For new readers coming upon this series, the story takes place at the end of this century when technology has advanced to the point where travel to nearby stars is possible. Because the distances to be travelled are far too great to carry the fuel required for a return trip, any interstellar journey carrying human passengers will necessarily be a one-way trip, so the voyagers will be colonists rather than scientists or explorers. Some of them are introduced in interludes to the main theme.
This post introduces the last of the voyagers to be introduced in this way. Zack is a shy, rather lonely teenager who leaves school and travels for a few months, only to find himself in a situation difficult for him to deal with.
This is a rather long interlude so this substack version will be published in two parts. The second will be published a few days from now.
INTERLUDE: ZACK
Zachary Gonzales was a large untidy young man. Although muscular, his shape leant towards the potato sack rather than the Greek god and his shirttail was always seeking its freedom. While capable of moving surprisingly fast on his large feet when the necessity arose, he was normally slow moving to the point of lethargy. Zack was one of those individuals who simply lacked the internal need for action when there was no call for it. If circumstances demanded he run, then run he would and with surprising speed and stamina, but otherwise he was content to amble along slowly.
Zachary's mother was a Kansas Baptist who, to the dismay of her family and friends, had married a Catholic, and a Mexican at that. Sarah's family proclaimed their Christian forgiveness of her for this unnatural act, even to the extent of inviting Philippe into their home after the marriage. But forgiveness or not, the social temperature was always hovering around the freezing mark and Sarah and Philippe eventually just drifted away.
Sarah did not miss her family much because she and her mother were two strong characters who fought incessantly when they were together. This was fortunate because Philippe's work took him all over the world for years at a time. Sarah soon became accustomed to uprooting herself and her children and setting up house in some strange corner of the globe. Had their mother not been a solid rock around which the household rotated, Zachary and his younger sister Martha would have grown up in chaos. Instead, they grew up in an environment in which there was always a central core of normality, no matter where they were. It seemed that after Sarah's one act of rebellion in marrying Philippe she had henceforth decided to conform to her own family's norms and create a Kansas Baptist community in miniature wherever she went. Luckily, Philippe had no interest in religion whatsoever so his Catholic background did not get in the way.
Philippe Gonzales was descended from a long line of Mexican peasants. Had he bred true to his strain he might have spent his life scratching a living on some hardscrabble plot in Mexico or perhaps slaving in a sweatshop making machine parts. But by some quirk of genes and the luck to be in the right place at the right time he won a scholarship to a university in California and graduated in the newly emerging technology of hydroponics.
With earth's population pushing twelve billion, there were more and more mouths to feed every year and less and less farmland to do it with. Philippe's job was to design and build vast factories that, given sunlight, water and a handful or two of chemicals, could grow crops. Most of the time for obvious reasons these were built in deserts where sunlight was plentiful and the land was of little use for anything else. Had Philippe been an astute businessman he could have become a very rich man, for he was as essential to his age as the computer technocrats of the previous century or the steam engineers of the century before that. But since he was no more than a competent engineer he merely enjoyed a comfortable life, albeit one that required him to travel around the world. His family invariably went with him when he was posted abroad for any length of time.
None of the Gonzales family were graceful in build. Philippe was a heavyset peasant while Sarah had developed into a broad-hipped matron with muscular forearms and a gravelly voice. Had she lived in India two hundred years previously she might have been a much-feared Memsahib, ruling a household of several dozen retainers with a rod of iron. As it was, she had a knack of commanding instant respect from all around her wherever she set up her household. This was fortunate for her and her family. Philippe's work took them into parts of the world where tension between ethnic or religious groups was a fact of life, and bombings and shootings were regarded as little more than Saturday night fun by the locals.
The Gonzales spent a year or two in the Middle East then moved on to northern China on the edges of the Gobi desert. Although the Chinese civil war in the 2040’s and 50’s had resulted in 200 million deaths, mainly from starvation and disease, China’s population had more than recovered and was approaching two billion. With much of their farmland devastated by industrial and military pollution, hydroponic factories were vital if further civil wars were to be avoided, and Phillipe’s skills were much in demand.
