Spares

The phone rang in Howie’s office, and he reached across to pick it up. The first part had taken an hour to tell, and Suej had fallen asleep, lying crumpled in the chair. As Howie listened to whoever was on the line I stood up, took off my coat, and laid it over her. She stirred distantly, a long way away, and then settled down again. Her eyelids were flickering, and I wondered what she was dreaming about. I hoped it was something good.

Howie put the phone down. “That was Dath,” he said. “No one below thirty knows shit.”

“What about Paulie? Nothing from him?”

“He’s out in the Portal.” Howie shrugged. “He’ll call if he gets anything.”

He sat, and waited, and I told him the rest.

The first thing I did was introduce some new wiring into the Farm complex, setting up a subsidiary alarm system. Then, with Ratchet’s help, I disabled the automatic relays which would trip if the tunnel doors were left open for longer than five minutes. As the relays would flash lights on panels in both Roanoke General and the SafetyNet headquarters, they had to be cut out before step one of the plan could be put in place. We couldn’t just destroy them, because that would set off a different alarm.

When we were convinced that it was safe, we opened the doors. From then on they were left that way all the time, unless the alarm went off. I let the spares pretty much come and go as they pleased in the facility, distressing though that sometimes was it was never a relaxing experience to look under the table and find a naked man with no eyes or a girl with no legs lying underneath.

I didn’t make any other changes for a few days, waiting to see if freedom of movement caused any of them distress. It didn’t appear to. The spares Ratchet and I were especially targeting soon seemed to prefer being outside the tunnels, though they usually went back there to sleep. The others reacted in a variety of ways: from occasional accidental excursions into the main facility, to never leaving at all.

Then I started the classes. I could never have done what I did, or even a fraction of it, without Ratchet. I got through a year of college, but I studied history. I didn’t tangle with child psychology, language acquisition, or any kind of teaching practice. I was starting with kids in their teens, none of whom had received any human interaction in their lives. It ought to have been impossible to overcome that, and I think that had I been on my own it would have been pitifully little, far too late.

But Ratchet was more than the cleaning drone I’d largely ignored until the night of the overdose. For a start, he did something to the medic droid. It was a company machine, designed and built to do what SafetyNet wanted. Yet at no point in the following five years did it ever show any sign of turning us in, or complain about having to chase the spares all over the compound in order to monitor and feed them.

Second, and most importantly, it was Ratchet who did the teaching. Sure, I was the one who sat with the spares and hauled them upright, held their heads still so they could see the letters I waved in front of them and hear the words I repeated, over and over, in their ears. And yes, it was me who stood behind them, arms looped up under theirs forcing them to learn how to use their limbs properly. Their muscles were ludicrously underdeveloped, despite all the magic in the medic droid’s food preparations. The day-in, day-out hauling around of the spares was probably the only thing which kept my own body from wilting into oblivion.

I did these things, and talked to them nonstop, and held them when they were unhappy, though such contact comes far from easily to me. But it was Ratchet who did the real work. He insisted I be the front man, on the grounds that the spares needed human nurturing, and I worked hard years of watchfulness and manufactured warmth. I tried to guess at the things they would need, and as they finally started to hold rudimentary conversations I did what I could to ensure that their intelligence gained some hold, and some independence. But without Ratchet’s apparent understanding of the ways in which a dormant human brain could be hot-wired into life, none of it would have passed step one. He planned the lessons, and I carried them out.

After a while, the project—because in some ways I suppose that’s what it was—took on its own momentum. I became less dependent on Ratchet’s advice. I let the spares watch television and listen to music. I tried to explain the stuff that Ratchet couldn’t—like how the outside world really worked. But throughout, Ratchet was there every step of the way.

I often wondered how Ratchet came by his knowledge, and never came to any real conclusion. Except one, which may or may not be relevant. I wondered if Ratchet was broken.

I didn’t begin to suspect this for a long time—the droid was so capable in so many ways that the idea would have seemed preposterous. But I began to notice things. Sudden changes of activity, occasional brief periods when he seemed to stall or slip into a quiet neutral. He had some weird theories too, about unifying the conscious and the unconscious, which I never understood. And then there was the coffee.

Every day I was on the Farm, Ratchet made enough coffee to waterlog about twice as many people as the place could hold. Each time I went into the kitchen I was baffled, amused and increasingly concerned to see the huge pots on the stove, each of which would quickly be replaced when it became stale. Unless the machine had spent time in some large hotel as Droid in Charge of Beverages, I couldn’t imagine why he might do such a thing.

