Read Online Spares by Michael Marshall Smith - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Michael Marshall Smith
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of Safety Net, to allow spares out of the tunnels. To attempt to teach them to read. To give them a pointless scrap of life.”
“Yes,” I said, with weak defiance, sensing how stupid and idealistic I sounded. The strange thing was that it wasn’t like me. I had my idealism kicked out of me many years ago, round about the time I learned about skinFix. If you’d have asked me, I’d have said I didn’t give a shit, that I didn’t really care about the spares or anything else. I didn’t know why I was doing this.
“You’ll need help,” the droid said.
It took a while for this to sink in. “From you?”
“There is a price,” Ratchet said, and then the bad news came. “You come off your drug.”
“Fuck off,” I said, and strode unsteadily out of the room.
Half an hour later Ratchet came and found me. I was slumped at the end of the long corridor, as far away as possible from any life-forms, either carbon- or silicon-based. My teeth were chattering uncontrollably, my long muscles twitching in true Rapt-withdrawal style, and I was losing it. Cold so bitter it felt like liquid fire was spreading up my back, and I was starting to hallucinate. I looked blearily up at the droid when he appeared, and then turned away again. He wasn’t interesting to me. Certainly not as interesting as the inch-high men who were trying to climb onto my leg. Some of them looked like people I had known in the war, people I knew were dead. I was convinced they were trying to warn me of something, but their speech was so high-pitched I couldn’t hear it. I was trying to turn myself into a dog so I’d have a better chance.
You know how it is with these things.
The droid didn’t leave, and after a moment his extensible tray slid toward me, bearing a syringe. I stared at him, my eyes hot and bright.
“The dose you take would kill four normal people,” he said. “Immediately, within seconds of injection. You need this today, or you’re going to die. But tomorrow you have less.”
“Ratchet,” I mumbled, “you don’t understand.”
“I do. I know why you are here. But you will kill yourself in weeks like this, and I want you to remain alive.”
“Why?”
“To teach them.”
In the end I don’t know which of us won—whether I’d convinced Ratchet with my initial inarticulate outburst, or he blackmailed me into colluding in some bizarre impossible idea that had seeped into my mind while it teetered on the edge of slipping forever beneath deep water. Maybe Ratchet was Jesus all along, and I was just his fucked-up John the Baptist.
Either way, I kicked Rapt over the next eight months, and life within the Farm began to change.
The phone rang in Howie’s office, and he reached across to pick it up. The first part had taken an hour to tell, and Suej had fallen asleep, lying crumpled in the chair. As Howie listened to whoever was on the line I stood up, took off my coat, and laid it over her. She stirred distantly, a long way away, and then settled down again. Her eyelids were flickering, and I wondered what she was dreaming about. I hoped it was something good.
Howie put the phone down. “That was Dath,” he said. “No one below thirty knows shit.”
“What about Paulie? Nothing from him?”
“He’s out in the Portal.” Howie shrugged. “He’ll call if he gets anything.”
He sat, and waited, and I told him the rest.
The first thing I did was introduce some new wiring into the Farm complex, setting up a subsidiary alarm system. Then, with Ratchet’s help, I disabled the automatic relays which would trip if the tunnel doors were left openfor longer than five minutes. As the relays would flash lights on panels in both Roanoke General and the SafetyNet headquarters, they had to be cut out before step one of the plan could be put in place. We couldn’t just destroy them, because that would set off a different alarm.
When we were convinced that it was safe, we opened the doors. From then on they were left
“Yes,” I said, with weak defiance, sensing how stupid and idealistic I sounded. The strange thing was that it wasn’t like me. I had my idealism kicked out of me many years ago, round about the time I learned about skinFix. If you’d have asked me, I’d have said I didn’t give a shit, that I didn’t really care about the spares or anything else. I didn’t know why I was doing this.
“You’ll need help,” the droid said.
It took a while for this to sink in. “From you?”
“There is a price,” Ratchet said, and then the bad news came. “You come off your drug.”
“Fuck off,” I said, and strode unsteadily out of the room.
Half an hour later Ratchet came and found me. I was slumped at the end of the long corridor, as far away as possible from any life-forms, either carbon- or silicon-based. My teeth were chattering uncontrollably, my long muscles twitching in true Rapt-withdrawal style, and I was losing it. Cold so bitter it felt like liquid fire was spreading up my back, and I was starting to hallucinate. I looked blearily up at the droid when he appeared, and then turned away again. He wasn’t interesting to me. Certainly not as interesting as the inch-high men who were trying to climb onto my leg. Some of them looked like people I had known in the war, people I knew were dead. I was convinced they were trying to warn me of something, but their speech was so high-pitched I couldn’t hear it. I was trying to turn myself into a dog so I’d have a better chance.
You know how it is with these things.
The droid didn’t leave, and after a moment his extensible tray slid toward me, bearing a syringe. I stared at him, my eyes hot and bright.
“The dose you take would kill four normal people,” he said. “Immediately, within seconds of injection. You need this today, or you’re going to die. But tomorrow you have less.”
“Ratchet,” I mumbled, “you don’t understand.”
“I do. I know why you are here. But you will kill yourself in weeks like this, and I want you to remain alive.”
“Why?”
“To teach them.”
In the end I don’t know which of us won—whether I’d convinced Ratchet with my initial inarticulate outburst, or he blackmailed me into colluding in some bizarre impossible idea that had seeped into my mind while it teetered on the edge of slipping forever beneath deep water. Maybe Ratchet was Jesus all along, and I was just his fucked-up John the Baptist.
Either way, I kicked Rapt over the next eight months, and life within the Farm began to change.
The phone rang in Howie’s office, and he reached across to pick it up. The first part had taken an hour to tell, and Suej had fallen asleep, lying crumpled in the chair. As Howie listened to whoever was on the line I stood up, took off my coat, and laid it over her. She stirred distantly, a long way away, and then settled down again. Her eyelids were flickering, and I wondered what she was dreaming about. I hoped it was something good.
Howie put the phone down. “That was Dath,” he said. “No one below thirty knows shit.”
“What about Paulie? Nothing from him?”
“He’s out in the Portal.” Howie shrugged. “He’ll call if he gets anything.”
He sat, and waited, and I told him the rest.
The first thing I did was introduce some new wiring into the Farm complex, setting up a subsidiary alarm system. Then, with Ratchet’s help, I disabled the automatic relays which would trip if the tunnel doors were left openfor longer than five minutes. As the relays would flash lights on panels in both Roanoke General and the SafetyNet headquarters, they had to be cut out before step one of the plan could be put in place. We couldn’t just destroy them, because that would set off a different alarm.
When we were convinced that it was safe, we opened the doors. From then on they were left
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