Redwood: Servant of the State Read Online Free PDF

completely off the grid. He had the place to himself, miles from anywhere. Nobody watching him, telling him what to do. I was giddy at the thought.
    He threw some tortellini in the pot, then set about making a sauce from scratch. My first supper off the grid was one of the most delicious meals I’ve ever eaten.
    Some time later we walked into the back of the station, and he showed me the sleeping quarters. He motioned to a room on the right, which had six bunk beds hanging on the wall. A room on the left was identical.
    “I sleep in this room. You can take the one across the hall. Good night.”
    That was Kalinowski. A man of few words, and what few he had were right to the point. I suppose living alone for years on end can have that effect on someone.
    -+-
    The next morning I woke up to the smell of bacon and eggs, toast and coffee. I made my way to the mess and found a full English breakfast waiting for me.
    Kalinowski wiped his lips with a napkin, slurped some coffee, and said, “You can do the dishes.”
    After I finished eating and started on the dishes, a thought struck me.
    “Mr. Kalinowski? Where did you get all this food? Do you always eat this well?”
    “Friends keep me well supplied, Mr. Savitch. They bring me what I can’t grow. I give them most of what I grow.”
    Those friends of his again. I decided not to push it. I hadn’t even been there a full day yet.
    After breakfast we walked outside through the manual doorway, and made our way to a tool shed. The palm lock had been disabled on it, too. Kalinowski went inside, grabbed a couple of garden hoes, gave me one.
    “Spent much time on the top of Redwood City?”
    I nodded.
    “Well, it’s not much different out here. Except, of course, there’s weather, weeds, and pests to worry about. Well I guess y’all got rats, but out here we’ve got the native wildlife to bother us. And, it’s certainly not a controlled climate. The produce tastes better, though. Too many artificial elements in the Redwood City food chain. We’ll eat some native fruit later and you’ll see what I mean.”
    We walked a good quarter mile, past robot tractors puttering through different rows of crops. Finally we came to a field filled with row after row of green leafy plants.
    “I’ll take this row. You take that one. Take out the weeds.”
    We finished close to noon, walked back to the station. Despite the big breakfast, I was starting to get hungry, and looked forward to lunch. As we walked into the mess, I thought about the morning’s work.
    “Say, Mr. Kalinowski, what were the plants we were tending to?”
    He looked up from the stove with a twinkle in his eyes.
    “Tobacco.”
    My jaw dropped. Tobacco? I was stunned. I found myself stammering.
    “But … but … that’s illegal!”
    His barking laugh rang out in the mess. “So is leaving Redwood City without permission.”
    “Yeah, but … sir … if we get caught with tobacco, it’s a one way trip to the penal colony on Orange. Or worse.”
    He smiled, threw some meat in a skillet and set it on the stove.
    “Yup.”
    -+-
    After lunch, he took me on a tour of an underground warehouse. It sat near the station, and housed tons of tobacco leaf.
    “Climate controlled. Can’t be seen from the sky. Plenty of space.”
    It was large, and divided into different sections, each filled with tobacco leaves of varying age. Young crops set out to dry, older ones aging in place. The warehouse had a heavy nicotine odor that stuck to our clothes.
    I was impressed by the extent of his operation, in spite of my horror of its legal implications.
    “Did you dig all this out by yourself?”
    He shrugged modestly. “Well, I repurposed some of the robot tractors, temporarily. I use them when I need to. Have to be careful with their logs, though.”
    “How long have you been doing this?”
    He paused to think for a bit, then said, “Almost eighteen years.”
    I gaped in astonishment. Eighteen years he’d been running an illegal