by John F. Carr
“Uh-huh,” Jablonski nodded quickly. “And we damn-well study the food-dispenser so we can repair it, or unlock it ourselves.”
Bronstein looked about quickly, checking for prying eyes, before he pulled a satchel out of his duffelbag and slid next to Jablonski. “We also check out the local wildlife for anything edible,” he almost whispered, opening the satchel where only Jablonski could see, revealing a small notebook computer. “We learn, and we teach, as fast as possible. This one’s got a plutonium battery with a solar assist, but even that won’t last forever.”
“Hide that sucker!” Jablonski whispered, appalled. “If anyone sees—”
“I know damn-well what it’s worth here,” said Bronstein, shoving it back in the satchel. “Now let’s start making ourselves known.”
Right then the guards rolled in a big flat cart carrying a couple hundred deep clay bowls and a big carton of plastic spoons. A distorted voice from the overhead loudspeakers told everyone within hearing to take one bowl and spoon apiece just as a third batch of transportees stumbled in.
“I’ll get ours,” said Bronstein, shoving his satchel back into his duffel. He darted to the cart and picked up two bowls and spoons before anyone else could think to move. The moment he turned away from the cart, several other transportees started toward it. They weren’t stupid, at least.
He handed Jablonski a spoon and bowl, slipped back to his place on the other side of the doorway, and casually leaned on the wall. After a moment’s thought, Jablonski did the same on his side. He also, Bronstein noted, pulled something fairly long and slender out of his own bag, then kept it concealed behind his leg.
Soon enough, one of the other deportees came toward the food-dispenser, spotted its two unofficial guards, and hesitated. Bronstein nodded pleasantly to him, and Jablonski did likewise. The man, reassured and hungry, hurried to the Protocarb dispenser, shoved his bowl under the nozzle and pressed the obvious button. In a moment the nozzle filled the bowl with semi-liquid tan paste, which was comprised of the processed remains of local non-poisonous wildlife. The man took the bowl, grimaced at the contents, but hurried away.
“We get to keep the bowls?” Bronstein asked.
“Yeah,” Jablonski considered. “An’ we oughtta cache more when we can.”
“Could be useful,” Bronstein agreed as the next deportee came up.
This one, a pathetically scrawny Hindu, gave them both deep but fast bows before jabbing the button. After that, the rest of the deportees began forming a line. The line moved fast, smoothly and quietly, everybody taking their bowls and returning to the circle around the heater to eat.
First custom established, Bronstein noted with approval.
Then, sure enough, someone started trouble further down the line. It was none other than Hassan, shoving Rajnamurti aside as he pushed his way into the line ahead of him. Rajna promptly fell down and began to wail.
Bronstein swapped looks with Jablonski, and both of them silently set off down the line. Everyone else stood perfectly still, keeping out of their way.
They reached Hassan just as he was kicking Rajna and cursing loudly. He looked up at the last minute, in time to see only Bronstein. Hassan raised his hands and started howling something—in Arabic, unfortunately for him—while Jablonski grabbed him. Between the two of them, they picked up Hassan and threw him a good fifteen feet, well out of the line. Bronstein reached down to help Rajnamurti to his feet while Jablonski kept an eye on Hassan. Bronstein noticed the old woman with the muscles watching him with a calculating look.
Hassan shifted into English and howled: “Racists! They’re racists! See how they’re oppressing me!”
Jablonski gave a booming laugh, then answered. “Gee, I didn’t know ‘asshole’ was a race.”
“You’re not a race; you’re a punk,” Bronstein added.
“Amen,” growled Old Muscles, taking half a step forward.
Surprised, Bronstein gave her a nod of acknowledgment.
Hassan stepped back further and scanned the line, looking for sympathizers. Finding none, he went stomping off to the end of the line muttering imprecations that nobody bothered to translate. Bronstein looked Rajna up and down and asked: “Can you keep walking til you get fed?”
