In the Blood

by French, Jackie

  ‘I thought you didn’t believe in vampires?’ I said.

  ‘That’s not it. I just don’t like the whole setup,’ said Neil. ‘It feels wrong.’

  I looked at him in surprise. ‘It’s over the top, I admit. But what’s so wrong about it?’

  ‘No orchard,’ said Neil.

  I grinned at him. ‘Not everyone shares your passion for fruit.’

  ‘No vegetable garden either. No stock. What do they eat in that place?’

  ‘Ah, the blood of virtuous young maidens,’ I said, then remembered Doris, her white face and the blood on her wrists, and wished I hadn’t. ‘Maybe they trade with someone, or order concentrates from the City.

  Neil shook his head. ‘I’ve never known anywhere in the Outlands that didn’t grow at least some of its food,’ he said. He hesitated. ‘Look, I’m going to send a message back home. I’d feel happier if someone at least knew where we were.’

  ‘Fine by me,’ I said.

  While he Linked, I sat on the floater step and looked at the castle. Neil was right. It did seem odd—not just the absence of orchards and gardens, but the total absence of any sign of human life. Not even washing on the line.

  But, of course, a castle wouldn’t have a washing line outside, I told myself. It wouldn’t fit the image. You didn’t put deckchairs on battlements either, or a satellite dish on a turret. All these things would be there somewhere, but would be disguised.

  ‘I left a message for Theo,’ said Neil. ‘All right, shall we try it?’

  Chapter 34

  The moat had grass growing in it, the drawbridge looked splintery. The castle doors were grey, like the walls. I raised my hand to knock and they opened.

  ‘They forgot to creak,’ remarked Neil.

  ‘Pressure sensitive,’ I said.

  We stepped inside and stopped.

  ‘My God,’ said Neil under his breath.

  We were in a hall: stone floor, arched ceiling, the walls covered with tapestries in lovely muted, faded shades. The only furnishings were the rugs on the floor and a long banqueting table on the dais by the fireplace that took up a third of the far wall. The only light was from the skylights far above and the orange flames that flickered across the walls.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ said Neil reverently.

  ‘I have,’ I said.

  ‘Have you? Where?’

  ‘Archives. This is a Nelson-Haberdsley design from about, oh, ninety years ago. Note the subtle diffusion of light from the fire and the way the tapestries glow.’

  ‘Design? You mean this isn’t real? It’s holo?’

  I nodded, and reached to touch one of the tapestries. My fingers went through the cloth and onto some smooth substance—certainly not stone—behind.

  ‘But…but I can feel the heat from the fire,’ objected Neil. ‘And smell it too.’

  ‘Shit,’ I said. ‘It’s not just holo then. They’re using wideband Virtual projection too. I can’t sense a thing.’ For the first time I was almost grateful to be shut off.

  ‘Then what is really here?’ asked Neil slowly.

  I shrugged without answering and stepped further into the room. ‘Hello! Is anybody here?’ My voice echoed back to me: ‘here here here…’

  ‘It sounds as though the room is large, at any rate,’

  said Neil.

  ‘Not necessarily. It’s an easy enough effect to imitate. I’ve used it myself—in fact, there’s every reason to think it’s a small room not a big one.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Easier to project an illusion in a small space. Lower power requirements, fewer variables. Also security—if this place was built during the troubles before the Decline, then it would almost certainly have some defences built in, like an antechamber where guests could be inspected before they were let into the building proper.’

  ‘So what do we do now?’

  ‘Pretend it’s real.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘If it’s a good illusion—and the Nelson-Haberdsley designs were—then any likely movements will have been allowed for.’

  ‘You mean if we walk forwards we won’t run into a brick wall?’

  ‘Exactly. My guess is they didn’t expect visitors to go round the walls inspecting the tapestries. They expect us to either head for the fire to warm ourselves, or to head for that door over there.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So we head for the door.’

  ‘At least there wasn’t an Igor to meet us. Or a vampire.’

  I shivered. ‘Neil…’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘I keep forgetting it’s real. There is a vampire. Someone who sucked that poor child’s blood right out of her. Whenever I think of it, I feel sick.’

