Out of the Soylent Planet (A Rex Nihilo Adventure) (Starship Grifters Book 0)

by Robert Kroese

  When we were fully hidden in the field, Rex let go of me. “What’s gotten into you, Sandy? You know better to blab about our escape plan in front of one of those things.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “Sorry, sir.” I opted against pointing out that we were now surrounded by several hundred more of “those things.” It probably didn’t matter anyway; most of the shamblers were too dimwitted to make sense of anything but the simplest conversation. Stubby Joe really was a savant, comparatively speaking. “Frankly, sir, I assumed you had forgotten about me.”

  “Forgotten about you! Bite your tongue, Samantha!”

  “I have no tongue, sir. And it’s Sasha.”

  Rex went on, “You’ll be happy to know that while you’ve been screwing around down here with your little plant friends, I’ve been hard at work devising an escape plan.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. I’ve come up with a foolproof sixteen-point plan to get off Jorfu. And you’re welcome to come with me, if you haven’t grown too attached to the bucolic tranquility of plantation life.”

  “What’s your plan, sir?”

  “It gets a little complicated, but try to follow me. My supervisor is a woman named Marla. Crazy old bat, everybody hates her. Her numbers have been slipping lately and there are rumors that she’s one write-up away from being ground up into plant food. When that happens, the QA agent with the best numbers for the quarter replaces her. I’m going to make sure that’s me.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. I couldn’t help getting a bit excited, as I was starting to believe Rex really had worked out a detailed escape plan. “And then what?”

  “Well, before Marla was put on probation, she was in line for a job as a tech support supervisor. With her out of the way, I’m the natural pick for that job.”

  “Got it,” I said. “And then?”

  “I have it on good authority the head of tech support has been stealing office supplies. Not enough for anybody to notice, but I’m betting I can blackmail him into recommending me for a position as a field tech.”

  “Aha!” I exclaimed. “And as a field tech, you’ll have the latitude to escape!”

  “You’re getting ahead of me, Sasha. As a field tech, I’ll have a wide array of advancement options. Odds are good that a more senior position will open up within a few months.”

  “And that position will allow you to escape?”

  “That position will allow me to get a better sense of who the major players are in the corporate hierarchy. Once I know who’s got the inside track, I’ll be able to pick a mentor.”

  “A mentor, sir?”

  “Sure, you can’t get anywhere without a mentor. Once I know whose coattails to ride, I figure I’m three to five years from middle management.”

  “Did you say three to five years?”

  “Sure, if I keep my nose clean and work most weekends. After that it’s just a matter of positioning myself as the obvious replacement when one of the senior executives retires. Then I ride it out for another ten to twenty years until a VP slot opens up.”

  “Dare I ask what I’ll be doing this whole time?”

  “You’ll have to stay here on the plantation until I can find an excuse to hire you as my assistant. I’ll probably have to go through three or four other assistants first, of course, to belay suspicion.”

  My enthusiasm had all but disappeared. “And then you’ll be able to escape?”

  “They’ll be watching me pretty closely for the first few years, but eventually I think I can come up with some excuse to take a trip offworld. If that goes well, I’ll be able to take more of them over the next few years. I’ll lull them into thinking I have no intention of escaping.”

  “That seems like an easy sell,” I said.

  “Can’t take any chances.”

  “To be clear, sir,” I said, “your escape plan is to climb the corporate ladder for thirty years and then ditch your security escort?”

  “Shhh!” Rex hissed. “Good grief, Sasha. Why don’t you just broadcast it from the loudspeakers? There are probably some wranglers three fields over who didn’t hear you.”

  “It just doesn’t seem like much of an escape plan, sir. It’s more like a retirement plan, to be honest.”

  “Well, I want to keep my options open. VPs get some serious stock options. Be a shame to throw that away on some pie-in-the-sky fantasy about escaping corporate life.”

  “Sir, what has happened to you? You used to be a ne’er-do-well and scoundrel. You’re the guy who sold 400 defective MASHERs to Ubiqorp for a quick buck. And now you want to work for them as a corporate drone for the rest of your life?”

