Blood Moon (3 page)

Suddenly he had my full attention. ‘Water Sprites?’

I knew the Utopia offered shelter to other Proclaimed modifications like the Centaurs…and me, for that matter, but…‘Water Sprites?’ I said again.

Theo smiled. If you looked closely you could see his canines were just slightly longer and thicker than Truenorm. ‘They live in the top dam, but I imagine it’s a bit boring for them.’

‘I’ve never seen them,’ I said.

‘No? Well, they don’t come out much.’ Theo didn’t elaborate why. ‘Dinner tomorrow night? We could call Neil for you at the same time.’

‘Yes, that would be lovely. Thank you. I’ll look forward to it.’

I left him and walked back to my own house.

I
t was drizzling when I stepped outside. The clouds must have drifted over while I’d been inside.

A year before I’d have assumed this drizzle meant the end of the drought. I’d even done a drought Virtual once, a sort of subtle horror theme, the subliminals sneaking up on you till the smell of dusty flesh and hot bone surrounded you. I’d ended it with a sunlit shower of rain, the red-brown greening from the horizon and the onlooker suddenly realising they were smelling flowers and grass.

Today, as an apple farmer’s lover, I knew that this drizzle meant little. A little green fuzz on the hills, perhaps, that would melt away in two days’ sun. No deep moisture for the roots of trees. The small dams would stay dry, the big dam that supplied the orchards and the community would stay half empty. No wonder the Centaurs had come down from the dry hills.

What would it be like to be a Water Sprite and watch your dam dry up? I wondered. Water Sprites…they’d be long-haired and ethereal, I decided, with blue eyes and delicate fingers.

At least the drizzle was a change from blue sky so high you thought it had been doing stretching exercises.

I wished…I wished Neil was waiting for me, instead of an empty house.

I wished it would rain enough to water the garden, so I didn’t have to bother this afternoon, standing wet and
stupid in the rain because the damn stuff couldn’t be bothered to do its job properly.

I wished Michael was…what? Properly ashamed? No, properly anguished, that was the word. As anguished as I had been over the death of my friends, over the brain death of Melanie, but even more anguished than me because it was he who had betrayed us, betrayed us, betrayed us…

I closed the paddock gate behind me (there was no sign of either cows or Centaurs, but I had learnt to keep gates as I’d found them) and began the climb up the hill.

T
he clouds hung low and grey till evening. I made myself a boiled egg (from the hens at the Utopia—Realfood was still a luxury, even after a year in the Outlands) and cut slices from the loaf Elaine had given me the day before, and ate it with a salad of tomatoes and cucumbers from the garden. When I looked out the window, the heavens were clear again; stars salted and peppered through the sky, more vivid, now that the full moon had waned to a cheese rind.

The next day was blue and hot and gold, and the next day and the next. Michael didn’t call again. Neil did, but our conversations in Theo’s office seemed incomplete or perhaps, I decided, I simply wasn’t used to the limited communications a Terminal allowed. Perhaps it would be different, I thought, when my manual Terminal arrived and I could talk in the familiar intimate surroundings of our home. But by then Neil should be home.

The beach design was complete. The site was pegged out. The contractors would start work in the next day or two, with their supervisor, a capable woman I’d worked with before. My role was finished until the basic work was done.

The beach would be fresh water, not salt—the only area where I’d deliberately not been accurate, but it would smell and taste salty to anyone microchipped and capable of receiving Virtual signals. In other words, everyone in the Utopia except me. The project would
actually increase the water storage capacity of the community.

Five days till Neil returned. Not that I was counting…

It was time to start planning another project. There had to be something Faith Hope and Charity needed, or at least some luxury they’d enjoy. A teaching project for the kids perhaps—a miniature of the entire planet, maybe, to help the study of geography. Or a medieval farming village. That would be relevant and useful—for a three-hour lesson perhaps…

If only I’d been sent to a less prosperous Utopia, one that really needed my skills—or at least my money.

Maybe I should concentrate on our own house for a while. Add a Roman bath, perhaps. Maybe make it a Garden of Eden design, with apple trees for Neil…

It would be fun and it would occupy me. For a time.

I pulled my sketching pad towards me (it had taken weeks to get used to drawing on paper, to using a pen instead of transferring the image directly to the Net from my mind) and began to draw.

Someone knocked on the door. For a moment I thought it might be the Wombat, hoping for carrots and companionship. (I was never quite sure how lonely—if at all—my Animal neighbour was.) But he’d been busy with a project of his own, enlarging the hole behind the hut that was his home, and wombat-like, he had room for only one idea at a time. Besides, although I had been trying to teach him the art of knocking, he was more likely just to push his way in.

