Rebellion (8 page)

meant blowing holes in an eight thousand-year-old monument so your bulldozers could roll. The least you might have done is given us some warning." The executive looked at Daniel as if the Egyptologist were something extremely unpleasant he'd scraped off his shoe. "You must be Jackson." "Daniel Jackson, Ph.D. And you?" "Eugene Lockwood. I'm the UMC site manager. And right now we're preparing the site." "Way to go, Lockwood. You've got a start on your truck route, and all it cost you was any goodwill Draven built up among the people who live here. Take a look at them." Daniel gestured to Kasuf and the other Elders, who stared at the wreckage Lockwood's plans had created. Their expressions were critical, to say the least. "On the other hand, the sooner we get into production on the mine, the sooner UMC can offer things this world needs." Lockwood nodded toward Kasuf and the Elders. "You might tell them that." "I'll tell them that-it's about time you turned up!" Daniel was looking over Lockwood's shoulder at a newcomer to the confrontation.

Jack O'Neil was not in a good mood. "I got here as soon as I heard that UMC requested a security team for their ... alterations." "Your guys nearly shot us when we came to investigate the blast," Daniel accused.

"A calm, laid-back investigator like you?" O'Neil raised an eyebrow.

"How could that be?" One week later, Skaara took his seat for Daniel's third English class. Actually, it was a joint teaching effort, with Daniel and Sha'uri at the front of the room. What concerned Skaara was the growing number of empty seats. He counted only half as many students as had appeared at the first class. Daniel noticed it, too. "Is it something I said?" he asked, trying to make a joke of his misgivings.

"I may not have the world's greatest accent in your language. That's why I asked Sha'uri to join me." "It's not your teaching-or your accent," one of the students apologized. "It's the classes those others are giving at their camp." "The camp" had quickly crept into the vocabulary of everyone in Nagada. In mere days, Lockwood had created a tent city on the rocky plateau that supported the StarGate pyramid. A constant stream of material seemed to be transiting over from Earth. In addition, the security force of Marines commanded by Jack O'Neil had taken up defensive positions. Although the Marines offered far more protection than his home guard unit, Skaara had maintained the watch on the pyramid. It was more of an exercise for the young men, but Skaara had gotten reports of a continuing trickle of Nagadans visiting the encampment. "So what have they got that we don't?" Daniel asked.

"Prettier teachers? Or are they grading on the curve?" He waved his hand. "I'm sorry. I'm making bad jokes-and nobody here even understands what I'm joking about." Daniel glanced at Sha'uri. "So let's start working on some things we can understand." He started to work on the lesson. When the class ended, Skaara set off from Nagada's gates and across the dunes. He stopped briefly at his watch point, then went on to the UMC camp. He looked for a Marine uniform and put his fledgling English into use. "Koronel O'Near-O'Neil," he corrected himself. Surprised, the Marine pointed the way to the command tent. Jack O'Neil was surprised to see Skaara. But he was even more surprised when the young man spoke to him. "Hello, Colonel." "Hello, Skaara." "My sister teaches me. Daniel, too." O'Neil smiled. "They're doing a very good job." "They teach here, too." Skaara frowned, trying to get his point across with a limited vocabulary. "People Daniel teaches. They come here . . ." "You want to know why?" O'Neil had to smile at Skaara's eager nod. "Good idea, General." The young man looked confused.

"General," O'Neil repeated, snapping a salute. "You General, I salute."

Skaara touched his chest. "General." "You're scouting." O'Neil shaded his eyes with his hand, miming the action of scoping things out. "We call that intelligence." Poor Skaara looked totally lost. O'Neil toned down his conversation. "I'll show you the classes. You look around."

UMC's English classes were being conducted in a large, airy tent.

Skaara's eyes were big as he took in the banks of computer and video monitors. Some showed incredible machines, like the earthmovers he'd seen at the pyramid. There were other pictures of great, boxy wagons that moved on many wheels, but had no mastadges to pull them. There were also brightly animated figures on other screens moving to cheerful music. The young man had wondered how people who didn't speak his language could teach theirs. The flashing figures explained how. The UMC teachers were using hieroglyphics-and besides deserters from his English class, Skaara also saw faces he recognized from Daniel's literacy courses. The strangers were using Daniel's own work to lure away his students! It certainly wasn't perfect. Skaara saw several signs he didn't understand, and some that were just plain wrong. One of the teaching staff approached him. "You want to learn my tongue?" he asked in a broken, fumbling sort of dialect. "You must help teach me yours." "The teacher in the city speaks my tongue better," Skaara replied. "Why shouldn't I learn from him?" "That one is not . . ." The teacher tapped the side of his head. "In my place, he is a failure."

