THE HARVEST

The Crop

 

The voice cut through her daydream like glass through skin. Soupie caught her breath before it leapt from her mouth. The effort almost made her gag. Her companions glanced at her, their eyes cold and calculating. Had she made a sound they would have killed her, without thought or compunction. She avoided their looks. Even to break the separation could result in death. It was essential to stay inside oneself. 

She slowly turned her eyes back towards the wall across the street, towards the window the voice had come from. A hand waved, slowly turning and twisting, like bleached kelp in slow, deep waves. Her hands twitched in unconscious response. A dim childhood memory of returning a wave, of the fascination of contact with a stranger, made her hand listen to a deeper voice than her fear of her companions.

Thin and pale, the fingers waved and floated as though the hand was trying to catch the wind. Soupie tried to imagine the face of the person the arm belonged to and in her fascination, she strained forward to see it better. Without thinking, she raised her own thin arm in mute response and as she leaned forward her ragged coat caught on a nail and tore. 

The sound it made was so small it could barely be called a sound, but her companions all heard it and turned, silently as ghosts, towards it. Their hard eyes signalled their intent. She cringed, begging silently for forgiveness. Her only hope lay in the smallness of the sound and her habitual insignificance. 

Willmott made the decision. She usually did when it came to the killing. Soupie knew she was dead before Willmott moved. The day before she would have sat and silently accepted her death because she knew the penalty for betraying the group’s presence by any sound and if it had been another, she might have joined in the killing. But that day was different. That day she did not want to die. Her survival instinct made the decision to move and she was faster than they knew. Wilmott’s silent knife struck air as the girl vaulted out of the window and ran, almost without sound, along the balcony towards the stairs. 

The group all stared in horror at the small, thin figure until it disappeared down the stone steps towards the street. It took only a second for survival to take charge and all, as one, as silent as wraiths, glided away through the door of the apartment and out into the carcass of the broken city. Their strained faces told of their disbelief and fear but each kept the separation, none shared the terror by looking at another’s face – the silence was complete. They fled without sound into the depths of their broken world, for fear that if bloodsuckers did not find them, the parameds would. Either way spelled death for the tainted ones.

Soupie reached the street and was physically alone for the first time in her life. The adrenaline rush that had propelled her out of the window dissipated by the time she reached street level and she fell in a heap. Her terror of being heard made it more difficult to control her breathing. Her people never exerted themselves for any length of time, their health did not allow it, nor did the need for silence and stealth. Theirs was a world of minima; their way and hold on life was such they could not afford the luxury and the noise of exertion. Soupie knew she was going to die now. She could escape Willmott’s little knife but there was no way she could avoid the bloodsuckers or parameds. A tiny, exhausted sob almost made it out of her throat. Despite her certain knowledge of imminent death, her years of subordination to the silence made her suppress the sound. 

She glanced up at the window, expecting to see the hand but there was nothing. She wondered if it had been there at all or if she was beginning the time of dreams. They left those outside, the ones who had the dreams. Once they started, the dreamers broke the silence, and they were a threat. Soupie never questioned why they did not kill the dreamers, why they left them outside for the parameds to clean up, it was just considered unlucky to kill them.  The first time a dreamer broke the silence, the group bundled them out to wander in the throes of their madness until the white robed squads found them. 

For several minutes she sat and waited for something to happen. Her stomach growled audibly. Instinctively she hunched over trying to deaden the sound, willing her empty belly to silence. She knew she must not think of food. To think of food would stimulate her hunger, but today she could not summon the energy to quell her raging need to eat. 

Like all her kind, Soupie had never known anything but hunger. There was only more or less hungry, never full, never sated – just as there was never warm, never comfortable, never safe. People often died of hunger, but not of starvation. There were few deaths of actual starvation as food could be scavenged in the city dumps. In Soupie’s group and others like it, people died from the noise their hungry bodies made.

The sound, when it came, was so huge the girl flung herself flat on the ground in a paroxysm of terror. It filled, not only her head, but her chest cavity and her empty belly. It threatened to burst her like a balloon. 

Flat on the ground with her face in the dirt and her hands over her ears, Soupie did not see the four large white boots until one of them flipped her over onto her back. She gazed up at the two enormous figures, all white and featureless. Inhuman. One of the figures made more noise. It was monstrous. Soupie realised it was speaking but it was so loud it seemed to her as though all the people in the world were shouting through that one head. She could not make out any words, just noise, which got worse as the figure bent down towards her. 

With practised ease, the figure picked her up and slid her small, thin body into the clear plastic container the other figure had placed on the ground. Strangely calm, Soupie gazed out at the huge figures as they bent and picked up the container. For the first time in her conscious memory, she lay on a clean sheet. The container was clean and white and smelled fresh and sweet. The feel and smell of it stirred a deep memory, like the one that had been revived by the hand. A poor, ragged little memory of a time when she had felt warm and protected, clean and content. She almost smiled.