I went to answer it. It was Theo.

‘Good evening.’ He stood there uncertainly. ‘I apologise for disturbing you. There’s a call for you. Elaine is busy. Martha’s gone into labour and…’

‘Please don’t apologise. I’m the one who should say sorry for disturbing you with my calls. They promised to have the manual Terminal ready for me three weeks ago. You wouldn’t think it would be so difficult, would you?’

I was gabbling. I wondered if Theo and I would ever recover the ease with which we used to talk before the incident last year. I used to enjoy talking with Theo. ‘I’ll just get my jacket.’

‘I brought a dikdik in case you thought it too late to walk.’

Or in case I didn’t want an evening walk with a vampire, I thought. ‘No, Theo,’ I said gently. ‘I’d love a walk. I’ve been cooped up here all day.’

It was hard to read the expression on his face. How could I, I thought. What had I ever experienced of the small, private hells Theo endured? But I thought he looked relieved.

‘I’ll send it back on automatic then,’ he said.

It was a quiet walk. The dead grass crackled faintly under our feet, and there was the occasional deeper crack of bark. Faintly in the distance I could hear the dikdik puttering back to the farm on the lowest speed, the occasional murmur of a cow, the shriek of a possum whose territory had been disturbed, the far off gong of a powerful owl. Listing all these sounds makes it sound rowdier than any City enclave, but maybe non-human noises are different. They only seemed to emphasise the quiet.

‘Fruit bat,’ said Theo suddenly.

For a moment I thought it was a reference to vampire bats.

‘That shriek,’ said Theo.

‘I thought it was a possum?’

I could just see his head shake in the darkness. ‘Fruit bat. They’ll be after the late apples. Not much blossom about in the bush in weather like this. I must remember to put the orchard ultrasound onto pulse before I go to bed.’

‘Theo…?’

‘Yes?’

I stopped. I wanted to ask, ‘Has Elaine forgiven you yet? Does she still order the blood you need, hidden in the ‘topia’s medical supplies? Can she bear to touch you yet or is she, like me, still seeing the red blood on the girl’s white skin? Not a nice girl, but who could wish a death like that on anyone? I wanted to ask, ‘How can you be Theo, the kind philosopher I thought I knew, and still be capable of killing?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ I said.

I had forgotten to ask who the call was from. Perhaps I had just assumed it was Neil with fresh news from his conference, or Michael, not believing that this new Danielle might refuse to do his bidding.

It was neither.

The screen in Theo’s office was still on. Evidently whoever had called preferred to hold on for the forty minutes or so it had taken Theo to fetch me, rather than have me call them back. Which meant that either they were very patient or I didn’t have their comsig.

Theo’s footsteps faded along the corridor as I stared at the screen. It showed a white painted wall, with a coloured drawing pinned to one side. Whoever had called had apparently grown tired of waiting.

I stared at the drawing. It was roughly done. More a scrawl than a sketch—green-topped trees with straight brown trunks and a blue smudge of sky, and an animal
which might have been a horse or a dog or a deformed bandicoot…

‘Is anyone there?’ It seemed silly speaking to an empty screen, but someone could be within earshot.

‘What?’ A face appeared from the left, grey-brown hair that might have seen a brush last week or the week before, a grease smudge on the cheek. ‘Danny! I’m sorry, there’s a connection loose. I was just under the table fiddling with it. Hippolyta was suppose to fix it but you know what she’s like…’

‘Ophelia! It’s good to see you. How is…?’ I wanted to ask, how is Gloucester? Has he recovered from the horror of Perdita’s death? But even saying it would bring some of the horror back. So I said instead, ‘How are things at Black Stump?’

‘Oh fine. Dry of course, we had hardly any apples this year, but the corn’s okay. Spot had kittens, but Yorik says it has to be a virgin birth because there’s no other cat around, and Romeo and Juliet had a tiff two days ago, but you know how they are—they’ll be all over each other again next week which will be totally embarrassing for everyone till they cool down again, and we had a Wanderer staying with us for a few days, a nice kid. How are things there?’

‘Good. I’ve been designing a beach for the kids and Neil’s away at a conference in the City.’

Ophelia’s face fell. ‘Oh. I just wondered…’

‘Ophelia, what is it?’

‘I thought the two of you could…well, maybe just you then…’

‘You thought the two of us could what?’

‘Danny, there’s been some trouble around here. People killed.’

‘Yes,’ I said slowly. ‘Someone told me. I forgot that they’d be near Black Stump too. Did you know them? Not Brother Perry, the other one.’

