Spares Read online

  For the next three years, two feelings shifted against each other inside me, like sleepy cats trying to get comfortable in a small basket. The first was a caged realization that I had created a situation that I had to see through, for the sake of both the spares and myself.

  The second was a hatred, for the Farms, whoever owned them, and everything they stood for. I knew something had to be done, but neither Ratchet nor I could think of what it might be.

  In the end the decision was taken out of our hands.

  On December 10th of the fifth year of my time at the Farm, I spent the morning sitting in the main room. Several of the spares were there with me, talking, watching television, some even trying to read. Others, in various states of repair, were dotted all over the complex, wandering with purpose or wherever their rolls and crawling had taken them. I went for a walk round the perimeter at lunchtime, my breath clouding in front of my face. Winter had settled into the hillside like cold into bone, and trees stood frozen in place against a pale sky like sticks of charcoal laid on brushed aluminum. It was good to come out, every now and then, to remind myself there was still an outside world. I was also checking the weather, hoping for a fog or snow. On a couple of previous occasions, when I was sure no one could see from the road, I’d let a few of the spares out into the yard.

  The afternoon passed comfortably in the warmth of the Farm. I helped Suej with her reading and showed David some more exercises he could do to build up strength in his arms. I did my own daily ration of pushups and sit-ups too, trying to keep myself in some kind of shape. I still wanted Rapt every day of my life, but it had been a year since I’d had any at all. Exercise and work, along with Ratchet, were keeping me clean. I took a shower, helped myself to a cup of coffee from the ever-present vats in the kitchen, and settled down with a book in the main room.

  Just another winter’s evening at the Farm, and I felt relaxed. I almost felt worthwhile.

  At nine o’clock the alarm went off, and my heart folded coldly. Why today, I wondered furiously—as if the day made any difference—why can’t they just leave us alone?

  The main spares quickly helped herd the others into the tunnels, and when everything was secured I turned the alarm off and waited in the main room for the doctors to arrive.

  Just let it be one of the others, I was pleading, conscious of how unfair that was, of how similar it was to the thinking which had generated the Farms in the first place. Protect those whom I care about. And fuck everyone else.

  The doctors arrived. They wanted Jenny.

  I led the orderly into the second tunnel, swallowing compulsively. I knew Jenny wasn’t there, but I took as long as I could finding out. After about five minutes of pantomime the orderly shoved me against the wall and pushed his gun into my stomach.

  “Find it,” he said, and partly he was just being an asshole in the time-honored fashion of grunts. But beneath the off-the-rack anger there was something else, and I began to suspect that Jenny’s twin must be someone pretty important.

  We went into Tunnel 1. I moved round David and Suej, who were a few yards apart, facing into the walls. The orderly kicked Suej hard in the thigh, and then leant over to squeeze her breasts. For a moment I saw his neck before me, perfectly in position for a blow that would have killed him immediately. I didn’t take advantage of it. I couldn’t, then, though I wish I had. Suej goggled vaguely at him for a moment, rolled over, and then craned her head back toward him with a look of such vacancy that he recoiled in distaste. I found myself nearly smiling: Suej understood how to behave. Better so than David, who looked a little self-conscious and was keeping his front carefully turned toward the wall. I let the main spares wear various bits and pieces of my clothes, and they’d gotten used to it. Being clothed may not be a natural state, but for them it was a badge of belonging to a world outside the blue.

  In the end I didn’t have much choice. I pointed Jenny out, and the orderly looked her up and down before dragging her out of the tunnel. From the way his hands crawled over her body I thought it was lucky the doctors were in a greater hurry than usual.

  One of them met us as we turned into the corridor to the operating room and impatiently motioned us forward. I tried to send some message to Jenny as the door closed between us, and then I strode back down the corridor again, hands clenching.

  I passed Ratchet on the way. The droid generally waited outside the OR in case there were any special instructions after the operation. Usually we exchanged some word at that point, some verbalization of futility. That day we didn’t. Neither of us appeared to be in the mood.

