Short Fiction: The Bitter Harvest

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Too astonished to be dismayed, Evgeny leaned on the porch-rail of his prefab cabin, chin perched on the tips of his fingers. Utter bedlam had overtaken the six fenced-in garden beds that had been so neat and orderly the previous evening.

Evgeny was not much of a farmer, even with the familiar Heraklean species he’d known from his father’s garden. The cabin and plots, hidden in an out-of-the-way corner of a vast wooded land parcel, were an experiment in product diversification. Fortunately, he’d needed to do very little of the actual work raising the crop. The spindly machines in each of the plots had done most of the planting, tending, and weeding once he’d set them up, but now they stood in the midst of a jungle of disarray, their jointed arms still and their indicator lights blinking forlornly.

In the three months since he’d fed each of the elaborate, illicitly-acquired contraptions an equally illicitly-acquired cylinder of seeds, Evgeny had done little besides keep the water tower full and the generator fueled. Data crystals on each cylinder had given each machine all the instructions needed to alter the soil, plant the seeds, and tend to the growing plants. Documenting the progress of the strange crops took only a few minutes each day, leaving plenty of time for reading, watching holo-dramas, and hiking the surrounding woodland.

The problem with running strange machinery without access to normal documentation, and using it to tend unfamiliar crops, was that when something went wrong, it did so without warning. When he’d gone to bed the previous night, his experiment had seemed poised at the edge of total success – all six beds had been overflowing with healthy-looking plants, each laden with fruits, protruding tubers, or cabbage-like buds.

According to timers on the plant-tending machines, the growth cycle for each crop was set to end during the night. Evgeny figured this was because the day-night cycle on the machines’ world of origin did not quite match the one they had been brought to. He had retired with dreams of new products for the luxury market, and the wealth they would bring. After all, who among the high society of Farthing’s Chain would forsake the opportunity to sample Incarnation foodstuffs while war with this mysterious power still raged?

Those dreams had lived only as long as the night. Normally, he wasn’t much of a morning person. Today, excited in a way that only imminent profits could make him, Evgeny had risen with the first pink rays of dawn and hurried out of his cabin, and had there been halted by the sudden and total madness which had overtaken his experimental farm.

Some time during the night, the plants had entered a state of near-explosive growth, some almost doubling in size since sunset. The purloined Incarnation farming machines, supposed to keep the plants optimally pruned, had simply given up. Now the vine-like, plants in plot number two, despite being laden with waxy yellow fruit, were invading the neighboring beds, their fuzzy tendrils encircling the tuberous stalks in plot number one and forming a rather daintily attractive net around several of the swollen, cabbage-looking bulbs in plot number five.

The vines would have invaded plot number three, too, but the tendrils which quested in that direction lay limp and withered on the ground. The shiny, broad-leafed plant growing in number three seemed to be the culprit; its leaves had sprouted long spines whose tips dropped an oily secretion; evidently this substance had proven toxic to the vines.

The crops in beds four and six, the farthest from the aggressive vines in number two, shouldn’t have been affected, yet four looked wilted to the point of death, and most of the tubular, red fruit in number six had split and were leaking syrupy black juice.

Evgeny had known from the beginning that he was working with genetically altered flora. Most crops grown anywhere in the Reach were gene-tweaked in some fashion, mostly to make them grow faster and better on worlds to which they were not native. Gene-tweaked plants could be unstable and fragile when exposed to abnormal environments, but local conditions were close to optimal and hadn’t changed for months. That consistency, and hilariously low land prices,spurred Evgeny’s decision to run the experiment on remote Van Rompaey.

Evgeny sighed and started down the cabin’s steps. He’d have to check the last batch of fertilizer for unexpected trace elements, and sample both the soil and water source for microbes that hadn’t been present when he’d last tested them. He had a few hundred more seed canisters, but losing the crop meant a loss of three months, and it wouldn’t be long before his competitors in the not-quite-legal luxuries market got ahold of their own Incarnation agri-tech and started producing their foreign delicacies.

