Rebellion (9 page)

"What does Lockwood know of the suns?" Whitebeard demanded angrily. "I am told he spends most of his days in a box where it is always cold." As good a description of an air-conditioned trailer as I ever heard, Daniel thought. "Let him and his overseers stagger under the suns before they set such conditions," another oldster angrily declared. "Even under Rathe tent of rest was open to all who needed it-whenever they needed it." Daniel frowned. The Elders were obviously talking about a tradition that had survived for thousands of years. But Lockwood apparently felt the tradition was insufficiently businesslike, and intended to change it. His attempt might blow up in his face even worse than the blasting at the pyramid. There he had merely destroyed an artifact of the people's past. Here he was attacking an institution that affected the health and welfare of every Abydan who worked in the mines. The Elders, all of whom had spent time in the pit, were getting worked up. And understandably so. As older men working under the broiling suns, they had probably needed the amenities of the tent of rest. "Tell them how it is on your world, Daniel," Skaara suddenly urged. "About the corporations, and the laws, and the workers protecting themselves." Daniel Jackson suddenly found every eye in the room on him.

It was an uncomfortable feeling. He'd experienced it other times-standing in front of a horde of skeptical Egyptologists when he'd presented the theories that got him branded as a crackpot. He'd experienced the near adulation of the people of Nagada on the first day he'd come to Abydos. Back then these people had thought he was some sort of messenger from Ra. But now, after he had finally convinced them that he was just a man, the leaders of Abydos were turning to him for advice. After ignoring so many of his warnings, Kasuf and the Elders were beginning to suspect they were out of their depth in dealing with Eugene Lockwood. What could Daniel tell them? He wasn't a lawyer, or a labor consultant. He was a scholar, an ivory-tower type who'd made some right guesses about history but couldn't get a job. By dumb luck his theories and knowledge of hieroglyphics had gotten him into the StarGate project, and he'd managed to parlay that knowledge into a chance at the greatest adventure in his life. Daniel gulped, looking around at the expectant faces. I'm only an expert on the dead past, not current events, he thought. this is a hell of a situation for an Egyptologist to get himself into.

"Colonel O'Neil? Vernon Ballard. I've been brought in as head of security for the mining operation." Jack O'Neil smelled problems the moment this latest newcomer from Earth entered his command tent. The stranger was a big, beefy man, holding himself ramrod straight but with the beginnings of a beer belly ruining the line of his uniform. It was the gray-brown of the camouflage suit that caught O'Neil's eye. One glance told that it was definitely government issue-but the uniform didn't come from the U.S. government. Ballard removed his matching combat cap, revealing balding brown hair cut so close, it was hard to tell where haircut ended and five o'clock shadow began. The line of Ballard's chin was also slightly softened by excess flesh, as if he'd spent more time recently at a desk than out in the field. The security man caught O'Neil's speculative gaze on his uniform. "I thought it would be best to differentiate between our forces. UMC was able to pick up a shipment of old Rhodesian uniforms-most suitable, I think, for dry bush operations. O'Neil responded with a noncommittal grunt. Lockwood had been whining for some time about the need for company police. Trust UMC to outfit them with relics from a twenty-year-old blackwhite African war. "Well, I trust you do better than the soldiers who last wore that uniform," O'Neil said dryly. "Rhodesia, after all, is now Zimbabwe." He gestured for Ballard to sit, but the man remained standing at parade rest. O'Neil's distaste deepened. Civilians who played soldier made his teeth itch. If, on the other hand, this guy was a pro taking UMC's pay, that made him a mercenary. And the Universal Mining Consortium's record with mercenary troops in the Third World was scarcely what one would call exemplary. "So, how many people are you bringing in, Ballard?" O'Neil inquired. "Does this mean I can send some of my Marines home?" "I'll be transshipping approximately a hundred security consultants." A fine euphemism for hired guns, O'Neil thought. Ballard's face stiffened when he caught the soldier's expression. "I expected you'd be bringing in reinforcements as well, Colonel. I mean, considering the uncertain temper of the mine workers." "The people who delve into that mine have been working at it since time out of mind,"

