Motus, page 5
It took them a little over three hours to finish all one hundred copies, in no small part due to Corun forgetting his role entirely and watching her work. He still couldn’t believe he knew the anonymous author’s identity and now had a hand in the creation of her latest pamphlet.
He waited until she was on the last pamphlet before he dared distract her.
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” he said with feigned confusion. “But isn’t ‘forefront’ supposed to be spelled with an “E.”
Eyes going wide, she took the paper from his hands and hastily read through it, only stopping when Corun could no longer stifle his laughter. He snorted as she turned to glare at him.
“How long have you been waiting to use that one?”
“A couple hours.”
“Hopeless,” she said as she returned to typing, but a smile pulled at the corners of her mouth as she worked.
“We’ll divide them between us,” she said, then blew gently on the last sheet. “You take Third Street and I take First. We can meet on Second and head back together.”
“Sounds fair. Can we meet at Feldspar’s to check on Rhyo and Hagen?”
“Good a place as any, I suppose.”
She added the last pamphlet to her stack, which Corun had already set aside for her. She then opened a drawer and took out a heavy sack.
“You can use these to pin them to any iron surface.”
She dug her hand into the sack, and when it emerged, a cluster of rough and irregular beads came with it. The weight of it surprised Corun when she dropped it in his cupped hand.
“Lodestones? Is this how you do it in the Foredistrict?”
“At the beginning, until compliance officers started patrolling in the hopes of catching me in the act. Now I put them in envelopes, address them to people, and stick them in the mail for couriers to distribute. They passed a rule once to make it mandatory to include a sender’s name on every envelope and parcel, thinking that I was somehow incapable of forging those details too. Now, short of opening all private mail, they’ve no way of knowing what’s mine and what’s an actual correspondence. They expect everyone to throw it out as soon as they find it, and I fear most of them do.”
“You can’t give up,” Corun said. “I’m sure some of them read it.”
She smiled sadly as she stood and grabbed a messenger bag from a hook beside the door.
“If this plan works the way I hope it will, this will be the last one I need to write. You ready?”
Corun grinned.
He turned off his head lamp, now low on fuel, took up his pickaxe and stack of pamphlets, and followed her outside.
“Keep them concealed as best you can and try not to place them when somebody is watching,” she said as she tucked her own stack of pamphlets inside the messenger bag. “And good luck.”
Corun was reluctant to part ways, not wanting these last perfect hours to come to an end. As he watched her hasten down the street and turn at the nearest crossroad, fear of disappointing her drove him into action.
Without a bag of his own, he tucked the pamphlets beneath his threadbare shirt and underneath one arm. The lodestones clung conveniently to the head of his pickaxe, allowing him to pluck one free as needed.
Finally ready, he took a deep breath and set off toward Third Street.
Haulers moved in a steady stream from the mines to the Smeltery along the thoroughfare. None of them appeared confused or excited, and that gave Corun some reassurance that they hadn’t yet stumbled upon the slagheap. It was only a matter of time before Malac spread the word and the flow of rock ceased.
Corun tried not to look too suspicious as he paused beside the first building on his designated route, took a lump of magnetite from his pickaxe, and posted a pamphlet on the plain metal wall of the Brewery.
He glanced at all the faces he passed, but no one appeared to have noticed. Letting out a long sigh, he continued down the street. After placing five more pamphlets in quick succession with similar success, his confidence got the best of him. He failed to see a woman nursing her baby in front of her residence as he loitered outside the bakery, waiting for a gap in traffic. When he saw her frowning at him, he turned his head and walked away, hoping she hadn’t gotten a good look at him. In his periphery, he saw her adjust her nursing baby in her arms and approach the pamphlet. Her posture became tense as her eyes moved down the page.
