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brief Realtime tasks — taking hot coffee mugs from the ultrawave, bowel motions, talking to outsiders who weren’t enhanced.
    I’d got used to Realtime in the past two years, learnt to focus on each moment in a way you never did online. I wondered what would happen when Neil was more used to the enhancement — whether we’d bother with Realtime between us at all.
    Somehow I thought we would.
    ‘She was happy,’ said Neil drowsily.
    ‘Elaine? Yes.’
    ‘She’ll like a baby.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘Theo looks frail. Don’t know if it’s just because I haven’t seen him for a while or if he’s got frailer lately.’
    ‘Maybe both,’ I said.
    More silence, if you didn’t count the rustle of the leaves, the grunt of the Wombat as he tried yet again to push through the stone wall around the garden, then settled for the carrots I’d left out for him in a dish by the back door. Sometimes he scratched on the door wanting company. But mostly the wombat genes overpowered his human ones and his mind was focused on food alone.
    ‘Do you remember the last bioplague?’ asked Neil finally.
    ‘A bit. I was four, no five. I remember being creche-bound for a while. They wouldn’t even let my parents visit. But it didn’t matter much. We Virtualed instead.’
    ‘I don’t remember much change here either. I suppose it was different for the adults. I know Theo turned on the go-away signal for any floater or dikdik homing in on our coordinates, and powered up the neuro fence around the perimeter. He’s probably done that again already now.’
    ‘That’s a bit ruthless.’ It was difficult to imagine Theo, mild-mannered accountant and closet vampire, putting up a defence shield that caused mental irritation at first and death if you persisted. But then strangers might bring death too.
    Neil’s hand began to absently rub up and down my thigh. The City might be more ruthless, I thought, but they did it all at arm’s length. The Outlands looked after themselves. The utopias’ ability to isolate themselves was what had kept them alive through the Declines. Many utopias in fact had been formed by Citysiders fleeing from the plagues. Yes, Theo would do what he had to do to keep the community safe.
    ‘I can’t quite accept it,’ I said slowly. ‘The idea that we might really be in danger. But Theo and Elaine seemed to take it in their stride.’
    ‘They lived through the last one,’ said Neil.
    ‘No cases here?’
    ‘None. I seem to remember people in iso suits taking it in turns to care for sick strangers. There was a clinic set up — you know the storeroom by the top boundary? There.’
    ‘Will the community set it up as a clinic again do you think?’
    ‘Probably. Theo will want to. Elaine too. But they’ll chat to a few people first.’ Our utopia, Faith Hope and Charity, rarely held formal debates or voted on issues. It mostly operated on a casual consensus, on the basis that most of the time no-one cared much either way. But this would be different.
    ‘I suppose there’ll be a meeting,’ I said slowly. ‘Should we go down to it?’
    ‘No. We know the news anyway. And I don’t want everyone asking questions about our lack of hair,’ said Neil lightly, his hand on my breast. ‘Will they get bigger, do you think?’
    I wrenched my mind from neuro fences and plague clinics. ‘Probably,’ I said. ‘Then sag down to my waist if I don’t get them regenerated.’
    ‘Better make the most of this shape then,’ said Neil.
    We made love again and slept, and when I woke in terror later in the night Neil’s warm body soothed me, and I slept again.
    But the terror lingered in the happiness, all the same.

chapter 14
    I spent the next two weeks combing the Nets. Despite the seriousness of the situation I felt the euphoria every time I Linked. It was like stretching again after two years cramped in a small box. It was a shock, sometimes, to slow down to Realtime, to talk to Neil. Even when I washed