  I went back to the main room, poured a whiskey, and waited for what could only be bad news. In those last few moments at the Farm my mind was filled with alternatives, parts that could be taken without scarring Jenny too badly. A finger joint, maybe. A ligament somewhere unimportant.

  But not her eyes, I was thinking—they’re too beautiful. Please don’t take her eyes.

  Then suddenly I heard shouts and the sound of an impact. Seconds later, the medic droid shot into the main room and zipped out of the front door without even looking at me. I shot a bewildered glance after it and then instinctively ran toward the OR. As I reached the turn I saw Ratchet speeding down the corridor toward me, dragging Jenny, who looked bewildered and terrified. The door to the operating room was locked, and I could hear the sound of the doctors banging their fists against it. Jenny tripped and fell toward me, and I caught her in my arms.

  “What the fuck?” I asked.

  “She spoke,” Ratchet said.

  Jenny cowered away from me. I tried to soften my face and to smile. I don’t imagine it looked too convincing.

  “It’s not her fault,” Ratchet added quickly. Jenny’s twin had been involved in a fire, and had internal injuries together with third-degree burns over eighty-five per cent of her body. Jenny would not have survived the operation. They were going to use her up in one go; were, in short, intending to skin and gut her. The surgeons had hurriedly discussed technique as Jenny was strapped to the table, not for a moment realizing that she could understand if not the detail, then certainly the gist of what they were saying. The operations on the spares were never made under anesthetic, and as the head surgeon had bent over her to inject the muscle paralyzer, Jenny had allowed two words to escape from her mouth.

  “Please,” she said. “Don’t.”’

  Only little words—but she shouldn’t have been able to speak at all. Ratchet, eavesdropping outside, had immediately smashed through the doors, slammed the surgeon out of the way, grabbed Jenny and ran.

  He knew as well as I did that it had finally all come down.

  “Jack,” the droid said suddenly, and I turned to see the orderly sprinting along the tunnel corridor toward us, holding a pump-action riot gun at port arms. I pulled Jenny and Ratchet back into the other corridor. “What are we going to do?”

  “This,” I said, waited a second, then stepped out in front of the orderly. As he whipped the gun round into position I snapped my hand into his chin, palm open, and his head rocked back on his neck. I punched him in the throat, put my hands on his shoulders and whipped my knee up while yanking his face down toward it. He grunted as his nose spread across his face and tumbled forward, already unconscious. Before he hit the floor I caught the back of his head with a swinging kick that snapped his neck.

  I turned the body over and pulled the gun out of twitching hands. Then I grabbed the revolver from his holster and shoved it into my belt.

  “Keep them in there,” I said to Ratchet, stabbing my finger toward the OR. Both the droid and the spare were gaping at me. I avoided their eyes and grasped Jenny’s hand. Nice Uncle Jack betrays his real skills, I thought, with a sinking feeling.

  Jenny fought against me for a moment but then gave in and was dragged behind me as I ran to the tunnels where I shook David and Suej to their feet, hustled them out, and pushed them through into the control room. I stepped into the room where I slept, grabbed
an assortment of clothes, and threw them at the spares, shouting at them to get dressed. As they clambered into a ragged assortment of my cast-offs I heard the first shots coming from the OR. At least one of the surgeons had his own weapon and was trying to shoot his way through the door. SafetyNet doctors aren’t your usual kindly men in white coats. Their backgrounds are kind of checkered, and at least some of them are ex-Bright Eyes. The spares turned their heads back and forth at the sound, faces white and eyes wide with complete incomprehension, and I motioned at them to hurry.

  I snatched, my traveling bag from the cupboard where it had lain unused for over five years, and swept more of my clothes into it, selecting the thickest sweaters I had. I’d been out that afternoon, of course, and knew how cold it was going to be. I scrunched a couple of lightweight folderCoats into the top of the bag, propped the shotgun against the wall while I dragged a jacket on, and then stepped out into the control room. The medic droid popped urgently back through the main door, paused for a moment, then disappeared into the corridors. I started to follow but Ratchet appeared in the doorway.

