The Final Encyclopedia

Chapter Seven

"Cause or peremptory?" the gray-haired man was demanding.

"I hear he's a trouble-maker." Once more, Will Nanne's voice was painfully clear over all the open area.

"All right," said the man on the steps. "Thornhill, you step back. Wallace Carter?"

The smallest of the kips stepped out as Hal retreated.

"Yours, Charlei."

"All right."

"Johannes Hevelius."

"Yours, Beson."

"He'll do."

The other two crossed over. Hal was left standing nakedly alone.

"All right. Last call on Thornhill. You're all still short at least one worker. Will Nanne, you don't want him?"

"No."

"Beson?"

"Not for me."

"Charlei?"

"Not for me."

"John? Last chance."

The powerful, short man turned and walked with a rolling gait over to Will Nanne.

"Tell me what you heard about him," he said.

Nanne leaned down and spoke quietly in Heikkila's ear. The shorter man listened, nodded, and turned to the man on the step.

"I'll take him."

Hal moved slowly across the flat surface of the space toward John Heikkila. The powerful-looking leader who had claimed him was talking to Anyo Yuan. Hal stood waiting until the conversation was done, and then Heikkila turned and saw him.

"You come with me," he said.

He led Hal, not toward the bunkhouse, to which everyone else was now moving - the man on the steps having gone back into the Management Office - but in the opposite direction, across to an empty far corner of the enclosure. Then he stopped and turned to face Hal. He looked at Hal in silence for a moment.

"You like to fight?" he said. His voice was tenor-toned, but hard.

"No," said Hal. He was torn between his desire to sound convincing to Heikkila and his attempt to maintain the tight-lipped taciturn image Sost had urged on him.

"That's not what I hear. Will tells me you put a man in the infirmary down at Halla Station Holding Area, yesterday."

"He tried to hit me with a metal mug when I wasn't looking," said Hal. "It was just an accident he ended up in the hospital."

Heikkila stared at him coldly for an extended moment.

"You think you could put me in the infirmary?"

Hal stared at him, suddenly weary with a weariness much older than his years. The other was standing with his face barely eight inches from Hal's. The round, black hair of his head came barely to Hal's eye-level; but his great chest and arms seemed to blot out half the scene behind him. He would carry nearly as much weight again as Hal, in experienced adult bone and muscle; and there was a dangerousness about the way he stood that marked plain upon him the fact that he was something more than a merely ordinarily competent fighter. Someone like this - again, the knowledge, like the answer, came from a time older than Hal's years, older than the lessons of Malachi - would have to be killed, killed quickly, by someone as light and young as Hal if there was to be any hope of stopping him at all. He was waiting now for assurance that Hal would know better than to pick a fight with him. Hal did - but he could not lie in answering. Not if he was to work and live with this man from now on.

"If you came for me the way that man at the Holding Station did," Hal said heavily, "I'd have to try. But I don't want to fight - anybody."

Heikkila continued to stare harshly. Slowly, then, the harshness went and something a little like puzzlement came into the round face.

"It's a good thing, then," he said slowly, at last. "Because there's no fighting on my team. We don't have time to fight. We don't have time for anything but getting the ore out. You understand me?"

Hal nodded. Unexpectedly, he found he wanted to be on this man's team rather than that of any other leader he had seen there.

"If you'll give me a chance," he told Heikkila, "you'll see I'm telling the truth. I'm not a troublemaker."

Heikkila watched him for a second more.

"You calling Will Nanne a liar?"

"I don't know what he heard," said Hal. "But whatever it was he can't have heard it as it happened."

"That so?" Heikkila still stared at him; but the last of the dangerousness Hal had felt like a living presence in the team leader was gone. "Damn if I understand. How big was this kip you laid out?"

"About my height," said Hal, "but older."

"Oh. Real old?"

"Not real old…" said Hal - and then suddenly realized he might be implying too much in an opposite direction. "But he came at me without any warning, from behind. I was just trying to save myself. He hit a wall."

"You're saying he put himself in the infirmary?"

"Yes… in a way."

Heikkila nodded.

"Damn," he said, again. He studied Hal. "How old are you?"

"Twenty."

"Twenty!" Heikkila snorted.

" - next year," said Hal, desperately.

"Sure," said Heikkila. "Sure you are."

He sighed gustily, from the depths of his wide chest.

"All right, come on with me, then," he said. "But it's rough working in the mines. You better know that."

He turned and led the way across the open space toward the bunkhouse.

"That woman, the first one to get picked. She's been a miner, before, hasn't she?" asked Hal, catching up with him.