At least the yellowish fruit on the sprawling vines in plot number two still looked plump and healthy. Evgeny stooped for a better look on his way to the fertilizer bin behind the shed and noted that they were as shiny and wholesome-looking as ever. Between them and the intact looking cabbage-things in plot five, and possibly a few of the un-split fruits from plot six, he might still have enough to work with for a few initial preparations. There wasn’t any serious profit in fresh produce, of course; he could double or triple the value of exotic crops by preparing, preserving, and packaging them. Once he added a label inspired by Incarnation propaganda imagery, he could probably sell each container for nearly a hundred credits.

As one more red fruit split with a soft squishing noise, Evgeny realized that, whatever he had done wrong, it would be better to first salvage what he could then later try to figure out what had happened.

His sources hadn’t been able to get any harvesting machinery, so that would be a manual affair, for which he had come prepared with basket and pruning shears. Once the vegetables were in the cooler, he could do his post-mortem.

Evgeny didn’t realize how rattled he was until, in hurrying past the plants, he tripped over one of the sprawling vines and nearly fell headlong onto the mossy ground. Scowling, he stooped down to extract his foot from the tangle. As he did, he got a closer look at the oil-sweating leaves in plot number three, and wondered what use the oily secretion might be. Perhaps the plant had been engineered to produce this substance, which might be a spice or even an edible oil after a bit of refining. It was worth analyzing, at least.

Buoyed by the realization that he’d be getting something to test from at least four of the beds, and that the disaster had not been as bad as it initially appeared, Evgeny hurried to the shed and rummaged around at the back for his shears. As he did, he heard a strange sound behind him, a sort of tinny clicking, like electrical connections being made on a live circuit. Thinking it might be coming from the generator, he returned to the shed’s door and peered back out over the garden.

For the second time during that very brief morning, he stood amazed, struggling to process what he saw. The vines which had grown across the path had begun to twitch spasmodically, and the clicking seemed to come from this motion. A single spasmodic wave seemed to start at the tendrils choking the stalked plants in plot number one, then to work its way up the thickening vines to the roots, and back down the vines once more to terminate at the increasingly vine-encased cabbage-growths in plot five.

Evgeny was all too familiar with species of flora which possessed motive power, so the movement itself was not terribly concerning. What was worrying, though, was the metallic, sparky clicking that accompanied each wave’s origin at the tuberous plants in plot one. It almost sounded like a circuit being closed, but that didn’t make any sense. Some species did generate electricity for self-defense, but surely such behavior would be bred out of any agricultural cultivar.

Before he could spend much time pondering this problem, Evgeny noticed that the destinations of the twitching movement – the cabbage-like plants encircled by vine tendrils – had begun to hum ominously, and the sound was growing louder with every wave of electrical twitching. Worse still, they seemed to be swelling at an alarming pace, their pale-green flesh once again becoming visible through the encasing greenery.

Evgeny watched this swelling for several crucial seconds. When the inevitable conclusion that he was in danger finally slipped through his utter confusion, it was almost too late. He scrambled back into the shed and dove behind the heavy ground-tilling machine. 

The first of the cabbage-like plants exploded with a bright flash at almost the same instant he hit the ground. The blast was nothing like the wet, fleshy, bursting one might have expected from a vegetable.

Evgeny covered his head with his arms as a hail of debris - most of it sounding distressingly hard and sharp - slashed through the shed’s thin walls all around him.

Evgeny, ears ringing, counted to three, then started to get up to see what had happened. 

The second blast sent him back to hugging the dirt, and he lay there through at least four more in quick succession, praying for the madness to end.

When there were no more explosions for some time, and even the patter of falling debris had ceased, Evgeny got to his knees and peered over the top of the tilling machine, taking in the utter ruin which had overtaken his farm. Little but steaming, scorched pulp remained of most of the plants. Something in that morass still twitched occasionally, and the movement made a viscous squelching sound. There was nothing visible left of the machine that had stood in plot five. One of the other tending machines was on its side some distance away, and another was bent almost double where something had taken a chunk out of it. 

The thought which had begun when he’d heard the electric clicking now had time to develop. Evgeny wondered whether the seeds he’d bought might not have been intended as a food crop after all.

