BLUE-792 was a prize bull. His genes had created hundreds, possibly thousands, of calves over the years and some of his offspring, a very few, had become bulls too, siring even more calves to keep the herds going. Shanti recognised every one of BLUE-792’s descendants. They weren’t the beautiful cattle of the herds. They were the heavy-boned, hardy strain. They were the ones that survived disease and the cold, regimented routine that was herd life. They were the ones that fulfilled their purpose. All of them shared his blue eyes and round face. Most of them had his swollen bulb of a nose. They were in the dairy herds, in the bullpens, in the veal enclosures and in the meat herds too. Only bulls and dairy cows would live as long as BLUE-792 and of those, only the very finest bulls would lead such a long and prosperous existence.
Shanti watched the bull sleep and wondered how many of its offspring he had already dispatched. So many times the access panel on the conveyor had opened and he would find himself looking into the eyes of BLUE-792 passed down one, or sometimes two, generations. And here was their predecessor, still alive. Still kicking, as the stockmen would say.
BLUE-792 stirred causing the straw he was lying in to rustle. Shanti froze in position. If the bull knew it was being watched it could cause problems. Cattle that formed any kind of relationship with their human overlords tended to alter their behaviour patterns, to become unmanageable. Many words were synonymous with meat at MMP. ‘Unmanageable’ was one of them. Shanti liked watching this particular bull. He didn’t want to find himself looking into its eyes as he pressed a pneumatic weapon to its head. Not yet. Not until BLUE-792’s time was well and truly up.
The bull sat up, as though waking to a sudden loud noise. Shanti shrank back away from the crack and held his breath for a few moments. More scratching and rustling came from inside the pen as the bull raised itself heavily onto its legs. For a few seconds afterwards there was total silence. Shanti planned to back away quickly and noiselessly if he heard the bull come towards where he was standing. Instead he heard the swish of straw as BLUE-792 walked to the far end of its pen and began to tap its finger stumps on the wall. Shanti heard the whispered hissing and sighing coming from the bull’s mouth. He wondered how many other Magnus Meat Processing employees had noticed the Chosen signalling each other this way. He doubted anyone had the time for observation. None of them took the same interest he did.
The not-quite-random taps and breaths continued and Shanti crept back towards the crack. Inside he saw BLUE-792 with one ear laid to the aluminium panels. There was a smile creasing its face. Perhaps it was comforted just to hear the response of other animals and know that it was not alone.
Nauseated and weakened by the chemicals in the dip, Snipe found himself barely able to struggle as Cleaver forced him towards one of the sarcophagus-shaped operating tables. The noose tightened, constricting Snipe’s windpipe and cutting off most of the blood flow to and from his head. Just before he reached the table he blacked out.
It must have been part of Cleaver’s method for handling his charges on his own. When Snipe came round, the hard lights came back into focus above him; he was spread-eagled on the slab. Cleaver was tightening a strap on his ankle. His other limbs were already secured but Cleaver appeared to want no movement at all to disrupt his work. A leather strap came over his chest and was pulled so taut he had to breathe from his solar plexus to get any air. Another was looped over the bones of his pelvis, another locked his knees flat. The final strap was for his head. He tried to fight this one because it would mean he could no longer see what was happening. He didn’t want to look but it was the last modicum of control he possessed. He swung his head from side to side trying to evade Cleaver’s grip and for a while he succeeded in preventing the last strap being fixed. It was only when Snipe felt a smooth section of timber slide under the back of his neck that he realised Cleaver wanted him to struggle so that he could arrange things according to his requirements.
With the block of wood there, his struggles were restricted but he didn’t give up. The tip of a knife appeared large and distorted only millimetres from his right eye.
‘You’re going to make me late with all this fucking around. Blinding isn’t part of the ritual,’ breathed Cleaver. ‘But I’d be happy to include it at your request.’
Snipe stopped moving.
‘That’s more like it.’
Cleaver drew a strap across his forehead and pulled it tight. Because of the block underneath his neck, Snipe’s throat was extended and exposed as the broad loop of leather shortened against his brow. He could breathe but he could no longer swallow.
When Cleaver thrust the tip of a scalpel into his larynx, Snipe screamed for the first and last time. The sound was cut short.
Rory Magnus sat back in his chair with a creak so familiar he didn’t notice it and put his booted feet on the scarred oak of his desk. He lit a cheroot from the previous one he’d been smoking and dropped the first one into his ashtray without bothering to crush it out.
From the door at the back of his study he could hear the faint sounds of struggling, the rush of bodily evacuations and inevitable dunking and wet thrashing. He’d heard it all a hundred, a thousand times, before and he never tired of it. This was how to rule the town. This was how to maintain high standards at the factory. This was how to command respect and destroy dissent.
The curtain by the door shifted in an air current and soon Magnus could smell shit and bile and the acidic tang of the dip. It was unusual in so far as there had been no words of pleading from the cow-poking dairyman. But soon, though. Any minute now there would be –
The scream.
The first incision was the easiest to abide but they all screamed. Every single one of them. And then the scream would cease as though someone had swept an axe down upon a block. Efficient Mr. Cleaver. He smiled.
And after the scream there was a different sound, just as intense. More so perhaps. A desperate sibilation that struggled to be heard. Magnus could imagine Snipe’s lips moving as his words no longer came. The silent begging and the wordless hisses of transformation.
Deeper, more complete cuts would follow.
Magnus listened as if to a familiar duet played by unfamiliar musicians.
He listened and it was good.
Six
It was dusty in the records offices. The further back through the years the Parson went, the dustier the filing boxes and the shelves around them became. The silence in there lay like dust also, strata of it pressing down and muffling the wood, the cardboard, the paper.
A records officer had stamped her Welfare pass; a flaky-skinned man with white hair curling out of his ears and nostrils, an air of ancient overuse about his faded green tank top and the worn edges of his collar. He had the smell of a man who lived alone. A records clerk assisted him. Between them they recorded all the births, deaths and marriages in the town and filed them in manila folders in brown boxes on racks of shelves.