Tales from Kalgachia - 9

Beyond the northern frontier, changes were afoot.

It had begun curiously enough; the radio station 'Volkssender Tuulersbyur', notorious for polluting the civil radio spectrum of western Benacia with a transmitter power so high that it distorted the burbling recitation of Froyalanic verse that constituted the entirety of its content, had abruptly gone off the air - only to reappear ten minutes later, playing Batavian marching tunes on loop. This first tentative sign that some kind of regime change had taken place was confirmed by the trickle of Froyalanish refugees who began arriving in western Katarsis along what was, at the time, the only stretch of common Shirerithian/Kalgachi frontier. Somewhat ignorant of Kalgachia's involvement in expelling their kind from Mishalan, or else indifferent in their state of desperate flight, these blonde-haired masses with their plaintive blue eyes were duly shepherded into special reception camps which had been hurriedly set up by the Prefects. They were then filtered and swapped between camps in such a way that all family groups were seperated. Vanic priests and those carrying a suspiciously large number of Vanic artifacts were bound, hooded and escorted in the general direction of a nearby disused quarry from which they were never seen to return. Those who remained were given the good news by particuarly jolly officials from the Directorate of Labour and Economic Planning who arrived in their camp the following morning:

"Hello everyone, and welcome to the Garden of Kalgachia! The first thing I'd like to tell you is that residency in our homeland is a very special thing. A privilege. In order to earn this privilege, and to atone for the collective guilt of your people in doing some very silly things to the detriment of Benacian civilisation, and by proceeding past a certain signpost at the border, you have contractually agreed to a period of indefinite labour service. I assume you all saw the sign, but we really must get it made in larger print..."

A short pause would inevitably follow while a linguist from the Directorate of the Tumultuous Wastes finished reciting the statement in the Froyalanites' own tongue, whence would begin the familiar ritual of howling protest and the intervention of baton-wielding Prefects who extracted the more vociferous objectors from the crowd and escorted them up the road to the quarry. The placid remnants were then led to a medical hut and presented in front of a high-power klystron tube, directed at the appropriate points to effect their instant sterilisation and a case of blistering sunburn; the inevitable development of tumours and carcinomas would, in theory, not arise until after the end of the subject's toil-shortened lifespan. Then the Froyalanish 'volunteers' - man, woman, child, codger and crone alike - would finally be ready for work.

For the Directorate of Public Works, this influx of labourers had been a timely addition. Their flagship project in western Kalgachia - the construction of a deep-level underground railway linking the cities of Katarsis, Bergburg and Jollity - had been drawn up by draughtsmen of the old Minarborian mould who were accustomed to having masses of zombots at their disposal. In the absence of this undead labour force, however, the project had quickly fallen behind schedule and required the progressive degradation of Kalgachi labourers' working conditions to meet the shortfall. Just when the workers' rumblings of discontent threatened to get out of hand, it seemed as if the Garden Ketheric had pulled a miracle out of the Tumultuous Wastes. Here was a new labour force whose complaints could be freely ignored, or at least silenced with a clout to the head. In the eyes of the older foremen who worked the endless face of granite at the head of their uncompleted tunnels, these new workers comfortably fitted the gap in their psyche which had previously been filled by the zombots. The Froyalanish may have been human at one time, but history had rightly consigned them to the status of biological robots upon whom any sense of sympathy or pity would be comically misdirected. In the eyes of their new masters, one may as well have attempted sympathy toward the dust-choked jackhammers they would soon be wielding for fourteen hours a day. The foremen also marvelled at the gifts presented to them by the Directorate for the incentivisation of their new workforce - namely the stout, russet-tanned riding whips with braided handles from the surplus stores of the KDF's kossar and cossack units.