Sitting down and putting his back to the reassuring bulk of the tilling machine - it, at least, wouldn’t have any unkind surprises, being of proper Reach manufacture - Evgeny called up the farmstead’s network on his wristcuff to check what was still working. 

Only two of the crop tending machines still responded on the network, their status readouts a cascade of orange and red indicators, along with a fast-flowing stream of binary data that appeared on the display only as a block of wavy static. No doubt an Incarnation technician could make sense of these things, but to Evgeny, they were utterly impenetrable. The security camera system and water pumping system were also offline, and the cabin computer calmly noted that damage to the exterior had rendered it non-weatherproof. 

Muttering a resigned curse, Evgeny put away the display, only for his eyes to fall on the dappled sunlight on the shed’s dirt floor. He looked up at the freshly perforated metal roof which now admitted light. Some of the holes were big enough to put his fist through.

As Evgeny got to his feet, something caught his eye. A piece of greenish-brown material, seemingly equal parts wood splinter and crystal shard, was still wedged in one of the holes. Evgeny carefully plucked it free and held it up to one of the shafts of illumination, admiring the strange layers - or rings - that cut across its jagged length. Had this substance been growing within those seemingly innocuous cabbage-like vegetables?

Evgeny walked around the cabin once to survey the damage before heading inside to sit down and have a cup of coffee. Fortunately, the food-fab machine had suffered nothing worse than a dent on the chute which fed scraps to the composter. While he sipped the bitter drink, he considered the situation as calmly as his trembling hands would allow. It was safe to say that his experiment was a total bust, and it was time to start cleaning up. If the Van Rompaey authorities had detected those blasts, someone would be along in a few hours to ask uncomfortable questions, and it would be no profit if he were still around to answer them.

Tossing the empty disposable cup into the hopper, Evgeny went back outside, found a hoe in the shed, and started poking about in the mushy ruin in each of the garden beds. There was nothing left of the cabbage-like growths that had exploded. Only the stubby base of their crop-tending machine remained, with various shredded internals dangling out of the metallic stump. The other plants had all been variously mangled, diced, or pulped in turn. Nothing looked salvageable.

Evgeny’s comm uplink started buzzing as he set down his hoe. This was the worst possible time for another rambling tirade from his sister, the only person who’d called him since he’d started his doomed experiment. He muted the device without looking. If he was extraordinarily lucky, she would never forgive him for spending months on Van Rompaey and only visiting her once.

Evgeny had plenty of time to clean up after himself, at least. There was no way the authorities could penetrate his web of shell companies and trace him to this plot of land unless he was actually apprehended there. Even if Van Rompaey law enforcement had detected the blast and dispatched emergency services, they would be many hours away. That would be plenty of time to destroy anything that might trace back to him, and make a clean getaway.

The machines proved the biggest problem. Packing up the two that still partly worked would take a lot of time, and even if he did, he’d never be able to fix them. Pieces of the other four were probably scattered hundreds of yards into the trees. If any of those components contained computer cores, and someone found them before their power cells died, something in those databanks might expose him.

The comms unit started buzzing again just as Evgeny finished removing the cabin’s computer core and started for the crawler hidden a hundred meters away. There were a few kilos of mining explosive in one of its cargo bins; he’d bought it as part of a cover story explaining his long stay in the hinterland. Officially, he was supposed to be fifty klicks to the north, prospecting a business partner’s land holdings for rare minerals.

On his way back out of the crawler, Evgeny saw its comms panel blinking furiously. Apparently he’d missed dozens of messages and comms channel requests, all from the same source. A quick check showed that the source was not his sister; it was identified only with an anonymized numeric code. He put a system block on that sender and turned off the crawler’s comms system. In his line of work, it didn’t pay to deal with someone who wanted to be anonymous but couldn’t be bothered to at least steal a respectable datasphere identity.

He’d set explosives around the shed and the remains of the garden plots when a single-seat lighter zipped overhead at high speed, then banked into a high turn and circled the clearing. 

