I thought about that unreasonable order: for us all to go to Fat Landing. They had to know it was impossible. They had to know that it was harvest and that we wouldn’t comply. That wecouldn’tcomply.
Running was useless. It didn’t matter if it was five days or five years. There wasn’t anywhere we’d be able to hide. And even if I did run, I knew several of my friends wouldn’t. And then what? What if we survived? What would we come back to? Would I be able to live with myself?
No,I decided.No, I couldn’t.
“Let’s do this,” I said.
Chapter 8
Each of the wheeled transports was a hopper, the most common of the open-top grain transports on the peninsula. The standard hopper was twenty-two meters long and a little over four meters tall. I knew this was based on an Earth standard from hundreds of years ago. There were maybe thirty of the hoppers in the entire peninsula, and they were always breaking down.
These six sitting on the farm now were to get to Burnt Ends and then transport the new honeybee parts back to the barn. They weren’t the only transports currently under Roger’s control. He’d also hacked into and commandeered an additional ten of the large transports along with several of the other, smaller trucks, all of which were currently on other tasks from Roger or were on standby and awaiting somewhere along our forty-five-kilometer route to the town.
There were doors on the back and on the side of the graffiti-covered hoppers, though we usually used the conveyor to just drop the grain in from the top. Because we had no bridges or tunnels in the area, the height of these things could be expanded with temporary walls, but nobody ever did, especially if they were hauling grain. Each transport had a single cab up front that could hold two passengers, though these things usually went unoccupied.
Three drones moved into each tub as we watched, moving into the side doors. The large doglike robots could not fly like the scouts, and they clanked noisily into the empty transports, jumping up from the ground into the dirty beds before settling in place and lowering to the ground.
Despite there being six transports and six of us, we doubled up in the last three cabs, leaving the first three trucks unoccupied. I tried to get into a cab with Rosita, but my sister grabbed onto her arm and dragged her into transport number four. Sam and I moved into number five. The Serrano twins, Tito and Axel, moved into the last while their grandmother clucked over them, sobbing and showering the large twenty-four-year-old men with kisses.
Roger had insisted we also update the bracelets of the two Serrano brothers to the new network, which had started a minor firestorm of everybody trying to get their bracelets changed. It was Lulu, not Roger, who’d shut that down, telling everybody that we couldn’t do it. She added Mr.Gonzales and Harriet to the network, and that was it.
“She seemed mad. Do you think she’s mad?” Sam asked worriedly as we pulled away from the farm, bumping onto the road. He looked out the window of the truck, watching as Harriet turned back into my house.
“She’s scared,” I said, also watching the pregnant woman. I cringed, seeing someone open the window to my room. There were at least three dozen people in our house now, which was just ridiculous.
There was so much to do. There was always so much to do. I could just hear my grandfather’s voice.I don’t have time for a damn invasion.
We were moving toward danger. Even after my encounter with the robot this morning, it didn’t seem real. Was it strange that I couldn’t stop worrying about the farm itself? About the crops? It seemed wrong. Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
All the remaining drones had abandoned their harvesting dutiesand were moving quickly about the fields, building multiple structures throughout the farm. A group of fifty swarmed over the main fence, shoring it up with concrete blocks. A few were building what appeared to be towerlike structures. Men and women, unable to help with the drones, had moved to the fields and were helping with the harvest. Roger zipped about, shouting instructions. The field was littered with metal buckets and guides, all of which had to be uprooted before I could use my combine.
The same combine that was still broken down. A wave of anxiety washed over me. So much to do.
Another few dozen of the drones had left with a group of twenty men and women hiking north toward the Gonzales farm in order to retrieve more insta-set and aggregates for the walls. Mr.Gonzales hoarded the stuff. But even that wouldn’t be enough, and we’d been given a secondary objective to gather more building supplies while we were in town.
I knew it wasn’t all of the people helping. A few were taking Roger’s advice and running for the hills. Mr.and Mrs.Gonzales were not among them.
I didn’t blame those who fled, but both Lulu and Rosita had had some choice words for them. Rosita made sure her camera got a good shot of all of them leaving.
When Harriet had arrived, she’d dragged Sam off, and they’d had a heated discussion, ending with her walking off in a huff. He hadn’t said anything, but it was clear she’d wanted to run.
The trucks continued to bump over the road. Sam and I didn’t talk, both of us sitting in silence, buried in our own worries. According to Roger, four of the five mechs in town had recently powered down while the drop ship returned to orbit, ostensibly to gather a weapons refill, leaving the five mechs without backup. We had no idea how long that would take, or if the powered-down mechs would protect themselves from attack.
We passed through the crossroads where just a few buildingsstood. It was so small, it couldn’t even be considered a town. One was the Belly-Rubbed Pug, which was really just a barn whose original owner had long ago relocated. There was a music system, a stage that had never been used by anyone, and Yasmine, the holographic pole dancer. All of the booze was supplied by Tito and Axel’s family and a few places north of Burnt Ends. The bar didn’t even have a real floor. Nobody, not even AJ, the proprietor, knew the origin of the bar’s name. The sign had come from a bar onEncantada, one of the fifteen generation ships, and it featured a flat-faced dog with a top hat.
Also at the crossroads was the cemetery where my mother and both of my grandparents were buried. I’d never really known my dad, who’d been a migrant farmworker. He’d visited me only once, and he’d stayed long enough to knock up my mother a second time. It was possible he was buried here, too. All of our parents were buried here.
And other than the bar and cemetery, there was the Catholic church, but it was abandoned with the roof sagging in. There was a church in Burnt Ends for those who still had faith, but there weren’t many of us. The only practicing Catholics I knew were Mr.and Mrs.Gonzales and Mrs.Becerra. Most all the others said they were Catholic, but they never went to services except maybe the Christmas service in Burnt Ends.
I watched the Belly-Rubbed Pug pass by, focusing on the old weather-cracked sign. When we were kids, Sam and I had once asked the proprietor—AJ’s grandfather, whose name was also AJ—if we could play a gig on the stage. He had laughed and said only if we played covers of old Earth songs, which had pissed Sam off so much, we’d never asked again. We did know one cover, and Sam didn’t want to play more than that. He always had weirdly strong opinions about anything music related.
We’re never going to get a chance to play a gig there now,I thought sadly as the bar pulled away.
After the crossroads, it was just kilometers and kilometers of fields.
“If it’s a game and they’re not actively driving the mechs, do the machines just sit there idle?” Sam asked, breaking the silence. “Like, what happens if the drivers have to take a crap or go to school or go to sleep? They’re just gonna leave them sitting there? If they really are worried about terrorists and whatever, that seems kind of stupid. It’s not like they can log out, and the machines disappear.”
I was wondering the same thing. “We’re going to find out.”
