Free Flesh and Blood by Jackie French Page A

plague there. Have gone off and married Yorick at Black Stump?’
    ‘Yorick?’ He frowned at that. ‘Do you mean you and Yorick?’
    ‘Nope. Never occurred to me. Or him probably. Just trying to work out any possible desirable future you might have interfered with.’
    He did grin at that. ‘I’m being stupid.’
    ‘Yes,’ I said gently. ‘But if you want to blame yourself for not being able to zap a virus out of the air, go right ahead.’ I took his hand. ‘I’m where I want to be. With the person I want to be with.’
    ‘Really?’
    I considered. ‘Well, come to think of it, no. I’d rather not be on a floater in an iso skin heading into the desert tofind victims of a plague. I’d rather you were somewhere else too. Somewhere safe. A beach maybe …’
    ‘Tsunamis, blue-ringed octopus, mutant algae, who can fight fate?’ intoned Neil. ‘I could be floating out to sea drowned on my surfboard now.’
    ‘I didn’t know you could ride a surfboard,’ I said.
    ‘I can’t. That’s why I drowned,’ said Neil. His grin was almost genuine now.

chapter 24
    ‘T his is it,’ said Neil dubiously.
    I looked around.
    Grass. Trees. Rocks. Not even a crow in a gum tree.
    ‘Well,’ I said, ‘either there’s an invisible utopia all around us or our friends back at the tent just camped here.’
    ‘Yes, but why here? Why come into the middle of nowhere to camp? There isn’t even any water here.’
    ‘Might be a spring by the rocks.’
    ‘Ha,’ said Neil. ‘If there’s a spring anywhere around here I’ll eat my toe-nails.’ He opened the door and stepped out.
    I followed him more slowly. There wasn’t much point in even leaving the floater. There was nothing to see. ‘Perhaps you got the coordinates wrong …’ I began, when Neil gave a yelp of triumph.
    ‘Look at this!’
    I looked. ‘Can’t see anything.’
    ‘The grass, dimwit. See, it’s thinner here.’
    ‘Well, goody gumdrops.’
    He grinned at me. ‘Something has rested here, for weeks probably. Long enough for the grass to start to die, but long enough ago for it to have begun to recover.’
    ‘Their tent?’
    ‘Bigger than that,’ his grin grew wider. ‘A hunters’ camp. I’m sure of it.’
    I’d done a Virtual of a roo hunters’ camp years ago in my old life in the City. I’d given it up halfway throughand done a medieval hunting lodge instead. Medieval hunting lodges are romantic: great blazing fires and roasting oxen and galloping through the trees. A roo hunters’ camp is bleak and lonely.
    ‘See?’ said Neil. ‘I bet this was where the refrigeration plant was. And the floaters over here — the soil’s sort of depressed. And they’d have had the tents over here. Look, bloodstains — the door to the refrigeration area where they kept the roos must have been just here …’
    ‘Great,’ I said. I’d had enough of blood.
    ‘So all we have to do is find out where they’ve gone next,’ said Neil.
    ‘How do we do that?’ I asked.
    He smiled again. The small triumph had lifted his spirits. ‘You’re the data-retrieval expert.’
    ‘Not expert. Just more experienced. And I wouldn’t know where to start looking.’
    ‘Easy,’ said Neil. ‘Just assume you’re a utopia that wants to trade roo meat and ——’
    ‘And call up “meat”,’ I finished for him. ‘Okay.’
    I shut my eyes — most people do when they pulse. It’s easier to concentrate. I usually didn’t bother, but I wanted to work fast now. ‘Got them,’ I said. I pulsed the coordinates into the floater as I spoke.
    ‘How far away?’
    I calculated. ‘Half an hour. How often do hunters move camp?’
    ‘Dunno. Till the roos have moved away, I suppose. Or when they hear of a good rainfall that might bring the mobs together.’
    We stepped into the floater and he shut the door.

chapter 25
    M ore grass. Yellow erosion gullies that the bio-Engineered grass still hadn’t colonised. Stunted scarecrows in the distance that only grew tree-like