“There’s where we’ll be doing our jobs,” he said.
Presently the train jerked to a stop. Bert stood up, heavily and wearily. He collected his gear, and followed the other man into the drizzling rain. He felt bowed down by his load. His feet shuffled in a clumsy trudge. He wondered how long it was going to take his muscles to adapt to Venus. At present the place bore down as heavily upon his flesh as upon his spirit…
BERT stood on the lip of a small quarry, surveying the scene beneath him. Because, rather remarkably, it was not raining he had an extensive view. But because it was likely to resume raining at any moment he still wore the long waterproof coat that was practically a local uniform. Beneath it his feet showed in large boots that were clumsy, but did keep out the wet. At his waist was a belt supporting a machete and a sheath-knife on the left. His other instrument, a whip, with its twelve-foot lash carefully coiled, was thrust into the belt on his right hand side.
Looking down almost between his feet he could see his party of fifty griffas at work. They were loading ironstone into small trucks which they would presently push on to the slope which led down to the terminus of the line, and later wind up again. Beyond the sheds and tangle of trucklines at the terminus itself he could see the electrified line, flanked all the way by cleared and cultivated fields, stretching like a rather uncertain swathe cut to the horizon. To either side the natural Venusian forest grew untouched. Mostly it was a monotone of the pallid and, to unaccustomed eyes, unhealthy looking grey-green. There was a little relief here and there from the pink flush of the displeasing plant they called the mock-rose—it reminded Bert more of a spiky petalled dahlia which had been swollen to some eight feet in diameter. Even more scattered, but giving some relief were occasional streaks of true green, and blobs of slatey-blue. Pennant-trees reared their crests magnificently above the ruck with their ribbons streaming. Still higher rose the feather-tops, swinging in great graceful arcs even in so light a wind. With the rippling fronds of the tree-ferns they helped to give the illusion that the whole plain was in undulating motion. Bert, pensively regarding the span from the mist-hidden sea in the east to the shadowy mountains in the west, loathed each acre of it individually and intensely.
The only things in sight he didn’t loathe were the griffas. For them he had a mixture of pity and fellow-feeling. They were intelligent little creatures, but the general opinion was that they were dead lazy. As Bert saw it, that just showed narrow thinking. Laziness is a relative term to be measured against work. Nobody calls a flower or a tree lazy. The point was that a wild griffa never had any conception of work. When it was caught and shown work, it didn’t like it. Why should it? The captives netted by a drive in the forest came in as sad-eyed, bewildered little figures, of whom a number went promptly into a decline and allowed themselves to die. The rest had no great will to survive. Life in captivity was very little better to them than no life at all. The only thing that made them work at all was the desire to avoid pain. They were intelligent enough to be taught quite complicated duties, but what no one had been able to instil into them was the sacred idea of duty itself. They could not be brought to the idea that it was something they owed to these human invaders of their planet. It was Bert’s job to keep them working by the only effective method. He loathed that, too.
There was also the uneasy feeling that his position in Venusian society was not all that different from theirs…
HIS wandering thoughts were brought back by the sight of the foreman overseer climbing the path to the quarry. Bert descended to meet him.
The man gave him no greeting. He was dressed like Bert himself save for the sign of authority represented by the pistol on his belt. As he strode into the working it was plain that he was in a bad temper. His hard eyes looked Bert over with the full insolence of petty authority.
“Your lot’s down on production. Way down. Why?” he demanded. But he did not seem to expect an answer. He glanced round, taking the place in at a sweep. “Look at ’em, by God! Your job here is to keep the little rats working, isn’t it? Well, why in hell don’t you do it?”
“They’re working,” said Bert, flatly.
“Working, hell!” said the overseer.
He drew his whip. The lash whistled. A female griffa screamed horribly, and dropped where she stood. Her two companions, linked by chains to her ankles, stood quivering, with fear and misery in their dark eyes. The rest, after a startled pause, began to work very much more actively. Bert’s hand clenched. He looked down on the fallen griffa, watching the red blood well up and soak into the silver fur. He raised his eyes to find the overseer studying him.
“You don’t like that,” the man told him, showing his teeth.
“No,” said Bert.
“You’ve gone soft. Building this place up is a man’s job. When you’ve been here a bit you’ll learn.”
“I doubt it,” said Bert.
“You’d better,” the overseer said, unpleasantly.
“I didn’t come here to help build a slave-state,” Bert told him.
“No? You’d just like to start at the top—with none of the dirty work—wouldn’t you? Well, it can’t be done. You tell me one great nation or empire on Earth that didn’t have this behind it at one stage?” He swung his whip with a crack like a rifle shot. “Well, tell me—?”
“It’s wrong,” said Bert, helplessly.
“You know a better way? Love and kindness, maybe?” the man said, jeering. “You’ve gone soft,” he repeated.
“Maybe,” Bert admitted. “But I still say that if there’s no better way of building than driving these creatures crazy with pain and fear until they die—then it’s not worth doing at all.”
“Tchah! Where’s your bible, Preacher? There’s just one way to get the work that’s got to be done, and this is it.”
His whip whistled again. Another little griffa screamed, and another.
Bert hesitated a second. Then he drew his own whip. The lash sang through the air and wrapped itself around the overseer’s neck. At that moment Bert yanked on the handle with all his strength. The man lurched towards him, tripped on a chunk of ironstone, and came down on his head. Bert dropped the whip, and dived to stop him drawing his pistol.”
His leap was superfluous. The overseer was not in a condition where he would be able to use a pistol—or a whip—any more.
THE griffas had stopped work, and stood staring as Bert got up and fixed the holstered pistol to his own belt. He raised his eyes from the man on the ground and stared back at them. He turned and went towards the toolshed. There he took down the long-handled pincers that were customarily used to cut a dead griffa free from his fellows. Then he went back to them, and got to work.
When it was over they still stood round puzzled, with dark, sorrowful eyes blinking at him from silver-furred faces. “Go on, you mugs! Beat it! Shoo!” said Bert.
He watched them scuttle away and disappear into the dense growth above the quarry, and then turned to reconsider the fallen man. The overseer was heavily built. It was laborious to Bert’s still unaccustomed muscles to drag him out of the quarry, but he managed it. A short way down the path he paused a little to recover his breath. Then, with a great effort, he lifted the body, and heaved it into a mock-rose. The petal-like tendrils received the weight with a slow, engulfing movement like the yielding of a feather-bed. The large outer leaves began to close. Presently the thing was a hard tight ball looking like an enormous, etiolated brussels sprout.