have you seen real life these days?
Almost none of the other spares picked up anything at all, even though some were hauled into the classes regularly and the younger group were encouraged to pass things on to them. A few, like Mr Two, gained a shadowy grasp of a handful of forms and words, in the way a cat may learn to open a door. Most learnt nothing, and just rolled and crawled round the Farm for a little while each day, before returning to the tunnels to sleep and wait for the knife.
Because it kept happening, of course. The ambulances kept arriving. Sometimes it seemed that the people out there in the real world delighted in living recklessly because they knew they had insurance. At intervals the men would come, and go again, leaving someone maimed. Nanune lost her left leg, a hand and a long strip of muscle from her arm. Ragald's left kidney went, along with some bone marrow, one arm and a portion of one lung. In addition to the graft which had been taken before I got to the Farm, Suej lost a strip of stomach lining, a patch of skin from her face and then, six months before the end, her ovaries. By that time, Suej had learnt enough to know what she was losing. David lost two of his fingers and a couple other bits and pieces. The group got off comparatively lightly.
And you know, it didn't have to be this way. If the scientists could clone whole bodies, then they could have just grown limbs or parts when the need arose. But that would have been more expensive and less convenient, and they are the new Gods in this wonderful century of ours. If parts had been made to order, the real people would have had to wait longer before they could hold a wine glass properly again. This way spare parts were always ready and waiting.
It didn't take me long to realize the trap I'd backed myself into. When the orderly grabbed Nanune out of the tunnel the first time, I only just managed to hold myself back from violence at the last moment, converting my lunge into a pretence of helping the orderly which was, in any event, ignored. As the years went on, it got worse, because there was nothing I could do. Literally nothing. If I caused trouble of any kind, however small, I'd be out. SafetyNet owned me. They housed me, fed me, paid me. Even my ownCard was theirs. If I lost the job, I was in trouble, but that was the least of my worries.
If I stopped being the caretaker at Roanoke Farm, then someone else would take my place. Someone who wouldn't help them, who would shut them back into the tunnels and make the taste of freedom I'd given them the bitterest mistake of my life. A man who would shut the tunnels and keep them that way, except maybe to yank Jenny or Suej or one of several others out in the middle of the afternoon, rape them, then throw them back on the pile. With rotten empty men left alone, you never can tell what they'll do. Morality is all about being watched; when you're alone it has a way of wavering or disappearing altogether. Ratchet knew stories about a caretaker who finally slid inside himself one long, cold night and started playing Russian Roulette with the spares. He pulled the trigger for both of them, obviously, and as fate would have it the first time the hammer connected with a full chamber the gun was pointing at his own head. They say a fragment of the bullet is still embedded in the tunnel wall, and that when the body was found one of the spares was licking the remains of the inside of his skull.
I've also heard about complaints being made when spare hands turned out to have no fingernails left, only ragged and bleeding tips, when internal organs were found to be so bruised they were barely usable, when spares' skins showed evidence of cuts and burns which did not tally with any official activity.
Maybe they should have hired proper teams of professionals to look after the spares. Perhaps SafetyNet's customers thought they did. But they didn't. That would cut into the profit. People sometimes seem to think that letting financial concerns make the decisions produces some kind of independent, objective wisdom. It doesn't, of course. It leaves the door open for a kind of sweaty, frantic horror that is as close to pure evil as makes no difference.
I might have been okay if I'd just done the job I'd been hired to do, that of sitting and letting the droids get on with the tending of livestock. But I didn't, and once I'd started, there was no possibility of just walking away. I've turned my back on a lot of situations in my life, too many. Each time you do so a sliver of your mind is left behind, cut off from the rest. This part is forever watching the past, glaring at it to keep it down, and the only way you know it's gone is because the present begins to bleach and fade. A smell grows up around you, a soft curdled odour which is so omnipresent that you don't notice it. Other people may, however, and it will prevent you from ever really knowing what is going on again, from ever understanding the present.
When David lost his fingers I sat him down and explained why the men had done that to him. As I talked, conscious of the smell of Jack Daniels on my breath, I looked into his eyes and saw myself reflected back, distorted by tears. For the first time in six months I wanted some Rapt, something to smooth away the knowledge the pain in his eyes awoke in me. I was the nearest thing he would ever have to a parent, and I was explaining why it was okay for people to come along every now and then and cut pieces off his body. I was honest, and calm, and tried to make him realize I was on his side, but the more I talked the more I reminded myself of my own father.
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 which 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 aluminium. 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 push-ups 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 who 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-honoured 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