Hello and welcome to Letters From the Knot where, every fortnight, I post a short piece of fiction. Each one takes place in the Knot, the setting of a novel I’m currently working on. The Knot is a mess of tangled spacecraft, an inverted city. Kept spinning to provide some semblance of uneven gravity, the Knot is a place both figuratively and literally coming undone. Each piece will be different: a story, a dream, a character portrait, a slice of life, a fragment.
This week, we’ve got ourselves a multi-parter. A spooky story about farming.
If sci-fi’s not your thing, I also release a more traditional newsletter on the off weeks. Enjoy!
The Farmlands, Part One
Day one
“It’s not like the posters,” Lem said, wiping at her face, slick already with a silky green substance.
Kye chuckled. “They like the romance, I think,” he replied. “Landbrugsjordene. Farmlands. You’re meant to imagine open fields, I reckon. Like a sort of garden. Bountiful. But nobody really asks where their food comes from, do they? I bet you never did. Am I right?”
Kye was tall, his arms were the thick arms of a farmlander, his skin pale and veined. Even by the standards of the Knot, Lem thought, these were a people severely lacking in light exposure. If they ever left the farmlands, a rare enough thing, they could be spotted by the bags around their eyes, their thin hair, the muscular hands.
“I suppose you’re right,” Lem said. She had a headache from the darkness and the noise and the pressure. She tried to rub some of the slime off her hands so she could take some pills but there wasn’t a bit of her overalls that wasn’t already slick and green.
“Thought as much,” said Kye, sighing to himself, happily. '“I thought so.”
They had been walking for hours, away from the crewspace and into the deep hydroponic drum, the dark and coiling maze that was the source of all of the food on the Knot. Lem’s glit was telling her nothing; all signals were blocked in this winding murk. She only had the rolling of her gut to tell her which way was down, which way was out.
“It’s pretty simple really,” Kye said. He approached a metal hatch in the wall, identical to all the other hatches they had passed. He lifted a heavy lever and a hissing sound announced a sudden change of pressure within. He swung open the hatch to reveal a thick mass of brown-green foliage, threaded through with pallid blue light. “You need to just make a note of the soil acidity levels, the humidity, the temperature,” he said. For each variable he pointed at a little glowing dial just inside the door of the hatch, occasionally wiping away a build-up of slime. “Then you…just check the density,” he said, shoving his forearm deep into the wilting thicket, waggling it about. “Fine,” he concluded, pulling it out again. “And it’s as simple as that. Most of it’s automated of course, these days.”
This was perhaps the fiftieth time he had given Lem this exact demonstration, the movements and the words always the same. The values on the dials never changed, there was never any further action to take. She was starting to wonder which of them was losing it.
This part of the farmlands, Kye had explained a dozen times, was where they grew the vegetables and the grains and what passed as fruit. Every time he opened a hatch, there was a rush of rank air. The smell of growth, rampant and sticky and grasping and laced through with death and decay, a dismal rotting smell that contained within it the seeds of new life in turn, rebirth and regeneration, beginnings from endings. All life on the Knot was played out in cycles.
Kye led them away down the corridor. As she followed, Lem found every movement uncomfortable; they had given her some new overalls made of stiff fabric that pinched her wherever she flexed or bent. She noticed Kye’s own overalls were soft and pliable, polished to a shine in places where they rubbed against the walls, and so infused with this fine green mist that they almost glowed. She had that to look forward to, at least.
“This end of the drum is fine, grav wise,” said Kye, muttering her induction in fragments, some repeated, some irrelevant. “You can move pretty comfortably. We only use about half the tanks, give or take. Even in their boxes, these plants want grav to grow. They need a floor to root to. Whole place used to spin like a giant tumble drier...we’re going back centuries though. Now it’s part of the Knot, it sits on a sort of slant so...well, only half the tanks get the benefit of the spin. And even then, further into the drum you go, grav gets lighter, things get...odd.”
