by Reed, Jaxon
“I was the one who threw them in the recycle bin, sir.”
A long silence followed as The Old Man, Adams and Hernandez stared at me. Finally The Old Man grunted.
“Well, the Agent’s report backs up your story. Obviously this was a tragedy. I hope you learned something about staying away from black markets. It looks like you don’t have a taste for beer, and that’s good too. You see what can happen to people when they get drunk. Go on back to your quarters now. Report for duty as usual in the morning.”
On the way out, I heard Hernandez mumble in awe, “Sixteen beers!”
Adams said, “At two and a half percent, it’d take that many …”
-+-
I should feel elated, I thought. I’ve literally just gotten away with murder. But I’m tired. The emotional energy of the tribunal, and the last two weeks or so mentally preparing for it have left me exhausted. I walked listlessly through hallways and corridors, up elevators and escalators to Servant Quarters. A few recognized me and greeted me as I passed.
“Hey Savitch! Long time!”
“Welcome home stranger!”
I waved at them but shambled on, promising to catch up later.
Finally I found my room. A cell, really. 10 square meters of floor space all my own. The palm reader recognized me, the door swept open and I collapsed on my cot. The view screen still showed a video feed of Redwood from space. It’s beautiful. Mostly ocean, slowly revolving. Soon the lone continent will slip over the horizon. Same channel I left it on two months ago. It reminded me of the openness of space. Freedom.
Sleep came quick, along with dreams of an angry Peterson lunging at me again and again and again.
“Bloodsucker!”
Chapter Three
Menial labor. That was what Adams always gave pilots after returning. I think he figures two months of freedom should be balanced by the most demeaning, filthiest work possible. With no chance of going outside the cube.
He started me in Park 7, which is located in the middle of the giant cubic city. Several hallways on level 25 open up to a large atrium, five levels high with several hundred square meters of floor space. Natural sunlight is piped in with mirrors, so plants can grow there. Plants that need to be tended, walkways that need to be mopped, grass that needs to be mowed, and so on. Ugh.
I spent three days toiling in Park 7 before Adams sent me up to the roof. The roof’s not bad, actually. One square kilometer with open views to the sky. It’s sealed in by glass, and pressurized. The top is devoted to crops and farm animals. I spent a few days shoveling animal waste, then moved over to tending crops.
A few days later I started feeling the need for blood again. Fortunately, by then I’d befriended a cat. Why do we have cats in Redwood City? Somehow, rats made the trip all the way from Old Earth through 28 Janus jumps, found their way from the landing bay up 50 levels to the rooftop of Redwood City. They were a constant problem, invading food stores, nibbling plants and whatnot. No amount of traps or poison seemed to diminish their numbers for long. So, we imported a number of Felis domestica to help take care of the rats.
Most of the cats are wild and run away soon as they see you. Every now and then you can find one that’s more tolerant of people, especially if it’s been fed by somebody. An orange tabby made the mistake of trusting me too much. I wringed his neck before he had a chance to claw me.
Corn crops are fairly private. No cams over here to spy on people. On the roof, they’re mostly watching the tool sheds, making sure everything gets put back and nothing gets stolen that might be used as a weapon or something. But no cam watcher is going to spend mindless days observing Servants toil in the fields hours on end. Even if they do, rows and rows of corn stalks provide good cover.
I’m going to tell you right now, cat’s blood tastes awful. But, it fulfilled my primary need. It wasn’t my first time to drink it, either. How I savored the human blood available in the black market on New Texas. Human blood tastes better than any other mammals I’ve tried. I wished I could smuggle back gallons of the stuff. Or get access to a blood bank or something.
Oh well. If wishes were wings …
I buried the shriveled cat body between some corn stalks. Fertilizer.
-+-
Before long over a month had passed. My days fell into a routine. Breakfast in the Servants’ Mess. Work on the rooftop crops till noon. Lunch. Work. Supper. Shoot the breeze with the boys until lights out. Sleep. Repeat.
