There were many types in the lower caverns. Not all of the inhabitants were wholly sane, but once their idiosyncrasies were known life was compatible. One fought when one had to, never for amusement; one yielded upon occasion to unreason and stayed clear of trouble unless one wanted it.
One man stood out amid the steady grind for garnets. He was notable because he was a nonsurvival type who managed to survive nicely. This was the grossly obese Hastings: intelligent, knowledgeable, cheerful, quick with his hands, but with a complete vacuity of talent for mining, and perpetually unlucky. He survived as an entrepreneur. He won his garnets from men, rather than from stone.
“I need a blue garnet as I need Laza’s love,” fat Hastings expounded during a break. The others gaped at him, rising to the bait.
“Hasty, Hasty—you know what a blue garnet is?” Framy asked incredulously. “You know what a blue garnet’ll do for a man?”
The other edged in, anticipating a show.
“I know what it’ll do for a man,” Hastings said. “It’ll kill him so fast the chimera wouldn’t pick up the pieces.”
The “chimera” was the cavern name for a deadly predator of the fringe caverns that no person had ever seen—and lived.
“I’ll take that chance,” a man said. “Just gimme the garnet.”
Aton was curious. “I’ve never heard of a blue one.”
“Oh, Fiver,” Framy said, dusting himself off in the center of the group. “Lemme expoun’ to you the facts of life. You know how the little ones we find are red, and maybe a brown one once awhile? Well, there’s other kinds too, we don’t latch on to often. Worth more. Like if you got a black one, you tap ol’ bitch Garnet for a week’s chow, maybe more. And if you got a chunk of pure white jadeite—well, ol’ man Chessy upstairs is hard up for the stuff, and he’ll pull for you something awful, you sneak him a message. ’Nuff of that stuff, you don’t have to mine no more.
“Well, these’r little fish. You ever grab hold a blue garnet, it’s your ticket to freedom.”
Aton’s interest abruptly intensified.
Framy was enjoying himself. He scratched his hair. “Yep. They’ll let you go. You won’t be punished no more. Free as a bird in the big outside.”
The others nodded agreement, sharing the dream. “But you’ll never see one,” a woman said.
“That’s right,” another put in. “Ain’t none of us seen a blue garnet. Ain’t none never will. Ain’t none.”
“That’s a lie!” Framy screamed.
“Don’t call me a liar, you little liar!” the woman said angrily. She had sharp features and black hair winding down her back. Few of the women in the lower prison were pretty, but this one was; she still looked deceptively young and soft. “I’ll poke your beady little eyeballs back into your dirty little brain,” she continued.
Framy cringed, then came back boldly. “Not with my pal Fiver here, you won’t. He’ll get you good.”
It hadn’t occurred to Aton that the woman’s threat might be literal. But it was; she had nails like talons. She now eyed him speculatively. “I reckon I can handle him awright,” she said. She inhaled to make her fine bosom stand out. “How about it, mister?”
This too was literal, and not entirely unattractive. But not now. Aton attempted a return to the subject. “What’s so deadly about the blue garnet, Hasty?”
“So your last name’s Five,” Hastings mused, as though he had just discovered the fact. “They call that the pixie number, you know. Dangerous. Only name I ever heard that translates into itself.”
“What’re you talking about?” Framy demanded.
Hastings held out a fleshy palm.
Framy fought his curiosity and lost. He spat out a small garnet and handed it over. Hastings considered Framy his prime customer.
“Science of numerology,” Hastings said, and the people around settled back comfortably, listening. “Every number from 1 to 9 has its vibration. You add up the vowels—A is 1 because it’s first in the old English alphabet, E is 5 because it’s fifth, and so on—you add them up, and add again, until you have a single number. Each one has its influence—1 is the beginning, 2 is slow, and so on down the line.”
“But how does 5—?”
“Spell it out. F-I-V-E. That I is worth 9; the E, 5. Add them up to make 14. That’s too big, so add the one and the four to each other to get your number: 5.”
Framy’s face lighted. “Five is 5!” he said, delighted with the discovery. Someone snickered, but he was oblivious. He would be translating people to numbers for many shifts to come.
Suddenly he sobered. “You say 5 is dangerous?”
“Full of surprises. 5 can bring a fortune out of the blue—or sudden death. Really has to watch his step.”
Aton steered the subject back once more. “You were talking about the special garnet.”
Hastings settled his belly back comfortably. He waited. The others chuckled: it was Aton’s turn to cough up the stake.
“Well, take a look at it this way,” Hastings said after the transaction. “A blue garnet is valuable. So valuable that a man might bribe his way to freedom with it. That’s a commendable price. Perhaps there are no blues, so the authorities believe they’re safe; or it may be their subtle way of telling us that there is no such thing as a reprieve. But if there is such a thing—a blue garnet, I mean—it is certain that it is a lot more valuable than a prisoner or a principle. Now all of us here are criminals—”
“I ain’t!” Framy yelled. “I ain’t no criminal. I was—”
“FRAMED!” the group chorused.
“Well, I was,” Framy said, hurt.
“…Criminals, imprisoned here for the rest of our unnatural lives. There isn’t any one of us here who doesn’t want to get out more than anything else he can think of. There isn’t any one of us who has a chance at all, unless he wants to take the Hard Trek. Except for the one who happens to uncover the blue stone.
“Now if I had a blue garnet right here in my hand, like this—” he extended a closed fist “—and I said, ‘Gentlemen, I have found eureka and I’m going to leave you now…!’ ”
The fingers of his hand slipped apart a little, accidentally, it seemed. A touch of blue showed through. They watched in shocked silence.
Hastings made as if to rise. “Well, freedom is calling me!” he sang out gaily. “Be seeing you—never!”
Three flying bodies crashed him to the floor, as two men and a woman launched themselves simultaneously. One grabbed his outflung arm and wrenched the hand open with cruel force. A fragment of blue cloth fluttered out.
They turned him loose silently, the avarice in their faces fading. Hastings heaved himself upright, rubbing his arm. “Maybe you get my meaning now,” he said. “You can’t go free unless you make your garnet known. And when you do…”
Garnet was hard on Aton. She reviled him every time she saw him, and lost no opportunity to make him miserable. His meals were difficult. Garnet claimed that his offerings were too small or had flaws, or merely denied he had given her one, thus forcing two or even three for a single package.
Aton took it. He never argued with her, always thanked her for the food as though she were doing him a favor. He stood silent while she yelled at him, simply looking at her. At times he would come to her for no apparent reason, just to sit and listen to her scream at him.
Framy couldn’t understand it. “What you want to hang around her for?” he inquired incredulously. “There’s lots better women’n her. Nice bodies and soft tongues, and they got the eye for you, Fiver, oh, my, they do. Like that sexy slut with the black hair. Why fool with the biggest bitch in the pit?”