At the same time, Neif was coming on again, after a slight, startled pause at seeing Hal move so swiftly from a helpless position on the ground to his feet and ready to react. Neif came in swiftly, swinging his right fist for Hal's adam's apple.
Shaky and weak, but automatically responding, Hal turned his body sideways to let the fist go by and made one sweeping step forward and around the other as Neif staggered, off-balance from his unsuccessful punch. He stood, facing the back of the other man. Automatically, without conscious thought, Hal pumped two short, twisting blows with right and left hand fists into the kidney areas of the back before him. Neif dropped.
Hal took a step away and stood looking down at the other. His head was clearing rapidly now, and as it did the feeling of sickness came back on him.
It was no use. He could not make himself simply stand there and take whatever punishment Neif wanted to hand out. He simply could not make himself do it. That first blow that had made him momentarily unconscious had awakened a primitive fear and instinct for survival within him. But the other man was down now, and unmoving. Maybe that would be the end of it.
He started to move away… and Neif stirred. His arms tensed, pulled his hands back alongside his body, and pushed himself up on one knee, facing away from Hal. He rose uncertainly to his feet and turned around. He came toward Hal.
If I could just knock him out, Hal thought…
But his head was still not completely clear and Neif was almost on top of him. Hal raised his two arms, trapped the arm that was attempting to hit him, and, turning, knelt, so that Neif cartwheeled over Hal's right shoulder to land heavily on his back. Again, he lay still for a moment, the breath knocked out of him. But once more, after a few seconds, he began to stir, to turn and climb to his feet.
Hal's head was almost clear now and bleakly he faced the impossibility of what he had been thinking of doing. There was no way just to knock Neif out, harmlessly. That was the stuff of romantic adventures found in the bound volumes of the library that Walter InTeacher had made available to him—not the reality of what Malachi had taught him. Only in fiction could someone be hit so cleverly with fists or club that he was knocked briefly unconscious, but otherwise put into no danger of real damage. In real life the same impact that would only render one person unconscious could kill another of the same weight, size and general physical condition.
No, the only blows he knew that he could be sure would put Neif down to stay were all killing blows. Someone with the experience of Malachi Nasuno might have risked using one of them with just the right amount of force to only stun, but Hal was neither strong enough nor skilled enough to risk it.
He felt despair. Neif was coming at him again, a crazy expression around his eyes. Once more Hal faded away before the other's attack, caught him, led him off balance and threw him. Once more, after a second, Neif struggled back to his feet and attacked again. Hal threw him once more; and still, again, Neif climbed back to his feet and came on. Hal threw him.
The man was plainly in superb physical condition from his hard work in the mines; and also he was obviously not going to give up until he was stopped. The internal sickness came again to fill Hal completely. The crowd watching seemed very far away. The world about him was a place of rock and light; dry, dusty, and empty except for the unending necessity to deal with this attacker who would not lie down, would not leave him alone, and who forced him to continue handing out punishment.
Please, make him stay down! … the prayer repeated itself, over and over in Hal, as Neif continued to climb back to his feet and come again. In his mind, long ago, Hal had stopped reacting; in his mind, he was trying to leave himself for Neif to do anything the other man wanted to do to him. But the fear still with him overrode and ignored his mind; and refused to let the other man close.
In his imagination Hal saw the other lying still—too still—on the ground; and inside himself he shuddered away from the image. This could not go on. With a sudden spasm of desperate self-control, Hal succeeded in forcing himself to stand still with his arms down; and Neif finally reached him, grappled with him, and pulled him to the stony floor on which they fought.
But the miner was a man with his strength almost gone. Nothing was truly left in him but the blind will to keep fighting as long as he was alive. Neif's fingers fumbled up Hal's cheeks to gouge at his eyes, but Hal dodged them—and was suddenly filled with hope born of inspiration.
Lying on the ground with the other man on top of him, he slid his hands up to hold the other's shoulders, and under the pretense of trying to push the other away, pressed his thumbs into the carotid arteries on each side of Neif's neck. In the same moment Neif's fingers finally found Hal's eye-sockets.
Desperately Hal bowed his head on his neck so that most of the pressure was taken by his cheekbones. His mind counted slowly as Neif continued to try to sink his fingers into Hal's eye-sockets… one thousand… one thousand one… one thousand two… he pressed his face as close as possible to Neif's dusty hair and continued counting as he held the pressure on the other's arteries.
As he counted one thousand forty-three, Neif's fingers began to relax and at one thousand sixty they fell away entirely; and the miner lay motionless. Hal crawled out from under the other man's body and looked down. Neif continued to lie still.
Hal turned and walked, stumblingly, away from the motionless man toward the wall of bodies between himself and the bunkhouse. He could see Tonina directly ahead of him, her face for some reason in focus where the faces around her were featureless blurs. The surface on which he walked seemed constructed rather of pillows than of the hard rock and packed dust.
A sudden, swelling murmur went through the crowd. They were looking past him. He stopped and turned exhaustedly to look.
Neif was up on one elbow, looking around him. He was obviously conscious again; but, just as Hal had lost orientation after absorbing the other's first blow, so Neif's temporarily blood-starved brain cells were for the moment confused, and he would not be sure just why he was lying where he was.
