17
a short story by Paul J McAuley
It seemed to 17 that her family had been labourers in the Factory
forever. Her mother claimed that her great-great-great grandparents
had worked in the original Factory, and that they had helped in the
reconstruction after the One Big One; her most treasured possession
was a photo of men and women in rags standing in knee-deep mud in
front of a hillside of trees all knocked down in the same direction.

17 had worked since she could walk, when her mother had taught her
how to grade waste paper. Then she had cycled with the kids from
her rack, chasing heavy metal residues in the flues of the refineries,
harvesting mussels in the sewers for their metal-rich shells, sorting
through the spill heaps. She had run with the same pack for ten years,
had been boss for the last three, but at last she had realised that she
wasn't interested in them any more. They were just kids. So she had
picked a fight with the next oldest, a lanky boy called Wulf, had
beaten him bloody and had told him that he was boss now, and had
walked away.

That was last winter. Since then she'd been a free labourer, turning up
each day at the canal junction by the cooler stacks and waiting with
the others until the shift foremen arrived and made their pick. It was
hard, dangerous work. The men went to the refineries or foundries. 17
mostly cleaned the spinners, clever machines which built up hundreds
of different things using frames and cellulose spray. The spinners never
stopped, their spray heads chattering away right above her while she
dug out mounds of stinking cellulose that had accumulated beneath the
frames. Blood worms lived in the stuff, thin red whips a metre long
that stung bad if they lashed your skin. Rat-crabs too, and roaches
and black crickets.

Her mother disapproved. It was time she settled down, her mother
said, time she got herself a man and made babies.

They had terrible rows about it. 17 argued that she could do what she
wanted, but she knew that if she stayed a free labourer sooner or later
she'd get hurt. And if she got hurt bad she'd be sent to work the tanks
where wood pulp was dissolved in acid. Most people didn't last long
there; fumes ate their lungs, blinded them, ulcerated their skin until
gangrene set in. But it was that or ending up as a breeder like her
mother, blown up by having kids one after the other, or becoming
some jack's troll. She'd already had a taste of that, thanks to Dim, the
prime jack of her rack. She'd messed around with the other kids of
her pack, but Dim had shown her what real sex was like. She swore
she'd kill him or kill herself if he or any other man tried it again.

Then Doc Roberts came, and everything changed forever.


Doc Roberts was ex-Service, come to the Factory to stretch his
pension by leechcraft. He rented a shack on the roof of one of the
racks at the edge of the quadrant. He filled it with sunlamps and plants
and hung out a shingle announcing his rates.
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