Analog SFF, October 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Valerie hated football. It wasn't that she was anti-sports; she'd played soccer in college. But soccer was elegant; football was just a bunch of guys grunting and bashing into each other. And when, she wondered, had people started taking it for granted that Senate campaigns would start during football season, a year in advance? When, for that matter, had the wine harvest slipped into early September? Maybe the grapes weren't as ripe as they looked and she was spinning her wheels on nothing—a nonstory on which she didn't even have an assignment.

  She stared at the beer. Nearly gone, and while there'd been a few worker-looking cars coming out of the winery road, there weren't many. Maybe it was time to leave.

  “So I take it you're not much of a Bobcat fan?”

  Valerie jumped. She'd been so absorbed in her thoughts she'd not seen the man standing next to her table.

  “Me neither,” he said. “Can I buy you another beer?”

  He had a babyish, blue-eyed face and sandy hair already beginning to recede. Blue jeans with dark, fresh-looking stains. Rumpled sport shirt, sneakers. He appeared to be in his early thirties.

  “I know,” he said, “not much to look at. Sorry. I just got off work. It's been a tough week; lots of overtime. We're already gearing up for the harvest. Damn global warming.”

  Valerie had been about to tell him thanks but no. Now she perked up. “You work at Angel's Head?”

  “Yeah.” He offered his hand. “I'm Martin. Martin McRae.”

  Valerie didn't want to be picked up. Nor did she want another hangover. But this was an opportunity she couldn't pass up. “Sure. I'm having the Bridgehouse ale.”

  * * * *

  As the evening wore on, she felt guilty because McRae seemed a nice guy and she was stringing him along. To ease her conscience, she bought a pitcher, encouraging a couple of his buddies to join their table—a move McRae didn't fully appreciate, either from her or them.

  He didn't look like a field laborer, and, as it turned out, he wasn't. “I'm an analytical chemist,” he said. “You wouldn't believe how sophisticated winemaking has become. George here works in the lab, too, while Hiroshi over there's got a degree in microbiology. He's always tinkering with yeasts. Says he loves the little buggers.”

  “Aren't there any traditional farm workers?”

  “Sure. Most of them work at night.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, it's a climate thing. The French have been doing it for years, but we're the first in America. Longer growing seasons mean the grapes ripen earlier, but it's not good to pick ‘em in the heat. We've got a few people out during the day, but for the past couple of years, most of the real work's been done at night. I don't think I've ever met one of those guys. Have you, George?”

  “Nope.”

  “Think they're illegal?” What a story that would be.

  “Nah. My supervisor's always complaining that the feds should crack down on wineries that ignore the law. I think he gets it straight from the top.”

  The evening rambled on from there, and when a string band started up, Valerie allowed herself to be danced with a bit, before pleading exhaustion and taking her leave, Saturday night or not.

  In the parking lot, she looked again at the winery road. It was nearly ten, and still no traffic. The night pickers either lived up there somewhere, tucked away out of sight, or came in really, really late.

  A hundred yards back from the highway, where she could barely see it, a swing gate was now pulled across the road. She thought again about a hundred million dollars a year, and decided this made sense. Besides, it was a weekend. Maybe nobody worked Saturday nights. Or maybe they bused the workers in and the bus driver had a key. She could easily have missed the buses, talking to the guys.

  Lots of maybes, but nothing that looked much like a story.

  * * * *

  Several days later, she bumped into B. J. in the Times' lunchroom—if the refrigerator-microwave-and-coffee-machine-equipped alcove could be dignified with that term. It was another slow day, and business and technology were his beat, not hers, so she told him about her trip to Angel's Head.

  He was immediately intrigued. “Yeah, night harvesting makes sense. They're leaders in that type of thing. Anderson started the winery on a shoestring thirty years ago, then leveraged it to the cutting edge with a series of moves that always had him a step or two ahead. But all that security? Sounds fishy to me. They've got a huge investment up there, but it's not exactly portable. Maybe they're hiding a labor camp full of undocumented workers. They've certainly got the room, up against the mountains. Let me check into it. If they're busing folks up there at night, someone will have noticed.”

