He found it enjoyable drinking with Davies and the others—although all the drinks they had ordered were strong enough to burn his throat. He was a little surprised when they reminded him that, having drunk with each of them, it was now time for him to move on.
He moved on.
He had not enjoyed himself so much in a long time. At the next table, the drinks were all different again. These also burned his throat, but they did not seem as strong as the drinks had at the table where Davies had sat. Once more he lost track of what he was supposed to be doing and had to be reminded to move on. At some indefinite time later he found himself being piloted back to his original table by people who went along on either side of him. He dropped into his chair and grinned at John, Will and Tonina.
Everyone else in their group, it seemed, were now gathered in a circle around the table, watching him. Tonina had scarcely touched her drink in all this time. Its level was lowered only slightly from what it had been when it had risen through the delivery slot in the table. She pushed it at him.
"You might as well just drink this," she said.
There was an explosion of protest from around the table.
"No fair! Cheat! He's got to drink a full one each time…"
"What do you want?" Tonina suddenly flared at them. "He shouldn't even be conscious, after what you've been feeding him! You want to kill him?"
"All right," said John. "All right… there's not enough gone from that glass to matter."
The protests died down. Tonina pushed the glass over in front of Hal. He reached out carefully, closed his hand around it and lifted it to his lips. It was warm, after all this time, and sweeter than he would have preferred; with a thick, lemony taste. But there seemed hardly any alcohol in it at all, as far as his taste buds could tell in their present numb condition. He decided that a thing worth doing was worth doing well and drained it before he put the glass back on the table.
The wall of people around him exploded in noise. He was slapped on the back, shoulder-punched in friendly fashion, congratulated… and without warning, his stomach seemed to come loose within him and float upward, queasily.
He kept the grin on his face and tried to order the stomach to stay put. But the physical controls he had learned from Walter and Malachi had deserted him. His stomach surged rebelliously…
"Excuse me…" He pushed himself to his feet, turned from the table and looked around with rising panic.
"Help him!" said Tonina, sharply over the chatter of voices. The voices died. Everyone was turning to look at Hal.
"What'd you order, anyway?" somebody asked her. But Hal did not stay to hear the answer. Davies had him by the arm and was piloting him away from the table.
"This way," Davies said.
Somehow he made it to the restroom with Davies' help; and there it seemed that not only everything he had drunk tonight, but everything he had eaten and drunk for the past two weeks, came up. A little later, alone, haggard and wan, he made his unsteady way back to his original table.
"Feel better now?" asked Tonina, when he sat down.
"A little," he said. He stared at her. "Did you give me something to make me sick?"
"I gave you what I ordered for myself," said Tonina, "and a good thing, too. You'd be in the hospital right now, if I hadn't. What made you think you could drink like that?"
"I was doing all right," said Hal, feebly.
"All right! Most of the alcohol hadn't hit your blood-stream yet. Thirty minutes and they'd have been giving you oxygen, at the rate you drank it. Don't you realize the only way to handle that much drink is to take it so slowly you metabolize most of it as you go?"
She sounded like Malachi.
"I know that," he said. "I thought I was going slow."
"Hah!"
"All the same," said Will, heavily, "that's not the way it's supposed to be done. He's supposed—"
"Why?" Tonina turned fiercely on the other team leader. "What more do you want? He drank everything the team gave him first. I was only along for an extra. And I told you. I only gave him what I ordered for myself. If he hadn't drunk it, I would have. Want me to order one right now and drink it to make you happy?"
"No need for that," said John, as Tonina's hand shot out to the buttons of the table waiter. "Will, she's right. He had a drink with everyone on the team, first, and you as well."
"You forget what he is," said Tonina. "For God's sake, you forget what he is! Look at him. Twelve large drinks in less than three hours and he's still not only conscious but halfway sensible. How many grown men do you know who can do that?"
"Not the point…" protested Hal, weakly. But Tonina ignored him and the others were not listening either. Sitting in the chair, he felt intolerably tired. His eyes closed in spite of anything he could do…
He woke some time later to find himself sitting at the table alone. He felt as if his bones would creak when he moved; his body in general felt dried out and his mind was dulled. But in a sense he felt better than when he had dropped off to sleep. Looking around, he saw that about half the team had left the Grotto, along with Will Nanne. John and Tonina sat with Davies and a couple of the other team members at a table down near the edge of the illusory ocean.
Hal got up to join them, changed his mind and detoured to the restroom again. There was a water fountain there, and after he had drunk what seemed like several gallons of water he felt better. He went out again, found their table and sat down with them.
"Well! Back from the dead?" said Tonina. He smiled, embarrassed.
"Come on," she said, standing up, "I'll steer you home."
"Hey, he doesn't want to go yet," protested Davies.
"I don't want to go yet," said Hal.
She stared at him.
"Well, I'm going," she said, after a moment. "I've got to get back. I missed half a shift as it is. Will one of you see him safe home and not try to kill him with drink in the meantime?"
"I'll see him back," said John.
"All right, then." She looked at Hal. "We'll see how you feel about this staying when it comes time for you to go on shift, tomorrow."
Hal felt uncomfortable; but, stubbornly, he was determined not to go. He watched her leave.
"How do you feel?" Davies asked him.
"Dry," said Hal.
"Beer," said Davies. "That's what's good for that—beer."
"Take it easy," said John.
"I'm not forcing him!" said Davies. "You know he'll feel better with some beer in him."
John sat back, and Davies coded for a beer from the table waiter.
Hal took it, feeling nowhere near as enthusiastic about it as he had felt about the beers earlier. Nonetheless, it was cold, wet and not too unpleasant to swallow. After he had gotten it down, Davies insisted that he have another.
