I was silent for a moment. It sounded possible. All too possible. But something in me still screamed ‘no!’.
‘I don’t think that’s it,’ I said finally. ‘Neil, give me a couple of days. I’ll take care, really I will. If I haven’t worked this thing out by then, I’ll come home, or you can come here.’
Neil’s image hesitated on the screen. For a moment I wondered what I’d do if he insisted. But he just said, ‘You’ll call me then? Morning and night. And let me know as soon as you discover anything else.’
‘I promise,’ I said.
‘I wish I were there,’ he said again.
‘I wish you were too,’ I repeated.
‘I…’ He broke off, and turned away for a moment. I heard an apologetic murmur behind him.
‘Someone’s come in,’ he said. ‘We’re going to check the new bud culture. I’ll call you later, Danny. Or you get someone to call me.’
The screen went blank.
I sat where I was for a moment. Neil’s presence was suddenly so strong I could almost smell him, his lovely musky smell, particularly that bare spot behind his ears between his hair and whiskers…I forced the thought away.
Lunch. I needed lunch. Food. Fuel.
I looked at my watch. (It still felt odd, even now, not to be able to pulse up a time signal.) Three o’clock and I’d had nothing since breakfast. I thought wistfully of the fruit cake and ginger biscuits Mrs Anderson had made. I supposed Alan was tucking into them now, getting crumbs in his feathers, if he wasn’t already sharpening stakes or ordering silver bullets or whatever it was you killed werewolves with.
I stood up and headed for the kitchen.
The room was empty; the fire sunk to glowing coals in the giant fireplace. The holo of the cubs flickered quietly on the wall.
I peered into the larder room. There were the remains of the cold haunch of what I supposed was the venison we had eaten last night on a shelf, and bread in a big stoneware bread crock.
I hauled them out onto the kitchen bench and cut myself two hunks of bread. I supposed there was butter somewhere, but I didn’t bother hunting for it, just sliced off a chunk of meat and placed it on the bread. I was just biting into it when Eleanor floated—for a heavily pregnant woman she was certainly light on her feet—into the room.
‘Call for you again,’ she said. ‘I asked them to hang on this time.’
I wondered what Neil wanted now. Maybe just to warn me again, or maybe he had forgotten something, a message from Theo perhaps…
I put down my sandwich. ‘Thank you. I’m sorry you keep being disturbed.’ I gestured at the sandwich. ‘I hope you don’t mind—I missed lunch and I’m starving.’
‘Not at all. Take the whole roast if you like and gnaw it while you take your call.’ Another smile. ‘If you don’t Dusty probably will. Or maybe he’ll bury it for later.’
I wasn’t sure if she were joking or not. ‘No, this is fine. Thank you. I’ll just take that call.’
This time she followed me into the study. I wondered if she were hospitably checking that they hadn’t rung off in case I needed her to dial for me, or if she were simply curious. I sat down again by the Terminal.
‘Neil, I…’ I stopped. It wasn’t Neil’s face on the screen. It was Michael’s.
‘Danny! Is everything all right? You look…’
‘It’s been a long day,’ I said ‘A long night too. What do you want?’ Even I was surprised at the unfriendliness of my voice. Neil’s warning had taken root, I thought. Michael would find it so convenient if his last Link with the Forest snapped…I glanced up at Eleanor. She raised one of those elegant eyebrows, then crossed the square of carpet and shut the door behind her.
Michael frowned. I wasn’t following whatever script he had planned. ‘I just called to see how you were going.’ His voice was almost plaintive.
‘Michael,’ I said ‘I’m not doing this for you. I’m here because some friends of mine asked me to.’
‘I see.’ His face was carefully blank. No one could do a blank face like Michael. Once I’d been able to see the thoughts behind it; even now some whisper in my brain told me more than his face revealed. He’s hurt, said the voice, Michael is actually hurt…
‘I’m not a friend?’ he asked at last.
I considered. Once closer than a brother, then a past lover, and finally a betrayer. ‘No,’ I said ‘Whatever we were, Michael, we were never friends.’
