I had everything I wanted.’
‘I see,’ said Neil. Then he said, ‘Look, there’s the first of the ‘burbs.’
Chapter 18
It took perhaps half an hour to traverse the ‘burbs; not because they were extensive—they probably only stretch a few kloms out from the City in any direction. But they are unplanned: the streets curve and twist and peter out into dead ends. The streets are unrecorded, too, for good reason, because what is a street today may be filled with squats next week, hurriedly erected by hopefuls on temporary permits who are allowed a few hours City access for menial work that no one else cares to do, while other newly empty shanties are dismantled to let traffic past.
Even the route the floater had taken that morning and tried to use again was now blocked with market stalls and the next two alternative routes were blocked by some sort of meeting as well. I was beginning to feel slightly nauseous from the stopping and starting and circling, when we finally approached the door, a wide black mouth in the City walls.
When I say walls, I don’t mean that literally. The walls of the City are a haphazard joining of many buildings that took place over decades as the City was gradually enclosed, first as protection against UV radiation, and then against civil discontent, and then even more securely with air filters and O2 boosting as a barrier to the viruses that made up the Decline.
So the walls are a patchwork of 20th-century concrete, 21st-century biocrete and more modern polymers filling the gaps, except for the entrance road, which is a material that even I didn’t recognise, the details no doubt locked in some top-secret databank along with other details of the City’s defences against the unwanted.
The floater entered without hesitation but I knew its passage and our identities would have been checked and monitored; just as our journey here had been monitored as well.
Two minutes of darkness and then normal City corridors, holos of the Nevada desert (third-rate stuff but I suppose the City does bother paying patents on good material for the entrance route) giving way to scenes of 19th-century bucolic village life (even worse), and then a seascape and then penguins on an icefloe. The usual chaotic imagery of the City, where no one corridor committee coordinates its holos with any other, and no one sees any reason why they should. They’re not Realities, with sound and scent and guaranteed emotion, after all. Why match them?
Then a lift duct, and a rise of three or four storeys; another corridor; two more lift ducts, one down, one up. And then an admin office docking bay, the shutters closing after us as we entered and a door on the right opening automatically as we stepped from the floater.
I think I expected Michael to be there to meet us. Despite his attitude on the screen, I had thought…
But he wasn’t. There was a woman instead—blank-faced courtesy, dark grey office uni-suit.
‘If you’d step this way,’ she said.
Another corridor, people-sized this time, standard office mode. Not the main entrance. Michael was keeping this discreet. The woman opened a door and stood back to let us precede her.
‘They’ve arrived, Mr Doddens,’ she said. The door closed behind her and she was gone.
Michael looked up from his desk.
He looked as he had on the sc
reen, as he had the last time I had seen him in person. Internal changes mustn’t affect the outside very quickly. And besides, I realised, Michael would make very sure his life appeared to go on as before. It would be his way of saying the Forest meant nothing to him. All I am, he’d declare, I achieved by myself, without the Forest’s help, and I can go on achieving without it.
‘Michael,’ I said.
‘Danielle.’ He didn’t get up. He gestured to a seat.
‘This is Neil,’ I said belatedly. ‘He’s from the Utopia over the hill from my house.’
‘Good morning,’ said Neil. He looked even larger and more innocent here in the office. His clothes were wrong—too colourful, informal. And yet he’d worn a suit to the funeral…
Michael nodded. I realised he already knew exactly who Neil was. Neil would have been chipped during his City residency. The monitor in the floater would have identified him, as well as the monitors at the gates. By now, Michael would have been well briefed on Neil’s whole history.
‘You said it was urgent,’ said Michael. He looked at his watch. ‘Two hours.’
No, ‘It’s good to see you.’ No, ‘You’re looking well.’ But then I only had two hours, as he had reminded me. There was no point wasting them.
I pulled my bag onto my lap, unzipped it and took out the polymer bags inside it. Then suddenly I hesitated, unsure where to start.
Six months ago I’d simply have Linked to Michael. Two minutes and he’d have known all I did, and more. Our analyses would have Linked, our correlations bounced off each other. But now…
So I put it into words, haltingly, and Michael listened, as though this was his normal way of gaining data, as I suppose it now was. And Neil sat there with his big body and his calm face, listening to it all.
Michael was still silent when I finished. ‘So you see what I’m getting at? If it’s just one person, well, the police need to know the possible background, so they don’t just treat it as an everyday assault. But if I’m right and it is a modification side effect—well, you know how serious that is.’
Michael nodded. He’d always been slower than the rest of us to grasp a correlation, but more able than any of us to use it to advantage. ‘If you’re correct, then this needs to be investigated.’ He raised his eyebrow at the polymer bags. ‘What have you got in there?’
I took a breath. ‘In the small bags, hair sample, scraping from the inner cheek, blood sample. Not exactly classical sampling technique but I’m sure there’ll be enough for a DNA match. That will at least tell us who she was.’
‘If she was from the City,’ said Michael quietly.
I glanced up at him. ‘I never considered she mightn’t be,’ I said slowly.
‘Because you’ve lived your life in the City,’ stated Michael, who still did. But it was true that Outlander political policy had been a far larger part of his world than mine.
I handed him the first of the two large bags. ‘Her clothes. There might be traces of DNA from her attacker on them, or anyone else she’s been in contact with lately, or possibly some other clue to where she’s been.’
‘And the other bag?’
‘Tissue swabs. I took them when I…cleaned her up, just in case she injured her attacker. I took a vaginal swab as well. And there’s a small bag of fingernail clippings.’ Michael would know as well as I did that the best chance of finding an attacker’s DNA was under the victim’s fingernails.
Michael pressed a switch on his desk. Just three months ago he wouldn’t have needed a switch. But then three months ago I wouldn’t have needed to give him explanations.