The drug that was pumped into the container ensured she did not feel the needle which extracted some of her blood and another which took some of her bone marrow. It did ensure that she floated in a state of pleasure and tranquility, halfway between life and death. She did not know that the tests the white suited creatures were carrying out would determine which way she would continue – on, towards death, or back, towards life. Nor did she care. Like many of her people before her, it was not solely the drug that left Soupie feeling so euphoric, it was the release from the stress of being hunted. She was captured, and not running, not hiding, not fearing, felt good. 

She had no way of knowing how long she was in the container or what decisions were taken and why. They moved her to a place where other white suited figures took her out of the pod, removed her rags, and placed her in an upright canister that washed and dried her. The white suits then examined her, scanned, swabbed, and injected her and placed her in a small, clean, white bed in a small, clean white room with one small, clean window, high up on the wall, through which she could see blue sky. 

A short while after they brought her food - clean, fresh food on clean plates, with cool, clean, fresh water. She lay and stared up at the sky, hands folded across her full belly. As she felt and smelt the smooth, clean sheets, Soupie, known as Susie to her long dead parents, Jill and Ian Paine, smiled. 

 

The Harvester

 

She had positioned herself exactly in the middle and lay unnaturally still and deathly quiet. For several days she had barely moved at all and it seemed as though she was frozen, in stasis, yet we knew she was conscious and healthy. We had encountered one like this before. That one had been so still and so silent it was hard to believe she was alive and healthy. It took weeks before she spoke, and longer before she was able to tell us about the life that had led her to this state. 

This one was watching me warily. I could feel her eyes following me and I detected a minute movement of her head. Her face had some colour in it and her body was showing the first signs of weight gain. It would not be very long before she’d be ready for the harvest.  I felt a little sad, as always. She was so young and so fragile. She had spoken for the first time earlier today, said something about a hand at a window. Her words were formed like a child's, her voice was breathy, so small, and thin it hardly seemed human. 

I busied myself with my tasks, aware of how strange I must look to her in my steri-suit. She did not flinch as the needles entered her soft skin, just stared at me with eyes trained to betray no emotion. I felt those eyes on my back as I moved about the room. I knew she was detailing everything about my white suited figure, trying to work out who, what, why, where. I smiled at her as I turned to leave and there was just a hint of one in return. I asked her if there was anything else I could do for her and she opened her mouth but no sound came out. She gestured to the window and moved her hand as though she was waving. Her expressive eyes were asking me a question. 

‘What are you asking me?’

She waved again and gestured with her eyes towards the window.

I knew what she was asking. 

‘Did you see someone waving from one of the windows? When you were on the outside?’

She nodded and her eyes asked me who it was.

‘That was someone else who is here for treatment. She had managed to open a window that had been left unlocked. I think she was just …’ My voice tailed off. 

The lies just refused to trip off my tongue as they usually did. Something about this girl’s clear, steady gaze froze my will and I felt a wave of deathly fatigue wash over me. Bizarre though it was, I wanted to crawl into the clean, white bed and sleep. 

The girl looked quizzical and then sympathetic, as if she knew how I was feeling. I don’t know how long I might have stood there or what I might have done if the outer door alarm hadn’t gone off. I left the room and when I looked back through the observation window, I saw a small smile play around her lips. I was pleased; it was good she was responding so well. I pressed the open button and Robinson came in through the door and joined me at the observation window.  

When he spoke, I felt the nerves in my throat twitch. 

‘It's funny how good it feels to find a clean one. It’s not just the money they’re worth. Hell no. However much you try to justify it, however sanitised and deodorised they make it, every time we dispatch one of those poor half dead bastards, it…’ His voice trailed off into one of his strained silences.

I nodded in agreement. As much as I hated him and his voice, I agreed with his sentiment.

'How long is it since we last found a clean one? No-one’s saying anything but it’s getting bad. Jesus, some days I feel like jacking it in, but …’  

Again, his voice stuttered and ran out of fuel and I hoped he would shut up, but he cleared his throat and continued. 

‘And I suppose someone’s got to do it – let’s face it, we give them a dignified end for god’s sake. They have a chance – if they’re clean.  If not, at least they have some moments of pleasure before we give them a peaceful death.'   

He nodded, agreeing with himself. I knew the ritual of trying to convince yourself of the righteousness of your words. 

‘That’s more than they’d get in their sewers when the viruses get them. Or if the others get them first - poor bastards. Still, this one’s lucky. Wonder what made her come out?' 

I shook my head. It was unusual to find a young, relatively fit female in this way. Usually, we had to track them down and dart them or trap them.  