‘Not all that well. Met him at the gatherings, Christmas, Easter Harvest, times like that. The Patriarch was a blerk, but okay if you handled him right. It’s just…’

‘You’re nervous with another murderer about?.’

‘Yes,’ said Ophelia frankly. ‘Especially for the kids. You don’t like to say ‘don’t go out alone after dark’ and all that. But it’s not just that.’

‘What then?’

‘People are accusing some neighbours of ours. Saying they did the murders, or one of them did anyway. You know what gossip’s like.’

‘You don’t mean the werewolves?’ I demanded.

‘They’re not werewolves! You can hardly see the wolf in them, most of the time. Well, apart from Uncle Dusty of course, and Len’s a bit…’

‘You’re sure they’re innocent?’

‘Of course! Wolves are, well, they’re gentle creatures. They’re not like humans. Wolves only kill for food, or in self-defence. You should see Uncle Dusty with the kids. He’s just wonderful with them. We trade with the Tree all the time—our corn for their venison. They’re good friends. Good neighbours. Danny, I hate to see them suspected like this. We’re afraid…well, what people might do…’

Outlanders take care of their own. The Outlands had their own systems of justice. I was beginning to realise that in some cases it might not be justice at all.

‘You mean a…a lynching party?’

‘Yes. No. Maybe not that. Maybe just a shot in the dark when they’re hunting.’

‘They hunt? I thought they weren’t wolves?’

‘They’re part wolf! A small part! Some of them hunt for food sometimes—and if they enjoy the chase too, what’s the harm in that? But they don’t kill humans, Danny. I’m sure of it.’

‘I see.’ I was silent a moment. ‘Why call me?’

‘Because…because we can’t think who else could help. Because they’re our friends. Because you’re our friend too.’

‘Oh,’ I said. I sat silently a moment while the screen fuzzed and flickered then steadied again. Either the connection was still loose or their power system was about to crash again.

‘Ophelia…don’t be so sure I can help. I’m not a detective. I’ve never been trained in anything like this.’

‘But you can try,’ said Ophelia. ‘Besides, people will listen to you. You’re an outsider. Everyone just says that we’re—well biased. That we don’t want to accept it. Please, Danny.’

‘I’ll be there tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Say about lunch time. I’ll help if I can.’

‘Danny, thank you.’ Ophelia’s face showed pleasure, but no surprise. I was their friend after all. To those at Black Stump—and Faith Hope and Charity, I supposed—that said it all. Of course one friend would help another.

I went to find Theo, to ask him to make a call to hire a floater for me. A manual one, on long-term lease.

T
he floater beeped as it neared the Black Stump coordinates. I switched it on to manual and managed to park it under the gnarled apple trees beside the main house.

I stepped out then stepped back again, as my foot landed in a puddle of something black. I glanced up.

A hook hung from an apple branch. It too was dark, crusted with something the flies nuzzled in the heat. Blood.

I shivered despite the sunlight. The blood brought back too many memories: Perdita’s body, slumped in the kitchen; her murderer hanging from this same hook, his guts hanging from his body, with Gloucester slumped and anguished beside him…

No, it couldn’t be the same hook. Or they’d have washed it, anyway. This blood was fresh—an animal, slaughtered for meat.

I took off my slipon and washed it, and my foot too, under the tap by the house, before climbing the steps to the verandah.

T
he Black Stump kitchen smelt of hens and fresh corn muffins and elderly washing-up. The scent of parched grass blustered down the hallway as the breeze blew in from the sea. There was a hint of compost toilet, too. The type that never quite managed to compost itself and instead bubbled in the blackness below one’s bum.

‘What do you know about wolves?’ demanded Ophelia.

We were sitting at the kitchen table, the washing-up piled behind us. The table was littered with cornmeal and sultanas and a plate of muffins on the table from today’s breakfast, or maybe yesterday’s or the day before’s. Somewhere outside a hen clucked then squawked in alarm, as a child ran after it.

I set my mind to recall. Even though I could no longer scroll through networks’ data as though they were an extension of my brain, I could at least remember what I had learnt when I was still Forest. ‘Not much,’ I admitted. ‘I never made a winter Virtual, you know, snow and wolves howling. Or a werewolf thriller either—too hackneyed.’

‘I keep telling you, they’re not werewolves,’ said Ophelia irritably, scratching at a mosquito bite on her arm. ‘They don’t change by moonlight or stuff like that. They just have wolf genes back in their ancestry, that’s all.’

‘That’s all? It sounds quite enough. Why wolf, anyway?’

Ophelia shrugged. ‘Who knows why most of the modifications were made in the wild years.’

