by John Keeble
"Mr. Mark," says a calm voice through an unseen communications device. "Our sensors indicate that you are awake. We will serve breakfast in forty-five minutes on the veranda outside your accommodation. Please be ready. Commander Aindrea will join you for breakfast and your tour of our processing facility."
"Commander Aindrea, why is he here?" says Mark.
"Who knows?" replies Patti indifferently. Her voice reassures him. It is not slurred; there is no hesitancy. All the same, he suspects she is suffering from the same disconnection of mind and emotions that he feels.
"Are you okay?" he asks.
"I don't know what they are going to do with you but I know that I face a slow, painful death in the research lab," she says, as immobile as clay. "They never use drugs to lessen the pain, they never make it fast. I feel like I have been sedated but they will not start until it has worn off. They will want me screaming in agony to condense and clarify my emotional and physical data."
Mark raises himself on his elbow to look at her. "Patti..." he says but he cannot think of what to say. Even worse, he cannot feel anything. He has an idea of what she will suffer. He remembers their ecstasy and passion on the ship. Now, he feels nothing for her – or even for himself.
"We must get up," she tells him. "You have breakfast and I have an early appointment with the priest and then the research knives. There's no escape. Let's not give them any satisfaction in forcing us."
They get up, silently shower and dress. They check the time, walk out to the veranda at exactly the itinerary time, 7:15 am.
"Good morning, Mr. Mark," says Commander Aindrea, who is stepping up the three wooden stairs from the path. Three uniformed spookpolice guards walk a few respectful paces behind him.
"Hello, Commander," says Mark. "It's a pleasure to see you, but why are you here?"
"I thought I would show you the facility personally," Aindrea replies. "I have matters to discuss with the commander here and I can attend to that after you have been processed tomorrow."
"Commander, is it too late? You're important and powerful. Can you save our lives?"
"I am sorry, my friend," says Aindrea. "I did try to give you a little more time alive but I was overruled. What I can do, I am doing – making your last hours interesting and pleasant."
"May Miss Patti join our tour?" Mark asks, though in fact he does not care. I can't connect my mind and emotions. I must be drugged.
A tremor of distaste runs through Aindrea. "No," he says with finality. "These guards will take her to the research reception now."
"She cannot even join us for breakfast?" Mark counters, more show than conviction. He knows her itinerary.
"Waste of resources, my friend," jokes Aindrea as he leads Mark to the breakfast table set for two.
Mark sits, facing the garden, and watches the guards lead Patti away. She turns, one last desperate time, to catch his eye as he considers whether to take tea or coffee.
"Commander," he begins but Aindrea holds up a hand to stop him.
"Please, call me 'Aini' – that is what my friends call me."
"Aini, have I been drugged?"
"Of course not! I ordered a light sedative for you, that's all. I thought you would be more comfortable. I hope it worked for you. Doses in human animals are difficult to judge. By the time we have finished breakfast, it will have gone."
A human-looking servant climbs the stairs with a tray of pmeat canapés and fruit. He looks with apprehension at Aindrea and sets down the tray on a small table nearby before serving.
"Are those really mango and pineapple?" asks Mark in wonder. "What are the other two?"
"We grow them all," says Aini, as if to a naïve cousin from the country. "Yes, mango and pineapple, but we improved them genetically – we grow them bigger and sweeter than the ones humans imagine their gods made."
Mark tries to maintain his interest in the fruit but he cannot keep his eyes off the plates of pmeat canapés.
"Impressive, aren't they?" says Aini. "I know your tastes and told the kitchen to prepare a selection for you to try. This tray of thirty or so amounts to less than ten percent of the selection they produce in a week. May I recommend the purple one – the morakee canapé?"
Mark reaches for the purple pâté on a thin wafer. He puts it in his mouth and feels it melting on his tongue, strange, savory, irresistible. A hint of herbs, a gentle peppery heat, a meatiness in texture and aroma. How do they make this with vegetables? It's so much like meat but nothing like the pmeat in FedUK.
He tries another flavor, then another... each one different, so stunning to his senses that he would give a week's supply of FedUK pmeat for one bite.
