Flesh and Blood

by French, Jackie

  Neil frowned. ‘You what?’

  ‘She’s a Virtual. One of my best programs. The All-purpose Greeter. One of the most flexible and graceful programs in existence, if I do say so myself, even after a couple of years. Look at her features — other programs make their greeters beautiful. But too much beauty is disconcerting. This one has all the elements of beauty — the wide eyes, the relaxed mouth — but with just a hint of asymmetry so you feel comfortable with her.’

  Neil looked less stressed. ‘Dan, not in front of her …’

  I grinned at him. ‘She’s not real! There aren’t any feelings to hurt! She just responds to our actions and coaxes us to do whatever she’s been programmed with.’ I turned to her. ‘Isn’t that right?’

  The woman smiled. ‘Quite right, Mistress Forester. And let me say it’s an honour to meet you.’ (Aha, I thought, I bet Michael programmed that bit in.) ‘Now if you’d like to go to your separate suites we can put you through decontamination.’

  ‘Separate?’ asked Neil.

  She nodded reassuringly. ‘Yes, I’m afraid so. If one of you is infected and the other isn’t you may pass on the disease. But each suite is fully Virtualed. It will be just as though you are together.’

  ‘No, it won’t,’ said Neil stubbornly.

  ‘Yes it will,’ I said. ‘Trust me. I’m the Engineer.’

  I touched the slippery white cloth of his arm. ‘The sooner we’re out of these things the better. Really, we’ll still be in contact.’

  Neil looked at me strangely for a moment. Then he nodded. The woman took his arm and moved towards the door that opened to the right at the same time that she took my arm and guided me to the left (and if you think this sounds like delirium, believe me a good Virtual Engineer — me — can make it work).

  I stepped through the door and found myself in my old apartment.

  chapter 42

  It wasn’t really of course. I knew the way to my apartment and that hadn’t been it. This had been recreated for me, and I knew who’d done it. I pulsed his comsig.

  ‘Michael?’

  ‘Virtual Michael seven.’

  I felt tears choke my throat. ‘Tell Michael Realtime thanks. Okay?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Virtual Michael seven. He smiled at me — a personal, not a polite let’s do business smile. Michael must have programmed his Virtuals to recognise me and to cannibalise recordings of Michael and me together to use when talking to me. ‘I’m glad you like it,’ he added.

  I broke the Link and looked around. The sofa that Mel and I had bought together, deep and wide and soft, programming the specifications for the automates to build; the Realtime holo of the Deep Space Probe on the wall; the doors to my room, Mel’s room, the kitchen …

  The Greeter touched my arm. ‘Mistress Forester …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mr Forester asked me to remind you that there are Virtuals of Mistress Melanie, if you want to pulse them up.’

  ‘I …’ I stopped. ‘Perhaps. Later. Just let me get changed. I’ll think about it.’

  chapter 43

  She was there when I came out of the gelbath, smelling of the gelscent I’d been using when I left the City, wearing what surely wasn’t one of the unisaks I’d left behind, but looked and felt like it.

  Mel sat curled up on the sofa. She turned and smiled at me. ‘Lunch,’ she pulsed, in that clear bright MindTone that was unmistakably Mel’s. ‘Will you call it or will I?’

  ‘I’ll call it,’ I pulsed back as automatically as if I’d been doing it for the past two years, as well as all my life before. And then I stopped and sat on the other end of the sofa and looked at her.

  She grinned at me. She looked just as she’d always done. Of course she did, this Mel was based on recordings of that time, carefully programmed as I had programmed the Greeter to take past images of Mel and make them respond to what I did now. And of course the Virtual Mel was Net based, could MindLink with me just as RealMel had.

  This Mel was no more real than the Greeter. The RealMel was unconscious at the Green Trees Clinic. But I couldn’t break away.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ I whispered. ‘Oh, I’ve missed you.’

  ‘I’ve always been here,’ said Mel lightly. ‘You just had to access the banks.’

