Neal Asher - Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2)

This was becoming something of an ongoing surprise, for just how large and widespread was the illegal population of Earth had only been revealed by the extermination of legal ZAs by the Scour. Really, all of these prisoners were guilty of a capital crime by dint of not possessing ID implants, but the criminality of one group – in cell B45 – was even more serious. Serene gazed at them, trying to summon up some interest in them all, then finally forced herself to open communication with the enforcer in charge. Another frame opened on the screen to show an eager-looking young woman in an enforcer’s uniform.

‘Branimir,’ began Serene, ‘I’ve read your report, but now I’d like to hear it from you in your own words.’ It was merely a delaying tactic while she decided what to do. Really she just wanted to give an extermination order and then forget about it, but that was just due to her mood. She needed to step back and use her intellect, since the remaining population of Earth needed to learn a lesson from this.

‘Ma’am,’ said Branimir respectfully, ‘after the bones of the only roe deer recently seen were discovered, you ordered that those who killed it be apprehended and for us then to await your decision on their punishment. It seemed unlikely to us that any of the remaining SA population was guilty of killing the deer and eating it, since the site where the bones were found was obviously an indigents’ encampment. We also knew that de-implanted humans were present in the area. Using the encampment as a centre point, we set up a readergun perimeter extended twenty kilometres out. We then moved every implanted human out of the area—’

‘How can you be sure that only indigents were involved,’ Serene interrupted. ‘Certainly that was an indigents’ encampment, but I don’t see them as being above selling fresh venison’ – Serene felt slightly disgusted by the thought – ‘to SA residents.’

‘We ran stomach contents tests on them all, as they were moved out, ma’am.’

Serene nodded in acknowledgement of that. The report had been a little vague on that point, but this explanation accounted for the huge forensic investigation bill involved. Testing the stomach contents of nearly three million people was no small operation.

‘Continue,’ she said.

‘Once the resident population had been relocated, we worked our way in, using human searchers and spiderguns, with razorbirds doing a thermal sweep, and in that way seized everyone else remaining within the area. Nine of the fifty-three we found registered positive to having ingested deer meat. We now hold them all at your pleasure.’

‘That wasn’t all you found,’ said Serene, ‘from the stomach contents analyses?’

‘No, ma’am.’ The woman looked slightly uncomfortable. ‘Over eight thousand SAs, and all the de-implanted, registered positive for consuming human flesh.’

This hadn’t surprised Serene, since cannibalism, as a response to famine, had been underway for a long time. What had surprised her was the extent and degree of organization evident in the long-pig black market. This extent had only been revealed as she began closing down the Safe Departure clinics, thus revealing just how many bodies hadn’t made it to the community digesters. Big freezer warehouses had also been found, full of gutted corpses hanging on hooks, and processing plants where the meat was homogenized and turned into something that looked sufficiently acceptable. It had struck her as imminently sensible, so she had told the Inspectorate investigators involved to drop their investigation.

‘I need to consider this,’ she told Branimir. ‘I’ll get back to you shortly.’ She then cut the connection.

So, what to do? Obviously every one of the fifty-three faced a death penalty, but the nine needed a special punishment. This wasn’t about petty vengeance or childish spite but, as she had decided earlier, about delivering a harsh and memorable lesson to the rest of the population of Earth. She sat back and thought about the considerable range of options available to her. It would have to be something highly visible, broadcast on ETV, and fairly long-running. Unfortunately she had dispensed with the skills of Nelson, but there were others available with a similar proficiency.

She began scanning history files in search of ideas, and discovered that the region where the bones had been found had once been the country called Romania. With something tickling at her memory she searched further and soon found inspiration. It was a method that should work and, with modern techniques and medical technology, it could be extended for a long time – long enough to make it worthwhile instituting a real-time subchannel on ETV. Vlad Tepes himself had shown her the way to deal with these criminals.

14

And Down on the Farm

Out in the million-hectare fields of mass agriculture, leviathan multi-combines cruised about like mobile islands. These simultaneously harvested a crop, pre-processed it, compress-baled waste organics either for digesters or biofuel plants, and ploughed, fertilized, tilled and planted the cleared fields in a stroke. With little supervision, they then took their harvests to processing and distribution plants, from where the crop went by robot truck to be unloaded by robots in hypermarkets. The main human component in this circuit was consumption, and little else. However, humans did still work in other parts of the agricultural industry where a more delicate touch was required: fruit picking, the pruning of orchards and grapevines; anywhere the heavy and bumbling appendages of machines might cause damage. The development of multipurpose robots, eventually refined into the agribots, changed all that. The moment the hardware caught up with computer software, and the first grape picker displaced a hundred workers in the New World, was the beginning of the end of human participation in agriculture. The closest most people now get to the growing of the crops that feed them is as part of the fertilizer produced by community digesters.

Mars

As she pulled away from the remains of Antares Base, the work lights had picked out an ATV labouring away ahead of its train of linked trailers, each stacked with bonded regolith blocks from Hex Four. Over to the right of the hex, robots and a number of workers in EA suits had been further disassembling the roof panels, ready to be loaded when the ATV returned with its trailers empty. The move was going well back there, and everyone knew what they were doing, which seemed more than could be said for the team uninstalling the old lifting gear from the edge of the Coprates Chasma.

It had seemed to be a good idea to send Rhone out here to oversee the work, since he was a former chief of staff who no longer had a department to run – preparations currently being made to dismantle it for transport – but nevertheless he was fudging the new job. Martinez, apparently, could get no sense out of him and no reasonable explanation for the delays. Lopomac’s earlier visit out here had not speeded things up either.

Things had been starting to look up as she had realized that the general mood of the base was more pessimistic than hostile and that it was not due to her. She pushed herself harder, becoming more diplomatic and more optimistic. She congratulated and cajoled, made frequent reference to what was happening with Argus, and noting what it might be possible to achieve. And, slowly at first, the general mood had changed to one of cautious optimism. However, as she now peered ahead through the Martian dawn, she felt a return of the anger she had managed to control since her brief exchange with Martinez.

The sun was casting a weak light across the Martian landscape as Var drove her ATV the last few kilometres towards the chasma, and now she could see that the lifting framework had still not been disassembled.