  A couple of days later they spoke again.

  “There's no way they're hiring that much labor locally,” he said, when Valerie stopped by his desk. He'd been working his way through the afternoon's wire-service copy, but now he switched to a different web page. “While I was at it, I also checked out the brother. He's all over eBay. He buys lots of broken equipment, then sells back that which he can fix. Pretty much anything mechanical, other than the big industrial stuff.”

  He typed “Gavin Anderson, MechnoManiac” into the search box.

  “That's what he calls himself. “See? Motorized wheelchairs, artificial limbs, toy cars—all kinds of stuff. He's even done some custom jobs.” He clicked a link. “See that one? It's a little hard to tell from the picture, but it's a motorized wheelchair with a toggle-switch manipulator arm. There are enough of those around these days that the Special Olympics even has a competition in which people drive them through a maze, picking up tennis balls and flags and things like that. Really cool.”

  “What about other types of competitions?” She told him about the dueling machines the gardener had described.

  “Not that I saw. Though robot competitions are a dime a dozen, so who knows?” He navigated back to the AP feed. “Gavin probably just gives him a workshop and lets him do what he wants.”

  “That's what I thought.”

  “Yeah. But the field workers are a different matter. What say we take a night run up there and catch ‘em in the act?”

  * * * *

  Of course, it wasn't quite that easy, since the road was locked at night. And not just on weekends, Valerie discovered, when she swung by to check it out.

  It was B. J. who figured out the solution. “All those hills behind the winery are part of the state forest,” he said. “We can get in from the back side.” Which also turned out to be only partially true. The map showed a spaghetti bowl of logging roads, but “state forest” simply meant the schools got the money. The land was leased to private companies, who'd stripped out the good trees years before and were now waiting for them to grow back.

  “Damn,” Valerie said. “No wonder nobody knows what they're doing in there at night. You can't even get close to the place.”

  B. J. shot her an odd glance. “What do you mean, ‘can't?’ Last I noticed we've each got two good legs.” Valerie was sure he was about to comment on hers, but surprisingly he didn't. Maybe he wasn't quite the geek she thought.

  And so it was, two days later, that they found themselves hiking up what mountain bikers euphemistically called double-track. “Overgrown” was the word Valeria would have used. Nobody had driven these roads in years.

  It was slow going, but they'd left early to make sure they found a good vantage point well before sunset. Valerie was carrying binoculars. B. J. had a short-barreled telescope he said would not only magnify things, but make them brighter. “Your binocs will get us the big picture,” he said. “This puppy will bring us in close.”

  Happily, the underbrush abated as they climbed and the trees became bigger, providing shade. Eventually, they crested the ridgeline, but they had to descend about a third of the way down the other side before they found an open slope with an unobstructed view.

  Below, the vineyard filled the valley with parallel rows: arrow-straight where the land was flat, contoured where
it wasn't. Far to the left, Valerie could make out the entrance road and the red-tile roofs of the Angel's Head estate. Nearby, the fields were empty except for a few equipment sheds, but off near the road, her binoculars showed several people-shaped dots. Maybe they were always there, to give the appearance of activity to those who didn't question too deeply.

  “Well, this is it,” she said. “Stakeout time.” Her clothes were khaki green, but her backpack wasn't, and B. J.'s T-shirt was maroon: flattering against his late-summer tan but not, in retrospect, the ideal choice. “Maybe we should get out of sight.”

  Out of sight didn't mean out of the sun, and they spent the next few hours sitting atop their outcrop, gazing across range after range of distant hills. The only thing missing was a good book; but when was the last time she'd spent a whole afternoon doing absolutely nothing?

  What would happen if she and B. J. had nothing else to show for their day? Not much, she decided. Nobody knew what they were doing. As far as the newsroom was concerned, this was simply a vacation day. The only real risk was that people would notice they were both gone and jump to the wrong conclusion. But at the tail end of summer, lots of people looked for excuses to get out, so the gossips wouldn't have much to go on.