Hal turned away again and plodded on toward the ring of faces and Tonina. He reached them; and, as he did so, the ring broke up, the miners in it streaming past him to surround Neif, help him to his feet and assist him to his room. Tonina was suddenly before Hal and she caught him strongly around the waist with one arm, as he tripped and almost fell.
"It's all right," she said. "It's all right. It's over now. I'll take you in. Where are you hurt?"
He stared down at her. He was suddenly conscious of the aching of his eyes and jaw, and the bruises and scrapes of the hard rock on which he and Neif had wrestled. But he wanted to tell her that there was nothing really wrong with him, nothing but exhaustion; that outside of that first blow, Neif had done nothing to him. But the sickness in him mounted, and his throat was clenched as tightly shut against it as if a pipe wrench had been tightened upon it. He could only stare at her.
"Lean on me," she said.
She turned and half-led, half-carried him toward the bunkhouse. Her arm around his waist was incredibly strong—stronger by far, a portion of his mind thought bitterly, than his own. He let himself be taken away in silence and brought to his own room, dropped on his bed and undressed. Lying on the bed, he began to shiver violently and uncontrollably.
Tonina wrapped the bedcover tightly around him and turned its controls to heat, but he still shivered. Hastily, she shrugged out of her own outer clothes and slipped in under the blanket with him. She put her hard, strong arms around him and held his trembling body to her, warming it with her own body heat.
Gradually, his shuddering ceased. Warmth was born in him again and flooded out through all his limbs. He lay relaxed. He still breathed deeply and tremblingly for a while longer, but finally even that slowed. Instinctively, his arms closed around Tonina, drawing her even more closely to him, running his hands over her body.
For a moment she tensed and resisted him. Then the tightness went out of her and she
let him pull her to him.
Chapter Ten
A month and a half later Sost showed up unexpectedly at the mine with a delivery, pulling into the staging area just as dinner was ending for the teams that ate with John Heikkila's. Hal wandered comfortably out of the door of the dining hall and saw a familiar-looking truck shape before the office building and an even more familiar human shape getting out of it.
Hal started toward the truck, picking up speed as he went. Sost, however, disappeared into the office building carrying a large package before Hal got there, and Hal stood waiting until the older man came out again.
"Hey there," said Sost when he emerged, as casually as if they had parted fifteen minutes before. He rambled down the steps and came up to offer Hal a square, thick hand. "How's the Yow Dee been doing for you?"
"I like it here," said Hal, taking the hand. "Come on over to the canteen and sit down."
"Won't refuse," said Sost.
The canteen was half full of off-shift miners. Hal looked around for Tonina or anyone from his team, but saw none of them.
"Here," said Hal, finding them seats at an empty table with six places. "What would you like? There's only food—drinks and coffee, because of the mine regulations."
"Coffee's fine," said Sost, taking a seat.
Hal got them both coffee—or what was called coffee on Coby—and brought it back to their table in copper mugs with ceramic rims at the top so that lips would not be burned on the hot metal when the cups were filled.
"I didn't know you came way over here," he said to Sost.
"I'm liable to end up anywhere," Sost said, drinking from his own cup. "Like it here, do you?"
Just then Tonina came in the door.
"Tonina!" he called. She looked around, saw him, and Sost, and headed toward them. "Yes, it's a good mine… Tonina, sit down. I'd like you to meet Sost. Do you want something to drink?"
"Not right now," she said, joining them at the table. She and Sost looked at each other.
"I've heard the name," she said.
"I get around," said Sost. "I met the boy, here, just outside his holding station. Stupidest twenty-year-old I ever saw; and I told him so. We ended up getting on real well."
"Ah," said Tonina. She relaxed. Hal had noticed before how quick she was to tense up in any unusual situation. Normally she did not relax this quickly. "He's getting brighter every day."
"Don't say?" said Sost, drinking coffee.
"I do say," Tonina said. "He's rating right at the top among the muckers-out and he's only been here a little over a month."
"Six weeks," said Hal.
"I remember you now," Tonina said to Sost, "you used to come in regularly to the old Trid Mine. Nearly two years ago. I got started there. You remember Alf Sumejari, the head cook…"
They talked about people whose names were unknown to Hal. But he did not feel uncomfortable at being left out of the conversation. He sat listening comfortably, and when John Heikkila walked through the entrance a few minutes later he called the team leader over to join them.
"He's doing all right," John told Sost, whom he had evidently met before.
"About time then, isn't it?" said Sost.
"I'll be the judge of that," said John. "Are you going to be coming in here regularly, then?"
"Not on a regular schedule," Sost said. "But I'll be working this territory generally for quite a while. There'll be things to bring me to the Yow Dee."
He pushed his empty coffee mug away from him and stood up. John and Tonina were also getting to their feet and Hal scrambled to his. He had the sudden, sharp feeling that something he had not understood had gone on about him.
"You're leaving right away?" he said to Sost. "I thought we could take a few hours—"
"Got to keep schedule," said Sost. He nodded at John and Tonina. "See you in Port, sometime."
