Redwood: Servant of the State Read Online Free PDF Page B

tobacco harvest, right under the nose of the State! Well, maybe a thousand miles from Redwood City is not exactly under their noses, but still … this guy was a serious criminal, on a scale I’d never seen before in my brief jaunts through the New Texas black market.
    “Many things we like to consume fresh. Vegetables, for instance. Some things need to age, though. Wine. Good whisky. And tobacco.”
    “Three things I’ve never tried.”
    He smiled. “Let’s look in on the worker bees.”
    In another room a robot chopped tobacco leaves while another one rolled cigars in binder leaf.
    Again, I gaped in astonishment. “Load bots!”
    “Actually more like garden bots. But you’re right, they’re based on the same platform.”
    The units’ heads were dark round ovals filled with sensors. Kind of like an astronaut’s helmet, only loaded with circuitry. Currently, their heads bent over the table. The torsos were man-sized, but made out of plain gray metal. They moved by skid-steers, with little tank tracks on the right and left in place of legs. I knew this allowed them to carry heavy loads, and made them ideal for unloading a ship’s cargo. I supposed it also allowed for easy movement on loose dirt out in the fields.
    But the notable things about the bots were their arms and hands. They were synthetic flesh, fully articulated like a human’s, down to five fingers on each hand. I knew the arms were stronger than a human’s, and except for the color they looked remarkably similar to real arms and hands. The artificial skin was a light gray, matching their torsos. They moved in a blur of precise motions over the table, dutifully chopping tobacco leaf and rolling it into cigars, placing the finished product in small boxes.
    -+-
    We spent the afternoon tending to different crops, picking some that were ripe and taking them back to the station. We stored some fresh produce in the mess, and put the rest in transport boxes. Kalinowski had a large assortment of boxes in the rec room filled with food and cigars.
    He went over to one, grabbed a large red fruit and tossed it to me.
    “Here you go, m’boy. Try a William’s apple. It’s a native fruit named after the Scientist who discovered it.”
    I took a tentative bite. “This is delicious. Why haven’t I had it before?”
    “Import restricted. Only a select few get it, and the apples sent off planet are all harvested from an orchard at A-E-S Ten.”
    I chomped the last bit of it down. It was much bigger than an Old Earth apple. “Too bad. Somebody’d make a fortune. They ought to at least let us have this in the Servant’s Mess. It’d be a lot better than that bland stuff they give us.”
    He smiled. “Rank hath its privileges, m’boy. I can guarantee you The Old Man eats these almost every day.”
    -+-
    I was in for another culinary delight at supper.
    “Don’t get to grill for guests too often,” Kalinowski said. Then he spent an hour and a half fussing over an outdoor metal stove filled with coals. Ever so slowly, and with lots of fragrant smoke, he cooked a couple of giant steaks on the contraption.
    When he was done he took some baked potatoes out of the oven in the mess and set everything on two plates at the table. He watched expectantly as I gently cut my steak. Juice came out with each slice. It was so tender, the knife went right through it.
    I took the first bite and my eyes grew big as flavor exploded in my mouth.
    “Good?”
    I nodded emphatically. “Best steak I’ve ever had.”
    I quickly cut off another bite.
    About halfway through, a thought popped into my mind. I said, “Mr. Kalinowski, is this steak from a cow? What type of cow is this?”
    He swallowed the bite he’d been chewing, then said, “ Bos primigenius redwoodian .”
    I choked and spit out my meat.
    He ignored me and continued. “Actually, they should have their own genus since they’re exobiological, but there’s a long tale about the politics behind that, associated with