Again the blank look, again the hint of something underneath. ‘I think you’re wrong, Danny,’ he said. ‘That’s what we were most of all. All of us, all the Forest. We were friends, in a way no one ever has been before.’
Suddenly the rage boiled through me; the sort of anger you can only feel towards someone you have loved. ‘How can you speak of the Forest so casually after what you did?’
His face grew even emptier and whiter too. ‘I did what I had to! There was no way the City was going to let us keep our abilities, Danny. It was obvious to me, even if it wasn’t to the rest of you. Was what I did so very terrible?’
‘We were the Forest! We were closer in Mindlink than any group has ever been before! And yet you betrayed that!’
‘Did I? I gave up my abilities voluntarily. You had yours forcibly removed. But we’ve both come to the same point, Danny. Neither of us is Forest any more.’
‘Don’t you dare compare yourself to me!’
‘But Danny…’
‘There’s no “but Danny” about it! You betrayed us!
The blank look was cracking. ‘It’s not betrayal to give up what you know will be taken from you any way! To show a bit of common sense, try to retrieve something from an impossible situation…’
‘No? Then what about monitoring your “friends”?
Did you call us? No! You don’t call that betrayal? Monitoring your friends so you can tell the City when they are all Linked—all but you—so they can send a MindWipe! Is that what you call friendship, Michael? Killing your friends. Oops, sorry, not all your friends. You just turned Mel into a vegetable, mindless, passive…You just left me to face life alone…alone…’ I was choking, but with anguish or rage I couldn’t tell.
‘Danny!’
If I’d been able to Link, I could have switched the screen off. But I couldn’t…I couldn’t.
‘Go away!’ I screamed. ‘Get out of my life! I wish I had never let you into my brain, into my body. The very thought of you makes my flesh crawl…’
‘Danny, you don’t think that I…’
I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even look at his image on the screen.
‘Danny, how could you possibly think…I swear to you I didn’t do that…could never have done that.’
‘Get out, get out, get out!’ Get out of my past, get out of my memories, the memory of Mel slumped in her chair, the blood trickling from her ears and nose, the memory of Michael holding me, the closeness of mind and body that I would never ever feel again.
I think I would have tried to crush the Terminal if I had stayed there. I even looked around wildly, but there was only a notepad, the chairs, a bone under my chair, nothing that would crush a Terminal, crush the face that mouthed something, nothing, empty words—the words of a betrayer.
I stumbled to my feet and ran from the room.
Chapter 28
My room was quiet. All I could hear were my sobs, muffled by the pillow and the yip of the cubs arguing far off. Even the door when it opened was almost silent. I didn’t lift my head.
‘Are you all right?’ It was Eleanor’s voice, for once not Eleanor the elegant or Eleanor the dominant, the all-knowing, but Eleanor the concerned, Eleanor the friend to whom Black Stump had been loyal, the woman who’s friendship I had shared last night.
I sat up, rubbed my face on my sleeve. ‘Yes. No. I don’t know.’
‘You need a hanky.’ The voice was matter-of-fact.
She reached into a pocket and handed me a softie. I took it and blew my nose.
�
��Thank you.’
‘No need.’ She sat on the end of the bed, not talking, not probing. Simply there.
‘Did you turn off the Terminal?’ I said stupidly. ‘I left it on…’
‘It’s off,’ said Eleanor.
‘Did Michael say anything?’
‘Just that he thought you were upset. I said I’d see that you were all right.’
‘He thought…yes,’ I said ‘I was upset.’
More silence.
I thought she’d ask what he’d said to send me crying to my room, but she just said, ‘I suppose when you’ve shared so much past it’s easy to touch the depths of each other’s feelings.’
‘Michael hasn’t got any feelings,’ I said, ‘just ambition. Self-confidence. A love of manipulating other people.’
‘You shared his mind for how many years?’ Eleanor asked. ‘You must know that’s not true.’
‘So? How long have you known him?’
‘Just over a year. Enough to know there is more to Michael than ambition and self-confidence. I am ambitious and self-confident, but there is more to me too.’
‘You’re close friends?’