Rajna nodded jerkily and shuffled forward to prove it. Bronstein and Jablonski turned and paced back up the line to their starting point. A woman was standing at the food machine, collecting her bowlful. She likewise nodded to the two of them and moved off, but not very fast.
Judging that the time was right, Bronstein looked to Jablonski and asked him-just loudly enough that the next man in line could hear: “Why do you think Hassan picked on harmless little Rajna?”
Jablonski favored him with an eloquent eyebrow. “Probably ‘cause he was easy pickings.”
The man between them, tall and skinny and balding, keeping an eye on his filling bowl, cut in: “Don’t you know? Muslims have been picking on Hindus for centuries. That’s why Pakistan exists. When the Brits gave up India, they carved off Pakistan to give to the Muslims, hoping they’d leave the rest of India alone.”
Bronstein feigned surprise and asked: “How do you know?”
The man shrugged. “I used to be a high school history teacher.”
Right on cue, Jablonski asked: “Well, damn, how’d you wind up here?”
The man gave them a humorless smile. “I made the mistake of teaching real history, which wasn’t Politically Correct. That’s all it took.”
“Damn,” Bronstein echoed respectfully.
As the ex-teacher turned away with his full bowl, Jablonski flicked Bronstein a look that clearly meant: recruit that one. Bronstein nodded again, considering that between Jablonski, Old Muscles and History-Man, he had the beginnings of an organizing committee.
*
*
*
The local Kennicott managers, as proven by the announcement that came blatting through the loudspeakers an hour later, had the sense to start with building the miners’ prefab housing. They also rattled off the workday shifts, name by name.
So far so good, Bronstein considered as he spooned up the last of his bowlful of tasteless food-paste. Easy to remember the time and their own names. But then the management—whoever the fool was who’d drawn this duty—went that one step further into stupidity, and began listing The Rules of Behavior. Seeing the looks of bewilderment and annoyance among the other deportees, Bronstein knew that none of them could memorize all that bureaucratic crap.
This was the opening he’d been looking for.
Bronstein flicked a look to Jablonski, set down his emptied bowl, got up and went to the door of the tent. The seal was stubborn, but he got it to work. It was cold as hell outside, and the light was dim and reddish, but he could easily pick out the camp’s guard command-post—the only solid building around—and make his way toward it.
On the way to the guard-shack he saw a small animal that somewhat resembled a possum waddling past. He recognized it as a “drillbit,” and gave it a wide berth. Such creatures, he considered, might come in handy. He’d have to check his computer again and learn if the beasts were edible. For that matter, it was possible that every plant and animal on this world—edible or poisonous, dangerous or medicinal—could be useful. By then he reached the shack.
Sure enough, a guard—Kennicott’s, all right—stopped him at the door.
“We need a copy of the rules in writing,” Bronstein explained, carefully not being antagonistic, not yet. “Nobody can remember all that stuff.”
“You can’t come in,” the guard huffed, actually pulling himself up to his best height. “Orders.”
Smothering a chuckle, Bronstein pulled himself to attention and formally intoned: “May I Please Have That Order In Writing, Sir?”
That made the guard blink, think, gruffly tell Bronstein to wait right there, and disappear into the doorway. The noise of a radio wafted out, telling of a .6% rise in Kennicott shares and an increase in lower-ma
nagement stock-options. Bronstein dutifully waited, hoping to get a look at the interior of the HQ building. He had no luck there; after a few minutes the guard came out, blocking the doorway, and shoved a roll of plastifilm into Bronstein’s hands. “That’s the regs,” he said shortly. “Everybody’s gotta obey ’em.”
Of course, Bronstein thought, giving the guard no more than a brief nod. He turned back to the barracks-tent, already studying the close-printed pages.
Jablonski casually stood guard and blocked sight while Bronstein fed the sheets, one by one, through the computer’s scan-slot. “See anything interesting?” he asked quietly, tracking his vision around the tent and its occupants.
“Haven’t really had time to look at it, but there’s bound to be something.” Bronstein looked up. “Why? You notice something going on?”
