“When is it going to start?”
“Soon. Bethan was the first. Probably there will be more by the end of the day. The nannite fields had ovulation turned off and the natural hormones that were generated by the cycle were replaced and released in a steady stream. Now we’re going to be slaves to that damned curse again!”
“That sucks,” Rachel said. “I’m not going to!”
“You don’t have a choice,” Daneh replied, thinking furiously. “They used to have ways to… catch the flow. Terms, old terms. On the rag. Riding the cotton pony.”
“Where have I heard that before?” Bethan asked.
“You find it in the literature of the day,” Rachel replied with a frown. “King, Moore, Hiaasen…”
“Ah, the masters,” Bethan smiled wanly.
“I don’t know what they used, but we’d better think of something,” Daneh said with a frown. “And soon. Or this whole town is going to be one hell of a mess.”
“So I’m not dying,” Bethan said.
“No, you’re going through a perfectly normal monthly cycle that has been survived by countless women throughout the ages,” Daneh replied astringently. “And there’s so much good news attached to it, too.”
“Oh?” Bethan asked warily.
“Yes, it means you’re now as fertile as one of your cows. How many more children do you plan on having?”
The three days of rest were cut short for the starting of the familiarization classes and on the second day after arriving at Raven’s Mill Herzer found himself in a mixed group of males and females clearing land along the Shenan River on the far side from Raven’s Mill.
The work was backbreaking. The majority of the trees in the area were “secondary old growth.” That meant that while the area had once been cleared, had, in fact, been the fringe of the massive megalopolis that had once stretched down the entire coast, the buildings and other structures had been gone long enough for multiple generations of forest to have grown on the spot.
Herzer didn’t know the names of the trees and didn’t particularly care. They were just horrible growing things to be attacked with axe and saw. He supposed that given his friendship with Bast he should be more understanding. She had, after all, seen the trees grow from seeds or acorns or whatever and loved them like children. But it was hard to be kindly thinking towards the trees when your hands ran with blood from the blisters.
He had taken turns in a rota using the two crosscut saws they had available and that was bad enough. The motion used muscles he didn’t even know he had and by the first hour he was in agony from it. It took a particular stance and motion to get the most out of the saws and he suspected that for long-term users it was relatively easy. Relatively. Drawing a saw back and forth for hour upon hour could never be characterized as “easy.” But surely easier than it was to learn. And then there was the question of “coasting.” It was nearly impossible to determine if the person on the other side of the saw was working as hard as you were and it was tempting, especially on some of the more recalcitrant trees, to suspect that the person was not, in fact, giving their all.
Herzer had noticed by the morning of the first day that not everyone worked equally. There were ten males and five females, most of them younger like Mike and he. Herzer, Mike and a few others, males and females, threw themselves into all the tasks with as much energy and enthusiasm as they could summon. In Mike’s case he seemed to have a real drive to learn the details of each of the jobs while in Herzer’s case he had an obstinate refusal to do less than his best.
Most of the rest, though, were just there to pick up a meal chit. There had been some muttering the first day, especially after they found out how hard they were going to have to work, about “slave labor,” but the incipient rebellion had been quelled quickly by the supervisor of the clearing effort, a reenactor named Jody Dorsett.
He had stood with his hands on his hips in front of a group of the “apprentices” who had simply dropped the axes they had been wielding. He looked at them with cold blue eyes.
“You can pick them up and start working or you can drop out. It doesn’t matter to me. And if I think you’re not working as hard as you should, I can dock your rations. So don’t think you can just pick the axe up every few seconds and give the tree a love tap. I’ve seen it all me buckoes and if I see any more of it out of you you’ll damned well be thrown out of the program.”
So the malingerers got back to work, grudgingly, as Herzer and a few others threw themselves into their assigned tasks.
For Herzer and Mike it had started with the crosscut saw. The objective was to drop the trees in a certain direction so they could be extracted more easily, but the trees didn’t always want to go that way. Indeed, it seemed they were bound and determined not to.
Herzer, working with another man whose name he never did quite catch, had started on a smaller tree, but a tough one. Only about two thirds of a meter across where they were cutting, it had nonetheless taken nearly an hour to cut through. They had first cut an angled slit down one side then driven wooden “wedges” into the slit. With that done they notched out the far side with an axe then started the crosscut. The blade had bound a time or two, requiring that wedges on the “pushing” side be loosened and wedges be driven in around the blade. But finally, after it felt they would never get the damned thing to fall it did, right at Herzer.
At first it seemed to be going well but then the cut at the base split and the tree turned, partially pressured by the winds that had sprung up, and aimed itself in Herzer’s direction.
Only a quick yell from the supervisor, who had been keeping a wary eye out for the junior team, had prevented the boy from being crushed. As it was, he barely made it out of the way of the trunk and was actually struck a glancing blow by one of the smaller, lower branches.
Jody’s only comment was a snarl for getting the blade bound under the trunk and nearly breaking it. As soon as it was loose he set Herzer and a new partner to cut a larger tree with a trunk nearly two meters across, wide spreading branches and gnarls all over its trunk. Herzer groaned in fatigue but set to it without further comment.
And the blisters started almost immediately. Unlike most of the rest he had some calluses, but they were from sword and bow, utterly unlike the calluses from a saw or axe. So in no time at all his hands had become swollen with blisters which just as quickly popped under the unremitting punishment.
This time Herzer was teamed with a guy named Earnon Brooke. He had been one of the brief mutineers and true to form, Herzer was sure that he wasn’t doing much more than leaning on the end of the saw. Herzer had to practically push it through on each cut, instead of simply moving with it and maybe putting some pressure against the trunk. And when he did his pull there was more resistance than he thought there should be; it almost felt like the guy was leaning back on it and letting Herzer pull him through.
Herzer put up with it for about ten minutes, which had barely gotten them started on the wedge cut and then he’d had enough. He dropped his end of the saw at the end of his pull and walked over to the other man.
Earnon was tall and good looking but he had the shiftiest eyes Herzer had ever seen. He was, however, at least a good decade older than the boy and Herzer tried not to let that intimidate him.
“Look, you’re not pulling your share of the weight,” Herzer said calmly. “We’re never going to get this tree cut if you don’t work at it.”
“I am working at it,” Earnon said stepping forward and snarling at the boy. “If anybody’s not pulling his own weight, it’s you, boy. Don’t you be blaming me if you’re afraid the thing’s gonna fall on you again. It wasn’t my screw-up that time; it was yours.”