She’d asked him about his life, what it was like to be ‘made’. He’d told her about the growth farms in the English countryside – enormous factories of iron struts and grimy glass where near to full-grown genics were birthed from giant copper vats, then cleaned, clothed and numbered. And about living from day one in schoolhouses: long huts stacked with hard bunk beds and straw mattresses. Living there to be educated on the basics they needed for their life-long roles, taught by other genics designed specifically to teach. His description of the growth farms had reminded her of the enormous internment camps back in 2026 along India’s northern border with Pakistan; the lives of refugees lived entirely within chain-link compounds, one day like any other.
Then, with no warning at all, he’d been crated up like so much freight and shipped to a far corner of the British Empire.
Sam had told them that at first he’d worked in a very hot place where the humans were of Sal’s colour, mostly darker. There he’d worked on maintaining field harvesters, stripping them, cleaning the engines alongside human workers who lived only marginally better lives than the genics did. It had been one of them who had taught him how to read.
Then again, without warning, he’d been packaged like freight and shipped to another country, and another. Eventually learning from the scraps of books and pamphlets he picked up and squirrelled away the names of all these strange places: New Rhodesia, Great Albany, British Central District, Cape Georgia. Finally ending up in a place called America.
Sam said he could read most things. Only occasionally did he find language too difficult for him to understand. But his one big regret was that he couldn’t write more than a child’s untidy scrawl. His hands, designed to hold spanners and wrenches, lacked the dexterity to manage something as straightforward as a pencil.
If he could have written things, he’d said he would have liked to have written ‘singsong stories’. Sal had no idea what those were. Perhaps he meant poems.
On that note he’d said he needed his rest and was fast asleep within seconds. She wondered if that was a deliberately designed ability, to be able to flick a switch inside and be instantly unconscious. Or whether it was a lifetime’s habit, learning to get rest when it was available.
‘Abraham?’ she whispered in the dark.
There was no reply.
‘Lincoln?’ she tried again. Nothing.
She was going to ask him what he thought of an idea she had. To see if they could slip out of the cellar unheard, escape the city and try to intercept these soldiers the genics were certain were coming their way. Perhaps, seeing them free and unharmed, the soldiers might let the creatures go, be redeployed to do something more useful elsewhere. Or, if not, then perhaps she and Lincoln might be able to send them off in the wrong direction on a wild-goose chase. Give these things a chance to escape and find a new home somewhere else. But the deep voice of a genic grunted irritably out of the darkness.
‘Shut up … resting now.’
So much for that idea, then.
CHAPTER 54
2001, outside Dead City
Liam watched the night sky. He was looking at the very same stars as Sal. In front of them was the outline of the dark city suburbs.
McManus prodded the dying fire with a stick. ‘We shall wait till first light, Liam. Then we’ll send in the hounds.’
Another delay of hours. Liam did his best to contain the frustration behind gritted teeth.
‘They should find those runaways easily enough … and your sister and friend too.’
Liam glanced across the trampled field, lit by several campfires. The ‘hounds’ that McManus referred to were those large baboon-headed dogs. He could see them clustered around one of the fires, eating rations of food out of a trough. He could see flashes of long teeth as they periodically raised their heads and chewed hungrily on what appeared to be dry nuggets of protein biscuit.
‘They look pretty ferocious, so they do. Are you sure my sister’s going to be safe from them?’
‘Indeed. Those hunter-seekers won’t harm them. They’ve been instructed.’
‘How’ll they know who it is they’re not to hurt, though?’
‘White Bear has had them all get a taste of the tracks left by the genics. They know the smell of your sister and have orders to follow the scent, locate them and then report in.’
Liam looked at him sceptically. ‘Instructed, you said? You make them sound almost human.’
McManus