For the next several minutes, he played it safe, not departing with a single pamphlet within anyone’s line of sight. He abandoned that strategy a short time later. Quickly spreading word of the slag’s discovery was more important than going unnoticed. Eschewing caution, Corun began dropping pamphlets every dozen meters, thinking the ground was as good a place as any for a passing laborer to see them. If a compliance officer caught him in the act of littering, a fine would be the least of the consequences.
By the time he reached the end of Third Street and the heat of the Smeltery warmed his cheeks, he had dropped a score of pamphlets and placed nearly as many on shopfronts or under the doors of residences.
He resisted the impulse to enter the Smeltery, even as throngs of laborers hurried into and out of its sweltering confines. Like most of the large operations in the Reardistrict, the Smeltery was owned and operated by powerful families in the Foredistrict, many of them serving on the board of directors. Leaving a pamphlet inside would be little different than delivering it to the chairman himself. Were Hagen not under the watchful eye of Rhyo, Corun had no doubt he would do just that.
Thinking of his friend, he turned onto Second Street, toward Feldspar’s. A minute later, he stepped up onto a rusted wheel and entered through the bar’s squeaking metal door. The interior was dingy, dark and filled with a heady scent of fermented barley and the sound of boisterous patrons. He cringed as his boot pulled away from the floor with some resistance. In hindsight, it was not the kind of place he would ever suggest meeting a girl.
As promised, Rhyo had escorted Hagen to their usual table and was in the middle of offering the man a mug of beer. From the four empty mugs on the table, it wasn’t the first.
“Hagen’s a bigger lightweight than you, Corun,” Rhyo said as soon as he arrived at the table.
“You promised I could go after three beers,” Hagen said. The defiant glare he cast Rhyo, and the mug in Rhyo’s hand, was spoiled by his eyes going cross. “You lied to me.”
“I did,” Rhyo said with pride. “And now you are far too drunk to resist. I might not be as clever as Corun, here, but I’ve been around the block a few more times.”
“I take it you two have become close these past few hours and will look back on this day fondly?” Corun asked, raising his eyebrows hopefully at Hagen.
“If the beer had been slightly palatable, perhaps, but this swill has surely cut years off my lifespan.”
“But the time you have left will be all that much better,” Rhyo said, looking not the slightest bit apologetic. “With all the hair it will put back on your head.”
“Where did that seditious compactor run off to?” Hagen said, taking the mug Rhyo offered without another word.
“Come now, Hagen. No need for name calling.”
“It means treasonous, you idiot. I should charge you for a full year’s tutorship after tonight. You learn a new word every time I open my mouth.”
“That’s not fair. I taught you a few words too. You’ve said as much.”
“Words I would as soon forget.”
“She’ll be meeting us here any minute now,” Corun said. “We’ve been distributing these.”
Corun took out a pamphlet and placed it on the table between them. Rhyo slid it closer and pushed a mug across the table in exchange. Corun nodded his thanks, but his friend was already squinting down at the paper, his eyes slowly crawling across the page.
Corun took a long draw from the mug. Sedition was thirsty work. True to Hagen’s word, it wasn’t the best beer he’d ever tasted, but it somehow tasted better out of one of his mother’s stoneware mugs. As Rhyo read the pamphlet, Corun admired the smooth, cylindrical shape of the mug, from the perfect lip of the rim to the etchings of barley grass coming together to form the handle. He would have to tell Celest about all this eventually, but he had already decided he wouldn’t put one of the pamphlets under her door. It wasn’t like she would leave her house to visit Headquarters, no matter how important the vote.
Rhyo took his time reading over the pamphlet, his letters coming harder to him than most. Hagen, his curiosity getting the better of him, leaned closer to read beside him. They both finished at around the same time despite Rhyo’s head start.
“Experienced appraiser, huh? Assuming you aren’t referring to my age, I’ll take the compliment, though I’d have preferred not to be connected with this nonsense at all,” Hagen said.
“Nonsense? You didn’t read it at all, did you?” Rhyo asked, slapping his hand down on the pamphlet. “All the evidence is right there. You helped provide it.”
