2184

by Martin Parish

  "Pleased to meet you," Kamal said with a sunny smile that revealed the white flash of his teeth.

  "Good to meet you too."

  "This is really kind of you," I said as we set off down the narrow two-lane street. Across the way I saw a couple of clotheslines hung out across front porches and heard the occasional sounds of the residents awakening to the early morning - the slam of a door, a metal ladle scraping a pot. "We only just got here yesterday, and we'd been in the road just a couple days ago when it rained, so everything we had got soaked," I said, hoping this would explain our appearance.

  "No trouble at all. It's not like I'm doing you a favour, if you know anything about electrical repair like you said you do, trust me, you'll be the most popular man on our street in a week," he said. "And there's one other thing I wanted to warn you. The manager at our place - she's a real nice lady once you get to ow her, but she's a bit of a bitch at first, until you get used to her, really. So don't mind how she is now.”

  "So how long've you lived here in Reading?" Kamal asked.

  "Lived here all my life. I came here with my family when I was a kid, 'cause we were from Milton Keynes, back before the government-" he nodded in the direction of the tower in central Reading - "blew it off the map. It's funny how much it's changed here though. Back about ten years ago it used to be pretty awful, I mean, you had to be willing to do just about anything, but things are getting better. The price of food's gone down, there's more people here than there were ten years ago, and some of us we get together for dogfights and bet on the dogs, play cards, that kind of thing.”

  "That sounds good," I said.

  "And we've got a sense of community now too, it's not like we're a small town or anything, but you know all your neighbours and as long as we all stick together we're all right." Given the hostile reception we'd met with the day before I knew that, however true this might be for Tom, it was an inaccurate depiction of Reading. "I think you'll like it here."

  "But that tower downtown," Kamal said; "it's like they're watching you, isn't it."

  "Not really, I mean, you get used to that. Of course, if you ever think about them experimenting on people in there and everything, it gives you the creeps, but those are criminals, you know? And they treat 'em really well, they give them exercise and food and all that, it's not like they're cruel to them. It's actually really nice in there, at least from what I hear. You know, it's funny, I was just talking to the wife about this the other day. The way I see it, if you break the rules and that's where you end up, that's your look-out, now isn't it. The way I see it is, the Mods are here to protect us, you know, keep us safe. They're smarter than us, so it's only fair they're on top, now, isn't it? And things aren't really that bad now. As long as we don't make trouble we're fine. So that's what I say any time I hear any of this crap about how things used to be or whatever. And that's what I tell my kids, you know, just do what they tell you, they know what's best." I didn't want to quarrel with our new neighbour, so I changed the subject.

  "No, it sounds nice. I'd heard things were better in Reading and some of the other towns than in London," I lied. (I'd never heard any such thing about Reading.)

  "I don't know much about what goes on in London now, I haven't heard. Is it really all that bad?" Tom asked with a frown.

  "No, I mean, I wouldn't say it's bad. More expensive, and you can't get any real cigs for at least five years now. Well, at least I can't."

  "It's the same here," Tom said, shaking his head. "Not that I smoke, but you know."

  "I smoke some of these packed-black-algae cigarettes every now and again but I can't say I'm keen on them. And it's - when we came out here we took the place next to yours because it was empty, but in Lndon half the houses are co-ops now - at least the ones that aren't falling apart - and they all want letters of reference."

  "It's expensive, is it? How much does synfuel cost?" Tom asked.

  "Half a national a litre."

  "Yeah, that's not cheap. But it's not too bad," Tom said, nodding critically.

  "And then they're really strict about enforcing the rules, like the curfew and the ban on electronic communications," I added. "I knew someone who got arrested for breaking the curfew just four months ago."

  "Oh, see, they're not that strict out here. Long as you stay out of the way and do what they tell you, you're all right. So you just packed up and came out here by the M4 then?"

  "Yes, that's right," I said.