I asked him about it once, and he said simply it was “necessary.”

Years passed, and gradually the changes in the spares consolidated. The ones we spent most time with now understood, at a basic level, what was said to them. They also began to talk, though for a long period there was a kind of crossover where some of them, notably Suej, spoke in an odd amalgam of English and what I thought of as “tunnel talk.” This was an incomprehensible system of grunts and murmurings, and I’m not even sure it was a proto-language of any kind. More probably it was simply a form of verbal comforting. As time went on they settled into using English most of the time, and of course most of them ended up sounding oddly like me, because mine were the only verbal rhythms they’d heard face-to-face. I let them watch television, too, so they could learn about the world outside. Possibly TV isn’t much of a role model, but then have you seen real life these days?

Almost none of the older spares picked up anything at all, even though some were hauled into the classes regularly and the younger group were encouraged to pass things on to them. A few, like Mr. Two, gained a shadowy grasp of a handful of forms and words, in the way a cat may learn to open a door. Most learned nothing, and just rolled and crawled round the Farm for a little while each day, before returning to the tunnels to sleep and wait for the knife.

Because it kept happening, of course. The ambulances kept arriving. Sometimes it seemed that the people out there in the real world delighted in living recklessly because they knew they had insurance. At intervals the men would come, and go again, leaving someone maimed. Nanune lost her left leg, a hand and a long strip of muscle from her arm. Ragald’s left kidney went, along with some bone marrow, one arm and a portion of one lung. In addition to the graft which had been taken before I got to the Farm, Suej lost a strip of stomach lining, a patch of skin from her face and then, six months before the end, her ovaries. By that time, Suej had learnt enough to know what she was losing. David lost two of his fingers and a couple other bits and pieces. The group got off comparatively lightly.

And you know, it didn’t have to be this way. If the scientists could clone whole bodies, then they could have just grown limbs or parts when the need arose. But that would have been more expensive and less convenient, and they are the new Gods in this wonderful century of ours. If parts had been made to order, the real people would have had to wait longer before they could hold a wineglass properly again. This way spare parts were always ready and waiting.

It didn’t take me long to realize the trap I’d backed myself into. When the orderly grabbed Nanune out of the tunnel the first time, I only just managed to hold myself back from violence at the last moment, converting my lunge into a pretense of helping the orderly which was, in any event, ignored. As the years went on, it got worse, because there was nothing I could do. Literally nothing. If I caused trouble of any kind, however small, I’d be out. SafetyNet owned me. They housed me, fed me, paid me. Even my ownCard was theirs. If I lost the job, I was in trouble, but that was the least of my worries.

If I stopped being the caretaker at Roanoke Farm, then someone else would take my place. Someone who wouldn’t help them, who would shut them back into the tunnels and make the taste of freedom I’d given them the bitterest mistake of my life. A man who would shut the tunnels and keep them that way, except maybe to yank jenny or Suej or one of several others out in the middle of the afternoon, rape them, then throw them back on the pile. With rotten empty men left alone, you never can tell what they’ll do. Morality is all about being watched; when you’re alone it has a way of wavering or disappearing altogether. Ratchet knew stories about a caretaker who finally slid inside himself one long, cold night and started playing Russian roulette with the spares. He pulled the trigger for both of them, obviously, and as fate would have it the first time the hammer connected with a full chamber the gun was pointing at his own head. They say a fragment of the bullet is still embedded in the tunnel wall, and that when the caretaker’s body was found, one of the spares was licking the remains of the inside of his skull.

I’ve also heard about complaints being made when spare hands turned out to have no fingernails left, only ragged and bleeding tips, when internal organs were found to be so bruised they were barely usable, when spares’ skin showed evidence of cuts and burns which did not tally with any official activity.

Maybe they should have hired proper teams of professionals to look after the spares. Perhaps SafetyNet’s customers thought they did. But they didn’t. That would cut into the profit. People sometimes seem to think that letting financial concerns make the decisions produces some kind of independent, objective wisdom. It doesn’t, of course. It leaves the door open for a kind of sweaty, frantic horror that is as close to pure evil as makes no difference.