"How do they make it? I can't believe it is vegetable like FedUK pmeat. Is this a FedOz animal?" he asks in awe.
"All will be explained," says Aini, and Mark wonders how any numan can be this jovial. "Don't eat too many. I have ordered something else for you to try."
Almost to the second, Mark's breath catches in his throat as the servant returns with medallions of pmeat an inch thick and six inches in diameter – more pmeat than he has ever seen served at one time. In the center of the medallions are bonelike decorations with gaily fashioned chef-style paper hats. Stuck into the medallions, what looks like spice from a film clip about historic food preparation... yes, cloves. Black pepper, perhaps, is sprinkled on the surface.
"I think this will be to your taste," says Aini, the gracious host. "We have tried it on other humans and they certainly enjoyed it. Though, like all animals, they do tend to eat anything." He pauses, watches Mark savor the pmeat medallion, and lightly engages him in conversation. "Do you like the bungalow, my friend? It's mine. I told them to let you use it."
Half an hour later, as they abandon the breakfast table to begin the production facility tour, Mark glances through the bungalow's open door. Patti's bag is lying open on the bed. Why didn't she take it?
*
Ali holds Aapeli as tightly as she can, giving him the strength to run forward, to survive. On the other side of Aapeli, his father struggles to keep up as he, too, takes some of Aapeli's weight. Galen and Nandro, the spookpolice medtech, are close behind and the two guards are herding Jack.
The first of the big transport drones lifts off as the mob reaches the last of the troopers retreating from the perimeter fence. The noise of battle is deafening and then, in seconds, it dies away. The big drones fly out, leaving only the research drone as a target.
Ali can see numan2 mobsters coming through the shattered fence. One lifts a primitive projectile weapon and aims it at them. He fires and she ducks instinctively. A shower of hot blood and head debris hits the side of her face and for a split second she thinks it is Jack. A quick glance is enough: the spookpolice medtech is dead on the ground.
"Get in the drone!" shouts Jack as she feels him pushing Galen aside to shield her and Aapeli. Aleksi, caught off balance scanning the fence for more danger, staggers in with them.
"Bring Galen," says Ali. She wants to leave him for the mob to tear apart but she cannot let him be killed. "Jack, we need him! I must know what upgrade design he gave Aapeli."
Galen, seeing his chance, pushes his way to safety. "I'm the only one who can fly the drone," he shouts in Jack's face.
Alice steps back, trips over Aapeli's feet and cracks her head before scrambling to her feet.
"Free my hands!" Jack roars at the guards and then tells Galen, "Fly this contraption to my cottage."
"Your cottage? Are you mad?" yells Galen as something thumps against the outside of the hull.
"Do it or I'll kill you," Jack orders, and Galen reels away, grabbing at the controls, and the drone rocks dangerously into the air, barely under control and the door still open. The 360-degree external-view screen flickers and lights up all around the hull's sides. Frenzied mobs are in the drone zone. One of the transport drones has been hit by a smart bullet and is crashing like a giant insect caught by an ant army.
An emergency channel blare from Jack's
phone adds to the pandemonium. "Jack, the cottage gate says he's being overrun by mobsters. Max is in the cottage. I can get my friend the door to let him out to run away."
Ali can see on the external-view screen that they are only seconds from the cottage. "Yes," she shouts at the phone. "Let him run. We can get him. Galen, set us down by the cottage!"
"You are crazy," Galen shouts and Ali wants to kill him. But the moment passes as she realizes he is landing and she watches the external views as a mob rushes towards them. Dear Dick, please make them not have smart guns.
As the drone hits the ground with a jarring thud and the door opens, Max runs wildly from the cottage.
"Max!" bellows Jack. "Here!"
Max turns, heads straight for Jack, dodges the first of the numan2s trying to hit him with homemade weapons and easily outpaces them to the drone door. He leaps in, knocking Jack down and licking his face furiously as Galen gets the drone airborne.
Alice reaches out to touch Max, who turns on her with joy. "Max, Max. Steady. Calm down!" But Max cannot calm down and she cannot stop crying.