  ‘I couldn’t. They put a plate in my head so I couldn’t Link. I’ve only just got the ability back and this is the first time I’ve had access to the CityNets.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mel, ‘I’m here now. Whenever you want me.’ She looked at me seriously.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I stretched out my hand. She took it. Her skin felt warm and smooth. Mel’s hand. ‘But you know I can’t,’ I added.

  She smiled at that. ‘Yes. I know. I did the paper on Virtual addiction, remember?’

  ‘And you’d be addictive,’ I said. ‘Impossibly addictive. It’s not just that I miss you. It’s being able to MindLink again. There’s no-one, no-one I can do that with any more. Neil has a hint of it and maybe it will grow … Oh, Mel, I wish you could stay.’

  There were tears in her eyes. Even though I knew they were programmed tears it didn’t matter. RealMel would have had tears too. ‘Call me up at Christmas maybe,’ she said, just a bit too lightly. ‘Half an hour, once a year.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I might just do that.’

  I watched her fade. ‘I’ll wear a Santa hat,’ she called, ‘so you’ll know it’s me.’

  Then she was gone.

  chapter 44

  ‘Dan? Dan, are you there?’

  Neil’s voice woke me out of my daze. I blinked at his image on the terminal screen on my desk. ‘Yes, of course I’m here. I mean I’m still in the suite next to yours. Turn on your Virtual, will you? The panel’s on the wall.’

  ‘Okay, you’d better break the Link. It’ll interfere with the Virtual.’

  I could Link and Virtual at the same time, of course, but he’d forgotten that. Or did he even know it? I pulsed the Virtual on from where I sat on the sofa. The room shivered for a moment, then Neil was there, on the sofa next to me. Michael must have arranged for his apartment to be the duplicate of mine, I thought, to make the merging of images so perfect.

  ‘It’s good to be out of the iso suit.’ He put out his hand gingerly and touched my hand, then jerked it back.

  I laughed. ‘How much Virtual have you used before?’

  He flushed. ‘Almost none. Not this sort anyway, just the bits they put in vids and the corridors the times I’ve been to the City. Tried to do a workshop in Virtual once. Didn’t like it.’

  I wriggled over to him. It was good to feel the real Neil again, without the suits between us. But his arm around me seemed stiff, unsure. ‘Hey, you can relax. It’s not going to give you an electric shock.’

  ‘I know. It’s just — well, I know you’re not there.’

  ‘Yes, I am. I’m here, you’re there. We’re using just the same senses to feel and smell and touch each other. The impulses are just going straight to our brains instead of taking the long way. What’s the difference?’

  Neil shrugged. ‘I’m just not comfortable with it.’ He grinned awkwardly. ‘It’s a bit like the first time I saw the City hydroponics farms. Everything growing but no dirt. Not real somehow, even though you could smell and touch it.’

  He stood up. I wondered if it was an excuse not to touch me. ‘What’s that?’ He gestured to the scene on the wall, two people at a table, one with a cup halfway to his mouth, the other with an opening mouth that might be going to speak or eat or laugh or yawn. ‘Is it one of your programs?’

  I shook my head. ‘It’s RealLink with the Deep Space Probe. It’s a comLink with the space probe refectory.’

  ‘They’re not moving.’

  ‘Yes they are. Theory of Relativity, remember? They are going away from us so fast that our relative times are different. Two years here equals about two seconds there.’ I grinned. ‘That cup was two seconds lower when I left the City.’

  Neil fro
wned. ‘Isn’t it expensive?’

  ‘Very. I can afford it.’

  ‘I suppose you can,’ said Neil vaguely. ‘Look, if I make us a sandwich can you eat it too?’

  ‘I can see it, taste it and smell something you make,’ I said dryly. ‘But it won’t reach my stomach. But we can both make our own sandwiches together and eat them together too.’

  ‘Okay.’ He headed off to the kitchen.

  I followed him slowly. It seemed odd, somehow, to be so far from Neil — emotionally, if not physically — after the closeness with Mel a few minutes before. I wondered how he’d react when he found out that any sandwich made in my kitchen wouldn’t be made with bread and cheese and butter and a tomato from the garden. It would be made from A-Grade Basics: tasteless, odourless and extremely nutritious — just add a good sandwich Virtual and it would be almost the real thing.