  "That must be difficult to just pack up and leave like that," Tom remarked. "I don't know how you do that. I couldn't just pack up and go someplace else like that, you know, leave everyone you know behind." In my own mind I labelled Tom Ferguson. I misjudged him, naturally; you should never make the mistake of underestimating someone's intelligence; but as in his case, it's often a very easy mistake to make. In my mind I imagined him in the work camp, and how quickly he would either die or be forced to change, and a smile crossed my face - perhaps I'd changed a little myself. He frowned.

  "What's that?" he said.

  "I was just thinking, it wasn't as difficult leaving as getting here, actually. The M4 was bloody awful in the rain."

  The plant where Tom worked was north of the railroad. To my relief, neither the siding nor Cow Lane were visible from the plant(I was starting to wonder whether they'd seen us trundling barrels the day before). The security guard knew Tom well, and Tom explained we wanted to talk to the manager about a job. A chain-link fence enclosed three steel sheds, each surmounted by a series of thin solar panels; the panels, less than a centimetre thick, shimmered the colour of green emerald in the sun. They relied on artificial photosynthesis and were efficient enough to supply power even on cloudy days. The whine of an electric grinder mingled with an orchestra of lesser noises, and a few people crossed the yard between the sheds, two of them carrying a bundle of steel rods. A middle-aged woman stood leaning against a door writing on an electronic pad. She wore glasses and a sceptical frown, grown permanent from long years of overuse, that had etched deep lines around her mouth. Her short dark hair was a shade of red(and I assumed it was dyed that colour, because the roots were the colour of her rain jacket).

  "Good morning Karen," Tom called out.

  "Good morning, you're here early," she replied.

  "Just five or ten miutes. I brought a couple friends. They're looking for a job."

  "Oh, for the night shift, you mean," she said, looking up from her pad. She studied both of us and her face darkened. "Friends of yours?"

  "Yes, my neighbours. They just moved in from London last week, and they're looking for work."

  "What are their names?" she asked Tom.

  "This is Mark Henshaw, and the other is Kamal Das," Tom said, mispronouncing Kamal in a way I used to think was impossible.

  "So you're from London, are you?" she said.

  "Yes, that's right. I can do some electrical repair, and I used to work at the Tottenham Court fuel plant in West London," I said.

  "Who was the owner?"

  "It was government,” I said.

  "How long did you work there?"

  "Three and a half years now."

  "And your friend here, Mr. -"

  "Mr. Das," Kamal broke in.

  "Where'd you used to work in London?"

  "I ran my own business," Kamal replied. "I was a plumber. But I used to work at a synthetic chemicals farm in East London, so I've done assembly work before."

  "And why'd you leave London then?" our interlocutor continued.

  "It's getting more expensive there all the time," I replied. “I'd heard from a friend of mine that things were better here in Reading, so we thought we'd come here." I hoped my story sounded plausible. Without telephone or electronic communications, it was virtually impossible to do background checks; there was a common substitute that many employers would request, and I anticipated her next question.

  "Do you have any letters of reference?"

  "No, I'm afraid we don't. We got ca
ught in a downpour on the way down the M4, the water got into my case and all our stuff got soaked, unfortunately." It was a plausible if flimsy excuse, and her eyes bored into me. “But I've got experience doing assembly work, and so does Kamal from about four years ago doing the same thing," I added, "so that's why I thought we'd be just perfect for your company."

  "I can vouch for them if you need a reference," Tom broke in.

  "We'll do a trial period if you want,” I added.

  &0"> typically do a trial period anyway," she said. "But it's not just my decision. What you'll need to do is come and talk to the night-shift manager, Sam, and he'll decide if he wants to take you on. Come back here at five thirty and I'll let him know to be expecting you. You do know it's night work and six nights a week, yeah?"

  "Yes, Tom told us all about it."

  "All right, and the other thing is that if Sam does take you, the first night's work is unpaid, because we've got to train you and make sure that you're up to par with everyone else before we can start paying you. It's all assembly line work, so you've got to be able to move quickly without making any mistakes. You can do that, yeah?"