I might have been okay if I’d just done the job I’d been hired to do, that of sitting and letting the droids get on with the tending of livestock. But I didn’t, and once I’d started, there was no possibility of just walking away. I’ve turned my back on a lot of situations in my life, too many. Each time you do so a sliver of your mind is left behind, cut off from the rest. This part is forever watching the past, glaring at it to keep it down, and the only way you know it’s gone is because the present begins to bleach and fade. A smell grows up around you, a soft curdled odor which is so omnipresent that you don’t notice it. Other people may, however, and it will prevent you from ever really knowing What is going on again, from ever understanding the present

When David lost his fingers I sat him down and explained why the men had done that to him. As I talked, conscious of the smell of Jack Daniels on my breath, I looked into his eyes and saw myself reflected back, distorted by tears. For the first time in six months I wanted some Rapt, something to smooth away the knowledge the pain in his eyes awoke in me. I was the nearest thing he would ever have to a parent, and I was explaining why it was okay for people to come along every now and then and cut pieces off his body. I was honest, and calm, and tried to make him realize I was on his side, but the more I talked the more I reminded myself of my own father.

For the next three years, two feelings shifted against each other inside me, like sleepy cats trying to get comfortable in a small basket. The first was a caged realization that I had created a situation that I had to see through, for the sake of both the spares and myself.

The second was a hatred, for the Farms, whoever owned them, and everything they stood for. I knew something had to be done, but neither Ratchet nor I could think of what it might be.

In the end the decision was taken out of our hands.

On December 10th of the fifth year of my time at the Farm, I spent the morning sitting in the main room. Several of the spares were there with me, talking, watching television, some even trying to read. Others, in various states of repair, were dotted all over the complex, wandering with purpose or wherever their rolls and crawling had taken them. I went for a walk round the perimeter at lunchtime, my breath clouding in front of my face. Winter had settled into the hillside like cold into bone, and trees stood frozen in place against a pale sky like sticks of charcoal laid on brushed aluminum. It was good to come out, every now and then, to remind myself there was still an outside world. I was also checking the weather, hoping for a fog or snow. On a couple of previous occasions, when I was sure no one could see from the road, I’d let a few of the spares out into the yard.

The afternoon passed comfortably in the warmth of the Farm. I helped Suej with her reading and showed David some more exercises he could do to build up strength in his arms. I did my own daily ration of pushups and sit-ups too, trying to keep myself in some kind of shape. I still wanted Rapt every day of my life, but it had been a year since I’d had any at all. Exercise and work, along with Ratchet, were keeping me clean. I took a shower, helped myself to a cup of coffee from the ever-present vats in the kitchen, and settled down with a book in the main room.

Just another winter’s evening at the Farm, and I felt relaxed. I almost felt worthwhile.

At nine o’clock the alarm went off, and my heart folded coldly. Why today, I wondered furiously—as if the day made any difference—why can’t they just leave us alone?

The main spares quickly helped herd the others into the tunnels, and when everything was secured I turned the alarm off and waited in the main room for the doctors to arrive.

Just let it be one of the others, I was pleading, conscious of how unfair that was, of how similar it was to the thinking which had generated the Farms in the first place. Protect those whom I care about. And fuck everyone else.

The doctors arrived. They wanted Jenny.

I led the orderly into the second tunnel, swallowing compulsively. I knew Jenny wasn’t there, but I took as long as I could finding out. After about five minutes of pantomime the orderly shoved me against the wall and pushed his gun into my stomach.

“Find it,” he said, and partly he was just being an asshole in the time-honored fashion of grunts. But beneath the off-the-rack anger there was something else, and I began to suspect that Jenny’s twin must be someone pretty important.

We went into Tunnel 1. I moved round David and Suej, who were a few yards apart, facing into the walls. The orderly kicked Suej hard in the thigh, and then leant over to squeeze her breasts. For a moment I saw his neck before me, perfectly in position for a blow that would have killed him immediately. I didn’t take advantage of it. I couldn’t, then, though I wish I had. Suej goggled vaguely at him for a moment, rolled over, and then craned her head back toward him with a look of such vacancy that he recoiled in distaste. I found myself nearly smiling: Suej understood how to behave. Better so than David, who looked a little self-conscious and was keeping his front carefully turned toward the wall. I let the main spares wear various bits and pieces of my clothes, and they’d gotten used to it. Being clothed may not be a natural state, but for them it was a badge of belonging to a world outside the blue.

In the end I didn’t have much choice. I pointed Jenny out, and the orderly looked her up and down before dragging her out of the tunnel. From the way his hands crawled over her body I thought it was lucky the doctors were in a greater hurry than usual.

