The Ladder in the Sky (7 page)

He shrugged, rubbed his chin, and walked towards the truck.

XII

Not a jail …

This was such a transparently obvious fact that Kazan could not understand why so many of the people working here felt otherwise. There were about six thousand personnel altogether: a couple of hundred forming a permanent administrative core, mostly career government servants from the parent world of Marduk, the rest labor recruited on a contract basis from a number of planets, ranging from highly skilled metallurgists and personnel experts to the least educated, least skilled of the workers who had come in with Ogric’s ship. Merely to come into contact with people from so many different backgrounds was fascinating to Kazan, but there was something infinitely more significant still.

Not a jail, for him, in any least sense of the word. An incredible liberation.

He could see a very pale reflection of his own feelings in some of the other workers from Berak, especially among the people of the Dyasthala. It didn’t apply so much to those who had come to Vashti because they had supported Luth’s abortive revolt and wanted to escape the consequences. As nearly as he could put it into words, it was release from the naked problem of staying alive, warm and fed.

Most of the people of the Dyasthala had never worked regularly or been fed and clothed without having to beg or steal. Those who had been passed by the selectors at the Berak spaceport were those who innately disliked such an existence. It would obviously have been foolish to choose recruits who had a real psychological need for theft and violence.

Now they found themselves at a complete loss. Once, living had been a clock-round business for them, extending not only to the question of where the next meal was coming from, but as often as not to the question of where they could safely sleep the night. Free from the perennial preoccupations which had faced them, they were now fed, clothed, housed and entertained in return for undemanding work. It was said that in ten years’ time the Vashti mines would be fully automatized and would require only a token corps of engineers and surveyors to run them. Already the process had gone so far that the crying need was for labor to undertake the simple tasks which machines would take over completely in the first stage of automation. That was why Ogric had gone to Berak; unskilled labor was growing steadily rarer.

Not a jail, for the love of life!

Already aboard ship Kazan had begun to realize how much of his thinking had formerly been wasted on problems of survival. Already he had cast around for other things to apply himself to, and had fetched up with a crash against the blank wall of the ultimate simplicities which the greatest human thinkers of many worlds had tackled, and failed to answer. But new horizons were opening before him all the time, and it did not really seem to matter what he concerned himself with because so many things were offered.

First there was the work he was assigned to, doing repair and maintenance under the supervision of a tubby, pleasant man with a shiny bald head named Rureth. His life in the Dyasthala had brought him no nearer to contact with machinery in general than an occasional theft of a vehicle for a job. And that was an incidental, an accessory, which did not involve his interest.

Confronted with the machines they worked with here, he was jerked again into a new view of the universe in which he existed. They assigned a large number of illiterates and slow readers to the repair shops, because the tough, reliable equipment seldom needed more than cleaning, servicing and changing of parts which could be done by following colored diagrams. Most of the other workers were content with that. Kazan could not stop there. He wanted to know more; he had to discover the system behind the effects. This was an excavator which shifted and piled overburden at the rate of a ton a minute. What went on in the magnet-cased fusion chamber to produce so much power? This was a separator, which sorted streams of finely ground mineral dust according to its composition, into forty vertical storage tubes. How could it tell one kind of dust from another?

At first Rureth was irritated by Kazan’s insistent questioning. Then he began to understand the reason behind it, and to think that he ought not to try and stop Kazan from improving himself. He sent him to the library.

The library, with its stock of microfilms and recordings, was a revelation to Kazan. When he had been spending almost every free moment there for a month, Rureth decided that something ought to be done about this young man so hungry for knowledge.

Not a jail, Clary thought dully. That was a joke, if you liked. It was all very well not to have to worry any more about where the next meal was coming from, where you were going to sleep tonight, but with that much taken out of her pattern of existence, what could she put in its place? She felt empty, and bored, and frustrated.

And as for Kazan, who seemed not to be worried, she was disgusted with him.

Her work was of no particular interest to her. It was simple clerking and maintenance of records. She could already read and write fairly well; she was taught to use a keyboard computer input, to select the appropriate program from the limited range required to administer the small settlement, and to interpret results. Mostly she had to handle dietary and leisure-time programming. The department was also responsible for accommodation, but that was a subject she would rather not think about now.

True enough, she wasn’t deliberately kept away from Kazan. Although the mining area sprawled over large distances, the accommodations were concentrated for convenience together with the canteens, the leisure facilities and such ancillary establishments as the hospital and library. There was not even a need for internal transport in the dwelling area—everywhere was in easy walking distance, and helibuses were only necessary to transport workers to their jobs.

But she was separated from Kazan in another way, and a far more effective one.

