Spares

Spares
Michael Marshall Smith

Talking fridges, human clone farms, flying shopping malls – we must be in the Michael Marshall Smith zone. A world all too close to our own…Spares – human clones, the ultimate health insurance. An eye for an eye – but some people are doing all the taking.Spares – the story of Jack Randall: burnt-out, dropped out, and way overdrawn at the luck bank. But as caretaker on a Spares Farm, he still has a choice, and it might make a difference…if he can run fast enough.Spares – a breathless race through strange, disturbing territories in a world all too close to our own.Spares – it’s fiction. But only just…

MICHAEL MARSHALL SMITH

spares

For Paula,

who lights up the forest.

Our kind. Us people. All of us that

started the game with a crooked cue,

that wanted so much and got so little,

that meant so good and did so bad.

JIM THOMPSON

‘The Killer Inside Me’

Table of Contents

Epigraph (#u7e8bd7da-7803-5546-a909-b3ba1d125742)

Part One: Dead Code (#u5fcfe1fb-c88e-54d1-9d1e-1dbcf08285b4)

Chapter One (#u654a5466-82ad-5a27-8415-bae35b9888ff)

Chapter Two (#u63954f39-300c-5943-8dfc-aba8f082b914)

Chapter Three (#u8aa2a7a2-48ad-5522-9e99-8c99026fdfaf)

Chapter Four (#u64387a0b-7593-5ee1-823a-c76d64c21e7e)

Chapter Five (#uf95358fc-a190-5d29-bde8-439d386be507)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Part Two: The Gap (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Part Three: New Richmond (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-one (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-two (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

By Michael Marshall Smith (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

PART ONE Dead Code (#ua26a07ef-b9f2-5db2-86ce-76ad7365bc1d)

One (#ua26a07ef-b9f2-5db2-86ce-76ad7365bc1d)

Wide shot.

New Richmond, Virginia. Not the old Richmond, the historic capital of historical old Virginia, that sprawl of creaking tedium, but the New. The old Richmond was destroyed over a century ago, razed to the ground during riots which lasted two months. After decades of putting up with dreadful shopping facilities, a bewilderingly dull Old Town and no good restaurants to speak of, the residents suddenly went non-linear and strode across the city like avenging angels, destroying everything in their wake. It was great.

Spin doctors blamed downtown decay, crack wars, the cast of the moon. Personally, I think everyone just got really bored, and either way good riddance to it. The old Richmond was a content-free mess, a waste of a good, level patch within sight of the pleasingly pointy Blue Ridge Mountains. Everyone agreed it was much better off as a landing strip, a refuelling point for the MegaMalls.

The MegaMalls are aircraft – five miles square, two hundred storeys high – which majestically transport passengers from one side of the continent to the other, from the bottom to the top; from wherever they've been to wherever they seem to think will be better. The biggest oblongs of all time, a fetching shade of consumer goods black, studded with millions of points of light and so big they transcend function and become simply a shape again.