The Final Encyclopedia

Chapter Six

The Guest House in Halla Station proved to be a form of barracks for those who were not employees of local companies or offices. Hal learned, somewhat grimly, that the Guest House had been open to him all the time, since he had credit to pay for it. The Holding Area was only for job seekers, or former miners rehiring who had no credit. Everything at the Area, including the beer in the canteen, was free. This also included the package of food Jennison had charged him for. The Holding Area, in short, was for the Coby version of indigents - or those who knew no better, like himself.

"Hell," said Sosyetr, as they sat over a late meal in the clean and comfortable meal room of the Guest House, "didn't you ever think to ask the interviewer at Halla Station what you could buy?"

"No," said Hal. "I just took for granted he'd tell me whatever I needed to know. I was stupid."

"Sure," said Sosyetr, nodding. "You were stupid, all right. Stupidest twenty-year-old I ever met."

Hal looked up quickly from the chunk of processed meat he was cutting. But if there had been a grin on the older man's face, he had been too slow to surprise it.

He finished eating - Sosyetr had already finished a much smaller meal and was sitting with a cup of Coby coffee, watching him - and pushed the plate aside.

"Sost," he said, for the other had said this was the version he preferred to hear of a last name most people mispronounced - and he was not partial to Hans - "what happens from the time I report for job assignment to roll-call?"

This time he did see Sost grin.

"Going to ask some questions now?"

"From now on," said Hal.

Sost nodded.

''All right," he said. He drank from his coffee cup and set it down again. "You'll show up there tomorrow morning and everybody who can stand on their feet'll be out in front of the office. Agent'll call the roll, mark off anyone not there, and hand out assignments on the basis of the work orders he got since roll call the morning before. That's about it."

"Then what? What if I'm called for a work assignment?"

"Then you get travel papers with directions and travel passes credited against your new job; and you take off for whatever company needed you enough to hire you."

"And when I get there?"

"You'll be assigned to a team on one of the shifts - unless the team captain throws you back. If that happens, they'll bounce you around until they find a team that'll take you."

"What if no one wants me?"

"You?" Sost looked at him. "Not likely. But if they did the company'd give you a week's wages and dump you at the nearest Holding Area. You get to start all over again."

He got up to get himself another cup of coffee from the wall dispenser and sat back down at the table they were sharing.

"Sost," said Hal, "what are the things that make you think I'm younger than twenty?"

Sost stared at him for a long moment.

"You want to know what to look out for?" he said at last. "I'll tell you. The first thing is, keep your mouth shut. Sure, I know your voice changed four-five years ago; but every time you say something you talk like a kid. Hell, you think like a kid. So don't talk, if you can help it."

Hal nodded.

"All right," he said. "I won't."

"And take your time," said Sost. "Don't start talking to everyone you meet like he was an old friend. I don't mean act suspicious all the time, either. Just - hold back a little. Wait a bit. Don't go jumping around with your body, either. You get a little older, you won't have that kind of energy to waste. Sit still when you sit. But the big thing is - watch that talking. Just get in the habit of not doing it."

"You talk a fair amount," Hal said.

"There you go," Sost said. "That's just the sort of thing a kid would say. That's just the wrong thing. What's it change things for you, what I do? As far as me talking, I know what to say. I can make noise with my mouth all day long and not give anything away I don't want to. You, you give everything you've got away, every time you open your lips."

Hal nodded.

"All right," he said.

"That's better," said Sost. "Now, what're you planning to do tomorrow?"

"Wait and see," said Hal.

"All right." Sost nodded, in his turn. "Good for you. You're learning. But I mean, what're you going to do about those kips back at the Holding Area?"

Hal shrugged.

"That's even better. You'll do," said Sost. He got up. "I'm folding up. That's another difference. You grow up, and you know there's a next day coming. You don't forget it."

After the older man had left, Hal sat for a little while, enjoying the clean smells and the privacy of the dining room, in which he was now alone. Then he went to bed behind a locked door in the comfortable room his credit had been able to provide for him.

