by John F. Carr
The muscular old woman waited for Bronstein to sit down before speaking. “How’s it going out there?” was all she said, though implying much.
“The houses are plasticrete huts,” he said without preamble, “But at this rate we’ll turn out a dozen a day. We can get away to the woods with only a little guard-distraction. Hmm, we’ll also need some sort of toilets and baths pretty soon, but there’s been no word about them yet.”
“I noticed some of the guards pumping out the porta-johns.” She smiled sourly. “I suspect the Kennicott boys don’t expect us to ask for anything else.”
“Starting tomorrow,” Bronstein dared, “The awake off-shift has got to start digging slit-trenches, at least. And we’ve got to make plans for a wash house. If we start it on our own, Kennicott might have the sense to pick up the idea and run with it.”
“And if not?” Muscles cocked her head at him.
“Then we finish the job ourselves.”
“And if the Kenny guards complain?”
“We dump them head-first into the trenches,” Bronstein smiled. “But I suspect they’ll have better sense.”
The old woman nodded slowly, studying him. “How many have you got organized already?” she asked.
Bronstein lifted an appreciative eyebrow. “About half of the first shift, sort of. Plus Jablonski and you and History-Man, I think.”
“That means also Lucinda and Yolanda…” She jerked a thumb toward Blades and Mama Mouth, now sleeping. “And we can swing the rest of the women. Nothing succeeds like success, so once we start making life easier, most of the men will come along. Not all of them, though.”
“No,” Bronstein agreed, running his gaze along the knots of clustered Arabs and Latinos. “We’ll have to take precautions. Have the women had any trouble?”
“There was some on the ship, but I—and then Lucinda—put an end to it. That’s when we started organizing.”
“Uh huh,” Bronstein grinned, making a good guess. “Who were you with, back on Earth?”
“The ILGWU,” Muscles said proudly. “Oldest continuing union in the worldor worlds.”
“There’s one older,” Bronstein smiled.
Muscles did a double-take. “Sheesh,” she almost whispered, “We thought you guys were all dead!”
“We hear that a lot.”
“Okay. So, how do we organize our shift when we get on?”
Bronstein quietly outlined everything he’d done with his shift, adding some suggestions.
*
*
*
Within five days they had it down to a science. Without any specific words said or contract made, the guards understood that each shift would work two hours on, then fifteen minutes off, two more hours, then an hour for lunch, two more hours and another fifteen-minute break, two more hours and then back to the main tent. During this time, each shift would reliably put up four sturdy shelters. If this schedule meant that each shift was actually putting in nine and a half hours per day, that didn’t much matter given Haven’s peculiar calendar.
It was also understood that the deportees would, during their off-shift, borrow tools to dig latrines and put up a wash house. They would also go “off the grounds” into the forest to gather wood to heat the wash fires. Between them, the organized deportees found enough tools to cut wood, build washtubs, dig fire-pits, dig drains and put up privacy walls. They also came up with enough kettles to heat water.
The guards left the whole construction alone, and what the Kennicott managers thought they didn’t express; the company was indeed keeping a low and faceless profile. The guard-shack radio spoke only of Kennicott thwarting an attempted takeover of a subsidiary by Huang Manufacturing.
Meanwhile, the lines between the organized and the non-organized began to show. All the Asians and half the Latinos had unofficially allied with Bronstein’s as-yet-unnamed group. The other half of the Latinos and almost all the Arabs remained separate, and didn’t ally with each other, either.
Bronstein had managed to print out a hard copy description of the edible plants of Haven, and while the guards kept watch on the work-shifts, the women and children managed to “wander off the grounds,” get into the woods and hunt for food. They also managed to make wooden spears to keep the land gators away, but the beasts didn’t show themselves.
So far, nobody occupied the finished huts; they had no heating units, no electricity and no water. There were growing questions and grumbles over when that would change. There were also the first questions about wages.
At that point one of the non-organized Latino guys came swaggering over and yelled at the lot of them: “You think you such hot shit, eh? You go makin’ a union here, maricons? Hey, who make the strike that get us all deported, eh?” He spat at the heater. “That for damn youn-yuns!”
Bronstein had been planning his answer for months; he laughed good and hard. “Yeah, sure,” he barked back. “It was the union that called the cops and got us hauled away, huh? It was the union cut wages and bennies to what we couldn’t live on, right? Hey, fool: if it wasn’t for the union, those cops wouldn’t have rounded us up to deport; they would have shot us outright! You think it hasn’t been done before? You think the rich don’t kill the poor when it suits them?”
“And what stands between the bosses and us?” Muscles added. “You think it’s the law? You damn fool, the bosses buy the law, all the time. The only power we’ve got is numbers, and how do you think we use that? We organize!”
The Latino guy started to turn, opened his mouth, then shut it again. He did that a few times, then swore in Spanish and walked away. The rest of the crowd laughed quietly, a knowing ugly laugh, and then went back to planning.
Old Muscles borrowed the use of a shovel and pickaxe, and disappeared into the forest for long periods of time. When she returned at shift-end she didn’t say where she’d been, and Bronstein didn’t push her for explanations.
