The ore carriers, as I said, were on treads. They had a large flat-faced cab in front, in which the driver and his assistant sat, and an ample high-sided metal open-topped storage area in the rear, where the ore was loaded. Between these two, there was a narrow empty space, no more than a foot wide, with the back wall of the cab on one side and the front wall of the storage area on the other. Tread mountings shielded it from view on the remaining two sides. A man inside there could not be seen.
Once the discovery was made, all that was left was timing. I understood by now the normal ebb and flow of my job, knew those points when a long str,etch if time would go by
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before I was given any more numbers to punch. All I had to do was wait till such a time began just as an ore carrier was preparing to leave and at a moment when no official was looking directly toward my shed or the truck. I knew I would have only the one chance, so I permitted several possible opportunities to go by, and waited for that one perfect juxtaposition of factors.
It did come. I looked out my window, scanned this way and that, and saw that everything was perfect. Without hesitation, I performed the action I had rehearsed so often in my mind, raising both feet, sliding them out the window, leaping out onto the ground with both arms wide to help me keep my balance—the lack of a left hand bothered me there, made me tend to lean too heavily to the right—and running across the short stretch of open ground between the shed and the truck.
It was harder to climb over the treads than I'd anticipated also because of the lost hand, and when I reached the top and looked inside I saw what I couldn't possibly have known in advance, that this space between cab and trailer had no floor.
Of course not, of course not! Now that I saw it I could understand the reason for it. This truck was meant to be flexible, because of the rough country it was built to traverse, so only the treads—and a few cables underneath, down at the bottom—connected the two parts.
Could I do it anyway? If I could hold on to the top of the top of the trailer front wall with my right hand, and stand on two of those cables which passed from underneath the cab to underneath the trailer, it was still possible. The cables were thick and looked rough-surfaced, but my bare feet were used to walking on the pulverized rock of the compound. As to the height, it seemed to me I would just be able to reach the top while standing on those cables.
In any case, I didn't have the choice. I dared not try to get back again to my work-shed. Nor could I stay here, atop the treads in plain view. After only a second's hesitation, I went over the side of the treads, slid carefully down until I felt one of the cables beneath my left foot, and gradually inched myself into position.
It would work. I was extremely uncomfortable, and had to
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stretch to my limit to reach the top of the trailer and hook my fingertips over it, but I was nevertheless fixed in place.
And just in time. Just behind my back, the truck engine started. I braced myself, waited, and after the longest five seconds I had ever lived the truck at last lurched forward. Out of the corner of my eye, above the treads, I caught a glimpse of the wall as we passed by.
I was freel
XIX
if i had known in advance what that journey was to be like, it is possible I would have chosen to remain a slave.
In the first place, one of the cables—the one on which I had my left foot—must have had something to do with the exhaust system from the engine, bec"ause it soon grew hot, and hotter, and quickly was too hot to touch. I had to keep my left knee bent, holding on only with my right foot on the cable and the fingertips of my right hand clutching the top of the trailer.
If I'd had two hands, it's possible I could have pulled myself up once we'd started, climbed out on top of the load of ore, and traveled in relative comfort. As it was, with only the one hand, I could do nothing but hold on and wait.
If only they'd stop. There were two drivers; sooner or later they'd have to stop while they switched places. But they wouldn't do it. I held on, and chewed my lower lip till it bled, and when I got weak and began to pass out my left foot sagged down onto the hot cable and snapped me awake again.
I considered hammering my elbow against the metal partition behind me, signaling the drivers. But if they found me they would only turn me in at the compound. And I wouldn't go back, not now, not after all I was going through to get out.
Still, I didn't want to die. And I would die, I knew that without doubt; I would die if I lost my grip and fell. Part of me would hit ground while part was still between cab and trailer; I would be torn to pieces.
I finally decided on a gamble, a bad gamble but the only
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thing I could think of to do. I would try to attract the attention of the drivers, and then I would try to avoid being discovered by them.
Accordingly, I hit my left elbow against the partition. And again. And again. And again.
My elbow was numb, and I was about ready to believe the partition was too thick for them to hear me pounding, when at long last I felt the brakes being applied. The truck ponderously slowed, and the great clattering treads on both sides of me came shuddering to a stop.
The instant the truck stopped I let go my grip and dropped down onto the ground. I landed wrong, and painfully, on sharp stones, but immediately pushed farther down, squirming my legs under the trailer until I was sitting on the ground, then squirming more, hitting my head against the bottom edge of the cab body, forcing myself along the jagged ground until I was completely under the trailer, on my back, staring up at the pitted metal inches from my face, and waited to see what would happen.
The drivers both looked in the area I'd just vacated, and talked back and forth about what had been making the noise. Something obviously had come loose, but what? One of them got down on hands and knees in front of the cab and looked under; I heard him plainly as he said, "It's pitch black under thero. I can't see a thing."
"We'll report it," the other one said. "Come on, let's get going."
They talked about it a minute or two more, then got back into the truck and drove away, the trailer sliding past above men and suddenly leaving clear sky, the violet color of evening on Anarchaos.
It was now necessary to get off the road. I was far too weak to walk by now, but I could still crawl. Slowly, heavily, I rolled myself over onto my stomach, bent my knees, stretched my right hand out ahead of me as far as it would go, and began to drag myself to the side of the road.
I crawled what seemed a considerable distance, over rough, broken, rocky ground. When at last I could move no more, I was in darkness, in the shadow of a large boulder. I lay my face on the cold ground and closed my eyes.
I came to semi-consciousness some time later, aware of the
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cold. I could no longer feel my feet or fingers. I thought, "I must get up and walk, or I will freeze to death. I must get up and walk, or I will die."
I thought that. But I didn't move.
XX
I knew i was dreaming. I knew it, and yet everything that happened seemed real and urgent. I was loading an ore cart, down in the mine, and had to hurry, but instead of ore there was stacked a gray mound of severed hands. Both my own hands were missing, so I had to pick up each one between my forearms and raise it high and drop it over the side into the ore cart. Then Gar came and said, "You aren't doing very well. I expected better things of you. Jenna and I expected better things of you." Then Jenna was beside him, and he had an arm around her. She smiled as though to tell me it was all right that I was a failure, and a great river of water came washing down the tunnel, sweeping me away. Gar and Jenna just stood there, the water swirling around them and unable to move them. I wanted desperately to stay with them, but the water washed me down the long tunnel and out into an Arctic night, with icebergs floating by. I was freezing, and drowning, and I climbed out onto a block of ice and lay there, shivering and wet. Then a polar bear came along and stretched out on top of me. I grew warm, with the polar bear on top of me, but I was very frightened of it. My stumps began to sting and burn, and so did my feet. Then someone was cooking stew, and I was sitting at the kitchen table in the house where I'd lived as a boy, and I said to my mother, whose back was to me as she stood at the stove, "Where's Gar?" She turned, not saying anything, and it was the polar bear. Then it was a man with white hair and a white beard, dressed in a long coat of gray fur, with heavy black boots on his feet. He had a spoon in his hand, with which he'd been stirring the stew, and he said, "So you're awake," and I realized I was.