Blood Moon (21 page)

‘He’s not my Michael,’ I said.

‘Oh, yes he is,’ she said. ‘For a very little while. Until your death.’

It hadn’t occurred to me. It truly hadn’t occurred to me until now to be afraid of her, even while she was so calmly admitting all that she had done.

‘You can’t hurt me,’ I said. ‘By the time you get here I’ll have told Michael, Theo, everyone what you’ve done.’

She stood up gracefully, and stretched, almost lazily. The sand fell off her body, the white grains glinting in the sun. She brushed the last of them away. I stared at the grains of sand. I stared at her. ‘You’re here!’ I said stupidly.

‘Oh, yes, I’m very much here. I called a floater to pick me up down near Black Stump as soon as Emerald told me you’d called. You didn’t think I’d really confront you as a hologram did you?’

‘You can’t get away with hurting me. I’ve already left a note for Neil.’

‘Then I shall have to deal with Neil too,’ she said.

I started. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might endanger Neil too. Desperation flooded through me.

‘You still can’t…if they find my body…they’ll know it’s…’

‘You don’t really think I’m planning to leave your battered, bloodstained corpse on the sand, do you? I really am a bit more subtle than that. I won’t even rip
your throat out. See? No garden fork, and my teeth are really far too small for me to try.’ She showed them to me in a travesty of a smile.

‘No, your body is going to be found a hundred kilometres from here and your floater too, under a bush near a certain bootleg Meditech with surgical pretensions. Everyone will assume that you went there hoping to restore your abilities. That the operation went wrong…I will have to make a few adjustments for verisimilitude, of course. Such as sawing off the top of your head, but you’ll be dead by then. I’m sure I can manage.’

The smile was still there. She was standing now, gazing down at me. I stood up slowly, expecting her to attack at any second, my back against the tree.

Option one—run. But I couldn’t outrun her, and if she leapt upon me as I ran, I’d be easy prey indeed.

Second option—out-fight her. But the closest I had ever come to fighting was wrestling a fork away from Malvolio before he poked his eye out. He’d nearly won that battle too. Eleanor was trained for fighting, both physically and mentally.

Final option—it isn’t always the strongest who wins, Emerald had said, which left determination and brains.

I lunged to the right. Eleanor hadn’t expected it. Her momentary hesitation gave me the chance to press two buttons in the bark of the Tree. Then I was up and running for the water.

The waves flattened in front of me. They’d drain down into the storage chambers now, but the water would still cover enough of me to feel my pulse. The pulse of a woman pursued by a murderous werewolf, I decided, should be quite enough to trigger the alarms up at the farm.

But the orchards were what? Five minutes away, even by dikdik. I wondered if I’d last even for three.

Footsteps behind me, easy, practised. She wasn’t even hurrying, I guessed.

My feet hit water. That at least had been achieved. I plunged on in. The sand sloped down, under my feet. It’s softness slowed me down even more than the water. It was deeper here, but not by much. I’d only used the minimum slope necessary to get good waves.

A hand grabbed me, pushed me down. I ducked and rolled, and came up beside her. Then she was on top of me, bearing me back into the water and sand.

Water filled my mouth, my nose. I kicked up frantically. To my surprise she fell back. More by good luck than guidance I must have landed the blow on her head. I sat up, gasped for air and rolled away again.

She didn’t follow me. For one vital second I was free, as she gazed out at the apparent horizon and the giant octopus that lurched up from the foam.

And then she laughed, ‘A good try. But he’s not real, of course. He was designed to surge up from the waves and without the waves he doesn’t ring true. No, darling, he’s not going to frighten me away. None of your images can help you now.’

She dived at me again. This time her hands were at my throat, and then across my mouth and nose, her body bearing me down, down, down, as I breathed in her long blonde hair…

Blonde hair?

Someone screamed above me. Was it rage or was it pain? Or was it simply surprise as what she had assumed to be another set of holograms grabbed her with giant fists, and tore her off me.

‘Leave her alone!’

‘You bitch!’

‘She hasn’t even programmed our octopus yet!’ cried the Water Sprite (the giant Water Sprite, three metres high at least), her large green eyes (the size of dinner plates) flashing indignantly, as she and her massive friends lifted Eleanor off me and carried her, struggling furiously, to the sand.