Wincing, Evgeny tossed the rest of the explosives under the cabin. It was just his luck that one of the nearby plot-holders had seen the explosion and come to investigate. He stepped out where he would be the most visible and waved at the aircraft, giving it the universal double-thumbs-up and sunny smile that should indicate that he needed no assistance.

The lighter pilot was not dissuaded. It circled a few times to bleed off velocity and altitude, clearly intending to land. Evgeny wondered how he’d explain the mess, or the obviously foreign machinery littered about. He had little choice but to head for the grassy hillock a few dozen yards behind the cabin, which was the best place for such an aircraft to land.

As it turned out, he didn’t need to explain. The pilot hopped out the moment the little aircraft came to a stop. Her reddish skin and mane of pearly white hair told Evgeny who it was; after all, there were only a handful of Atro’me on Van Rompaey, and in his business he only ever crossed paths with one of them.

“Constable Neeson!” Evgeny waved with enthusiasm to conceal his sinking heart. Neeson being here meant that somehow, she’d found a way to associate him with this particular plot of land. “What brings you out here?” He looked again at the lighter, noting that it was not an officially marked vehicle. “Is this a personal call?”

Neeson folded her arms over her chest. “I’m here unofficially.” In the usual mold of her kind when they modified themselves to look more human, she was striking and even attractive, but her huge yellow eyes and the even, sharp teeth behind her carefully sculpted, full lips always made his blood run cold. “You’ve been quiet for months, Evgeny. Too quiet. What are you up to?”

Evgeny shrugged. “Agriculture project.” He followed Neeson’s gaze behind himself to the shrapnel-shredded cabin and shed. “It’s, a, well. Bit of a bust, I’m afraid. Farming just isn’t for me. Unofficial capacity, you said?”

“There’s been an explosion.” Neeson frowned. “And you know something about it.”

Evgeny once again glanced behind himself, then shrugged. “Er, a fertilizer storage accident?”

The constable stared at Evgeny blankly for several seconds. “Do take this seriously. Two people are dead, and there are ten more in geltanks, including your buddy Kingston. I need a lead.”

Evgeny held up a hand. “Kingston’s hurt? We are not talking about the same accident, are we?” Yoel Kingston far from Evgeny’s friend, but this was not the time to explain that to the Constable. If he was involved, that probably meant Evgeny hadn’t been the only one in the neighborhood who’d gotten his hands on Incarnation farming tech. The timing suggested that he hadn’t been the only one to have his experiment go poorly. 

Neeson frowned. “You thought I was coming about the mess you’re making here?” She sighed. “I’m up to my ears in problems, and for once, you’re not causing them. If blowing up a few acres out here is what keeps you quiet, you go for it.” Her yellow eyes narrowed. “As long as you tell me what you know about bay Seven White, we can both forget I was ever here.”

Evgeny froze. Seven White, the most decrepit part of the spaceport, was the preferred docking point for smugglers bringing in illicit goods to Van Rompaey. That had been where he’d met the smugglers who’d gotten him his cache of Incarnation seeds and agricultural equipment. “Something exploded at Seven White? Was Ursula DeKalb docked at the time?”

Neeson nodded slowly. “So you do know something. Do they work for you?”

“Oh, no. Not most of the time. Not recently.” Evgeny winced. “Look, it’s a complicated business relationship, you know how it is.”

“I really don’t.” Neeson pointed one crimson finger at Evgeny. “You at least had the sense to bring whatever they’re moving out here before trying it. Arms-dealing isn’t your style, and it isn’t Kingston’s. Is the economy hitting you that hard?”

Evgeny leaned forward and lowered his voice. “If I tell you, I’m in the clear?”

Neeson glared hard. “As long as your mess doesn’t blow up in anyone’s face but your own? Sure.”

Evgeny brightened. “In that case, I may have a theory.” Immunity from Neeson’s disapproving gaze on his affairs wouldn’t last long, but it would at least save him the trouble of worming his way out of the day’s disaster. He beckoned toward the ruins of the farm plot. “Let me show you what DeKalb has been moving recently, and why Kingston probably didn’t even realize he was in danger.”

Like this story? Check out the rest of the short fiction I have posted to Minds!