Those too young or infirm to be of any use in the tunnels were assigned to various occupations on the surface, chiefly a small abbatoir located suspiciously close to the quarry where their priests and rabble-rousers had disappeared. There, with their bare hands, the children and elderly folk would scoop a malodorous meat paste from the output chute of a giant mincer and cram it into tin cans; bone, gristle and all. This protein-rich foodstuff would be conveyed to the tunnel workers who quickly developed a degree of brawn which began to alarm their foremen, although the relative absence of any other nutrients soon caused the workers to succumb to a degree of mental fugue in addition to the loss of teeth and hair. With each can of mystery meat, both their strength and placidity increased.

Like many entrants to the underground construction site, Björn Flyttersson had felt intimidated by the toothless musculature of his fellow workers, their eyes utterly dead and their noses perpetually streaming a grey snot full of powdered granite. But he had quickly learned to fear the deceptive jollity of his foreman more, and in a few cautious whispers the other workers had turned out to be helpful in instructing him how to avoid the foreman's wrath. Head down at all times. Never appear tired until the penultimate half-hour of the shift; any earlier would provoke a lash of the whip, and any later would provoke two hours' overtime.

Between shifts, nobody had the energy to do anything other than sleep in the artificial caverns which constituted their sleeping quarters. The ten minute mealtime in the middle of the shift was where any conversation happened, between hurried mouthfuls of meaty sludge. For all his upbeat savagery, Björn's foreman - unlike others on the project - permitted his workers to converse in their native tongue, under a watchful eye.

"So what did you do before?" Björn asked the worker beside him, whom he knew as Grimur, on his third day.

"Does it matter?" said Grimur. "This time next week you won't care about your own past, let alone mine."

"I'm beginning to think I made a mistake, coming here."

"Didn't we all? We should never have left Amokolia."

"But Kalgachia is part of Greater Amokolia. Didn't you learn that at school?"

"You know what I mean. Anyway, the guy who worked here before you - I forget his name, he died after five days anyway - he caught some gossip. Said the Kaiser's government set aside a reserve for us. We'd probably be safe there. Safer than here, anyway. We were stupid, coming here when we did. And now we pay the price. Odin never fails to punish the fool, and he's punishing all of-"

Grimur was interrupted by the sting of a whip across his face, from the foreman whose ears had pricked up at the invocation of a Froyalanic deity.

"Now now, Grimmy, you know what I said about no religious talk. You should be setting an example to the new workers, shouldn't you? For that, you can all end your break three minutes early. Off you trot now, off to work! It'll make your day pass so much quicker. Come along now, Björn, it's bad form to be the last to your feet. If you do it tomorrow I'll have to give you a lick of the old persuader, won't I?"

Björn did not understand all the words sputtering from the foreman's animated grin, but the malevolent glint in his eye and the fondling of his whip crossed the language barrier well enough. Björn sprung to his feet and broke into a jog, passing the other workers and being the first to haul his jackhammer off the dusty tunnel floor with his aching hands.

"Now that's more like it," chortled the foreman. "You'll go far, young man! Off you go then, fire it up."

A chorus of whining filed the tunnel as the workers started their jackhammers, and soon their deafening clink against the digging face kicked up a cloud of dust and grit. As he practised the traditional "safety squint" in lieu of goggles against the shards of rock flying at his face, Björn settled into a rhythm and thought about the fate of his family. He had been seperated from his wife and two daughters at the reception camp. A short time afterwards while being marched out of the camp, he had spotted his eldest daughter - a wide-hipped and busty specimen whose alluring curves Björn himself had often boasted about in the mead hall - being dragged alone behind a toilet shack by a camp guard of Laqi complexion. For a moment, recounting the image, he felt proud that the product of his loins should be selected so vigorously for a performance of the rites of Freyja.

The moment of reverie slowed him down enough to cost him a full lash of the foreman's whip, stinging hard and diagonal across his bare back. "Come along now, Björn!" came the voice behind him. "If you slack off any more I'll have to tickle the lot of you, won't I?"