‘I think so,’ said Eleanor. ‘Much more than work mates anyway. I think Michael sees, well, let’s just say a little of his past in me. The maverick who doesn’t fit the City. Someone who is different, as he once was. As he still is, of course.’
‘Michael accepted a brain plant from his norm clone. He’s Truenorm now.’
‘Is he? Legally perhaps, but the habits of so many years stay with you, surely. You’ve lost your abilities too, but would you really say that you’re Truenorm?’
I was silent for a moment. ‘No,’ I said at last. ‘The way I think…the way I look at things. Part of me is still Forest, even if the ability is gone. Even if the Forest has gone.’
‘Exactly. But it is easier for you than Michael.’
‘Easier for me!’ My voice rose in indignation.
Eleanor lay back comfortably on the pillows. ‘Oh yes. You don’t have to pretend. You’re still Danielle Forest. You can be whoever you want to be in the Outlands. Michael will always be shadowed by what he was, by what he had and what he lost.’
‘His ability to Link totally…it was why he got so high in admin so quickly. I suppose without it…’
‘I didn’t mean that,’ said Eleanor, as though an ability to Link Realtime with any data bank was nothing at all. ‘I mean he has lost his friends, his real family, even if they weren’t his biological ones. And he has lost you.’
‘He betrayed us,’ I said softly. ‘He was responsible for the deaths of those who you say he lost.’
‘Really?’ Eleanor looked faintly puzzled, as though she was trying to fit that piece of data into her picture of Michael. ‘I didn’t know that. I find it difficult to believe that Michael…but even if he did, can’t you grieve for those you’ve killed?’
‘Can you? I don’t know.’
‘They say most murders are committed by husbands against wives, wives against husbands. Don’t you think there might be love there, as well as hate?’
I didn’t answer.
‘Besides,’ Eleanor’s voice was light. ‘Are you sure he really did betray you?’
‘But…but he must have! We were all Linked, except him, when the MindWipe went through.’
‘Except for you, presumably, as you are still here. Or were you able to tolerate the MindWipe for some reason?’
‘No, no, of course not. No one with our abilities could, that’s the other side of being able to Link totally. We were totally vulnerable too.’
‘Then you weren’t Linked when the wipe went through either?’
‘No. I had been. We’d been discussing the legal strategies for our appeal. That’s why Michael wasn’t Linked with us. He wasn’t going to appeal. I’d gone to make a cup of tea. I just broke the Link for a few seconds, you know, the way you do when you’re dealing with something hot and you want to concentrate in Realtime. Well, I suppose you don’t…I was in the kitchen, I called to Melanie that it was ready. She didn’t answer. I tried to Link again, but there was nothing there. It was just empty. I had never felt anything like it. Never! I’ll never forget that first nanosecond. There had always been someone. My mind couldn’t find Mel, not any of them. I ran out to see what was wrong and…’ I couldn’t go on.
‘If Melanie had survived, maybe she’d assume you were the betrayer.’
‘She’s alive. Just brain dead…’ Suddenly her words registered. ‘What do you mean, she’d think I betrayed them? How could she think that?’
‘You weren’t Linked when they were wiped.’
‘But that was just coincidence! A few seconds later I would have been…’
‘Perhaps it was coincidence with Michael too.’
‘No, it…’ My voice died away.
Of course Michael was guilty, of course he was. Michael had accepted Truenorm restoration. Michael had no longer been one of us, not even part of the legal challenge we had planned and the City had forestalled with its MindWipe. Of course Michael…
There was no of course about it.
‘I suppose,’ I said quietly. ‘I suppose I might have been wrong. I just assumed…’
‘Assumed that because he was no longer one of you he must be guilty?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Ah,’ said Eleanor gently from the pillows. ‘The outsider is always guilty, aren’t they? The Jews killed the babies in their ritual sacrifices, the English Catholics poisoned the wells, the French Protestants planned to kill the king, the werewolves murdered their neighbours…’
‘All without evidence,’ I said wearily.
‘Exactly,’ said Eleanor. ‘Humans don’t need evidence to blame and hate.’
More silence.
‘Eleanor…’
‘Yes?’
