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I decided to trust her.
I often took my lunch break at odd hours so others could enjoy a more normal time. I liked the quiet of the coal face when the others were gone. I could break or move coal or tinker with the machinery as I liked, not having to worry about striking someone with a wide swing.
Then when I did eat, I had the commissary trailer and the ramshackle lawn furniture to myself. Someone had added some Astroturf and plastic flowers recently, to make the eating area a bit more outdoorsy. The naked bulbs of the lighting spoiled the effect, though. Not for the first time, I found the human tendency to go halfway and call it good enough vexing.
Aym made me the two sandwiches I ordered. I examined the mine office and elevator shaft, as well as the shadows between, before speaking.
“You are a wonderful cook,” I said. “Your food is the high point of my day.”
“That’s quite a speech, Hickory,” Aym said. “Did you have help?”
“I find it convenient to play at being the sort of Grog these men are used to. My kind are more advanced.”
“I wish I could say the same about us,” Aym said. “I knew there was something funny about you. You scared they’ll open you up to take a peek inside and see what makes you different?”
“Something like that,” I said.
“I’m good at keeping secrets. Rumor has it you’re some kind of plant. They say you’ve got a device surgically implanted that records everything. I won’t tell you the person who claimed that and gave me a name to back it up. That’s how discreet I am.”
“No. I have no recent, unexplained scars. I remember each wound on my body.”
“I didn’t believe it anyway. The men at Number Four have big egos—you know that word?—they think they’re bigger troublemakers than they are. About the worst that can be said for them is that they’re bad apples. Seeing a few scribbled dirty words in church Bibles or hearing talk about going on strike doesn’t worry the Maynes clan.”
“There’s not much left of it.”
“They’ll make a comeback; you just see. They’ll set up some marriages, bring in some new blood; the White Palace will be full again in no time. We’re still waiting for our purge.”
“You think it will be soon?” I asked.
“Yes. Everyone is tense. I’ve been sending up coffee and sandwiches to the mine office past midnight every night since your fight. They must think that blind people don’t need shut-eye. I wonder if Prapa has to hide something.”
“I’m surprised a man like that is a director.”
“Number Four is remote. If you want to live with other people, it means a long drive. When I worked in the office, he told me he spent two hours a day driving, in good weather. There are dozens of ways he could be skimming—ghost workers, selling coal oil on the black market, misuse of transport for running white lighting—I wouldn’t be surprised if he was doing all of them. It’s not that hard to bribe the auditors, and the Conglomerate knows that the chance of a little corruption is better than layers of auditors and then auditors who audit the auditors. Bureaucratic fiefdoms become kingdoms in no time.”
“And they have a person like you making sandwiches.”
“It’s the one spot at Number Four where I can be my own boss. I just pay a concession to the mine. It’s a worry, with a purge coming on. The mine would work just fine with my trailer broken down and hauled out of here.
“That scares me. Who knows what they could dream up for someone like me? I’m nervous enough in unfamiliar places.”
I respected her enough to tell the truth as I saw it, without any more shading than that required by mannered conversation. “I would not think they would do that—it adds time and uncertainty to the extraction process. Anything could happen in the process Jones described. Though I could see them reserving it for special enemies.”
“You think so?”
“They won’t take you. You’re the best thing about Number Four.”
“It’s bound to happen sooner or later. We all die. It’s just a bit more rational and organized in the Kurian Zone.”
“Organized, yes. Rational? Only if you accept that Kurians deserve to live forever at the cost of other lives. I’m told the longer they go on, the more vital aura they need. It must end in holocaust, worlds as stripped of life as I am told Kur is, if that’s the truth. I can think of nothing more irrational.”
• • •
That night, I replayed every word of our conversation in my head. Being able to engage another intelligent, sensitive mind—all I can compare it to is a prisoner long held in a dungeon brought up into the sunlight for an afternoon.
Looking back on it, both o
f us were taking a risk. Most Kurian Zones had a strong unspoken rule, at least among the more professional classes, against discussing the mechanics of death in the Kurian Order. To do so risked social ostracism at the very least. Among men such as the miners, there were earthy jokes, just as there were earthy jokes about all of life’s functions from excreting to procreating.
