‘Okay, let’s go,’ said Garp.
They stepped out of the car and Garp popped the boot. From it he removed his rail-gun and walked over to the fence. The red sun breaking over the horizon cast his shadow behind him.
He held the weapon out of view and waved. The driver raised a hand in return and continued down the row. Some minutes later the harvester neared the fence. Salind couldn’t figure what Garp intended. Was he going to hold up the harvester? Garp showed him. As the machine reached the point where it had to turn to go down the next row Garp raised his weapon and fired a short burst. The driver disappeared in a cloud of red.
‘Jesu! What the hell are you doing!’
Garp glanced at him. ‘Well you said he’d be redundant.’
‘You just killed him!’
‘Yeah, I did didn’t I. Come here.’
He took hold of Salind’s shoulder and walked him to one side. Salind felt himself shaking.
He’d seen some horrible things, but he’d never seen someone killed in such cold blood. The harvester kept going, from where it should have turned, and crashed into the fence. Electricity shorted through its body as it tore out a hundred-metre length of fencing and dragged it into the highway. Hitting the bank on the other side of the road it ground to a halt, its vacuum still roaring. Salind saw that the driver was still sitting in the bucket seat, though only from the waist down.
‘You killed him,’ he repeated.
‘They all know what’s going on in here. You’ve seen nothing yet. Come on, we’ve got to move fast now. The guards’ll be here soon.’
Garp led him back to the car and started it up. He carefully drove it off-road and through the gap made by the harvester. Then he floored the accelerator and the turbine soon had them up to a hundred kloms up the cleared lane between the banoaks.
‘They always come at a breach from the outside. We’ll be too far in by then for them to do anything about us,’ said Garp.
‘What about getting out?’ asked Salind.
‘I shouldn’t worry unduly about that.’
In a few minutes they reached the end of the grove and Garp dumped the car in an irrigation ditch. He gave it one shove to get it there, leaving a dent in the metal.
‘You still recording?’ he asked as he checked his rail-gun.
‘Yes,’ said Salind, wondering if that was the right thing to say.
‘Good. Let’s go take a look at the factory.’ He hung the gun at his belt and turned his back to Salind. Looking over his shoulder he said, ‘Hop on.’
This being his first piggy-back ride on the back of a psychotic Golem android, Salind did not know what to expect. He swore, after they covered four or five kilometres, it would be his last. In minutes they reached rocky terrain cut through by gravel roads. Banoaks grew in wild profusion here, with a low scrub of adapted thyme and spherule grass below them. On the higher ground the banoaks were bigger and older than in the grove. Perhaps they had been growing since before humans arrived on Banjer.
How long do they live?
Oaks on the north continent have been dated at over five thousand years in age.
Garp peered at him, and he wondered if the ex-policeman could listen in on these aug conversations. Garp pointed to a ring of pots strapped round one of the nearby oaks.
‘Sap drains. You’ll see how they use the sap in a bit. Still recording?’
‘Yes,’ Salind replied, prepared to give no more than that. He dry-swallowed another praist pill before following where Garp led. Soon they came to a rise overlooking a sprawl of warehouses. Garp pointed to the four trucks parked before the largest building.
‘See, they’re unloading cropsters,’ he explained.
Salind’s vision did not extend so far, for he did not have a Golem’s eyes. He could just about see some activity.
Argus, give me a visual feedback, magnification x10.
Processing.
After a moment his vision nickered and suddenly he could view the scene up close.
Trussed in straitjackets and with bags over their heads, people were being led from the trucks.
One of them tried to run and soon fell flat on his face. The men doing the unloading, men dressed in armoralls like those worn by the one Garp had killed, stood laughing. One of them walked over to the fallen man and proceeded to beat him with a length of wood, only desisting when one of his companions called to him. He then dragged his victim to his feet and with more blows drove him back to the rest.
Cut feedback.
Salind’s vision returned to normal.
‘What the hell is going on down there?’ he asked.
‘They’re all people who’ve done something to piss off Soper or one of her lieutenants. Or they’re other disposable members of society. It’s noticeable how few occupants our asylums and gaols have,’ replied Garp.
‘What are they going to do to them?’
‘That’s what you’re here to see. Come on.’
Using banoak copses, scattered boulders and the occasional natural gully as cover, they worked their way closer to the buildings. Salind worried about the footprints they were leaving in the spherule grass as its little glassy bubbles burst under their feet, until he looked back and saw how quickly the footprints faded. When they were within a hundred metres of the main building Garp stopped in a low gully.
‘Wait here. I’ll be back in a few minutes.’
True to his word Garp soon returned. He carried two pairs of armoralls and two helmets.
The helmet with a crack in it dripped blood. Salind selected the other one.
Garp told him, ‘Just follow me and keep your mouth shut. You’re going to see some pretty horrible things in there. Don’t react. These people see it every day.’
‘Can I start transmitting now?’
Garp glanced over to where a long and expensive-looking hydrocar was parked. ‘Yeah, I reckon so. She’s only got access to the Polity networks back in the city, and by the time she finds out it’ll be too late.’
With some relief Salind turned his aug’s transmitter back on.
They pulled on the armoralls, Salind trying not to notice his were still warm. Climbing from the gully to one side of the main building, they headed towards the doors. Those unloading the cropsters did not notice them for a moment. When they did, Garp raised his hand and continued walking. A hand was raised in return, but they were otherwise ignored. Salind just kept his head down and his teeth gritted. He’d just seen the previous possessors of the armoralls lying in a drainage ditch. Passing the trucks, they entered the building. Salind tried to ignore the crying from inside one truck.
Message from Jennifer Tarjen: Great job, Salind. You’re live on Earthnet right now!
Somehow Salind couldn’t get excited about that. He wondered how the Polity citizens were reacting to what he was seeing right now. Inside the building a group of three men were strapping cropsters to frames. They had it down to a fine art: no one escaped. After the victims were in place, two women went down the rows pulling bags from heads and pushing metal devices into the cropsters’ mouths. Salind supposed those devices were to stop them biting through the tubes that were then forced down into their stomachs.