"Fly us to somewhere we can rest, Galen. Somewhere safe," Jack orders.
"Safe?" replies Galen. "Is that some kind of human animal joke?"
*
Chapter 20
The food facility tour is nothing like Mark expects. Oddly, to Mark's mind, it starts with "Doctor" Aini giving him a cursory physical examination on the veranda. Lucky he does, thinks Mark, as Aini administers cool, soothing eye drops.
From the luxury of Aini's cruising limousine, Mark can see that the research and processing estate is enormous, with green areas and distant views of well-separated constructions suggesting industry, agriculture and a town. The long straight roads linking the centers of activity are deserted.
An image of Patti forms in his mind. Her frightened eyes, looking into mine. The guards forcing her on. Why didn't I do something to help her? Even now he cannot feel the true horror of what his mind sees. He knows it is happening but, emotionally, he cannot grasp the truth of her agonizing death.
What looks like a small town draws nearer, the limousine purring along the road and Aini relaxing without explaining anything. They ghost through the town center, no one paying more than scant attention to their passing. The town center has shops, restaurants and – Mark can hardly believe it – coffee houses with enticing names like Café Arabica and advertising "real beans, real expresso."
As the limousine stops near the town center, Aini comes to life. "This is NewLife City," he tells Mark. "We can get out here and walk for a short time. I want you to see how we have made our human animals content."
His constant harping on about humans being animals is beginning to annoy me.
It is the kind of town shown in FedOz promotional videos. Wide, tree-lined streets with spacious, well-kept houses and NewLife people looking happy and relaxed.
"This is amazing," he says to Aini in his surprise. After what we left behind in Alice Springs city, it's more than amazing. It's a shock to see that the promo vids were telling the truth. He had told Patti that the videos were lies. She must be screaming in agony now. He closes his eyes. What have I done to her? She needed me and I abandoned her.
"Mark, my friend, you have gone quite pale," says Aini, his imperturbability glossed with bureaucratic charm as they walk past streets of homes towards the coffee houses. "Are you unwell?"
"I'm okay. I just thought of Patti. Why does she have to die so horribly?"
Aini checks a time strip on his sleeve: it is woven elegantly into his gown and shows his day's schedule in numan4 color coding. "Don't worry about your companion," he says. "We have been changing her genetic coding over the past few months to turn her into one hundred percent human animal – we needed genetic, physical and emotional information synchronized with her complete file from FedUK and the cruise ship. This was lucky for her. Human animals do not feel pain as we do."
"You have been changing her over a few months?" asks Mark, his mind bouncing off the horror of Patti being cut up alive. How could they have been working on Patti for months?
"My friend, let's forget her," says Aini. "She is of no account." But Mark's gaze holds Aini for a few seconds more as the numan4 withdraws into his mind, then returns to the world and tells Mark, "Actually, she is worse than 'of no account.' A lot of our resources were expended upon her at FedUK Center." Aindrea is growing redder, more angry-looking. "And she was given the best of everything, including genetic meds, on the cruise ship. Yet in the laboratory today, we found that it was all for nothing. Not one single useful fact came from her mind or her body."
Mark feels he should say "I'm sorry" but he cannot. He wants to say "You mean, she died in agony for nothing" but he does not dare. And he has no idea when or how Aini got the report from the lab.
"Let's forget her," Aini repeats, but it is immediately clear that he cannot. "Unfortunately in this case, we have strict laws for the numane treatment of animals – all animals, but your species has made sure there are very few other animals still in existence."
Mark's mind is overflowing, unable to grip the enormity of being an animal in a numan world.
"What do you think of our ranch?" asks Aini, jerking Mark onto a new path of thought. "Aren't the animals superb? This is the model for ranches all over FedOZ."
Mark's eyes wander along the street, over the human women and men who are lingering, gardening, chatting, enjoying themselves in the tranquility of their new habitat. He and Aini walk into the town center. He wonders what Aini means by "ranch" and concludes it is just a language difference.