O'Neil said, trying to keep his voice even. "UMC is stirring up its own problems, trying to change things overnight. Besides, I'm tasked with external security." "But surely your troops must be prepared to safeguard American interests." O'Neil gave Ballard the look of a man finding something stinking and sticky on the sole of his shoe. "I've yet to be convinced that the national interest and UMC's are exactly concurrent." He nodded at the security man. "That's why you and your bully boys are being imported. Your pay probably costs Lockwood as much again as the wages he's offering the people doing the real work down in the pit." Ballard pulled himself to full attention again, his pale face going red. "Perhaps you doubt our professionalism, Colonel. But I assure you. my people know their jobs-as do I. You may be Marine recon, Colonel, but I trained as a Navy SEAL." O'Neil's expression was flat, unimpressed as he gazed up at Ballard. "A SEAL, huh? What happened? You get skinned?" The flush in Ballard's face deepened. "Excuse me, Colonel?" O'Neil jerked a thumb toward the entrance of his tent. "Take a good look outside, Navy boy. I'll bet you were trained in underwater demolitions and wetlands operations. But this is a goddamned desert planet, bucko. Your areas of expertise mean nothing out here except one. So you can talk about security, but you've been brought in here as UMC's leg breaker. And I wish you joy of it." Ballard was already storming his way out of the tent as O'Neil finished: "When they got sick of being mistreated, the people here went up against gods and killed them. I don't think they're going to be scared of an ex-SEAL and a hundred guns for hire." The atmosphere was equally hot in Eugene Lockwood's air-conditioned trailer, where Martin Preston had barged in on the site manager's privacy. "You're going to put guards around the rest tent?" Preston exploded. The UMC engineer had just heard of Lockwood's latest edict from one of the supervisors. Although Preston was supposed to be consulting on the project, the new system had been implemented without any input from him. "We'll be able to tighten things up with our own security people on-site." Lockwood sat behind his desk, completely unmoved by the headquarters man's ire. "We're going to impose our standard of five round trips before the ore carriers are allowed to take a break. After the fifth trip, our supervisors will issue a chit to the worker. The guards will be on hand to ensure no chit, no entrance to that tent." "From the lowest part of that mine, the trip to the surface is the equivalent of an eleven-story climb on those ladders." Preston had tried to make it on an uninterrupted climb-once.

Since then he had carefully paced himself and took frequent rests on various levels. Lockwood, who monitored progress only from his office on the surface, merely shrugged. "The local workers must surely be used to the climb." He turned to more serious matters. "These people have ignored our supervisors when we tried to establish the standard on a voluntary basis. Even when they're docked in pay, they still take unauthorized rest breaks." The site manager thumped the desk with his fist. "I will not allow a bunch of rag heads to flout management's authority. We're still operating below our production projections-"

"Below your projections," Preston challenged. "You severely underestimated the logistical impact of having a single-lane road for a supply line. It's not easy scheduling the movements of ore and supplies. I hear you've had to start buying food in the city." "That damned O'Neil puts his supplies at a higher priority than ours,"

Lockwood growled. "He ties up the StarGate when he's got huge stockpiles already on the ground here." "You can't blame O'Neil for your delays in upgrading the technology in the mine. It's taken weeks-plural-to get the first elevator installed in the pit, because of the difficulty in getting the pieces to the bottom of a missile silo and then over here."

"All the more reason to get better work out of the locals," Lockwood snarled back. "Define 'better' when your work rules will result in people dropping from heat prostration." Preston unearthed a copy of his latest report, which lay unconsidered under a pile of dead-item papers.

"You're ignoring the most elementary safety concerns which I outlined-"

"I can't be bothered with your baseless complaints," Lockwood cut him off. "I've got a mine to run." "I think you mean an ass to cover,"

Preston accused. "You were going to be a corporate hero, offering the board of directors profit estimates grossly in excess of the projections I made." The mining expert favored his superior with a mirthless smile.

"But now the mine's actual production falls laughably short of your inflated guarantees. You're falling behind on construction. You tell me you can't afford to implement anything in the way of safety, but you bring in a small army of thugs and call it 'security." " Preston jabbed an angry finger at Lockwood. "You're not an engineer anymore-just a lousy bean counter!" "A bean counter who happens to be your boss,"

Lockwood emphasized. "And there's a good reason for that. You engineering types are supposed to find practical answers to problems.