Monotony. Our every move is watched by Adams or his lackeys or some other higher up. Cams watch us as we sleep in our cubicles, as we eat in the dining hall, as we line up and gather tools for work.
No more pirate radio music. All entertainment is strictly regulated. No Internet. No books. Once a week we watch a State approved movie in the dining hall after supper. Whatever the plot, it always has a moral message affirming the State. The State knows best. The State benevolently controls the people for the people’s benefit. The State is good. The State is great.
Blah, blah, blah.
Escape comes through online class work. Servants aren’t expected to be schooled after age 13. But, the State provides a free ongoing education and blandly encourages everybody to participate.
Nobody does, except me it seems. I picked up on my Biology studies. I found making outrageous goals and applying myself to study for them helped with the boredom. My newest goal involved learning the classification of Old Earth plants and animals. All of them. Or, at least as many as I could. I’d study new ones at night and spend the working hours trying to remember them.
One day while working in the crops, I found a moment alone near the glass wall. I walked over until my nose pressed against the surface. It was a cloudless day. I stared out over miles of desert landscape below, and wide open blue sky above. In the distance, the desert gave way to a ribbon of green. Beyond that, I knew, were the giant trees of Redwood. I longed to see them in person. My few assignments outside the cube had brought me nowhere near the forests.
I’d seen pictures of course, we all have. I’d flown over them coming home in spaceships and seen them from a distance. But it’s not the same as actually visiting them, exploring them, breathing the same air the trees breathe. I yearned for the chance to go there. I yearned for freedom. Big as it is, I wanted out of this stupid cube of a city.
“Savitch!”
I jumped and whipped around to see a cam along the wall to my right. Hadn’t noticed it earlier. It was pointed at me and an electronic voice said, “Report to Mr. Adams’ office, ASAP!”
I gave a sarcastic salute. “Yes, sir!”
-+-
I made my way toward the center of the cube, passing boys lucky enough to draw office duty running their errands. Cush jobs.
Eventually I found Suite 300, Adams’ office. I stared at the cam until somebody noticed me and opened the door. I recognized the kid at the front desk. Nguyen. About my age. We often sat together at meals. He motioned toward Adams’ door.
“Go on in, he’s waiting for you.”
As the door swished shut behind me, Adams and another man stood up. The new guy was big. Six-six I guessed, two hundred forty pounds. Athletic. About 30 years old. Close cropped brown hair, tanned skin.
“Savitch, meet Mr. Schmidt. He’s an Agent of the State from New Texas and needs a ride out to one of the experiment stations.”
“Alvin Schmidt, how are ya?”
I shook his beefy right hand, looked down and saw a big gold ring.
“Are you an Aggie?”
His chest actually swelled even bigger, if that were possible, filled with pride.
“Class of thirty-eight.”
Great, I thought to myself. If there’s anything more insufferable than a New Texan, it’s an Aggie.
“Savitch, we need a pilot and you’re nominated. Take Mr. Schmidt to the quadcopter bay, and fly him out to A-E-S number twelve. Return here when he’s done.”
“Yes, sir!”
I waited pa
tiently at the door while Schmidt and Adams exchanged parting remarks, then led him out of the suite and made my way to the quadcopter bay.
I walked fast. I thought, I’m going outside! First time in a long time. Schmidt hurried to catch up.
“Hey, kid, slow down.”
“Sorry.”
“I’d like to see the sights, ya know? This is my first visit to Redwood.”
The sights are all outside, I thought. Not in this giant, artificial, boring cube. But I slowed and let him gape at the perfect geometric symmetry of the hallways, the elegantly placed doorways and view screens showing live shots of nature around the planet (with some artfully hidden cams in the walls too, that he didn’t seem to notice).
I lapsed into tour guide mode, mentioning the dimensions. One cubic kilometer, with a new level every 20 meters, total of 50 levels. So the city essentially has 50 square kilometers to walk around in. Not exactly, of course, since walls and such take up a portion of the floor space. And inner city parks with their atriums tend to cut out chunks of floor space on multiple levels. Still, the round numbers probably sound good to a first time visitor.