“Evidence is not proof. You haven’t yet excluded all other possibilities. You’ve simply latched on to the explanation that best supports your agenda. And as for me, I stand behind my work. Can you all say the same? You didn’t even sign it,” Hagen said. Then his eyebrows drew together. “Wait. I’ve seen this before. You are the one who writes these?”
“They do look familiar,” Rhyo said with a look of suspicion that rivaled Hagen’s. “It explains why you never have time to join me here for a drink, and why you’re so interested in looking for the documents in the trash.”
It was the second time that day his best friend had accused him of some underhanded dealings, first in the mines with the slag, and now writing the anonymous pamphlets. When had Rhyo stopped trusting him?
Corun hesitated. He couldn’t so easily deny this accusation, not when it would implicate Cassi.
Thankfully, the compactor herself saved him from his moral quandary.
“At least I have one fan,” Cassi said as she plopped into the seat beside Corun. She took the mug from his hand and tentatively sipped at the contents.
Corun almost didn’t recognize Cassi with her helmet off. Her hair, a dark auburn, curled down around her neck, shimmering like molten metal under the electric bulbs.
“You’re the author?” Rhyo asked. “But you’re just . . .”
“A girl?”
“A compactor!” he said. “I’ll have you know I respect the slag out of women.”
“But not compactors?”
“Compactors are who I give the slag to after I’m done with all that respecting. How can I respect anyone who works that hard for so little pay? They’re all either criminals or idiots.”
“She doesn’t strike me as an idiot,” Hagen said, stroking his chin as he looked her up and down. “Not if you’re really the one writing all of these.”
Corun couldn’t help but agree. So far, he had refrained from asking her how she, a compactor, knew so much about the Foredistrict, everything from the most salacious of gossip to detailed histories of Motus and its board of directors.
Under the weight of their gazes, Cassi took another long sip of beer.
“I wasn’t always a compactor. My father was a former archivist, and my mother was a board member.”
“The Roscos,” Hagen said. “I thought you looked familiar. You’re their daughter.” Cassi nodded mutely and stared into her mug instead of meeting his pitying gaze. “It wasn’t right what they did to them. My wife and I have always said that.”
“What happened?” Corun asked, his curiosity getting the better of him.
When no response came from Cassi, Hagen elaborated. “About a decade ago, the Roscos submitted an amendment to the voting rules that would have allowed all shareholders to vote by mail. It was rejected after accusations of corruption surfaced. Allegedly, the Roscos would have benefited financially from the measure.”
“All lies,” Cassi said. “My mother offered to make the mail-in ballots herself since she owned a typewriter. It was a donation of her time and effort. All she asked for were the shares to cover the paper and ink.”
“If I recall correctly, that paper would have been purchased from the Archives at a price determined by your father.”
Cassi’s nostrils flared. “Only until more paper could be made. The Archives were the only stockpile of paper in all of Motus. The rate my father set was fair, and none of those shares would have gone to him anyway. And let’s be honest. It was never about the shares. The board needed an excuse to reject the measure, even if it had to invent one. They weren’t going to let any laborers vote if they could help it.”
“And what did your parents do?” Corun asked.
“What could they do? They were fired from their positions, and our home was taken, all under the pretext that it was purchased through embezzled shares. It wasn’t hard for people to believe after the board laid the groundwork. We were homeless until my parents took a job on third shift at the Air Handlers. They both died from a gas leak six years ago.”
“They couldn’t find a safer job?” Rhyo asked before the silence became unbearable.
“They didn’t have much of a choice. Almost every industry in the Reardistrict is owned by the city and the board. The only jobs left were those nobody wanted. They’ve been doing the same to me since I was old enough to work,” she said, a slight quaver in her voice. “Being a compactor doesn’t pay much, but it’s one of the few jobs left where I can work for myself.”
“Miners work for themselves,” Corun appended.