Skaara kept his face noncommittal. But when he returned home, he'd have much to discuss with Daniel and Sha'uri.

Daniel couldn't believe what Skaara had to tell him. "Televisions.

Computers. All the bells and whistles." He saw the incomprehension on Skaara's and Sha'uri's faces and apologized. "Sorry. An expression from back home." Listening to the content of what Skaara had seen, he scowled. "So. Part of this show is to impress people with the wonderful machines Lockwood intends to bring here. He may even be looking for people with an aptitude to run them. They'd be a lot cheaper to pay than bringing people from Earth. Most of that can be done with pictures. But how can they talk to people? I can't believe the Marines picked up enough words When Skaara explained about the dancing hieroglyphics, Daniel's eyes went big behind his glasses. "They're trying to learn ancient Egyptian from the people I taught how to write? Using hieroglyphics?" "Some didn't make any sense," Skaara said. Using chalk on a piece of slate, he drew one of the odd figures he'd seen on the glowing screens. "I can't get the colors, of course," Skaara apologized.

Daniel, however, was staring at the glyph

Skaara had drawn. He began to laugh. "No wonder you couldn't understand what this means. Those idiots are using Budge's work-and it's full of mistakes." His good humor restored, he turned to Sha'uri. "Looks like we'll have to reopen enrollment for our English classes," he said.

"This time we choose people we didn't teach how to write. You'll handle the spoken word, and I'll teach them the English alphabet." He frowned and muttered in English, "Wonder if I could send away for that phonics course I always used to hear advertised." The strangers made great progress in a very short time. A road now stretched from the pyramid housing the StarGate to the mining site. Trucks roared back and forth.

Work began on the first mechanical hoist system to carry the ore from the depths to the surface. But in the meantime the quartz material still had to be dug and transported by hand. Lockwood made several visits to Nagada, bargaining with the Elders for more workers and harder effort. He wasn't meeting his production estimates. He brought staff members along, and as his teachers became more proficient in the local idiom, some of them accompanied the manager as well. At least they verified that Daniel Jackson was translating Lockwood's requests fairly and accurately. The UMC man was not happy to hear this. He had a sizable gap developing between what he'd promised his superiors and the amount of ore being loaded. And Lockwood wanted someone to blame. He tried incentives, raising the rates of workers who produced more than usual. It didn't represent that much of a monetary drain. The elders had agreed on daily wages that would produce coronaries in most mineworkers' unions. The only problem was that the locals demanded payment in coin. They didn't mind if it was U.S. coin. But a lot of American banks were wondering why the demand for Susan B. Anthony dollar coins was rising. Production rose slightly, but not enough to reach Lockwood's goals. Having failed with the carrot, he next decided to try the stick. He began by arranging private meetings with his field foremen-a much more corporate title than overseer. "They're lazy,"

foreman Tony DiBlasi complained. "No discipline. I don't know how they managed to produce as much as you say they did. just a few trips up and down those ladders, and half of them are off to that refreshment tent of theirs. Especially the women and old men." DiBlasi didn't mention that just one trip up the ladders was enough to put him out of commission for a good half hour. Lockwood smiled. "So what we need to do is set standards. These people can't declare breaks on their own. Let's try for a minimum of five round trips before they can take a rest. Does that sound reasonable?" Sitting in the boss's air-conditioned trailer, out of the broiling heat of Abydos's THREE suns, any thing sounded reasonable to DiBlasi. "But how do we enforce it?" he asked. Lockwood's face looked as if he'd suddenly bitten into a sour persimmon. "I'll apply to headquarters for some security people. Knowing what a soft heart this O'Neil guy has, we'll never get the Marines to back us up on this." "And what about the Abydos people? What if they complain?"

DiBlasi wanted to know. "The Abbadabbas?" Lockwood smiled derisively, speaking aloud for the first the name he'd privately been using for the natives. "What are they going to do? File a grievance with the union?"

