Motus, page 18
Not everyone suffered from a lack of free time. Bored by the prospect of sitting around in the same room for hours, many set off for the city to find some entertainment and drink. Usually not until after they’d had their dinner, Corun noted with some satisfaction. His only demand was that they be back before their shift the next morning, even if that meant waking up early after a rowdy night in the city and climbing the steps hungover. Few made that mistake more than once, especially when it meant missing breakfast.
Others found more productive uses of their time. One evening, Cassi disappeared for a few hours before returning with her typewriter, paper, and dozens of short, capped pipes. She demonstrated the purpose of the latter by asking Corun for all the ingredients he needed in his next shipment. She typed as he spoke, and afterward, she rolled up the list and placed it into the metal pipe, capped it, and dropped it down the mineshaft.
“A hauler will find it in the next couple of hours.”
Corun took advantage of this message delivery system several more times over the next month, first to ask Ruth about the status of Malac’s and his mother’s disciplinary hearings, and Hagen about his progress on the batteries. He received a short but optimistic reply from both a few days later with his next shipment of food.
Among his additional requests for ingredients, he asked for quail bones, barley malt, and milk. The miners considered his bone broth to be equally as delicious in a stew or as a warm savory beverage after a long shift in the cold mineshaft. Orzo flavored with barley malt and barley milk was a breakfast favorite, so much so that Corun commissioned a large, insulated container to keep the beverage hot so they could enjoy it throughout the day in the upper reaches of the mineshaft.
He did receive one item he hadn’t requested, though. It came with a note from Merrill, the oldest member of the union, who had worked as a technician in the lab. It described the contents of the two buckets as synthetic sugar and fats, colloquially known as rock juice and rock butter. As for the sugar, she reassured him that all traces of formaldehyde, the starting ingredient, had been converted into sugars or were otherwise undetectable. This concerned him almost as much as the thought of eating butter synthesized from carbon monoxide and hydrogen gas, oxidized, reacted with glycerol, and fractionally distilled. Doubts or no, they did indeed taste sweet and oily, respectively, and the miners couldn’t tell the difference when he used them in his recipes. The rock juice was primarily used to sweeten orzo or pastries, though one enterprising miner took a portion to ferment into alcohol. The results were dubious at best. The rock butter was good on morning toast, though its taste was much improved with the tiniest bit of tomato paste and salt.
Corun found it difficult to sleep in the basecamp at first, partly due to the persistent snoring and bubbling of the oxygen generator, or the comings, goings, cooking, and conversation of the other shifts. The thin bedroll didn’t help. When he was at his most restless, he lay half dreaming of the comfortable couch from the Archives.
During those long, sleepless nights, he also wished Cassi didn’t sleep so far from him, but she and the eight other women miners had taken a corner of the basecamp for themselves. Some of the miners said it was to gossip, but they all knew it was because of the way a few of the unmarried men leered at them. It was understood, though, that these women could make such men regret any unwanted advances.
Those confrontations were uncommon and minor, nothing like the one that occurred when a miner struck a small cluster of semiprecious gems. Corun had to make the difficult decision of letting the lucky man keep the haul, even though all of them had assisted in its uncovering. They were already sharing the profits of the ore, but he thought it would help incentivize faster and longer duration digging by some of the lazier miners among their ranks.
For some of the miners, this was the last straw, and they decided to look for other work in the city or stand at the picket line. By the same token, a few miners joined them from the city, former laborers tired of standing guard and wanting to do something productive for a change. The free food was just another incentive.
Toward the end of the month, however, that uneasy balance was threatening to turn against him. The amount, variety, and quality of food delivered was decreasing, even as the height of the mineshaft increased, resulting in hungry, tired, and cold miners. Corun worried Ruth and her delegation were getting the bad side of any deal they had made with the Foredistrict. And unless they figured out how to fix it, things were only going to get worse.
So, one evening after dinner, he made up his mind to head down to Motus for the first time in weeks.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Corun sat for the third time that evening. The constant impact of his feet on the stairs made his knees throb, while one leg felt distinctly longer than the other from the endless spiral of stairs. He lost count of the number of times he’d stumbled only to barely catch himself on the railing, which he would just as soon steer clear of. Beyond the tall lip of stone, rocks hurtled down the vertical mineshaft, occasionally clipping the railing as they went. The whooshing of air as they passed was a startling example of the force they called gravity. He had never seen anything fall more than a few meters before, and had no idea that, given the chance, objects could reach such absurd speeds. He could just faintly hear the rocks’ impact far below as he refilled the water reservoir of his carbide lamp. With a heavy sigh, he took a greedy sip of water for himself before standing and resuming his monotonous trudge.
Five minutes later, the sound of rocks crashing against the floor of Motus became deafening. Before he realized it, he had reached the bottom and was staggering forward, his foot encountered paving stones rather than descending onto another step. Dizzy and unaccustomed to traveling in a straight line, he shuffled away from the mineshaft’s entrance, his steps carving deep trenches through a thick coating of rock dust.