A knocking at his door seemed to wake him the minute he had closed his eyes. He got up, unlocked and opened the door, and found Sost dressed and waiting.

"What time is it?" Hal asked thickly.

"Seven-thirty," Sost said. "Or don't you want breakfast?"

They had breakfast in the same meal room and Sost drove him out to the Holding Area.

"I'll wait," said Sost, parking the truck when they got there just at the 8:30 roll-call time. "You're a natural to get assigned today. But if you don't, I can give you a lift back to the Guest House before I go on."

Hal started to get out of the truck to join the men standing before the office.

"Sit still," said Sost, under his breath. "What the hell, you can hear from here, can't you? What'd I tell you last night about jumping?"

Hal settled back in his seat in the truck. He sat silently with Sost, waiting with the standing crowd for Jennison to put in an appearance. He had time to study the others who were waiting; and he found himself looking for the man who had attacked him. But the wedge-shaped face and long body did not seem to be there. Perhaps the other man had been hurt more badly than Hal had thought… The thought chilled him, but after Sost's words the night before, he did not say anything to the older man.

He started to get out of the truck again.

"Sit still, I said," growled Sost softly.

"I've got to get my bag - if it's still there."

"After."

Hal sank back in his seat. He went back to searching the crowd for faces he could recognize. He picked out the man who had been doing the carving, but was not able to identify certainly any of the others from the cage. He gradually became aware that none of those in the crowd were meeting his eyes. In fact, the carver had turned away when Hal had started watching him.

Experimentally, he picked out a man he was sure he had never seen before and stared only at him. The man, apparently casually, first turned away from Hal's gaze; then, when Hal continued to watch, the other moved deeper into the crowd, stepping behind other, taller individuals and using them as screens until they moved, until he had been herded by Hal's unrelenting watch to the far edge of the crowd.

The door opened finally, and Jennison appeared. It was almost a quarter to nine. He was carrying a hard copy printout in his hand, and without looking at the crowd he began to read off names. Hal's was the third to be read. When Jennison had finished, he looked up and saw the truck with the two of them in it.

"Sost!" he called, and waved. Sost waved back. Jennison turned and went back into the office.

"You know him?" Hal asked.

"No," said Sost. "Looks like he knows me, though. Lots do."

The crowd before the office was beginning to disintegrate slowly as disappointed members of it began to break off toward the cages or the canteen and those whose names had been called moved up to cluster just outside the door.

"No hurry," Sost said, as Hal again started to get out of the truck. "Let the others go in first. Now's a good time to get that bag of yours."

"If it's still there," said Hal again, glumly.

Sost laughed, but said nothing.

Hal got out of the truck and, tensing instinctively, approached the men, who were still in a loose gathering before the office. They parted unobtrusively to let him through, with none of them looking directly at him in the process. Beyond them, the corridor between the rows of cages was empty, and the cages themselves were deserted except for a heavily inert body here and there on a bunk. He went to the cage he had been in the night before, stepped inside, and looked for the bunk he had occupied.

His bag was there, just where he had left it. He took it back to the truck. There were still a number of men waiting before the office door and as he came through the space before the building, one came out and another entered. Hal climbed back into the truck.

"It was there, all right," he said. "I can't believe it."

Sost chuckled, this time quietly.

"Who of them'd take it?" he asked.

Hal looked curiously at the older man; but playing his new game of speaking as little as possible, he waited, instead of asking what the older man had meant. Either Sost would tell him before the older man left, or the answer would emerge otherwise.

He sat comfortably with Sost until the last man had come out of the office, then got down from the truck and crossed the space to the office door, himself. He stepped in and found Jennison in position at his desk behind the counter. But this time Jennison got up, smiling, and came to the other side of the counter.

"Here's your assignment papers," Jennison said, handing them over. "You're hired by the Yow Dee Mine, Templar Mining Company. You ought to be there in two hours by tube. I gave you a good assignment."

Hal did not answer immediately. He had not liked Jennison on first encounter. He liked him no more now; and he was certain that the apparent generosity and friendliness must tie in with some advantage Jennison was hoping to gain from him. The thing would be to try and find out what that advantage was. "Such situations," Walter had told him once, "always develop into bargaining sessions. And the first secret of successful bargaining is to make the other party do the proposing."

