Sten (Sten #1). Allan Cole
the men you want to meet who don’t smell like machine oil and sweat and . . . and all that.”
Leta put a hand over Sten’s mouth.
“That’s me, Sten. Not you. I’m leaving. I’ve got a contract, and that gives me money and the drugs and whatever I eat or drink. I can’t even gamble at the tables. They won’t take my card. It doesn’t matter what else I do. Just so long as I stay alive, I’ve got a guarantee that I’ll get off of Vulcan. Just like all the other joygirls. Or the shills and the carders. They’re all leaving. So are the Techs and the patrolmen. But not the Migs. Migs never leave.”
Sten shook his head, not believing a word she said.
“You’re a sweet boy, Sten, but you’re gonna die on Vulcan.”
* * * *
He stayed away from Leta’s place for a while, telling himself that he didn’t need her. He didn’t want somebody around that was going to tell him those kinds of . . . well, they had to be lies, didn’t they?
But the longer he stayed away, the more he thought and the more he wondered. Finally he decided that he had to talk to her. To show her that maybe she was right about all the other Migs. But not about him.
At first, the people at the joyhouse pretended they’d never heard of her. Then they remembered. Oh, Leta. She was transferred or something. Yeah. Kind of sudden. But she seemed real happy about it when they came for her. Must’ve been a shift over at that new rec area in The Eye, for the Execs. Or something like that.
Sten wondered.
But he didn’t wonder anymore when, late that off-shift, he stole into what had been Leta’s cubicle and found the tiny mike planted in the ceiling.
He always wondered what they’d done to her for talking.
* * * *
FIRST MONTH EXPENSES:
Quarters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1,000 credits
Rations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500”
Foreman fee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..225”
Walkway toll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..250”
TOTAL: 1,975 credits
FIRST MONTH PAY:
2,000 credits less 1,975 credits expenses
25 credits savings
* * * *
Sten checked the balance column on the screen for the tenth time. He’d budgeted to the bone. Cut out all recreation, and worked on the near-starvation basic diet. But it always came out the same. At twenty-five credits a month, he wouldn’t be able to shorten his contract time at all, not by so much as six months. And if he kept on living the way he’d been, he’d go crazy in five years.
Sten decided to go over it one more time. Perhaps there was something he’d missed. Sten tapped the console keys and called up the Company’s Work Guidelines Manual. He scrolled paragraph after paragraph, looking for an out.
“Clot!” He almost passed it. Sten rolled back up to the paragraph, and read and reread it:
SAFETY LEVY: All migratory workers shall be levied not less than 35 credits nor more than 67 credits each pay cycle, except when performing what the Company deems to be extraordinary labor which increases the chances of accidental injury and/or death, in which case the levy shall be no less than 75 credits and no more than 125 credits each cycle, for which the Company agrees to provide appropriate medical care and/or death benefits not to exceed 750 credits for funeral arrangements and/or . . .
He slammed his fist on the keys and the vid screen did several fast flip-flops, then went blank.
They had you. No matter how you shaved it, every Mig would always be in the hole.
* * * *
Sten paced back and forth.
The robot finished the mover and dropped out the exit, waiting for the next cigar tube to be on-lined. The completed car whooshed away, into the pneumatic freight tube and away toward the shipping terminal. But there’d been some error. Something or someone didn’t have the next pile of seats ready.
Sten yawned as his robot whined at another machine about quotas. The second machine wasn’t about to take the blame. They bickered back and forth electronically until, eventually, the ceiling crane slammed a seat consignment down between them. The robot slid into the mover. Sten hoisted a seat to his shoulder and lugged it aboard. He set the chair in position and listened to the robot natter while he moved the seat back and forth.
The robot bent forward, heatgun ready. Sten felt a sudden bout of nausea wash over him. This would be it for the rest of his life, listening to the gray blob preach.
Sten lurched forward. The seat slid into the robot, and the machine yowled as it welded itself to seat and mover frame.
“Help! Help! I’m trapped,” it whined. “Notify master control.”
Sten blinked. Then hid a grin. “Sure. Right away.”
He ambled slowly off the mover to the line control panel, took a deep breath, and punched the TASK COMPLETE button. The doors of the tube slid closed, and the mover slid toward the freight tube. “Notify . . . control . . . help . . . help . . .” And for the first time since he’d been promoted to full worker, Sten felt the satisfaction of a job well done.
CHAPTER SIX
Sten had been “sick” for over a week before the Counselor showed up.
Actually, he really had been sick the first day. Scared sick that somebody might have discovered his little game with the robot. It’d be considered outright sabotage, he was sure. If he was lucky, they’d put him under a mind-probe and just burn away any areas that didn’t seem to fit the Ideal Worker Profile.
But there probably was something worse. There usually was on Vulcan. Sten wasn’t sure what something worse could be. He had heard stories about hellshops, where incorrigibles were sent. But nobody knew anybody who’d actually been sent to such a shop. Maybe the stories were just that — or maybe nobody ever came back from those places. Sten wondered sometimes if he wouldn’t rather just be brainburned and turned into a vegetable.
The second day, Sten woke up smiling. He realized that nobody’d ever figure out what had happened to the robot. So he celebrated by staying home again, lounging in bed until two hours past shift-start. Then he dug out a few of the luxury food items his parents had saved and just stared at the nonsnowing wall mural. He knew better than to stick his card in the vid and watch a reel, or to go out to a rec area. That’d make it even easier for the Company to figure out that he was malingering.
The flakes hanging in the air on the mural fascinated Sten. Frozen water, falling from the sky. It didn’t seem very sanitary. Sten wondered if there was any way at all that he could get offworld. Even though those snowflakes didn’t look very practical, they might be something to see. Anything might be something to see — as long as it was away from the Company and Vulcan.
By the third day, he’d decided he wasn’t going to work anymore. Sten didn’t know how long he was going to get away with malingering. Or what would happen to him when they caught him. He just sat. Thinking about the snowflakes and what it would be like to walk in them, with no card in his pocket that said where he was supposed to be and what he was supposed to do when he got there. He’d just learned that if he squinched his eyes a bit, the snowflakes would almost move again, when the door buzzer went off.
He didn’t move. The door buzzed again.
“Sten,” the Counselor shouted through the panel, “I know you’re there. Let me in. Everything is fine. We’ll work it out. Together. Just open the door. Everything is fine.”
Sten knew it wasn’t. But finally he pulled himself up and walked toward the door. The buzzer sounded again. Then something started fumbling in