They had allotted him to a room in the block where repair and maintenance staff lived, her to a room in the administrative staff’s block. Remembering what the supervisor had said when they arrived, she inquired and found it was permissible to apply for shared accommodation; a lot of the staff formed more or less permanent arrangements together, because they were mostly here on two- or five-year contracts. Provided you showed up in time for the transport to work, she was told, no one would mind.

But her carefully worded application came back vetoed by Snutch.

In charge of records and programming, and therefore of her department, was a middle-aged woman called Lecia. She was well liked by her subordinates, though she was merciless with their shortcomings. Clary demanded of her why the application had been turned down. There was vacant accommodation available, she knew from the department’s charts.

But Lecia merely said that she could not override a decision by Manager Snutch, and gave no further explanation.

According to the results of her examination on Berak, and the brief training course she had been through, Clary should have been a good and reliable worker. Her attention seemed to move somewhere away from her work after that. Lecia tried half a dozen times to shake her out of her apathy, but after a month she decided something was going to have to be done about the root problem.

This was not the separation which divided Clary from Kazan, though. It was worse than physical. It was as though since coming to Vashti Kazan had become another person as different again from what he had been on arrival as he then had been from the way he was when he left Berak.

“Why did you let him hit you like that?” she demanded of him, thinking of Snutch’s suddenly reddened face and unreasoning violence.

Kazan frowned. “I felt sorry for him,” he said after a pause.

“What?”

“Yes, sorry for him. Don’t you see that the only reason he could have for doing such a thing would be because he’s not completely responsible? I’ve asked some people who’ve been here for a long time, and they tell me they think he’s bitter about having come from Marduk to run things here. He feels that if he had stayed at home he might have got further ahead in life; he thinks he’s traded his chance of fulfilling his main ambitions for a second-best job where he can rise no further.”

“That’s his fault, then!” Clary snapped. “I suppose he’s vetoed the application for shared accommodation for the same reason!”

Kazan shrugged. He said, “I guess so.”

“Don’t you care?” Clary pleaded. “Don’t you want to do something, even if it’s only to complain about it? There isn’t any regulation or anything to stop us being together—only Snutch’s decision. And—and—wouldn’t you like us to be together, Kazan?”

“But we can be,” Kazan said, and she realized with a sinking heart that he had missed her point. “And you know as well as I do that if Snutch vetoed the application for some emotional reason he won’t change his mind. Also I think he knows he made himself look foolish in front of his staff when he hit me for no good cause, and the way a twisted mind like that works, it seems to him that it was my fault he looked foolish. It’s inconceivable that he would change his mind simply because I asked him to.”

“You know a hell of a lot about what goes on in Snutch’s mind,” Clary said sharply. “But you don’t know a thing about what does on in mine, do you? Or do you just not care?”

She left him there before he could answer, hoping against hope that he would come after her. But he did not, and the next time they met it was like meeting a stranger, who could seemingly talk only about stellar processes and numbers and facts of the physical universe. But of these he talked with the excitement of a man who has made a miraculous discovery.

By instinct rather than conscious understanding, she saw then that Kazan as he had been for so short a time was lost to her. It was not his fault, and for all her reflex bitterness she could not make herself think that it was. She knew too well that he was being driven now by his own nature, and until the impetus was exhausted she could not hope to follow him. She could only wait until he was over the violence of this new enthusiasm for pure knowledge, and then—perhaps—he would remember that he had been grateful to her and had even liked her very much.

But the waiting was going to be intolerable, and there was no certainty that it was worthwhile.

XIII

There had been a fight between two of the workers in the repair shops over some contemptuous reference to the Dyasthala background of one of them; it took Rureth to Snutch’s office to get the matter straightened out, and afterwards he used the opportunity to broach the other subject concerning him.

“One of that new batch of workers,” he said thoughtfully, staring out of the big window which gave Snutch a general view of his nearer empire. He had heard the stories about what happened the day Ogric landed this batch; he was not at all surprised to see Snutch lift his head like a hunting animal snuffing a scent on the wind.

“Yes?” the manager said sharply.

Rureth settled his tubby body deep in his chair. He said, “Kazan. Know him?”

Snutch gave a wary nod. “What about him?”

“You’re wasting him on me,” Rureth said. “What I needed was dumb oxen who could be taught to turn a wrench or weld a seam—not high-calibre engineers.”

“He isn’t one,” Snutch said. “He’s a slum-bred thief.”

“But he is,” Rureth corrected gently. “Who do you think is in charge of the shops while I’m over here with you?”

Snutch stared at him for a long moment. Then he slammed his open palm down on his desk. He said, “You have no business doing that, Rureth! Putting an unqualified novice in a position of responsibility—it’s insane! Do you want an adverse entry on your service report?”

