The Unicorn Girl

by Anne McCaffrey

  “I think…I know you,” she said in confusion. “But how?”

  “She saved you from surgery at Amalgamated’s space base,” Gill said. His big hand briefly enveloped Judit’s; she felt a wave of warmth and security emanating from his touch. “But you were unconscious at the time, drugged for the operation. You can’t remember.”

  “I remember the voice,” Acorna said. She looked thoughtfully at Judit. “You were very much afraid…and very said. You are not so sad now, I think.”

  “Then it is you!” Judit exclaimed. “But you were so tiny…”

  “It seems my people mature more rapidly than do yours,” Acorna said. “Not, of course, that we know anything about my people….” Her pupils narrowed to slits again, then widened as she turned her silvery gaze on Judit and dismissed that subject. “So you are Judit. Gill and Rafik and Calum have told me often of your heroism.”

  “Then they have exaggerated wildly,” Judit said. “I didn’t do anything, really.”

  “You will allow us to differ about that,” Gill put in, still holding Judit’s hand clasped inside his.

  “And you were not harmed afterwards?”

  Judit smiled. “Oh, no. They bought the hostage story…I think Dr. Forelle had some doubts, but nobody else could quite believe that a barrio girl, even one who’d made it through university, would have the brains or independence to go against so many rules. And to keep them from thinking it, I made sure to act very stupid for some time thereafter. I think they were glad to get rid of me when Mr. Li offered me a position as his assistant.”

  “Ah, yes,” Rafik said. “Your famous Mr. Li. Pal has been telling us all about him, and his fortune, and his great plans—”

  Judit felt the blood draining from her face.

  “Pal, how could you?”

  How could Pal have trusted these men with such dangerous secrets! Oh, Gill, she would trust, but these other two…no doubt they were good men, but Pal didn’t have the right to risk the lives of children on his intuitive judgment of them.

  “—plans to establish lunar mining bases on Kezdet’s moons,” Rafik went on, and Judit breathed again. “He seems very eager to give us a contract to oversee the establishment and development of the work…a remarkably lucrative contract to offer three independent asteroid miners.”

  “As I’ve explained to you,” Pal cut in, “Kezdet is a technologically underdeveloped planet. We have planetside mines, of course, but they are of the crudest sort, dependent on manual labor for nearly everything. And there is no local expertise in low-g mining. Kezdet’s moons are far richer in valuable metals than the planet itself, but up to now we have lacked the capital and the technology to exploit the mines. Mr. Li proposes to provide the capital, but he needs men like you to consult on all the problems of mining in space—protection from solar flares, high-friction coefficients, lack of the usual reagents for extraction, and so forth.”

  “You seem tolerably well informed on the problems, anyway,” Calum remarked.

  Pal flushed. “I’ve studied a few vid-cubes. That doesn’t make me a space mining expert. That’s where you come in.”

  “I should perhaps point out,” Rafik said softly, “that hijacking our ship and taking us, unconscious, to a planet we have every reason to avoid is not the most persuasive of bargaining maneuvers.”

  “Pal,” Judit said sorrowfully, “you could have tried explaining to them!”

  Pal’s flush deepened and he rounded on his sister, palms out. “A minute ago you thought I had explained to them, and I was in deep kimchee for that, too. Can’t I do anything right?”

  “Not with a big sister, kid.” Gill chuckled. “Rafik, Pal, both of you calm down. Whatever the rights and wrongs of it, we’re here now, and it won’t hurt us to listen to Mr. Li’s offer…and personally, I’m dying to hear the explanations.”

  “I think Mr. Li would prefer to present his case to you personally,” Pal said, “and he very seldom leaves his mansion. Will you trust me so far as to accompany me there, where we can discuss the matter in greater comfort?”

  Gill glanced at the others, smiled wryly and shrugged. “What the heck…we’re already on Kezdet, how much worse can it get? Just lay off the sleep gas this time.”

  “Kezdet,” Pal said somberly, “can get much, much worse than any of you can imagine.”