  “They’re getting through and I can’t kill them,” he stated baldly. I knew the medic droid couldn’t, either. To that extent, at least, they were both still company men. “Go now.”

  “Ratchet,” I said, and I’m not sure what I was going to say. I knew he couldn’t come with us, that he would be like a big red beacon amongst the group, trackable by radio from the sky. Perhaps I was going to ask advice, or thank him. I never got as far as doing either.

  “One of them is using a mobile,” Ratchet interrupted suddenly. “Go. Go. Go.” As he repeated the word, over and over with eerie similarity like some verbal siren, I heard a crash down the corridor. I ran to the spares and shoved them out into the compound as footsteps ticked down the OR corridor. The steps paused for a moment, presumably by the corpse of the orderly, and then thundered toward us: aggressive, purposeful slaps of leather on dry tiles.

  “Get in the ambulance,” I shouted at David, who just stared at me. He knew what a van was—he’d seen cars and trucks on television. As for how you got into them, that was a different matter, and not something they go to great pains to explain in films. It’s generally taken as understood. David started banging his hands, palms down, against one of the doors, frustration spiraling into fury.

  Suej stared at me, ready to do something, anything, if I would only tell her what it should be; and Jenny stood to one side, head down, clinging to one of Suej’s hands and crying into the wind. I felt a toxic gout of hatred of myself, for making her feel to blame for what was showering all around us. Then suddenly six cubic inches of the door frame exploded into my face.

  I believe some moments in your life collapse into themselves, that some things never really happen at all except in the grainy slow motion of retrospect. Perhaps those moments, those sparks which flare and fall out of your life, are drawn together somewhere, to make a whole that stands apart from you. Maybe they are all part of some other life. The killing of the orderly had been a simple, savage act. But the surgeon was different, was a glimpse of this other void swimming into vision out of darkness.

  In silence, I turned slowly to see the surgeon bursting into the control room, his body surging toward me. His face was hard, with straight lines of bone, skin stretched with effort and two chips of ice in his eyes; his gun was steady in his hand. His mouth opened as he shouted something at me, but I never heard what it was. My hands pumped the gun, fired it from the hip, but I watched the effect it had as if my eyes were cameras and I was sitting in some entirely different room somewhere far away. The round caught him squarely in the stomach and it looked almost as if his lungs and bowels stayed where they were while the rest of his body leapt forward.

  Then time hit me like a truck from the side and I stumbled backward into the yard as Ratchet kept repeating his alarm, over and over again. “Go. Go. Go.” There was something damaged and empty about the sound, and I wondered if he’d been hit.

  The yard was brightly lit against the darkness by arc lights in each corner. In less than a second I realized where the medic droid had been going when he left the complex: to cut the tires of the ambulance. I guess he couldn’t have known we’d make it there first and, since it couldn’t harm SafetyNet employees, had done his best to destroy their means of pursuit. Nice thinking on his, or—more likely—Ratchet’s part, but not everything goes the way you expect. As I stared bleakly at the vehicle I heard an excited squawk from behind me, and turned to see Ragald standing shivering in the door. Nanune was hiding behind him, gaping at the mess in the control room. Both were completely naked.

  I got within an inch of shouting at them to go back inside, caught sight of Ratchet, and clamped my mouth shut. Wincing against the sound of David’s continuing attack on the ambulance, I threw my bag at Suej and told her to get them dressed. Then I grabbed the neck of David’s coat, hauled him away from a door which was now covered in dents from his fists, and ran toward the gate. I trusted Ratchet to keep the other doctor out of my hair for a few minutes at least.

