Man of Many Minds/Chapter 14

Chapter 14
Yes, Hanlon would work the natives, but without cruelty. His thoughts were a seething of contempt for these brutal thugs. He was willing to bet, right there and then, without knowing anything about this situation, that these natives could be controlled without bullying or hurting them—and better.

Having had military training, Hanlon knew it was possible to enforce the most strict discipline without such means, and that any man … or entity, probably … could and would submit to discipline fairly and decently enforced, with far less trouble and animosity, and with far greater productivity than if he were driven to it.

“Anybody works better for a pat on the back than for a kick in the pants!” he thought indignantly.

Philander stood about for an hour, and when he saw that Hanlon understood exactly what was expected of him and his crew—when he saw Hanlon several times correct the sorters who had left too much rock in with the ores—he turned to leave.

“You'll hear the siren when the shift's over,” he said. “Bring your gang back and lock 'em in the stockade then. Be sure you lock both gates carefully.”

“Cookie gave me a lunch for half-time,” Hanlon said. “What about the natives? Do they eat then, too?”

“Naw, they don't eat,” was the surprising answer. “Once a day they stick their hands into the dirt for nearly an hour. Must get nourishment that way.”

“That seems to prove they're vegetable matter. Their fingers must be some sort of feeding roots,” Hanlon observed sagely. “They sure are the strangest 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 for a 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 very rich one, and by using slave labor those men could well be reaping a huge fortune from it. No wonder they could afford to pay guards a thousand a month.

After a bit one of the natives, seeing Hanlon merely sitting there instead of being alertly on guard close to them, dropped its shovel and turned away from its work. Hanlon got up leisurely, but walked purposefully over to confront the Greenie. He smiled and motioned the native back to work.

The Greenie's face showed surprise at Hanlon's action, but it made no move to go. It did, however, appear to be keeping its eyes alertly on that dread shock-rod hanging loosely in Hanlon's hand. The guard could see that the others had also stopped work, and were carefully watching the little drama.

Hanlon smiled and again motioned the native back to work, and when it did not move, he reached out, grasped it gently by the shoulder and, still gently, pushed it in the direction of its shovel, with what was really a pat on the back.

There were looks of surprise that amounted almost to stupefaction on the faces of all the natives. The one who had first stopped now picked up its shovel and resumed work, and the rest followed its example. Hanlon resumed his seat, still with that friendly smile on his face. He noticed with satisfaction that they were soon working harder and faster than before the incident.

“I was right,” he told himself almost smugly.

The six hour shift was finally ended without any further show of resistance. That is, it was six hours by Algonian time, but about eight by Terra standards. For on Algon, while the day had been divided by the humans into twenty-four hours, the same as on Earth, each hour was almost seventy-eight minutes long. They divided the year into five day weeks, though, so it averaged out about the same.

When the siren blew Hanlon smiled happily at his crew as he herded them together, and made applauding motions with his hands, wondering if they understood what he meant.

When he had locked the natives in their stockade, he hunted up the checkers. “How'd I do?” he asked. “Come anywhere near what I was supposed 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 usual output, and clean, too. That's really okay for a new guard, and then some. Didn't have any trouble, eh?”

“Trouble?” Hanlon asked naively. “Was I supposed to have some?” Then he couldn'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, then tumbled onto his bunk for a nap until dinner-time.

Those first days so thoroughly disgusted George Hanlon as he saw the continued and senseless brutality the guards used toward their native “slaves,” that he had trouble concealing his feelings. He continued to treat his Greenies with the respect he felt was due them, and he could not help but notice they seemed to look on him more and more as their friend. They always smiled when he looked at them, and before many days he 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 of evolution to know the meaning of gratitude, and he could tell they were repaying his kindness with co-operation.

He had begun to make much more sense out of the pictures he saw in their minds, and to get some glimmerings of understanding about their alien concepts. Also, it was increasingly borne in upon him that they did “talk” to each other, and he guessed shrewdly that the reason no one could hear them was because their voices were above … or below? … the range of human hearing. “Above,” he finally deduced.

That gave him the idea for an experiment, and he started whistling as loud as he could, gradually raising his tones until he was at the top of his range. He saw with interest and excitement that the last one or two shrillest notes seemed to attract their attention. Their silly-looking little triangular ears perked up and began twitching. They turned about, as though seeking the source of that sound, while every mouth began working with signs of utmost excitement, and his mind caught concepts of surprise and wonder.

That convinced him and so, in his next several off-hours, he surreptitiously collected various articles and pieces of material, and in his room started the construction of a little machine. His course in the Corps school had included considerable mechanics and electronics, and the tearing down and rebuilding of many of the machines and instruments the Corps used.