"Sure," said Heikkila. "Right here at the Yow Dee."

"If she can do it," Hal said, thinking of her relative smallness, "I can."

Heikkila snorted again. It was almost a laugh.

"You think so?" he said. "Well, you just worry about showing me you're willing to work, or you'll be off my team after the first shift. My team bids top quota at this mine. You make it through the first shift and I'll give you two weeks to toughen in. If you don't do it by then - out!"

As they got close to the bunkhouse, Hal found himself at last identifying something that had bothered him from first landing on Coby. Because the habitable area of the planet was underground, there was no real outdoors. Odors and sunlight and a dozen other small, natural signals did not intrude their differences here to remind him that he was no longer on Earth. In spite of this, an unrelenting sense of alienness had been with him from the first moment of his leaving the ship. Now, suddenly, he realized the cause of it.

There were almost no shadows. Here in this open space, a thousand sources of illumination in the cave roof far overhead gave a light that came from all angles and did not change. Even where there were shadows, these, too, were permanent. Here, there would be neither night nor day. It occurred to him suddenly that it might be almost a relief to go down into the mine and get away from this upper area where time seemed forever at a standstill.

They had reached the bunkhouse. He followed John Heikkila in, through a lounge area into a narrow corridor, with lines of doors in each wall, some open but most closed, entrances to what seemed to be a series of single person rooms. They continued along to the end of the corridor before John stopped and let them both into a room which was half again as large as the ones Hal had glimpsed through open doors as they walked down the corridor. This room held not only a bed, a couple of comfortable chair floats and a small writing desk, as the other rooms had, but also a large, business-style desk; and it was at this desk that Heikkila now sat down, extended one square, thick hand, and said the word that Hal was coming to hear even in his sleep.

"Papers."

Hal got them out and passed them over. The leader passed them through the transverse slot in his desk, fingered some code on his pad of keys, beside the slot, and returned the papers to Hal. A hard-copy of a single printed page came up through the slot and he handed this also to Hal.

"You're hired as kip," said John. "One-fiftieth team share and an open charge against all necessary equipment, supplies and living expenses."

He held out his hand to Hal, who gripped it automatically. "I'm John," he said. "You're Tad. Welcome to the team."

"John…" said Hal. He looked at the hard copy in his hand.

"I don't understand," he said. "Doesn't the mine management hire me - "

"We bid and sub-contract here, team by team, just like most of the honest mines do," said John, looking up at him. "You work for the team. I work for the team. The only difference between you and me is I'm leader - I do all the paperwork and make all the decisions. And I get the biggest share."

He got to his feet.

"We're on day shift for the rest of this two-week," he said. "Another pair of three-days. Better set your caller for four-thirty, if you want to make breakfast by five hundred hours and lineup by five-thirty with all your equipment. Come on, I'll show you your place."

He got up from the desk, and led the way out into the hall and down to one of the doors. Opening it, he revealed a room in which everything was neat and ready for occupancy.

"Bunkhouse maintenance takes care of ordinary cleanup," he said. "You make an unusual mess, you settle it with them; whether you clean up yourself, or pay them extra out of your own account. Better settle it yourself, because if they come to me with it, it's going to cost you even more."

Hal nodded. He laid his bag down on the bed. The sheets, he saw, were synthetic fabric knits.

John looked at him. The team leader's dark brown eyes were as bleak as an arctic night; and there was no way to tell if there had ever been any emotion in them or not.

"Better get some sleep," John said. He went out, closing the door behind him.

Hal put his travel bag in the small closet and stretched out on top of the bed's coverings.

He felt in him a desperate need for time to sort out in his own mind what had happened to him. Evidently, the Leader called Will Nanne had gotten word of what had happened at the Holding Area of Halla Station; and if that was so, this world of mines must be an incredible whispering gallery. How could word travel so fast? And why?

He puzzled over it, but found himself drifting off to sleep in spite of the questions in his mind. He was just about lost to slumber when it occurred to him that it might be one of Jennison's sources of income, selling information on the men he assigned to the team leaders at the mines he assigned them to. But Jennison had seemed to want to be on Hal's side, the last time Hal had talked to him - the assignment man had flatly said that he expected them to do some business together in the future. If so, why would he pass on a report that had come very close to costing Hal the job he, Jennison, had assigned him to?

Sost had said that if Hal was not hired, he would be sent back to the nearest Holding Area to be processed again. In this case, would the Holding Area have been Halla Station again? And if so, could Jennison have set the whole thing up to impress Hal with his power to produce or withhold good jobs?