“Odd?” said Lem. The corridors were tight here and Kye kept moving close to her, getting into her personal space. She pulled her head back whenever he spoke. Even in the fertile stink, she was conscious of the smell of his breath, conscious of how far down they’d come, and how long it had been since they’d seen any of the other farmlanders.
“The plants don’t grow right...” he said, between heavy breaths. “And there are just odd things going on down there. When the grav gets less, people hear things. See things. Did you know the far end of the farmlands butts up against the Peg? My son reckons the gliesans get in, reckons they might even be using the tanks on the far side.”
“Hmm,” said Lem, taking another subtle step away. She had been warned the farmlanders were superstitious. All the better, she thought.
“Further down the drum, we grow the proteins,” Kye said. “But I’ll not subject you to that on your first day. That’s a smell that doesn’t wash out easy. Proteins don’t care about grav so much, y’see. They grow in little balls, little throbbing balls. Some people think the low grav’s better for them. Think they prefer it like that.”
“Prefer it like...they can feel it?” said Lem.
Kye just shrugged. In the gloom she could see his facial expression. A non-committal sort of look, mouth frowning, eye-brows raised. It was an expression that said draw your own conclusions.
Kye moved on again. They walked awkwardly for another ten minutes, the grav getting fractionally lighter as they went. Kye eventually stopped at another hatch. “It’s pretty simple really,” he said, reaching for the lever.
“How many of these do you do a day?” said Lem, unable to bear another repetition of the demo.
“Meant to do all of em,” Kye said, lifting the lever and letting loose the reeking flood of air.
“But…we’ve skipped most of them,” said Lem as he plunged his hand into the tank.
Kye chuckled again. “Well, nobody’s gonna check on you either way.”
Day five
Lem wrenched the hatch open, glanced at the little dials, and thrust her hands into the foliage. She felt the fibrous stems thrusting up towards the pale blue lights, felt the wet scum of dead leaves, the rustle of young growth. She breathed in the stench of it.
“The boy’s...well look, the boy’s just cut from a different tree if you catch my meaning,” said Kye. He stood a few steps away from her, carefully watching her actions, always talking. “He’s smart. Stupidly smart. But probably not a farmer, if I’m honest with myself.”
“He’s still here then?” said Lem. She had found it best to respond with short questions. It kept Kye’s constant chatter moving forward as opposed to round in circles.
“Oh yeah. He’s still here...he’s still here. We sent him on a sort of course up on the Hafgufa. It’s a special education programme, sort of thing. You probably understand it more than I do but it was for kids all over the Knot to learn some more skills. We don’t really use ullus or implants down here so...well he had to go and learn somewhere.”
“Hmm...” said Lem. She withdrew her hand, careful not to bend any of the stems.
“Think the idea is they get skills to take back to whichever poor forgotten part of the Knot they came from. A vey Selman way of thinking, if you ask me.”
“You don’t think he wants to stay here?” said Lem, closing the hatch. She walked on in front of Kye, still wary, still careful not to let him get too close up behind her.
“He doesn’t know what he wants. Disappears for days at a time. Doesn’t take his work seriously. I think he’s looking for something bigger than this.”
Lem made a mental note of this, chose another hatch to open at random, and plunged into the life-giving shoots once more.
Day ten
Lem leaned into the tank, fondled the fleshy mass, felt its pulse. It grew around a metal cord, covered in fine needles. These needles, she had learned, injected the mass with a combination of nutrients and antibiotics and, more concerningly, painkillers. When she questioned this latter ingredient, Kye had shrugged. “Just makes em grow faster,” he had said.
It was the first time since getting the job that Kye had left her alone for the day. She took the chance to drink things in. Every once in a while, she crouched down, wiped the slime from her glide, and took a few notes, cryptic as she could manage without fooling her future self.
Over the course of a few weeks, this flesh-lump would spread up and down the cord and eventually create enough protein to feed a whole subdeck on the Selma or Hafgufa. Lem leant in closer to examine the needles, the fine pipes that fed them, the pulsing uterine lights. The smell down here wasn’t as bad as Kye had suggested. It was a sour and shitty smell, yes, but there was also something animal and comforting about it. Embracing and enriching. She gripped one of the thin tubes and gave it a testing tug. Firm but breakable, she concluded, and shut the tank again. She was enjoying herself, enjoying the peace. There had been a tense atmosphere that morning in the crewspace and she was glad to be away from it.
