Brain Ships - Anne McCaffrey [189]
"They may not talk," said Blaize, "but they've learned to understand simple sign commands quite well. Most of them have, anyway. This fellow in the middle dropped a serving dish when he was waiting on me at dinner yesterday. I've been saving him to make an example of in front of the miners, but since there's an audience here already"—he allowed his eyes to roam lazily over his four co-conspirators—"why wait any longer for the pleasure?"
He pointed over the side of the mesa with a deliberate downward motion, three times repeated. The two Loosie guards bobbed their square heads and half carried, half dragged their prisoner over the edge.
"You make 'em throw themselves over the cliff?"
"Not at all," Blaize cackled. "Too fast, that'd be. Come and watch!"
By the time everybody had crowded around the low wall at the mesa's edge, the three Loosies were already down on the mud flats, approaching one of the areas where bubbles rose and burst in the glop with a stench of sulfur. The two guards hauled the prisoner to the edge of this bubbling area and thrust him into the soft mud. As he writhed and struggled to escape, they picked up the long sticks that had marked the site of the bubbles and used them to thrust him back into the steaming mud.
"Natural hot springs under there," Blaize explained. "Very hot. Takes a couple of hours to cook 'em through. Fortunately, the Loosies are real patient. Those two I use as guards will keep pushing him down until he quits trying to get out, even if it takes most of the evening."
He turned away from the spectacle of torture and bowed once again to his guests. "Well, ladies and gentlemen," he inquired with a benign smile, "shall we begin the business meeting?"
Even Polyon, Blaize noted, was pale against the dead black of his uniform; while the other three were shocked into silence. So much the better. It would be a while, he thought, before any of them underestimated little Blaize again.
* * *
After the shocking scene Blaize had just provided, the third annual progress meeting began more quietly than the previous meetings had gone. The underlying tensions in the group were still present, however, and all the sharper for another year's fermenting.
As host, Blaize claimed the honor of giving the initial report. While Polyon gazed over his head in unfeigned boredom and the two girls sat pale and silent, he began reciting facts and figures to back up his earlier assertions. In earlier years he'd had little to report. This year he was at last coming into his own. He fancied a glimmer of respect in Polyon's eyes as Blaize explained how he was using the first profits from the corycium mine to finance the purchase of heavy mining equipment that would open up even more of the planet for exploitation. Darnell twitched and muttered to himself during this part of the report, but he didn't explode until Polyon pointedly inquired as to how Blaize had financed the initial startup costs of the mine.
"Reselling surplus PTA shipments," Blaize replied promptly.
"Dear me," commented Polyon, "I thought the—ah—'Loosies' were starving. Didn't this move reduce your potential worker population somewhat?"
"Waste not, want not," Blaize waved his hand in vague circles. "There's a lot of surplus in any bureaucracy. I just—as you might say—cut the fat out."
It was perhaps unfortunate that his eyes met Darnell's at this moment, and that the airy circles his hand was sketching could have been taken for an indication of Darnell's growing paunch.
"The hell you did!" Darnell exploded, surging to his feet on a wave of red-faced fury. "Cut it right out of my hide, you mean!" He turned to the others as if appealing for their sympathy. "Little bastard blackmailed me to ship extra food here—free—while he was selling the supplies that ought to've gone to the natives!"
This accusation did not have quite the effect he might have been hoping for.
"Really, Darnell?" asked Polyon with bright-eyed interest.