T
hree minutes later Neil arrived, running. Joe and Samantha were racing behind him, then Elaine on a dikdik with her Medikit. None of them had thought to bring a rope, but it didn’t matter. There were quite enough hands to hold Eleanor down—six of them gigantic—and take her back temporarily to a secure storeroom at the farm.

I let Neil hold me. Or maybe I held him. Either way it didn’t matter. ‘I thought…’ I said. ‘I thought…I only saw the Water Sprite on the screen. I had no idea…’

‘No idea they were so large?’

‘Large? They’re enormous. Giant-economy size.’

‘What?’

‘Old twenty-first-century saying. Forget it.’ I peered over Neil’s shoulder. A Water Sprite—the one I’d spoken to? They all seemed identical—was lumbering up the beach, one massive silver-skinned hand around Eleanor’s legs. Her sister? Wife? carried Eleanor’s head and torso, though not as gently as she might.

‘I…I thought they’d be sirens. You know, ethereal. I was even jealous in case you…’

‘Maybe I like giant-economy size,’ said Neil. He was obviously trying hard to keep his tone light. ‘But it’s nice to know that you can be jealous too.’

‘What? Yes. Yes, I suppose so.’

I buried my head in his shoulder again, or perhaps his hand cradled my head there again. Not that it mattered.

W
hich was how we were, hours later, when Michael burst through our front door, and found us on the sofa. ‘Danny! What the hell?’

I tried to struggle to my feet, but Neil held me firm. I gave up the attempt and sat back.

‘What’s been happening?’ demanded Michael. ‘Where’s Eleanor? I got some confused message from her, then another one from Emerald and then there was yours.’

So I told him, as he sat there in our quiet living room; or I told him most of it at least. There were parts, I thought, he didn’t need to know, and others that he knew already and I had no wish to discuss.

Then Neil cooked dinner, while I explained parts of it again. And we ate together, and while the two men weren’t exactly best friends by the end of the meal—there was a touch of Rusty in them both; perhaps there’s a hint of territorial wolf in most men—it was surprisingly companionable. If Michael and I were bound by our shared pasts, Neil and Michael had now shared enough mutual horror for at least the beginning of a bond to form as well.

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ said Neil, as the moon rose again through the living room window behind us. It was a crescent moon now, the stars burning bright in the achingly dry sky. I was glad it wasn’t a full moon. I couldn’t have stood its blank-faced reproach tonight.

‘Yes, it was,’ I said. ‘I allowed myself to be bluffed, to be used. If I hadn’t, Len would still be alive.’

Michael looked as weary as I felt. ‘If I hadn’t let myself be manipulated perhaps no one would have died,’ he said.

‘And if only I’d been clairvoyant none of this would have happened at all.’ Neil spread cheese on a biscuit. Neither Michael nor I had much of an appetite, but Neil was a working boy.

‘Stop blaming yourselves. Eleanor is the guilty one. You both did your best, and you can’t blame yourselves if that wasn’t enough.’ He crunched the biscuit and stood up. ‘Anyone want coffee?’

Michael nodded. I shook my head.

‘So,’ said Michael, as Neil left the room.

‘So,’ I said. ‘What now?’

‘I go back to the City. Make innumerable reports. Admit that a Proclaimed modification was the killer, thereby reinforcing everyone’s prejudices. Admit that the consultant I hired was a murderer, which will not do my reputation any good. And you…what will you do?’

‘Stay here. Work here. Live. Love. The whole caboodle. But no more detecting. I’m no good at it, Michael. If I had been, Len would still be alive. Next time you want to see me, just come out to dinner. Don’t give me a job to do.’

‘All right,’ said Michael. It was nearly a smile.

‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘You should bring Mel too.’

His head jerked up at that. ‘She wouldn’t know what was happening, where she was.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘We’d know. We’re all that’s left of the Forest now, Michael, even if none of us is Forest any more. Michael?’

‘What?’ he watched me slightly warily. The one thing we hadn’t touched on was his parentage of Eleanor’s child. Eleanor had said he didn’t know, but surely he must suspect…no, if it were left to me, we weren’t going to touch on that subject at all.

‘What will happen to her?’

