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After more haggling, Shanghai Mike finally had a small leather case brought in. He handed it to me with an order to put it together. I opened it and found a musical instrument inside, in four pieces. Luckily it was a fairly obvious vertical horn, and I had little difficulty telling which end the bell went on and where the mouthpiece capped it. It was the sort of test an inexperienced Gray One would spend an hour doing, if he could maintain interest.
“What did I tell you? King’s smart!”
“So he can put together a clarinet. Three thousand five, with a five-hundred bonus for a quick sale.”
“I can’t wait around. Gotta get back to my unit.”
“Go grab a bite in the club. Act like a regular down from Ohio who never misses the joint when visiting Lex and I’ll think about thirty-eight flat, though if he croaks on me, you’d better never come home again.”
It turned out I was sold to a West Virginia company by the time Frisky’s sandwich left the grill.
“And there’s an extra thou for the boy,” Shanghai Mike said as Frisky handed over the key to my chain, as though I were a parked automobile.
So, the kid in the ill-fitting uniform wouldn’t be returning north of the Ohio. Hopefully he’d learn a lesson about trusting Frisky.
“I want a separate receipt for him, okay?”
“Of course,” Mike said, scribbling on a yellow pad.
Frisky looked down the corridor of tanks. “Dumb kid. Deserting on me like that. His CO’s going to be so disappointed. He’ll wise up in that turpentine camp.”
“You did him a big favor, Fris,” Shangahi Mike said. “He’ll come out of it sharper.”
“I like to think I do my part in seasoning the raw. Pleasure doing business with you, Mike. Bye, King. Say hello to the coal for me.”
• • •
So my stay in Lexington was but brief. Evidently my size and weight made a full load for one of the slave transports, and I was bundled along with several other lost souls, protesting or weeping, onto a wire-cage flatbed and put under a canvas cover that reeked of assorted molds and droppings.
I’ve noticed that most of the Kurian Order propaganda posters talk about the dignity and advancement of man. A photo of this transport would make a fine rebuttal if it were attached.
The appeals to authority of my companions provided some mild interest. Those from north of the Ohio mostly threatened some form of official action from the Ordnance. It was just possible. The Ordnance was one of the better-run Kurian organizations stretching across much of what I’m told used to be
called the “rust belt” between the Ohio River and the Great Lakes. Those from Tennessee on south vowed a more private or familial revenge. I suspect Shanghai Mike had heard many such threats over the years.
I liked one Ohioan in particular, formerly a young civilian assistant on some general’s staff, his face polished with soap and his soft, full hair that of a human who hadn’t seen his twentieth winter. I shall refer to him for a while as Mr. Vernabie. He seemed to understand his predicament better than most, or perhaps the nature of his captors. He continually shouted to Shanghai Mike’s men that if they would just get in touch with his family, the Vernabies, they would pay double whatever they were getting for his back from our purchaser.
Only once we were bumping up into the mountains did Mr. Vernabie break his cool: “My father and uncle both won brass rings. So did their fathers before them! Pre-’twenty-two service to Kur runs in my family!”
If the drivers even heard him, they showed no sign of it.
One of the other prisoners made a comment about trying Mr. Vernabie’s pinky ring and reached for him. He shifted quickly to the opposite corner and was quiet for the rest of the trip.
I passed up an escape opportunity on the truck ride into the mountains. Our consumptive diesel had to have a tire changed, and they took us out of the cage and shackled us together in a long line. I was sure that if I could get my foot on the chain, the pin holding the chain end to my hands would part easily enough. Instead, I made myself useful by putting stones behind the wheels of the truck so it would not roll as the drivers changed the tire.
“Me cop trucks all same, help!” I told the drivers, grinning and licking my lips while scratching at the earth in front of their feet in the manner of a submissive, pleading Grog. “Help good. Help all time.”
Two men and a muzzled dog watched over the prisoners. Both wore pistols at their belts and one carried a shotgun. If my fellow prisoners had been a little more spirited, we might have taken them and used the tools to free ourselves, but my companions were as conditioned to authority as the truck’s transmission.
We bumped up mountainsides and bumped down them. The roads improved slightly and I heard the driver say we’d passed out of Kentucky. Finally we arrived at a long, redbrick building.
Consolidated Mines
A Maynes Conglomerate Resource Holding
The words read in two-meter-high letters painted on the brick, and over windows in some cases.
They let us walk and stretch in a big parking lot out back between the office and another building with grinding and tapping noises; a workshop of some kind. While the guard visited the door marked RECRUITING OFFICE, we could pace between the buildings. A cold wind blew out of the north, and we limited our milling to pockets out of the wind. A man with overalls and a tool belt with various cleaning products and implements brought us hearty sandwiches. He was a kindly man, and he gave me three.
