The Unknown Industrial Prisoner (40 page)

In reply, the Humdinger collared Disneyland and fed him a gentle line about being young, superbly built, extremely fit, a natural athlete. Disneyland lapped it up, the broad scar over his eye wrinkling with pleasure. He'd cut himself so often the skin was tissue paper. In five minutes he was running round refinery roads. It was seven and fairly dark. Bubbles replied by pulling Ambrose in and getting him to stand up straight in the control room, look up at the light, then turn round fast. Round and round he spun and of course fell over.

‘You'll have to do it again and again, practise it until you're perfect, otherwise you'll never pass your advanced physical.'

‘Have I got another medical to do still?'

‘You want to be an advanced operator, don't you?'

Ambrose was in—hook, line and sinker.

Disneyland was still away after Ambrose had spun and fallen fifteen times, so they had to look for another victim; neither was willing to admit the other had won by these puny demonstrations of man's power over man.

The Humdinger rang in the voice of the Sumpsucker for the services of Goathead, an old long-service prisoner who came round on his bike to test for the presence of gas. When he came, grumbling aloud as he pedalled, he didn't get past the spray water tank. The Humdinger took him, meter, sniffer, bike and all, with the jet from the three-inch hose.

This was great fun for the audience, who barracked loudly for the two men after each trick was done. Laughing beforehand to warn the victim was unfair.

‘I'll need some help with the next one,' said Bubbles. ‘Does anyone know how to do the three-man lift?' No answer. ‘I'll ask it the other way. Does anyone not know the three-man lift.'

‘I don't,' said Ambrose. Bubbles couldn't believe his luck. Soon they had one man sitting on the floor gripping Ambrose's ankles, another sitting behind him gripping his arms behind his back and Bubbles stood over them as if ready to lift the three men locked together. But instead of lifting, Bubbles bent down and searched until he found something belonging to Ambrose, a pretty little thing with a small, pink mouth and wide, glowing cheeks. He held it up between finger and thumb, showed everyone, then got out the black boot polish he used to smarten up with when he went straight from work to the club, and blacked this little thing all over.

‘Beat that!' exclaimed Bubbles to the Humdinger. The Humdinger scratched his head. A light went on in his face.

‘Back in half an hour.' He was seen creeping out into the night towards the gastail plant and not again for an hour. The Samurai saw him though, and Dutch Treat, who was up the stack again, climbing carefully up the vertical ladders of the two-hundred-foot absorber column, a slim, silver, dizzy column swaying in the wind. Rung by rung, up under the sleeping birds that infested the ladders and railings of the tallest parts of the plant. Clouds of birds came from the north-west every day to sleep. Thousands of starlings, sparrows, swallows. The Humdinger would get under a step with birds on it, snake his hand up quietly, grip a bird tightly and shove it into his open overalls front. He came down with several dozen of these pets, starlings and sparrows, half and half, took them behind the control panel, positioned himself behind one of the cutout sections (new instruments were going in all the time) and waited.

His luck was unbelievable. At 8.30 the Spotted Trout came in with a busload of visitors on a sightseeing tour and when they were nicely spread out through the control room, he was ready to go. Bubbles and the others couldn't hold back, they had to help make this a winner. The idea was so good petty rivalry was forgotten. Bubbles and the Samurai, who came in from doing start-up work, and Far Away Places, all amazed the Trout by taking little groups of visitors helpfully in hand and getting them strung out along the length of the control room, giving them innocuous but good-natured lectures on the parts of the panel they were facing. Most didn't know the place at all though they worked there every day, but they read out the labels on the instruments and put in words that sounded technical and the visitors didn't know the difference. Just as in the technical bits of a TV commercial, they made up additions to the table of elements.

When the gabble was stilled and the lecturers had attentive listeners, the Humdinger held his stomach against the eight-by-six hole and let the birds out into the lighted room. The panic started slowly, then accelerated like the panic of a person wakened in his own bedroom by the police.

The lights blinded the birds, who flew erratically from one end of the room to the other. There was no space for the visitors to get out; by some chance there was a gaping, grinning, ducking crowd of overalled operators at the exit end. People milled, women screamed. Men lashed out to protect themselves from the little winged bullets, which were too fast to get away from. Beaks hit faces. Clubbing hands hit other people.

