A young girl sat on the end of the bench nearest them, her dark head bent over her work. She wore a light yellow dress and no shoes, and though the idea of going barefoot in all this muck was a little off-putting, the thought of touching the coolness of the earth was not without appeal. Among the men, rolled sleeves and open shirts were the order of the day.
So these were dirt-dwellers. She’d never thought to be so close to any. She touched Adrian’s arm, and he swung around at once to face her. “How do you know that man?”
“Roger? He worked here the summer I was sent down.” Seeing her puzzled look, he said, “It’s the custom for court-level children to be sent here for a few months to gain experience. To grasp what goes into gem-farming, and how long it takes to build up a trade output, and what life is like outside of the courts. It’s more honored in the breach than the observance, but Saul wanted me down here, so down I came. Of course, as an orphan I didn’t have parents to make a fuss and keep me out.”
“You lived down here?”
“For a few months. Why do you look so surprised?”
“I’m not surprised. I’m— I don’t know, I just never saw any people from the agricultural levels before. I thought they would be different.”
“Different how?”
“Well … they die more, don’t they?”
“One death for each man or woman, I assure you.”
“Oh, but you know what I mean.”
“Yes.” His smile was one of such tenderness, and came so out of nowhere, that she hardly knew what to think. “Their life expectancy is about nine years shorter than that of the middle levels, on average. It’s the result of all those years of cumulative exposure. Added to by the number of accidents that can happen in a place like this.” Io glanced around hastily, wondering what did happen in a place like this. “They don’t seem upset. How can they be normal people?”
“They’re not happy about it, believe me. Their options are limited.”
Iolanthe considered this. “You’re the Protector. You could order that people be drafted to work here in shifts.”
“What an unusual political agitator you are, my Lady Iolanthe. A seventeen-year-old court beauty, and from the Opal, too. What would the Lord Cardinal say?”
She felt herself flush. “I merely meant to wonder, sir.”
“Oh, well, if you call me ‘sir,’ my heart will be broken in any case, and nothing will be left for you when you lead the revolution against me.”
She saw that he was not really offended and said, “Then—Adrian—would you tell me why there’s no draft to bring in new workers here?”
He laughed. “I once knew a small dog with very sharp teeth who was much like you. He never let go. One day the Lady Prudence had to cut off a piece of her gown in order to separate herself from the creature.” He glanced over to where Prudence stood gingerly beside a table, holding her skirts well above the dirt. “The truth is, we have a hard enough time filling the high-radiation levels. The council doesn’t consider the farmers’ problems to be as extreme.”
“Is that what you think, sir? —Adrian?”
“What I think … What I think, my lady, is that I will have to call you Pouncer, which is what we called the dog, and that in your spare time we will have you interrogate prisoners for State Security. As for the farmers, it occurs to me that much of the work could be automated—”
“But the Book of Sawyer says that all Curosa legacies must be worked by human hands!”
“So it does. I merely made an observation. Besides, this is hardly unskilled work, and rotating new people in here every few months would lose us an enormous amount of output. Watch.”
He nodded toward the dark-haired girl in the yellow dress. She reached for one of the vastules going by on the conveyor. Io stepped closer; she had never seen one before. It was flat-shelled, grayish white, and about the size of a spread hand. The girl very quickly forced it open, inserting a metal stick to keep it that way, and moved her hand warily past the sharp, pointed teeth. “Cuts from these can take weeks to heal,” said Adrian, over her shoulder. “And the buildup from anything above twenty or so is fatal.” Now the girl took a tweezer, reached into the shiny bowl beside her, and removed a tiny, glinting diamond chip. She maneuvered the chip past the teeth and dropped it well back in the vastule’s throat—or body, depending on how one looked at it. Then she removed the metal stick with a well-practiced swipe, narrowly missing the snap of the closing jaws. She marked a red diamond-shape on the top of the shell and placed it back on the conveyor. The whole process took less than thirty seconds.
People were working with a similar quiet efficiency all down the row. Roger appeared across the conveyor, waving a closed vastule. “Care to try one for old time’s sake?” he called to Adrian. “We could time you against one of the apprentices, as we did before.”
“You’re too kind,” said Adrian, in the voice of one who suggests that an experience of the past has not been forgotten.
Roger laughed. “Perhaps later.” He replaced the vastule.
Iolanthe said, “I’m surprised that Saul let you work here. What if you’d been bitten?”
“I was,” said Adrian. “But less than twenty times.”
She blinked, considering this, and followed him down the rows. Saul must have been very peculiar man.
“Come over, my Lady Pouncer, and see the vastule pit.” Adrian crouched beside one of the bogs. Prudence followed, still carefully clutching her skirts. “This one is a diamond pit, I’m pretty sure; we’ve got ruby and kylite and emerald in this building. The kylite’s mainly for industrial uses. Stations and ship builders will pay top