‘She’s a bit unusual this one. Not like any of the others. Maybe the boss’ll find some other way to deploy her.’ Robinson looked hopefully at me. 

I shrugged, reluctant to respond. 

'I’m just glad we found her before the bloodsuckers got to her. If we lost another one to them or found another one that’d been snuffed for some breach of some bizarre ritual or other… '  

His thick voice bogged down again, and he fell silent. I prayed he would stay that way. When he started speaking again, I could not control the urge to clear my throat. 

'I tell you the last time, when we found those two kids, it broke my heart.' Robinson nodded, agreeing with himself. 'Yeah, mine and the boss's. I remember the speech – every clean one lost is another resource denied an ailing world.’  

I could not tell if he was being sarcastic. Normally I would avoid saying anything to Robinson, but something made me drop my guard.

'Like he gives a damn.’ My voice sounded harsh. 

He shot a sideways look at me, as if unsure how to take my comment. His eyes narrowed slightly as he seemed to calculate whether he wanted to hear what I had to say. I don’t know why I spoke my mind but suddenly the words that had sat in my heart for years decided they would be heard. 

‘Like it isn’t about the money. Like it isn’t about the fact that life’s a sodding commodity, bought and sold by people rich enough to afford it.’

Robinson was staring at me. I knew he was fascinated by the turn of events, and probably wondering how he could turn my outburst to his advantage. 

I looked at the girl in her clean, white bed and there was no stopping my words. 

‘You know that he started illegally trading the DNA of dying animal and plant species – that’s where he made his billions. Let’s not pretend he’s a saintly humanitarian. If he hadn’t had enough money and political contacts to get licensed by the government, he’d be a blood sucker.'

Robinson looked away, embarrassed by my outburst. The legal trade was regulated by government, or quasi-government agencies, but the illegal trade, the "red market", was a nightmare that most people preferred not to think about, let alone talk about.

'I often wonder how it’s going to end.’ He stared hard at me. ‘The lab ops say there are new viruses mutating every day. The things are species hopping like crazy.’ He turned and rested his head on the glass. ‘How the hell is it going to end?' 

He stared morosely through the observation window at the girl lying in her bed. Like most street operatives Robinson wasn't clean. No clean human is risked on the streets. Everyone knows the parameds are all infected with something or other. It has to be that way, or the bloodsuckers would start preying on them – or the militant viros would target them. 

I turned towards him. For some reason today I could not keep my mouth shut. 

‘How's it all going to end?’ My voice sounded shrill and a line from a long-forgotten poem suddenly came to mind. ‘Not with a bang but a whimper. Yeah, the whimper of a kid like that one.  As long as there are people willing and able to pay, and there are people like you and me willing and able to do the hunting and the harvesting…’ My voice dried up suddenly. I coughed and cleared my throat, and snapped, ‘Haven’t you got something you need to be doing?’

Robinson scowled. ‘I ripped my bloody suit this morning and I’ve got to wait for it to be replaced or repaired. Whichever. Anderson’s having treatment and there’s no-one on stand-by, so we’re grounded.’

‘Yeah? Well, we mustn’t run the risk of spoiling the merchandise, must we?’          

The heavy jowls wobbled as he nodded, a half-grin relieving the deep lines in his face. 

‘No. It’s a laugh isn’t it? We wear steri-suits to ensure we don’t infect our patients.’ 

He almost spat the last word out. Robinson was a bit unusual in our world in that he had been a nurse, and according to him, a good one. What kept him and those like him in their line of work were the drug treatments that kept their viruses under control. 

What kept people like me in my line of work was the fear of infection and knowing that if I did contract something, I could qualify for drug therapy by joining the parameds. That and the drugs I was able to steal for my son. No one knew he had one of the most recent viruses which I was monitoring and treating with the agency’s latest drug. I had managed twice to rig the compulsory testing to substitute my blood for his, but I knew I couldn’t get away with it for long. When it became known he was infected, I’d face the horror of handing him over to the agency for treatment and I would not be allowed any contact with clean patients. If I was lucky that is. If not, I'd face expulsion. 

My world and its ugly realities were well hidden behind impenetrable physical and ideological walls. It was certainly all beyond the girl's imaginings. Her world at that moment was the clean, white, sterile room and the hope of more food and continued warmth and comfort. 

Tomorrow or the day after she might start to wonder about the window and the door and what lies beyond. She may begin to connect her reality with the hand she saw bending and waving on the wind and realise it was not a greeting but a plea for help. And when she is strong and fit enough, she may start to question the use to which her body will be put, as the agency uses her as a surrogate, or harvests her healthy ovum, blood, bone marrow, and other tissue. If it represents value for money, she may donate a kidney or a cornea, and if she is not needed as a surrogate, her uterus and cervix.