  Just before dawn there was a subtle change in the quality of the darkness of the sleep shed. Unrelieved blackness faded slightly, revealing the slumped outlines of what looked like piles of rags on the earthen floor. After three years working Below, Jana could sleep through the twenty-four-hour rumble and thump of the slagger, but the faint light in the shed woke her, most mornings, before the call. That was the good thing about being on day shift. Night shift, you didn’t have that bit of warning. It worked today; she was on her feet, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, when Siri Teku came through the shed with his bucket of icy water, splashing it on the heaps of rags until the children underneath stirred. He grinned at Jana and aimed the last of the bucketful at her, but she dodged so that he only got her bare feet.

  “Thanks,” she said, “I was meanin’ to wash my feet today anyway.”

  She dived into the corner and caught little Chiura by the arm, hauling her upright and clapping one hand across her mouth before the kid could wail and earn a slash from the long, flexible rod Siri Teku held in his other hand. The other kids knew better than to cry about a little thing like cold water, or to take too long scrambling to their feet, but Chiura was new, the only new one their gang had got from last week’s intake. The others had grumbled when Siri Teku shoved her into their shed.

  “How we gone keep up our allotment with babies on the soojin’ gang?” Khetala demanded.

  Khetala, two years older than Jana, broad-shouldered and black-browed, was the unofficial leader of their gang. She kept the rest of the kids in line with pinches, slaps, and threats to tell Siri Teku on them. But she also kept their ore carts full and the draggers moving so that they weighed in with a full allotment most shifts. That meant supper. Gangs that didn’t earn supper didn’t last long; the kids got tired too easily, then they couldn’t keep up their allotment, they started getting sick, pretty soon the sick ones disappeared and the ones that were just puny got sold off to other gangs. Or worse, Kheti said darkly, but Jana wasn’t sure what could be worse than being a dragger on a gang.

  “She’s too little to go Below,” Jana said. Chiura’s bare legs were dimpled with baby fat; her round, full face was tilted upward to Jana and Khetala as if she expected them to pick her up or something. She’d learn soon enough that there wasn’t any time at Anyag for playing with babies.

  “No backtalk!” Siri Teku’s rod whistled against the backs of Jana’s legs. She didn’t jump, so he lashed her a couple more times until tears stood in her eyes. “She’s not going Below. Not yet, anyway. She can help Ganga and Laxmi sort.”

  Jana and Khetala looked at each other. They needed another sorter. Siri Teku had taken Najeem away right after wake-up a couple of days ago, when he noticed Najeem’s morning cough. But how were they going to teach a baby who couldn’t be more than four, maybe only three, to sort ore?

  “She wants to eat, she’ll learn,” Siri Teku said. “You’ll teach her.” He left the shed to fetch their scanty morning meal.

  Now Jana knelt beside Chiura, dipped a corner of her own kameez in the water bucket and wiped the kid’s face clean. She’d been crying again in the night, there were dried tears and snot caked around her upper lip. A bruise was starting to show on her cheek.

  “Who hit you, Chiura?”

  Chiura didn’t answer, but she glanced toward Laxmi and back, a quick, darting, furtive glance that she’d learned in this first week at Anyag. Jana glowered at Laxmi.

  “The brat kept me awake with her snuffling,” Laxmi said.

  “We all cried at first,” Jana said. “You hit her again, Laxmi, and I’ll break your arm. See how long Siri Teku keeps you on the gang when yo
u can’t work!” She wiped Chiura’s face as gently as she could and ran her fingers through the curly dark hair, trying to work a few tangles out of the matted ringlets.

  “You’re wasting your time,” Laxmi said. “She’ll hafta get clipped like the rest of us, or she’ll get lice. I donno why Siri Teku hasn’t done it yet.”

  “You mean there’s something you don’t know?” Jana jeered. “An’ here I thought you was the Divine Fountain of Wisdom come down to Anyag to instruct and save us all.”

  Siri Teku kicked the door open and set down a round platter of bean paste just inside the shed. Beside it he dropped a stack of patts, letting them fall on the dirt so the bottom ones would be all gritty. He said it trained the kids to grab their food fast and not waste time, but Jana figured it was just meanness. She’d never seen anybody who wasn’t hungry enough to bolt their patts and bean paste so fast they hardly chewed.

  The first day, Chiura had wrinkled up her face and spat out the gritty patt and bean paste Jana rolled for her. She was hungrier now; she would’ve dived right under the trampling feet of the older kids if Jana hadn’t held her back.