  Still, after hiking all the way up here, she hoped she got something more from it than an afternoon in the sun.

  * * * *

  As it turned out, she did, but on her own, she might have missed it.

  It had been a long time since she'd been in the wilds, and she'd forgotten the soporific effects of a long walk followed by hours of sun. By sunset, she could barely keep her eyes open, and an hour later, with dinner (such as it was) behind her, she was beginning to doze.

  The chill woke her a couple hours later, but there was still no obvious activity below. Warm again in a jacket, she'd soon have been back asleep if she'd not had someone to talk with.

  To her surprise, B. J. knew the stars. After guiding her though the constellations (not that she remembered them five minutes later), he turned his telescope on the Pleiades and Orion, revealing starry wonders that Valerie had never known, there in the crisp near-autumn air, three thousand feet above the city.

  Eventually, they settled back against a rock, moving to where they could gaze across the valley where still nothing was happening.

  “I think we're on a wild goose chase,” Valerie said.

  There might have been an answering nod in the darkness. “Maybe. Maybe not. It's probably warmer down there, so they might still be waiting.” A green glow broke the darkness at his wrist, surprisingly bright. “It's only 10:15.” There was a pause. “Either way, the company's good.”

  Valerie had gotten very good at deflecting such comments, but this time she surprised herself. “Yeah.” She was suddenly aware of how few inches separated them, but it was a gap she wasn't yet prepared to bridge. “Maybe someday I'll tell you about my ex. If you want to know.”

  B. J. scrunched against the rock but made no move to close the gap. “Sure. When you're ready.”

  She shifted topic. “But not if I have to call you B. J. What on earth does that stand for?”

  He had a very nongeeky laugh. “Benjamin James. But don't tell anyone. They'd stick me with stockbrokers forever.”

  It was Valerie's turn to laugh. “Change it. Reinvent yourself.” Was that what tonight was about? Or was she just chasing a story? On an all-night stakeout in the middle of nowhere with a guy she barely knew? Not the way she usually did stories. She'd always been a phone-and-Google girl—and a loner, not a collaborator. Not to mention that she was going to have to walk out of here in the morning, fantasizing about lattes the whole way. What did she think she was doing?

  Luckily, she was saved from further introspection. “Whoa,” she said. “What's that?”

  A horde of tiny specks of light had appeared, fanning out into the vineyard from somewhere almost directly below. To the left and right, she could see others, like flotillas of Christmas lights sailing onto a sea of darkness.

  She tried looking though the binoculars, but they merely revealed that the lights were moving at what might be a brisk walk, flickering when they were blocked by leaves or branches. If there were people carrying them, they were children, because there were no heads reaching above the vines.

  B. J. was trying to track them with his telescope.

  “See anything?” she asked.

  “No. They're too bright. If I get an eyeful of one, I can't see anything else. Let's get closer.”

  * * * *

  By the time they got down to the valley floor, Valerie was beginning to wonder if the whole excursion was worth it. They'd not thought to check the phase of the moon before leaving town, but luck of the draw had served up a moonless night: good for stealth, but poor for picking their way through crackly brush. At first, they'd had a road, and B. J. had produced a tiny, red flashlight. “Star-gazing tool,” he'd said. “Doesn't wreck night vision, and hard to see from way down there.”

  But eventually, the road petered out, and in the brush, B. J.'s little red glowworm of a flashlight proved useless. Valerie was glad they'd left their packs at the overlook, rather than trying to carry them through vegetation that seemed determined to block their every move. They'd also left B. J.'s telescope, which wasn't much use without moonlight, and too expensive to risk damaging.

  During their descent, the lights continued to move, but they were still too far away to reveal anything about the dark shapes carrying them.

  There was no fencerow at the edge of the vineyard, and for a moment, Valerie hesitated. So far, they'd been on state land: unauthorized, but not truly trespassing. The moment they stepped into the vineyard, it was a different matter. Still, what was the point of all that sneaking through the brush if they still couldn't see what was going on?