The farmlanders lived most of their lives in tight, utilitarian, living quarters, essentially larger versions of the tanks their crops grew in. A cylindrical room, sleeping racks stacked five-high arrayed around a central hub where there were showers, toilets, a kitchen, tables, chairs, a recessed circular seat that served as a lounge. The lights were kept dim at all times. Theirs was one of the better such tanks, Kye had told her, but even there the floor didn’t quite align with the gravity, and everyone had learned to live at a slant.
It would have felt like a prison had the residents not made it their own. The austere metal walls had been adorned with painted murals. The showers and toilets, once seemingly open for all to see, had been surrounded by hanging fabric walls, a dignifying touch in space apparently designed to dehumanise. At one point, Kye told her, the farmlands would have been home to ten thousand workers. Now there were fewer than two hundred spread over about ten such spaces. The fact they were here at all was a consequence not of necessity, Lem thought, but of a Selman fetish for cultural protectionism. This was a way of life being slowly eroded by time. To Lem, it was an irresistible opportunity.
She had woken to sounds of a fight, raised voices. Keeping quiet, she tried to spin herself around in her sleeping rack, curling into a tight ball and twisting herself around so she could get her head near the opening. As she turned, she could hear that one of the voices was Kye’s.
“Six days away, one night on your rack, and now you’re slipping out first spin?” Kye said. He was restraining himself, but it was clear he wanted to shout. There was a trembling to his voice, something violent was being compressed.
“Please, keep your voice down,” said the other speaker, softer and younger. Lem was sure this must be Kye’s son, about whom he had spoken ceaselessly for days. The young man’s name was Kyanne.
“Patronising me as well are you? Telling me to be quiet in my own home?”
“You want to fight…”
“Don’t tell me what I want.”
“You’re angry,” said Kyanne. “Try softness, for once. Try kindness. Seek a gentler path. Your instinct is always to be brutish and hard.” He spoke almost tonelessly. There was no passion in that soft voice, but a steady, weary, acceptance.
“You’re trying to make a fool out of me, now,” said Kye, his voice breaking. “What a sad turn, Kya. We pay for your education, scrounge for your education, and you use it to belittle us?”
“What us?” said Kyanne. “I only see you here. I only see you staying up all night, festering. Waiting for me to wake up so you can...attack me. Are you so tired of your own life that you have to ruin mine?”
“Ruin?” shouted Kye. He had given up trying to stifle his voice.
By now Lem had finished her turn and gently pulled aside the little curtain that covered her rack. The two men were standing in the centre of the living quarters. Kye was the taller but was standing in the little sunken pit that was their lounge. On the seat behind him were littered the relics of his night’s vigil. Water bottles and ration packets and a crumpled blanket. He had chosen a seat that faced the entrance to the crewspace; it was clear he had not slept. Kyanne stood above him, looking down into the pit, a thin and string-limbed boy. He had the bleached skin of a farmlander, but none of the gristle and muscle that their culture made a virtue of.
“Ruin, yes,” said Kyanne, still calm, still soft. “I know this is the kind of love you understand. Gripping, clinging love. But you’re pulling at me, dragging me. Your love is a pit, father. This place is a pit.”
“You’ve only got this place!” Kye shouted. Lem could see now that, around the living space, curtains were being pulled aside. The gaunt confused faces of the other farmlanders were watching on, making no effort to conceal their interest. Dark though this place was, nothing could really be hidden.
“You don’t know the first thing about what I’ve got,” said Kyanne. He sounded sad, pitying even. “I’ll be leaving again today, and I don’t know when I’ll be back. I think it would be good for your heart, your soul, if you try to let me go a little way. Try to be at peace with me not being around all the time.”
“Leaving to go where?” said Kye. “There’s nothing for you there in the deep.”