But do you? No. You have no conception of the bottom line." "We're talking about human lives here," Preston said desperately, "not beans.

Don't you worry "There's nothing to make me worry," Lockwood cut him off. "No unions, no OSHA-no feds. We're on another planet, for chrissake. So who's going to worry about a few Abbadabbas more or less?" Azar was one of those whom Lockwood had mockingly christened Abbadabbas, a humble member of the fellahin, the thousands of simple laborers who toiled in the deep, stony gash that was Abydos's quartzite mine. Leaning on one of the myriad ladders that climbed the ravine walls, Azar wiped stinging sweat from his eyes with the tail of his head rag. The triple suns of his world had seemed to align themselves with diabolical accuracy to beat down mercilessly into this deep crack in the planet's crust. Shade was nonexistent, coolness a forgotten memory.

Sucking on a pebble to generate some sort of moisture within his parched mouth, Azar leaned far between the rungs of the ladder he occupied, hacking into a surface vein of quartzite with a crude copper mattock.

One, two, THREE times his digging tool chopped into the bright ore with dull chunk. At last a fragment of ore about half the size of a man's head broke loose to fall to the floor of the terrace below. Azar paused for a moment while a collector stepped beneath the ladder to grab the piece of gleaming rock and pack it into the bag he carried. "Come on, Gaden," the miner jested to his workmate. "Gather that up and get out of there before I drop another piece on your head." "Ah, no, I've enough to carry to the top now," Gaden replied. "Perhaps I'll even stop by the tent of rest-while it's still allowed." Azar glanced over at the lines of fellahin toiling their way up the multiple ladders that led to the surface. "Why not take your load to the box-that-flies? It stops right over there " he gestured two ladder lines over. "A lot closer than the top of the gorge." "I hope you haven't been doing that while you're collecting," Gaden said. "I hear the overseers, the soo-pah-vai-sas-have been noting the names of the workers who deliver to the box. They're marked as weak-and they'll be the first to be discharged as more of the boxes are built." "That will take a long time," Azar scoffed. "Have you seen the strangers building the frames to hold the boxes? I don't even know their language, but I know they're cursing. They keep starting and stopping their work." "But someday they will finish their work. The parts will come. The boxes will fly up and down. And many, many of us will no longer have work." Gaden cast a sharp look toward his friend. "No more of those odd, shiny coins. They'll only be for the ones who run the machines-and perhaps for a few others."

"But none who'd be listed as weak," Azar said in a meditative voice. The flying box whoosked past on its way to the surface, shaking slightly in the cage that held it. The ladders shook more. Azar climbed down the smooth-worn rungs and headed over to the ladder rising right beside the framework that enclosed the box that flew. When the hoisting machine had gone into operation, Azar had examined it with interest. A great rope made of metal wires wrapped around each other was attached to the top of the box, pulling it up or letting it down. The open-sided car also ran on tracks. Gaden stood, watching, as Azar waited for the box to come back down, pretending to hew at rock where there was no ore. They heard the whoosh of the approaching box and glanced upward. Azar's eyes narrowed, gauging distances. The bottom of the square receptacle reached their level. Abruptly, Azar suddenly heaved his mattock to intersect with the joint of track and box. The elevator was empty except for the bulk of a heavyset young man leaning against one corner of the cage. Charlie Morris had been known in his Texas high school for two things: being a formidable linebacker and having the largest collar size in town. Unfortunately, college had not brought another growth spurt, so his dream of playing in the pros had faded. He'd taken a number of jobs that generally depended more on brawn than brains. Like this one, keeping an eye on a bunch of rag heads to make sure they didn't screw up too much on the ore. How could they screw up digging in the ground?

Charlie's head naturally thrust forward in a simian manner off his thick neck. In school it had earned him the nickname "Vanilla Gorilla." On Abydos his posture left him suffering from what felt like terminal sunburn on the back of his neck. No way was he climbing down with those suns blazing like the hinges of hell. Not when he could ride. Charlie leaned forward into the air flow coming around the dropping elevator car. It would be the last breeze he'd enjoy for the next four hours, down on the floor of this crack deep between the cheeks of Mother Abydos. Instead, it nearly turned into the last breeze he ever enjoyed.