Spares - Michael Marshall Smith [18]
I didn’t really know what the Farms were back then. Well, yeah, I did know. Vaguely. I’d driven past one once, wondered what they were, asked someone, got half the story. I knew more or less what they were for, but not how they did it, and at the time I didn’t really care too much.
We arrived in that scrag-end of night when the sky turns from black to blue just before dawn. The complex was a couple of miles outside Roanoke, handy for the hospitals. It was a two-story concrete building up against a hillside, a drab gray structure which from the road you’d probably assume was something to do with the military. In front there was a small compound where collection vehicles parked for the brief periods they spent at the Farm. The whole place was ringed by an electrified fence, like so much else these days. In back were the tunnels, but you couldn’t see them. They went straight into the rock.
I was left outside the compound, and waited shivering for the dawn and the representative from the parent company who was supposed to be coming to meet me. I waited two hours, two of the most wretched hours of my life. I’d evidently shot up from a bad batch and my head was completely fucked. I didn’t really know where I was, but that was giving me no relief. It was like being dead without the peace.
Finally, the man came. I was in several different kinds of pain by then and doing my miserable best not to show any of them. This guy was the last thing I needed. He was a small, fussy man in an expensive suit, a man who lived for the ticks he made at regular intervals on the sheet of paper he carried with him. He had a fashionable haircut and fashionable small, round glasses, on an unfashionable small, round head.
He took one look at me and smiled. Clearly I fitted the type.
It doesn’t take much to run a Farm. A caretaker and two support droids. The droids do the bulk of the work—all the caretaker has to do is keep an eye on things and deal with the white vans when they arrive. They’re token humans in the decision loop, installed in the way that a hundred years ago foremen were always white men, no matter how intelligent or educated their black or female workers. The caretakers are generally ex-security guards or farmers who’ve lost either their land or the will to work it Men with no special qualities, because none are really needed—apart, perhaps, from a lack of imagination. Most stay on the premises all the time, day in, day out. The company doesn’t like to have to organize relief cover, and few of the caretakers have much to go out for. I was no exception. I had no reason to go out at all.
The inside of the main building was arranged around two corridors at right angles to each other. The outside door led pretty much straight into the control room where I spent most of my time. At the bottom corner of this room was a door that led to the main corridor. As you walked down that passage you passed three large metal doors, each with a small Perspex window. These led to the tunnels and were supposed to be opened only at feeding times and when a collection was made. A little farther down was the second corridor which led to the operating room. There were a few farther rooms off the opposite side, a kitchen and various utility areas. The walls and ceilings throughout the complex were painted an entertaining shade of drab gray, and it was always quiet, like a mortuary, because everyone except the caretaker lived in the tunnels.
I was told my duties, and shown how to operate the few pieces of equipment that were my responsibility. It was explained to me when the shipments of food would arrive, and how little I had to do to them. I was given the phone numbers of relevant people in Roanoke General, and told the circumstances in which I was to call them. I stood, and nodded,