“Sure, if they already own their gear. You can spend months working off the cost of a nice carbon steel pickaxe and carbide lamp like yours. We won’t even go into the cost of obtaining a mining claim. Compactors get paid to pack slag into our tailings, a pittance, but something anyone with a heavy rock can perform.”
Corun nodded solemnly. It had taken his father most of his adult life to afford a mining claim, and it had only come into Corun’s possession through inheritance, much like the mining helmet and pickaxe.
“That is all very sad, truly,” Hagen said after he polished off the last of his beer. “But I don’t see how it warrants such a ploy. Calling for laborers to flood Headquarters at shift’s end? You’re practically begging for a riot. And for all you know, the board will be as concerned about this discovery as we are. I’m sure they will vote to do what’s best for all shareholders.”
“If that were true, they would have proven it long ago,” Corun said. He gestured to Rhyo. “Remember when we came across a deposit of olivine a few years ago? It had little going for it other than its appearance, but the board had the city stop for three weeks until every single family in the Foredistrict had as much of the gemstone as they wanted. The Smeltery could barely pull anything useful from the olivine and surrounding rock. Everyone in the Reardistrict was on water rations for weeks.”
“Water is always on ration,” Hagen grumbled, waving it away.
Rhyo didn’t let that go without a response. “Then why did they move us right through an overhydrated basalt a year later instead of staying to resupply? Because the moisture was rusting their homes and causing shorts in their precious power supply. The board does nothing to benefit the city unless it also benefits them.”
“They also restricted mining to first shift, just because they didn’t want to hear the miners working during the evening and night shift,” Corun added. “We could be moving Motus much faster and harvesting more resources if they cared more about this city than their own peace and quiet.”
“They aren’t wrong,” Cassi said. “I may not be an archivist like my father, but I grew up in the Archives. There are countless other examples from our history like that. It’s why my parents wanted to give all laborers a vote. So, I ask you, Hagen, do you really think that’s such a bad thing?”
The appraiser ran a shaking hand through his thinning hair, frown lines wrinkling his weary features.
“Of course not,” he said at last.
“Then I suggest you choose a side,” Cassi said, leaning forward to look him square in the eye. “Because whatever happens next, it will be the people of Motus who decide.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“I don’t know what I was expecting,” Malac said, his arms crossed as he gazed at the four of them. “But a hundred enraged laborers would have been nice.”
Their return to the Foredistrict went much quicker with Rhyo and Hagen helping distribute the pamphlets. Hagen, for his part, had agreed to help, even if his method of distribution was unenthusiastic at best. Corun spotted him crumpling up several and throwing them over his shoulder on more than one occasion. But it worked. Few laborers would pass up free paper when they saw it, especially if dropped by someone wearing a suit as fine as Hagen’s. Rhyo, by contrast, made a game of it, seeing how many doors he could slip a pamphlet under without being noticed. It was no easy feat, as he was one of the tallest and most noticeable people in the city. Corun was most impressed with Cassi, who seemed to weave through shareholders like a draft of air, parting with her remaining pamphlets in the most noticeable of locations without drawing a glance.
When they finally reached the Foredistrict, they moved along Third Street so as not to draw the attention of the compliance officers patrolling the crop platforms. The only change from earlier in the day was the noticeable lack of haulers taking their wheelbarrow full of stone and ore to the Smeltery.
Soon they had emerged into the newly paved section of the tunnel, a section that would be swallowed by Motus tomorrow as the city took the day off to move their homes forward. Malac stood alone in the open space, waiting for them.
“All in good time,” Cassi said. “We still have a quarter hour until shift’s end. But where are all the miners?” It was her turn to cross her arms and stare at the lone figure of Malac in the wide empty tunnel.
“They’re waiting with the pavers and electricians. I’ve brought everyone up to speed, though nobody is happy about it. This is their livelihood. If they can’t get those last loads of ore delivered to the Smeltery, they might not have enough shares to feed their families tonight.”