  ‘Then stop thinking about it. Let’s go see who’s home.’

  We crossed the hall, our feet clinking on the stone or muffled by the carpets, then through the doorway at the other side.

  We were now in a hallway, long—or apparently long—with a ceiling lower than the hall behind us, and tall, dark doors on either side interspersed with more of the tapestries. There was no obvious source of light. The hall was gloomy, but it was still possible to make out each detail. ‘Clever,’ I muttered.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘The lighting. It’s brilliant. Nelson-Haberdsley were experts at light effects. I wish I knew how they did this one.’

  ‘I…’ began Neil, and then he stopped. He turned to the doorway on our right. His face changed: a look of half shock, or even awe, and half pleasure, with a touch of something I couldn’t read. ‘Er…good morning. I mean afternoon,’ he said. He cocked his head as though he was listening. ‘I’m Neil,’ he said. His smile was rich and happy and seemed aimed at the wall beyond.

  ‘Neil, what on earth?’

  ‘Her name is Danielle Forest.’ He turned back to me ‘Why don’t you say something?’ he urged in a whisper.

  ‘Who to?’

  Neil shook his head again. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘We’ve had a long day. Danielle’s just…yes, of course.’ The smile grew even wider. He took two steps towards the still shut door before I grabbed him. ‘Neil, there’s no one there!’

  ‘What? Of course there is!’

  It’s illusion, like I told you!’

  ‘But…’ Again he turned his head away and listened. ‘Her name is Brunni. She says she wants us to—’

  ‘To follow her! Neil, she isn’t there!’

  ‘But…’ He looked from me to where the illusory Brunni presumably stood. ‘But even if she’s not real, surely we should follow her.’ He turned and in three steps had gone through the door.

  ‘Shit,’ I said again.

  This was no time to explain to him the games a good illusionist could play: the lighting that plays on your emotions, the pheromone enhancement pulsed directly to your mind, the tone of voice in just the right range to be compelling, the subliminals like scent and sub-auditory suggestion pulsed into your mind…It’s illegal to use these to any great extent in the City, but all artists made use of what they could get away with. And there has always been a market among the young with plenty of credit for illicit Virtuals—a leisure market with a touch of risk and illegality to add spice to an already seductive package. And out here…

  I shut my eyes, to make it easier to accept the door wasn’t there, and plunged through and after him.

  Chapter 35

  It was dark. It was totally dark. Yet Neil must be seeing something, something that was being picked up on the Linkages that I was shielded from. I could hear his footsteps in front of me, going further and further away.

  ‘Neil!’ I called urgently. ‘Neil!’

  ‘Danielle? What…’

  ‘Please, Neil. Come back. Don’t go any further!’

  ‘But…’ And then he screamed.

  It didn’t sound like Neil at all. It sounded like Doris, all those nights before. It sounded like something hunted, terrified, in pain.

 
‘Neil!’ I yelled again and stumbled forwards in the darkness.

  ‘No…no…oh, God! No! For God’s sake, Danny, get out of here! Run!’

  The heart-wrenching scream came again.

  ‘Neil…’

  ‘She’s sucking my blood! Can’t you hear her? Danny, just get out…’ His voice became a moan.

  I finally found him, writhing on the floor. I grabbed his arm and tried to hold him still. ‘Neil, there’s no one here!’

  ‘There is…she’s got my throat, my wrist’

  I felt around his body, up his arms, his neck, his head. ‘Neil, I’m the only one here! Can you hear me? Neil, can you feel my hands?’

  No answer. His skin was cold and damp to touch, his pulse very fast. I felt his wrist again and felt the stickiness of blood.

  It was like Doris all over again, but this time the darkness was total, this time it was Neil sobbing under my hands. And this time there was no one there at all.

  I had to stop it! There had to be someone watching, someone orchestrating this. But how to find them in the darkness? Even if I crawled the entire circumference of the room, they might be watching via remote.

  ‘Neil.’ He was quiet now, his breath a rapid hiccup, even more terrifying than his former sobs. ‘Neil, listen to me. Please!’