He went out the door. John and Tonina were already moving away in different directions into the room. Hal looked after them for a second, then followed Sost out.
"But when'll I see you again?" he asked Sost as the older man climbed into his truck.
"Any time. Not too long," said Sost.
He powered up the truck on its fans, turned it on its axis and drove out of the staging area. Hal. looked after him for several moments, then turned back to the canteen. He wanted to hear what John and Tonina thought of Sost. But as he got there, John came out and went across toward the office; and a second later Tonina also came out and went toward the bunkhouse.
Hal started to follow her, then read in the set of her back and shoulders that she was not in a mood for company. His steps slowed. He felt a little sadness. Since that first night following his fight she had never really let him within arm's length of her, although in all other ways she had been as warmly friendly as ever.
He watched her go. Walter InTeacher had coached him in the Exotic way of empathy, and he could feel deep in Tonina an old unhappiness that she had long ago given up any hope of conquering. She had simply lived with it until it had reached the point where she was all but unaware that it was still there. Still, he could feel how much of everything she did was directed by that ancient pain and the mechanisms she had developed to bury it. She would not have been willing to be helped with it now, even if Hal had known how to help her; and he did not. All he could do was feel the entombed ache in her and ache in sympathy with it.
By the next day, however, his empathic sense found something else to occupy itself as he rode down in the skip with the rest of the team. He could not miss noticing a difference in all of them toward him, today. But it was not an unfriendly difference. Hal shrugged internally; and, since it seemed to be harmless, he put it out of his mind.
When they got to the vein on which they were currently digging, he fitted himself automatically with a pair of tongs on each glove and turned around to the ledge, only to come within inches of bumping into Will Nanne. Hal had not exchanged a word with the other team leader since the day of his arrival; and he stopped, surprised and wary at seeing him here now, in the area of the Heikkila team.
"Well," said Will. Like Hal and the rest of them at the moment the helmet of his suit was thrown back; and his face was as unsmiling as ever. "You been here nearly two months now, haven't you?"
"About a month and a half, actually," said Hal.
"Time enough," said Will. "I need another torcher on my team. Want to shift over, and I'll train you?"
"Torcher?"
Hal stared at him. He had been having daydreams of the day when John Heikkila might offer him a chance to try working with a torch; and only a small part of that daydream was concerned with the larger percentage of the team's profits that would be coming to him if he became a torcher. The large part had had to do with the dream of being, in his own eyes as well as in the eyes of the other workers, a full-fledged miner.
For a moment he was strongly tempted; and then the whole weight of the friendships he had made with John and the rest of the team rejected the offer, even as he was voicing his incredulity.
"You don't want me?"
"I don't say it twice," Will said. "I've offered you a job. Take it or leave it."
"But you don't like me!" said Hal.
"Didn't. Do now," said Will. "Well, how about it? Work time's counting. I can't stand around here all shift waiting for you to make up your mind. Coming with me, or not?"
Hal took a deep breath.
"I can't," he said. "Thanks anyway. I'm sorry."
"You mean you won't."
"I mean I won't. But thanks for offering me the job—"
A strange thing was happening to Will Nanne's grim face. It was not changing, but laughter was coming out of it. Hal stared at the man, bewildered, and suddenly began to realize that there was merriment all around him. He looked again at Will, at the closed lips and scowling features with the snorts of laughter coming from the long nose. He looked around and saw the rest of his own team in a circle about him, not getting ready for work a
t all, their helmets all thrown back, and laughing.
John was one of them, standing almost at Hal's right elbow. But when he saw Hal's eyes on him, he sobered in turn and became almost as sour-faced as Will.
"All right, damn it!" he said. "I guess I got to give you a chance to try torching if everybody's going to be coming around here trying to hire you away from the team. Come on, everyone, let's get to work. Time's counting. Better luck next time, Will."
"I expect you'll be over to steal one of my team next," grumped Will; and turning, he went off, still snorting softly to himself.
Hal looked at John and grinned. He was beginning to understand.
"What're you looking so pleased about?" said John. "For two profit points, I'd fire you now and give you no place to go but with Will. How do I know you haven't been talking to him about changing teams, before this, behind my back?"
Hal only grinned more widely.
"All right," John said, turning away. "Let's see how happy you are after a shift of torching. Come on up on the ledge."
Hal followed him up to join the other torchers. They stood facing the wall, in front of about a body's width of rock apiece. John took a position at the left end of the line next to the stope wall.
"Put your helmet on," said John. "No. Put it on, then pick up your torch. Always do it that way. Now…" his voice came filtered through the suit mechanism, "watch me. Don't try to do any torching to start with, just watch how I do it. Don't knock your helmet back until you see me take mine off. When you see me put mine back on, put yours back on—and keep watching at all times. You understand?"
"Yes," said Hal, hearing his own voice hollow with excitement inside the helmet.
He obeyed. The wall before him—before each of them—was scored vertically and horizontally by earlier torch cuts; and its surface was a mosaic of different depths of rock, marking the planes where torch cuts had parted a surface chunk from the granite beneath. His eyes were on John.