by E. E. Knight
“One of those doll eyes was staring at me while I waited for that bloodsucker to depart. It danced around a bit.
“I waded through the pond, stepping the whole way on sunken logs. At least I hope they were sunken logs—my imagination was running wild. But dead men float, right?”
The boys nodded dumbly. “She had to die sometime,” one of them said.
“Kur’s got a plan for us,” the other said.
Pelloponensis shrugged. “The farmer’s got a plan for his chickens, too. Just because you’ve got a goal in mind, it don’t make wrong right.”
Once he was safe at home, it had occurred to him that the Reaper had followed him, and not the woman, into the quarry. The thought made him shudder.
Strangely, it seemed like I was learning more about the Maynes Empire off its property than I ever did on it. I’d heard whispers of a quarry and wondered if that was where the Maynes secrets were buried.
Others I frequently worked beside included Galloway, who had a magnificent voice. You could hear him singing in the tunnels for hundreds of meters as though in a concert hall if the equipment was silent. Sikorsky, the mechanic-electrician who had some sort of nasal condition that made him sound as though he had a permanent cold, did his job with just seven fingers and one thumb. Another was my first friend, the easily embarrassed Olson, the strongest of the group and an enthusiastic wrestler—he pulled me off my feet with a clever move the first time we tested our strength against each other.
As with every other gathering away from the ears of the Order in the Coal Country, the conversation frequently turned to the troubles.
I did not participate in these discussions, of course. They took place at breaks for meals. Sometimes I feigned a nap, or if I had heard repeated opinions, I played helpful Grog and refilled one of the water jugs or took away the old rags and towels everyone used to get the worst of the dust off his lips and hands before eating.
The old-timers said that “bad blood” tended to build up every fifteen or twenty years, leading to some kind of fighting against the regime. A few firehouses burned down; there were some disappearances that might be blamed on either vengeance or a Kurian-directed purge; a stick of dynamite might be thrown under a porch or down a chimney. Eventually, the Coal Country “would settle down again with the screws tightened in some parts, loosened up in others, so the coal machine could start production again.”
The old-timers admitted that since the massacre, it was the worst they’d ever seen. “And if it doesn’t stop, something or somebody’s going to come down hard. Then God help us.”
Most of the workers thought that it would die down after a while. “It’s already chilling out.”
Then firebrands like Jones said that snipped telephone wires and slashed tires and derailed coal cars weren’t much more than pranks, enraging in the moment, then quickly forgotten. “If we really wanted to put a hurting on the Kurian Order and show them they can’t shoot kids down in the street, all we’d have to do is kill coal production through a general strike and occupation of the mines. What else are they going to burn? Church bulletins?”
“Big talk,” an old hand countered. “If the coal quit, they’d just have their pastors give the sermons by candlelight. Reapers don’t need electricity to find us. They want us cold and in the dark, believe me. They don’t need a technological society; something out of the Dark Age would suit them just fine. One more thing to blame on the Resistance.”
“I heard the Resistance is giving up. Ever since they got Texas and that chunk of Oklahoma, they’ve got food and oil. They’re fat and happy now,” the old-timer named Sikorsky said.
“The Resistance keeps them from taking us back to sticks and stones,” Jones said. “They don’t dare let things drop too far or the Resistance will walk right over them.”
“You mean the Maynes family doesn’t,” Sikorsky said. “There aren’t enough Reapers for everything. It’s the people high up running things for them in the Control and whatnot that we have to hit. Without them, the whole rig collapses like a one-legged scaffolding with the screws pulled out.”
“Yeah,” Rage said. “I say it’s about time we start pulling screws here.”
“Forget that noise, kid,” Sikorsky said. “I used to be like you. You’re young and think you’ll live forever. You’re sick of the whole Conglomerate and think you can pull it down. That landed me here, and I don’t have any more chances coming. Better off hunkering down and doing your job.”
I hope that I have showed that while Number Four had the reputation of being a last stop, the men weren’t the dejected walking corpses that you met in some Kurian work camps, where those marked for destruction puttered away, or philosophized, or lay as though already a corpse, or engaged in a last frenetic bout of drinking and/or sexual activity of one sort or another.
They still had their human spirit—though I think the linguists should come up with another aphorism for that, because it seems nonexistent in many. Perhaps it was just tougher to beat out of these West Virginians, as rocky and difficult to humble as their mountains.
THE FIRST NOTES OF THE CRESCENDO
We had made it to the winter doldrums and I was now in my second year in the Coal Country. Looking back, I believe I was in a poor mood most of the time but could lose myself in the mindless physical labor at the coal face. I will say this: the constant physical strain toughened me even as it numbed my mind. I turned into the broad-shouldered Golden One of my youth. He looked at me from the mirror, a little less hair about the face and longer drop-whiskers.
Though I am ashamed to admit it, the mine office was pleased with me. The foreman, Bleecher, found me better-fitting safety equipment. Mr. Prapa, the director himself, a bracelet-favoring man with an out-of-season oily tan and all the appeal of dried chewing gum found sticking on a bus seat, rather gingerly called me into his office to ask me if there was a tribe of me up in the Pennsylvania hills, perhaps, that I could convince to come into the Coal Country to serve as laborers.
While sniffing through a bowl of fruit he offered me—fresh strawberries, in winter!—I glanced at a simple report; it seemed that every time I worked the coal face with the rest of a usual six-man crew, production went up twenty-five percent.*
I no longer had to produce money at Aym’s trailer.
I’d been playing the “helpful Grog” so long, I became him in a way. Ahn-Kha, who once roamed the Transmississippi as a fighter in a famous regiment, became just another scraping Grog, gently pawing at his masters as he waited for his next drink of flavored corn syrup.