The Slug took one look from outside the door and stayed out to examine the spray water pump. How could he be blamed if he was outside when it happened? Captain Bligh had a rolled newspaper in his hand and stood valiantly in the middle of the floor and batted the birds as they came from either end.

He was a hero. He missed many at first, but when the birds started to slow down after knocking their heads on the concrete walls at either end of the long room, he got more and more. Birds lay stunned, were trodden on. Feathers filled the air. Softened the concrete underfoot. The Humdinger and his crew unblocked the exit end and adjourned to the locker-room to finish their laughing. It was very pleasant to be the Humdinger. Bird lice would keep him scratching for days, but it was worth it.

The Trout managed to get his hysterical visitors out to the bus, apologizing and swearing. He explained he was swearing at the birds, not at them. Next day he reported Captain Bligh for having a newspaper. Reading matter was forbidden. He couldn't report the happening, or he'd have been in the gun for the failure of his tour.

Bubbles had tearfully, joyfully handed the palm to the Humdinger for the joke of the year and went on laughing for the rest of the shift. Disneyland came back, puffing from his four-mile run round the outer roads of the refinery.

‘I'm back,' he said. He didn't know why they were laughing and didn't know how to find out without exposing himself to their laughter. Sweat beaded his forehead, collected in the scar and ran down into his eye.

‘Look at my calf muscles now,' he finally said to the Humdinger. ‘They're getting bigger, I think.'

The Humdinger took time off from enjoying his success and said, ‘You better go round again, I think.'

He went. Hysteria resumed. The world was full of fools.

 

THE DIMINISHING WORKER The creator of the Home Beautiful asked a few tactful questions in the cracker panel room.

‘Seen Blue Hills about?'

‘Not since earlier,' said the Humdinger cautiously.

‘He's gone.'

‘Gone? The company must have taken him away.'

‘Haven't heard anything. Keep your ears open. If there's no news, keep it dark.'

‘No names, no packdrill.'

Handed down from convict days, the freemasonry of fear of the authorities kept the news of Blue Hills' collapse quiet.

‘What if he got up and walked away?' said the Humdinger.

The Samurai walked in the north door. The panel room phone rang. The Great White Father picked it up.

‘Yes,' regally, ‘this is the Great White Father. Herman the German? No. Where is he? Out of the anaesthetic? We'll send up a party each day to visit him. Poor old bastard.' Herman was no more than five years older than the Great White Father. Hearing the name, the Samurai walked up to listen.

‘I'll be damned. Off at the shoulder, eh? How long has he got, did they say? A year? Probably means three weeks. Well, we'll make him as comfortable as we can. Any relatives? OK man, we'll do our best. He'll have visitors.' He hung up sadly. Looking down he saw the Samurai's overalls flecked with good beach sand.

‘Dying?' asked the Samurai.

‘Looks like it. This bone disease keeps spreading and they keep chopping bits off. We'll have to get him on the beer.'

‘He's a teetotaller.'

‘Up to now. He won't be when I get hold of him.' Where would the Samurai pick up sand? Concreting?

‘Off at the shoulder. This mob'll sack him now, but he's still as good as any four men.'

‘Yes, they don't employ bloody cripples. They said so.' Perhaps he'd walked through one of the contractors' sand heaps.

 

THE RANGE OF FRIENDSHIP The Samurai received his usual number of thumps on the arm from the Humdinger. Lately they had been getting more frequent, both from the Humdinger and Two Pot, even from Bubbles; not to mention several of the quieter prisoners. They were very fond of him and instead of holding his hand or kissing him as women might their women friends, their contact was limited to a thump or two.

The arm, near the shoulder, was getting very sore. In his judo experience, he had seen men with bad legs from years of repeated foot contacts. He had started to turn his shoulder away or to present the other one. But they didn't seem to like hitting the left shoulder. It left his right arm free.

He couldn't ask them to ease up: that was like pleading. They were human enough to attack more if they suspected weakness. And this would only bring on confrontations, which he wanted to avoid. He tried to anticipate their friendly blows and move out of range.

