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Rh something or other. Just trying to butter us up, the bastards.”

“Flattery’s cheap, anyway,. [sic]”

“That’s their game. When an electrician does outdoor work, he gets another special allowance proportionate to the distance he travels; so many sen a mile. How about us? Whether we travel twenty miles or forty miles, we don’t get a sen more. If we linesmen are so important to the state, why do we only get a rise of two sen a day each year? Why don’t they give us that allowance for distance?”

They heard a faint snoring. Two men on the timber stack were lying fast asleep.

“Here, there,” shouted Soroku at these two sleeping figures, his discontent having no other outlet. “Here, get up, you’ll catch cold. Let’s be starting.”

His watch said 11.50. A white glare came from the snow. They had been walking for eight hours on end; their start in the snowstorm last night seemed as far off as a dream.

“Let’s go.”

“Go? How much further?”

The Communications Departments Cultural Club had organized a refresher course in a wing of one of the famous temples in the Shiba district of Tokyo. Fifty linesmen, thirty skilled workers and twenty electricians, engineers and foremen had been got