She will be given the very best of medical and general care as her body is plundered, and if she should lose her mind, as so many have done before, there are methods of restraint that will enable the harvesting to continue. 

But, even with the best of care the harvesting cannot continue forever. Even the strongest bodies start to deteriorate eventually. When it’s judged that the quality of life is so poor it would be inhumane to continue, she will make the ultimate sacrifice and her remaining kidney, cornea, heart, lungs, liver, pancreas will be sold to the highest bidder. 

Staying clean means being able to afford to buy clean stuff - legally or on the red market – so some rich bastard who wants to extend his or her life, or procreate or change gender or whatever, will buy bits of her. Some may even believe it's a legitimate donation, but the truth is that most know what the agencies do, and what the status of the "donors" really is. 

As Robinson said, in one of his rare moments of wisdom and insight, they've no more rights than lab animals used to have. Only there are no activists anymore to protest the inhumanity of this grand experiment.

The big man turned to me and half-smiled. 

'How's your boy? Jake, isn't it?'

I suspected the question wasn't an innocent one and I didn't quite control my reaction. When I spoke, my voice didn’t sound as defensive as I felt but I knew he would hear the tension in it. 

'He's fine. Doing well at school. You know how boys are. He's fine, growing and getting to be quite a big lad.' 

I didn't dare look at the big man. I knew he was staring intently at me, searching for the truth in the muscles of my face. I forced myself to smile at him. That was a mistake. I never smiled at Robinson and he knew I disliked him. 

He grunted something I did not quite catch and lumbered out. The doors whispered shut behind him. I was pleased to be rid of him. I knew he would report my outburst. Because I had a clean record, I doubted I'd get anything worse than a warning and a note on my file for being critical about the agency. But times were getting tougher and the agency was getting more paranoid. Anyone who spoke out of turn was regarded as a potential security threat. What if he reported my reaction to his question about my son? Did he know I had been stealing drugs?  I'd been careful but maybe he'd been sent to sound me out.  I tried to control the thoughts that were skittering around my mind. I needed to be calm, to think it through. 

I looked once more at the young woman and found her eyes staring straight at me through the observation glass. I knew she couldn’t see me, but in that moment, I saw her singularity in her dark, stoical eyes and I knew I could not let her be harvested. 

I cannot say why she touched me in a way that none of the others ever had. Maybe each sad, plundered body was a stepping-stone to my desensitised heart and she was the last stone – the one that finally allowed me to see what I've become. Or maybe in my corrupted heart, knowing I was going to be canned, I saw her as currency.  

It would be easy if I moved fast. No-one had ever done it before and there were no security precautions. Why would anyone run away from safety into the nightmare world outside? I was filled with a terrible urgency, but I worked methodically to put the pieces into place. First, I phoned down to the school and asked if Jake could join me in the staff cafeteria for lunch for my birthday. This was the plan if his status ever became known. I had told him that if he was invited up for a birthday lunch it meant they were onto us. 

While I waited for him to arrive, I prepared three steri-suits and crammed three medipacks with drugs, nutri-gels, protek-suits and boots and other supplies. Into another, I placed the gun I kept hidden in my locker. 

Jake arrived, looking remarkably calm. I explained the situation and to my surprise, he did not argue. The steri-suit was too big for him, but we managed to make it look reasonably normal. When we went into the isolation room the girl looked terrified until she realized it was me. I explained we had to leave. She shook her head. She wanted to stay, where it was safe, warm and clean and there was food. I left it to Jake to explain to her the price she would pay for her few months of comfort. His graphic descriptions and her own knowledge of the sick world outside ensured that it did not take too long to convince her. We dressed her in the third, smallest steri-suit, turned the lights down in the room and closed the blinds. I locked the door using a different code. It would take them a while to override it and every minute was vital. I knew Robinson’s codes and entered a request for exit approval. If the system connected the request with a grounded crew I was in trouble, but it didn’t, and a message flashed back that exit was approved. I knew that no-one would ever be able to take this escape route again. 

We took the parameds’ lift to the ambulance bay and got into Robinson’s vehicle. I instructed the girl to lie down in the back and told Jake to sit up tall. No-one tried to stop us when I drove it to the main doors because the guards thought it was a routine patrol. They even saluted and took little notice of the occupants of the vehicle. We all stared straight ahead as the huge steel inner doors opened. I drove through and we waited for the doors to close behind us. The alarm that signaled the opening of the outer doors went off and I heard Jake’s sharp intake of breath. I reassured him and glanced over my shoulder at the girl. I could not see her face through the helmet, but I could tell she was terrified. It seemed to take forever but finally the huge outer doors opened and, for the first time in twenty years, I saw the outside world. The ambulance rolled out of the bay and into the weak sunshine and whatever future we three would find.