What he was trying to make now was a “frequency-transformer.” If it would do what he was sure it would, and if he was right about the Algonians having vocal ability, they should be able to hear each other, and some day he might learn their language well enough to converse with them.

He finished it and smuggled the little box-like machine into his place in 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 small battery installed in it, then began talking at the same time he was turning a rheostat higher and higher. Finally he noticed those mobile ears began to twitch, and as he turned the tones higher and still higher, more and more of the natives stopped work and turned toward him. Finally he noticed an intenser excitement among them, and they dropped their tools and came crowding closer to him and his machine, their little eyes almost emitting sparks of excitement.

He thrilled with the realization that it worked. Now he turned another knob more and more, and gradually from the speaker came a jumble of sounds much like “mob-mutter,” but very low. He kept on turning the rheostat until the incoming voices seemed about the same pitch as his own voice.

The excitement of the natives had grown to tremendous proportions, and his own equalled theirs. Their little mouths were working faster, and an expression 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 learned something none of the greedy, power-mad Simonideans knew, and felt that here was the possible beginning for his campaign to free these poor native slaves.

He beckoned to one of the nearer natives to come to his side, then waved the rest back to their work. They looked at him questioningly for a moment, but he smiled reassuringly at them and they, having learned that he never used that dread shock-rod on them, all went back to their labors, leaving the one native standing there.

Hanlon looked earnestly at the Greenie, pointed a finger directly at himself and spoke into the microphone of his transformer. “Hanlon,” he said slowly and distinctly, and repeated it a number of times, tapping himself on the chest each time he said it.

A smile of comprehension broke over the native's little face and he tapped himself the same way and said a word that came out of the speaker sounding like “Geck.”

Hanlon reached out and touched the native and said “Geck.” The Greenie in turn tapped Hanlon and said “An-yon,” and they had made the first beginnings of understanding each other.

From then on this one native was released from all other work while Hanlon's crew was on duty, and the two devoted all their efforts to learning how to talk to each other.

Hanlon was pleased, but not especially surprised, to note that the rest of the crew—now almost entirely without his supervision—worked harder than ever, and that their daily output of ore grew progressively greater each shift, and all clean ore.

Hanlon's first exultant thought had been to run to Philander and tell him of what he had learned concerning the native's speech ability, and how 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 as long as possible. He hoped he could keep it until he had learned how to talk with these people and learned much about them, their situation, and how it could best be ameliorated.

The other men, he knew, considered the natives simply beasts, and would probably take away his transformer, instead of using it to learn about the Greenies as he planned to do.

By the end of a month he and Geck were chatting away like brothers. Each had learned enough of the other's language so that by using a mixture of the two they could exchange almost any thought concept desired. Hanlon's ability to read the native's surface thoughts helped a lot, especially as he began to understand their alien ways of thinking. Even so, he was surprised at how quickly Geck was picking up his own language.

Hanlon found that these people, while they had no scientific or mechanical knowledge or training of their own, did have highly developed ethical principles which governed all their individual and collective actions. They were a simple, natural people, with a native dignity Hanlon almost envied.

He found, too, that his first shrewd guess was correct—their bodies were of vegetable matter, rather than proto-plasmic. They reproduced by budding, and he saw a number of the “females” to whom were attached buds of varying sizes. One day he watched interestedly while one of the ripened buds, a fully-developed individual but only about ten inches high, detached itself from its parent and dropped to the ground. It lay there for some minutes while the “mother” watched it carefully. Then it rose by itself and trotted away with her as she resumed her work—a miniature but fully alive native “child.” It would take about two years for it to attain its maturity, Geck informed him. Hanlon asked, and Geck said it could take care of itself alone in the forest, so Hanlon managed to sneak it out into the woods, where it would be free.

Geck told him that about four years previous a great “egg” had landed here on Guddu, which was their name for the planet. Men had come from inside it, and scattered all about, seeking the metal ores they were now mining.

The natives, friendly and childishly curious, had gathered in force to watch these strange new creatures, and because of their trusting natures had been easily trapped, imprisoned and forced to work long, hard hours in the rapidly-deepening holes.

“Us die swiftly away from sunlight,” Geck said sadly. “Us have very long life-span, but underground work make us wither-die fast. Idea often discussed among we to discontinue race, because soon all we be gone anyway.”

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. Is horrible 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 business entirely, some way or another. He realized his limitations—one young, inexperienced man against twenty ruthless, wealth-and-power greedy ruffians … and that only here, at this one mine. No telling how many others there were on Algon, besides all those back on Simonides, and who knew what other planets, who were in on this plot.

His heart clamored for swift action—his brain counselled caution and careful planning.