by Allen Steele
The foreman finished reading the list. “All right,” he said as he lowered the pad, “now that everyone is present and accounted for, we can get down to business. I’m Jerry, the project supervisor, and this is Bill”—a brief nod toward the man beside him—“and he’s the payroll manager. We’re pretty much on a first-name basis here, so all you have to do is ask for us at the office shack. If you have any questions or problems, that’s where we’ll be.”
A few nods, but for the most part, the group remained quiet. “I’d like to welcome you to this place, but since it doesn’t have a name yet, I don’t know what to call it either.” That earned a couple of laughs, which Jerry accepted with a faint smile. “In fact, I can’t even tell you where you are, other than what you already know…somewhere in Medsylvania, just north of the channel. As you were told when you signed up, one of the conditions of your employment is that you do not know its exact location. That’s why all satphones, pads, or other sat-enabled devices were confiscated before you left New Boston…and if you’re still holding out, it’s a good idea to fork ’em over now, because if we find them on you, your employment will be immediately terminated, along with forfeiture of all payment owed to you. Have I made myself clear?”
He waited to see if anyone said or did anything. After a moment, one of the workmen sheepishly stepped forward to surrender the satphone he’d taken from his jacket pocket. “Thanks,” Jerry said. “You’ll get this back when you leave.” He handed the phone to Bill, who used a pen to mark it with the workman’s name. “Which brings us to the next item of business. You’re here until the project is finished, or at least until you’ve completed your particular job and we don’t have any reason to keep you around any longer. We have very good first-aid facilities, so if you’re injured, we’ll be able to take care of you on-site, but anything severe enough to warrant you being airlifted to a hospital will mean that you’ll be terminated as well.” A few grumbles, and Jerry raised a hand. “Sorry, but that’s the way it is…although if you are severely injured, you can rest assured that your bills will be paid and you’ll receive full compensation. But as our people explained to you before you signed the contract, there will be no days off and no vacations while you’re here. We work nine days a week, twelve hours a day, until this place is finished. Period.”
Again, Jerry paused. When no one said anything, he went on. “You’ll be paid every week, and payday is Raphael morning. If you’d like to have your paychecks automatically deposited at the Bank of Coyote, you can see Bill about it. Otherwise, you’ll each be issued a voucher, tagged to your thumbprint, that you’ll be able to redeem for cash once you leave. If you really want, you can take it in colonials, although I wouldn’t recommend it…there aren’t any places where you’ll be able to hide ’em where someone else couldn’t find ’em. Besides, there’s nothing here you need to buy.”
Hawk made a mental note to talk to the payroll manager sometime later and make sure that Melissa did the same. Since neither of them had bank accounts, they’d need to take their pay in cash and do the best they could to keep it from being discovered. Jerry went on. “Food, clothing, hard hats, tools, whatever…they’ll all be supplied to you. Except for the stuff you’re not supposed to have, of course, and that brings us to the next order of business.”
The project supervisor became more serious. “This is a clean site. That means no liquor and no dope. Booze, weed, sting…if we catch you with any of that, you’re outta here on the next gyro, and forget about getting paid. Don’t even think about trying to get cute with us. A couple of weeks ago, we found a bearshine still out in the woods. We caught the guys who built it, and…well, four of you have your jobs because they no longer have theirs. So don’t push your luck.”
A few murmurs at this, and Hawk wondered how many of the workmen had marijuana or whiskey flasks stashed away in their bags. If they were smart, they’d get rid of them as soon as possible.
“Finally, one more thing…and this may be the most important rule of all, because it has to do with what we’re building here.” Jerry cocked a thumb at the unfinished structure behind him. “This is going to be a monastery, to be used by a group of monks who don’t want to have anything to do with the rest of the world. They call themselves the Order of the Eye, and that’s as much as I can tell you about them other than that they’re the reason for all the secrecy. Once the place is finished and these guys move in, they don’t want visitors. A certain anonymous benefactor has generously agreed to foot the bill for the construction costs. Since he’s also the nice man who’s meeting the payroll, all you need to know about him is that his name is Mr. Mind Your Own Business…and that goes for the monks, too.”
