«You're the owner here?» Sergeant Derry asked.

«That's right.»

«Hmm.» Derry's optronic lens flashed up a file, sending minute green and red script scrolling over her right iris. «Amanda Foxon. Lived here by yourself since your husband died. Grandfather was granted full land title under first settlement law.» She grinned and swivelled round to scan the farmyard and the orchards beyond. «Very nice, very cosy. Your family seems to have done all right for itself, Amanda Foxon.»

«Thank you.» The pickers, led by Jane, began to filter into the farmyard. Even their presence didn't do much for Amanda's confidence.

«Well, well.» Derry grinned round. «Look at what we have got ourselves here. This has got to be the sorriest old collection of Jew boys and girls I've seen in a long time. I really hope you all have your ID chips.»

«We have,» Jane said.

It was the awful fatigue in her voice which kindled Amanda's anger, the hopelessness of the eternally beleaguered. «They're working for me,» she barked up at the Sergeant. «I don't have a single complaint.»

«Glad to hear it,» Derry said. She was looking at each of the pickers in turn, her optronic lens imaging their faces. «But we can't be too careful with the likes of these, now can we?»

«I'm sure you can't.»

«Where are you all from?»

«I'm from Harrisburg,» Jane said. «The Manton suburb.»

«I know it, you people turned it into a real shithole. What are you doing here, then?»

Jane smiled. «Picking fruit.»

«Don't smartmouth me, bitch.»

The hound growled, a low rumbling as its black rubber mouth drew back to expose long yellowed fangs. Jane flinched, but held her ground.

«They're picking fruit,» Amanda said forcefully. «I asked them here to do it, and they're excellent workers. Their private lives are none of your business.»

«Wrong, Amanda Foxon. What they get up to in private is always police business.»

«You're being ridiculous.»

«Am I? You live in Harrisburg county, an original family, so you and your son will be Christians, then?»

«No, we'll be atheists, actually.»

Derry shook her head ponderously. «It doesn't work like that. You'll understand eventually. If they take a shine to this area, every neighbour you have is going to be a Jew in five years' time. It's like a goddamn invasion force; ask the decent people who used to live in Manton. They turn the local schools over to teaching their creed, their wholesalers will come in and set up a new commercial network, one that doesn't include you. This farm will get frozen out ready for a nice kosher family to take it over at way below what it's worth, because no one else will touch it. The only way your precious Guy will get to carry on here is if he gets circumcised and you book him in for his bar mitzvah.»

«You're quite pathetic. Do you know that?»

«We'll see. If you ever looked outside your little valley of paradise you'd see it's already starting. Govcentral policies don't work here, not any more. Those bastards are destroying us with their equal settlement policies. They won't listen to us when we complain, all they do is keep sending us more human xenocs who don't belong here. You'll come round to our way eventually, Amanda, and when you do, when you remember who you really belong with, we'll help each other, you and me.»