The Last SPV: An Opco Boone Adventure
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The Adventures of Opco Boone, Legal Ace™
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Espievies are dying out. They have never successfully been bred in captivity, and global regulatory warming is making their usual habitats hostile. Traditional breeding grounds — the Caribbean, the islands at the periphery of the European continent, south Pacific archipelagos are becoming increasingly polluted by a parasite which feeds on them: the red tapeworm. There are some mature specimens with legacy Tax rulings, known as the grand-fathers — but these are a finite commodity, are protected against hunting, in designated wildlife sanctuaries and in any case trade at massive premia on the black market.
Some commercial harvesting remains, but those that remain are weak, small ones, but they are gradually being fished out. Some poachers break into the sanctuaries of northern Europe where there experimental breeding programmes designed to reintroduce them for benign taxation planning
There is talk of a new supply of synthetic spvs flooding in from eastern Europe somewhere. Segue to hunting session.
The oldest portal into, and out of, the Settlement was the Moor’s Gate. It opened out onto a region beyond the city walls they called The Meadow and, beyond that, the dark forest of Bretton.
{{indent|The Meadow was a wide flat, low-lying mud plain. It turned briskly to swamp whenever it rained, which wasn’t often, but often enough that the itinerants who for generations had maintained it had created narrow plank walkways around the miles of rows of cages that made up The Farm. These “boards” ran from the Gate all the way to the Woods, and along every row and aisle of The Farm where they raised and cultivated clients. Such a feature were they of the propagation and cultivation of client relationships that were the principle business of The Farm the itinerant travellers who walked them in the service of milk production were called the “on-boarders”.
Just now, a cross-eyed, black-toothed, puck-faced peasant limped along the boards with a pail of slops, tossing chicken bones left and right and ladling mouldy porridge to grasping beasts who slobbered through the slats.
A slight ginger lad stepped carefully along the board that ran from the Gate to the Farm until he caught the boarder’s attention and then stopped. The boarder stopped her round, too, eyeing him carefully. She held his stare for an a beat too long, weighing him up, as if undecided between amusement, irritation or malevolence. At length, she settled on amusement. She said, “Whatta fucka you wanna? Wanna-you some chicky, ah?”
She fished a chicken bone from her bucket and tossed it at the boys’s feet. He couldn’t tell if she was being serious until she roared at the joke.
Just as he began stammered out an oily yuck to move the vibe along, she stopped. “Well, amigo, whatta you gotta?”
Ramsay Punchface held out his tote bag. “I just caught these.”
The onboarder snatched the bag and up-ended it, dumping a handful of a small, rabbit-like animals into the dust. Their legs were loosely bound and they wriggled and whimpered. She grunted, and turned each over carefully with her boot. “Littl’uns, innit?”
“They’re segregated cells. J ... J ... Jersey. I think.”
The onboarder grunted again. “Feeble.” She looked over her shoulder. “Hey, Quasi. Whatta do you makea these?”
A old hunch-back, naked but for a sacking tunic and a dirty loincloth, scurried out of the farm on all fours. Despite his apparent age, his eyes glittered, though he gripped a monocle in one. He moved nimbly with a nervous, muscular energy. He regarded the onboarder, and the boy, and squawked. “What is it? What is it? What is it? HEY?”
“Heh. Lil runty fellas.” The boarder poked the animals with his foot. “Any good?”
“Any good? Any good? It’s all good. Any good is all good is every good boy deserves football —” The old man snatched up the rabbity thing, sniffed it, drawing its aroma deeply, an action from which he derived no small pleasure, inspected the animal’s fur closely through the monocle, taking it in his fingers, picking out fleas, or dirt, or imperfections. “Meh.”
He peered into its ears, yanked open its mouth, inspected its teeth. Finally, he pulled, a stout wooden device from his tunic and held it up against the animal. “Heh. It’ll do,” he said, “but it’s not exactly going to make the quarter. It’s a bit scrawny.” He scratched his chin. “Call it a three. Yes; a low priority three.” He tossed the first one in the smallest pen.
“A three?” Ramsay quailed. "But Jersey Oiks are a key business priority!”
“That they are, so they are, so I gather, soldier blue, but there are no oikeys here. That’s an SGPS, my young lad. Sociedade Gestora de Participações Sociais, to give him his full regalia, if you please, and he hails from —” he snatched up the beast again and began riffling through its fur “ — Porto? Lisbon, I wonder — oh! Madeira! Of course it is, my dear, Madeira, my dear. Similar to Oikey Oikses, they are, but — oh! — just not the same. It’s their milk, see? The yield is poor and it’s a bit thin, and sour, but it will nourish you juniors all right.”
Ramsay sighed and motioned at the other two espiecies. “What about the others, then?”
The old man examined the first one briefly. “This one — nah, Qatari: won’t net.” He tossed it away. His dog, a mongrel bull terrier, chased it under a fence. “Bosun! Bosun!” he screeched, at the dog.
He picked up the third, gingerly, turned it over in his hands and looked doubtfully in its ear.
Suddenly, violently, he threw it down, kicked out at it and scurried into the dark recess from where he had originally come. The boarder squawked in anguish and grabbed a spade and hid behind these nearest cage. Bosun leapt at it, but the man swiftly yanked on the dog’s chain to pull him out of reach.
“Get away, Bosun! Get out of it! JESUS! What do you think you're playing at, bringing that nasty little blighter in here? Take it away! Get rid of it! QUICKLY!”
Ramsay flapped his arms. “What’s wrong with it?”
“Just get rid of it before anyone sees you with it!”
Ramsay gingerly picked up the frightened little thing. It was barely bigger than a hamster and hand beautiful, soft, golden fur that shone auburn in the sunlight. It seemed so harmless. So pure. It trembled in the palm of his hand. “It’s okay, it’s okay little one,” Ramsay soothed.
The inspector was screeching and shaking the cage, screaming “GET RID OF IT! GO! GO! GO!”
Ramsay put his hands on his hips. “Well, I’m not leaving here without my commission.”
“Get rid! GET RID GET RID!!!” howled the inspector.
The old man strode over and snatched the animal, which was still snuggling on Ramsay's palm, hiffed it powerfully, into the sky.
“Hey! What did you do that for?”
As the espiecie arced towards the ground it it exploded in a ball of fluff and guts.
“Jesus wept, lad!”
“All right, all right — but what about my — for the other two?”
“Strike a light!” The onboarder fished in his pocket and tossed a couple of quarters towards Ramsay, into the dust.
“Half a stinking credit??!” Ramsay looked distraught and fished them out.
“Think yourself lucky kid. And let this be a lesson to you. Know run along with you and take that nasty little thing with you, before Quasi here has a goddamn aneurysm.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Panamanian variant. Just take it away okay?”
Ramsay’s eyes widened, he retched and bolted for the Wood.
The onboarder looked at the two scrawny mammals in the cage, and let out a deep, existential sigh. “Lean times, indeed,” he muttered, and tossed a bone into the cage, where the little espievies fell upon it.
The inspector had calmed down by now, and just chuckled darkly.