Flesh and Blood
CITY
M
ICHAEL
An ambitious City administrator, former lover of Danielle, once a member of the Forest but now restored to Truenorm status with a transplant from his norm clone.
M
ELANIE
(M
EL
)
One of the three remaining Forest, now brain-wiped and mind-dead, formerly engaged to Tom (now deceased).
FAITH HOPE AND CHARITY
D
ANIELLE
Once a City Virtual engineer and member of the Forest; now Proclaimed and outcast from the City.
N
EIL
Apple grower and apple breeder, Danielle’s lover.
T
HEO
Administrator/accountant, secret vampire,
*
married to Elaine; Neil’s foster father.
E
LAINE
Meditech, married to Theo; Neil’s foster mother.
C
ENTAURS
and W
ATER
S
PRITES
who are only loosely associated with the community.
BLACK STUMP
O
PHELIA
Danielle’s friend.
G
LOUCESTER
Formerly married to Perdita, now deceased.
*
R
OMEO
Formerly called Caliban, married to Juliet.
**
J
ULIET
Formerly called Julius, married to Romeo.
**
H
IPPOLYTA
**
Community technician.
Y
ORICK
**
Children:
P
ORTIA
, C
ORIOLANUS
, V
IOLA
, H
ORATIO
, M
ALVOLIO
.
GREEN TREES
D
R
M
EREDITH
:
Outlands surgeon and genetic engineer, 148 years old.
*
T
he man’s body lay in the bubble tent. It looked peaceful, as though all suffering was over. The dead don’t feel or think.
A woman knelt by the body. Her eyes were red with grief and sleeplessness. She stood, and pushed through the bubble tent’s flaps, then stumbled down to the creek. She knelt again, and splashed her face with water.
The dead don’t see either. But suddenly the corpse’s face grimaced with remembered pain. The woman stepped back into the tent as the dead eyes opened.
She screamed.
She was still screaming as the dead hands grabbed her.
P
ower.
How can I describe it? As though a light had been turned on in my brain, flooding me with brightness. As though every muscle in my body was magnified a million times. I could leap to the moon, I could seize the universe.
I lay back and let the power trickle through my mind.
Two years ago I had been cast out of the City; my ability to Link directly with computers — and with the others of the Forest who were computer-Linked too — had been taken from me.
Now it was back.
I was Forest again, not a Tree, and for the moment it didn’t matter that there was no-one alive who could Link with me, that the rest of the Forest were dead, except for Melanie, mindwiped and semi-conscious in her City room, and Michael, happily playing Administrator in the City that had banished me.
I let my mind fly through the blessed complexity of the Clinic’s Net.
‘How do you feel?’
I opened my eyes. A plump woman with salt-and-pepper hair and a scent of fresh bread sat by my bed. Dr Meredith.
‘It worked,’ I said simply.
She smiled. ‘I expected it would. It wasn’t a difficult operation.’
‘I don’t know how to thank you …’ My eyes filled with tears. Shock I suppose. Certainly not pain. I’d never need to feel pain again, now I could Link pain-control impulses directly to my brain.
‘Thank Manny. My grandson. Or is he my great-great-grandson?’ The smile grew deeper. ‘It’s hard to remember the generations nowadays. He was the one who operated. My hands aren’t steady enough to hold a scalpel any more.’
They looked steady as she sat peacefully by my side, soft from kneading butter pastry, with ingrained flour along one nail.
‘It’s not just the operation. You took the risk — all of you …’ I didn’t know what would happen if the City discovered what the Clinic had done; if they discovered that this illegal Outlands clinic even existed. I had no idea what the City did to Outlands undesirables — it was something the City Admin never cared to publicise — but I had no doubt it would be brief, savage and drastic.
‘We trust you to be discreet.’ It was said with a smile, but I didn’t doubt the seriousness of her words.
‘When can I get up?’
‘Tonight. There’s a plastiseal over the wound. Give it a few more hours to bond.’
‘And that’s it?’
She smiled again but her eyes were strangely watchful. ‘That’s it. When your hair grows again there’ll be no sign it ever happened.’
‘I … see …’ After so long it was hard to stay in the real world, not to plunge into the sea of data hovering about my mind. I forced myself back. ‘Where’s Neil?’ I tried not to make my voice pathetic. He’d held my hand as they’d wheeled me in. I had expected him to be holding it again now. Power was all very well, but I wanted Neil too.
The smile faded. ‘My dear …’
‘What is it? Something’s happened to him, hasn’t it?’
She nodded. The eyes were wary. ‘He’s still in the operating theatre.’
Suddenly I understood. ‘No! No, he didn’t … you wouldn’t …’
‘I’m sorry, my dear,’ said Dr Meredith.