Jerry turned to point toward the southern end of the clearing; for the first time, Hawk noticed a small collection of cabins built near the forest’s edge about a half mile away. On the other side of a chicken-wire fence with a small gate at its center, a field of tall grass separated the settlement from the construction site.
“That’s where the Order is staying while we’re building their new home,” the supervisor continued. “You may see them from time to time…they wear brown robes, sometimes with their hoods pulled up…but that doesn’t mean they want to talk to you, or even have anything to do with you. So a major stipulation is that you ignore them as much as possible. If they happen to drop by, just leave ’em alone. Don’t try to visit them, either”—a wry grin—“because, believe me, you don’t want to. That field is practically crawling with ball plants, and I shouldn’t have to warn you about those.”
Some of the workmen shook their heads. No one in their right mind wanted to be swarmed by pseudowasps. “Okay, that pretty much covers everything. If you have any questions about payroll, come over and see Bill. Otherwise, you can pick a tent wherever there’s a vacant bunk…Ladies, your quarters are in the two to the far left. Once you’re settled in, check the duty roster to find out which team you’re on. It’s posted on the bulletin board outside the office shack. Your first shift begins right after lunch. And that’s it.”
The workers picked up their bags and began to leave the airstrip, a few heading over to the payroll manager. Hawk shouldered his bag and began to saunter toward the camp. Melissa fell in beside him, but neither of them spoke until they were sure that no one was close enough to overhear them; even then, they were careful to keep their voices low.
“Looks like we won’t be sharing a bed after all,” Hawk murmured. He gave Melissa a sly smile. “Think you can handle that?”
“Oh, well…it was fun while it lasted.” She and Hawk had started sleeping together a few weeks earlier, not long after they’d reached New Florida. At first, it had been out of necessity—since they’d been posing as a newly arrived immigrant couple, it was part of their pretense to occupy the same room at the boardinghouse where they’d stayed—but soon their relationship had become more intimate, and Hawk had discovered that there was something to be said for having a former prostitute as a lover. “Maybe I can sneak over, when no one is…”
“Better not risk it.” Hawk shook his head. “We’re not married anymore, remember? And I don’t want to do anything that might put us at risk.”
“Yeah, okay.” Melissa pouted, but she knew Hawk was right. When they had heard about the job, one of the things they’d learned was that the project was specifically looking for unmarried individuals. That was when they’d changed their names again, for what they both hoped would be the last time. “But at least I can slide you an extra biscuit when you come in for breakfast.”
That gave Hawk another reason to smile. She’d been hired as a cook, while his job was as a carpenter. Before he could reply, though, Melissa moved a little closer. “Are you sure we’ve got the right place?” she whispered, gazing past him at the distant cabins. “I mean…do you think…?”
“He’s over there?” Hawk didn’t say anything for a moment. “If he isn’t, then I don’t know what else to do.” He shrugged. “At least we won
’t be bothered. I grew up in a camp like this. It’s not likely that we’ll see any proctors way out here.”
“That’s not what I’m asking.”
“I know what you said.” They were getting close to the camp, with more people around to hear them. To buy themselves a little more time, Hawk dropped his bag, then knelt to lace up his work boots. “If he and his people are who we’ve heard they are, then it makes sense that they’d want to pretend to be monks. Maybe they are monks. In any case, though, they’d probably want to keep to themselves. That’s what I’m thinking.”
Melissa didn’t respond. When he glanced up at her again, he saw she was still gazing at the settlement, a pensive look on her face. “Going to be hard for us to talk to them,” Hawk went on, “but it’s not like we’re in any hurry. As I said, this place probably doesn’t get visited by proctors. So let’s just…y’know, be patient. Do our jobs, keep our heads low, and wait to see what comes up.”