One of them met us as we turned into the corridor to the operating room and impatiently motioned us forward. I tried to send some message to Jenny as the door closed between us, and then I strode back down the corridor again, hands clenching.

I passed Ratchet on the way. The droid generally waited outside the OR in case there were any special instructions after the operation. Usually we exchanged some word at that point, some verbalization of futility. That day we didn’t. Neither of us appeared to be in the mood.

I went back to the main room, poured a whiskey, and waited for what could only be bad news. In those last few moments at the Farm my mind was filled with alternatives, parts that could be taken without scarring Jenny too badly. A finger joint, maybe. A ligament somewhere unimportant.

But not her eyes, I was thinking—they’re too beautiful. Please don’t take her eyes.

Then suddenly I heard shouts and the sound of an impact. Seconds later, the medic droid shot into the main room and zipped out of the front door without even looking at me. I shot a bewildered glance after it and then instinctively ran toward the OR. As I reached the turn I saw Ratchet speeding down the corridor toward me, dragging Jenny, who looked bewildered and terrified. The door to the operating room was locked, and I could hear the sound of the doctors banging their fists against it. Jenny tripped and fell toward me, and I caught her in my arms.

“What the fuck?” I asked.

“She spoke,” Ratchet said.

Jenny cowered away from me. I tried to soften my face and to smile. I don’t imagine it looked too convincing.

“It’s not her fault,” Ratchet added quickly. Jenny’s twin had been involved in a fire, and had internal injuries together with third-degree burns over eighty-five per cent of her body. Jenny would not have survived the operation. They were going to use her up in one go; were, in short, intending to skin and gut her. The surgeons had hurriedly discussed technique as Jenny was strapped to the table, not for a moment realizing that she could understand if not the detail, then certainly the gist of what they were saying. The operations on the spares were never made under anesthetic, and as the head surgeon had bent over her to inject the muscle paralyzer, Jenny had allowed two words to escape from her mouth.

“Please,” she said. “Don’t.”’

Only little words—but she shouldn’t have been able to speak at all. Ratchet, eavesdropping outside, had immediately smashed through the doors, slammed the surgeon out of the way, grabbed Jenny and ran.

He knew as well as I did that it had finally all come down.

“Jack,” the droid said suddenly, and I turned to see the orderly sprinting along the tunnel corridor toward us, holding a pump-action riot gun at port arms. I pulled Jenny and Ratchet back into the other corridor. “What are we going to do?”

“This,” I said, waited a second, then stepped out in front of the orderly. As he whipped the gun round into position I snapped my hand into his chin, palm open, and his head rocked back on his neck. I punched him in the throat, put my hands on his shoulders and whipped my knee up while yanking his face down toward it. He grunted as his nose spread across his face and tumbled forward, already unconscious. Before he hit the floor I caught the back of his head with a swinging kick that snapped his neck.

I turned the body over and pulled the gun out of twitching hands. Then I grabbed the revolver from his holster and shoved it into my belt.

“Keep them in there,” I said to Ratchet, stabbing my finger toward the OR. Both the droid and the spare were gaping at me. I avoided their eyes and grasped Jenny’s hand. Nice Uncle Jack betrays his real skills, I thought, with a sinking feeling.

Jenny fought against me for a moment but then gave in and was dragged behind me as I ran to the tunnels where I shook David and Suej to their feet, hustled them out, and pushed them through into the control room. I stepped into the room where I slept, grabbed an assortment of clothes, and threw them at the spares, shouting at them to get dressed. As they clambered into a ragged assortment of my cast-offs I heard the first shots coming from the OR. At least one of the surgeons had his own weapon and was trying to shoot his way through the door. SafetyNet doctors aren’t your usual kindly men in white coats. Their backgrounds are kind of checkered, and at least some of them are ex-Bright Eyes. The spares turned their heads back and forth at the sound, faces white and eyes wide with complete incomprehension, and I motioned at them to hurry.

I snatched, my traveling bag from the cupboard where it had lain unused for over five years, and swept more of my clothes into it, selecting the thickest sweaters I had. I’d been out that afternoon, of course, and knew how cold it was going to be. I scrunched a couple of lightweight folderCoats into the top of the bag, propped the shotgun against the wall while I dragged a jacket on, and then stepped out into the control room. The medic droid popped urgently back through the main door, paused for a moment, then disappeared into the corridors. I started to follow but Ratchet appeared in the doorway.