  "Yes."

  "All right. Then like I said, come back at five thirty and ask for Mr. Crosby and he'll be waiting for you. And you quit hanging about and get to work now," she said with a good-natured frown to Tom, who grinned in reply.

  "Thought you said I was early. All right, Mark, Kamal, see you tonight." We returned by the main gate and left by the same route we had come, and I waited until we were beyond the fence before I started bitching.

  "Isn't that wonderful," I said to Kamal irritably and in an undertone. "Now we get a night of unpaid work. And that's if we're lucky and this fellow's in a good mood. We're going to have to scrounge around for food until then. Perhaps we'd better look for something else."

  "The good side of it," Kamal said, "is that at least - if we were trained for free, they can hardly complain if we leave a week from now."

  "Why, who'd they have complained to? What difference would it make?"

  "I'd hate to get our neighbour in trouble. I mean, here he's giving us a good reference."

  I shrugged. "Kamal, Kamal. That's not our problem." My words echoed as we passed beneath the railway line, and above I heard the rattle of an approaching train. "I'm sure he'll figure it out, it's not as if they'll hold it against him. Besides, I'd be surprised if they take his word for too much anyway. He's not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, if you know what I mean. No, I don't think we'll get that. We'd better look for something else.”

  But Kamal disagreed. “I don't think they'll turn us down. I mean, everyone needs people nowadays, it's not like there's as many of us as there used to be.”

  In spite of my misgivings, we returned in the evening. Sam hardly asked any questions at all; instead he had us fill out a form and began explaining the plant policies as if we'd already been hired. He was a young, heavyset man with a short beard and thick dark brows; he wore overalls and latex gloves befouled with brown dust. "So here's how it works. You start at eighteen thirty each night and you leave at five thirty in the morning, but I'd get here early just to be safe, a lot of our people do.ou take a break at twenty-one hundred hours, another at midnight and then a last break at two." I'd misconstrued Karen's suspicious demeanour; perhaps – as Tom had warned us - she treated everyone like that. We had the job, assuming we could retain our employer's confidence.

  I don't want to describe in too much detail what the company did - I'm less than an expert myself - but it's best I give you a general idea. The assembly line I worked on manufactured artphoto panels. Artificial photosynthesis duplicates the process plants use to store energy from the sun, only where plants manufacture sugars, an artphoto panel produces fuel or electricity instead. Nanoparticles are arranged like crystals in a lattice, all embedded in woven plastic fabric so that the solar panel can bend or fit on nearly any surface, from a uniform to a building roof; the whole thing absorbs nearly 100% of light of every colour - even infrared - except green, which it reflects and which gives the panels their beautiful colour Even a poor-quality artphoto panel is three or four times more efficient than the solar panels our ancestors installed, back in the years when they still used crude oil instead of biotech algae to make gasoline.

  At night the plant, staffed with a skeleton crew, performed just the last steps of the process. Sam assigned Kamal to the end of the line nearest the door, while I followed him to the far end of warehouse, past shadowy figures - their hands and equipment brightly lit - standing still and working feverishly. Above us the roof of the metal shed soared like a steel cathedral into the darkness, and a draft of cold air wafted along the floor; it stank sweetly of solvent.

  "Ben. Stop the press a minute, dammit." Ben was a stoop-shouldered, snow-haired old man with owlish blue eyes behind his glasses, thin pale lips and a freckled face that wore an anxious look like a worried rabbit.

  "Ben, this is Mark, he's our new hire."

  "Pleased to meet you," Ben said. His voice was quiet and surprisingly strong, as if nature had mismatched it with its owner. Only a nervous tremor betrayed his age.

  "Ben's been here about as long as we have, so he knows all the ropes," Sam said. "Ben, show him what he's got to do, have him do it for a while then let me know how he does. And don't give him more than an hour - he doesn't need more than an hour. If it takes him any longer than that, come get me."

  "Will you mark me down my production goal for one hour?" Ben asked.

