"Piers Anthony - Bio of a Space Tyrant 02 - Mercenary" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anthony Piers)
We climbed the ladder-tube up into the bubble. Inside, we stepped out of the lock onto the great, curving inner surface. I stood, dazzled by it.
The bubble was a virtually hollow sphere about a thousand feet in diameter. From a mirror in its center shone the sun; or rather, the twenty-sevenfold magnified image of the sun, projecting the hellish intensity of Earth-normal solar radiation to the broad, curved expanse of green plants. I knew I would not be able to tolerate that very long; the radiation would soon blister my skin.
The bubble was, of course, oriented so that its pole pointed to the sun. Otherwise the light would have been flashing on and off in sub-two-minute cycles, not good for the plants. This way, the bubble's rotation was irrelevant; the mirror moved independently, beaming the light to cover one-third of the inner surface, rotating in the course
of twenty-four hours to complete the circuit. Earth plants preferred the Earth cycle, and produced most abundantly with it, and so they got it. That, in addition to the absence of all Earth diseases and predators and inconstancies of nature, meant that these plants were many times as productive as they could have been on Earth itself.
"Get over to the harvest station," Gallows told us. That turned out to be a pavilion a short distance away, on a terrace up the slope. Gee was only full and vertical at the bubble's equator, of course; the terraces became increasingly steep as the poles were approached. Otherwise, the plants and soil would simply have tumbled in a jumble to the equator. We hastened to comply, scrambling up the path.
Organization did not take long. We were issued broad-brimmed hats, gloves, and heavy shirts to protect us from the concentrated sunlight, and each of us was given a large plastic bucket on a belt. This was a pepper dome; we were to fill our buckets with the red peppers. About one hundred peppers filled a bucket. When we brought a filled bucket to the foreman, he would issue a ticket worth a dime. The more buckets we filled, the more dimes we earned. It was a remarkably simple system.
Theoretically the average worker would fill one bucket in five minutes, twelve per hour, and squeeze it up to about a hundred buckets in the full eight-hour working day. The overall mathematics of it generated a schedule for our thirty-man crew to complete the full harvest of three million peppers in ten days. That seemed simple enough.
But the polite math did not take much account of the human element. I discovered that harvesting is indeed not light work. I was assigned a terraced segment of the acreage to harvest that seemed huge but was probably small. The entire acreage of the bubble might have been seventy-two, though the terracing and loss of usable area toward the poles may have caused me to misjudge it. Only a third of it was lighted, and we were working on only part of that this day. In fact, I now realize that the average man had to harvest less than a quarter acre per day-but that was ten thousand peppers, and it was an enormous task. The plants were spaced in wide rows, so there was plenty of room to walk between them without brushing, and that was important, because I saw that these were long-term producers. We had to pick only the ripe peppers, not damaging the greater number of developing ones; other crews would harvest those in other months.
I went to work on my segment, and Joe Hill had one adjacent. I watched him picking, to get a clear notion of how it was done, then proceeded. Each plant had one ripe pepper, readily distinguishable by its bright red color; I took hold of it and broke it free of its stem with a quick twist and set it in the pail. That was important, too, we had been cautioned; we were not to bruise the peppers by tossing them in. There were farmhands patrolling the rows, watching to see that no plants or fruits were abused. They did no harvesting, they just watched.
I thought I was making good time, but I was last to bring my first bucket in to Gallows for my ticket. I resolved to do better, and I hurried back to my section. I did speed up, but now I was getting hot in the heavy shirt, and the clothing was chafing. It was necessary to hunch over to reach the plants, and my back began to feel it. I sweated profusely and had to take gulps of water from the fountain every time I delivered a bucket, to alleviate dehydration. Within an hour the work became unpleasant; in two hours it was torture. But I had to keep picking, for everyone else was, and I was falling behind.
There was no break for lunch; we had to keep picking feverishly to make the quota. I hardly felt hunger, anyway; the fatigue of my limbs and discomfort of my body drowned it out. The curving landscape blurred; only the nearest bushes remained in focus. I was no longer concerned about future days, or even future hours; my life was measured only by the bucketful. My two hands moved of their own volition, grasping, twisting, carrying, depositing. Now each pepper was a challenge!
"This is no life for you, Hope," a voice said. Dazedly, I looked up. A young woman stood before me, brown-haired and pretty. Her eyes were immeasurably sad.
But she faded into nothingness, and I fell face-first to the ground. Now I remembered what I had never forgotten: Helse was dead and butchered for the key she carried. The key of QYV. "Kife, I'll kill you!" I cried in blind, hopeless rage.
"Worry! Come out of it!"
It was Joe, heaving me off the ground. I shook my head, realizing that I had suffered some sort of seizure.
Joe made me stop picking for the day, though I had filled only forty-five buckets. That put me further in trouble, for the morning and evening meals cost two dollars each, and the bunk two dollars per night. Most workers also bought a jug of rotgut for a dollar, and some paid another two dollars for fifteen minutes in a shed with the bubble prostitute. One more dollar was withheld each day for the return bus fare, until that five-dollar charge was met. The foreman didn't want any worker stranded without busfare back to Leda! As they put it, Gallows didn't want anyone hanging. It was said, not quite jokingly, that a fellow could have "A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou" each day and come out even. Many of the men did exactly that.
Joe carried me. He was able to pick more than the minimum, and he gave me enough chits so I could eat and sleep. I was embarrassed to accept his further largesse, but I had no choice. Next day I was more careful and did not faint, but only picked sixty-five buckets. So it went, day by day; I was literally in debt to Joe, and could never quite catch up to it.
At night, in the ship, it was better. I rested and recovered, and gave Joe his turn on the bunk while I worked on my song and learned to play poker. I refused to play for money, since I was already in debt, and this dampened things somewhat, but I did learn the game, and my special perception of people enabled me to grasp their bluffs. Soon I was playing well enough so that they were glad it wasn't for money.
There was a good deal of time when everyone was awake in the ship, as we were not permitted to wander the bubble freely when off-duty. Naturally enough we were crowded and bored, which was why a game like poker was important. Trouble was easy to come by. I was, to my shame, responsible for some of it.
I was telling my story in nightly installments, for next to singing and poker that was the prime entertainment. Most of the others knew each other's histories, but I was new and unfamiliar, so was the present object of attention. It was like having a new holo-show for them to watch, instead of an old, familiar one. I told how my family had to depart our city of Maraud at night and catch a bootleg bubble to Jupiter-and the betrayal and tragedy that ensued. On the first night only half a dozen people paid much attention, but my audience grew on succeeding nights, and when I got to sixteen-year-old Helse, all thirty of them, including the foreman, were listening raptly. I did not spare myself, for I wanted to forget none of it: my gallant family, my first experiences with sex, the rigors of the hell-moon Io, and Helse's horrible death.
"Say," Rivers said. "For a tale like that, Trixie'd give you tail for free!" Trixie was the generic name for prostitutes.
I was silent. The thought of sex with any other woman appalled me. Helse, Helse! I was not even conscious of the tears streaming down my cheeks.
Joe Hill launched himself at Rivers. His fist scored on the man's gut. Rivers buckled, gasping for breath. "You had no call to say that!" Joe cried, standing over the fallen man.
I jumped up, frightened at what I had unwittingly instigated. "He meant no harm!"
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