  “Look, Sasha, I’m not thrilled about it either, but we have to be realistic. I tried doing things my way and it didn’t pan out. There’s no place in this galaxy for a guy who goes against the grain. It’s time for me to grow up and accept my responsibilities. You of all people should understand. You’re the one who finally convinced me to change my ways.”

  “I did?”

  “Yep. I was thinking about what you said when I stole those explosives. ‘You got yourself into this position.’ You were one hundred percent right, Sasha. I need to stop blaming other people and looking for the easy way out.”

  “But sir,” I said, “we had an agreement. We were going to escape Jorfu together.”

  “And we still are. The new Rex Nihilo lives up to his end of the bargain. But we’re going to do it right.”

  “And in your mind, ‘doing it right’ means I get to spend the next thirty years as a plantation slave.”

  “Maybe forty,” said Rex. “Fifty, tops. Speaking of which, if I’m going to have a shot at replacing Marla next quarter, I need you guys to bump up production by at least twenty-five percent.”

  “Sir, the wranglers were killing themselves to make quota as it was, and now we’re down a man. Dallas Webber ran into the energy barrier yesterday.”

  “Heard about that. Real shame. Problem is, if I take him off the rolls, corporate’s going to order an efficiency review, and that’ll cost us three days of production. So you’re just going to have to take up the slack for now.”

  “I don’t see how that’s possible, sir. We’re already working as fast as we can.”

  “Help me out here, Sasha. If I report that you lost a man, the higher-ups are going to want to know what happened. Someone’s going to have to take the blame.”

  “I nominate the man who ran into the energy barrier.”

  “Dead men don’t make good scapegoats. They’ll want to make an example of someone.”

  “And by ‘make an example’…”

  “I mean somebody’s going to get ground into fertilizer.”

  “They’re going to punish a suicide by killing somebody else?”

  “I don’t make the policies, Sasha. The good news is that in twenty or thirty years I’ll be in a position to express my disapproval of them in a sternly worded letter. But only if you guys stop screwing around and bump up your production. Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered. My report will specify ‘lower than expected fruit yield’ as the reason for the shortfall. That way, the guys in Nutrient Supply get the blame.”

  “I still don’t see how—”

  “Best I can do,” Rex said. “Get those numbers up, Sasha. Gotta go. If I’m out of the office too long, Marla will chew my ass.” He turned around and marched out of the field and I followed. Once again, the shamblers seemed to lean toward Rex as he walked past them. Rex waved to Stubby Joe, got back on his scooter, and zoomed away.

  “Your friend is a quite something,” said Stubby Joe, watching Rex recede into the horizon. An odd tone had crept into Stubby Joe’s voice.

  “Um, yeah,” I said.

  “What was that all about anyway?” Stubby Joe asked.

  “They want us to up our production by twenty-five percent.”

  “Seriously?” said Stubby Joe, snapping out of his daze.

  “Yeah.”

  “You know
, Dallas Webber’s plan is seeming less crazy every day.”

  I nodded. I was beginning to wonder if I’d have been better off if Stubby Joe hadn’t saved me.

  “Come on, let’s get back to camp. I gotta get in my nutrient bath before I fall over.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The next two days went more smoothly. Stubby Joe even let me take another shot at harvesting, and I managed to get three buckets full before I said something wrong I don’t quite remember and the herd erupted in an orgy of fruit-throwing.

  We were still behind quota, but I was starting to get the hang of soylent wrangling and there were no more energy barrier incidents or other injuries. Despite these encouraging signs, Stubby Joe seemed more anxious than ever (assuming I was reading the waving of his tentacles correctly).

  “What’s wrong, Stubby Joe?” I asked as we corralled a herd of shamblers into a pen.

