Dave Duncan - West of January

I knew I had taken a risk by befriending him. Every moment we remained together increased that risk, so I had to satisfy my curiosity before retribution separated us.

“Now,” I said, “tell me why.”

He scowled. “Why what?”

“Why did you volunteer to be licked?”

“So I could work.”

“But why do you want to work?”

“Isn’t it obvious?! They have three dead men to avenge.”

I was baffled. “So?”

“So they wanted to give me time to heal. Then the bosses would have taken turns with me.”

“You hoped to die?”

He looked offended. “No!”

“They can do nothing to you that would hurt worse than that.”

“It would go on longer. And be more permanent.”

“But they still can!”

He shrugged and obviously regretted doing so. “You’re only a herdman. You don’t understand pride.”

“Pride? You endured those lickings for pride?”

“Partly. But I’ve shown that I’ve got balls, so maybe now they’ll let me keep them.” His gaze flickered across the compound toward the cottages. “Most tribes need new blood. Who knows? I’m a miner. Maybe one of the girls’ll take a fancy to me when I get some hair on my chest.”

I wondered if even a female ant could ever think of Hrarrh as good-looking, but perhaps he was a better judge of that than I was. While I was pondering this, I saw that he was looking hard at me.

“So I’ve got a chance,” he said. “You don’t. Why do you stay?”

“What do you suggest I do? Walk out?”

“Step off the top of the ladder.”

“I’m a coward.”

He scowled. “No slave ever escapes! Never!”

“What about angels, though? Don’t they sometimes raid a mine?”

“Angels? You’re crazy! Angels don’t mess with miners!”

“Are you sure?” I was remembering what Orange had told me.

He spat out something unchewable and stuffed a lump of unidentifiable meat in his mouth. “Certain! Heaven needs what we produce—lead, iron, copper… The angels leave the mines alone. If that’s what you’re waiting for, then you’ll wait till the sun sets.”

“But…” Was this what Orange had called nonsense?

“But nothing! Even if Heaven sent an army of angels, it couldn’t approach a mine like this without us—them, I mean—without them knowing. So all the slaves go down the mine, the ponies come into the paddock, and where s your evidence? What angel is going to venture into the mine to look? What happens to him if he does?”

I did not reply. He was very convincing.

“Or we just fight it out. Cat against gun is a fair match at close quarters. How many angels can Heaven afford to lose?”

“Not many, I suppose.”

“Damned few.” Then he said in a low voice, “Knobil, I’m grateful. It hurts me to say it, but I am. Now leave me alone! You’re going to be punished, and if you keep defying the rules like this, you’ll be shucked for sure. I’ve given you the best advice I can: Die easy!”

“Thanks.”

After a moment he added, “One other bit of advice, then: Stay away from traders.”

“Traders?” I had not seen traders since my youth on the grasslands, but of course the ore we dug must go somewhere.

Hrarrh’s scabby face was grim. “Traders sell slaves to us—even a herdman must have discovered that by now. They’re one of our main sources. A trader will sell his grandsons if he can see profit.”

“So why tell me to stay away from them? I’m already in the worst place I could be.”

He hesitated, glancing at my hair. “I’m not sure about that. Just remember my advice. The first bit was the best.”

He struggled to his feet and I said: “Hrarrh?”

He paused, scowling down at me. “Yes?”

“Good luck with the beautiful lady miner. And if it works out for you…remember me?”

He nodded. “I’m greatly in your debt. I won’t forget that, Knobil!” He limped away, clutching the rugged hide around him like a cape.

That was how I met Hrarrh.

I AVOIDED HIM ON THE NEXT SHIFT, and he managed on his own. As I came out of the mine, I was stopped by one of the bosses and sent back in with his crew. Double duty, without rest or food, ranked fairly high on the list of punishments—it had been known to kill a man—but it was better than some of the things they might have done to me. It also put me on the opposite tour from Hrarrh, so we could not meet again.

It was bad, but I survived. So did Hrarrh. For a long time thereafter I saw him only in passing, sometimes trading clothes and tools with him at changeover. He was one big walking scar, but his great ant shoulders soon bulged with muscle. The rumor mill said that he ranked with the best workers, yet the bosses were hard on him. No matter how much he produced in a shift, he could rarely escape blooding. But he was spared real mutilation, so his brutal gamble had apparently paid off.

How long?

I don’t know how long I was a slave for the ants. I saw their women progress from wedding to pregnancy to weaning—then to more pregnancies and children growing. I saw Hrarrh develop a huge black beard and his scalp go as bald as a fish’s belly.

We worked to exhaustion, we ate, we slept, we worked to exhaustion again, in unending, uncounted repetition.

The only recreation was casual copulation. The only excitements were rockfalls and counting the bodies. The only release from the brutal discipline was death. Anyone too sick, too mad, or too badly injured to work died and was fed to the panthers, not necessarily in that order.

Not all work was done underground. Good workers would be rewarded from time to time with a spell on the surface—tending fields, crushing ore, working the sluice and picking the valued dark pellets of ore off the hides that trapped them…cutting timber, grinding grain, wheeling barrows. Some of those tasks were as strenuous as mining, but at least they were done in daylight, and we worked our hearts to pulp in the mines to earn them. Then a moment’s hesitation to obey an order, or someone else’s turn, or just the whim of a surly boss, and the terrible dark returned.

Gangs and shifts changed. Sometimes I found that I was back on the same schedule as Hrarrh. Rarely we would talk—at the food trough or the pits, or in the drowsy times before sleep on the hard ground. We were careful not to be seen together very often, but I think I was the only slave he ever spoke to all. As a born ant, he regarded slaves as dross and beneath contempt, although he was now one of us himself. Even with me his manner was always gruff and arrogant.

Yet Hrarrh himself was the second straw of hope that kept me afloat. “I won’t forget,” he had said. So if he had a chance, then I had one also, however slim.

And Hrarrh’s reward arrived eventually, as I learned when I saw him striding across the compound in smart new leathers, leading a half-grown panther off to training. Soon afterward, I watched his wedding. Bald and bearded, he was indistinguishable from any other young male ant, but he owed me a favor. It might be long before he achieved enough seniority in the tribe to do anything about it, but from then on I could believe that I was a little less unfortunate than all my fellows. One ant was in my debt.

There were bad times and worse times, and a very few not-quite-so-bad times. Rarely the ants held a wedding or some other feast that left nobody to supervise us. Then the slaves gained a holiday also, to sit idle in the scorching sun and watch the dancing by the cottages under the trees. At those times the ant women shimmered in gowns of iridescent gossamer, swirling clouds of color. The slaves laughed behind their hands at this futile attempt to beautify such ugliness, but the male ants seemed to like their women that shape.