  I fired a round at the gate’s lock mechanism, and then two others at the hinges. The metal bent and split, not completely but enough. As David and I kicked and shouldered the remains of the gate, we heard a bellow behind us. I whirled with the gun, teeth unconsciously bared, and came very close to blowing Mr. Two to pieces. When I saw he’d brought half a body out with him I shut my eyes and nearly pulled the trigger anyway.

  Suej held her hands up, took a coat and pair of overalls out for the latest addition to our merry band, and put the half-spare in my bag, which was by now empty of clothes. What would have been enough to keep four people warm was now spread thinly over six and a half.

  When the gate finally gave way, eventually aided by another round from the riot gun, I shouted at the spares and they straggled toward the gate with maddening slowness. When they reached the fence they all stopped as one, looking out through the hole in the gate like a litter of kittens: in front of an open window for the first time and not knowing what on earth to make of the possibilities beyond.

  An hour later we were on a CybTrak train, trundling round the outskirts of Roanoke and heading for the mountains. CybTrak wouldn’t have been my first choice of transport, maybe not even my second or third. Like anyone else, when something’s after me I want to be getting the hell away as quickly as possible: Making a getaway on CybTrak was like taking part in a car chase while riding a pogo stick. The network is only there to transport nonperishable goods slowly round the backwoods. I could have made better time just running. But within a few minutes of leaving the compound I saw that there was a higher priority than speed: getting the spares somewhere contained, manageable and away from normal eyes.

  They tried their best, David and Suej in particular. They’d all sat up nights and dreamed aloud of some day setting foot beyond the fence. I used to hear snatches of these conversations sometimes, as I dozed over a book at the other side of the control room. I’d let them talk, though I knew—or thought I did—that it could never happen. A release from pain, some better place. Everyone needs a religion, some unseen good to yearn toward.

  The moment I actually got them out, they froze. It was too much. Way, way too much. Most stopped dead in their tracks, trying to inventory the new things one by one. As the new things started with the black road at their feet and continued indefinitely in every direction, I sensed it could take a while. Ragald went to the other extreme, tuning everything out and thrumming instead with a blind and nervous joy which pulled each limb in a different direction and threatened to tear him apart. Mr. Two gazed meditatively across the hill, turning in a slow circle and intoning the word “spatula” at regular intervals, and Jenny stood slightly apart, trying to occupy as little space as possible.

  I got them moving eventually, but it was like trying to hurry a group of children on acid through a toy factory. Every step was too magical to understand, never mind leave behind.


  There was a T-junction thirty yards up the hill. I couldn’t remember where the two choices went, and squinted in both directions. One seemed to head round a hill, probably toward the town; the other looked as if it headed off toward the south end of the Blue Ridge Parkway. We didn’t want to go to Roanoke—hell, who does?—so I took them right instead.

  It was impossible. By dint of shouting at them I managed to focus David and Suej, but that was all. Mr. Two wouldn’t walk in a straight line, but in large bowing curves like a cat. Nanune was still trying to hide behind Ragald, and whenever the male spare turned to stare at something new, she shuffled round behind him until they were suddenly walking in another direction altogether. I could have made quicker progress walking backward on my hands. It was pitch-dark, and the temperature was dropping like a stone. I was torn between a rising panic and insane calm. The two emotions fed each other, melding together until they were transformed into some larger feeling of swift and glittering dread.

  Then two yellow eyes appeared ahead, and I bundled the spares rapidly off the road. By the time the car had passed I knew that we couldn’t simply keep on walking.

  I got us a half mile up the Parkway, to a point where the trees were thickening on either side of the road. Then I collected the spares into a group, led them into the trees, and impressed upon them the importance of shutting the fuck up.

  It was like being in the tunnels when the operating men came, I said—only even more important.

  I walked away, turned back to check they were out of sight, and saw Ragald obliviously following me. I returned him to the group under Suej’s supervision, and then walked away again. From twenty yards they were invisible. They’d be safe for a little while—at least until SafetyNet came with dogs. Holding the gun up against my chest, conscious of how few cartridges I had left, I ran off to see what I could find.