Sten (Sten #1). Allan Cole
Counselor smiled again. He patted Sten’s hand and rose. Then he hesitated, inserted his card in the slot again and punched buttons. Another drink appeared from the slot. “Have another, Citizen Sten. On me. And let me be the first to offer my congratulations.”
He patted Sten again, then turned and walked down the street. Sten stared after him. He picked up the drinks, and slowly poured them on the deck.
CHAPTER FIVE
The on-shift warning shrilled and Sten sourly sat up. He’d already been awake for nearly two hours. Waiting.
Even after four cycles the three-room apartment was empty. But Sten had learned that the dead must mourn for themselves. That part had been walled off, though sometimes he’d slip, and some of the grief would show itself. But mostly he was successful at turning himself into the quiet, obedient Mig the Company wanted. Or at least at faking it.
The wallslot clicked, and a tray slid out with the usual quick-shot energy drink, various hangover remedies, and antidepressants.
Sten took a handful at random and dumped them down the waste tube. He didn’t want or need any, but he knew better than to ignore the tray.
After a few hours, it would retract and self-inventory. Then some computer would report up the line on Sten’s lack of consumption. Which would rate a reprimand from the Counselor.
Sten sighed. There was a quota on everything.
Far up at the head of the line a worker touched his card to the medclock. The machine blinked and the man shoved his arm into its maw. It bleeped his vital signs, noted he was free of alcohol or drugs that might be left over from last off-shift’s routine brawl, and clocked him in.
The man disappeared into the factory and the line moved two steps forward.
Sten moved forward with the rest, gossip buzzing around him.
“Considerin’ Fran was the loosest man with a quota on the bench, I think it was clottin’ fine of the Company — so he lost an arm; only thing he ever did with it is pinch joy-girls. They gave him a month’s credits, didn’t they? . . .”
“You know me, not a man on Vulcan can match me drink for drink — and next shift I’m rarin’ for the line — I’m a quota fool! Bring ‘em on, I says, and look out down the line . . .”
It was Sten’s turn. He slotted his card, stared at the machine dully as it inspected and approved him, and then walked reluctantly into the factory.
The assembly building was enormous, honeycombed from floor to ceiling with belts, tracks, giant gears, and machines. The Migs had to inch along narrow catwalks to keep from falling or being jerked into the innards of some machine and pounded, pressed, and rolled into some nameless device that would eventually be rejected at the end of the line because it contained odd impurities.
After nearly two months in the factory, Sten had learned to hate his partner almost as much as the job. The robot was a squat gray ovoid with a huge array of sensors bunched into a large insect eye that moved on a combination of wheels and leg stalks that it let down for stairs. Only the eye cluster and the waggling tentacles seemed alive.
Most of all, he hated its high-pitched and nagging voice. Like an old microlibrarian that Sten remembered from his Basic Crèche.
“Hurry,” it fussed, “we’re running behind quota. A good worker never runs behind quota. Last cycle, in the third sector, one Myal Thorkenson actually doubled his quota. Now, isn’t that an ideal worth emulating?”
Sten looked at the machine and thought about kicking it. Last time he’d tried that, he’d limped for two days.
Sten’s robot prodded him with its voice. “Hurry now. Another chair.”
He picked up another seat from the pile in front of the long silver tube. Then he carried it back to where the robot squatted, waiting.
Sten and his robot were at the tail end of a long assembly line of movers, the capsules used in the pneumatic transit systems common to most industrial worlds.
The robot was the technician. Sten was the dot-and-carry man. His job was to pick up a seat from the pile, lug it inside the tube to the properly marked slot, and then position it while the robot heat-sealed the seat to the frame. It was a mind-numbing job that he never seemed to do quite right for his mechanical straw boss.
“Not there,” the robot said. “You always do it wrong. The position is clearly marked. Slide it up now. Slide it up.”
The robot’s heatgun flashed. “Quickly, now. Another.”
Sten lumbered back down the aisle, where he was met by a worker whose name he couldn’t remember. “Hey. You hear? I just got promoted!”
“Congratulations.”
The man was beaming. “Thanks. I’m throwing a big bash after shift. Everyone’s invited. All on me.”
Sten looked up at the fellow. “Uh, won’t that set you back — I mean, put you even with the promotion?”
The man shrugged.
“So I card it. It’ll only add another six months or so to my contract.”
Sten considered asking him why it was so important to rush right out and spend every credit — and then some — of his raise. How he could throw away another six months of his life on . . . He already knew the answer. So he didn’t bother.
“That’s right,” he sighed. “You can card it.”
The Mig rushed on.
* * * *
Leta was about the only bright spot in Sten’s life those days.
In many ways, she was the typical joygirl. Hired on the same kind of backwater planet Sten’s parents had come from, Leta just knew that when her contract ran out and she immigrated to one of the Empire’s leisure worlds, she’d meet and sign a life-contract with a member of the royal family. Or at least a merchant prince.
Even though Sten knew better than to believe in the whore with the heart of gold, he felt that she got real pleasure from their talk and sex.
Sten lay silently on the far side of the bed.
The girl slid over to him and stroked his body slowly with her fingertips.
Sten rolled over and looked up at her.
Leta’s face was gentle, her pupils wide with pleasure drugs.
“Ssswrong,” she muttered.
“Contracts. Contracts and quotas and Migs.”
She giggled.
“Nothin’ wrong with you. An’ you’re a Mig.”
Sten sat up.
“I won’t be forever. When my contract’s up, I’ll get off this clottin’ world and learn what it is to be a free man.”
Leta laughed.
“I mean it. No carding it. No contract extensions. No more nights on the dome drinking. I’m just gonna put in my time. Period.”
Leta shook her head and got up.
She took several deep breaths, trying to clear her mind.
“You can’t do it.”
“Why not?” Sten asked. “Hell. Even nineteen years isn’t forever.”
“You can’t do it because it’s rigged. The whole thing. Controlled. Like your job. Like the games. Like . . . like even this. They set it up so you never get off . . . so you’re always tied down to them. And they do it any way they can.”
Sten was puzzled.
“But if it’s rigged, and nobody ever gets off Vulcan, what about you?”
“What