ABOUT THIS BOOK: Into a sexless, controlled society of drug-transformed immortals comes a rare, untainted human with female characteristics. Homeless, she wants a place to belong, but not if she has to become like them. She is young. She wants to be loved.
| CHAPTER ONE |
I call myself Dell, though my name is unrecorded. I am a herder of goats on an Outpost of the Farm with Pat and Mike.
I have always been with Pat and Mike, but they do not call me by name; they seldom speak, not to me and not to each other. My earliest memory was fear they would leave me. Pat and Mike belong to the Farm and the Farm belongs to the Town. The Farm and the Town do not know about me. I know this to be true, but I do not know why.
Everything I know has come in pieces—from Pat and Mike’s infrequent words, from shifts of their eyes and hands, from the goats we tend on scrub-covered hills, from crumbling masses of paper used as padding in the sleeping racks of our hut: Animal Husbandry, The Chicago Tribune, A History of Computing. I learned to recognize words from Pat’s and Mike’s wristscreens and from text that scrolls across the hut’s terminal on the rare occasions when it lights up. In thousands of quiet days and nights, I have repeated numbers, colors, names, instructions, and cautions. In loneliness I have called back to birds, lain among the herd, and caressed newborn kids.
When the terminal is live, I sync data that waits in Pat’s and Mike’s wristscreens. Some of the data concerns the status of their bodies, but most is what they have gathered from the goats’ ear tags. Pat and Mike like me to take care of this work, especially when they are not feeling strong, which is often.
I have come to understand that I have no implanted wristscreen because I do not belong anywhere. I have no port in my arm for meds, no number after my name. Pat and Mike have taught me to be watchful for catchers and to hide at the rare times anyone comes to our Outpost, like the tractor driver who pulls the herder hut to new grazing locations. I would like to stop hiding and see what happens. I would like to belong.
But now in the hut something rare is happening. A line of text moves across the terminal. Herders Pat 49 and Mike 55 overdue for transformation, scheduled next noon. Herder Mike 55 reassigned to Farm. Prepare for new herder Rykart 32.
Pat rises from the table, slides her nutrition packet into the recycler, brushes a broom three swipes on the floor and lets it drop. Mike’s eyes look like they are stuck open. He and Pat say nothing. They do not look at me or at each other, but I sense their fear of dislocation. A new herder will sleep and eat in the hut. Pat will be transformed, able to work again. With a new herder assigned to our hut, I will have to hide. Worse, Mike will be gone.
I run outside because they do not like me to be anything but calm, and I am not calm now. Once transformed, Pat and Mike will not be bothered by their separation. It is useless to ask what I am supposed to do, and if they will help me.
I have tried to be like them. I wear a broken wristscreen stolen from the recycler. It has no port to my arm, syncs with nothing, and does not light up. When I was more than half their height, I started marking the spring season by adding a number to the name I chose for myself. That was eight springs ago. Now I am as tall as Pat. The other name I have given myself is “female,” a term associated with most of our goats. Only one time did I astonish Pat and Mike by asking if herders were male and female too.
Pat and Mike look alike, especially when they are overdue for transformation and their skin wrinkles and sags, but Mike has body parts like the goats they call males, the ones they castrate so they won’t become bucks. Pat and I do not. A long time ago I asked if Pat’s parts had been cut off. To that question I got a rare response. No.
Pat and Mike have warned that my desire to be known will bring trouble. They say this twice a year, when the tractor driver comes, and I must hide. For a long time I have been old and strong enough to follow the dust of the tractor and herd from a distance, but every relocation is troubled by memories of being left behind, tethered among rocks in the cold and dark. When my kid legs grew long enough to outrun Pat and Mike, I trailed them to the new Outpost, exposed and in danger of being found. Not by the tractor driver, but by catchers on four-wheeled ramblers.
Because I do not belong, catchers might think I am one of the outlaws who roam the baked, scrubby hills beyond the Farm. Pat and Mike say a catcher’s job is to send outlaws to the mines. They make “send to the mines” sound bad, but they never explain.
Catchers would not care that I was raised on nutrition packets from the Farm, or that I am a better herder than Pat or Mike. But catchers are unlikely to see me when I am with the goats. My herder’s robe is earth-brown, a ragged castoff from Pat that should have gone into the recycler. I have learned to pull other necessities from the recycler, and I have learned to eat grasshoppers and squeeze milk from a doe, because the herders’ rations for two have never been enough for three.
