The Tithe barges are back over the wheat: harvest season warning

They came back on the third, as they do every year when the wheat turns. From the roof of the Ashby Cross silo you could see three of them coming in over the belt from the direction of the core, low and slow, each one longer than the high street, riveted iron from nose to tail, with forty or fifty cages hanging underneath on chains like a catch that has not been caught yet. You hear the engines before you see them: a long low hum that gets into the window glass. I have lived out on the belt since before the Handover. That is eleven harvests. Here is what I have learned, for the young ones.

What a Tithe wants

The Bureau calls it 'the harvest'. It is not the wheat they are harvesting. The wheat goes to the Camps, yes, but the cages are for us. A barge comes over at dusk because that is when people come in from the fields, tired and in groups. It does not chase, not at first. It hangs over the gate, sings a little song over its loudhailer about warm beds and hot soup, and lets a cage down on its chain. You would be amazed how many people get in.

If nobody gets in, the searchlights come on, and then the grappling cables: steel lines with a hook and a claw on the end, dropped into the streets, through skylights, over the washing lines. They feel about. They are patient. The Sexton wardens ride the cages down and help.

Hot soup, warm beds, no forms to file. That is what it says. It is lying about the forms.

Harvest season rules

• Nobody comes in from the fields in groups larger than three. Stagger your return on the bell at St Olave's: one ring for the east rows, two for the west.
• A barge cannot turn quickly, and it hates a crosswind. If one comes for you, run across the wind, into the wet ditches or under a roof with a floor above it, never along the road and never over open rooftops. The lights see rooftops best.
• The searchlights sweep in a figure of eight. Count the loop. Move when the beam is on the far side.
• Do not answer the loudhailer. It knows names. It will use your mum's.

Brixton's Law: if a machine is being kind to you, count your children. Last year we lost twenty-two on the belt. The year before, sixty. We are getting better at this. The Chaplains have promised a detachment for the Ashby gate once the Sector 7 line is quiet. Until then keep low, keep apart, and keep a roof between you and the chains.