Yet it would grow back. Clemens had assured her of that. The prisoners had to shave themselves regularly. There was nothing about the bugs or the air that rendered the condition permanent.
She soaped her bare scalp. It was a strange sensation and she felt chilled despite the roaring hot water. The old mining and smelting facility might be short of many things, but water wasn’t one of them. The big desalinization plant down on the bay had been built to provide water for all installation functions and its full complement of personnel as well. Even at minimal operational levels it provided more than enough water for the prisoners to waste.
She shut her eyes and stepped back under the full force of the heavy spray. As far as she was concerned the past ten thousand years of human civilization had produced three really important inventions: speech, writing, and indoor plumbing.
Outside the stalls, old death and new problems awaited, though the latter seemed insignificant compared to what she’d already been through. Clemens and Andrews and the rest didn’t, couldn’t, understand that, nor did she feel it incumbent upon herself to elaborate for them.
After what she’d endured, the prospect of being forced to spend a few weeks in the company of some hardened criminals was about as daunting as a walk in the park.
The prisoners had their meals in what had been the supervisors’ mess when the mine had been in operation. The room still exceeded their modest requirements. But while the facility was impressive despite having been stripped of its original expensive decor, the food was something else again.
Still, complaints were infrequent and mild. If not precisely of gourmet quality, at least there was plenty of it. While not wishing to pamper its indentured caretakers, neither did the Company wish them to starve.
Within certain prescribed and well known temporal parametres the men could eat when they wished. Thanks to the extra space they tended to cluster in small groups. A few chose to eat alone. Their solitude was always respected. In Fiorina’s restricted environment enforced conversation was threatening conversation.
Dillon picked up his preheated tray and scanned the room.
Men were chatting, consuming, pretending they had lives. As always, the superintendent and his assistant ate in the same hall as the prisoners, though off to one side. Wordlessly he homed in on a table occupied by three men displaying particularly absorbed expressions. No, not absorbed, he corrected himself.
Sullen.
Well, that was hardly a unique situation on Fiorina.
Nevertheless, he was curious.
Golic glanced up as the new arrival’s bulk shadowed the table, looked away quickly. His eyes met those of his friends Boggs and Rains. The three of them concentrated on their bland meals with preternatural intensity as Dillon slid into the empty seat. They did not object to his presence, but neither did they welcome him.
The four ate in silence. Dillon watched them closely, and they were conscious of his watching them, and still no one said anything.
Finally the big man had had enough. Pausing with his spoon halfway to his mouth, he settled on Boggs.
‘Okay. This is eating time, interacting time. Not contemplation seminar. Lotta talk goin’ round that we got some disharmony here. One of you guys want to tell me what the problem is?’
Boggs looked away. Golic concentrated on his mash. Dillon did not raise his voice but his impatience was evident nonetheless.
‘Speak to me, brothers. You all know me and so you know that I can be persistent. I sense that you are troubled and I wish only to help.’ He placed a massive, powerful fist gently on the table next to his tray. ‘Unburden your spirits. Tell me what’s the matter.’
Rains hesitated, then put down his fork and pushed his tray toward the centre of the table. ‘All right, you want to know what’s wrong? I’ll tell you what’s wrong. I’ve learned how to get along here. I never thought that I would but I have. I don’t mind the dark, I don’t mind the bugs, I don’t mind the isolation or all the talk of ghosts in the machinery. But I mind Golic.’ He waved at the individual in question, who blissfully continued scarfing down his food.
Dillon turned to Boggs. ‘That the way you feel about it?’
Boggs continued to stir his food nervously, finally looked up.
‘I ain’t one to start something or cause trouble. I just want to get along and serve my time like everybody else.’
The big man leaned forward and the table creaked slightly beneath his weight. ‘I asked you if that’s the way you feel about it.’
‘All right, yeah. Yeah. Hey, the man is crazy. I don’t care what Clemens or the “official” reports say. He’s nuts. If he wasn’t like this when he got here then he is now. The planet or the place or both have made him like that. He’s running on smoke drive, and he smells bad. I ain’t goin’ outside with him anymore. Not to the beach, not to check the shafts, not nowhere. And ain’t nobody can make me,’ he finished belligerently. ‘I know my rights.’
‘Your rights?’ Dillon smiled thinly. ‘Yes, of course. Your rights.’ He glanced to his left. ‘You got anything to say for yourself?’
Golic looked up, particles of food clinging to his thick lips, and grinned idiotically. He essayed an indifferent shrug before returning to his meal.
Dillon regarded the other two steadily. ‘Because Golic doesn’t like to talk doesn’t mean he’s crazy. Just nonverbal.
Frankly, from everything I’ve seen he manages to express what he’s feeling as well as anybody else. There are no orators here.’
‘Get to the point,’ Boggs mumbled unhappily.
‘The point is that he’s going with you. He’s part of your work team and until further notice or unless he does something more threatening than keep his mouth shut, that’s the way it stays. You all have a job to do. Take it from me, you will learn not to mind Golic or his little idiosyncrasies. He’s nothing more than another poor, miserable, suffering son of a bitch like you and me. Which means he’s no crazier than any of the rest of us.’
‘Except he smells worse,’ Rains snapped disgustedly.
‘And he’s crazy,’ Boggs added, unrepentant.
Dillon straightened in his seat. ‘Look, you’re making far too much out of this. I’ve seen it before. It happens when there isn’t a whole helluva lot else to do. You start picking on the food, then the bugs, then each other. Golic’s different, that’s all. No better and no worse than the rest of us.’
‘He stinks,’ Rains muttered.
Dillon shot the other man a cautionary look. ‘None of us is a walking bouquet down here. Knock this shit off. You have a job to do. The three of you. It’s a good job.’
‘Didn’t ask for it,’ Boggs muttered.
‘Nobody asks for anything here. You take what’s given to you and make the best of it. That way lies survival. For you and for everybody else. This ain’t like some Earthside prison. You riot here and no citizen media comes runnin’ to listen to your complaints. You just get a lot more uncomfortable. Or you die.’
Boggs shuffled his feet uneasily.
‘Now, listen to me. There’s others who’d be willing to take on foraging duty. But in case you ain’t noticed, Andrews ain’t in a very accommodating mood right now. I wouldn’t be asking him about switching assignments and changing rosters.’ The big man smiled encouragingly. ‘Hey, you get to work at your own speed, and you’re out of sight of the superintendent and his toady. Maybe you’ll get lucky, find some good stuff you can try and keep to yourselves.’
‘Fat chance of that.’ Rains was still bitter, but less so. Dillon had reminded him of possibilities.
‘That’s better,’ said the big man. ‘Just keep your mind on your work and you won’t even notice Golic. You are foragers.
You know what that entails. Hunting for overlooked provisions and useful equipment. As we all know from previous scavenging expeditions, Weyland-Yutani’s noble, upstanding miners had the useful habit of appropriating their employers’