 

NO MAN PROVOKES ME WITH IMPUNITY A week later, after his arm turned blue-black just below the shoulder where the muscle crossed the bone, he took himself along to a doctor, who told him he would have to avoid anything that might knock his arm. He should have taken the week off, but relied on being able to persuade the boys not to thump him on that muscle. He knew he was kidding himself.

Ten days after that, the skin started to break as if it had been undermined. It smelled. He had seen gangrene and knew this was the end of work for a while. The Humdinger and Bubbles looked offended when he showed them the arm.

It was better in three weeks, but had not healed in the deep wound-trench where the gangrenous tissue had been cut out. Still, it was good enough to be back at work. Thickly strapped.

He noticed a certain coolness from the Humdinger, who looked at him as if the whole thing was some sort of frame-up. Very likely they would never forgive him for what they had done.

Why was he the one to take injury from the casual, tongue-tied affection of these poor creatures? He was used to the sight of it now: the others thought it a horrible disfigurement. But the sore had transferred itself to a place inside him and was still spreading. When would he find an opponent worthy to fight? The festering inside him would only be checked by violence. Revenge. Revenge. But on whom? Had it taken only this little wound to sour him? Was he soured or merely sufficiently provoked?

 

NOT A FOOT WRONG He was back at work for yet another start-up. The latest crash had been disgraceful, they told him; men milling round the instrument panels; the Humdinger trying to break through a group of fitters having a conference in front of the fractionator instruments and failing to get through in time to save the column puking; starting the reactor with five instruments not working; broken-off probes still in the plugged tappings of key controls; running blind on levels; only one slide working on the double-disc slide valves on stripper and regenerator; discovering there were no other probes in the refinery to clear plugged pressure-tapping points; a violent mix-up of supervisors, technologists, engineers, foreign experts crowding round the main panel and showing resentment if operators tried to elbow them out of the way to reach controls. The only good thing had been Gunga Din, who always made sure the urn was full of water for the next brew of tea.

The Humdinger tried to get to the high-pressure steam let-down valve in time, and finding his way blocked, stood back with arms folded. There were loud bangs outside. Bomber Command saw him.

‘Either they get outa my way or she crashes,' he said above the babel of voices.

Bomber Command came good and urged a dozen out of the way, saving the boilers and making himself unpopular with his superiors, but this was an exception. He kept clear after this and the next crisis saw the plant down nicely. The experts conferring were world famous in their line, but they were not familiar with the state of the plant at that particular moment. And in fact they were not discussing it. They were considering future modifications to the most recent modifications and in this gentle atmosphere of erudite technical speculation the plant as it was at that moment diminished in importance and receded to the farther limits of their horizons. Sharply rising and falling chart lines were objects to them, not disasters. The local brass were the same, they didn't so much walk around to see what was going on as stand stiff in attitudes. Leadership. Rebuke. Progress. Ambition, Kindliness. Authority.

Attitudes, no more. The Samurai shook his head. It was the same everywhere. All over the world machines replace men, the men don't take any trouble. The people above don't care about the job to be done—they despise it because an interest in it is the infallible sign of the subordinate not the manager type—they care about moving on to the next job, slightly higher in status, promotion from job to job until the final bright day when they reach management ranks, always the eye on the future in the approved cautious, self-protecting style, never on the immediate task; that was safe with the subordinate type. If they left their desks to visit the plant often, others might get at their papers, or Admin might denounce them for not being on the job. Or they might be accused of fraternizing with the enemy.

It was madness. Men who waffled knowledgeably at executive meetings, sooner saying nothing than daring to put a foot wrong; so scared of making one mistake that they made the mistake of doing nothing that someone hadn't thought of first; these were the Puroil men and they thought they were running a refinery. What made them think this? Well, the overseas bosses pour money in; equipment, foreign experts and construction crews are imported, you put in a management structure diagram, observe Puroil International Procedure, hire people to get their hands dirty, give them flow diagrams and a pay packet and the refinery runs itself. Feed goes in here and product comes out there. Madness.