DiBlasi chuckled. "Abbadabbas," he repeated. "I like that." "I want you and the other management people to monitor the workers," Lockwood said.

"Identify the weak links-the ones who don't produce. As we mechanize the operation, those will be the first we'll get rid of." His clean-cut features twisted into a smirking wink. "Just don't work them to death, all right? For the time being, we need these people." Perhaps Lockwood considered himself clever dubbing people "Abbadabbas" and calling them dirty and lazy. But he underestimated one of his listeners. While Lockwood and DiBlasi had been talking, one of the locals had been cleaning Lockwood's trailer. She was a older woman, who reminded one of the foremen of his own mother, so he'd secured this light duty for her.

What neither the foreman nor Lockwood knew was that the woman was also a student in Daniel jackson's English classes. The voices coming through the paper-thin partitions of the trailer had been clear enough. And although her English wasn't up to translating the whole interview, the woman had an illiterate's facility for remembering sounds. When she recited the conversation at class that evening, Daniel felt as though he were listening to a human tape recorder. Some of those more fluent in English, like Sha'uri and Skaara, were angered and offended. The ill-will grew as the less fluent got translations from more advanced students. Daniel merely felt sick. Abbadabbas, he thought. The bastard has come up with a perfect demeaning name for us. But he had other concerns at the moment, heading off a ground swell of anti-UMC feeling in his classroom. "Who does this Lockwood think he is?" an angry student demanded. "Ra himself. He at least had the excuse of being a god-not human. But Lockwood is as mortal as the rest of us." Daniel picked his words carefully. "On my world," he said, "when big jobs must be done, large groups are organized, called corporations." "Large jobs-like mining?" another student asked. "The bigger the job, the bigger the corporation. Some of them begin to take on lives of their own. Those who work for the corporation-especially those near the top-begin to think only of the good of the company. For them the corporation becomes a god to be worshiped-like Ra." "And with their power, they begin to act like Ra," Skaara said shrewdly. "But how do the people on your world protect themselves against arrogant corporations?"

a young man in the back row wanted to know. "There are different ways,"

Daniel said slowly. "In some cases the people ask our leaders to make laws protecting them. Other times the workers organize to bargain with the corporation." "Little good that would have done us with Ra," an older woman scoffed. "If we had protested mistreatment, the Horus guards would have beaten us more severely." There was a moment of silence as the class considered her words. Ra's followers had treated the people badly-until the people had finally risen up. When they were finished, Ra and his people were dead. Daniel didn't like the obvious train of thought he could read on his students' faces. "We've gotten very far from the point," he said abruptly, turning back to his slateboard. "We were talking about why some words are spelled one way but sound another The next day, Daniel, Sha'uri, and Skaara were called to meet with Kasuf and the Elders. The older men were frankly baffled. "We hear of strange things in the camp of this man Lockwood," a white-bearded leader said almost peevishly. "Those who go to learn the Strangers' language are shown pictures of great machines that can do the work of a hundred men.

Some are offered the chance to learn more than the language-how to ride these great devices themselves. They are told this will make them valuable workers. And there are hints that others may lose their jobs."

"Not hints," another Elder put in angrily. "I have heard a report that Lockwood was saying as much to his overseers." "I, too, have heard this," Kasuf said, turning to Daniel. "And I have heard that it was said in your class. Is this true?" "A woman who cleans for Lockwood heard it," Sha'uri spoke up. "He laughs at us, calls us silly names.

But he wants his overseers to keep track of who brings up more ore and who brings up less." "Well, of course some can carry more than others,"

an Elder said. "In my day-in the days of Ra-" he amended, "everyone dug for ore when it was demanded. The children, the elderly, women-they could not carry as much up the ladders as a strong man. But they could bring something." "They carried their loads for fear of Ra and his warriors," Skaara pointed out. "The people now working in the mines do so freely, for the coins the strangers offer." "And Lockwood complains they do not work hard enough." Kasuf looked baffled. "If they do not work hard enough, why does he want less workers?" "He will get rid of them as he brings the machines in," Skaara declared. "Until then he needs many laborers-and he intends to work them hard. None will be allowed into the tent of rest until they have made five circuits of the ladders." The Elders muttered among themselves. "Five circuits-that is difficult enough for a strong man under the suns at this time of year."