The crashing of stone against stone made him jump before he realized he was in no danger. A stone wall had been erected from the tunnel floor to its ceiling, separating the stairway from the shaft and stretching out in a wide arc beside the Smeltery. It effectively shielded passing laborers from chips of stone sent careening away from each impact. Corun suspected its main purpose was to dampen the sound, something that was sure to have kept many residents of Motus awake through all hours of the night.
He watched as a loose line of haulers disappeared behind the wall only to emerge again with wheelbarrows full of the rocks. In addition to their helmets, each wore a translucent visor, a mask, thick gloves, and metal shin guards. Corun was tempted to look for Rhyo among them, but he had more pressing business to attend to before he began the long journey back up the stairs.
He headed straight for his mother’s studio for a much-needed wash and a clean pair of clothes.
Only when he looked and felt human again did he make his way to the Shroomery. He took the long way, wanting to see how the laborers at the picket line were faring.
Slag had continued to pile up in Corun’s absence. It sat beneath buildings and heaped against walls. They were running out of places to put it, and Corun highly doubted the Foredistrict was willing to take any off their hands.
The picket line was constructed of slag and sheets of metal. Behind it, laborers relaxed on chairs, lay down on straw mattresses, or stood to peer toward the Foredistrict. Each of them had a metal bar or some other blunt or sharpened weapon within arm’s reach. Stacks of fist-sized rocks were among the supplies, and Corun suspected they were meant for hurling at compliance officers should they dare approach or attempt a siege. Corun couldn’t help but have a look for himself. Twenty meters separated their wall from another one, this more polished and well-constructed, a statement of pride rather than a defensive barrier. Rocks and other debris littered the paving stones in between. It was impossible to tell how many compliance officers stood behind their wall, but it was easy enough to spot the cages of quail just beyond. By design, no doubt. A reminder of who had all the food, or a dare to the laborers to try and take it for themselves.
Unlike the mineshaft, the brown dust coating everything at the picket line was from the barley mill. In it, Corun could see tracks leading from one wall to the other. At least some people were willing to cross the divide and trade resources.
That was all Corun needed to know, and so he resumed his walk to the Shroomery. The longer this standoff lasted, the more time they had to find the Surface.
He had come and gone from the Shroomery so many times over the years, he hardly recognized the place when he arrived. The number of Ruth’s employees had multiplied several fold due to the need for food and the number of now unemployed laborers, like pavers, electricians, and plumbers. The Shroomery was a residential unit in length, one of the smaller industries in the Reardistrict, but this too had changed. Corun watched as men and women carried pots of mushroom substrate between multiple buildings, and yet more pots sprouting clusters of mushrooms from that building to another. With mushrooms being their one and only stable food source, it was no wonder it had grown to accommodate the greater demand. This also explained the overabundance of the fungi in the miners’ food shipments.
He had to search all three buildings before he found Ruth. She still wore the obsidian dagger at her hip, and Corun was beginning to think she wore it more than just for protection. She stood in the center of a stream of men and women, all going about their tasks. She directed them with a quick word here and there, occasionally stepping closer to test the moisture content of substrate by squeezing it in her fist.
Corun watched for a few minutes, until Ruth caught sight of him. To her credit, she didn’t look at all startled or distressed by his sudden appearance and approached him with a friendly but concerned smile.
“You look tired,” she said, scanning him up and down. “And a bit skinnier. Your mother would kill me if she found out I wasn’t feeding you enough.”
“I’m fine,” Corun said, suppressing a flare of anger at the mention of his mother. Had she already forgotten her own role in her imprisonment? He sighed and softened his tone. “I’m eating plenty.” And he was. He too had noticed his body changing, growing leaner in some places and broader in others. He chalked it up to the redistribution of muscles as his body adjusted to climbing stairs, chiseling at walls, and lifting stones in addition to his usual labor with the pickaxe. “What’s with all the activity?” he asked, even as Ruth turned to adjust the gas flow on a methane burner actively sterilizing a dozen pots. Several glass containers stood among the ceramic ones, and he could only surmise it was due to the lack of a potter.
“The board is slowly clamping down on trade, increasing prices on food, and generally making it harder for us to feed everyone. They even increased the price on barley straw, though they have no use for it themselves. Just growing these mushrooms is draining what little funds we had,” she said. She finished fiddling with the methane burner and gestured outside. He followed her into the street, where she sat on a bench directly beneath a roof support and its light bulb. Corun joined her, eager to get off his feet for a time.
“So why don’t we do the same to them, even the score?” he asked, gesturing up at the lightbulb. “Charge more for electricity for instance.”
“That’s about the only thing we have over them right now. But they can live far longer without electricity than we can without food.”
“What about the water?” Corun asked, all of his concerns reigniting in his stomach at once.
“They did something we hadn’t anticipated. Somehow they found people willing to dig a pit or weld a big tank together. We aren’t sure which. Before we knew what was happening, they had slowly filled it with water to create their own reserve. We didn’t notice until we discovered a discrepancy in the amount of wastewater returning compared to fresh water going out. One of their experts running the reclaimer concealed it as long as possible.”
