She shouldn’t feel so concerned about human bodies, for many had already gone through recycling here, along with the other waste, whilst more recent ones resided in a silo stored for when they would help make up the soil necessary for the arboretum. Manoeuvring Gisender’s body through the airlock itself was easy, though she did wonder if its lack of weight would be noticed. She then pushed the outer airlock door open, just enough to shove the dead woman outside. And the shepherd instantly pounced, its shiny legs clattering against the crawler, tentacles spearing down like the tongues of chameleons. Var held back for a moment as the arachnid machine retreated, then she moved forward to peer outside again. The shepherd was striding away, with Gisender tightly clasped against its underside, clearly with no idea that it had retrieved the wrong EA-suited human.
Var returned to the cargo compartment to pick up the diamond saw and its battery box. She took the shears too, though the saw ought to be enough. She needed to act quickly now, before Ricard discovered that his shepherd had only retrieved a corpse.
Earth
His other preparations, made after he completed the escape tunnel, were good, though Saul had been hoping not to need them. The dyke curved round for nearly a kilometre, the water in it growing fetid and the silkweed becoming a toxic orange. Glancing back, he could see a pillar of smoke rising from the abandoned bunker’s location and, worryingly, two shepherds patrolling around it. But only as he and Hannah moved into the shadow of a processing plant did he witness more aeros arriving.
The dyke carried the outflow from apparatus used for cleaning and preserving vegetables. He imagined that the orange tint of the water derived from the antiviral and antibacterial sprays used to extend shelf-life. That was not quite the organic dream of previous ages, but then, over the last century, and faced with the cold realities of trying to feed an out-of-control population, a great many of Earth’s dreams had been abandoned.
The outflow pipe ran out underneath a security fence, and many months ago he had cut through the bars of the grating at the near end of it and secured them again simply with ducting tape. It came away easily, and they proceeded through darkness, ankle-deep in toxic water, to an inspection hatch he’d previously altered so that it could now be opened from the inside.
‘This way.’ They crossed a carbocrete yard and skirted the looming silos and juice tanks, also the big storage barns beside which robotic harvesters were parked.
From here, when the season arrived, the great combines, diggers and sievers would depart to harvest the crops, before returning to pump, blow or otherwise convey their loads into the processing plant. Keeping in the lee of a wall made from blocks of bonded ash, the pair of fugitives moved round to the forecourt where lorries and tankers awaited. Some of these were robotic, but others of an older make required human drivers. All these took rapeseed oil and bamboo pulp to fuel plants and power stations respectively, vegetables to MegaMalls or other processing plants where they were further preserved, and cereal crops to be turned into all sorts of commodities. Saul knew, for instance, that the big bread factory in Suffolk used a great deal of bamboo pulp in its four mix to bulk its products out.
‘Over there.’ He was heading for a nearby grain lorry when he noticed Hannah staring at something over by the fence. He glanced over that way too, but couldn’t figure out what had caught her attention until a swarm of flies rose up. Someone had obviously made it this far through the surrounding fields, and then been brought down at the fence.
‘Why?’ she asked, her voice choking.
It seemed an odd question to be asking him then and there, but then he himself had grown used to seeing the dead scattered across the agricultural landscape, and smelling the occasional stench arising some days after another desperate human being had fallen foul of readerguns or razorbirds.
‘Because human life has been cheapened by its sheer number?’ he suggested.
Hannah had no reply for that, so they now climbed up into the truck’s cab. He paused to watch as a robotic tanker pulled out of the forecourt, probably loaded with sugar syrup that had been processed here during last season.
‘You can drive this?’ Hannah asked him, her gaze still fixed on the fly-blown corpse clinging to the razormesh. ‘It won’t be picked up?’
‘It’s always wise to be prepared,’ he replied, reaching under the dashboard and pulling out the black box he’d stashed there previously, which was linked in to the truck’s computer. The click of a switch overrode the recognition system that allowed only approved drivers to operate the vehicle. He pressed the start button and, after the hydrogen turbine had wound up to speed, reversed the lorry round, before heading towards the compound gate. It opened automatically, and soon they were out on the all-but-empty motorway.
‘So what other preparations have you made?’ Hannah asked leadenly.
‘I’ve got caches of useful items spread across Europe, as well as new identities I can assume. More in North Africa, too, in case things get really desperate.’ He glanced at her. ‘But we definitely don’t want to go that route, as it would take us further away from where we ultimately want to go.’
‘Minsk Spaceport,’ she replied fatly.
The apartment Saul decided to use measured eight metres square. It possessed a small kitchen area, a combined toilet and shower, a motorized sofa bed and a home computer. One window overlooked the central megaplex of the residential block, and a screen window could run any view he selected, including ones from the numerous cams positioned on the block itself. Or at least it would if the screen was working. A single lighting array, also containing a community safety camera, was suspended from the ceiling. Generally, only complex computer programs kept watch on the inhabitant of this apartment, but if his behaviour strayed outside acceptable parameters, the visual and audio feed would instantly be diverted to a community political officer, for further assessment. Not everybody endured cameras like this one perpetually watching them, but then not everyone was considered a ‘societal asset’ who needed constant supervision.
‘Not
‘Assigned to one of my reserve identities,’ he replied. ‘Ownership is merely an anachronistic concept fostered by the anti-society dissident,’ he quoted.
‘So what’s your name now, citizen?’ Hannah asked, as she paused by the door – holding it open, as he had instructed, with his altered keycard still in the slot.
‘Kostas Andreas,’ he replied, looking round.
‘Very . . . Mediterranean,’ she observed.
He nodded, pulled over a chair and stood on it to get at the safety camera, smearing the lens with a gobbet of
