Slave Planet by Laurence Janifer

Author:Laurence Janifer [Janifer, Laurence]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Serapis Classics
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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11

The work went on, for Cadnan as well as for the masters. Days passed and he began to improve slightly: he received no further discipline, and he was beginning to settle into a routine. Only thoughts of Dara disturbed him—those, and the presence of Marvor, who was still apparently waiting to make good his incomprehensible threat.

Marvor had said he was going to leave, but he still appeared every evening in the same room. Cadnan had hardly dared to question him, for fear of being drawn into the plan, whatever it was: he could only wait and watch and wish for someone to talk to. But, of course, there was no one.

And then, one day during the first part of his working shift, a master came into the room, the very master who had gone with Cadnan through his training. "You're Cadnan?" he asked.

Cadnan said: "I am Cadnan."

The master beckoned through the open door of Cadnan's working-room, and two more masters appeared, strange ones, leading between them an elder. The elder, Cadnan saw at once, had lived through many matings: the green skin of his arms was turning to silver, and his eye was no longer bright, but dulling fast with age. He looked at the working-room and at the young Albert with blank caution.

"This one is called Gornom," the master said. "He'll be with you when you work. He's going to help you work—you can teach him all he has to know. Just make sure you don't let him handle the buttons until we give you the word. All right?"

Cadnan understood. "All right," he said, and the three masters left the room without more words. The door shut behind them and Gornom visibly relaxed. Yet there was still wariness behind the old eye. "I work in the field," he said after a second. "I am good worker in the field."

Cadnan knew from gossip about the field: that was the place where the metal lay. Alberts worked there, digging it up and bringing it to the buildings where Cadnan and many like him took over the job. He nodded slowly, bending his body from the waist instead of from the neck like the masters, or Marvor. "If you are in the field," he said, "why do you come here? This is not a place for diggers."

"I am brought here," Gornom said. "I am an elder many times. What the masters say, I do. Now they say I come here, and I come."

Cadnan looked doubtful. "You are to work with me?"

"So the masters say." That was unanswerable, and Cadnan accepted it. He flicked a glance at the TV screen which showed him the smelting process, and leaped for the buttons. After a few minutes of action he was finished: there was a slight breathing-space.

"I am to tell you what to do," he said.

Gornom looked grave. "I see what it is you do," he said. "It is a lesson.

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