“So we cut off their waste recycling. Let them swim in it,” Corun said, remembering Malac’s threat to Wolfram as the concussed board member was dragged away.
“That would hurt us more than them. Their wastewater is the only reason we’re receiving any of that water back at all. And if they get desperate enough, they could tap into the reactor cooling lines running beneath the paving stones, which could endanger us all. And don’t forget that they are providing the expertise to run many of our industries, so threatening to cut them off means they’ll just withdraw personnel critical to the operation. Honestly, it feels like I’m walking a knife’s edge these days. If either side pushes too hard on any one thing, it could all descend to mayhem and death, and that could mean the end of all of us.”
Corun frowned. Perhaps he wasn’t giving Ruth enough credit. He had a hard enough time managing the miners under his watch, and yet she and a few other members of the union were responsible for the livelihood of the entire city. Perhaps she caried the obsidian knife as a reminder of just how precarious their situation was.
“What about our own food production?”
“We have a few plots growing food, but it’s months until harvest, and there’s nowhere near enough of it to make a dent. We tried hatching chicks from the eggs we purchased too, but so far they’ve all been unfertilized. Merrill’s synthetic sugar and butter are helping, but it takes a lot of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, and we just can’t justify hydrolyzing that much water. Like it or not, they outplayed us. And there’s something else . . .”
Corun swallowed and leaned back on the bench, readying himself.
“They know we’re digging up.”
His tension eased slightly.
“Does this mean they’ve finally acknowledged the Surface exists?”
“Quite the opposite, actually. They spent the entire meeting bringing up all the same tired Descensionist arguments we’ve heard before.”
“But the recording—”
“Never existed, according to them. They refuse to discuss it at all.”
“So why does it matter? If they don’t believe the Surface exists, why does it matter where we get the rock from?”
“They see it as a huge waste of time, resources, and space. Especially space. They argue that we’ll never be able to effectively fill in a vertical shaft like that. They’re charging us for that wasted space and raising the price of food until we pay back the debt.”
“They’re trying to get us to stop,” he said, his words coming out more like a growl. At her nod, he continued. “But we aren’t going to, right?”
“Don’t worry. That was nonnegotiable,” she said, lifting a hand to calm him. “But I had to concede something to buy us more time.”
“What is it?”
“Nothing too bad. Since we’ve proven it’s possible to dig a mineshaft a fair distance from the city, they want us to dig down too.”
“Ruth, no. I need all the miners I can get just to ascend. You want to take them away and go in the opposite direction?”
“Don’t worry, we won’t need many miners. They don’t know we’re working in shifts around the clock, or even how far we’ve gone. All we need to do is fill one shift and show the occasional compliance office we’re making reasonable progress.”
“How many miners are you talking?”
“Ten, maybe fifteen. It depends on how many other laborers I can draw away from the picket line.”
Corun slumped as he tried to calculate just how much that would slow him down.
“I don’t like it, Ruth. If they get their way on this, what will they ask for next? And will they ever schedule my mom’s and Malac’s disciplinary hearings?”
“I’m sorry, Corun. I have too few tools to bargain with. We’re just going to have to wait a little longer.”
“Any way I can see them?”
“You’re a wanted man, Corun, and you’re too important to the mining operation. And, well, I may need you for one other thing.”
Corun raised his eyebrows as Ruth pressed her lips together. Was it just his imagination, or did she look ashamed?
An hour later, Corun was standing in his mother’s studio, checking to make sure he had everything he needed, when someone knocked at the door.
But it wasn’t Ruth.
“You’re in the city and didn’t tell me?” Rhyo asked as he stepped into the studio, uninvited.
“Sorry, Rhyo, but I won’t be staying long. Ruth asked me to do her a favor.”
“You have no idea how boring it’s been here without you,” he continued as he closed the door and sat on his mother’s stool. “Everyone’s all tense and Aegir, the guy who owns the Brewery, said he wasn’t brewing anything for a while. Apparently, the barley’s too important to waste. Waste,” he scoffed. “More like improved.”
Corun smiled despite himself. “This must be really hard for you. No alcohol, no excuse to see Eden.”
“Eden,” Rhyo said, his chin falling to his chest. “I’m done with her, Corun. I gave her every chance to date me, you know, short of coming across as too easy. But no, she goes and chooses that other guy. Have you seen him? He’s like half my size.”
“Size isn’t everything, or so they say.”
Rhyo looked at Corun as if that were the most profoundly stupid thing he had ever heard. Only then did he notice what Corun was wearing.
“Why are you wearing your mom’s tomato blossom apron?”
Corun let out a long breath through his nose but was saved from answering by yet another knock on the door.
This time it was Ruth, and she had brought a guest.
“Corun, thank you for agreeing to train her. We really need this. This is Cinna. She used to be a paver before she joined the Shroomery.”
A frizz of dark red hair poked out from beneath a helmet, and freckles speckled a short nose and paler than average cheeks as the former paver stared up at him.
“Those mushroom spores were just killing me,” she said. “I’m happy to get back to shaping rock, even if it is softer rock than what I’m used to.”