  "Course not. I'll only mark down for ten minutes. You can get the same done with him watching as you can without," Sam said, "you're fast enough. You know better'n to ask that."

  "So this is your first night?" Ben asked, his gaze following Sam's retreating figure with resentment.

  "Yes, just started."

  "All right, well, come on," Ben said. "We've got ten minutes then. This'll be your workspace - it's mine right now but they're going to have me do something else. First thing you've got to know around here is it's all about the nums. They say they want you to do 300 cells an hour. If you do more than that, wonderful. If you do less than that, you're done.”

  A thick, semicircular concrete slab with embedded instruments formed Ben's workbench. A thin wooden board screened it from view; to this, Ben had tacked a picture of several people - two children and a woman – that I assumed were his relatives. A light hung by a cable from a metal rafter some ten or twenty feet above. On either side of the workspace rested a plastic bin, one of them half-full with panel segments tacked together like artificial skin; the other was three-quarters full of loose cells. Ben picked one of them up. The light caught it and it shone green like a jewel.

  "All right. Now this is what we do," Ben said. "You see those cells in the box on your right, like this one? The first thing I do is take it and put it in this press. You use these knobs to move the press. You see how there's these dark green lines on the cell?" I did; dark green lines bisected it like the lines on graphing paper. "And two of them come to the surface on this side. So you want to take it, slot it in the holder here - that'll keep it in the right place - then you push the press up to it and once it's in contact, you press this button."

  A bright light like a spark lit the workspace. "Now that's drilled two small holes in the cell. Now you flip it on its end and you drill those same two holes in all four sides. Then you take another cell and do the same thing with it, which I already have." He picked up another cell with the miniature holes drilled in its sides. "Now take these plastic rods here. Now you insert a black lead and a white lead and you use that to connect two of the cells, see?" All the time he was talking his thin, nimble fingers kept on moving, like the restless antennae of an insect. They moved of their own accord as if they had a life of their own.

  "Does it matter which way you put them?" I asked. Ben shook his head.

  "There's only one thing you've got to keep in mind, which is: they've all got to be on the same s
ide. So if I link ten cells together in a row like this," he said, stooping to pick up one of the finished panels from the box on the left, "you see how the white rods are always on one side and the black on another? Do anything else and they'll mark down your production. Keep on doing all that just like I showed you until you've got a square of ten cells by ten cells all linked up together - that's a hundred cells. Next you put that under the caulk press over here, see? and that glues them all together. You want to put the glue on both sides.”

  His explanation was confusing, but his fingers demonstrated what I ought to do, so I followed his fingers and ignored the words. Once I did that I understood.

  "So you've got to do three hundred cells - three of those squares an hour?"

  "I'd do three-fifty if I were you, otherwise some other arsehole'll come along and tell Sam he can do three-fifty, and you'll be out on your bum. Yes; you'd better do three-fifty. I do four and you hear how he talks to me," Ben said with an angry little flash in his eyes.

  "Where do I get more cells when I run out?"

  "Take that box over there at the end of the line," Ben said, pointing to a box adjacent to another workbench. "Don't worry about the box of finished panels, the next fellow along the line'll take it when 'e's done with his own work."

  "And the tubes?"

  "You can get those from Sam. Now if anything and I mean anything breaks tell Sam first thing. That's first thing. That way he'll mark down your production. Otherwise he'll think you're doing a few hundred an hour."

  "All right, that makes sense."

  "So do you want to have a go at it then?" He looked at me with anxious eyes.

  The work was simple and I got the hang of it quickly. Of course the most dangerous time at any new job is once you think you have it down; at that point your overconfidence blinds you and you make mistakes. Sam stopped by a couple of times, apparently for no other reason than to stare over my shoulder. I tried to keep count of the cells I stitched together and realized I was falling behind; I tried to move faster but my inexperience hindered me. I was relieved when the wall clock read 9:30 and the annoying whine of the drill press ground to a halt.