They stayed several years in China, and Zack, as he was universally known, grew up speaking Chinese as well as English with an accent composed of equal parts of Mexico, Kansas and northern China. Two years of schooling after this in California where Philippe at that time was running a head office design team left Zack wondering just who he was. At age eleven he didn't seem to be quite an American, certainly not Mexican, yet equally certainly not Chinese.
“Who am I, Mom?” he wanted to ask after a day at school in which he never quite seemed to fit in. Yet Sarah for all her strengths was not the kind of person of whom you could easily ask soul-searching questions. She was an intensely practical tower of strength who would defend her children like a lioness if she thought they were threatened. But so sure was she of her own identity that she could not conceive of others being unsure.
Zack's education was continued in Mexico where Philippe managed a large production plant. Here for the first time Zack felt he had some roots. There were real live aunts and uncles and innumerable cousins to visit. Even here though, Zack felt a stranger. He initially had difficulty understanding their street Spanish and in any case they lived too far away to be part of his everyday experience. By his early teens Zack had retreated into himself, a shy child lacking the resources, or perhaps too thin-skinned, to bull his way into any new group and become part of it.
By sixteen Zack was an accomplished linguist, fluently at ease in Spanish and English and competent in half a dozen other languages. Lacking any real social life he threw himself into school work, achieving academic distinctions that he would never have obtained otherwise. But by his seventeenth birthday Zack had had enough. “I'm leaving school, Mom. There's nothing in it for me anymore.”
Sarah, who was the undisputed head of their household when it came to such matters, was not perturbed. Time for Zack to spread his wings a little, she thought. He can always continue his schooling later.
“Okay Zack, it's your choice. What do you want to do?”
“I don't know. Travel I guess, but on my own this time.”
Three months later Zack was sitting in a café in Tangier. He had wandered around Europe for a few weeks, done the obligatory sightseeing and discovered that mere sights quickly bored him. His money was beginning to run low and he needed to find work, but found that the prospects for even the meanest of jobs were worse than in America. A casual acquaintance mentioned that it was easier in North Africa, and since he was in Spain at the time it was easy enough to take the train through the Gibraltar tunnel.
With his American clothing he was every inch a student tourist yet his calm demeanor and willingness to listen quietly allowed him to fade into the background. He had checked in to a cheap hotel as soon as he reached town - there was usually some kind of accommodation aimed at wandering students in every large town - and now was gradually feeling his way around the place.
He sat with a coffee in front of him, absorbing the atmosphere. The café was a small shabby affair a little removed from the tourist center of the city, which Zack instinctively avoided. The babble around him gradually began to sort itself out into individual voices. Some were French, heavily accented to Zack's ears, while others were in an unknown language. He began listening to the French at the table next to him. There were four of them, heavily built men in their thirties and forties, looked as if they might be off-duty police or security guards perhaps. They all had that arrogant, authoritative air of the minor official who has bulled his way up the ranks, an I'm-in-charge-here-and-don't-you-forget-it look that brooked no interruptions or interference. Zack wanted to strike up a conversation with someone to ask about the city, but decided very quickly that these were not the right people at all. Instead he sat quietly, idly listening to their conversation.
“ .... so the boss gets a new batch, doesn't check that they've been processed properly, picks a pretty boy out and starts screwing him, and a couple of the others just walk out the door. Twenty minutes later, when that lump of dung realizes what's happened, he hits the panic button and expects us to run our asses off to cover his mistake. He can go rot for all I care. May his balls drop off - and they probably will one of these days, the way he lights into everything with an asshole.”
“You're right, Jorge, it's a hot day. So what are we looking for, anyway?”