“I’m
telling
you,” Rureth said patiently. “It’s been a bit more than a month since I took him on. The library records show that he’s requisitioned most of the texts on engineering and physical science that are available, and I can say from my own knowledge that he’s learned them. It doesn’t make sense to keep a man with learning ability of that order in the repair shops. Also I was told he was illiterate, and he’s not. As you may have gathered.”

“So what do you want me to do?” Snutch demanded. “Anyone would think that you’d be pleased. From what you say, you could sit back till the end of your contract and leave your work to him to handle!”

“I probably could,” Rureth agreed. “But it wouldn’t suit me, and I doubt if it would suit him. The suggestion I was going to make was that you transfer him around the settlement to as many different jobs as you can, for short periods, and then let him wind up on the planning staff. Maybe I’m being optimistic, because the only signs of original thinking he’s shown so far have been in petty matters. But I prefer to back my hunch that he’d be a valuable planner, and he’d probably find ways of cutting the ten-year period to full automation.”

“You said you’d had him for—how long?” Snutch commented sarcastically.

“Long enough to know when I’m on to a good thing,” Rureth answered. “Another point: the rest of the workers from Berak regard him with almost superstitious awe. I doubt if it’s rooted in sense, but it works all right. You ought to come out and see him handle them some time. It’s hard to define, but he’s got a sort of impatience with anything that’s less than perfect, and what’s more he can make it catching. Even to me.

“He’ll gather round the four or five workers responsible for a particular job—say, replacing the magnet windings on an excavator’s power unit—and spend ten or twenty minutes going over the diagrams with them. At the end of that time he’ll have got the idea of what they’re doing through their heads. Then they throw the diagrams away and they do the job. You see what I’m getting at? For years I’ve been plagued with knob-headed wrench-pushers dim enough to follow the diagrams by rote, which is all right but calls for unceasing supervision. When Kazan gets them working, they aren’t just going through the motions—they know the reasons for the motions. And the difference is fantastic.”

“Make your mind up!” Snutch rapped. “Either you want the job done like that, or you want dumb oxen. You’ve asked for both.”

“I managed without him before he got here,” Rureth said imperturbably. “I can manage again. But if he can do this in a repair shop he can probably do it for the mines as a whole, in which case he ought to be given the chance.”

“Nonsense!” Snutch said with finality.

“You’re the manager,” Rureth shrugged. “Mark you, I guess I’m wasting my time anyway, because he’s going to make his own chances. It’ll just take him longer. In a year or two you’re going to find him involved in planning anyway. It’s his natural habitat. He’ll make for it whether he knows about it or not.”

“That’s as may be,” Snutch said. “But you keep your views to yourself.”

“No,” Rureth said. “Not without a good reason.” The change that had come over his normally rather sleepy, casual voice was astonishing in that instant. It rang now like a beaten anvil. “And it’s got to be better than the reason which people ascribe to you right now.”

“What do you mean?” Snutch said slowly.

“It’s good sense to make exceptional arrangements for an exceptional person,” Rureth said. “Kazan is exceptional. But I was talking to Lecia yesterday evening, and I understand from her that for Kazan you won’t even make ordinary arrangements.”

“What was the idiot woman talking about?”

“That isn’t fair to Lecia,” Rureth said. “But let it pass. Kazan had a woman—Clary is the name—and she applied according to regulations for shared accommodation with him. You vetoed it. Any good reason?”

“That pair were troublemakers!” Snutch barked. “Didn’t you hear what happened aboard Ogric’s ship on the way here? A near-riot to start with, and tension from then on. This Clary threatened to make the workers welsh on their contracts, and blackmailed Ogric into giving her a bonus for not doing it, and as for Kazan—well, it was over him that the riot brewed!”

“I haven’t had any trouble with Kazan,” Rureth said. “And he’s only been working directly under me. With others from Berak, yes, like that one who got involved in the fight this morning. If you want trouble from Kazan, you’re going about it the right way.”

Snutch leaped on that like a hungry animal on a scrap of meat. “You think he’s contemplating trouble?” he said.

Rureth sighed and got to his feet. “No, but you are,” he said. “You only have to wait until the rest of the workers from Berak start to feel the same way about Kazan as the ones in the repair shops already do. Like I said, they have this superstitious awe of him. But it’s turning into a kind of reflected pride. They’re thinking, “This guy is from Berak, and he’s hell with jets!’ ”

“If he tries whipping up a personality cult for himself among the workers, that can be dealt with,” Snutch said, and compressed his lips whitely together.

“Listen!” Rureth said, leaning on both palms on the front of Snutch’s desk. “You’d better hear this from me rather than someone else. Everybody knows—but
everybody—
you’re ashamed of yourself for hitting him the way you did. It made you look like a fool, no denying. Pretty soon everybody will know about Kazan’s talent. If you don’t want the word to go around that you’re scared of him, you’d better do something. Fast.”