T
hey let me see him that night. One of the boys pushed my old-fashioned wheelchair into the recovery room, Dr Meredith at my side.
Neil lay unmoving in the bed. His head was shaved, like mine, with the faint pink of plastiseal over six incisions. His eyes were shut, his face blank.
For a moment I panicked. Dr Meredith touched my shoulder. ‘Link anaesthesia, my dear. We’ll keep him unconscious for another twenty-four hours.’
‘And then?’
She shrugged. ‘I won’t lie to you. I don’t know. Nothing like this has been attempted before.’
‘But even if it fails he’ll be like he was before?’
The pressure on my shoulder strengthened. ‘No promises. Even if the operations work there may be … damage. Mental processing is spread through so much of the brain. There may be memory loss, problems with physical coordination. Hopefully there’ll be none of these. But there may be.’
The panic bit deeper. ‘How much memory loss?’
Another shrug.
‘When will we know?’ I tried to keep my voice steady.
She hesitated. ‘I can’t tell you that either. He may wake tomorrow and there may be no problems at all. There may be problems for a year or more and then they’ll settle down. There may be so much damage that it will be
kinder to keep him under anaesthetic indefinitely. Neil knew the risks. He accepted them.’
But I didn’t, my mind screamed. I knew nothing of this! Nothing! Why didn’t he ask me …
For the same reason I didn’t ask him when I chose to have my Link block removed. My mind was my own. My body was my own. It was mine to risk …
I couldn’t speak. My body wanted to hurl itself at Neil, warm him with my warmth, share my consciousness with him. I grasped the edges of the wheelchair instead.
One hour, two. I was dizzy with fatigue.
They wheeled me back to my room.
D
inner was turkey — thin strips of meat fried in butter and spices with a dish of tomatoes baked with potatoes at its side. (I could hear the birds gobbling in the distance, on the farm that disguised the illegal Outlands clinic.) I ate it carefully, knowing I needed the food, trying to appreciate its flavours. I’d be able to Link up any flavour and texture I wanted now, could spoon up Basic stodge and let my mind believe I was eating caviar, scooped from the fish before sturgeon became extinct. But I was used to Realfood now.
Dr Meredith brought in the dessert. There were two plates on the tray. She handed one to me, took the other herself and sat by my bed.
It was cherry tart, with custard. I caught the smell of some unfamiliar liqueur.
Dr Meredith took a bite, swallowed. ‘Too much kirsch.’
‘Is that what it is?’
She nodded and took another spoonful of custard. ‘I could give you the recipe if you like. But I suppose you’d prefer me to answer your questions.’
‘Please.’ I tried to think where to start. ‘I don’t understand any of this. How could you do such a thing?’
‘Morally or technically?’
‘Both.’
‘Well, morally — Neil asked me to. I respected his request, warned him of the dangers. Technically …’ she hesitated.
‘Go on.’
‘Remember how you gave me a tissue sample when you and Neil first came here? Well, Neil gave me one at the same time.’
‘What?’ I cast my mind back. ‘You mean he planned this way back then? But we weren’t even lovers yet.’
‘No,’ she said gently. ‘But Neil loved you nonetheless. Didn’t you know?’
I remembered how defensive I’d been two years before. ‘Yes,’ I said slowly. ‘I remember.’
‘Even back then Neil guessed that one day you’d choose to have your abilities restored. He believed — rightly or wrongly — that when that happened you wouldn’t want to share your life with someone who couldn’t Link minds with you, couldn’t even Link with a computer Net and share its power. He asked me if it would be possible to modify his brain to have those abilities too.’
‘And you told him …’
‘I said I didn’t know. I said I’d think about it. And I did.’
‘I manipulated a cell of Neil’s to incorporate your modification, then force-grew a clone. Today we took modified brain tissue from that clone and grafted it into Neil’s brain.’
‘But … but my modification — it’s not all in one place. It’s not like inserting a bit of brain and there you are.’
‘Thank you,’ she said dryly. ‘I’m aware of that. It took four of my boys nearly eight hours, as a matter of fact. It would have been easier of course just to replace large portions of Neil’s brain with his clone’s. But I wanted to preserve the memories. Neil’s clone is only potentially the Neil that you know. We had to keep as much of Neil’s brain intact as possible.’
I put down the cherry tart. Even the ghost of appetite was gone. Dr Meredith shook her head. ‘Carbohydrates are a natural sedative. Eat up.’
My hand shook almost too much to hold the spoon. ‘What are the chances?’
‘Of the operation succeeding? I told you — I have literally no idea. No past experience to judge by.’
‘No. Of …’ I tried very hard not to cry. ‘Of getting Neil back. The Neil I know.’
‘I’m sorry, my dear,’ said Dr Meredith softly. ‘I don’t know that one either.’