The iso skins fitted like, well, skins. An almost translucent white over our entire bodies with a small mask, like a flattened mouth organ, to filter air in and out as we breathed. The skins were permeable too: they let sweat out and rain in, but allowed nothing living, virus or bacteria, either way.
No one seemd to know where the Centaur had been before they’d come in to the paddocks. None of the remaining centaurs had enough language to help us either. But no-one from the surrounding utopias reported meeting the centaurs in the past month.
‘Where first?’ I asked. ‘Just fly in ever-increasing circles around the utopia till we find something?’
Neil shook his head. ‘Crows,’ he said.
‘Crows?’
‘Crows go for dead bodies.’
‘But what if the person the Centaur caught it from died indoors?’
‘Unlikely. If anyone in any of the utopias near here had caught the disease they’d have told us. The Centaur most likely came in contact with a Wanderer who didn’t manage to make it to a utopia before dying. Or another Animal.’
‘But if they died, what, twenty-one days ago. Surely the crows would have …’ I tried to keep my voice firm, ‘… have finished feeding now.’
‘Crows hang around,’ said Neil.
We packed the floater with enough food for several days — it had its own water supply — and bedding too, in case we were too far from home to return at night. Normally most utopias would shelter travellers for a night, but somehow I doubted that two alien-looking beings in iso skins, possibly carrying the plague, would be welcome.
The motor hummed, as floaters always do for a few seconds when you start them up, some deep vibration in the machinery. I switched the controls onto look-see so whenever I kept the control button pressed the floater would follow the direction of my gaze. The floater rose half a metre then gathered speed down to the creek, then up the hill and along the ridge.
You could see the main buildings from here, the long solid community centre with Elaine’s and Theo’s house at one end; the clusters of two-storey houses; the orchards, dotted with sheds and workshops; the gleam of dams. And then the paddocks, the pale blue cows grazing the dark green grass, and my beach with the three Water Sprites surfing through the waves.
Normal. Quiet. Safe.
The purple flicker of the neuro fence grew closer. Neil buzzed Theo; the flicker stopped while we went through, then started up again behind us.
It was strangely frightening beyond the fence. Back there, if we grew ill, they’d look after us. Out here we were on our own.
The trees crowded like a green wall in front of us.
‘Crow,’ I said. ‘Over there.’
I pressed the look-see button down. The floater veered in a narrow curve and zoomed through the trees up the next hill.
It was a kangaroo, or had been once. A Norm roo, no human genes to carry the plague. Now the skeleton was brown and stained, the flesh dried strips of meat. The solitary crow glanced at us, screamed once and flew away.
‘Not a likely plague vector,’ I said.
Neil nodded.
I sent the floater up and vaguely in the direction the crow had flown.
Then we saw them. A black crowd on a gum tree by a gully. They screamed and fled as we approached. I hovered the floater almost at ground level and looked around.
‘Down there,’ said Neil shortly.
I followed his gaze.
It was human, or had been. The clothes were scarcely torn, a tough unisuit of stained blue. I tried not to think what had caused the stains. The arms still stretched towards the trickle of water in the gully. The hands held something round and dappled dark and white. But their flesh was gone.
I reached for the toilet chute and retched uncontrollably. ‘I’m sorry,’ I choked.
Neil shook his head without speaking. He passed me his handkerchief and I wiped my mouth.
‘I’m not usually squeamish,’ I began, then swallowed my gorge again. ‘It must be the pregnancy.’
‘Probably,’ said Neil. He looked a bit white himself. ‘You stay here.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘See if there’s any way of identifying the body. See where the poor bugger came from.’
‘Neil look! Up the hill. It’s a tent.’
‘And a dikdik,’ said Neil softly. ‘This will be easy then.’ He gave me a half-smile. ‘Don’t look,’ he instructed.
But I did. I watched as his iso-suited hands rolled the body over, checked the pockets, shook his head. He walked up to the dikdik next, switched it on to do a check through of its memory, then turned it off. He crossed over to the tent.
It was the sort most Wanderers use — an inflatable bubble pegged to the ground that didn’t need trees or poles to tie to, that kept out heat and cold if it was too far for your dikdik to make the next utopia or you felt like camping by a stream. Humans seem to have an inbuilt need for trees and water. In the City people relaxed into Virtuals. Out here they took tents when they wanted a change of scene.
Neil pulled open the door and stuck his head inside. Suddenly he stepped back and pressed the tent closed again.
He didn’t look at me. He looked at the body by the creek, then back at the closed tent. Then he stepped slowly and deliberately towards the floater.
‘Neil, what is it?’ His face was white.
‘Just give me a minute.’ He pulsed for coffee. I heard the gurgle as it gushed into the cup, the swish as sugar swirled in too.
There was no-one here we might infect, so Neil slid open his mask, then sipped the coffee, holding the cup in both hands as though he needed its warmth.
‘Neil!’
‘I’ve got the coordinates from the dikdik,’ he said quietly. ‘The last place they stopped. It’s west a fair way. Just let me key them in.’
‘All right.’
Something was badly wrong. I knew it. But I also knew he’d tell me in his own time.
The floater rose. I took a last look at the tent, at the body by the creek. Neil didn’t look back.
Suddenly something struck me. ‘You said “they” — the last place “they” stopped.’
Another sip of coffee. ‘There was someone in the tent.’
‘Dead?’
‘Yes. But not of plague.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Plague doesn’t usually rip your body into pieces.’
‘Oh my …’
‘It wasn’t … nice,’ said Neil.
‘But what could have done it? An animal? Maybe the person by the creek was attacked too. Maybe it wasn’t plague at all.’
‘Not an animal,’ said Neil flatly. ‘Animals don’t do up tents after they’ve killed.’
‘But people don’t …’ I was going to say, people don’t rip each other into pieces either. Even the vampire and werewolf I’d sought before hadn’t done that. But I saw the whiteness of Neil’s face and said nothing.
‘There was something else,’ he said at last, as the floater veered around a dark stone bluff and onto an almost treeless plain.
Something in his voice told me I didn’t want to know. But it also said I needed to know.
‘What?’
‘The body by the creek. It was holding something.’
‘Yes?’
‘It was a skull,’ said Neil. ‘It still had a hat on. It was the skull from the body in the tent.’