Harvest Time

13 - Three Months Later

"I think I've worked out enough of the Harvester information to understand what you need to do," Elcanah said one morning. The village had finished breakfast and most of the others were away hunting, leaving us undisturbed.

"About time," Emla said as we returned to the new shack that Emla and I shared. It stood next to Elcanah's dwelling and, as with the others, had been built using fallen trees scavenged from the forest and the remains of the shack that Treyan had occupied until his death. I still had the remains of a scar where he had tried to attack me after discovering that I had partnered with Emla.

"She's mine," Treyan had shouted. "I saw her first."

Apparently, this latter statement was true as he had been the one on watch at the Harvester depot when she had first managed to escape the machine that had brought her here.

"She doesn't want you," I countered, which was just as true.

"Leave us alone," Emla shouted. "I choose Toquin, not you."

But Treyan was having none of it. He grabbed a sharp piece of wood, a remnant of the previous day's fire, wielding it as if it was a sword or long knife, and tried to lunge at me. Surprised at the swiftness of his action, the point caught me on the arm and dug into my flesh, though not into the muscle. It hurt a lot. Despite shouts from the other members of the village, he didn't back down. Without warning, Emla launched herself at him and kicked him in the stomach, causing him to double up and collapse onto the ground, dropping his stick. Emla snatched up the weapon and stabbed him in the groin. It resulted in a lot of blood.

"Try that again," she screamed, "and I'll cut your balls completely off."

"Maybe you have," Teshlo said, bending down to help. Treyan was curled up, clutching his nether regions and whimpering.

The blood didn't stop flowing and, that night, Treyan died. No one chastised Emla – I don't think they dared. The next morning a silent party of men carried Treyan's stiffening body out of the village.

"Where are they taking him?" I asked.

"To the feeding pit," Elcanah explained. "It's where we will all end up, eventually, if we don't get away."

"You don't bury people here then?"

"No," she replied. "The ground has too many roots for graves and we don't want the men-things scenting him and coming here for a meal. We did try to bury someone once but the creatures dug her up and ate her anyway."

I shuddered and pretended to examine the cut on my arm that had begun to heal without turning septic.

"Did you see any lights inside the Harvester?" Elcanah said once we were inside our shack. Under her arm, she carried one of the Harvester books from the city along with a metal pen and some sheets of plastic.

"No," Emla said. "I got out of a side hole when they came to empty the tank of blood and guts inside it."

"I did," I said. "The top section of the Harvester was full of lights and connections like ropes. Wires, didn't you call them?"

"Indeed. It seems that the boxes on the Harvester depot walls are what control where the Harvesters are sent. But there's a similar one inside each Harvester which brings it back once the tank inside is full enough. According to this, the box in the Harvester has got an extra row of seven lights above the longer rows."

Elcanah pointed to a diagram on one of the pages of the book.

"Wow," Emla said. "Does that mean that if we can figure out exactly what the patterns mean, we can not only send a Harvester somewhere, but we can also bring it back or even send it somewhere new?"

"Possibly," Elcanah confirmed. "If I understand it correctly, each light can be pushed to turn it on or off."

"What does the extra row do?" Emla asked.

Elcanah shook her head. "Now that's something I haven't been able to determine exactly. The symbols next to the row on the diagram are ambiguous. They might represent 'pure' or 'filter', or maybe 'fine'."

"Oh," I said, as something pinged in my memory, "could it be like the controls on the mirror mounts that allow more precise positioning? We sometimes called it 'fine control'."

"Ah, that makes sense," Elcanah said. "Yes, you could be right. The bottom rows select the world, the upper rows select the general location on that world, so maybe the seven lights determine exactly where they come out."

"They send all the Harvesters in a row out together," Emla added. "But, from what I hear, they all turn up in slightly different places within a citadel."

"Yes, that's right," I agreed, remembering how the first Harvester I had seen had appeared coming through the wall of the breeding chamber, while the one that Ronnack and I had temporarily killed had been several chambers away.

"We need to watch the smaller machines to see what they do when they need to change the lights," Emla said.

I frowned and said, "But if the Harvesters always go to the same citadels and always come back to the same slot in the depot, then there's no need for the machines to change the lights."

"That's true," Emla agreed, "apart from when a citadel dies, of course. So, what we need to do is force them to change some lights."

"How are we going to do that?"

"I have an idea," Emla grinned.

Thanks for reading. Please don't forget to comment and vote on the story! The next part will be along in a week or two (or three!).