*
*
*
At the end of the last shift on the fifth day, the organized deportees politely refused to go to their assigned work, claiming it was the weekend and they had other things to do. The guards had the sense not to confront the laborers openly, but went into their shack and called Management for guidance—briefly cutting off a radio report about reduced interest on reserve financing.
Apparently the Kennicott bosses had the sense to stick to a standard work week, for the guards did nothing further. The organized deportees took the carefully measured two days to finish the wash house. They also went off to the forest, on the excuse of gathering firewood, and came back with edible plants more often than wood. Blades quietly planted some of the gathered plants in a patch just inside the forest’s edge, marked off with a fence of sticks. A few deportees went down to the river and experimented with fishhooks, nets and fish-traps.
Bronstein quietly hunted among the deportees until he found a Latino woman who’d been a chemist before the sweep. He quietly gave her a copy of the medicinal plants printout and recommended that she start hunting for antiseptic, antibiotic and—especially pain-killing chemicals that could be made from the local wildlife.
The guards did nothing but watch idly and listen to the radio, which in between bursts of static warbled about management retirement bonuses and a 1% tariff reduction.
The non-organized deportees scattered and wandered, some inspecting the finished huts, some hanging around the heater in the main tent, some exploring up and down the riverbank. A few of them got into fights, and were trounced by the guards. A few wandered into the forest and failed to re-appear. One of them, who had a reputation for bothering the women, was found behind a hut with his throat raggedly slashed, about which no one knew anything. The guards soon gave up asking questions, and hauled the body away. What became of it nobody knew for certain, but the rumor spread that it had been hauled off into the forest to feed the land gators.
The only problem came near the end of the weekend, when one of the guar
ds tried to get one of the women alone as she was coming back from the wash house. Bronstein, making his unofficial sentry-rounds, saw the fool trying to push the woman into the gap between the main tent and the tool shed. He also saw that the woman was standing her ground and smiling evilly. He further saw that she was Blades, and she was reaching for something under her coat.
Oh hell, not yet! he thought, hurrying toward them. We can’t kill any of the guards, let the bosses know we’re dangerous, not yet— “Hey, you!” he bellowed, running toward them. “Let her alone!”
And damned if both of them didn’t turn to him with looks of guilty disappointment.
The guard started to take a bullying pose and bellow something about minding his own business, but Bronstein didn’t slow down. He pushed the guard aside, grabbed Blades and forcefully shoved her back out of the gap. “Not yet!” was all he had time to whisper in her ear.
At that point the fool guard charged at him—or started to. Bronstein only dropped low and stepped back, and the idiot fell right over him. All Bronstein had to do was stand up quickly, and the guard went tumbling into the dirt, head first, neatly knocking himself out.
“Scram!” Bronstein snapped at Blades. “Don’t you understand? We can’t kill any of them yet! We can’t afford to tip our hand.”
Surprised, Blades condescended to walk along beside him. “What we gonna do ‘bout that creep, then?” she asked.
“If he’s too stupid to take the hint, we’ll arrange an accident for him—maybe stun him hard and drag him out in the woods for the land gators or stobors to find—but that will take planning.” Bronstein paused for breath; the action had taken a surprising amount of energy.
“So meanwhile, what?” Lucinda-of-the-Blades asked. “I just let that craphead do what he likes?”
“Hell, no. Just don’t go anywhere alone. He may be an idiot, but he’ll have more sense than to try that merde in front of witnesses.”
“Bastard,” she muttered. “Company man.”
“Target-man,” Bronstein corrected. “Cannon-fodder. We concentrate our outrage on him, and when he’s gone our will-to-resist suffers. The real power stays carefully faceless. See?”
Lucinda nodded slowly, a look of enlightenment spreading over her face. “Smart dog test,” she muttered.
“Dog?”
“You want to know how smart a dog is, have a man beat it with a stick. Stupid dog bites the stick. Smart dog bites the man behind the stick.”
“You got it,” Bronstein smiled. “Now let’s go back to looking harmless.”
*
*
*
With the exception of the stupid guard—who somehow managed to disappear in the forest—the pattern repeated over the next six weeks, by which time there were several small gardens at the edge of the forest, the wash house was in round-the-clock operation, and over three hundred huts had been built. It appeared the Company was building additional units in advance for the next shipload of transportees.
At the beginning of first shift on the day after the last weekend, a small delegation of the workers went to the guard shack and asked the guards to forward a question to Management, namely: when would the huts be provided with heating units, wiring and plumbing?
The guards pondered that while the radio spoke in awed tones about Kennicott lobbyists persuading the CoDominium to redirect BuReloc shipments to worlds with successful mining colonies.
At the next change of shift the miners got their answer, this time over the loudspeaker in the main tent. The loud and distorted voice announced that in two days another ship was due, and this one would bring a cargo of heating units and industrial equipment. After the cargo was unloaded, the work-teams would put together the camp’s power-plant.
“They didn’t say anything ‘bout plumbing,” Jablonski commented as soon as the announcement ended.
“We shouldna built the wash house an’ the la-trines,” Mama Mouth opined, loudly. “Now we done it, they figure they don’ have to.”