“Oh, the usual. About ten or eleven years old, male, skin color a bit lighter than the locals. Just look for anyone looking a bit dazed or lost and haul 'em in. Alive if possible, but don't pick up one of the locals or we're in trouble. We search this sector, the others will take care of theirs.”
They stood up and clumped heavily out. Zack stayed for a while, puzzling over their talk, then got up and walked out himself. He decided to wander around the place, to familiarize himself and see what was to be seen. He was reasonably confident that his sense of direction would enable him to find his way back again.
Perhaps it was the unfamiliar pattern of little winding alleys or perhaps Zack was too interested in absorbing the unfamiliar sights and smells around him, but half an hour later he had to admit to himself he was lost. He was not unduly perturbed, but continued walking at random deeper into a maze of narrow alleys between tall buildings, confident that sooner or later he would find his way out. He rounded a sharp corner and was nearly bowled over by a small figure that ran into him at full tilt. He instinctively clutched at the child as he fought to retain his balance.
“You there, hold him right there. He's ours” shouted a loud voice about fifty yards off.
The child - Zack could see it was a young boy - was nearly exhausted, and seemed unable to run any further. He clutched at Zack, getting between Zack and the owner of the loud voice, who was approaching fast. “Don't let them take me” he said.
It took Zack a couple of seconds to realize he was speaking Mandarin Chinese, a language he hadn't heard for several years. The illogicality of it struck him: what was this child, obviously speaking his birth tongue, doing half a world away in a North African slum? By this time Loud Voice had reached Zack and pushed him aside to reach the child.
That was a mistake. Zack did not like being pushed and was too large to be pushed with impunity. He turned sideways, swinging the child away from his assailant as he did so, and returned the push with a shoulder check catching Loud Voice in the chest as he reached forward. More by accident than design it was a well-timed maneuver. Loud Voice gave a surprised grunt and sat down heavily. Zack thought he recognized him as one of the men in the café.
A heavy hand fell on Zack's shoulder and pulled him roughly around. Zack found himself looking at another of the men from the café, holding a nightstick that had evidently seen considerable use judging by the dents and scratches on it. The child tried to run but the man holding Zack casually put his foot out and tripped him. He fell heavily, and didn't move. Loud Voice had got to his feet by this time and picked the child up as if it were a bundle of firewood.
“Just keep out of our way, m’sieur”, said the one with the nightstick. “This one is our property, we've paid for him, and to interfere with him would be theft. You wouldn't want us to make a complaint to the magistrate, would you? The jails here are not good places for well brought-up young men to find themselves.”
Zack wasn't quite sure what he had got himself into, only that whatever it was he felt sorry for the child and quite helpless since Loud Voice was now about to disappear around a corner with him. He opened his mouth and spluttered the beginning of a protest, but the other simply patted his shoulder, saying “You meant well m’sieur, but you are in the wrong here. Enjoy your stay in Tangier”. With that he walked swiftly off to join his companion, leaving Zack standing in the street with his mouth hanging open.
Discontented and inwardly seething, although about what he couldn’t say. Zack found his way back to his hotel. Not one to spill his heart out to strangers, he was nonetheless sufficiently moved to tell the desk clerk about his experience. The answer was unexpected. The clerk looked at him as if he had walked in with dog shit on his shoes and remarked icily that decent people didn't bother themselves about such things.
Taken aback, Zack slouched off to his room but was unable to forget the incident. He hung around the tourist areas of the city for a few days, but the joy of discovery had gone out of him. Finally he decided to go find the American consul in the hope of acquiring a sympathetic and knowledgeable ear.
Two days later, Zack was ushered into a moderately imposing office in which sat a moderately imposing man next to a very imposing American flag. By his speech he was evidently a local resident and didn't look particularly sympathetic, but Zack plunged on regardless. As Zack told his story the consul's expression changed from boredom to interest to a wholely undecipherable look.
“Well, at least you haven't come to me with the usual hard-luck story I get from students. That's a relief at any rate. But why tell me about this? What do you expect me to do about it?”
