The Meat Tree by Gwyneth Lewis

nine months to get to Mars. What had they been doing? Did they stop somewhere along the way?
    It’s no good, I can’t figure it. The timeline just doesn’t make sense. This case seemed so straight­forward at first, but the more I look at this little ship, the stranger it is. And the story in the VR. Why is it like that? With all the fluidity between categories of human and animal? Not unusual, of course, in early mythology, but it’s very unexpected in a Technological Age vehicle. You’d expect it all to be about warfare and aliens.
    I’d like to wake Nona to talk this through, but I can’t, it’s far too late. There’s something fragile about that girl, even though she’s so feisty. I thought she was going to hit me the other day when she thought she might be attacked again in the game. For God’s sake, it’s only VR. This generation’s forgotten that there’s real life outside the Virtual Field. They never have any cause, it seems, to leave it. Still, for a young one, she’s pretty good value. I’m beginning to feel quite fatherly towards her. That’s allowed. If I had her for a year I’m sure I could turn her into a half-decent Inspector, and that’s saying something.
    I’m watching her as she sleeps. She makes small movements, like the leaves of a plant responding to the tiniest variations in light and temperature. In her dreams, she’s leaning towards a sun about whose nature I have no idea and no way of knowing.
    Try to sleep, now. Settle down. Funny – the body never gets used to the lack of gravity. Lean against something and you push yourself away. My limbs get lonely without the feel of things pressing against me.
    Restless. Every time I start to fall asleep, I hear that tiny, high-pitched voice, singing a song I don’t know from a part of myself that I’ve completely forgotten. It shocks me awake every time, familiar and alien at the same time. And it makes me want to cry.

9

    Name
    Joint Thought Channel 6 Feb 2210, 09:05

    Inspector of Wrecks
    This looks quite different. Like one of those primitive wizard games.

    Apprentice
    I know. I’ve seen them in the Virtual Museum. You each have a series of gifts and talents that you can trade in order to make your way through a landscape.

    Inspector of Wrecks
    Gwydion again. Why don’t I take his part this time, for the sake of variety?

    Apprentice
    Why not? Do you want me to be the boy by his side?

    Inspector of Wrecks
    Let’s wait for a second until we see what challenge presents itself. I’m assuming that, in the old-fashioned way, we’ll be given a task to complete.

    Apprentice
    That must be the child that Gwydion has reared. He’s grown much taller. Aged about – what – eleven, from the down on his lip?

    Inspector of Wrecks
    Difficult to tell. Remember, we go through puberty a lot earlier than the old Earth inhabitants did. He could be anything from nine to fifteen. The boy’s big, though. He’s like his half-brothers. Their years in the forest seemed to add up to more human years than the actual time they’d spent there, which was only one season, after all. This boy has the shadow of another realm on his development.

    Apprentice
    But surely he’s got no animal in him.

    Inspector of Wrecks
    No, that’s not the suggestion. From what I remember from Irish myth, physical size is a way of describing the heroic. Cú Chulainn was huge and his physical prowess exceptional.

    Apprentice
    Cú- who?

    Inspector of Wrecks
    Oh surely you’ve heard of him, the most famous…

    Apprentice
    Yes, as it happens I have. A long time ago I played a lot of a game called the Táin . Just winding you up.

    Inspector of Wrecks
    Here she comes, Aranrhod. Why don’t you take her part? The boy hasn’t been on the scene long enough to have much to teach us yet.

    Apprentice
    All right. I’m in.

    Inspector of