He looked at his fellow workers, and furiously matched their pace to avoid any further whippings. Place the jackhammer. Push down. Lift. Place. Push. Kick the rubble aside a couple of times. Repeat. The lifting was the hardest part, requiring the strain of his entire body to smash away the rock near the tunnel ceiling.

"Higher, Björn!" came the foreman's cry. "You're making a very low ceiling there. Go right up, like the others! Don't be afraid of a little sweat, young man. The dust will soak it up." With his ears ringing Björn would not have understood the foreman's words even if it had been in his own tongue, but Grimur picked up on the foreman's exhortations and passed them on with a series of hasty hand signals.

"That's it Grimmy, help him along! He'll get there!" Somewhere in the haze of dust behind, the foreman's arms were contentedly folded with the tip of his whip swinging playfully at his feet.

Björn's last reserves of willpower forced the jackhammer aloft time and time again, ignoring the insistent pain of his aching body. His lungs, coughing up the clouds of grit only moments before, now resignedly took it in with great gasps. It seemed, at last, like he was getting into his stride. If he could get used to this pace, he thought, the work would not be so bad. It would even be routine. He could go robotically like Grimur, all suffering seemingly suspended. And he seemed to be achieving it, even if his heart was beating faster than he had ever known it. Very fast, in fact. Out of control. Suddenly he began to feel light-headed.

"Now that's the kind of work I expect!" called the foreman. "Only another six and a half hours to go, unless you're up to another two. Crack on, now!"

The words barely registered in Björn's tachycardia-battered brain, only the presence of the whip which would enforce them if he slowed down. Grimur and the others showed no sign of slowing, but they had been fed on a meat diet for longer and were probably stocky to begin with. Björn had always been slim; until he had shovelled the gristly meat paste down him for a few more weeks, he could only get his strength from nerves and sinew. But the foreman would not take that as an excuse. He would have to keep up. Keep up, he thought, as his heart sped so fast that one beat merged into the next. Then, with a stabbing jolt down his left arm and a chest-splitting crushing sensation, it suddenly locked into complete fibrillation.

"Well now, taking a nap are we?" said the foreman as Björn, with his jackhammer, crashed to the floor. A stroke of the whip did nothing to get him back on his feet. Nor did a second. "Honestly," muttered the foreman, stepping over the carpet of rubble and rolling Björn onto his back with a wrench of the arm. The other workers knew better than to stop while the foreman looked around, picked up their urine bucket and dashed its contents over Björn's face with a punt of his boot. "Come on, boy, wake up! There's plenty more to dig yet!" Then he noticed Bjorn's complexion had not become any less grey after the dust was washed off it. He felt for a pulse. Nothing. "Oh for the love of the Garden," he cried, "not another one... hey, you two! Step over here, will you?" He beckoned to two workers behind him, part of a group who were loading rubble into wheeled carts. They cautiously paused their work and apprached close enough to hear the foreman, whose flustered shouting in an alien tongue was accompanied by a flurry of hand signals. "This one's a stiff. You pick him up, put him in your last cart, that cart there, and get him out of here! Understand, yes?"

The two workers did not entirely understand, but made a calculated guess as to what the foreman wanted before his whip started flying. They dragged Björn's body through the rubble, hauled it up and dropped it into the cart with a thud. The foreman pencilled out a message on his notepad, tore off the page and stuffed it into the corpse's hand - 'NEED IMMEDIATE REPLACEMENT. GANG 12. NOT SO SKINNY THIS TIME. MUCH OBLIGED.'

The rubble loaders, for their part, were only relieved that the presence of a corpse had saved them from loading the last cart full of rubble. Their loads were duly hauled away up the tunnel, distracting the foreman just long enough for Grimur to speak to the worker beside him.

"I had a feeling he wouldn't last."

His companion snorted. "What, and you don't envy hi-"

A crack of the foreman's whip shut him up, and the tunnel face was smashed away with a renewed vigour.