  “It’s okay,” she told Chiura. “Kheti sees to it, there’s fair shares for everyone.”

  “More,” Chiura wailed when the rush had slowed and they got their patts and beans, one apiece.

  “Fair shares,” Jana said firmly, but she tore her rolled patt in half and slipped it to Chiura when nobody was looking. And while the rest of the gang shuffled off to the shaft, she lingered to ask Laxmi how the baby was doing.

  “Plays too much, less’n I clout her,” Laxmi said. “Doesn’t know good rock from bad. She’s bringin’ down our count.”

  “Don’t hit her,” Jana said. “She won’t learn if she’s scared. Let her watch what you’re doing. She’ll learn.” She knelt by Chiura and hugged her. “You’ll watch Laxmi, won’t you, sweetcake? Watch and learn how to tell good ore from rocks. Watch for Mama Jana.”

  “Sweetcake?” Chiura repeated. “Mama?”

  “Aah, she’s too dumb to know what you’re saying,” Laxmi whined. “Only way to teach her…” She doubled over in a silent cough. Her thin face turned dark with the effort to hush the convulsions that shook her body.

  “You don’t hit her,” Jana said, “and I don’t tell Siri Teku you got Najeem’s cough. Deal?”

  Laxmi nodded in between convulsions, and Siri Teku’s rod came down across the backs of Jana’s legs. This time Jana yelled good and loud, to give Laxmi a chance to let some of the coughing out. And Siri Teku was so busy telling her off for lingering behind the rest of the gang, he didn’t even notice the way Laxmi wheezed for breath. She hoped.

  Going Below was the part Jana hated worst, the sickening drop in the cage full of scared kids. It was usually all right, if the minder was awake and paying attention to his engine. If he let it run a few seconds too long, the cage would slam into the pit floor like a dropped basket of eggs. Coming back up was just as dangerous; an inattentive minder could drag the cage and all into the engine to be chewed up like a lump of ore in the slagger, but you didn’t think about that so much—by the end of shift, all you could think of was getting Above again. Above belonged to light and flowers and Sita Ram, whom Jana imagined like a mother who smiled and hugged you close and wanted to keep you forever. Below belonged to Old Black and the Piper, and if you prayed to Sita Ram or even thought about Her, they’d maybe get angry and send one of Their messengers for you: a rock falling from the tunnel roof, a flood of water when the hewers broke through into old workings, or the stinking air that made your chest forget how to breathe.

  The cage rattled to a stop, thudding on the pit floor but not falling, and the gang moved off to their places under Siri Teku’s direction.

  “Buddhe, Faiz, you boys are dragging for Face Three today. Watch how Gulab Rao handles the compressor, Buddhe. You’re getting too big for a dragger and I just might put you to work on the face pretty soon if you show me you can get a load of ore without spraying the gallery with rock splinters. Israr, you trap for Face Three. You girls go to Five. Khetala and Jana drag, Lata trap.”

  Buddhe and Faiz set off at a run down the opening that slanted down to the tunnel to Three, but Kheti called them back and made them strap on their knee and arm pads.

  “Girl stuff,” Buddhe said scornfully, flexing his skinny ten-year-old arm while Kheti tried to tie on the pads she’d made out of old rags. “When I’m a hewer, I won’t fool with stupid girl stuff like padding myself.”

  “Wear the pads, maybe you don’t get so many cuts, maybe you live long enough to make hewer,” Khetala snapped.

  Jana didn’t argue about putting her own pads on. They were another of Kheti’s good ideas. Other gangs, when they got new kameezes, sold the ragged bits of their old ones to a picker for a cornet of curried peas or some other luxury. Kheti made them save the old cloths to make these pads that protected their knees and elbows from the sharp rock floors of the tunnels. While the pads lasted, their gang didn’t come down with half as many scrapes and cuts and infections as the other gangs. The only trouble was, they never could get enough cloth. Kheti said she was going to talk to Siri Teku some day when he wasn’t drunk or angry and point out how much the pads saved them, try and talk him into giving them some extra cloth. But it could be a long time waiting until Siri Teku was in a mood to be approached.

