Pit Planet by David Dvorkin

Author:David Dvorkin [Dvorkin, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: underground, intrigue, caves, mining, plutocracy, corporate control
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY

Later, listening to other hands talk, he would realize how lucky he was to be assigned to Stephan Scheel’s crew. Scheel was more intelligent and organized than most of the other foremen. More important, he seemed to really care about his men and to feel responsible for their survival. They were individuals to him, not replaceable parts. Too bad the men who ran Contco weren’t more like that, Benton thought. Or, for that matter, the men who ran The Jacksonite Corporation.

He learned that the hole he had almost fallen into during his first hours underground was a fairly common formation, or perhaps a manmade artifact. The hands called them glory holes. They shoved excess rock and dirt down them and dead luxes and tools that were broken beyond repair. Occasionally, they came across dead undermen. If the body was of someone they knew, someone from the Headman’s village, they carried it back to the Big House with them so that it could be sent up to Heaven with some future load of ore. If they didn’t recognize the dead underman, the body went down a glory hole.

Every time he helped to do this, he remembered his glimpse of the white monster rising from the waters of Lux Lake toward a body sliding down the waterfall, and he wondered if that was where these bodies ended up. Was that also the fate of anyone who fell down a glory hole alive? Had that body he had seen actually been moving, flailing for purchase as it fell?

Benton knew that it made sense not to leave bodies in the tunnels, although he suspected that the luxes would take care of the remains eventually. Throwing them down a glory hole was a quick and efficient way to get rid of them. He hated doing it nonetheless. His fellow hands, though, seemed to see it as a clean and even respectful way of getting rid of the corpses of strangers.

The work was astonishingly hard. He was amazed that the tired, malnourished hands could do it. He was continually astonished that he became able to do it himself. They had only primitive hand tools and spent their days chipping and gouging jacksonite-containing shards from the tunnel walls. Hours of work yielded tiny piles of ore, except on those fortunately rare occasions when large pieces fell unexpectedly from tunnel wall or roof. They carried the ore back to various designated collection points in sacks made from various kinds of cloth. After what he had seen in the Recorder’s office, Benton chose not to ask anyone what the cloth was made from.

The work was also horrendously dangerous. There were the glory holes, but they knew where those were and Benton never saw anyone fall down one. The biggest danger was falling rocks. Scheel’s crew was relatively lucky, but one of the hands had only one arm and another had a withered leg — both the results of rock falls. At that, those two were lucky to have survived their injuries.

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