“I'm not sure. I just felt an injustice was being done and I felt sorry for that poor kid. What was he doing here anyway? He was born in northern China, I'm certain of that. I want to do something to help him but I don't know what to do until I know what it was all about.”
The consul looked at Zack for a moment. “I don't think you know much about how the world operates, do you Mr. Gonzales. Perhaps I should tell you a few of the facts of life.
“That's a nice jacket you have. Buy it in the US, did you? Could I have a look at it for a moment?”
Somewhat perplexed, Zack took off his jacket and handed it over. The consul looked at it for a moment, then examined a label sewn on the inside of one of the inner pockets. Handing it back he said “As I thought, your jacket was made right here in the big plant on the other side of town.
“Where do you think all these nice cheap things you buy in your shops come from? They certainly aren't made in the States, I can guarantee that. Your labor laws and trade unions have priced your own workers right out of the market. You think you're too good to make all these things, yet you still demand them in your shops. Well, for your information, these things are mostly made in megaplants like the one right here, by ten-year olds like the one you saw the other day.”
“But, but, I thought there were laws against that sort of thing”, spluttered Zack, in the beginnings of outrage.
“There probably are in the US, but in the Tangier Free Trade Zone and a few dozen other places like it around the world, there aren't. The rest of the world doesn't care or isn't willing to give up its luxuries so it looks the other way, but it's places like this that supply the shopping malls of the world. The kid you saw was probably bought a few days ago in China and shipped here in a batch of a hundred or so. He'll work for ten years or so at the plant until he's of no more use to them.”
“But doesn't anybody care about these things?” cried Zack. “We were always taught about the dignity and the sanctity of life in our schools.”
“Son” said the consul gently, “when you have twelve billion people in the world and rising, there isn't much room for dignity and sanctity. In most parts of the world, life is cheap. It's like any other commodity. When there's too much of it, the price goes down. Didn't they ever teach you that in school? You just happen to be a very privileged young man, born in a privileged society where you haven't had to come face to face with the realities of life. Welcome to the real world.”
Zack sat speechless for a few moments, his thoughts whirling incoherently. Finally, the memory of the helpless child who had come to him and whom Zack, it now seemed to him had refused to help, came back. “What will happen to those kids when they become, like you said, of no more use?”
The consul for the first time would not look Zack in the face. “I don't know”, he said “and if I were you I wouldn't ask. Just get one thing into your head. The plant out there is making enormous amounts of money, a lot of which flows into this city. Anyone who does anything to interrupt that flow is liable to get squashed very flat, very fast. And now if you'll excuse me I have a lot of other things to attend to.”
Zack walked out of the consul's office confused and unhappy. He could neither believe nor fully understand what he had just heard, but the face of the terrified child kept intruding on his thoughts. As he walked, not caring where he was going, confusion gave way to anger, a deep inchoate anger. Zack wanted to lash out, to rend, to kill, yet there was nothing around him which seemed to deserve his anger. Just a sense of frustrated failure and the face of a terrified child.
He found himself back at the hotel, not quite knowing how he had got there. The same desk clerk was on duty that had rebuffed him earlier. He walked up to the desk and asked “How do I get to the plant where the foreign children work?” Something in his manner caused the clerk to forget his disdain and he gave Zack directions.
The plant was vast. Over two square miles of buildings, storage yards, rail lines, shipping terminals and warehouses. It was surrounded by a high, heavy chain link fence that seemed to be designed to keep people in rather than out. Zack started walking around it. It was easy to do so, because there was a perimeter road running outside the fence, with a neatly graveled swath about ten yards wide between the road and the fence. The gravel was spotless, and seemed to be freshly raked. Inside the fence was another ten yard stretch of gravel, and, Zack noticed, a second fence beyond that.
The sun was hot as he walked the perimeter road. It did not seem to lead anywhere, just around the plant. After about ten minutes, a light truck approached him from the opposite direction and skidded to a halt in front of him. A heavy looking man, reminiscent of the group in the café a few days previously, leaned out of the cab.