We wasted several minutes in Park 5 as he professed to be overwhelmed by the beauty of an indoor atrium with piped in sunlight and an artificial waterfall.
I tamped down my impatience. At least he didn’t ask to see the Agents’ Quarters, or we would have wasted another hour at least.
Finally we got to QC Bay. Parker was manning the desk. He’s another kid I knew well, about my age.
“I just got the order. Take QC 17. The power pack is fully charged and it’s ready to go.”
-+-
We squeezed into the cabin together and I pulled down the canopy. The dash came alive as the little craft’s computer booted up.
A quadcopter is pretty much as you’d expect. Four rotors surround the cockpit. They’re protected by tough composite plastic rings just like the PHU rotors. The power pack is bigger, of course, and can carry two passengers and their cargo several hundred miles between recharges. It’s the standard surface craft for Redwood City. The environmental bureaucrats like it because it’s emissions-free. If humans must violate the sanctity of the planet’s natural environment, then they should disturb it as little as possible.
Whatever.
I pushed the “On” button, squeezed the throttle on the control stick, and the rotors started spinning. We floated up a few feet off the floor, then shot forward through the open bay door. The desert raced below. Behind us, the cube shrank while the green strip ahead grew larger.
“Computer, plot a course for A-E-S Twelve.”
It beeped and popped up a map hologram, showing our current location and a dotted line to a point several hundred miles inland.
The computer’s pleasant female voice said, “E-T-A three hours, twenty-eight minutes.”
“Engage autopilot.”
There really is nothing to flying these things, once you get going.
“Enjoy the sights,” I said. “I’m taking a nap.”
-+-
I didn’t really need to sleep, and I love any opportunity to look at my adopted home planet, but this way I didn’t have to spend the entire time talking to Agent Schmidt. Or listen to him yak. With the monotonous humming of the rotors and gentle swaying of air currents, I soon dozed off for real.
I woke up when the craft slowed and started to descend.
“Looks like we’re here,” Schmidt said. I nodded. He doesn’t miss a thing, that Schmidt.
The computer put us down on a pad near a small building in the middle of several crops. I popped the canopy open and we crawled out of the cabin. A sign nearby read, “New Texas A&M University Agricultural Experiment Station #12.”
As we walked toward the door I saw a robot tractor puttering away in the distance.
“So this place is unmanned?”
Schmidt nodded. “Yup. Everything is controlled remotely back home.”
“On New Texas?”
“Yup.” He turned to look at me, hearing the impressed tone in my voice. “Satellite signals can travel through the Janus rings, ya know.”
No I didn’t know. “I guess I never thought about it.”
He placed his hand on the palm reader and the front door hissed open. The air inside was stale, as if nobody had been there in a long time. We walked into a lab, filled with tables, sinks, and storage closets.
“A-E-S Twelve is special, ya know. We left behind some high-end equipment here.”
He approached a storage closet on one wall, swiped his hand on the panel to open it, started pulling instruments out and setting them on a nearby table. A Bunsen burner. Several beakers.
“One of the things we put out here is a portable spectrometer. We can analyze all sorts of things with it. Nobody can be really sure what sort of exobiological specimens may be encountered when exploring a new planet, ya know. This sort of instrument gives quick results in the field so we don’t have to send tissue samples back to the lab.”
I tuned him out. He babbled on about exobiology, field science, the joy of discovering new species, yada, yada, yada.
I wandered around the small lab, taking in everything. It reminded me of the science lab from school.
“Aha! Here we go. Come over here, Mr. Savitch, let me show you something.”
I wandered back over to his side of the room. He had a bulky black rectangular box with round openings on the narrow ends. He opened it up and I saw electronics on top and bottom.
“This is our portable spectrometer. I need to test it and see if it’s still working.”
He plugged it in and a control panel on top came to life. It beeped.