  The hewers had been working at Five since well before first light; they went on shift and off shift earlier than the draggers, so that the kids could find full corves of ore waiting when they started work and could finish off the hewers’ last production of the day before they went off shift. This morning there were three full corves waiting for them. You couldn’t hear anything over the whine of the compressors, but one of the hewers—Ram Dal, it was—wasn’t wearing his face mask, and Jana could guess from his scowl what he was saying to them. If the draggers got behind, then he wouldn’t have an empty corf to pile his ore into, his production would go down and the gang wouldn’t meet their allotment. It wasn’t her and Khetala’s fault that Face Five had turned into an easy vein that the hewers could strip faster than Siri Teku had expected, but they’d be the ones to get the stick if Ram Dal told Siri Teku that they were holding up the line. Jana buckled the belt about her waist, straddled the chain attached to the first corf, and set off back up the long slope of the tunnel without a word or a nod to Khetala. Halfway up the tunnel, Lata pulled the ventilation fan back so that they could drag the corves through.

  “Come back soon,” she begged. “It’s dark here. I’m scared the Piper will get me.”

  “Don’t worry about the Piper,” Jana said as she passed. “I left an offering for Him at the face. And we’ll be back in a minute.”

  It was always dark in the tunnel, and they always came back as fast as they could. Lata really was simple; you could see it in her face, the funny tilted eyes and the moon-round cheeks. She could never remember anything from one trip to the next. But being so simple, she didn’t get bored and fall asleep, either. Jana liked having Lata as trapper and didn’t mind saying, every trip, that she would come back in a minute.

  “Liar,” Kheti whispered when they were past Lata and the hum of the fan blocked out their words. “You never. Piper’s gonna get you.”

  “Huh. Piper won’t want me, I’m too skinny. Piper’s gonna take you, Kheti—your chest getting big now.”

  The first trip wasn’t so bad, except for being in a hurry because the hewers were getting ahead this morning. Jana figured about the third trip was the worst; by that time everything was bugging you. Your thighs ached from the pull of the loaded corf, you had scrapes on the places your pads didn’t protect, the chain between your legs chafed and sweat dropped down into the chafed places and made them sting worse than ever. In some ways Jana reckoned it was better later on in the shift, when you were too tired to care, almost too tired to remember that there’d ever been anything but pulling loaded corves, tipping them into the cage basket, and
drawing the empty boxes back. Finally the hewers quit for the day, and then they knew end of shift was almost there and all they had to do was clear the last loaded corves.

  Then there was the creaking cage again, this time taking up draggers and trappers instead of baskets of ore, and cool clean air and the first stars of evening, and shivering because your kameez was soaked with sweat and you weren’t used to the coolness. Jana helped Khetala to herd the other kids of their gang over to the pump that spewed out water from the lowest mine workings, nagged them all to pull off their kameezes and wash. The littlest ones, Lata and Israr, were so tired they were about to fall asleep, even though they had been sitting still all day instead of hauling corves. They gasped and crowed indignantly at the shock of the tepid water. That helped; Buddhe and Faiz wanted to show they were tougher than the little kids, so they splashed rowdily under the pipe. Jana and Khetala took the last wash. Faiz tried to pinch Khetala’s chest and she splashed water into his eyes and everybody had a good laugh.

  “I wish we had spare kameezes, and spare pads, too,” Kheti said as they trudged back to the shed. “Then we could wash our clothes and pads and leave them to dry next day.”

  “Yeah? Long as you’re wishing, why don’t you wish for the moon to hang in our shed and a cloud to fly through the tunnels on?”

  “The better we keep clean,” Kheti said firmly, “the less we fall sick.”

  Jana didn’t see the connection herself. Everybody knew that sickness was caused by annoying Old Black and the Piper so that they laid a cough in your chest. She’d been at the mines five years now, since she was only a little bigger than Chiura. Kheti was all the time setting herself up as some kind of know-it-all because she’d only come to the mines two years ago, when she was eleven already, and she claimed to know all sorts of things about the world away from the mines. But she did know a lot of good stories to tell at night, and it was true that since she’d joined them they had only lost two kids from the gang to illness. Besides, if you argued, she hit and slapped, and Jana had taken enough blows that day from Siri Teku and Ram Dal—she didn’t need a fight with Kheti to finish the day off.