“What the hell are you doing here? This is private property.”
“There's no fence around it”, said Zack, reasonably but rather tensely.
“Don't give me that shit. Get the hell out of here if you know what's good for you, or I'll have you thrown out.”
The truck accelerated past Zack, missing him by no more than a couple of inches. Deciding that discretion was temporarily the better part of valor, Zack moved off the road away from the fence into the scrub, and continued on his way. The going was harder, but there were no fences or signs nearby so Zack assumed he was safe.
He crossed a double railway line which entered the perimeter fence through massive gates. The gates were shut and it was evidently well lit at night, judging by the number of overhead lights. Zack continued on. The sun was even hotter now and he wished he had brought some water. A few sounds came from the factory but otherwise there was silence, broken only by the sound of insects in the scrub.
About halfway round, with the plant on his right and unbroken wasteland on his left, a truck came hurtling down the road towards him. It stopped several yards away and three men wearing some kind of uniform got out and walked towards him. At the same time another truck came up behind him, and disgorged another two men, similarly attired. Feeling that he was in trouble, Zack turned briefly to run, then thought better of it. Apart from several hundred miles of desert there was nowhere to run. He stood his ground and waited.
The five men spread out so as to encircle him, then closed in. Zack waited, outwardly calm but with a fluttering of apprehension in his belly. When they reached him, there were no preliminaries. Two of them grabbed his arms and hustled him to one of the trucks, while the other three followed as escort. Zack was half pushed, half thrown into the back seat, with a guard - he assumed that was their function - on either side. Not a word was spoken while the truck drove inside the main gate and stopped at the back of a building a hundred yards or so further on.
Zack found himself, not altogether of his own volition, in front of a desk behind which sat a large, coarse-featured man looking coldly at Zack. Standing beside him Zack recognized the heavy with the nightstick who had spoken to him a few days previously. As if to confirm this, Nightstick nodded and said “That's the one, boss. Attacked Jorge when we were retrieving the absconder the other day”.
The boss, whatever he was boss of, looked at Zack for a few seconds more. Finally, “You're in big trouble, m’sieur. First, you attack one of my men when he's doing his job. Then, you come snooping around where you've no business to be. So before we hand you over to the police, who are going to throw you out of the country, you're going to tell us why you're doing this. And just in case you were wondering, the police here won't worry at all if you're, shall we say, a little bit the worse for wear when we hand you over.”
Zack was fighting hard not to panic. He had never been in such a situation before. Suddenly, with a flash of inspiration born of desperation, he knew what to do. He had come here to find out what was happening to those children. Very well, now he was here he had to find a way to stay here, and to stay with sufficient freedom to move around at will.
He forced himself to relax, and flashed what he hoped was a confident smile at the boss. “I came here for a job, boss. I knew if I wandered around outside your guys would pick me up, and what better way to meet my future employer. As for that business with, what was his name, Jorge? it was just an accident. The kid ran into me, and Jorge pushed me to get at the kid. The rest was just instinct. Hey, I'm sorry if I hurt his feelings, but next time I see him I'll buy him a drink.”
Zack's speech had got the boss's attention. He stared at Zack for a few seconds more then, guardedly, “What sort of a job were you thinking of, m’sieur?”
“Why, a security guard, of course. Plant like this must need a lot of guys who can pull their weight and I need the work. Reckon I'd be good at it, too.”
“What experience do you have, m’sieur?”
Zack cheered up immensely at this. The boss appeared to be showing some interest. However, he had enough sense not to fabricate anything. Like almost everyone else in the world his life history was available on a database somewhere. “At this trade, not much, boss. But I'm fit and strong, and I speak several languages, including the one that kid spoke. It's Chinese, and he comes from northern China, if you're interested.”
