Chapter 14
Yes, Hanlon would work the natives, but without cruelty. His thoughtswere a seething of contempt for these brutal thugs. He was willing tobet, right there and then, without knowing anything about thissituation, that these natives could be controlled without bullying orhurting them--and better.
Having had military training, Hanlon knew it was possible to enforce themost strict discipline without such means, and that any man ... orentity, probably ... could and would submit to discipline fairly anddecently enforced, with far less trouble and animosity, and with fargreater productivity than if he were driven to it.
"Anybody works better for a pat on the back than for a kick in thepants!" he thought indignantly.
Philander stood about for an hour, and when he saw that Hanlonunderstood exactly what was expected of him and his crew--when he sawHanlon several times correct the sorters who had left too much rock inwith the ores--he turned to leave.
"You'll hear the siren when the shift's over," he said. "Bring your gangback and lock 'em in the stockade then. Be sure you lock both gatescarefully."
"Cookie gave me a lunch for half-time," Hanlon said. "What about thenatives? Do they eat then, too?"
"Naw, they don't eat," was the surprising answer. "Once a day they sticktheir hands into the dirt for nearly an hour. Must get nourishment thatway."
"That seems to prove they're vegetable matter. Their fingers must besome sort of feeding roots," Hanlon observed sagely. "They sure are thestrangest beings I've ever heard of."
The superintendent shrugged and left without further words.
Hanlon looked about and found a rock near the sorters, and used this fora seat. He sat watching the natives work, and speculating about them,and also about what this was all about. The mine seemed to him a veryrich one, and by using slave labor those men could well be reaping ahuge fortune from it. No wonder they could afford to pay guards athousand a month.
After a bit one of the natives, seeing Hanlon merely sitting thereinstead of being alertly on guard close to them, dropped its shovel andturned away from its work. Hanlon got up leisurely, but walkedpurposefully over to confront the Greenie. He smiled and motioned thenative back to work.
The Greenie's face showed surprise at Hanlon's action, but it made nomove to go. It did, however, appear to be keeping its eyes alertly onthat dread shock-rod hanging loosely in Hanlon's hand. The guard couldsee that the others had also stopped work, and were carefully watchingthe little drama.
Hanlon smiled and again motioned the native back to work, and when itdid not move, he reached out, grasped it gently by the shoulder and,still gently, pushed it in the direction of its shovel, with what wasreally a pat on the back.
There were looks of surprise that amounted almost to stupefaction on thefaces of all the natives. The one who had first stopped now picked upits shovel and resumed work, and the rest followed its example. Hanlonresumed his seat, still with that friendly smile on his face. He noticedwith satisfaction that they were soon working harder and faster thanbefore the incident.
"I was right," he told himself almost smugly.
The six hour shift was finally ended without any further show ofresistance. That is, it was six hours by Algonian time, but about eightby Terra standards. For on Algon, while the day had been divided by thehumans into twenty-four hours, the same as on Earth, each hour wasalmost seventy-eight minutes long. They divided the year into five dayweeks, though, so it averaged out about the same.
When the siren blew Hanlon smiled happily at his crew as he herded themtogether, and made applauding motions with his hands, wondering if theyunderstood what he meant.
When he had locked the natives in their stockade, he hunted up thecheckers. "How'd I do?" he asked. "Come anywhere near what I wassupposed to get out?"
One of the checkers totalled up his figures, then looked up in surprise."Hey, kid, you did all right. Nearly a hundred pounds over the usualoutput, and clean, too. That's really okay for a new guard, and thensome. Didn't have any trouble, eh?"
"Trouble?" Hanlon asked naively. "Was I supposed to have some?" Then hecouldn't help grinning. "Thanks for the info," and went to his room,took a shower to cool off after that muggy heat in the mine, thentumbled onto his bunk for a nap until dinner-time.
Those first days so thoroughly disgusted George Hanlon as he saw thecontinued and senseless brutality the guards used toward their native"slaves," that he had trouble concealing his feelings. He continued totreat his Greenies with the respect he felt was due them, and he couldnot help but notice they seemed to look on him more and more as theirfriend. They always smiled when he looked at them, and before many dayshe discovered that his crew was doing more work than any of the others.His mind-probing had convinced him they were high enough in the scale ofevolution to know the meaning of gratitude, and he could tell they wererepaying his kindness with co-operation.
He had begun to make much more sense out of the pictures he saw intheir minds, and to get some glimmerings of understanding about theiralien concepts. Also, it was increasingly borne in upon him that theydid "talk" to each other, and he guessed shrewdly that the reasonno one could hear them was because their voices were above ... orbelow? ... the range of human hearing. "Above," he finally deduced.
That gave him the idea for an experiment, and he started whistling asloud as he could, gradually raising his tones until he was at the top ofhis range. He saw with interest and excitement that the last one or twoshrillest notes seemed to attract their attention. Their silly-lookinglittle triangular ears perked up and began twitching. They turned about,as though seeking the source of that sound, while every mouth beganworking with signs of utmost excitement, and his mind caught concepts ofsurprise and wonder.
That convinced him and so, in his next several off-hours, hesurreptitiously collected various articles and pieces of material, andin his room started the construction of a little machine. His course inthe Corps school had included considerable mechanics and electronics,and the tearing down and rebuilding of many of the machines andinstruments the Corps used.