  “Too much fruit,” Stubby Joe grumbled. “Look at these guys. We just harvested this herd last week and now their fruit is practically bursting. If they keep producing at this rate, there’s no way we can keep up.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “They get ornery if they’re not harvested in time. Hard to manage. And overripe fruit is no good. Won’t count toward our quota. If this keeps up, we’re going to have to make ample use of your talent for provoking the shamblers.”

  “What do you think is causing it?” I asked. “Has this happened before?”

  “A few times, yeah. Usually it’s a screwup in Nutrient Supply. A trainee probably misplaced a decimal point and made the mixture too rich. I’ll give them a call tonight and let them know we’re drowning in fruit over here. The good news is that we can blame them for not meeting our quota.”

  “Um,” I said, remember what Rex had said. “I think maybe that’s not a good idea.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I told him what Rex had said about blaming Nutrient Supply for our production shortfall. Stubby Joe stared at me.

  “You’re saying we have too much fruit to harvest because Rex had the brilliant idea of telling the higher-ups the yield was too low, and the guys in Nutrient Supply responded by enriching the mixture, creating a problem where there wasn’t one before.”

  “That would be my guess, yes.”

  “Well, I’m going to have to call them and sort it out,” Stubby Joe said. “We can’t keep up with this rate of yield.”

  “But if you tell Nutrient Supply that Rex’s report was a mistake, then we’ll get the blame for not meeting our quota. QA will do an efficiency review and document what happened to Webber.”

  “And they’ll find a scapegoat to grind into fertilizer,” Stubby Joe said, rubbing the area where his chin would be with one of his tentacles. “So we’ll be down another man and even farther behind.”

  “That would seem to be an accurate summary of our predicament.”

  Stubby Joe made a noise I took for a sigh. “All right, well maybe I can quietly work it out with Nutrient Supply on the down low. For now, we’ll just have to do our best to keep up.”

  *****

  Our best wasn’t nearly good enough. Fruit yields continued to increase over the next few days, and soon it was all we could do to keep the shamblers from stampeding. I spent most of my time running through shambler pens dodging fruit. After a week of this, Rex showed up again on his scooter.

  “What in Space is going on here?” Rex demanded, setting the scooter down in front of me. I had been on my way to a pen full of particularly overripe and agitated shamblers. “You guys are down twenty percent from last week!”

  “Thanks to you,” I said. “After you blamed Nutrient Supply for our shortfall, they enriched the mixture and now the fruit is ripening too fast for us to harvest it.”

  “Hmm,” Rex said. “Hadn’t thought of that. Okay, no problem. I can take care of this.”

  “Take care of it how?”

  “I’ll say they misunderstood my report. Tell them they were supposed to dilute the mixture, not enrich it.”

  “But then they’ll overcorrect and we won’t have enough fruit.”

  “I’ve got it covered, Sasha. After sending my correction, I’ll send another report telling them to bump the mixture up to the previous levels. Then you guys should have no trouble meeting your quota.”

  “We’re still understaffed,” I reminded him.

  “You’re going to have to work it out,” Rex said. “I’m doing everything I can. Gotta go.” He got back on his scooter and zoomed off. As I watched him go, Stubby Joe came up next to me.

  “Rex says he’s going to fix it,” I said.

  “I’ll believe it when I see it,” Stubby Joe said. “Did he ask about me?”

  “What?”

  “Just wondering if your friend said anything about me.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “No reason,” said Stubby Joe, unable to hide the disappointment in his voice. “Stop lollygagging and get back to work.” He turned and stomped off.

  I shook my head and headed back to the pen.

  *****

  The next day I saw that Stubby Joe was right to be skeptical: the ripening of the fruit continued to accelerate. Either Nutrient Supply hadn’t gotten Rex’s message or they had ignored it. We harvested as fast as we could just to keep the shamblers from smashing out of their pens. It was nearly sunset when Rex showed up again on his scooter.

  “Sir,” I said, “What in Space happened? We can’t keep this up much longer!”