  B. J. was already moving forward. “Let's go down this row,” he said. The closest action appeared to be several rows off to one side, where the intervening vines should offer enough screening to allow them to see without being seen.

  Valerie dithered another moment, then nodded in the dark. “Okay.” She could feel her heart pounding, harder than anytime on the long hike across the mountains. If this was the way Pulitzers were to be had, maybe the fundraiser beat hadn't been so bad.

  * * * *

  Walking down the mountain had been slow and painstaking. This was easier, but nerve-wracking. The vines were low enough that she could see right over the tops of them, but even in the dark, she was afraid to risk it except for occasional glances. Most of the time, she walked in a partial crouch that threatened to give her a serious crick in the neck, while also leaving her legs burning from the strain. It wasn't that she was out of shape, but hill climbing, bushwhacking, and crouch-walking weren't things she'd ever seen the need to train for.

  The vineyard was a couple of miles wide, but she and B. J. didn't have to go that far: only to the nearest cluster of lights.

  As they drew near, they walked ever more slowly, cautious not to step on a stick or anything else that might alert the workers to their presence. Luckily, although the ground was lumpy in the center of the row, to each side her feet found parallel stripes of smoother ground, as though someone had driven back and forth in some kind of wheeled vehicle. The tracks were too narrow for comfortable walking, but they were free of sticks, so now she stayed with them, moving one foot in front of the other, like a gymnast on a balance beam—or a pirate victim walking the plank.

  She'd expected to hear voices, but there was none of the banter she was anticipating. Not that heavy accents or rapid-fire Spanish would have meant anything, but it wasn't until she didn't hear them that she realized how strongly she'd assumed that this was what she'd find.

  Eventually, they were only a half dozen rows from the nearest light—close enough that they could peer between vines, looking for legs, illuminated in the backwash of light. This close, they could now hear sounds, but they still weren't normal worker sounds. Rather they were c
licks and whirrs and an electric motor, starting and stopping.

  Something wheeled moved across Valerie's line of sight, slowly enough that even bent over nearly double, it was easy to keep pace with it. At first she thought it was simply a cart. How embarrassing if Angel's Head's secret proved to be a massive hire-the-handicapped project. But there wasn't anyone sitting on the cart. Instead, mechanical arms and servo-mounted lights worked each side of the row, finding grape clusters one at a time and examining them with some kind of lens. Most, the machine passed up, but sometimes, mechanical shears would snip a cluster for deposit in a large basket.

  She stopped and B. J. nearly tripped over her. His breath was feather-light in her ear. “I'll be damned. Old Galen's doing more than just playing around on eBay,” he said.

  The robot was moving away, and Valerie wanted nothing more than to get back into the forest. “Yeah.” She nudged B. J. “Let's get out of here.”

  Still crouch-walking, she slipped by him and started leading the way. It wasn't until she was nearly back that fear began to give way to excitement. What a story!

  “So that's why Angel's Head is supporting Blaine,” she said, stopping so she could talk to B. J. without raising her voice. “It's all about automation. If they shut off their competitors’ labor supply, they've got a huge advantage. There's no end to what they can charge.” She multiplied forty-five thousand cases by an extra hundred dollars a bottle and got an extra fifty million dollars per year. Not to mention the possibility of expanding into other industries. The others might eventually catch up, but in the interim, Angel's Head would reap a huge windfall. “Wow!”

  “That's also one hell of a sophisticated robot,” B. J. said. “When I was Google-stalking Galen's eBay business, I actually thought about automation, so I did a bit of background. It turns out to be really hard to program robots to do such things. Those sword-fighters were truly cutting edge. I bet these pickers are even more so. It's hard enough to make a robot that can recognize a cluster of grapes. But to not only distinguish them from leaves, but tell the difference between ripe and almost-ripe? Galen must be some kind of genius.” He was almost bubbling with excitement. “So, how do we get this story? Legally?”