"You charged me for a meal, last night," Hal said, picking up the assignment papers.

"That's right, I did," said Jennison. He leaned on the counter and continued to smile. "Officially, of course, I shouldn't have done it. If I'd known more about you, I wouldn't have. But in a job like this, you take what you can. I wouldn't do it again; but now the credit's entered with central bookkeeping, it'd be a little awkward to fix it without upsetting the accountants at headquarters. And I get along by getting along with people. Now, I did you a big favor with the mine I assigned you to - ask your friend Sost about that if you don't believe me. Why don't you do me the small favor of forgetting that small charge to your credit? Maybe someday we can do a little business, and I can knock the amount of it off a price."

"And maybe we won't do any business," said Hal.

Jennison laughed.

"On Coby everybody does business with everybody. As I say, ask your friend Sost."

"Maybe I'm different," said Hal.

He had chosen the words at random; but his senses, stretched to their greatest alertness, suddenly convinced him that he had triggered a reaction from Jennison with that last answer. Of course, Jennison could be interpreting what he had just said as a threat… Hal suddenly remembered that he had come here to Coby to hide, and he was abruptly conscious of the danger of insisting too much on any difference he might have. He spoke again quickly.

"Anyway, I don't expect to come through here again."

"There's always a chance," said Jennison. "I don't know myself what might bring us to talking again; but I always like to part friends with everybody. All right?"

"I don't make friends that easily."

Jennison showed a trace of impatience.

"I'm just pointing out I may be able to do you some good, someday!" he said. "You'll maybe find out you want to do business with me, after all. It'll work a lot better then if we're already - all right, not friends, then - but at least friendly."

Hal watched the man closely. Jennison was sounding sincere. Hal could check with Sost, but he was beginning to be strongly convinced that the agent must have some specific stock-in-trade which the events here had convinced him he might be able to sell to Hal, someday; and he was trying to pave the way for that sale, in advance.

Hal put the assignment papers safely in an inside jacket pocket.

"What happened to that man who jumped me last night?" he asked.

"Who?" Jennison raised an eyebrow, turned about and ran his eye down a list of what seemed to be names on a printout on his desk. "… Khef? Oh, yes, Khef. He's all right. In the infirmary. Slight concussion; probably be back here in a day or two - though they say they may want to hold him for some psychiatrics."

Hal turned and went out the door. He had to struggle against a lifetime of training to keep from saying goodbye; but he managed it.

Outside, the space between the canteen and the office was now empty. Things seemed to be going full blast once more in the canteen. He walked over and got in the truck with Sost.

"What does 'psychiatrics' mean here?" he asked.

"Head-tests. For crazies." Sost looked at him. "What's your assignment?"

"Yow Dee Mine," said Hal. "Jennison seemed to think he'd done me a particular favor."

Sost whistled briefly.

"Could be," he said. "It's a good mine. Honest management. Good team leaders - or used to be good team leaders, last I heard, anyway."

Sost raised the truck from the ground on its air jets and turned it back toward Halla Station.

"What are team leaders?" Hal asked.

"Six to ten men to a team. One man leads them. You'll be taking the tube. I'll run you over to it."

"You mean, working down in the mine, they work in teams?"

Sost nodded.

"What's the procedure when I get there? Are they going to stick me on a team - do I go right down the mine and to work? Or is there some sort of training I'll have to get first?"

"Your team leader'll train you - all the training you'll get," said Sost. "But they don't just stick you on. Like I say, the team captain can turn you down if he wants to. They don't do it too much, though. A team captain that hard to please wears out the patience of management, pretty fast. Probably they'll send you down on your first shift the day after you get there, but if they want to, they can tell you to suit up, hand you a torch and walk you right out of the hiring yard into the skip."

"Skip? That's what you called the others back at the Holding Area, wasn't it?"

"No - kip. A kip - that's what you're going to be - is the last man joined onto the team. He's got to run all the errands for the rest of them. A skip - that's the car you go down into the mine in. Like an elevator."