I rarely dreamt of escape anymore, or if I did, I went at the coal face with a pickaxe as though digging a tunnel to freedom. I exhausted my brain into numbness. I fell into bed with grit still dug deep into my hair and awoke without expectation of anything more challenging than wondering if I should eat six eggs or a dozen for breakfast. I didn’t drink, gamble, or rent women on the weekends, so my wages, such as they were, mostly went to the little farmer stalls set up twice a week near the Number Four dormitory. While I enjoyed doing my own cooking, I usually gave a few dollars to one of the mine wives—whichever one caught my eye as the most ragged and careworn—to cook up my purchases for me. With the rest, on the advice of Olson, I set up a New Universal Church Community Investment account. That caused some confusion at the Church’s office, but we simplified matters by having Olson just set up a second account allowing me to draw on it. I trusted Olson, and it was better that I not have too much of a paper trail with the Church, in any case.
For me, life was simple. Work properly, get paid, keep the food supply fresh, and listen for the mine disaster klaxon.
No one made an effort to force me onto the buses for the weekly church services, and when the priests visited, they never spoke to me. My sheets and other laundry were mysteriously washed while I was at the mine.
• • •
Word passed among the miners—at each retelling it gained a different source—that a purge was coming, and soon. T
he Coal Country had quieted after the Maynes bloodletting, but not enough. Now the neighboring Kurian Zones were demanding payments in blood to make up the coal shortfalls.
“It never hits the mines too bad,” Sikorsky said one morning while we waited for Aym to finish with the customers ahead of us. Sikorsky had a Thermos waiting to be filled. He was talking to Olson just behind, who had a flashlight that he kept inserting “new” batteries into, in an effort to find a functional set. I stood just behind Olson. “But for anyone with gray hair, it’s a tense time.”
Sikorsky stepped up and handed his Thermos to Aym. She’d heard what he and Olson were talking about. Probably everyone in line that morning had had the same subject on his mind.
“Every time we go through this, I think I’m going to be the first one scratched. I can’t sleep. People tell me I look like hell.” Aym shrugged. “Then we go through it, and someone like Sikorsky disappears. Good or bad at the job, who cares; something about the selection rubbed the headcount team the wrong way.
“My first one as a postpubescent, I think they were ready to take me away, but my dad volunteered to go in my place. I never knew he liked me that much, my mom was the one who worked with me and found some Braille books, God knows how.
“Do you know anything about it? A church guy tried to tell me once that they hypnotize you like a snake with a bird, so you don’t even know what’s happening, then you go to eternal life as part of the greater Kurian Consciousness, but he was more interested in fingering me in the confession room than explaining how it works.
“Then Ray Jones said the complete opposite. He told me that they torment you for a little bit before killing you. Said it was like a chef cooking a meal; it added flavor to whatever energy they need from people. You know, our souls or auras or whatever. Of course, all his talk is a little wild. He tried to finger me, too, but I was better at defending myself by then. I’m not walking around with a tattoo that reads ‘Finger me’ on my forehead, am I?” She picked up Crumb and stroked him. The purring was almost loud enough to drown out the distant echoes from the coal face.
“Maybe it’s written in invisible ink. I don’t see it.”
I MAKE A FRIEND
I had been trying to make up my mind about Aym for weeks. She was clearly intelligent and skilled at drawing men out. A Kurian agent would have those skills. But then again, so would a popular barkeep.
I needed a friend. I’d been more than a year now in the Kurian Zone without anyone I could trust. I don’t expect most readers to understand—only those who’ve lived it will. I needed to talk to someone so badly, I was willing to chance death for it.
I’d thought about it a couple of times with MacTierney and almost drove over the centerline, but I always steered back again to the safety of the shoulder.
Many times in my life I’ve been praised for fearlessly going across Nomansland and into the Kurian Zones. This praise has usually been from speakers who have never spent a night in one. Fearless? Hardly. To survive the Kurian Zone, you become old friends with fear. You get to know fear so well, it tells you its secrets, whispering them in the long nights when probing flashlights and a firm shake of the shoulder come to escort you away. I let fear lead me through dark paths and nights out in the open, where every snapped branch might be an approaching Reaper.
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.
NEW ARRIVALS
We lost two miners in a cave-in. It was for a stupid reason—they were assigned to remove shoring materials in a disused tunnel with a played-out seam and there was a major cave-in. We opened an old disused tunnel that had once reached that seam and dug from the new Number Four as well.
Everyone agreed it was a stupid risk. Even the rawest new miner was worth more than shoring materials, and these men were both experienced.
We pulled them out, mottled and unconscious, and they were unceremoniously loaded onto a fire department ambulance for their trip to “hospital.” We never saw either of them again.
Prapa raged about the lost production in the effort to find the men, and very foolishly declared that future rescues had to be approved. Inspired by Rage, everyone started calling the new policy the “Dead Man’s Stamp”—meaning that by the time Prapa and the rest of the Kurian Order decided to dig someone out and put their stamp of approval on the rescue, the person would have long since ceased caring about earthly endeavors.
One of the young bucks who joined our shift was named Longliner. He did not look cut out for mine work. He was reedy with a sharp beak of a nose under wary eyes, but as it turned out, he had some strength in those flimsy-looking limbs. He was a friendly young man. I liked him, mostly because I was no longer the new miner. Someone else would be in charge of carrying the shit-bucket away from the coal face every afternoon.
He was self-possessed, for all his youth, and tried to make friends with everyone. I find human charm either amusing or annoying—frankly, I’d rather watch a dog roll over and expose its belly for scratches.