There is something strange, though. All the adults seem twenty-five to thirty-five years old, and they all look rosily healthy, strong and happy. There are no babies or children.
"Let's drink some coffee," Aini suggests, guiding him into a coffee house where humans are relaxing. "This place is my favorite. The coffee is excellent – I designed it myself."
Mark lets Aini lead him to a table where a couple are eating what looks like fruit cheesecake and drinking coffee. A tantalizing aroma reaches out of their cups to entice Mark's senses. No one is using money, as far as he can see. It's all free like on the cruise ship.
"We can sit here but don't stare or talk to them," says Aini. "They have accepted their new environment but it is still possible to frighten them. Just sit quietly, no sudden moves, until they have accepted us as harmless."
"Sorry. I know I was staring. It's just that their food looks like cheesecake, one strawberry and the other blackcurrant." He stops and Aini waits, an amused smile betraying his pleasure in showing Mark around. "I have seen that kind of food only in history books and vids," says Mark, a trifle embarrassed at his poor life in FedUK. "The cruise ship that brought us here had pastries but not cheesecake. Can you smell the coffee?"
A waiter appears next to them. To Mark, he looks human in face and dress. There is something very familiar about him, like he could have come out of human videos. But what grips Mark with wonder is Aini casually ordering coffee – real coffee – and wedges of fruit cheesecake. Their order is served almost immediately and Mark is lost in the sensations.
Aini leans slowly and calmly across the table to talk to the couple. "Hello, we have just arrived. How are you?"
"We're fine, mate," says the man in an accent Mark recognizes as south London. "We're getting wonderful grub. We've got a wonderful place to live. They say we can have a car and travel when we've acclimated and moved into a permanent home – we'll be living in a town called Dream City, which is a few hours east of here."
His wife joins the conversation, a hint of unhappiness about her. They look well fed, well kept, but there is a farm animal placidity about them. "I just wish we could have kept our children," she says in a voice as bland as her pretty face. "I understand all the children have to go away to special school towns to prepare for the new life. They are tomorrow's citizens. I miss my three. My baby girl was only six months old when they to
ok her. She still needs me."
"How is your health?" Aini asks the couple, gently changing the subject.
"Never better," says the man. His eyes slowly seek Aini's and then settle into a stare. "The kind of bad-living illnesses you get in FedUK are cured here and we've both put on weight – not the flabby fat you get in FedUK with all that poor nutrition, but good, lean, strong weight. The Dream City area has hiking, cycling and swimming. We'll be in perfect shape for all that. It's a marvelous new life. Apart from losing the children, of course."
"I'm so glad," says Aini with sincere and genuine pleasure.
"Why do the children have to go to special towns?" asks Mark later as they stand at the limousine, the driver hovering uneasily as he waits to open the door for them.
Aini chuckles and gives Mark's arm a paternal, reassuring pat. "I thought you might ask that. It's a very human animal concern."
"So why?" asks Mark, curious but wary of Aini's disapproval.
"Did you enjoy your canapés at breakfast?" asks Aini.
"Please don't change the subject," says Mark. "Why are the children taken away?"
"I think you especially liked morakee," continues Aini. "In our language, morakee means 'baby female human-animal.' Do you begin to understand?"
Mark stares for a moment, unwilling to understand or believe. "You mean I was eating a human baby?"
"My dear chap, don't look so shocked," says the genial Aini. "Most human animals like to eat babies of other species. I know morakee does not look like baby girl as a canapé but it is a good product name. A baby female human animal is force-fed liquid with herbs, spices and an alcohol that produces the pleasing color. When the chef judges the infusion process to be complete, the live animal is suspended by its feet, the throat cut and the blood drained. The meat is cooked into morakee. It's a great favorite."
Aini rests his arm on the roof of the limousine as he smiles encouragingly at Mark. "My friend, do not be disturbed. It is just one of the many uses of animals. In fact, we got the morakee idea from your ancestors' use of nonhuman animals – veal and foie gras come to mind. We developed the human practices. Now we have many different products, of course, but the idea is the same. I have brought some for our picnic. Can I tempt you?"