“They’re getting through and I can’t kill them,” he stated baldly. I knew the medic droid couldn’t, either. To that extent, at least, they were both still company men. “Go now.”

“Ratchet,” I said, and I’m not sure what I was going to say. I knew he couldn’t come with us, that he would be like a big red beacon amongst the group, trackable by radio from the sky. Perhaps I was going to ask advice, or thank him. I never got as far as doing either.

“One of them is using a mobile,” Ratchet interrupted suddenly. “Go. Go. Go.” As he repeated the word, over and over with eerie similarity like some verbal siren, I heard a crash down the corridor. I ran to the spares and shoved them out into the compound as footsteps ticked down the OR corridor. The steps paused for a moment, presumably by the corpse of the orderly, and then thundered toward us: aggressive, purposeful slaps of leather on dry tiles.

“Get in the ambulance,” I shouted at David, who just stared at me. He knew what a van was—he’d seen cars and trucks on television. As for how you got into them, that was a different matter, and not something they go to great pains to explain in films. It’s generally taken as understood. David started banging his hands, palms down, against one of the doors, frustration spiraling into fury.

Suej stared at me, ready to do something, anything, if I would only tell her what it should be; and Jenny stood to one side, head down, clinging to one of Suej’s hands and crying into the wind. I felt a toxic gout of hatred of myself, for making her feel to blame for what was showering all around us. Then suddenly six cubic inches of the door frame exploded into my face.

I believe some moments in your life collapse into themselves, that some things never really happen at all except in the grainy slow motion of retrospect. Perhaps those moments, those sparks which flare and fall out of your life, are drawn together somewhere, to make a whole that stands apart from you. Maybe they are all part of some other life. The killing of the orderly had been a simple, savage act. But the surgeon was different, was a glimpse of this other void swimming into vision out of darkness.

In silence, I turned slowly to see the surgeon bursting into the control room, his body surging toward me. His face was hard, with straight lines of bone, skin stretched with effort and two chips of ice in his eyes; his gun was steady in his hand. His mouth opened as he shouted something at me, but I never heard what it was. My hands pumped the gun, fired it from the hip, but I watched the effect it had as if my eyes were cameras and I was sitting in some entirely different room somewhere far away. The round caught him squarely in the stomach and it looked almost as if his lungs and bowels stayed where they were while the rest of his body leapt forward.

Then time hit me like a truck from the side and I stumbled backward into the yard as Ratchet kept repeating his alarm, over and over again. “Go. Go. Go.” There was something damaged and empty about the sound, and I wondered if he’d been hit.

The yard was brightly lit against the darkness by arc lights in each corner. In less than a second I realized where the medic droid had been going when he left the complex: to cut the tires of the ambulance. I guess he couldn’t have known we’d make it there first and, since it couldn’t harm SafetyNet employees, had done his best to destroy their means of pursuit. Nice thinking on his, or—more likely—Ratchet’s part, but not everything goes the way you expect. As I stared bleakly at the vehicle I heard an excited squawk from behind me, and turned to see Ragald standing shivering in the door. Nanune was hiding behind him, gaping at the mess in the control room. Both were completely naked.

I got within an inch of shouting at them to go back inside, caught sight of Ratchet, and clamped my mouth shut. Wincing against the sound of David’s continuing attack on the ambulance, I threw my bag at Suej and told her to get them dressed. Then I grabbed the neck of David’s coat, hauled him away from a door which was now covered in dents from his fists, and ran toward the gate. I trusted Ratchet to keep the other doctor out of my hair for a few minutes at least.

I fired a round at the gate’s lock mechanism, and then two others at the hinges. The metal bent and split, not completely but enough. As David and I kicked and shouldered the remains of the gate, we heard a bellow behind us. I whirled with the gun, teeth unconsciously bared, and came very close to blowing Mr. Two to pieces. When I saw he’d brought half a body out with him I shut my eyes and nearly pulled the trigger anyway.

Suej held her hands up, took a coat and pair of overalls out for the latest addition to our merry band, and put the half-spare in my bag, which was by now empty of clothes. What would have been enough to keep four people warm was now spread thinly over six and a half.

When the gate finally gave way, eventually aided by another round from the riot gun, I shouted at the spares and they straggled toward the gate with maddening slowness. When they reached the fence they all stopped as one, looking out through the hole in the gate like a litter of kittens: in front of an open window for the first time and not knowing what on earth to make of the possibilities beyond.