Hal was dropping into sleep with this question, too, unanswered, when a knock at the door jarred him into instant, wary wakefulness.

"Thornhill?" said a woman's voice through the panel. "You in there? Can I come in?"

He got up and opened the door. Tonina Wayle was standing outside; and as if she assumed that the opened door was an invitation, she walked in, closed it firmly behind her and sat on the float closest to his bed.

"Thought I'd say a word or two to you," she said.

She stared at him, almost the way John had, for a second without saying anything more. Then she spoke again.

"You're from Old Earth, aren't you?"

"You can tell?" he said. She laughed, surprising him; for the laugh was not unkindly.

"I can guess - now," she said. "Maybe a lot of the others couldn't. Give you another two weeks here and nobody'll be able to guess."

She sobered, suddenly.

"You've never been in a mine before, have you?" she asked.

"No."

"Well, you're not starting too badly. John Heikkila's one of the best. I'm on Beson McSweeney's team now, so I won't say anything one way or another between them; but you can be proud of being on John's."

"That story," said Hal, "of what I did to that man who jumped me down at the Holding Area - it was an accident he got hurt, actually. I told Heikkila - John - that, but I don't know if he believed me."

"If it's the truth, he'll end up believing it," said Tonina. She ran her eyes over him. "I don't find it too easy to believe, myself. How - "

"I'm twenty," said Hal, quickly. "I just look young for my age."

Tonina shrugged.

"Well, as I say, you'll get a fair shake from John. He wants production, but so does any other Leader," she said. "Did he tell you what you'd be doing?"

"No," said Hal.

"I thought not," she said. "There's none better, but he's been in the mines so long he forgets there're people who don't know. Well, he won't expect much of you your first shift tomorrow, anyway, so there's no need to worry."

"What do I do?"

"You'll be mucking out behind the men with torches," she said. "They'll be cutting ore from the rockface, and it'll be up to you to get what they cut out sorted and back into the carts."

She paused and looked at him.

"You don't even follow that much, do you?" she said. "When you and your team go down into the mine, the skip'll take you to the level your team's working on. After you leave the skip you'll ride the carts - they're like a train without tracks to run on, a train with cars that look like open metal bins. They'll each carry two men at once. You'll ride the carts back through the levels - tunnels to you - until you come to the end of the one where your team's bid to work on a section of the vein. The vein's the way the ore with the metal in it runs through the rock. It never runs level, so you're nearly always working on what's called a stope, that's sort of like a step up or a step down to get at the ore, and you cut out what's there until you have to go on and make another stope."

He nodded, fascinated.

"But what's 'mucking out'?" he asked.

"The top men in the team'll be carving rock - working ahead in the stope with laser torches - "

She laughed at the look on his face.

"Yes, real laser torches, right out of three hundred years ago. Here on Coby's the only place on all the worlds where miners cost less than equipment; and a laser's the only safe type of torch for anyone to use for cutting. You'll be behind the top men, gathering up the ore they've cut out of the rock. Just be damn sure you do two things. Keep the gloves of your suit on, no matter how you sweat inside your suit. You start handling a rock barehanded and get burned, you'll know it. And be God damn sure you don't take your helmet off, ever!"

Her last word came with a vehemence that startled him.

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

"You'll see the lead people, and maybe some of the others, throwing their helmets back from time to time. But don't you do it. They know when it's safe, because they know what they've just been cutting. You don't. I don't care how miserable it gets inside that headpiece, you keep it on. Otherwise you'll see them take theirs off, you'll take yours off, and then all of a sudden they've got theirs back on; but by then it's too late for you. You'll've inhaled some of the hot gases the torches boil out when they cut the rock; and it's too late."

"I see," said Hal.

"You better." She got to her feet. "Well, I've got to turn in myself. We work a twenty-hour day here, three days on, three days off; and on a three-day stint you better learn to sleep any time you can. You can catch up on your threes-off. I guess John'll keep an eye on you, this first day at least, about taking off your helmet. But nobody can watch you all the time; so you better get in the habit of taking care of yourself."

She went toward the door. Hal stood up.

"Wait - " he said. All his resolution about being taciturn and reserved had slipped away from him. She had been the first person to show anything like kindness to him at this mine, and he felt he could not let her go without knowing her better. "Uh - you used to work at this mine before, John Heikkila said."

"Yes," she replied, with the door half open.

"You must have liked it here, or you wouldn't have come back."

"Wrong," she said, and almost grinned. "The other way around. They liked me here. That meant better shares in a team; and people I could trust, down in the mine, when I worked with them."