“Come here, Mr. Savitch. Place your arm in there for me. Let’s see if you’re alive.”
The hair on the back of my neck grew stiff. Every instinct I had screamed at me not to do this. But he was smiling, had the spectrometer-whatsit open and beckoned toward me. Against my better judgment, I sat down and placed my arm in the unit.
He slammed it shut and adjusted a couple knobs on the control panel.
“There we go. Won’t take but a sec.”
The unit beeped and the output screen filled with characters.
“Mm-hm, mm-hm.”
“Well? Is it working?”
“It works great, Mr. Savitch. Just great.”
He pressed a button on the console and I felt a needle prick my arm from a hidden hypodermic.
“What …”
And everything turned black.
-+-
I started crawling back to consciousness to the sounds of a conversation taking place.
“So he’s definitely got it.”
“Oh yeah, no doubt about it.”
The first voice sounded like an electronic version of The Old Man’s. Maybe from a com link?
The second was Schmidt’s. He continued, “Looks like maybe he’s had it a while. What I can’t figure is, how has he been able to hide it all this time?”
“That doesn’t surprise us in the least. His IQ and personality scores are off the charts. I’m glad you had the unit out there. We don’t have anything like it in the city.”
“Yes, sir. We’ve got quite a bit of field equipment tucked away out here, most of it left over from our initial surveys. Feel free to use it …”
At that moment I came fully to, and let out a long string of profanity that’d make my grandmother blush. If I had a grandmother.
Schmidt stood in front of a screen, on a vid-call with The Old Man. He turned when I stumbled to my feet.
“What the … ? I’ll have to call you back, sir.”
The screen went black. My head was swimming, but things were coming into focus now. Schmidt headed my way, a frown on his face.
“Now look, son, we’re going to have to—”
“Don’t call me ‘son.’” I slugged him in the jaw hard as I could. He fell to his knees, stunned. I wouldn’t be so lucky next time.
He got back
to his feet, more cautious this time. He eyed me carefully, rubbed his jaw.
“I think we got off on the wrong foot, Mr. Savitch. I apologize for the trickery, but we had to find out if you are hematophagous or not. Several days ago, a body was found floating in space, by a maintenance crew near Janus Twenty-eight on the New Texas side. When it was recovered, they discovered just about all the blood had been drained.”
I paused, distracted. They found Peterson’s body? How did that happen, in all that space up there?
“We ID’d the body, saw the report from Redwood about his accident, and … well, ya know, things didn’t exactly add up. I’ve been sent here to check and see if you are indeed hematophagous or not.”
I was chewing this over, distracted. He’d inched closer while talking, his right hand slowly moving behind his back.
“Look, Savitch … we can help.”
He whipped out a stun gun, pulled the trigger. The prongs shot out, popped into my chest. Thousands of volts of electricity streamed into me. I screamed and fell to the ground.
“Ya had me worried, there, kid. I must not have given ya enough sedative earlier. Won’t make that mistake a second time.”
He kicked me over on my stomach.
“Just gonna restrain ya, now …”
I reached down deep inside me, and somewhere found the will to make my body move. I surged up as he reached down, and crunched the back of my head into his face.
He screamed and stumbled backwards, blood streaming from his nose.
“Ya done made me mad, kid!” He stumbled over to the wall, knocking stuff on a table to the floor. He found a panel on the wall, palmed it, and another storage door opened. Behind it were two neat rows of sub-machineguns hanging on the wall, and four rows of pistols. He grabbed a pistol, then an ammo magazine, shoved it home into the gun and cycled a round.
“I was supposed to bring you in alive if I could, kid. But I have discretion to kill filth like you.”
He aimed. I ducked. The gun shot off with a bang! that sounded extra loud in the enclosed space.
I scrambled behind a table. He shot at my legs twice. Then he started moving toward me.
“Somebody who’d kill a fellow human being … just to drink their blood … It ain’t natural. You’re infected by something. Something alien. You don’t deserve to live.”