My greatest learning times have been when Pat and Mike need transformation, like now. In their present, weakened state, they remember, worry, and talk more than when they are strong and healthy. “Everything is breaking down,” Mike says. “There is sloppiness everywhere.” His body slumps. I feel his dread.
* * *
A white-coated medtech has come on a four-wheeled rambler. Alerted by the distant plume of dust, I hide near the goats, with competing desires, to conceal myself again or stand and be discovered. What have I to lose? When the new herder comes, I will be shut out and alone, with nothing.
Pat and Mike have never before been transformed at the same time. They say they will get through it all right and will clean away the mess later. At Mike’s last transformation, the medtech injected drugs that caused old cells to be sloughed off and purged in huge, stinking quantities. When the medtech left, Pat and I cleaned him and his rack for two days, while Mike seemed nearly dead. This time I will take care of both.
Against the barren ground, my dirt-colored robe might be enough concealment, but I pull the hood over my forehead and crouch in dry brush. Soon the medtech will come from the hut, get on the rambler and ride away. I want to see, because the medtech is someone new. Pat and Mike will not tell me anything about this worker, because the transformations will take away most of their speech.
The medtech has been in the hut half of daylight. Accustomed to long hours with the herd, I adjust my squat in the brush. My view changes very little: circling hawks, the herd spread out over the hillside, the scent of musk from a buck, the nearby snip of its teeth as it tears a briar.
Abruptly the air stirs with dust and a fast stomp of feet. The buck leaps, and like one animal, the herd turns and races uphill, releasing an avalanche of pebbles. Forewarned, I hunch and tuck my head to my chest. Dusty, hairy outlaws run past, more than I have ever seen at one time, and closer. Two tall outlaws hold a tiny one between them and swing it forward to help it race along with the others. I rise from my hiding place to see those small, churning feet, but drop down as others rush by, near enough to touch. The outlaws glance back. I have no name for the look on their faces. Goat-skin skirts flap against their thin-muscled legs.
I grip my ears at the sudden roar of motors. Two ramblers with big tires leap into view, each ridden by a worker in gray. I know who they are: catchers. Outlaws and ramblers disappear over a ridge; then I hear screams like squeals of a gored goat. Too soon the ramblers return, each with an outlaw draped and tied behind the driver’s seat. They stop between my bush and the hut.
The outlaws’ heads and parts of their bodies are covered with dust and curling black hair, but they have the same skin as the catchers, the same as Pat’s and Mike’s and mine: the color of sand.
“Hello the hut,” a catcher calls. “Show yourself.”
The white-coated medtech opens the door and shakes a fist in the air. Grumbling, the catchers make the motors roar. Strapped-down bodies of the outlaws flop as the ramblers speed over humps and dips, leaving a new cloud of dust.
When the medtech goes back into the hut, I leave my hiding place and hurry to the ridge of the hill. The outlaws have disappeared. For a while I stand exposed, waiting to be noticed, then join the herd, sit on a rock and cuddle a kid to stop my bad feeling. When goats come near, I cry. A doe rubs her head on my back. The goats understand. Twice each year, some in the herd are taken away to the Farm.
I am back in my watching place when the medtech steps out of the hut and starts the rambler. I return to the hut only after it disappears in its cloud of dust. Inside, I wrap a rag over my nose to filter the odor of the transformations, already like rot. My eyes sting.
Mike and Pat are stretched on their racks, one on each side of the hut. I sit at the terminal, now lit with daily news. The Farm has a new super. When they were lucid, Mike and Pat said operations at the Farm were sloppy, especially in regard to outposts. Pat and Mike weren’t transformed as often as needed, and they were allowed to live and work together many years beyond the limit.
Their eyes are fixed and their bodies rigid as dead goats. But they are up to date. Their wristscreens display new numbers: Pat 50, Mike 56. They’ve always been part of the Farm and Town system, and transformation assures they will continue to be useful. Unlike goats, and, I think, unlike me, Pat and Mike will never stop breathing.
END OF THIS SAMPLE. Dell Zero is available in ebook and paperback from these sellers: Amazon, Barnes & Noble and others.