The Two Georges by Richard Dreyfuss;Harry Turtledove

Author:Richard Dreyfuss;Harry Turtledove [Turtledove, Richard Dreyfuss;Harry]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: SteamPunk, Fiction, General, Science Fiction, Great Britain, Alternative Histories (Fiction), United States, Great Britain - Fiction, United States - Fiction, Monarchy
ISBN: 9780312859695
Publisher: Tor
Published: 1995-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

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Bushell had never seen so many black men on the streets in his life. The miners heading away from the mines after their shift ended were not merely brown, as Samuel Stanley was - they were black. Black as coal, Bushell thought, and no wonder.

They bantered with one another as they spread through the town, some going home, others hurrying to the taverns to slake their thirst. Had Bushell been among their number, he would have had a drink, or more likely several, before he’d have wanted to face anyone he loved. Putting in a day’s work hundreds, maybe thousands of feet underground in tunnels barely tall enough to stand up in, never knowing when those tunnels would flood or come crashing down on your head or collapse somewhere behind you, sealing you off from any hope of rescue . . . The very idea made the hair stand up on the back of his neck.

But what had Shakespeare said of the gravedigger? “Custom had made it in him a property of easiness,”

that was the line. It held with the miners, too. They were raucous and cheerful, almost to a man. If they worried about how they made their living, they didn’t show it on the outside. They were magnificent-looking men, too, despite, or maybe because of, the coal dust that coated their bare torsos. Whatever evils that could be ascribed to it - and Bushell know how many they were laboring in the mines kept a man fit - till blacklung got him, anyhow. For his age, he was in good condition, but miners who had to be ten years older were far firmer and stronger. He felt himself drawing back his shoulders, tightening his belly. Walking along beside him, Samuel Stanley also held himself quite erect.

As soon as the two RAMs and Kathleen Flannery got out of Charleroi’s business district, Kathleen’s attention swung from the miners themselves to the homes in which they lived. “How can we expect human beings to put up with conditions like these?” she said, pointing. “And how long can we expect human beings to put up with them?”

Looking down the long rows of hovels jammed against one another, Bushell had a hard time finding an answer for those questions. The whole block of houses on Lantern Way leaned from the vertical; doors and windows were ten or even twenty degrees out of true. Grass grew rank on the thin strip of lawn between the sagging houses and the street. A few houses had decrepit steamers in various states of disrepair up on the lawn. Most, though, were without motorcars of any sort. Swarms of boys played on the grass and in the street. With bats that looked carved from branches, wickets made of piled jackets, and a sixpenny India-rubber ball, a mob of them had a spirited, if disorderly, game of cricket under way. They paused in their action while Bushell, Stanley, and Kathleen walked through the makeshift playing field toward Percy McGaffigan’s house at number 39.

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