The efficient woman returned. She glanced at me, glanced a few seconds longer at Neil. Michael handed her the bags. ‘All routine trace tests. The lab is on standby?’
‘Yes.’ She took the bags and went out, with a final glance at Neil. For a moment I thought she might have recognised him from his time in the City, but then I realised it was a purely personal glance.
In his quiet way, Neil was handsome. Quiet, unassuming. Content with his small world of apple trees and Sunday music—I blinked. Michael was speaking.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I said what about the dikdik? There may have been helpful traces there too.’
I shook my head. ‘I only had a chance to look at it briefly. Someone from Faith Hope and Charity took it and cleaned it before I could go back to it.’
‘I apologise for that,’ said Neil, although it hadn’t been his decision. They were the first words he had spoken.
Michael shrugged. ‘Can’t be helped now. No clue, that you saw?’
‘A nearly empty fuel cell. A black jacket, the same size as her other clothes; no obvious blood stains. I included it in the bag with the other clothes. No footprints, mud, etcetera, that I could see, although detailed examination might have revealed more.’
Michael’s eyes flicked to Neil again, but he said nothing.
‘It was just a common long-distance dikdik,’ I said.
He appeared to think for a few moments. I wondered if I should give him the same ‘vampire in history’ spiel I’d given Theo. But this was Michael, not Theo. He would already know it all, having gleaned it months before from my brain. He might even have more up to date information that I lacked.
Michael suddenly seemed to see us again. ‘Can I offer you a drink? Tea? Coffee? Polar?’ His hand hovered on the switch again.
I shook my head.
‘No, thank you.’ said Neil. ‘There were refreshments in the floater.’
Not that we’d had any, but I liked the answer anyway.
A light pulsed on the Terminal. Michael switched it on. I heard the almost subliminal faint voice, and then he said, ‘Give me a printout then.’
He looked up at us consideringly.
‘Well?’ I asked impatiently.
‘Her name was Doris Prothero. She was nineteen years old.’
I had thought her younger. But she’d been emaciated, dying…‘So she was from the City?’ I said.
Michael shook his head. ‘No. Her parents left the City for a community known as Nearer To Heaven when she was five years old.’ Which meant that her DNA was still on record.
‘Voluntarily left?’ I asked sharply.
‘Of course,’ said Michael smoothly. ‘All departures from the City are from choice.’
Like mine had been technically my choice too, I thought. It was a politician’s answer.
Michael must have read my expression. ‘They were members of a small religious cult based at that community.’ The printer gave a soft beep beside him. He switched it on. ‘There is no record of Doris Prothero or her parents ever returning to the City. So I am afraid it’s an Outlander problem after all.’
‘What?’ I said stupidly. ‘You don’t mean you’re not going to do anything more?’
Michael shrugged. ‘What can we do? There is no evidence the crime had anything to do with the City.’
‘But…but if it is a side effect or even a mutation, it’ll affect the City too.’
‘Then if it does, we will act,’ said Michael smoothly. ‘Political reality, my dear.’
He had never called me ‘my dear’ before. Or not like that. He looked at his watch again. ‘Are you sure I can’t offer you a drink before you go?’
‘Michael, you can’t just leave it like this. There must be something more you can do. At least send someone out there.’
‘I can give you the lab results. You might find them useful if you want to follow this any further.’ For the first time a trace of embarrassment crossed his face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and this time there was sincerity in his voice. ‘If you were anyone else, yes, perhaps I could stretch the rules a little. But Danny, don’t you see I can’t this time? Not for you. I can’t give any hint that I’m…’ He hesitated.
‘Forest, not a Tree?’
‘Exactly,’ said Michael.
I wondered if he would have said anything more if we had been alone. But really ther
e was nothing more to say.
The printer pinged softly. Michael held the sheets of paper out to me. ‘Here you are,’ he said. ‘I’ll send a copy of the data to Faith Hope and Charity as well, if you like.’
‘No. No need,’ said Neil swiftly. I looked at him, surprised.
‘It’s not a secure line,’ he added. ‘Anyone can tap in.’
‘Probably wise,’ said Michael. He stood up. For a moment he seemed at a loss. I suppose none of his standard politician’s phrases were right for the occasion. He couldn’t say, ‘We’ll keep in touch.’ Even less could he say, ‘It was good to see you.’ I suspected ‘You’re looking well’ would have been equally inaccurate.
‘Good luck,’ he said at last.
‘Michael…’
He knew what I was going to say. He’d seen my longing glance at the Terminal. Even more, he must have felt the same longing every day.
‘No, Danny,’ he said gently. ‘I can’t.’
I could have Linked through him. Perhaps our old bond would have been strong enough to just let me taste that world again. I could have Linked for just three minutes, a whole eternity.
But, of course, it would be monitored. He would be accountable. He would lose whatever trust he’d retained or had gained since the Proclamation.
And as for me…A slip of data flashed into my mind. It is always harder for an alcoholic to abandon the drink again, once they have lapsed once.
One day at a time.
‘Goodbye Michael,’ I said. ‘Good luck to you too.’ I hesitated. ‘How is Mel?’
Michael met my eyes. ‘I saw her two days ago. She didn’t recognise me. She’s well.’
‘Thank you,’ I said.
Neil put an arm around me. I was glad of it. Not for the support, but because I wasn’t alone as I left his office. Not as alone as Michael was, standing by his desk.
I made it all the way to the floater before I started to cry.
Chapter 19
Neil was good about it. He flicked our seatbelts first, to get the floater moving and us away as fast as possible. Then he lent me his shoulder as I cried, firm hands reassuringly warm, patting me awkwardly and making incomprehensible noises that were still soothing.
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