“What’s your name, sweetie?” asked the strange doe.
“217-B”, he replied.
For some reason he couldn’t understand she looked as if her heart had just broken. “Oh, honey” she breathed. She collected herself after a moment and continued on gamely. “Anyway, my name is Roxie. Do you know who we all are?”
“Yes”, said 217-B listlessly, “You’re the HLA. The Herbivores’ Liberation Army.”
“That’s right. Then you should know that we’re not here to hurt you. I know things might be scary right now, but I swear none of us will harm you.”
“You hurt the masters”, he said mulishly; and then regretted it. For all her promises not to hurt him, she would be well within her rights to punish a slave for speaking with such temerity.
“We had to”, replied Roxie calmly as if he had not just been so rude, “We offered them the chance to let you and the inmates go, and to leave in peace. They refused, and we had no choice but to attack.”
“Why didn’t you just leave us alone?”
“How could we have?”, asked Roxie. “People were dying here every day. We came here to help you. To free you.”
“People die everywhere every day”, countered 217-B, “what are you doing about it?”
“We’re doing everything we can,” she said stoically, “and that includes helping people like you. Now, I understand that you’re the one who broadcast that message telling the others to flee. Is that right?”
He nodded proudly. “That’s right.”
She shook her head and told him, “The soldiers have been searching the camp. The other inmates – the slaves – have all taken your advice and fled. There’s no trace of them in the lodging huts. We can’t find them.”
He let out a sigh of relief. He had done it. No matter what else came of this nightmare scenario, he had done whatever good he could.
“Sweetie”, she continued, “we weren’t going to hurt them. We’re not going to hurt you; we don’t want to hurt anyone!” She hung her head, “I’m sure you were concerned for their safety, but you still shouldn’t have done that. All you’ve really done is make things harder.”
“Good!”, he said before he could catch himself. Was it the terror of the situation making him so flippant? He wasn’t sure. He’d heard some of the meat describing a similar experience before.
Roxie shook her head softly. “That’s not what I meant, sweetie. You’ve made it harder for them. What are they going to do for food or shelter? I doubt your old masters taught you anything about wilderness survival – too much risk of trying to escape.”
“There’s no need for that”, replied 217-B, “They can survive without water for 3 days, right? The army will be here long before then. A few days of hunger won’t do any harm. Do the Cleaning Team some good, really.”
“Well, you’re right about one thing. The army will be here before too long. We managed to sabotage outgoing communications, but of course you can never be sure you got all of them. That means we’re going to leave shortly.”
He looked up, naked hope in his eyes.
“And”, she continued, “that means you’re coming with us.”
“You can’t!”, cried 217-B. All flippancy discarded, he leapt out of his seat and knelt low before her. “Please, please I’ll do anything, I’ll tell you anything-” he looked up at her, tears streaming down his face, “Please let me stay!”
“Kid, we can’t”, said Roxie, clearly trying not to shout. “They’ll interrogate you, torture you, they might even kill you!” She huffed. “This isn’t the first time we’ve done this. The other times – we did leave slaves behind. They wanted to stay, and we didn’t have time to talk it through properly, so we left them. The army interrogated them, and any they suspected of passing on information went in front of a firing squad.”
“Good! Traitors get what they deserve!”
“And what if they suspect you? It’s your word against theirs, a slave’s against a soldier’s. Or maybe they don’t suspect you, but they consider you too much of a potential security risk. Face it, kid, this is your only chance of survival.”
217-B wanted to say he was willing to die for his masters. In the heat of the moment, earlier, he really had been. But maybe time had passed, or maybe the prospect of a military investigation was just different; and his nerve failed him. “Fine!”, he choked out, “Take me with you. Just – just please, don’t make me do anything bad. Don’t make me hurt anyone.”
The assembly yard was abuzz with energy, just as it might have been on an ordinary delivery day. Everyone and everything was in motion, and though none of it was rushed all of it was being done as quickly as possible. The difference, of course, was that instead of camp slaves hauling supplies over to the storage house and guards corralling the meat into the processing centre, a gang of HLA terrorists were stowing their booty in the backs of old-fashioned military trucks. Each truck was painted a pale grey, and 217-B assumed he would go in with the rest of the loot until Roxie lead him to a waiting jeep. It too was pale grey and slightly dated, broadly resembling the vehicles driven by pred soldiers in the old filmreels the slaves were sometimes allowed to watch for their edification.
Used to watch. That would take getting used to. He wondered if the HLA had anything like that.
Roxie jumped into the driver’s seat and nodded towards the front passenger seat. He figured out the seatbelt and watched the rest of the raiding force (“liberation” army indeed, he thought to himself) pile in to other jeeps, along with trucks and APCs of the same dated look. The other vehicles were all marked with the two dark red stars and a yellow design of a hammer and some piece of farming equipment he couldn’t name.
“So where are we going?”, he asked after a minute.
“We have a base up in the mountains – well, I say a base, these days it’s getting more and more like a farming village. It’s tucked away where the Army can’t find us, and the last time the Air Force came looking we shot ‘em down before they could get close. The Mammals’ Republic of Dòngwù might not officially support the HLA, but a whole lot of their kit ends up in our hands anyway. It’s handy stuff.”
He wasn’t entirely certain what she meant, but at least the part about the farming village made sense. They’d need slaves to work the land, of course. He was pleased by the prospect of being put back to honest work after all this.
He was startled to pass a string of trucks containing prey of all shapes and sizes, clad in tattered pink pyjamas – the meat. They were gazing out at the world in wonder, though some of them shot him dirty looks as they passed. “What do you want with them?”, he asked. “Nobody gets sent to the camp because they’re useful.”
“The same thing we want with you”, replied Roxie, “For them to live happy and healthy lives.”
At first she seemed content to let the rest of the drive pass in silence, but shortly before an hour had passed she turned to him and asked, “How are you feeling there, sweetie?”
217-B didn’t answer. He didn’t think he could.
“You know,” she continued, “the people at our village...their names aren’t like yours.”
217-B sat in silence a moment before he managed a quiet “People names”.
Roxie made a quiet affirmative noise. “Well, you’re a person too, aren’t you? Would you ever want to have a...different name?”
217-B looked at her as if she had just asked if he would like to grow a second head. “What do you mean? I have a name.”
“That’s right, sweetie. But people can change their names. I’m not telling you that you have to, because you don’t if you don’t want to. But if you want to change your name then that’s OK. A new name, for a new start.”