  Forest and Trees, I thought. Forest and Trees. Had I just been kidding myself when I thought I could be as close to Neil as I had been with the Forest?

  No. What I shared with Neil was real. He was just … out of his depth, that was all. Whereas I was swimming as happily as a fish dropped back in the sea.

  But he’d get used to it, I assured myself. Maybe this was even what he needed to get him comfortable with MindLink. A few days and we’d be fine.

  I called Elaine and Theo after Neil had signed off. He didn’t want us to sleep together in Virtual. Give him time, I thought.

  I wasn’t sure why I had waited till Neil left to call home. Perhaps it was because I suspected that Theo was franker with me than he was with Neil — Theo had never bothered to hide anything from me since I had discovered he was the vampire I’d been hunting, but he’d hesitate to show vulnerability to his foster son.

  ‘Danielle!’ As always his face brightened as he saw me. ‘All well?’

  ‘Yes. We got here safely. They’re treating us as honoured guests. Where are you speaking from?’

  ‘My office. Taking time off to catch up on things.’

  ‘Theo, how are things — really?’

  Theo looked at me impassively for a moment. ’Which version would you like? Fifteen dead from The Temple — only three survivors. Four sick from Backlander, and I suspect more to come. On the plus side — no one ill here yet, though it’s too early to say who the Centaur may have infected. None of the other centaurs are sick, at any rate. It could be worse.’

  ‘How worse?’ I asked automatically.

  He looked at me steadily. ’Starving, terrified mobs attacking our defences. End of the Worlders trying to make their prophecies come true. A host of plagues, not one, infecting plants as well as people.’

  ‘Was that what it was like in the Wild Years?’

  ‘Worse,’ said Theo lightly. ‘How are you feeling?’

  He wasn’t asking about my health, ’I felt her kick this afternoon,’ I said. ‘I’m sure of it.’

  It was the best present I could have given him. His face lightened. ‘Take care,’ he said. ‘Of Neil too.’

  ‘I will,’ I promised, and logged off.

  Black Stump next. The signal beeped for almost five minutes. I was about to log off again — and worry if they were just too far from the house to catch the signal, or if they were in trouble — Black Stump didn’t even have any defences. Or at least, I amended, I didn’t think they did.

  ‘Who’s that?”

  It was Portia. She had chocolate stains around her mouth and a look of deep suspicion.

  ‘Me,’ I said. ‘It’s polite to say “hello” first.’

  Portia wrinkled her nose. ‘That’s silly. You should find out who it is, then if you don’t like them you can say “go away”.’ She looked at me curiously. ‘Where are you?’

  I realised she could see the Space Probe Realtime on the wall behind me. ‘In the City.’

  I thought she’d ask why, but she just nodded. Portia knew I lived in the City. I suppose she thought I’d just gone back for a visit. ‘They’re down swimming,’ she said. ‘The new Wanderer too. But I was hungry.’ She held up the bar of chocolate.

  ‘Wanderer?’ I hoped the child didn’t hear the alarm in my voice. ‘She isn’t sick, is she?’

  ‘No,’ said Portia scornfully. ‘She does that kissing stuff with Gloucester though.’

  I hoped that Gloucester had enough sense not to kiss a possible plague carrier. But I was glad too. In the past two years Gloucester had faced his wife’s death, and killed a good neighbour, believing the young man had been attacking me. It was time some good came to Gloucester. (Everyone at Black Stump had Shakespearean names — even the cat, Out Damn Spot. I had no idea how the tradition started.)

  ‘Honey, will you get Ophelia to call me? She has my comsig.’

  ‘Honey is sticky,’ said Portia. She waited for me to argue the point, then sighed. ‘I’ll tell her. Thanks for the chocolate,’ she added. ‘It’s persoonanimous.’

  The signal blanked out.

  I logged off too. ’Persoonanimous? I considered scrolling up a word bank, decided I didn’t care if it was real or a Portia-ism; decided too that I was too tired to call up a sensie or any of the City tricks I’d missed.

  I went to bed instead — my old bed, or just the same, the perfect one I’d designed the week I left the creche to flat with Mel.