  No response. Whatever signal dominated him was probably so strong there was little I could do to break into it. I spread myself as much across his body as I could, then screamed into the darkness. ‘Stop it! You’re killing him! You understand?’

  No answer.

  ‘Look, if this is a game, you’ve gone too far. And if this isn’t a game…’ I hesitated, then went on. ‘We’ve left instructions. If anything happens to us, I guarantee you’ll have the City down on you by tomorrow morning.’

  Still no answer. I was just gathering my voice to scream into the blackness again when the lights went on, a too white flash that left me temporarily blinded. I shut my eyes then opened them slowly.

  We were in a small room, as I’d expected, blank walled, blank floored, blank ceilinged. Presumably both door and walls had been hologram, the rest transmitted illusion to Neil alone. The door behind me must lead to the hall—or supposed hall—where we’d entered.

  I rolled off Neil and sat up. He wasn’t unconscious, as I’d feared, but his eyes were staring, unseeing, and his breathing was still shallow. I lifted his wrist and examined it.

  There was a small nick, a few centimetres long at most. On his other hand a bloody fingernail showed how he had torn it. No vampire. Just illusion and feedback terror.

  There was no sign of window or camera, but I was sure we were observed. I spoke to the wall in front of me for want of any other direction. ‘He’s in shock. I need blankets and something hot and sweet.’

  There was a giggle above me. It sounded like a child’s, high and excited. ‘Hot and sweet? Well, sweetie, you can try me if you like.’

  I felt my throat almost close with rage. ‘I am not joking! He needs help!’

  ‘Well, sweetie, I can give you blankets. But if it’s hot sweet tea you want, I just hope you’ve brought your own.’

  ‘You must have some hot drink!’

  ‘No, I haven’t.’ The voice sounded petulant now. ‘I don’t have anything like that. And it’s no use yelling at me. You’ll just make me angry. I really am not nice when I’m angry.’

  I lugged Neil’s head and shoulders onto my lap and tried to warm him as best I could. ‘You call this being nice?’

  ‘Sweetie, I was just playing. You know how it is. There you were all scared at the door talking about vampires, so I thought, well, that’s what I’ll give them.’ The giggle came again. ‘So I did.’

  ‘Feedback loop?’

  ‘You know feedbacks?’ The childlike voice sounded surprised now.

  ‘I work with them. Used to work with them.’

  ‘Oooh, I am impressed. I don’t suppose you brought one of your designs with you? No? What a pity. I would so like something new. Yes, that poor boy was just seeing whatever he expected to see, with a little little bit of extra help from me.’ The voice sounded faintly…not apologetic, but perhaps slightly surprised. ‘I really didn’t expect the feedback to be quite so strong.’

  ‘He was remembering something he’d seen quite recently. Something we’d both seen.’

  ‘But it didn’t affect you?’ The high young voice was genuinely curious now.

  I saw no reason to give details. ‘No.’

  ‘How interesting. You must tell me…’

  ‘Dan?’ Neil’s eyes shut for a moment, then opened again. For the first time he seemed to see me. ‘Dan? What happened? I…’

  ‘Shhh. You got caught in a feedback illusion. It seems we have a friend watching us.’

  ‘What?’ He tried to sit up. ‘I thought, I thought someone was sucking my blood.’ He caught sight of the blood on his wrist and began to shudder again.

  ‘Neil, it’s all right. It’s just a small cut. You did it yourself. I told you, none of it ever happened.’

  ‘It happened,’ said Neil.

  ‘It just happened inside your head, and your body reacted to it. For pete’s sake, don’t try to stand up yet. Here, lean on me for a bit.’

  The high-pitched giggle sounded again above us. ‘I do so apologise,’ said the voice. ‘It seems my little game got quite out of hand. Would you like me to give you a nice game now?’

  ‘No,’ said Neil.

  ‘But I promise you this time you’ll love it!’ said the voice disarmingly. ‘A romantic desert island with waterfall, just for the two of you? How would you like that?’

  ‘Falk Kennedy design I suppose, with volcanic eruption eight point three minutes into the field?’ I asked.

  The voice tittered. ‘No, no, sweetie, nothing like that. No nasty things at all, I promise you. Not even a virgin sacrifice. It’s so hard to get good virgins nowadays.’ It sounded like the joke had been made many times before.