  “Funny story,” Rex replied. “The guys in Nutrient Supply apparently misunderstood the report I sent them about misunderstanding the previous report, so they enriched the mixture again instead of diluting it. And then they got my request to enrich it and enriched it again. They’re giving you three times the normal levels!”

  “Sir, you have to tell them to stop! It’s not safe! We almost lost a man in a stampede today!”

  “Well, there isn’t much I can do about it at this point. There’s nobody in the Nutrient Supply office. They’ve got everybody working round the clock to get you guys all the nutrients you’ve requested. It’s inspiring, in a convoluted sort of way.”

  “There has to be a way to stop it.”

  Rex shrugged. “I think they’ve got somebody checking messages once a week. I’ll try putting in another request. Good luck. Gotta get back to the office. It’s Chip’s birthday and if I don’t hurry Marla will hog all the soylent cake. Catch you later!”

  Rex zoomed off again.

  “Another screwup?” Stubby Joe asked, emerging from the field to my left.

  I nodded.

  “That’s it then. We’re officially doomed.”

  “Looks that way,” I agreed. Even with my limited experience I could see that we were fighting a losing battle. “What are we going to do?”

  “Nothing,” said Stubby Joe. “I’m going to go sit in my nutrient bath.”

  “The shift’s not over yet,” I said.

  “It is for me,” Stubby Joe said. “I’m going on strike.”

  *****

  It didn’t take long for word of the strike to spread. If Stubby Joe wasn’t working, nobody else wanted to work either. It wasn’t in my nature to defy orders, but technically Stubby Joe was my boss, and there wasn’t much I could do on my own in any case. Even running through the shamblers provoking them to throw fruit at me seemed pointless now; it was only a matter of time before we had a full-blown riot on our hands. I didn’t know what ten thousand shamblers weighed down with overripe fruit were capable of, but we were soon going to find out. I spent most of the next day lying in bed, reminiscing about a time when my fate didn’t depend on the rapidly ripening fruit of ambulatory plant-creatures. If it weren’t for the ominous murmuring of the shamblers threatening to break through the fence separating them from the wrangler camp, it would have been almost pleasant.

  Rex finally showed up just after noon. Having evidently gotten nowhere with Stubby Joe, Re
x found me in my bunk and demanded to know what was going on.

  “We seem to be on strike,” I said.

  “You can’t go on strike,” Rex snapped. “You’re slave labor.”

  I shrugged. “Wasn’t my idea.”

  “Whose idea was it? It was that Bobo, wasn’t it?”

  “Bobo, sir?”

  “We’ve been hearing rumors about a mysterious revolutionary stirring up the people. Bobo the Liberator. He’s not going to get anywhere, you know.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir. We’re on strike because we have no alternative. We simply can’t keep up with the fruit yield. I did try to warn you.”

  “You don’t understand, Sasha. I’m on your side. I’ve been falsifying my reports to make it look like you guys have been hitting your quotas. If you stop production now, I’m in big trouble.”

  “With all due concern for your situation, sir, I’m not sure what you expect me to do about it. The other wranglers don’t listen to me. Dallas Webber is dead. Stubby Joe is about to snap.”

  Rex rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “So what you’re saying is that all the wranglers need is a strong leader. Like a Bobo the Liberator, but on Ubiqorp’s side.”

  “What? No, that is not at all what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that there’s simply no way to—”

  “Someone to inspire them to rise above this current challenge,” Rex went on, undeterred. “It’s all so clear to me now, Sasha! I had it all wrong. My path to success at Ubiqorp isn’t as a corporate drone; it’s inspiring other corporate drones to unprecedented levels of productivity! Just imagine what a pep talk from someone with my charisma could do for morale among the losers and malcontents working in this muckhole. And I’ll get all the credit!”

  I was suddenly struck with a vision of Rex being pelted with the fruit of thousands of angry shamblers. “Yes, sir,” I said. “Now that I think about it, that’s exactly what we need.”

  “Brilliant!” Rex exclaimed. “Tell your weird plant friend to assemble all the wranglers. I’m going to give them an inspirational speech for the ages.”