The Diehard
The numbers posted at the mouth of each shaft, they said, had been given out in the order the digging began. As a rule, then, the earlier a shaft's number, the farther the work had gone, the deeper the tunnel ran, and the harder the labor was reckoned to be. The reverse was also true: the later the number, the lighter the work. There was still so much coal in the ground that even a somewhat leisurely pick hardly showed in the day's yield, and the shafts were not yet deep enough for oxygen starvation or a collapse to pose much danger.
There was an exception.
Shaft No. 7.
Though it had been opened comparatively late, it boasted the worst working conditions in the entire mine. The recruitment notice alone offered a faint hint as to why, but the reason for that black reputation only became unmistakable once a man had changed into work clothes and stood before the mouth of the shaft itself.
"This batch of new hands is nothing but weaklings, too."
The supervisor. A pencil clamped between his teeth, he raked his cold eyes without pity over the laborers drawn up four abreast.
No one knew better than the supervisor himself that driving his men past the point of cruelty was half of what had made Shaft No. 7 infamous. He had not the slightest intention of mending his ways. Since the day he took the post, the shaft's coal output had climbed to an astonishing degree. Even allowing for the doubled wages, the profit was plain.
"Work starts around eight in the morning. You'll be given two meals, noon and evening, and time to rest."
He reeled off the formal briefing while picking the newcomers apart one by one. Four in all. It was a pity that two of them already had the look of men who would bolt before the day was out. Entrusting even odd jobs to that sort was a loss. Teach them and they would only run.
He shifted his attention to the other two.
Gray hair. The build was decent enough, but he did not look as if he could put any real strength behind a swing. This one might last three days, if that. The black-haired youth beside him was in better shape. A week, perhaps. There was a feel of potential about him—teach him properly, and he might actually stay on.
"That's all I have to pass on. New hands, come here. I'll tell you what you're doing."
In his head, the assignments were already finished.
"You two weaklings. Follow those big fellows over there."
Men who were going to run anyway were better worked to the bone while there was still something to wring out of them.
"Black hair. You go with that older hand."
The one who showed promise would learn from a seasoned partner.
"Gray hair."
And the one who was neither one thing nor the other got the chores.
"See that canary cage? Pick it up and follow the black-haired one."
A yellow bird chattered inside the little cage. It was there to tell whether the partial pressure of oxygen had dropped to a dangerous level, and hauling the thing about, forever minding it, was a thorough nuisance. The supervisor's way, therefore, was always to hang the canary on the least skilled man of the lot. There was a secondary profit as well: it handed the rest of them a pleasant sense of superiority. I'm not that green. I'm better than he is. Nothing raised a man's efficiency quite like feeling himself above someone else.
"All right. Off you go."
Once he had confirmed that every laborer, the four newcomers among them, had gone into the shaft, the supervisor took the pencil from his mouth, set a whistle between his teeth, and blew a sharp trill. It was the signal that the real work had begun.
Clang— clang— clang—
The ring of picks echoed back, a sound no one could honestly have called pleasant. The supervisor did not follow them in. On an ordinary day he would have gone as far as the entrance and kept an eye out for anyone slacking, but today the paperwork waiting outside had piled too high. He worked a pen for several hours in the hut near the shaft, then drew a pocket watch from his trouser pocket. Two in the afternoon. Rest.
Stepping outside, he blew the whistle hard once more.
"Rest—!"
Then he fixed his gaze on the mouth of the shaft. It was no exaggeration to call this the most important moment just after a fresh intake. Who came out first. That was what he had to see.
Most young men born and bred in the ordinary way of the Federation had never swung a pick in their lives—hardly even a shovel. With magical scholarship advancing at such a pace, and students dreaming of nothing but a scholar's life, contempt for bodily labor had only grown thicker. How well could they possibly handle a pick? In all likelihood they had spent every scrap of strength within an hour of starting. Six hours on, they would be past exhaustion, without even the strength to walk. That was why the first new hand out of the shaft mattered. It meant he was the one with the most promise.
"This round's going to be dull."