  I was several kilos heavier than I’d been then, and my shape had changed a bit too, but it still felt right. I was asleep before I could even think of calling SleepLink.

  chapter 45

  They put me to work the next day.

  It was pure pleasure, even though the work was hard. The OutlandNets had limited me — their data was too simple, too restricted — but here with the interLinking CityNets I could speed through data in microseconds and keep on speeding. For the first time in two years my brain felt totally alive. I swam through the Links, and gloried in it.

  Not that I found anything of use. A thousand correlations that only backed up what we already knew. Plagues needed three things: a close human–animal or human–bird link, so that a newly mutated animal or bird disease could pass to humans; human susceptibility — many ancient plagues appear to have started in south-west China, where selenium-deficient humans lived close to pigs, rabbits and chickens; and thirdly they needed some way to be spread quickly. An epidemic by definition is a disease that infects more than twenty per cent of the population at any one time. There were no plagues in humanity’s early years as groups of humans were too spread out, and communication was too slow. A new disease would have killed its victims before they managed to spread it further.

  But once humans started living in cities disease could spread. Once we started riding horses they could spread faster; and ships and then aircraft meant that a new disease in a place like the island they used to call Hong Kong could spread across the entire planet in a few days. The influenza plague of 1919 spread as soldiers travelled home from World War I.

  Of course there are other factors too. The bubonic plague spread with fleas on the black rat, and when the weather was too icy or wet for rats to spread, the plague stopped spreading too. The mad cow epidemic in the 2020s was caused by feeding the meat of infected sheep to cows and hens; humans ate the beef or chicken and years or decades later came down with the disease. The paraRoss River plague of 2031 was spread by mosquitoes which bred in the swamps from the polar melt and the humid summer of 2030; the epidemic of 2055 … well, you get the idea.

  DNA tests on the birdwomen and Bill confirmed Dunghill as the site of first infection: now we already knew how and where this plague began. Nothing I learnt helped find a solution, and when I tried to Link through the Medidata my mind stopped processing: I simply didn’t know the terminology or enough about medicine to make connections.

  Mel could have done it. Mel would have solved the problem easily, I thought bitterly. If the City hadn’t mindwiped the Forest there would be no plague. But they had feared us, they were jealous of us — and they destroyed us.

  Excep
t for me.

  I sat at my terminal, pulsed off, then pushed myself away. It was the first time I had admitted to myself that it served the City right if it were dying now. But it was no longer the City that was dying — the contagion here was under control. Newcomers would be strictly screened for the disease until a vaccine or bio-Engineering program could make all City dwellers immune.

  No, it was the Outlands that were at risk now, and the Burbs. And even if the City were at risk it had been only half a dozen Citysiders who had made the decision to eliminate the Forest, the Medi and the Admin staff at the top of the pyramid that governed the City.

  The City is no old-time democracy. It’s a meritocracy — you get promoted up level by level, and the top level makes the decisions.

  I wished I could call Mel — Mel Virtual or Mel Realtime, unconscious at the Outland Clinic. But it was too dangerous to call either. MindLinking with Virtual Mel was more satisfying than any Realtime communication and so addictive; and even sitting by RealMel’s bed in Virtual could endanger the Clinic — any call made here in the City could and would be traced and become part of the City records.

  It was strange, I thought. I was more isolated here in the City than I ever had been in the Outlands. There I had friends in the community and at Black Stump; here I had lost my friends and family — there were just acquaintances, none of whom had cared enough to visit a Proclaimed person in the Outlands.

  Here I had only Neil and Michael. But Neil was almost as uncomfortable in Virtual as he was in MindLink.

  I had hoped that here in the City Neil might lose his MindLinking inhibitions; that he’d search the Nets with me, gradually becoming more and more confident.

  It didn’t happen. Although he spent each day Linked into the Nets as well, he never managed to merge with them, as I did. There wasn’t even a hint of the MindLink we’d shared in times of danger or deep emotion before.

  I know he tried. But by nightfall he was so tired that we didn’t even bother programming the Virtual so we could sleep together. We ate in Virtual together and that was all; and even that seemed to make Neil increasingly uncomfortable.