This definitely got the boss's attention. “Where did you learn all these languages, m’sieur?” Zack gave him a thumbnail sketch of his life. The boss turned his head towards Nightstick and cocked an inquiring eye at him. “Well, Pedro?”
Pedro grunted. “Could be useful. Let me do some background checking first. Might be a plant.”
The boss turned back to Zack. “We might have a use for you, m’sieur. But we have some checking to do first. My men will take care of you till then.”
The next morning found Zack with a new uniform, a nightstick and a few other implements of the trade, and a spartan room in what was evidently the guards barracks. He had tried phoning home to let his family know where he was but his smartphone didn’t seem to work – there appeared to be some kind of interference whenever he tried to use it or to access social media.. He made a mental note to look into it later but dismissed it as a minor problem to be sorted out later. However, the food was good and the other guards were not unfriendly.
“Hey, I hear you're the one that knocked Jorge down. About time someone did that to him.”
“Good thing you're not on his squad, though. Reckon he'll bear a grudge for a long time.”
Zack presented himself as a bumbling, cheerful dimwit, and it seemed to go down well. Apparently nothing much else was required or desired of him. Abdul, his squad leader, was a dour individual who took him to his assigned station and told him what was expected of him.
“You do what you're told when you're told and how you're told. I got no use for guards who try to think for themselves. You do what I say and we get along. You screw up and I give you shit. OK?”
Since Abdul was a mean-looking individual, larger than Zack with a scarred face and aggressively bad breath, Zack was inclined to believe him. He mumbled “Yessir”, which seemed to satisfy Abdul, and meekly followed along behind him.
The plant contained a bewildering array of buildings of all shapes and sizes. They entered one of the larger ones, went up a flight of stairs and came to a doorway. Abdul placed the palm of his hand against a translucent screen, there was a brief buzz, the door opened, and they went in.
The room seemed to recede into infinity. Lines of apparently identical machines were tended by a number of small, slow-moving figures, dressed identically in drab coveralls. A low murmur of machinery filled the air, but apart from an occasional clatter of sharper sound there was an almost dreamlike, underwater quality about the place. Abdul marched into the room with Zack trailing behind. The door shut automatically behind them with an audible click.
Abdul marched halfway down the room, looking neither to left nor right. He stopped at a station where another security guard stood, idly swinging his nightstick and looking intently around him. “All in order, Franz?”
“OK, boss.”
“This is Zack. He'll be on your shift beginning today.”
“OK, boss.” Evidently, small talk was not required on Abdul's squad.
Abdul beckoned to Zack. “Come.”
They approached an area where a couple of the workers, who looked to be of Chinese origin and no more than ten or twelve years old, stood as if waiting for something to happen. Zack was struck by their air of dumb dejection. They appeared as if they were barely aware of their surroundings, knowing only that they did not want to be there but had neither hope nor expectation that things would be better elsewhere. Abdul caught one of them by the shoulder and spun him round in a firm grip. The child staggered slightly, but otherwise made no resistance.
“Most times they're docile, like this, but occasionally they get out of hand. When that happens, you do this.” Abdul raised his nightstick and dealt the child a sharp blow to the base of the skull. The little form collapsed unconscious without a murmur. “Now let me see you do it on that one there.”
Zack felt sick. His instinct was to throw up, then run out of this hideous place, never looking back until he was across the ocean. But he had come here to help these people, so he told himself, and running wasn't going to help anyone. If he had to hurt some of them to help the rest, so be it. He sensed Abdul watching him intently.
“What's up kid? Squeamish?”
Feeling that words would be useless, he reached out and grasped the second child. He was struck by how frail it seemed. He spun the child round as gently as he could; it - she, he realized - stood docilely enough. He raised his nightstick in a trembling hand.
“Nah, not like that. You'll do permanent damage like that and then the Production Manager will complain to the Big Chief. Aim for that spot there, enough force to jolt them, but not enough to send them flying.”