I nodded. Perhaps someone who had money and a taste for kinky sex had said, ‘I want one of those. Make it for me.’ Or maybe they just wanted the perfect watchdog, with human intelligence and the jaw strength of a wolf.

Ophelia slapped another mosquito, ‘Blast these things. You’d think there’d be less in the dry, not more.’

‘So how many of them are there, anyway? These wolf-human crosses, I mean, not mozzies.’

‘Just the one family.’ She counted on her fingers. ‘Twelve I think, unless I’ve left someone out.’

‘So each generation must be getting more…humanlike, I suppose, as they interbreed with humans.’

‘Sort of. They don’t interbreed actually.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘They breed with each other, within the clan. It’s not like human incest. It’s a wolf thing.’

‘I thought you said these people were human…’

‘Well, they are. It’s just—well, okay, I suppose they are wolves too. Some more than others…’

‘Can they interbreed with humans?’

‘I suppose so,’ Ophelia said crossly. ‘The question just doesn’t come up.’

I sat back in the shabby old chair and took another apple and corn muffin from the plate on the table. ‘How about you just tell me what you know about them then.’

The muffin crumbled before I could get it to my mouth. I began to pick the crumbs up, one by one.

Ophelia bit her lip. ‘I don’t know all that much. I mean, you don’t ask friends questions like “Who was your great-great-grandma’s genetic surgeon?”’

‘The great-great-grandma was the original wolf-cross?’

‘I don’t know! Anyway,’ continued Ophelia, stubbornly meeting my eyes, ‘there must have been money from somewhere. The family bought the end of the valley, oh, about fifty years ago. They built this big house, the Tree it’s called…’

‘A tree house?’

‘No, a real tree. You’ll see when you get there. They breed deer up there. It’s perfect for deer, right up at the end of the valley—there are cliffs on three sides so they only need to fence the entrance. The animals more or less run wild.’

‘So who exactly is in the family?’

‘Well, there’s Great Uncle Rex and Great Aunt Lexie. Aunt Lexie’s mostly bedridden now, but Rex is a sweetie. Then there’s Uncle Dusty and Aunt Emerald, and Rusty and Eleanor. Rusty and Eleanor are…well, I suppose you’d call them the dominant male and female. You said you don’t know much about wolves?’

I shook my head, my mouth full of dry muffin crumbs.

‘Well, only one couple at a time mate and they mate for life.’

I blinked. ‘What do the others do about sex? You mean they’re totally celibate?’

‘I suppose so. Great Uncle Rex would like you to think he’s a bit of a lad—he even propositioned Hippolyta once. But it’s all show.’

‘No sex at all?’

‘Some people do without it,’ said Ophelia (who as far as I knew slept alone) wryly. ‘It’s the way wolf packs operate anyway. One boss male, one boss female, the rest help to look after the kids.’

‘How do you get to be the chosen ones?’

‘I don’t know. Fight for it, I suppose.’

I must have looked shocked. Ophelia frowned impatiently again. ‘Look, you’ve got to think of them on their own terms. They’re nice people. They’re just…different.’

‘So Rusty and Eleanor fought Lexie and Rex and became the dominant pair?’

‘I don’t think so. I think Lexie and Rex were always just aunt and uncle. It was all before my time. I suppose Rusty and Eleanor fought their parents.’

‘What happened to the parents?’

‘Dunno. The family kept to themselves in those days. It’s only since Rusty and Eleanor have been head of the family that they started to mix with the rest of us. They even had a gathering up at the Tree last year.’

‘Wait a minute, let’s get this straight. Rusty and Eleanor are brother and sister!’

‘And husband and wife. Look, the kings and queens of Egypt used to marry their brothers and sisters.’

‘And look what happened to them,’ I said dryly. ‘All right, Rusty and Eleanor fought their parents and won. Did they have to fight all the others too?

‘How should I know?’

‘All right, we’ve got Rusty and Eleanor, and the aunts and uncles. Who else?”

‘Just the kids. Two litters so far—Len, Ben and Jennie, they’re teenagers. And then Bonnie, Connie and Johnnie, they’re just cubs.’

‘Cubs? I thought you said these people were mostly human.’

‘They are! It’s just…well, that’s what they call them. They call themselves werewolves too, sometimes. It’s just
a joke. Anyway, the cubs come down here sometimes to play with the kids—or they used to. Eleanor doesn’t like them going out of their end of the valley now.’

‘She’s scared of the murderer?

Ophelia met my eyes. ‘I think she’s more worried by people’s reactions to the murders.’

‘But surely no one would hurt a mob of kids!’