"Oh," said Hal. He continued to ask questions, however, until Sost dropped him off at the tube platform.

"Just do what it says on your travel orders," said Sost, finally. "I got to get to work. So long."

He turned the truck abruptly on its own long axis and began to drive off.

"Wait!" Hal called after him. "When am I going to run into you again? How do I find you?"

"Just ask anybody!" Sost called back without turning his head. He lifted one hand briefly in farewell and drove around a corner out of sight of the platform and the tube tunnel.

It was some twenty minutes later that the train Hal was waiting for came through and he got on board. The mine that he had been assigned to was south of Halla Station but back towards the port city, almost half the distance Hal had originally come out. The tube car he was riding was almost empty of other passengers, and none of these showed any eagerness to socialize, which relieved him of the need to discourage conversation. He was free to sit by himself and think; and he did.

He was feeling curiously empty and lonely. Once again, he had met someone he liked, only to leave him behind. Except that, in the case of Sost, he still had the other's advice for a companion. Though it was not easy advice to follow. Hal would not have thought of himself as someone who jumped around physically and talked too much. His own self-image was of someone almost too quiet and almost too silent. But if he had struck Sost as being overactive and talkative, he must be doing more moving about and talking than he should, or else the older man would not have chosen those characteristics to pick on.

But advice alone was a cold companion. He thought now that he seemed fated to end up alone in the universe. Maybe it was necessary for things to happen that way to him now that his life had turned out the way it had. Certainly, if he was going to become invisible to the Others who might be looking for him, he probably could not afford the risk of having friends. He had been brought up, particularly by Walter the InTeacher, to reach out automatically and make connection with all other human beings around him. But now he would have to practice, not merely at not making friends, but rebuffing anyone who might try to make a friend of him.

To turn himself into a close-lipped solitary individual was one way to make sure nobody else would care much to be close to him. The ghosts of Walter, Malachi, and Obadiah had been right. His first imperative was to survive - by any means possible - until he was old enough and strong enough to defend himself against Bleys Ahrens and Dahno.

In any case, whatever method he chose to survive, one thing was sure. From now on, he could not afford the luxury of letting things happen to him. He would have to take control of his life and steer it the way he wanted it to go. To leave it any longer to circumstance and the will of others was a certain invitation to disaster. He had no idea yet how to go about taking such control, but he would learn.

It came to him, riding the strong wave of loneliness and unhappiness in him, that this was evidently what adulthood was meant to be - the taking on of the necessity of doing things he had no idea of how to do, and carrying the responsibility alone because now there was no one else to trust with it. He would have to become, he thought, like an armed ship belonging to no nation, travelling always alone, and running out his weapons at the first sight of any other vessel that ventured close to him.

But he had to do it. Sitting on the soft train seat, soothed by the minute vibrations of the car he was in, as it flew through endless tunnels in the planetary crust of Coby, he drifted off toward sleep, telling himself that he must find out how to do it, some way…

He woke shortly before he got to his destination, and was reasonably alert by the time the car slowed for his stop. He roused himself to get up and step down onto the station platform, and went on into the station, to the area where, as at Halla Station, a single interviewer sat at one of several available desks.

"Papers," said the interviewer as he came up, automatically extending a hand.

Hal made no move to produce his papers.

"Where's the Guest House?" he asked.

The interviewer's arm slowly sank back onto the desk top. He looked at Hal for a long moment, uncertainly.

"Guest House?" he answered at last. "Out the back door and two streets to your right. You'll see the sign."

Hal went toward the door, feeling the eyes of the interviewer following him. The man would have no way of knowing whether or not Hal was a new employee under assignment; and plainly the other was not sure enough of himself to check and find out. Sost's advice had been good.

Hal found the Guest House and walked inside to its lobby, which was identical in every way with the lobby of the Guest House in Halla Station. But there was a short young woman behind the registration counter instead of the elderly man he had encountered at the Guest House at Halla Station. Hal put down his bag and signed in, passing his credit and employment papers over.