“And where would we have washed, and crapped, this last month?” Blades growled.
“We can get wash water out of the river, but if we’re tied to the food-dispenser for drinking-water…” Bronstein let the sentence trail off, and let his organizing committee think about the implications.
“There are ways to purify the river water,” History-Man commented quietly. “You can do it with charcoal, fresh from the fire, or just distill it. The problem will be doing that in large volumes, without the company finding out.”
“There’s a stream in the forest that runs into the river,” Muscles volunteered. “We can set up our purification plant there, and the company won’t know.”
Bronstein smiled and pulled out his latest gem of information, a close satellite-map of the river, the settlement and its immediate surroundings. “Can you mark where it is on this?” he asked, handing it to Muscles.
She peered at the map, nodded once, pulled a small piece of charcoal out of a pocket and marked the spot. “We’ll need to start making decent pens and ink soon,” she muttered.
“Won’t do much good until we can make paper,” History-man noted. “For now, we can make do with clay tablets and carved sticks.”
“What I’m wondering,” Bronstein pondered, “Is when they want us to start digging the mines? They’ve got the machinery in that big tent down at the end of the row. They’ve got their labor-force and more than sufficient housing. So, when do they start?”
“After that next shipment comes in, I’ll bet,” said Jablonski, peering over Muscles’ shoulder to see where the hidden stream was supposed to be.
*
*
*
Two days later the ship did indeed arrive, and many questions were answered, while the guard shack radio wailed about upheavals in the options market.
Yes, there was a cargo of small heating units and some industrial machinery. There were no plumbing supplies nor any machinery for making the same. There was a lot of mining equipment. The deportees got a good look at everything, since they were the ones who unloaded it. There was a large meeting around the main tent heater that night, with everyone non-organized politely but firmly excluded.
“We deal with the water ourselves,” said Muscles, carefully not saying anything specific. “Next problem is…making the tools to make the goods. Anybody got an idea on that?”
It was Rajna, of all people, who raised his hand and answered. “Fire that cooks clay pots can…cook metal,” he managed in pretty fair English. “I was potter once. I know to build that kind fire.”
“All right!” Blades enthused. “Come the weekend, we’ll help you do that.”
Rajna pulled his hand down, looking absurdly pleased.
“What about ‘lectric power?” Mama Yolanda the Mouth grumbled. “When we gonna get that? And how?”
“We build the power station like they want us to,” answered Jablonski. “Then we string wires to our own houses.”
“What if the company won’t give us wire, or boxes, or tools?” Muscles noted.
“We make the tools ourselves,” History-Man answered. “There’s metal ore in these rocks, if anyone knows how to identify it.”
“I do,” piped up one of the white miners. “But what do we do for coal?”
“Charcoal will do, if you get it hot enough,” History-Man went on, “And we can get it hot with a blacksmith’s bellows. I know how to make that.”
“Metal…” Bronstein noted, thinking of other possibilities.
“And just when and how,” Muscles thought to ask, “Do we get assigned the houses we’ve made?”
Of course nobody had an answer for that, but it set everyone thinking.
*
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*
Within a week the power-plant was up and running. The next day a small delegation from the first shift asked the guards to ask the management about assignment of houses. The answer came by loudspeaker announcement at second shift change; th
e huts were allotted much as job-shifts had been, and not everybody was happy, particularly women with children. Mama Mouth put it succinctly: “How’m I gonna raise three kids in a one-room hut, I ask you?”
The loudspeaker went on to announce that next morning—such as mornings were on Haven—the shift teams would proceed to the pit-head where the machinery was assembled, and the actual mining would begin. Nothing was said about electric power or plumbing or making more huts.
The guard-shack news radio chirped happily about another .3% rise in shares.
The organizing committee made plans.
Next day the guards led Bronstein’s team down the short tractor-made road to the low hill beyond the miners’ housing, assigned half of them to continue building huts and the rest to come help with the big machinery. Already the computerized digging machines were at work scraping off the topsoil and piling it to one side, and everyone could see the dull red clay beneath. Someone made a comment about that being where the food-bowls had come from, and nobody contradicted him. One of the guards pointed to a jumble of equipment and managed to explain that the miners were supposed to assemble it into a long slanting trough that led into one of the big immobile machines.
“Ore refinery,” Bronstein explained to the men on either side of him. “Once they dig down to the rock, they’ll shovel it in here. We make sure it all goes into that big hatch there. The machine sorts out the hafnium ore and spits out the rest.”
Sure enough, once the trough linked together, the guards went down the line handing out shovels. A few minutes later the first load of raw ore was dumped into the trough’s top. The miners sighed understanding and began shoveling it down the trough to the refinery’s maw.
It took less than a quarter hour of shoveling for one of the Latino dudes to ask: “Ore-digger runs itself. Refinery runs itself. All computer-run. Why couldn’t they have a machine do this? A…belt? Assembly line…? That will leave most of us free to make more houses. So why not?”
“Electric power costs more than our sweat does,” Bronstein replied. “The machines can do big jobs, specific jobs, but we can do the small odd stuff. It isn’t ‘cost effective’ to make machines for that.”