"Why'd you leave?"

The humor went out of her face suddenly.

"I left to go down to the main infirmary with someone," she said.

"Your husband?"

"Husband?" For a moment she looked startled. "No, my brother."

"Oh," said Hal. Some inner part of his emotional sensitivities was beginning to fly warning signals, but he blundered on. "Did your brother work here before you did?"

"No. I got him the job." She hesitated. "He was my younger brother. He was bound to go working in the mines after knowing I was. He was about your age when I first got him in here."

She looked at him grimly, again.

"Your real age," she said.

"And he's working in some other mine now?"

Her face was wiped clean of expression.

"He's dead."

"Oh." Hal felt the way someone teetering on the edge of a precipice might feel, hearing the ground break suddenly under his feet. He stammered, lamely, "I'm sorry."

"He took his damn helmet off. I'd told him a million times not to!"

She turned and went out, the door closing hard behind her.

He stood for a long moment, then slowly turned and began undressing for bed.

He woke to the sound of his alarm in the morning, dressed and stumbled down the hall, following the foot-traffic there, until it led him to the dining hall. The room was a place of long tables, loaded with eggs, fried vegetables, breads and what must certainly be processed meats in the forms of sausages and steaks. Evidently people simply took whatever seat was vacant, as they came in. It was not a time of conversation but of stoking up. Grateful for the silence, he surrounded an excellent and gargantuan meal, wistfully realizing even as he finally pushed his plate away from him, that - even with this - he would probably be starving again long before the lunch break came.

Something seemed to have happened overnight. This morning was all business, and the feeling he had had earlier of being shunned by everyone there no longer seemed to hold. No one paid any particular attention to him but no one avoided him, either. As he was leaving the dining hall, John Heikkila came and found him.

"You come with me," John said.

He led Hal off into the crowd of men who were heading for the far end of the bunkhouse. They emerged into a room filled with racks from which hung what looked like heavy cloth coveralls with boots, gloves and helmets, each helmet containing a wide transverse window for vision. John took him to the end of one rack, glanced at him, selected one of the coveralls and threw it at him.

"This is yours from now on," he said. "Come to me when we get off shift and I'll show you how to check it for leaks. You got to check after every shift. Now get it on, and come along with the rest on our team."

Hal obeyed. With the coverall on, it was not as easy to pick out the people he recognized, among the identically-clad figures around him. But John's wide, short shape was unmistakable. Hal followed it; and ended moving in a mass of bodies out through a farther tunnel that echoed and roared to the sound of their thick-soled boots, until they came to an open area where the walls were naked rock. In the center of the floor of the area was the large mouth of a steeply inclined shaft, surrounded by machinery. As Hal watched, there was a puff of what looked like white dust from the hole; and a second later, the cage of some sort of elevator rose through the opening until its floor stood level with that of the stone underfoot around it.

"Everybody in!" said John, his voice booming out with metallic echoes through the speaker valve of his helmet. They crowded clumsily into the cage. There was room for all of them, but they ended up pressed tightly together. Within the enclosed confines of his own suit, Hal could hear the loud sound of his own breathing; as if he panted, except that he had no reason to pant.

"You, Thornhill, stand clear of the side of the skip!"

It was John's voice again, booming out. Obediently, Hal pressed inward upon the bodies about him, and away from the metal bars that separated him from the roughly-cut rock walls of the inclined shaft.

"All right. All down!" boomed John.

The cage dropped suddenly, and kept dropping. Hal pressed against the bodies around him as he almost became airborne. He was already beginning to sweat inside his suit; but, curiously, there was an unexpected feeling of satisfaction in him.

He was being dropped rapidly into the deep rock of Coby. There was no longer any choice about what he was doing. He was committed. He was, in fact, a miner; one of the miners that surrounded him. Their work was the work he would be doing. He could imagine it coming, in time, to be second nature to him; and even now he seemed to feel the beginnings of a familiarity with it.

He had achieved at last what he had begun when he had run from Ahrens and Danno; and from what had happened on the terrace. He had hidden himself from the Others and taken charge of his own life. No one but he had brought himself to this point. No one but he would be directing himself from now on. He would be all by himself, apart and isolated from those around him, which was a sad and lonely thought. But at the same moment, for the first time, his survival and his future would be in his own hands alone. From this moment forward there was no going back. One way or another he would survive - and grow - and finally return to bring retribution to Bleys and the Others.

The realization was cold but strongly attractive. There was almost a feeling of triumph in him. The hidden, oceanic purpose that he felt at times, hidden deep in his mind, seemed content.