Concentrating on the indicated spot on the back of the child's neck, and shutting his mind to everything else, Zack let fly. It wasn't hard enough. The child gave a feeble scream and dropped to the floor, clutching the back of her head in both hands.
“What the hell's going on here?” A tough looking woman in her thirties strode up to them. “How the hell do you expect me to meet my production quota if you go messing around with my Operators? Go play your stupid games somewhere else you fly-blown lump of camel shit.”
Abdul grinned at her with easy familiarity. “No problem, just breaking in a new guard.”
The woman ran her eye up and down Zack appraisingly. Zack was embarrassed by her frankly carnal look and felt himself blushing. “Hey, he's cute, isn't he” she said.
Abdul chuckled. “You keep your hands off him you old bag, at least until his shift's over. What are you staring at” he said to Zack. “Take these two” indicating with a nudge of his foot the two children lying on the floor, one unconscious, the other moaning gently, “through the blue door over there. They'll deal with them inside.”
Zack picked them up, one under each arm, one limp, the other barely moving. They were quite light. Going through the indicated door, he found himself in an area which had the appearance of a hospital. There was a wheeled stretcher nearby onto which he placed them, as gently as he could. Another woman, whom Zack took to be some kind of medic, was sitting in a small office, dictating something into a computer. She looked up as Zack came in, wiggled a couple of fingers at him, then went on with what she was doing. Not knowing what else to do, Zack stood waiting.
After a couple of minutes the medic came out of her office. “Alright, there's no need to stay. I'll look after everything.” Seeing Zack's irresolution, she added “You're new here, aren't you?”
“Yes, ma'am. Uh, I was, uh, wondering if this sort of thing happens often?”
“You are new, aren't you. Sure it does, happens all the time, that's why we're here.”
Seeing Zack's puzzled look, she added “Look, when we get a new batch of Operators they undergo treatment to make them docile. It's called personality suppression if you want to be technical, but most people call it brain-burning. Anyway, there's a delicate balance between too much and too little. If there's too little, they're difficult to handle, particularly when they get older, and if there's too much they become useless. So we have to accept that every now and then one or two of them get out of hand. That's where you come in. Your job is to deal with them with as little harm as you can, then bring 'em to us. We patch them up like these two, who'll probably be back on shift tomorrow, none the worse for wear.
“Let me see, you must be on Abdul's squad, right? He uses a billyclub. He's quite an artist with it. Some of the other squad leaders use gas. That's okay too, but if there's a crowd of them, it means you wheel in a dozen at a time, and the shift managers don't like that. You work at becoming as good as Abdul and you'll be okay. Now be off with you, I've got work to do.”
Zack left, deep in thought. Abdul had evidently finished chatting to the supervisor and was checking something on a computer screen at the guard station. As Zack approached, he turned around.
“So what took you so long? I said take them to the body shop, not get yourself laid, not while you're on duty. Next time I give you an order, you do it then get back on station on the double. Understand?”
“Yes, boss.”
For the next hour, Abdul toured him around the factory floor. The machines appeared to be making some kind of shirts, each one doing a different operation, and the human Operators fed them with raw materials and carted the finished products away. He guessed there were perhaps a hundred children on the floor with, as far as he could tell, three or four adult supervisors, including Abdul's friend. Each supervisor had a cattle prod which he or she used whenever necessary, and a panic button in case things got out of control. Zack was given a receiver which he wore on his wrist to indicate the area where he was needed. His job was to sprint over there and sort things out, which meant in practice using his nightstick. The children were of no danger to the adults, but unless stamped out promptly a kind of low-level hysteria could spread among them, which interrupted production.
By the end of the day Zack had clubbed a couple more and taken them to the body shop (it was technically the Operator Care Centre, but everyone called it the body shop). He felt sick at heart. He felt he should have thrown his club away and left the plant, never to return again. But something kept him going, a feeling that eventually he could help these creatures - it was becoming difficult for him to think of them as fellow humans - if only he could stick it out for a little while.