what the Hamalese, Zair rot ’em, did with it, why they forced this agony on fellow human beings.
The tailings stretched for dwaburs along the base of the foothills, ulm after ulm of them, spreading a powdery and ashlike detritus. What the refiners did, what sort of rock this was, what was taken from it
— all these things I did not know and gradually came not to care about. Early on I had said to a man, an apim, laboring alongside me, “What do they want the rock for, dom?”
“I do not know,” he had said, bashing his pick so that chips flew. “I only wish I could choke the rasts with it.”
“Amen to that,” I said, striking with my pick.
No one knew.
Every day we labored. There were no rest days.
The knowledge that if I did not escape soon I might forget that escape existed drove me on. While loading the fliers one day — for the Hamalese rotated tasks according to their rules — a man was discovered secreted in one of the leather-lined wooden boxes. Where guards of other peoples perhaps would have had sport with him — for example, taking him aloft so that he thought he was escaping, and then pitching him overboard; or weighing the box and declaring it was short-weight and so pouring rock upon him until he was crushed — the guards at the Heavenly Mines acted strictly according to the law. The Hamalians — or Hamalese, either term is quite correct — took him in chains to a summary court, where he was found guilty — for he was certainly that, having tried to escape — and sentenced to the prescribed punishment.
There are always sedentary jobs to be done in a mining complex like this, work that can be performed quite well by a man who cannot walk, by a man, say, who has no legs. They found him that employment. The law had no wish for extra severity and would not take his life. Slaves of quality were hard to come by in great quantity, and would not be wasted, only refuse being sent as victims to the arenas. And only tough fighters would do as coys, apprentice kaidurs. This man, number 5763, sat all day at his task, his stumps beautifully bandaged. He had shouted that he came from Hyrklana; but that did not help him.
If he tried to escape again, the law would be more severe on him; and, as was written down, at the third attempt would then demand his life.
He would be hanged in the most strict ritual procedure.
I witnessed only two hangings, one for a third-time escape attempt, incredible though that may be, and one for a slave who had struck an overseer.
This slave was a Chulik.
Had he killed the overseer the law admitted that the next of kin, or the dead man’s superior officer failing a next of kin, might stipulate what punishment the murderer would suffer before death. They were colorful in their thinking in those areas, were the bereaved in Hamal. And there was no revenge, no bloodthirsty shrilling anger in all this. It was all written down in the laws of the land. .
A new slave, number 2789 — for they filled up the old roster numbers with new slaves at the Heavenly Mines — said to me, “Eight-two-eight-one! I must escape! I’ll go mad!”
I said to him, “Two-seven-eight-nine. To escape is so difficult it is scarcely worth the attempt. Better for you to go mad.”
Only later, as I sat eating my chunk of bread — made from good corn, for the Hamalese wished to keep up our strength — and coarse pudding of vosk and onion, with a finger over the gregarian at the side of my bowl, was the truth of what I had said borne in on me.
I, Dray Prescot, unwilling to contemplate escape?
Number 8281 knew the truth. Dray Prescot was an empty boaster, a bladder of wind. Eight-two-eight-one knew the truth.
It took me a day to think of the subject again. We were opening up a new seam far down into the guts of the mountain. The rock we wanted held a gray metallic sheen which differentiated it from the yellower rock all around. Yet it held no mineral I could tell. We simply took all the gray rock, irrespective of minor differences. This seam was narrow, and an overseer, a little Och holding with his four limbs a lamp, a wax notepad, a stylus, and a prodding stick, waddled up on his two lower legs to supervise. We were all crouched down, for the roof pressed close, and the oil lamp — it was not samphron-oil — smoked a little. I smelled the lamp; but, also, I smelled another nostril- tickling odor. In that confined space in the grotesque shadows of the lamp, the little Och prodding and writing, a Rapa guard with a spear bending almost double ready to spit the first one of us who did anything against the law — for the law would hold a guard within his rights if he killed protecting a Hamalian — I picked up the unmistakable scent of squishes.
Memories of Inch flashed into my mind, of his insatiable hunger for squish pie, and of the taboos he held in so great honor, and of that limb of Satan, Pando, taunting poor Inch with rich, ripe juicy squish pie. The Och squeaked and backed away.
“All out!” He shouted so loudly some of the slaves jumped and a trickle of rock slid from the overhang.
“All out at once! Guard, prod ’em along, you onker!”
We scuttled out.
We did not go back to that seam again.
Although I can recall that scene in all its clarity now, at the time with the same depressing grayness of days it passed from my mind; the little flicker of the idea of escape guttered like a candle in the opened stern-lantern of a swifter of the Eye of the World.
Number 2789 harked back to the idea of escape himself, and so forced me to contemplate reality. Was not 8281 also Dray Prescot? Was I not Pur Dray, Krozair of Zy? The Lord of Strombor? Prince Majister of Vallia? Kov of this and that, and Strom of Valka? Zorcander? Was I not? No title would help me now, but a Krozair brother is never beaten until he is ceremoniously slipped into the sea over the side of his swifter — if he can be buried decently by his brothers of the Order of Krozairs of Zy instead of dying in some stinking prison or under the longswords of those Grodnim cramphs of Magdag. Despite all the horrendous difficulties, there had to be a way of escape. The sheer efficiency of the Hamalese would make any attempt enormously difficult. Probably escape was impossible. I wondered about it then, and I freely admit it, if it was possible for one man, even a Krozair of Zy, to escape from the Heavenly Mines of Hamal. But, from somewhere, I found the determination to make that attempt. I did not care how foolhardy it might be. I knew, and I believe I understood at last, that merely staying alive was not enough. My Delia, my Delia of Delphond — who so far had not been called Delia of Strombor, as she had once wished -
could not pine for me longer if I was dead than if I remained in these Opaz-forsaken mines. So the decision was taken.
I would try to escape.
Number and order and law had worn me down. If you have listened to these tapes of my life upon Kregen you will know with what a hearty zest I detest and despise petty authority exercised in heartless and evil ways, without thought for those who are weak and unable to defend themselves. Discipline is necessary in life — sometimes it is a necessary evil — but excessive discipline is a perversion.
Law dominated the men of Hamal.
I would turn their law against them.
Number 2789 would help. There were others, almost always newly arrived slaves who retained some shred of their old spirit. The Heavenly Mines in their soul-destroying regularity broke spirits as boys break twigs in sport.
I must have a plan ready to broach to the others, and then make it work. I worked out a scheme. Simplicity. Speed and simplicity. The seizure of a flier, for we would never walk out, offered our only chance, and the fliers were always well guarded. Strength. Well, we were strong from our unceasing and strenuous labors and the coarse but filling food.
The plans tumbled into my head and always the glorious face and figure of my Delia smiled at me, and her gorgeous brown hair with those outrageous tints of gold and auburn glinting filled me with uplifting determination. I collected a few loose scraps of jagged rock, for the law proscribed a slave possessing anything that might be used as a weapon when he came off shift, and all the picks and shovels with their numbers were checked into the stores.
In the hut I lay on the earth and drew my blanket about me. I turned over to think and I saw a reddish-brown scorpion scuttle out from a crack in the rock and stare at me, his tail high. If you have listened to these tapes I believe you may have some faint inkling of my feelings then. In that reedy scratchy voice I had heard before on the