“Sure. Whatever you say.” Melissa rubbed her arms against the morning cool. “But you…no talking about Sa’Tong with anyone, all right? That business back in Liberty…”
“That was a mistake. Won’t do it again.” The Sa’Tong-tas was at the bottom of his bag, a small box concealed within a rolled-up shirt. After the debacle with the Reverend Rice, Hawk had vowed not to discuss what he’d learned until he found someone who wasn’t committed to any established religion.
Which was why they were here.
Hauling the bag over his shoulder, he stood up again. “C’mon…let’s make ourselves at home. And in the meantime, keep an eye out for someone called Walking Star.”
It was a long time before they finally met Joseph Walking Star Cassidy. Even so, they didn’t find him; instead, it was he who found them.
Hawk was assigned to the team tasked with building the monastery’s interior walls. Erected on a concrete foundation, the structure was comprised of three floors, with a small cupola rising from a circular roof that was still unfinished. Hawk worked with nine other men and women to install the partitions that would separate one room from another, beginning with the ground floor.
He’d learned carpentry during the years he’d spent in Black Mountains timber camps, He wasn’t master-class, but he knew enough to be able to follow directions given by the team leader, who in turn consulted blueprints drawn up by an architect hired by their mysterious employer. The rest of his crew were experienced as well, and he got along with everyone. As Jerry had said, the people working on the project were pretty much on a first-name basis; although they knew that this was only a temporary job, they’d also been informed that, if they did their work well, a generous bonus awaited each and every one of them if the monastery was completed by Verchiel, the first month of summer.
So Hawk spent his days fitting wall boards against support beams, hammering them into place with three-and-a-half-inch nails he carried in a tool belt around his waist. He shared a tent with nine other men, and although they had little privacy—just a couple of hempcloth curtains that they could pull around their bunks when they slept—they spent the evening playing gin rummy or five-card stud while sitting around the potbelly stove that supplied heat to their quarters. They woke with the sun and knocked off work when it went down again. There were few arguments, and fights were practically nonexistent; the absence of liquor was something everyone complained about, but the fact of the matter was that sobriety contributed greatly to camp morale.
Hawk saw little of Melissa. Her job as assistant chef kept her in the mess tent’s kitchen nearly around the clock; as a result, he’d usually see her only at mealtimes. Although her tent was only fifty yards away, it was generally understood by all the men that the women’s quarters were off-limits. There were on-the-job flirtations, of course, along with a couple of serious affairs—one member of Hawk’s team was known to sneak off to the woods every now and then after dark—but he and Melissa agreed to refrain from that. As lonely as they were for each other, it was crucial that they kept a low profile. No one in camp must learn that Henry Lewis and Juliet Arnold had a previous relationship under different names.
After a while, though, they worked out a system through which they could have secret meetings. Melissa worked the chow line during breakfast. If she wanted to see him that evening after dinner, she’d ladle an extra helping of grits on his plate as he passed by. Likewise, if Hawk wanted to see her, he’d drop a spoon on the counter in front of her station. A quick glance, a furtive nod, and the meeting was set, with the lumberyard near the construction site as the rendezvous point.
But even though Melissa was in a good position to hear and see much of what was going on in the camp, never once was Cassidy’s name mentioned in her presence. And although Hawk occasionally caught a brief glimpse of the so-called monks—every now and then, one or two of them would come across the field to check on the progress of their monastery—none matched the description he’d been given of their leader: a tall man, of American Indian descent, with long black hair tied back in a braid. Of course, since the Order usually wore dark brown robes with their hoods pulled up around their heads, it was very difficult to tell one from another; any of them could have been Cassidy, and Hawk wouldn’t have known it.