‘What would you do if you found it was one of you? If your neighbours had evidence. If they arrived here and demanded that you give the guilty one up…’
‘I would do it,’ said Eleanor quietly. ‘If I was sure—if the evidence were overwhelming. The others…I don’t know about the others. They are perhaps more…more inward-looking, more focussed on the clan than I am. But I would persuade them.’
‘You could persuade them to give up one of their own?’
‘Yes,’ said Eleanor very softly and I believed her. ‘That is what being a leader means.’ She met my eyes again. ‘But there is no such evidence, so the matter is irrelevant.’
‘Eleanor…I found a wolf print there too. Under the lemon tree, where Mrs Anderson said she saw the wolf. Ophelia saw it too, and Alan Anderson.’
‘You all know what a wolf print looks like, do you?’
I hesitated. ‘Like a dog print, I suppose.’
‘Or a wombat’s,’ said Eleanor tiredly. ‘Go downstairs and look at Uncle Dusty’s prints if you don’t believe me, then go find a wombat and look at theirs. You can hardly tell the difference. Not unless you’re looking for it. Not blurred in the dust.’
‘Are there wombats around here?’
‘Of course there are. Especially in a season like this. When it’s dry they come up even closer to the houses, even up to the Tree, sometimes, despite the…’ she grimaced, ‘the wolf smell. Maybe that’s what Florrie Anderson saw. A large wombat terrified by the smell of blood, vanishing into the night.’
‘I see,’ I said at last. ‘It’s plausible.’
‘Far more plausible that than that one of my family could kill a man like Andy Anderson. Wolves aren’t…’
‘Yes, I know,’ I said. ‘You’ve told me. Michael told me. Ophelia told me. Wolves aren’t killers.’
I bit my lip. ‘So,’ I said. ‘What now?’
Chapter 29
The kitchen was too hot for such a warm day, but it was comforting.
I sat at the table with Eleanor and we drank sweet Truetea and I finished my interrupted sandwich and ate a chocolate slice.
Emera
ld limped around us, peeling potatoes and stripping what looked like Black Stump’s cobs of corn of their leaves and putting a shoulder and a leg of lamb (was it from the Andersons, I wondered, and what colour had its fleece been) into the oven for dinner.
The cubs tumbled in, demanding chocolate slices, then tumbled out again (the slices already half eaten) at a word from Eleanor. I heard Connie yelp for Uncle Rex out in the living room and his gruff reply.
It was peaceful and domestic and no, not quite human, but what did that matter? These people were kind, they were good neighbours, and surely that was what mattered.
‘There is one thing that puzzles me,’ I said, as I finished my tea.
‘Only one?’ said Eleanor, with an almost smile.
‘All right, one in particular at the moment. If a wolf didn’t kill the three men, who did?’
Emerald blinked. ‘Well, a human,’ she said.
‘But how? Don’t you see?’ I held up my hands. ‘No claws! A human can’t just tear someone’s throat out! How do you do it? Not with your teeth! Human teeth just aren’t long enough! You’d need…I don’t know—some sort of clawed weapon. Which means that if it wasn’t a wolf that did it, someone is deliberately making it seem as though it was.’
Eleanor poured the dregs of the teapot into her cup. ‘You know,’ she said softly. ‘I never thought about the throat-tearing thing.’
I looked at her. ‘Could anyone here do it?’ I asked frankly. ‘Physically, I mean.’
Eleanor exchanged a glance with Emerald. It was impossible to read their expressions.
‘Maybe,’ said Eleanor at last. ‘You saw Johnnie and his rabbit last night. But a man is bigger than a rabbit.’
‘You’d need strong jaws to maul a man,’ I said. ‘A true wolf could do it. But you’re not true wolves, are you? Rex looks like he might have been able to do it once but not now. Not for years. Dusty? Not likely. It’s just,’ I wondered how to phrase it, ‘I think everyone has forgotten that you aren’t wolves where it counts.’
Emerald smiled reminiscently. ‘I used to like hunting,’ she said. ‘For rabbits, like the cubs, or foxes. They were good times. Just me and Dusty and Rusty and the bush. The quiet and then the chase, outwitting the prey, working together. We had good times back then.’
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