Ophelia bit her lip. ‘There’ve been threats. Someone painted ‘blood calls for blood’ on their entrance wall a few days ago. And Sister Karen—do you remember her?’

I nodded.

‘She called in here to tell us that Animals don’t have souls, so it was no sin to kill them.’

‘Sweet of her.’

‘She meant well,’ said Ophelia unconvincingly. ‘She offered us a pair of mind-tangler’s anyway.’

‘Those things are dangerous!’

‘I think that was the general idea,’ said Ophelia dryly. ‘We’re supposed to defend ourselves with them when the werewolves attack.’

‘Surely you didn’t take them?’

Ophelia hesitated. ‘Gloucester did. He said even if the clan is harmless there’s still a murderer about. Said we need to be prepared. Maybe he’s right. I wish I knew.’

I took a deep breath. ‘All right, we’ve got the lead wolves, the aunts and uncles, and two litters of puppies. And some day the cubs will fight their parents and maybe each other and the winners will…’

‘Will breed. And Rusty and Eleanor will retire. Or maybe they’ll just retire without fighting about it. I don’t know. It’s not the sort of thing you ask questions about! Anyway, I bet it’ll be Jennie who takes over—she’s
older and bigger than the other girls, so she’ll almost certainly win. And I’d wager good money that Len’ll be the other one.’

‘Not Ben and Johnnie?’

Ophelia shrugged. ‘They’ll probably just submit. Len’s…well, when you meet him you’ll understand.’

Neo-authoritarianism, I thought. Natural leaders. It fitted.

There was the sound of feet in the corridor. ‘Hey, did you know there’s a floater…Danny!’

A slightly grease-stained hug from Hippolyta (she must have been working on the generator again), a drier peck on the cheek from Yorik, a wave in passing from Romeo as he gathered up the rest of the corn muffins and another from Juliet, as he dumped a load of slug-ridden lettuces in the sink and sat down to eat the muffins with Romeo. I remembered Ophelia saying they had made up their tiff. I could hear the yells of the kids outside, then sudden silence.

‘That’s your floater outside?’ asked Yorik, joining us at the table.

I nodded.

‘Okay if Gloucester takes the kids for a ride then?’

‘Sure.’ I stood up. ‘I’ll just go and…’

Hippolyta motioned me to sit back down. ‘No need. They’ve already gone. There’s an ancient car engine down by the old highway. I asked him if he’d mind picking it up for me.’ She shrugged. ‘Give him something to do.’

‘How is he?’

Did I imagine it or did the atmosphere tense slightly? Hippolyta pulled out the chair beside me. ‘He’s all right. Hey, coffee! Realcoffee!’

‘Danny brought it,’ said Ophelia. ‘There’s more things on the bench too.’

I’d brought all the Realcoffee I’d had in the house, plus chocolate and Truesugar and wheat flour. Black Stump ate well enough from their gardens and orchards, but anything that wasn’t home-grown tended to run out long before they got their harvest credits.

‘Coffee,’ breathed Hippolyta happily, lifting her sandalled feet up onto the empty chair beside me. ‘Yorik, put the kettle on the stove, there’s a love. Has anyone done anything about lunch? Oh, I forgot—I took a call for you earlier.’

‘Who was it? Neil?’

‘A Water Sprite. She seemed very anxious to get hold of you.’ Hippolyta gazed at me wickedly. ‘A gorgeous girl she was too. What do you get up to at your Utopia?’

‘Nothing that involves Water Sprites,’ I said. ‘She probably just wants to know when the beach will be ready.’

‘Beach?’ asked Juliet, his arm wrapped cosily around Romeo’s shoulders.

‘Just a project I’m working on,’ I said shortly, suddenly embarrassed at having so much time and money to spend on something that was purely for pleasure.

‘Do you want me to call her back for you?’ asked Hippolyta, hopefully.

I shook my head. ‘She can wait until I get home. One thing at a time…’

Hippolyta grinned. ‘So, you’re going to solve our murders then?’

‘Probably not,’ I said. ‘But I’ll try.’

‘That’s a good girl,’ Romeo patted my shoulder. ‘It’s good to see you, you know.’

I grinned at them. At one time I had thought that I might live here, if things hadn’t worked out with Neil. It would be fun, I’d thought, sharing their happiness and squalor. Black Stump had a comradeship that was almost Forest-like.

I looked around the kitchen, at the shelves of sticky jam (no one had ever got round to putting doors on them to turn them into cupboards), Hippolyta’s cracked purple toenails, the lines of laughter and fifty years of arguments on Yorik’s face, the cat, Spot, investigating yesterday’s saucepans on the sink.

It wouldn’t have been fun, of course. It would have been sheer hell.