Watching the seasoned laborers pour out, plastered in sweat and soot, the supervisor clicked his tongue. He didn't need to look to know that muscular black-haired youth would be first. The moment you already knew how a contest would end, the match stopped being any fun.
And then, in the midst of that certainty, he saw it. At the tail of the veterans' procession, one unfamiliar face mixed in among them. Arms, face, even the hair had been dyed black with coal dust, and for an instant he nearly failed to recognize the man—but that face, pretty as a courtesan's fancy man, made him wonder. The canary cage in the hand that was not shouldering the pick settled it.
Gray hair had come out first.
The next day, the supervisor stepped into the mine, and only then did yesterday's question find its answer.
Clang— clang— clang—
"Kh— ugh!"
Gray hair and black hair. Eugene and Damon stood side by side at the face, so a comparison took only a glance. Eugene's form was clean, and the force of the swing passed smoothly into the force of the downward blow.
"Hah!"
Clang— A neat strike cracked home. Steady breathing, eyes still alive. More than that, there hung about Eugene the sense of a man who had already found the trick of sparing his waist and his wrists.
Damon, too, must have had his form corrected by a veteran, for the swinging itself looked plausible enough. But he plainly had not understood a shred of the principle hidden inside the motion.
"Huff. Huff... kh!"
Instead of shifting his weight and riding the rebound, he was driving the pick down on strength alone. A few hours of that, and a man would be begging to fall over. The supervisor rubbed his stubbled jaw and turned it over. In truth, an ordinary new hand would fall short of Damon rather than surpass him. Considering that the other two had already fled, Damon could fairly be counted among the more promising of the intake.
The strange one was Eugene.
Good technique, was it? Easy to say. For a man who was still only a new hand to hold his form and keep a pick falling for more than ten hours a day was a kind of madness. The work did not ask for stamina and focus. It asked for an absurd, unreasonable stubbornness. The supervisor thought it in earnest. What is that one, really?
"Huff. Hah. Huff."
The world swam in front of his eyes. Damon was, quite simply, at the point of dying. Three days had passed since the canary cage became his. Work of a hellish intensity had wrung every last drop of strength out of him, and too little rest, too little sleep, and meals that tasted foul had gnawed away even his will, bit by bit. What still dragged his body forward was a kind of inertia—and a competitive fire aimed at Eugene, who, aside from having grown a little gaunt, still looked perfectly fine.
Clang—
He did not have the strength to open his mouth, but out of sheer cussedness Damon crooked one corner of it and forced the words out.
"Ash-headed bastard. So you didn't pick Shaft No. 7 with no confidence after all..."
"......"
"There's still time to run. Don't hesitate."
"Hah. You're cluttering my head. Be quiet."
Eugene answered without so much as a glance.
"I don't know what you've got against me, but I only came here for a while, and purely for the money. I picked Shaft No. 7 because they pay double."
"......"
"Let's drop the childish nonsense. You came all the way to a coal mine, so you've got reasons of your own, haven't you?"
The talk went no further.
Fweeeet!
A whistle cut through the shaft.
— Rest! Dinner time!
"There you have it. Let's eat."
"...Calling that slop food. You've got a strong stomach."
"Suppose so."
Eugene set his pick down and started walking. The light of the mana-lamps along the shaft fell across his back, laying bare the scars scattered over his arms and shoulders. That sickening gray hair had already been stained as black as if the color had always been his. Washing it out again would be no small labor.
"Tch."
Damon folded the thought away and moved as well.
That was when it happened. The canary screamed, an ominous cry, and in the same instant a faint tremor climbed up through the soles of his feet. He looked ahead without thinking. Tired, maybe—there was not the slightest sign the other man had noticed. And above him, rock dust was pattering down.
"Ah— hey, hey!"
Damon lunged on reflex and caught him by the scruff of the neck. A strangled kkh—! broke from Eugene's throat, but there was no time to mind it. Then dust began to fall above Damon's own head, and he froze where he stood, still hauling.
Fortunately, Eugene grasped it too. This time it was he who yanked Damon back and shouted.
The next moment—
KRRRR-BOOM—!
The ceiling of the shaft split with a splintering crack, and then it came down as it was.
The shaft was sealed.