"I've been hired by the Yow Dee Mine," he said to her. "Is there some way I can get a ride out to it, if it's some ways to go?"

The Guest House manager had brown hair and a cheerful, acorn-shaped face.

"You won't want to wait in the terminal until all the other hirees are in, and then ride out in Company transportation, will you?" she said. "No, I thought not. You're all to be added to teams on the day shift, so they won't be holding showup until this evening, after dinner. You might as well be comfortable here until then; and our on-duty maintenance worker'll run you out for a small charge."

"Thanks," said Hal, gratefully; and was immediately angry with himself for not succeeding in being more taciturn and unsociable. But it was hard to adjust all at once.

Later, the maintenancer - a girl younger than he was - drove him out to the mine. Its main area was a very large cave-space holding the pit-head, a number of structures built of what looked like concrete, including the offices and the bunkhouse - the maintenancer pointed out and named them for him - clustered around three sides of an open space that looked to be half recreation area, half marshalling yard, in which a number of people were already gathered.

"Looks like they're all ready to start your showup," the maintenancer said, as Hal got down from the small duty truck in which she had run him out. "On the side over at the left there, those six you see, they're the other kips like you."

Hal took his bag and walked over. He was conscious that a number of the men in the crowd of miners standing around - he could see no women - turned to look at him as he came. He made it a point to ignore this and go straight to the six people the maintenancer had pointed out. One of these was a lean, brown-haired, snub-nosed woman in her early twenties, wearing the same sort of hard-finish work jacket and slacks that a number of the men in the watching crowd also wore. She gazed at Hal, frowning a little.

He had barely joined these others when a tall, rawboned miner, at least in his fifties, came over from the watching crowd, took Hal roughly by the elbow and turned him around, so that they were face to face.

"You just in from Halla Station?"

The man had some of the rhythms of someone from one of the Friendly Worlds in his voice, although nothing else about him looked as if he came from the same Splinter Culture that had produced Obadiah.

"Yes," said Hal, looking directly back, almost on a level, into his face. The other released him and went back into the crowd without saying anything more.

There was a stir among those watching and faces turned to the door of what the maintenancer had pointed out as the Management Office. A very erect, thick-stomached man with wavy gray hair and an impatient face came out of the door there and stood at the top of the three steps that led down into the walled area.

"All right, team leaders," he called, his dry, harsh baritone carrying out over the other sounds of the crowd. "Where are you? Who's short?"

The general crowd moved back, leaving four men standing each a little apart from the other. One was the rawboned fifty-year-old who had spoken to Hal. The others were between that age and thirty; one, a lean, dark man in his forties; one who looked like a somewhat younger version of Sost - a burly blond-headed individual in his thirties; and a short, very wide-bodied and powerful-looking individual with a round head and jet-black hair who could have been any age between thirty and sixty.

"All right. Who's got priority for first assignment?" called the man on the steps. "You - Beson, isn't it?"

"Me," said the lean, dark man.

"All right." The man on the steps looked at a piece of printout in his hand. "Tonina Wayle!"

With a satisfied look on her face, the one woman among the kips, who had been continuing to watch Hal, crossed over to Beson. Several of the men from the crowd behind the four team leaders greeted her as if she was an old acquaintance.

"Next? Charlei?" The burly, Sost-like man nodded. "You draw Morgan Amdur. Morgan Amdur, which one are you?"

The man next to Hal stepped forward a little.

"All right," said the burly man, dryly. The man next to Hal crossed over.

"Anyo Yuan. Step out there!"

The man farthest from Hal among the kips took a pace forward.

"John, he's yours."

"All right," said the wide-bodied leader with the black hair. Anyo Yuan, who was evidently as new to this as Hal, hesitated, looking around him uncertainly.

"Go on over to John Heikkila, Yuan," said the man on the step. "Tad Thornhill."

Hal stepped forward.

"Will, he's yours. Thornhill, your leader is Will Nanne - "

"Don't want him!" The words from the tall, rawboned man were loud enough to echo from the walls of the surrounding buildings. Hal felt the sick drop of stomach that comes with the sudden fall of a fast elevator.