  ‘You try anything like that, and I’ll rip your intestines out and wrap them round your throat. Neil, do you think you can stand up? Let’s get out of here.’

  Neil nodded. I draped his arm round my shoulders and helped him up.

  ‘Don’t go,’ said the voice.

  I ignored it.

  ‘Please.’ The voice sounded almost genuine now. ‘We could have such a nice little visit.’

  ‘You can take your visit and stuff it up—’ I stopped. There was a sound outside the door. A real sound, an almost puttering noise. Suddenly a dikdik appeared around the corner—a two-seater, a soft-fabric covered model much like the ones used in the City corridors, although this one looked chunkier and more old-fashioned than those in City use now.

  ‘Just a little visit,’ cajoled the voice. ‘Uncle Bertie sees so few people now.’

  ‘Why don’t you come to us?’ I asked.

  ‘I can’t,’ said the voice, it had a ring of truth now. ‘I would if I could.’

  I glanced at Neil. His face was still white but his breathing had recovered. I suspected that he wasn’t far from full recovery and then embarrassment. ‘Will we try it?’

  ‘May as well,’ said Neil, too lightly. ‘I suspect we’ve had the worst already.’

  ‘There’s a sensible boy,’ said the voice approvingly. ‘Come on now, sweeties, hop up and come to Uncle Bertie.’

  I let Neil get on first, so he could hold the handlebars, then climbed on behind him and wrapped my arms around his waist. The dikdik rose slightly off the ground and began to puttputt back across the room and out into what had been the main hall.

  It was now, as I suspected it had been, simply a long narrow cylinder, with the same blank features as the room we had just been in. We puttputted along it. A door at the far end opened automatically and took us into another room, as featureless as the first.

  ‘None of this place was designed to be RealLife,’ I muttered to Neil. ‘It’s always been fake, the whole lot of it.’

 
‘What’s real?’ said the voice airily. It seemed to have followed us. ‘The world of our imagination or the world our imagination creates?’

  Another doorway, and then a set of stairs that I supposed could be manipulated into a range of 3D designs. The dikdik puttputted up them, our feet almost touching the ground.

  He was in a room at the top of the stairs. If it had had a window, it would have looked out over the river and the trees. But there was no window. Just the same bare walls, with a small table and an armchair. The child was tethered to the armchair by tubes that ran into his wrist and under his clothes to his protruding belly. A bag of clear liquid hung on a harness by his side.

  ‘Hello,’ said the child, and then he giggled and I saw that he was not a child at all.

  ‘Who are you?’ I demanded.

  The child—or not-child—gave a familiar giggle. ‘I’m Uncle Bertie!’ he said. ‘I told you I was.’

  It was a child’s face, round chinned and snub nosed and even lightly freckled, with the too wide eyes that you always program into an appealing child design. A child’s body too, chubby wristed under a child’s teddy bear patterned shirt and plump-legged in short pants. But they weren’t a child’s eyes, and the mouth at rest settled into lines that no child would ever have.

  ‘Good afternoon, Uncle Bertie,’ I said grimly, sliding off the dikdik. Neil stayed seated. He looked at Uncle Bertie, but said nothing.

  ‘Oh, you mustn’t sulk,’ said Uncle Bertie beguilingly. ‘Was I a naughty boy then? I didn’t mean to be. Truly ruly. How was I to know your feedback would be as strong as that?’

  ‘You could have stopped it as soon as it got serious,’ I said.

  ‘But it was so interesting!’ Uncle Bertie smiled charmingly. ‘Uncle Bertie has been so bored. I just wanted to see what would happen, that was all.’

  ‘Well, you did,’ said Neil.

  ‘I’m a naughty, naughty boy,’ said Uncle Bertie, smacking one fat hand against the other, so that his tubing snaked and wriggled. He gestured at it apologetically. ‘You see why I can’t offer you any tea? Now if I’d known you were coming…’

  ‘You’d have baked a cake,’ I said.

  Uncle Bertie blinked at me.

  ‘Old twentieth-century saying,’ I added.