An hour later we were on a CybTrak train, trundling round the outskirts of Roanoke and heading for the mountains. CybTrak wouldn’t have been my first choice of transport, maybe not even my second or third. Like anyone else, when something’s after me I want to be getting the hell away as quickly as possible: Making a getaway on CybTrak was like taking part in a car chase while riding a pogo stick. The network is only there to transport nonperishable goods slowly round the backwoods. I could have made better time just running. But within a few minutes of leaving the compound I saw that there was a higher priority than speed: getting the spares somewhere contained, manageable and away from normal eyes.

They tried their best, David and Suej in particular. They’d all sat up nights and dreamed aloud of some day setting foot beyond the fence. I used to hear snatches of these conversations sometimes, as I dozed over a book at the other side of the control room. I’d let them talk, though I knew—or thought I did—that it could never happen. A release from pain, some better place. Everyone needs a religion, some unseen good to yearn toward.

The moment I actually got them out, they froze. It was too much. Way, way too much. Most stopped dead in their tracks, trying to inventory the new things one by one. As the new things started with the black road at their feet and continued indefinitely in every direction, I sensed it could take a while. Ragald went to the other extreme, tuning everything out and thrumming instead with a blind and nervous joy which pulled each limb in a different direction and threatened to tear him apart. Mr. Two gazed meditatively across the hill, turning in a slow circle and intoning the word “spatula” at regular intervals, and Jenny stood slightly apart, trying to occupy as little space as possible.

I got them moving eventually, but it was like trying to hurry a group of children on acid through a toy factory. Every step was too magical to understand, never mind leave behind.

There was a T-junction thirty yards up the hill. I couldn’t remember where the two choices went, and squinted in both directions. One seemed to head round a hill, probably toward the town; the other looked as if it headed off toward the south end of the Blue Ridge Parkway. We didn’t want to go to Roanoke—hell, who does?—so I took them right instead.

It was impossible. By dint of shouting at them I managed to focus David and Suej, but that was all. Mr. Two wouldn’t walk in a straight line, but in large bowing curves like a cat. Nanune was still trying to hide behind Ragald, and whenever the male spare turned to stare at something new, she shuffled round behind him until they were suddenly walking in another direction altogether. I could have made quicker progress walking backward on my hands. It was pitch-dark, and the temperature was dropping like a stone. I was torn between a rising panic and insane calm. The two emotions fed each other, melding together until they were transformed into some larger feeling of swift and glittering dread.

Then two yellow eyes appeared ahead, and I bundled the spares rapidly off the road. By the time the car had passed I knew that we couldn’t simply keep on walking.

I got us a half mile up the Parkway, to a point where the trees were thickening on either side of the road. Then I collected the spares into a group, led them into the trees, and impressed upon them the importance of shutting the fuck up.

It was like being in the tunnels when the operating men came, I said—only even more important.

I walked away, turned back to check they were out of sight, and saw Ragald obliviously following me. I returned him to the group under Suej’s supervision, and then walked away again. From twenty yards they were invisible. They’d be safe for a little while—at least until SafetyNet came with dogs. Holding the gun up against my chest, conscious of how few cartridges I had left, I ran off to see what I could find.

I was too wired then to feel what I experienced the following morning in the CybTrak compound—a sudden delirious joy at being back in the world. Instead, I concentrated on keeping myself invisible, trying to work out a way we could get out of the area. The fact that the road wasn’t crawling already with SafetyNet security or Roanoke police was almost eerie. We had very little time to vanish.

I found the CybTrak rails after about ten minutes and ran back to collect the spares. They were terrified by then, and so cold they could barely walk, but I got them back to the track. We waited, and it was not long before a train meandered past. I walked alongside the train hauling the spares one by one into a carriage full of computer parts.

Then I jumped up myself, pushed the panel shut and we left the Farm behind forever.

Howie sat staring at his hands, as he had for much of the second part. I’d seldom met his eye, just let my mouth run. It was the first time in five years I’d had a real conversation with someone who wasn’t a droid or a spare. Even though I’d been describing a disaster area, it had felt good. Except now I’d finished I remembered it was all true, and that there were people who wanted to punish me for it.

I told Howie the rest, how we’d fetched up in a backwoods CybTrak compound that morning, and how Ragald had been cut in half by two security droids which had disguised themselves as an abandoned snow-covered carriage. Then I stood up, bones creaking, and fetched another beer from the fridge.

When I sat back down at the table Howie raised his eyes and looked at me. Then he started slowly shaking his head.