What he was trying to make now was a "frequency-transformer." If itwould do what he was sure it would, and if he was right about theAlgonians having vocal ability, they should be able to hear each other,and some day he might learn their language well enough to converse withthem.
He finished it and smuggled the little box-like machine into his placein the mine. When he had his crew down there and working at their tasks,he got out the little box. He turned on the current from the smallbattery installed in it, then began talking at the same time he wasturning a rheostat higher and higher. Finally he noticed those mobileears began to twitch, and as he turned the tones higher and stillhigher, more and more of the natives stopped work and turned toward him.Finally he noticed an intenser excitement among them, and they droppedtheir tools and came crowding closer to him and his machine, theirlittle eyes almost emitting sparks of excitement.
He thrilled with the realization that it worked. Now he turned anotherknob more and more, and gradually from the speaker came a jumble ofsounds much like "mob-mutter," but very low. He kept on turning therheostat until the incoming voices seemed about the same pitch as hisown voice.
The excitement of the natives had grown to tremendous proportions, andhis own equalled theirs. Their little mouths were working faster, and anexpression almost like laughter came onto their peculiar little faces,as they heard his voice and knew he could now hear theirs.
Hanlon's own smile almost cracked his face. He realized he had learnedsomething none of the greedy, power-mad Simonideans knew, and felt thathere was the possible beginning for his campaign to free these poornative slaves.
He beckoned to one of the nearer natives to come to his side, then wavedthe rest back to their work. They looked at him questioningly for amoment, but he smiled reassuringly at them and they, having learned thathe never used that dread shock-rod on them, all went back to theirlabors, leaving the one native standing there.
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Hanlon looked earnestly at the Greenie, pointed a finger directly athimself and spoke into the microphone of his transformer. "Hanlon," hesaid slowly and distinctly, and repeated it a number of times, tappinghimself on the chest each time he said it.
A smile of comprehension broke over the native's little face and hetapped himself the same way and said a word that came out of the speakersounding like "Geck."
Hanlon reached out and touched the native and said "Geck." The Greeniein turn tapped Hanlon and said "An-yon," and they had made the firstbeginnings of understanding each other.
From then on this one native was released from all other work whileHanlon's crew was on duty, and the two devoted all their efforts tolearning how to talk to each other.
Hanlon was pleased, but not especially surprised, to note that the restof the crew--now almost entirely without his supervision--worked harderthan ever, and that their daily output of ore grew progressively greatereach shift, and all clean ore.
Hanlon's first exultant thought had been to run to Philander and tellhim of what he had learned concerning the native's speech ability, andhow he had made it possible for humans to talk to them.
But more sober reflections during that long work-shift brought caution.He decided this was a bit of knowledge he had better keep to himself aslong as possible. He hoped he could keep it until he had learned how totalk with these people and learned much about them, their situation, andhow it could best be ameliorated.
The other men, he knew, considered the natives simply beasts, and wouldprobably take away his transformer, instead of using it to learn aboutthe Greenies as he planned to do.
By the end of a month he and Geck were chatting away like brothers. Eachhad learned enough of the other's language so that by using a mixture ofthe two they could exchange almost any thought concept desired. Hanlon'sability to read the native's surface thoughts helped a lot, especiallyas he began to understand their alien ways of thinking. Even so, he wassurprised at how quickly Geck was picking up his own language.
Hanlon found that these people, while they had no scientific ormechanical knowledge or training of their own, did have highly developedethical principles which governed all their individual and collectiveactions. They were a simple, natural people, with a native dignityHanlon almost envied.
He found, too, that his first shrewd guess was correct--their bodieswere of vegetable matter, rather than proto-plasmic. They reproduced bybudding, and he saw a number of the "females" to whom were attached budsof varying sizes. One day he watched interestedly while one of theripened buds, a fully-developed individual but only about ten incheshigh, detached itself from its parent and dropped to the ground. It laythere for some minutes while the "mother" watched it carefully. Then itrose by itself and trotted away with her as she resumed her work--aminiature but fully alive native "child." It would take about two yearsfor it to attain its maturity, Geck informed him. Hanlon asked, and Gecksaid it could take care of itself alone in the forest, so Hanlon managedto sneak it out into the woods, where it would be free.
Geck told him that about four years previous a great "egg" had landedhere on Guddu, which was their name for the planet. Men had come frominside it, and scattered all about, seeking the metal ores they were nowmining.
The natives, friendly and childishly curious, had gathered in force towatch these strange new creatures, and because of their trusting natureshad been easily trapped, imprisoned and forced to work long, hard hoursin the rapidly-deepening holes.
"Us die swiftly away from sunlight," Geck said sadly. "Us have very longlife-span, but underground work make us wither-die fast. Idea oftendiscussed among we to discontinue race, because soon all we be goneanyway."
That quiet, hopeless statement made Hanlon madder than a wet cat.
"What do the shock-rods do to you?" he asked after a while.
"Affect we's nervous system some way. Us get most terrible cramps. Ishorrible agony. Us so thankful you never use."
"I knew you would work without them as long as you were treated fairly."
To himself Hanlon swore a determined oath to finish this businessentirely, some way or another. He realized his limitations--one young,inexperienced man against twenty ruthless, wealth-and-power greedyruffians ... and that only here, at this one mine. No telling how manyothers there were on Algon, besides all those back on Simonides, and whoknew what other planets, who were in on this plot.
His heart clamored for swift action--his brain counselled caution andcareful planning.