“Hassan’s gonna be trouble,” said Jablonski, not taking his eyes off the scene. “He’s been goin’ around looking for other Arabs and givin’ ’em an earful of crap. I could only make out the word ‘kufar’, but that means ‘infidel’, so I can guess what he’s up to.”
“How are the other Arabs responding?” Bronstein asked, pulling the scanned sheets out of the other side of the comp.
“With no excitement,” Jablonski smiled. “My guess is, they’d love to get rid of ‘im before he jolly-jihads ’em into stickin’ their necks out.”
“Uh huh.” Bronstein turned off the comp and stuffed it back in his duffel. “You see any other knots forming?”
“Yeah. Rajna went to huddle with other Hindu-boys, all of ’em lookin’ as miserable as him. The women made their own camp, with Blades and Muscles takin’ turns on sentry-duty; they got Mama Mouth posted at their border to sound off if anybody comes close. The black guys’re still tryin’ to get it together, and it looks like they’ve decided on English. The Latinos’re collectin’ around the heater, but they’re still squabblin’ among ’emselves. The Asian families’re keepin’ as far from each other as they can while sittin’ along the same strip of wall.”
Bronstein peered at the clutch of oriental families, making some guesses. “They won’t get together unless some bunch of non-Asians picks on all of them together.” He sighed, arching his back until the joints creaked. “The women look likeliest, but where’s History-Man?”
“Over there with ’em, talking to Blades. I’ll bet he offered ‘is services as a teacher.”
“So much the better,” Bronstein smiled. “Hold the fort awhile, will you? I’ve got to go do some organizing.”
“My turn next,” Jablonski grinned after him.
Bronstein approached the knot of women and children with the roll of plastifilm sheets held in front of him, clearly heading for History-Man, so that even Mama Mouth had no more to complain of than: “Whatchu want here, huh?” He noted that Blades—her jacket’s hood pulled back to reveal her dark-brown hair that matched her eyes—only regarded him with a slit-eyed look and kept her hands in her pocket. Old Muscles, at the other side of the small crowd, watched expressionlessly and said nothing. He gave Blades a brief polite nod, caught History-Man’s eye and held out the sheets to him. “Hey,” he asked, “Can you make sense out of this?”
History-Man bent over the sheets, studying them closely. “The rules of conduct for the lot of us,” he announced. “Hmm, so… They’re not setting a minimum workload yet, but you can bet that will follow. They’re demanding eight hours, but allowing for overtime. The usual bans on fighting, getting drunk, using drugs, gambling, thieving—Hey, what’s this? They don’t want us ‘wandering off the grounds’, whatever the ‘grounds’ are. What’s that supposed to mean?”
Here it comes. Bronstein kept his expression solemn as he sat down close to the man, noting that Blades leaned closer to listen. “It means they don’t want us heading out into the woods and finding out what’s safe to eat,” he said.
Now, drop the bomb. “Lucky I got a list of the edible plants and animals before I got here. We don’t have to experiment; we’ll know.”
Then he sat back and waited for that information to do its work.
“We won’t be tied to the food-dispenser,” Blades made the obvious conclusion. Her voice was scratchy, as if something had damaged her throat not long ago.
“If we can get out from under the guards’ eyes,” History-Man added.
“We could start planning distractions,” Bronstein said neutrally. “How many friends have you got? And I don’t think anyone expects the kids to work in the mines.” He added just enough of a questioning tone to his voice to make them consider that possibility. “We just need to keep the guards busy while one or two of us at a time slip off…..” He gave an eloquent shrug.
By the time he got back to Jablonski there was a lightness to his step and a merry gleam in his eye that told the whole story.
“So,” Jablonski grinned, eyeing him, “We’ve got our organizin’ committee.”
“And our first project,” Bronstein smiled back. “It’s downright lucky that the bosses put us on different shifts.”
“Hmmm. And didja notice,” Jablonski ruminated, scratching his chin, “that the only way the bosses communicate with us is through the loudspeaker and the guards?”
“They don’t want to get their hands dirty,” Bronstein shrugged. “Business as usual. So?”
