This time, Prakesh pays more attention.
He hardly got any sleep, but even a little is better than nothing. He’s more alert now, looking for anything that he can use.
They’re back in the farm, carrying the last of the soil sacks to their new position. Some of the workers have already begun filling the troughs, and the hangar is alive with the thumping, scratchy sound of dirt on metal. As Prakesh drops a sack on the pile, he takes a closer look at the guards.
It isn’t hard to see how they’ve kept control. The workers might outnumber them three to one, but they’ve got all the guns. And they’re smart about their positioning, too, spacing themselves out around the edges of the room, always keeping the workers in view. It would be easy to see a coordinated attack coming–and even if it succeeded there’s no telling how many workers would die in the attempt.
Prakesh looks back at the troughs. They stretch all the way from the middle of the hangar to the far wall. Each one is waist-height, around forty feet long. Easy enough for a man to hide behind. If he could slip out of view, he could find a way out. And once he’s out into the ship…
But there’s no way he’ll be able to get to a hiding place before being cut down. It would take an extraordinary amount of luck. For a moment, he entertains the idea that the guards have set movement patterns, but then discards it. They aren’t robots.
Frustrated, he starts walking back the other way, his shoulders groaning under the heavy sack. Jojo passes him on the right, not looking at him. He hasn’t said a word to Prakesh since the night before, as if the act of talking as much as he did has exhausted him. Prakesh can’t help thinking of their conversation–how Jojo shut down the man who tried to stop them talking. He may have a stutter, may not even be out of his teens yet, but the other workers respect him.
The sack slips a little, sliding down Prakesh’s shoulder onto his upper arm. He stops, shifting it back, and that’s when the idea comes.
It’s not just what Riley would do in this situation. It’s what Aaron Carver would do, too. Carver, whose first response to any situation was to use a gadget or a tool, to use something he’d made. Carver, who was (is, he tells himself) always looking for new equipment.
Carver wouldn’t just rely on what was here. Carver would be looking to see what he could do with it.
Prakesh stands there for a moment too long, and one of the guards shouts at him to get moving. He bobs his head in apology, hefting the sack as he starts walking.
He can’t take out the guards individually. None of them can. But what if he could take them all out in one go?
They move to the troughs, all of them unloading the soil now, dumping it in and mixing it with fertiliser. The stuff comes in foul-smelling buckets, the white granules gritty and slightly slimy. There’s insecticide, too: yellowish dust that Prakesh recognises as sulphur. He spotted it earlier, off to one side in a pair of grimy containers. It stains his hands and prickles the inside of his nose. You’re supposed to handle this stuff with gloves–it can irritate the skin, causing blisters if you use a lot of it.
Jojo is next to him, head bent, patting the soil down. Prakesh doesn’t look at him. Keeping his voice low, he says, “Jojo.”
No response.
“Jojo,” he hisses, a little louder. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Jojo’s hand flick the air twice. No. Not now.
“Then don’t talk, just listen,” Prakesh says.
It doesn’t take him long to explain his plan. Jojo does nothing, doesn’t even register that he’s heard, but Prakesh isn’t worried. He wants this more than you do, he thinks, pushing a handful of fertiliser under the soil.
When Prakesh is finished, Jojo doesn’t respond for a long minute. Then his right hand forms a quick thumbs up.
It takes a long time for Jojo to tell the rest of the workers the plan. He has to be careful, changing places only when the guards’ attention wanders, conferring with them in an almost inaudible voice. Eventually, he makes his way back to Prakesh, and flashes another thumbs up, more emphatic this time.
Prakesh lifts his hands out of the soil. He can feel the other workers watching him. There’s a guard close by, a stick-thin woman with a shorn head, and Prakesh slowly starts to walk towards her.
The guard sees him coming before he gets within twenty feet. Her rifle goes up instantly, finger in the trigger guard. “Stop right there.”
Prakesh can feel the other rifles on him, like needles sticking into his back. For a moment, it’s as if all activity on the floor has stopped. He can’t hear anything but the roaring of blood in his ears.
“Back in the line,” the guard says, jerking her rifle. “We’ll take a break in an hour. You can piss then.”
“I don’t need a piss. I need to ask you something.”
“I said, back in the line.”
Prakesh looks over his shoulder, gestures to the troughs. “I can make your fertiliser better.”
The guard’s eyes narrow. “What?”
“Fertiliser. I used to be a plant technician, a biologist—”
He feels the bullet before he hears the gunshot. It spangs off the floor a few feet away, the gunshot echoing around the hangar. Prakesh jumps, and the workers hit the deck, throwing themselves to the floor.
“Move away!” shouts a voice. One of the other guards. “If she doesn’t shoot you, I will.”
Prakesh puts his hands above his head. He speaks as loudly and clearly as he can. “I can make it so everything grows faster. OK? Faster and stronger. I can make you a new batch of fertiliser. We can grow new plants–tomatoes, fruit, whatever you want. I just need a few things to do it.”
Silence. The guard still has her gun on him. He tenses, sure that at any second a bullet is going to slam right through him.
But he guessed right. A grow-op like this won’t give them a lot of variety in their diet. He’s offering them some new tastes, and he can see them looking at each other, thinking it over.
One of the guard’s colleagues wanders over, and they have a whispered conversation. Prakesh watches, not wanting to move, not wanting to give the others any reason to shoot.
Eventually, the first guard looks over at him. “I’ll pass it up the chain,” she says. “Keep working.”