2006-04-27

It’s another day here. It’s hot, like it always is, it seems a shame it only rains at night, but I guess if it rained through the day we couldn’t get any work done. The sky’s blue and there’s the high wrack that floats across the sun now and then. It’s a little hotter than what it normally is, since the horizon seems closer than what’s usual. Another day working for the Farmer.

The wrack’s overhead now, hazing over the sun, and there’s this breeze drifting in from the Ponds. I can smell the ensilage from around the Ponds and it reminds me of the work I did some time in the past, about a week ago I imagine. I’m out here in the field with the scythe, cutting and chopping all the rampants down, these being the weeds that grow overnight after the rains, they’re not so hard, so long as you don’t kill the crop or the sucker that hangs from them. There’s a few of us working at this stretch, about thirty of us, mainly younger bronzed ones like me, coloured that way after time under the sun and wrack.

It’s good, working for the Farmer, he feeds us and clothes us and does everything else, like lets us walk near the horizon or swim in the Deeps and keeps the bigger flimpers away from us with that net he’s got strung up in the sky about two or three kilometres up. I’ve been here since I was born, and that’s been a while, I suppose, considering that I can’t even remember when I was born. I’ve heard around the Lines that few can, what’s the point of knowing when the Farmer started you up? Useless stuff and it doesn’t keep you busy out in the fields or paddocks.

There’s this hooting noise, and I know it’s time to start this stint. I’ve done it a thousand times; this rending and sweeping with the scythe, hearing it’s blade whirr day in, day out, I’ve seen it put some people to sleep, and I’ve watched the scythe kill them as well. It can be a dangerous beast when it wants to be. It isn’t going to kill me though, not now, not ever; I’m too good for it. It isn’t too hard doing all this, just mow, mow, mow, and give room for the crop to grow, one of the suckers has fallen near my feet. This little animal lives on top of the crop and it helps it grow somehow. Only the Farmer could tell you how it does it, it is that hard to work out. It’s a funny little thing, it’s a pink and green wet thing with a round mouth.

It smells like insects and it watches you with its five eyes. I can hold one in both my hands, but I don’t like doing it since they smell and they are valuable to the Farmer. The crop dies without suckers on top of them. The overseer cries out at me for malingering and I put the cute little thing back on the crop head. It isn’t a great idea to annoy the overseers, especially when the Farmer’s crop is concerned, I can’t stand working triple stints. When you’ve seen your fellows flayed under the wrack or had the pinions snatch them for carelessness, then you learn not to annoy anyone.

I’ve got the smell of sucker on me now, and it’s a hell of a task to clean it off, I heard an overseer call it a pheromone. It’s meant to be this scent to attract the gnat-things which land in their eyes and makes them go orange. You’d seriously want to believe how valuable the crop is to the Farmer. Someone told me, perhaps an overseer, that it causes illnesses and other things to heal quicker, it’s got something to do with an anitiviral enzyme, but the crop is worth a lot of money to those who need it, like the people from offworld. It’s all too big for me, I’m sorry, all I know is that I work and work, and for specialties, I work some more. I live, I avoid triple stints, flimpers, pinions, oh-hells and death and I do all right. Simple, like the wrack floating under the sun.