The weeks went by, the days gradually becoming warmer as Ambriel faded into Muriel. As the monastery’s interior was being completed, work continued on the windows and roof. Gyros from Midland and New Florida began to arrive, carrying pallets of mountain-briar shingles and crated plates of glass. As before, none of the building materials came from Medsylvania itself; the monks had stipulated that the surrounding woodlands were to remain untouched. The very same day Hawk’s team was reassigned to work on the cupola, three electricians showed up to begin laying the interior wiring that would carry power through the building from the solar farm and wind turbine being erected nearby.
Hawk realized that it was only a matter of time before the monastery was finished. Indeed, a few nights later, Jerry stood up during dinner to announce that the new completion date would be Muriel 92, the last day of spring. Although the supervisor praised everyone for keeping ahead of schedule, Hawk couldn’t help but feel anxious. In only a month—perhaps even less—their work here would come to an end; when that happened, he and Melissa would have no choice but to leave. They would receive their final pay, then board a gyrobus and, along with the others, be transported back to Midland, never again to return to this place or even to have more than a vague idea of where it was located.
He couldn’t wait any longer. He had to act.
The following morning, he dropped a spoon in front of Melissa. She caught his eye and nodded: same time, same place. He went off to work as usual, yet even as he loaded shingles onto a wheelbarrow and pushed them over to the pulley rope that would hoist them up to the roof, his thoughts were on other matters. How could he get across the field to the monks’ settlement without being noticed? And once he got there, what would he tell them? It wasn’t them who he really wanted to see, but rather their leader, yet would Walking Star even listen to him, or would he simply dismiss Hawk as some sort of…?
Something itched at his mind. At first, he thought it was only a low-level headache, perhaps brought on by a pulled muscle in his neck. But it became more persistent: not actually painful, but noticeable all the same. If he’d had to describe the sensation, Hawk might have said that it felt as if a skeeter had somehow entered his cerebral cortex.
He set down the wheelbarrow, carefully making sure that it wouldn’t tip over, then took off his hard hat. He’d just begun to rub the tendons at the back of his neck when it occurred to him that he was being watched. He didn’t know how he knew this, but nonetheless…
He looked around, and saw a monk only a few yards away. A tall figure, hood pulled up over his head to shade his face against the morning sun; he’d apparently come over to visit the construction site. By then, everyone had become accustomed to seeing the Order, even though no one but Jerry was allowed to sp
eak to them. Indeed, the project supervisor stood beside this one, back turned toward Hawk as he pointed out something on his pad. Yet the monk was paying little attention to Jerry but instead stared past him at Hawk.
For a few moments, the two men silently regarded each other. Despite all reason, Hawk had the distinct feeling that the monk had somehow overheard his thoughts, just as clearly as if he’d been talking to himself. A cold chill crept down his spine; putting on his hat again, he hastily turned away. His hands trembled as he bent down to pick up the wheelbarrow; the moment he touched its handles, the cerebral itch stopped. He glanced back at the monk, only to see the figure suddenly walk away, leaving Jerry with a perplexed look on his face.
The incident haunted Hawk for the rest of the day. Distracted, his work became sloppy; twice he hit his own thumb with a hammer, causing him to yelp and drop the roofing nail he’d been trying to drive home, and at one point he discovered that the shingles he’d been placing beneath the cupola were misaligned with one another, forcing him to tear them up and start over again. Fortunately, no one made an issue of his mistakes—everyone on the crew had bad days—but Hawk knew that there was a reason for his lousy performance. So it came as a relief when, an hour before sunset, Jerry blew the evening whistle.
Hawk joined the others as they climbed down from the scaffolds. A quick trip to his quarters to drop off his hat, gloves, and tool belt, then he went over to the mess tent. He lingered over dinner, giving Melissa a chance to finish up in the kitchen; everyone else had finished eating and returned to their tents by the time he stood up from the bench and, under the cover of darkness, wandered over to the lumberyard.
He didn’t have to wait long for Melissa to show up. As always, they looked around to make sure they weren’t being observed before giving each other a quick hug and a kiss. Before he could speak, though, Melissa gently placed a finger across his lips.