“Get out before I throw you out,” Snutch said between his teeth.

Snutch had not seen Kazan since the day of his arrival. In some strange way he was surprised when an ordinary enough young man entered his office, wearing the standard reddish-brown work uniform. What had he been expecting—superman? He wondered for a moment, then checked himself and wished he had not thought of the question. An instant later he caught himself looking for traces of a bruise under Kazan’s chin.

He waved him to a seat.

“I’ve been hearing things about you,” he said, leaving the phrase deliberately vague and pausing after it. Kazan showed no sign of preconception; he merely nodded.

“I understand,” Snutch went on, “that you’ve been trying to create disaffection among the workers.”

Kazan cocked his head. He said, “How’s that, Manager?”

“You’ve been going around starting arguments between your people from Berak and the staff from Marduk and other places, about conditions of work, about living conditions—”

Kazan started to laugh. Snutch broke off, his face reddening. “What are you laughing at?” he barked.

“I’m ahead of you, Manager,” Kazan said. “I guess all I can say is that whoever told you wasn’t listening.”

Snutch hesitated. There was an uncomfortable confidence in Kazan’s voice, which reminded him of the younger man’s expression that moment before he was so incredibly foolish as to hit him. He drew a deep breath.

“All right. Give me your version,” he said.

“I’m not sure I can make it clear to you—”

“Are you hinting that I’m stupid?” Snutch cracked out, and instantly regretted it. What in the wyrds’ name made him so sensitive to this calm young man? He recovered himself. “Go on.”

“It’s a question of background,” Kazan said, ignoring the other’s outburst. “It’s like this. I come out of the Dyasthala in Berak. To me that’s like being let out into fresh air, being here. I feel I’m awake for the first time. What I used to think of as impossible luxuries are commonplace here. And I’m getting to learn things I didn’t know existed. It’s like being born all over again. But there are people here—the people from Marduk especially—who think they’re hard done by when they have to make do with what I call luxuries. They think they’re trapped and enclosed here because they have a contract to work out on Vashti, when it’s a liberation for me. I feel like”—he hesitated, hunting a comparison—“someone who’s been in a cage all his life. Now I’m out of it. I want to know about outside life. That’s all.”

Snutch studied him with narrowed eyes. It sounded convincing. It made sense, if it was true that he was a frustrated genius out of the slums. And it implied that there wasn’t much to fear from Kazan, if he was actively grateful to be on Vashti instead of in the Dyasthala.

Cautiously he said, “You like it here?”

“Better than the Dyasthala.”

“Your work?”

“Fine. I don’t have to spend too much time at it any more
.
Supervisor Rureth tells me I don’t need any more training than I have already. So I have a surplus of leisure.”

Without changing his expression, Snutch came to the alert. That was a problem he hadn’t foreseen. To leave this fellow, about whom Rureth made such astonishing predictions, with time on his hands—that was probably what Rureth had meant about heading for trouble. Let someone intelligent and restive get bored, and the consequences might be dangerous.

He felt calm, and pleased that he had exorcised the irrational specter haunting him from their first encounter. He debated with himself for a moment. It looked as though he’d better do two things: arrange to keep Kazan occupied by making him undergo several more training courses, as Rureth had suggested, meantime watching him closely, and secondly try and eradicate any source of a grudge Kazan might bear against him, Snutch. Provided what he had said proved to be the truth, there wouldn’t be any need to worry.

“Your girl put in for shared accommodation with you,” Snutch said after he had made his decision. “I hear she’s been miserable because I held over my approval. I wanted to make up my mind about you first. I’d heard you were talented. Supervisor Rureth’s confirmed that now. So I have some plans for your future here. You can take your girl a couple of presents.”

He had to avoid Kazan’s emotionless gaze. He fumbled up an authorization pad from a drawer in his desk.

“I’ll authorize your shared accommodation,” he said, writing rapidly. “And I’ll get you out of the repair shop. If you know all there is to know, you must be bored, hey?” He tried a friendly grin, and it failed. But Kazan smiled back, politely and mechanically.

“Shift you to the refinery,” Snutch said, after a moment’s thought: where is he likely to find the going toughest? Refinery work called for a keen understanding of chemistry; not even Kazan would hurry through his training there. “Give you something to chew on. Here you are.”

He held out the two authorizations: the accommodation and the work-transfer. Kazan took them and stood up.

“Thanks very much,” he said. “Is there anything else?”

It hadn’t worked. The devil wasn’t chained. “No,” Snutch muttered. “No, that’s all.”

And as the door closed he knew grayly that small bribes and favors were so utterly useless that even big ones probably would fail as well.

He felt trapped.