“Have ya seen any evidence that the managers are anywhere on this godforsaken moon?”
“Come to think of it, I haven’t. So where are they? On a circling satellite, or ship?”
“More likely a ship, so they could cut out fast if the scandal broke. Point is, they’re carefully givin’ us no face ta know, no specific target ta hit. If we got rambunctious, the only real people we could hit would be the guards, and they’re cheap foot-soldiers, easily replaced.”
“Do you think the guards know that?” Bronstein pondered.
“If they did,” Jablonski smiled, “It just might make ’em careful about how hard they push us.”
*
*
*
The first shift—Bronstein’s—began with the rising of the distant sun, its thin blue light adding second shadows under the red light of Cat’s Eye but doing nothing to reduce the cold. It was disconcerting, and the Hindus and the Arabs were already wilting. The guards had to prod them toward the tent where the tools and materials waited, while the radio in the guard-shack warbled about a decrease in debentures. Bronstein heard one of the Arabs howling in despair: “But which way is Mecca? Which way is Earth?” Nobody bothered to answer him, and Bronstein made another mental note.
The housing, as the guards pointed out, was nothing but balloon-tents and plasticrete. The deportees were supposed to inflate a tent, smear it over with plasticrete, let the ‘crete set, then deflate the balloon, add a thin plastic slab for a door—and voilá, a house. Nothing was said about individual heating units, let alone anything else. Bronstein made more mental notes while the other deportees wailed, then grumbled, but worked. He also gauged the distance to the nearest forest and the bank of the wide river. The soil, as he’d guessed, was thick with clay. It would be possible to make bricks, someday when the guards weren’t watching. It would also be possible to sneak away to the woods when darkness came.
The work progressed, though there were the usual arguments. The first concerned just who would go up the rickety ladders to smear plasticrete on the roofs of the tents, an argument the Hindus lost on the grounds that they were the smallest and skinniest, therefore the lightest. The tent-roofs held, and the plasticrete was spread quickly. The next argument concerned breaks, which—as a couple of white guys pointed out—allowed fifteen minutes of rest for every two hours of work. The guards noisily disagreed, and the deportees did nothing overt to counteract them, but the work slowed down noticeably. Bronstein mentally reviewed the list of rules and calculated that White Mutiny would be an effective tactic here.
The third argument concerned lunch, which the guards insisted would be brought to the working team b
y the off-shift personnel rather than allow the work-teams to go into the main tent. That one nearly caused a fight to break out. Bronstein solved it by leading a couple of interested burly guys quietly behind the guards, so that when one guard happened to look around he noticed that he was surrounded. Caught with the possibility of an all-out fight which they might possibly lose, the guards capitulated. Bronstein wondered if they’d already figured out that they were cannon-fodder.
The working team marched triumphantly back into the main tent, some of them surreptitiously slapping Bronstein on the back and shoulders. The deportees in the tent, those that weren’t sleeping, eyed the team thoughtfully—and Bronstein noted that Old Muscles was among them.
He led the way back out of the tent exactly one hour after they’d marched in, knowing it wasn’t wise to push one’s luck too soon. The others in the shift followed him with no words spoken.
The rest of the day’s work went smoothly and well, two hours on, fifteen minutes off, two hours on, then set down tools and head back to the main tent. The guards didn’t try to interfere; they could count hours as well as the work-shift could, and besides, there were now four shelters half-finished. Bronstein did the calculations as he went to waken Jablonski: four shelters per shift, three shifts per day, 120 houses in ten days. Would the Kennicott bosses have the sense to wait that long before sending the workers out to dig in the mines?
*
*
*
“Old Muscles wants to talk to you,” Jablonski said quietly as he slouched past Bronstein’s campsite. “She kept watch, by the way, while I was asleep.”
“Right,” said Bronstein, getting up. Obliging a debt was one way to encourage an alliance. And yes, there was Blades, casually keeping an eye on their gear. Good. He paced over to the women’s campsite, observing that History-Man was camped, asleep, nearby. Ah, very good.