‘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.
M
y 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?’
T
he 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.
Emerald 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.’
I looked at Eleanor. ‘You didn’t go with them?’
‘Not built for it,’ said Eleanor frankly. ‘I don’t have the right burst of speed for a hunter.’
In other words, I thought, she was too human. The others—including Rusty, I presumed—could run on four legs, so much more efficient than two. And her teeth were smaller too…
Unbidden, my eyes rested on Emerald’s mouth, wide-set eyes, short chin, the strong uneven teeth. Then
Eleanor’s teeth, longer than Truenorm, perhaps, but not by much.
There was a sudden noise outside. Emerald pricked up her ears—literally—they went from flat to pointed, so just for a second her face almost resembled Portia’s. Eleanor’s ears stayed human…or did they turn just ever so slightly in the direction of the noise outside?
Emerald lifted her nose towards the gnarled window. ‘The floater’s back,’ she said with satisfaction. ‘Rusty and the kids. They’ll be ravenous.’ She limped across to the larder door and disappeared inside.
I stood up and went over to the window. I could see the floater now, parked next to mine. A short, well-muscled man with a strong, square face hopped out, sniffed the air twice, then turned back to say something to whomever was in the floater. He was followed by a tall girl. Almost radiantly beautiful, she had her father’s strong features softened, and the confidence and unconscious grace of healthy youth. A boy followed, taller than his father, gangly rather than muscular, with only his nose and jaw showing anything non-human in his ancestry. He was laughing at something the girl had said. And then…
I stepped back.
‘What is it?’ asked Eleanor. She was watching me intently.
‘I saw…I thought I saw…’ I thought I’d seen a man with a wolf’s face. Not an Uncle Dusty, loveable and dog-like. This was a true wolf, but this one walked on two legs, with the size and muscles of a man.
I said nothing more. I backed up to the table and sat down again and took a gulp of tea. It was cold but still sweet. I needed the sweetness.
I heard the front door open. Voices, bumps as the cubs leapt on the furniture in excitement, a rumble of a man’s voice, more authoritative than Dusty’s. Then the kitchen door slid open.
‘Danielle,’ said Eleanor, her voice seemed to come from a long way away, ‘I’d like you to meet my husband. Rusty, my darling, this is Danielle. I told you about her last night; she’s come to help us.’
Rusty sniffed once, twice in the direction of his wife, then leant over and shook my hand. No neck, too-long arms, square nose, the nostrils moist and flexible, but the rest of his face was human. He smelt of sweat and something stronger, but it was more musty than unpleasant. His hand was square and muscular. The back was hairy rather than furry and the grip was polite rather than crushing.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ he barked—my mind had tried to avoid the word but it was apt. He turned to Eleanor. ‘New smell outside.’
‘Really, darling? Probably just from the Virtual. You know it always upsets you.’
Rusty shook his head. ‘Not Virtual,’ he said stubbornly, ‘something else’.
‘I hadn’t noticed…Danielle, these are our older children. Jen, say hello to Danielle.’
‘Hi,’ said the girl, taking the glass of milk that Emerald handed her. ‘Thanks Auntie, darling, I’m starved.’
A too-wide mouth, perhaps, and too-thick eyebrows, and the graceful body was slightly too narrow-shouldered and long-armed, but no one who didn’t know would ever have guessed her wolf heritage.
‘And this is Ben.’
The gangly boy grinned at me and reached over his sister’s shoulder for the chocolate slices that Emerald had placed on the table. He was smaller than his sister, and more heavily furred, and looked more easy-going too.
‘And this is our eldest son,’ said Eleanor. ‘Danielle, I’d like you to meet Len.’
The wolf towered in the doorway. Like Dusty, he wore shorts, but the clothes seemed to emphasise rather than diminish his animal form. He smiled at me, but it wasn’t a human smile. It was an animal’s grimace, a showing of teeth, not a gesture of welcome.
I was used to Animals. The Wombat at home, the Centaurs, Theo’s Cat…why should this apparition suddenly terrify me? Make the hair on my arms rise? Make me want to run out the kitchen door and keep on running…?
And then the wolf shut his jaws and wrinkled his long nose at me. ‘Glad to meet you,’ he said. ‘We really appreciate this. We really do.’
And suddenly he was a person too.