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.