That made sense. From what I could tell, Korthlo loved the brutalities of his job with a maniacal devotion bordering on psychopathy. His biggest thrill in life seemed to be retrieving prisoners who tried to escape. There were times when I noticed obvious flaws in the mine's security and reported them to him – only to see a look of sullen disappointment on his chitinous face, and realize that he'd left them there on purpose, daring slaves to take advantage of them.
My attention was drawn to a figure meandering away from the rows of laboring slaves, and I moved to examine him more closely. He was a human, one of the newer arrivals to the mining facility – Gordon, I thought his name was, though I couldn't be certain. In truth, I'd stopped trying to internalize the names of the new slaves as they came in quite some time ago. It seemed pointless when so many of them were worked to death or driven to madness. It also fostered a familiarity among workers which I generally attempted to discourage.
No room for friends down here in the slave pits. No purpose in pretending we were individual beings instead of tools to be utilized by the Pax until we were ground down to useless nubs.
Or until we proved that we'd never succumb, and were promoted accordingly, as I had been.
From my vantage point, I could see that Gordon (if that was his name) was casually limping over to the sustenance dispenser – the machine which provided rations of hydro-pills and nutrient pellets to keep the workers from dying before they'd finished their daily tasks. Using the machine with impunity during a shift was expressly forbidden, though.
And what's more, Gordon knew that.
I stormed over to him just as he extracted a tiny blue hydro-pill from the slot and slapped it out of his hand before he could put it in his mouth. He looked at me, his mouth still hanging open, his comically wide eyes filled with betrayal and hurt.
“Why did you do that?” he asked.
There was a pathetic whine hovering in his voice that made my head ache even more than the mining sounds did. God, worms like him made me ashamed to be human.
“You heard the Vence's thought-cast,” I replied through clenched teeth. “Mid-shift isn't for another five cleks. Mid-shift is when you're given your pills and pellets. You know that.”
“Well, yeah, but...” Gordon shifted his weight from one foot to the other nervously, as though he had to go to the bathroom. For a moment, I almost expected him to give that excuse next.
“'But' what? Spit it out fast and stop wasting my time.”
“But...I mean, I'm so thirsty I feel like I'll collapse without a hydro-pill...and it's only five cleks, and I figured it wouldn't be a big deal, since you're the one working as overseer today.” He licked his papery lips. He did look like he was suffering from severe dehydration.
Too bad that didn't distinguish him from any of the other workers in the mine, myself included. Too bad it didn't entitle him to any special treatment.
“And why, exactly, would it make any difference that I'm the overseer today?” I knew what was coming next. It wasn't the first time I'd had to endure this sort of insubordination from one of my own species.
It certainly didn't make it any less tiresome, though.
Gordon stammered. “Well, um...it's just that in the last mine I worked, we had a couple of overseers who were...you know...like us...”
I raised an eyebrow, smiling. “Human, you mean?”
He nodded vigorously, encouraged that I was starting to catch on. “Yeah! And they didn't rank as high as you obviously do—they wore leather collars, not metal—but still, they looked out for us, right? Because we're all from the same place, yeah? Earth? So they watched our backs, and they were relaxed about letting us have the pellets and pills when we needed them.”
“I see. And tell me: When those overseers showed preferential treatment to their own race, what did that do for the morale of the other races who were working the mines with you? Did it make all of you a more united work force? Did it increase output and please your masters? Or did it create unnecessary division and resentment, and hinder production levels?”
His expression darkened, and his fists clenched. I took note of the shift in his stance, the increased aggression and hostility in his posture, and prepared for what came next. As I said, I'd been through this plenty of times before, and it always ended the same way.
“Look, lady, what the hell do you care about production levels? You're a slave, just like the rest of us! Whose side are you on, anyway? What, you don't give a damn about helping your own people?”
Some of the other overseers had drifted away from their own posts to witness this confrontation. Good. I wanted them to.
“First of all,” I began, “you will address me by my earned title of overseer, not 'lady.' Second, from this point forward, you and the others may as well start picturing me a foot shorter and covered in white fur, because as far as you're concerned, I'm not a human; I'm a servant of the Pax Alliance and its interests. Third, you will immediately disclose the previous mining camps you worked in and the names of the humans who afforded you special treatment, so they can be dealt with accordingly.”
“Lady,” he spat, “I ain't tellin' you a goddamn thing,