Kyanne turned to leave without further reply, picked up a bag, a few other bits.
Lem expected Kye to do something, to move. She even willed him to. In the short time she’d known him, she had got the impression of a physical operator, a person who knew best how to control the space around him, as opposed to that within himself. Not this time though. He simply stood and watched as Kyanne left. Lem watched too, and saw that, clutched in Kyanne’s hand, was a dense and ragged book. One that she was familiar with. In red letters she could just see the first few letters of the title. She didn’t need to see the rest to be sure.
UNRAVELLING THE KNOT.
Day fourteen
For the fifth day in a row, Kye sent her down into the drum alone.
Each morning, the farmlanders pulled on their overalls, ate what thin gruel was kept for them after the harvesting, and murmured their odd chanting prayers. They had a language all their own, she had learned. Not Swese nor English or anything else spoken across the Knot, but a primal drum-tongue, forged in the strange dark. She asked Kye what was being said in the prayers one day, but he gave her a warning look. She was an outsider still, marked out by her thin arms, the colour of her skin, her foreign ways. It was a wonder they had let her in at all.
When breakfast was done and prayers had been muttered, the farmlanders split into pairs according to some long-standing arrangement and made their way down into the corridors to fondle the plants and proteins. Like every day before, Lem sidled over to Kye.
“It think it’s best I stay here today,” he said again, not making eye contact. He unzipped his overalls, shrugged off the top half and tied the sleeves around his waist. On her way out of the crewspace, Lem saw that he had taken up his now regular seat, watching the door.
For the most part, she spent her lonely days as she had been instructed. Descending into one of the coiling corridors, checking every few hatches on the growth within. Always the same smells, always the same sights. When she got deep enough, felt gravity’s press leaving her, and was sure she was alone, she started to hunt in earnest for fallibility. She wondered what would happen if the hatches were left open, wondered how many she could open before some alarm were sounded. She counted the steps between hatches, did some maths, tried to account for the dwindling gravity. She tried to calculate how many such tanks there were, how many of the people on the Knot relied on each tank, she wondered what damage could be done.
Lost in a train of such thoughts, she found herself deeper than she had ever been before. The gravity was low enough now that she had to raise her hands above her head to stop from clattering against the low ceiling. Soon enough she would be crawling, flying. As Kye had warned, things were different this far in. Every few tanks, the throbbing protein masses weren’t growing as they should. Some had developed veiny appendages. Some had abandoned their life-giving cords and stuck withering to the walls.
This deep, the corridor seemed tighter and darker, and the sounds travelled differently. Frequently, she stopped still to listen. Tried to tease out the sounds one from the next. The humming of the machines. The ubiquitous groan of the Knot’s spin. Occasionally, she thought she heard noises from deeper down, and others following her.
She tried to keep from creeping herself out and continued on, building for herself an internal schematic of the space. She noted down numbers, distances, marking each one with a code of her own devising. She hoped, if found, these scribblings would be seen by the farmlanders as a foreign eccentricity, nothing more.
She was well coated now, in slime. Her overalls, finally softening after many days' use, were heavy and sodden. Just as she was considering turning back towards the crewspace, she heard a kind of groaning noise and turned to face the dark through which she’d have to travel back. There was the sound again. She held herself steady and stared.
She thought she felt a rush of air coming towards her, a ball of pressure. She froze, thought of what might be lingering here. She imagined opening the hatch, crawling in, wrapping herself around the sustaining cord. Imagined curling up alongside the warm and pulsing growth.
Ahead of her she saw a changing of the colour of the dark, a looming form, growing all the time. Her eyes struggled to adjust but then she saw them, eyes, a face. Too afraid to make a sound, she started pushing herself away, floundering in the low grav. The shape was a farmlander, dark-eyed and strong.
It was Kye. Lem prepared herself for violence.
“Stop!” she shouted.
And he did, grabbing a wall to slow himself in the drift of low gravity. He looked exhausted.
“Outsider,” he said, breathless and rasping. “They’ve got him. They’ve got my son.”
Part two coming in two week’s time. Subscribe to read the rest!