‘Eleanor? Normally we’d leave that problem to the Outlands. Let her neighbours and her victims take care of it. But we’re involved now, if only because she worked for us and asked me formally to help solve the problem. I imagine someone—not me—will find a convenient Outlands surgeon who’ll find a way to control her, by whatever physical, surgical or psycho-pulse solution necessary, then lock her peacefully and safely away.’

‘And the Tree?’

‘Emerald will take over, I suppose.’

‘I think Rusty may be glad of that,’ I said slowly. ‘I have a feeling Eleanor sometimes bewildered him a bit.’

And in time, I thought, Jennie or Bonnie will challenge Emerald, and one of the sons—Ben or Johnnie or Mitch—will challenge Rusty. Perhaps one day Michael’s son would rule a werewolf clan. But there was nothing I could even think to say about that, and even less that I could think to do.

Maybe, I thought, it was not even wholly a bad thing, despite the means used to make it happen. Eleanor was right about one thing: humans are a dominant species, even if not always a very nice one, and our kind still rule the world.

‘Michael—one last thing, quickly, before Neil comes back.’

He leant towards me. ‘Yes?’

‘If…if I were to get the operation the City did on me
reversed so that I was able to Link again—Link totally and completely the way we used to do—what would the City do?’

Michael looked at me quietly. ‘I don’t know,’ he said frankly. ‘I literally have no idea.’

‘I see,’ I said.

‘But I do know this: if you were reasonably discreet—if you changed your comsig and only used Outland Nets, or if you had to use a City Net you got someone to download the material onto an Outlander Net for you—then I am reasonably sure that they would never know.’

He met my eyes again. He didn’t ask if I was planning to go ahead with it, but Michael knew me; he had no need to ask.

Neil brought in the coffee then. And we sat and talked, the way you do after an event has bitten deep into your soul. We talked about Eleanor and Emerald and wolves and domination, and a little about Water Sprites and what you might do with eight tentacles too, as the late hour overtook us and made us almost drunk with weariness.

Then Michael left and I kissed his cheek goodbye, and Neil didn’t even flinch when Michael hugged me roughly as he left. Or hardly at all, at any rate.

And then we went upstairs.

I
almost forgot,’ said Neil. ‘I have a present for you.’ ‘What?’

‘It’s on the bedside table.’

I looked. It was an apple. The epitome of an apple, perhaps, the sort that Snow White’s stepmother might have poisoned, or Eve plucked before humanity fell. It was round and red and shiny, a deep perfect shine that could never come from waxy residues and rubbing.

‘Try it,’ suggested Neil

I bit into it. It was sweet and tart and…’Perfect,’ I said, as I swallowed the first mouthful, then looked at it. Instead of creamy white the flesh was a deep rich pink.

‘It’s the result of the conference,’ said Neil. ‘Had to force grow it of course, to get fruit so soon. This is the first apple. There probably won’t be another for a good six months until the clones we’re forcing start bearing. Faith Hope and Charity holds the patent. So we should—there’s about a decade’s worth of work in that apple. Do you like it?’

‘I love it,’ I said sincerely.

‘It’s called Danielle,’ said Neil simply.

And then we went to bed.

I
made lists of priorities for the giant octopus program (I owed the Water Sprites that) until Neil left the next day, the core of the first Danielle in his pocket. (He’d plant the seeds he said, so we’d have naturally grown trees eventually, as well as one they’d culture-forced.)

I waited till I heard the door shut behind him before I used the Terminal.

I wondered if the battle with Eleanor had finally given me the courage to do this. I had put it all off too long. As Eleanor had said, some modifications made you more, not less, human.

The screen brightened. A loaf of bread appeared, with one slice cut and steaming gently, and then a face took its place. Salt and pepper hair, a pudgy face, skin that showed evidence of decades of sunlight, laughter and good eating, despite both regeneration and rejuvenation and who knew what other tweaking. Pleasure washed across her features. ‘Danielle,’ she said.

‘Dr Meredith.’

She smiled, the wrinkles crinkling even deeper. ‘Just call me Meredith,’ she said. ‘So much more discreet.’

‘You asked me to get in touch with you,’ I said. ‘If I ever decided I wanted to be what I used to be.’

The smile and lines grew richer. ‘I don’t suppose you can ever be that,’ she said. ‘There’s no going back again. But are you asking me if I can help you Link again?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s what I’m asking.’

‘Then we’ll have to see, my dear,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to see.’