As he drank the second one, Hal noticed that their original party had been dwindling rapidly since he had woken up. Only two others were left at another table besides Davies, John and himself; and Davies was showing signs of becoming silent and drowsy. The two others moved over to sit and talk with them for a while; and while they talked Davies dozed off in his chair. Then the others finished their drinks and headed off, on their way back to the mine and their rooms in the bunkhouse.
Hal was coming alive again, whether it was the two fresh beers or his own physical ability to bounce back. At the same time, even he could see the sense in going back to their beds, now. But instead of suggesting this, John turned back from watching the two who were just leaving as they walked from the room, then glanced at the still-slumbering Davies. He looked at Hal.
"What did happen at that Holding Station when you first got here?" he asked heavily.
"I came in and the man in charge there—his name was Jennison—" said Hal, "told me to find myself a bed. So, I went looking…"
He ran through the events at the Holding Station, step by step, exactly as they had happened. John listened, without saying anything, sitting back in his seat, one heavy hand holding his b
eer glass, his eyelids half down over his eyes.
"… That was it," said Hal, finally, when he had finished and John still had not said anything. "That's all there was to it. They all seemed to think I'd done something unusual in stopping that man who tried to brain me; and then word of it must have got to your mine and Will Nanne before I showed up. I didn't know then how fast word gets around here."
"It wasn't unusual?" John said, not moving, his eyelids still down over his eyes. "A grown man, big as you or bigger, heavier than you, and you just tossed him against a wall and laid him out, like that?"
"I…" Hal hesitated. "I had an… uncle who taught me a few things. I thought it was playing, mostly, when I was growing up, and I learned how to do them without really thinking. When he came at me, I just acted without thinking."
"And when you had that little go with Neif? You weren't thinking then, either?"
"I was kind of out on my feet after he hit me hard at first. Things just came to me."
"Sure," said John. "You see me?"
Hal nodded.
John reached out his hand and laid it palm-up on the table. He closed his fingers. He did not close them dramatically or with any great emotion, but the thick fingers, the wide palm, came together with an impression of power that was unmistakable.
"When I was fourteen," he said, as if talking to himself, "I was as tall as I am now. I never grew a centimeter after that. But even then I could pick up two grown men at once and carry them around."
Hal watched him across the table, unable to look away.
"When I came here…" said John, and for a moment Hal thought he had stopped talking, "when I came here, six standard years ago, I was in my twenties; and I hadn't settled down, yet. When you're like I was, then, some people can smell you, a kilometer off, and they come looking for you. I was in a Holding Station, when I first came here; and somebody had to try me and it happened. I broke his back. It was him started it, but I was the one broke his back. When I came to my first mine, my first job, they had me tabbed as somebody who was always like that—a gunfighter."
He stopped talking again. This time he did not go on.
"Is that why you took me on?" said Hal, at last.
John drew a deep breath and let it out.
"Time we were getting back," he said. "Wake him up there."
Hal got up himself, reached over and shook Davies gently by the shoulder. The other miner opened his eyes.
"Oh?" Davies said. "Time to go?"
He sat up, took hold of the edge of the table and pulled himself upright.
"I guess I'm late," said a familiar voice. Hal looked up and saw Sost standing at the end of the table. "All over, is it?"
"Sit down," said John. "We can last for one more drink."
"Not for me," said Sost. "Why don't I take you all home? Talk on the way."
"Fair enough," said John, getting to his feet. Hal also stood up. He turned and found a face with an unprepossessing smile at his elbow.
"Come back again," said the proprietor of the Grotto. "It was our pleasure to have you."
"He'll want a bill," said John. "Itemized."
"I'm afraid that'll take a few minutes…"
"It shouldn't," said John.
The proprietor went off and came back in a few seconds with a hard copy, which he handed to Hal. John took it and looked it over.
"Close enough," he said. "We'll check it, of course."
"I'm sure you'll find it the way it should be."
"Sure. See you again," said John.
He turned the hard copy back to Hal and led the way out.
"It's been a pleasure for us, serving you," said the proprietor behind them, as they went.
Outside, Sost's truck was waiting in the street before the Grotto. A Port marshal, with a green sash around his waist, was standing beside it.
"Are you the operator?" he said to Sost, as Sost started to get into the control seat. "I'll have to summon you for leaving this vehicle here."
"Send the summons to Amma Wong, then, sonny," said Sost. He looked around behind him. "Everybody in?"
John and Davies had climbed into the empty bed of the truck in back and stretched out, closing their eyes. Hal, who was beginning to feel hungry and very much awake, climbed into the other front seat beside Sost.
"Amma Wong?" the marshal was standing absolutely still, his narrow, middle-aged face blank of expression. Sost reached into an inside shirt pocket, brought out a wallet, flipped it open and showed it to the marshal, then put it away again before Hal could see what Sost had shown the man.
The marshal stepped back. Sost lifted the truck on its fans and drove off.
"Who's Amma Wong?" asked Hal, as they turned the corner of the block onto one of the arterial roads.
"Director of Freight Handling at the Port here," said Sost.
"You know her?"
"I work for her."
"Oh," said Hal, not much wiser than he had been before his first question. His stomach once more reminded him of its existence. "Could we stop and pick up something to eat?"
"Hungry?" Sost looked sideways at him. "Once I park the truck on the freight car, you can get something to eat from the machine on the subway train."
Hal stared at him.
"You're taking us all the way back to the mine?" he said. "You're going to put the truck and all on the subway?"
"Right," Sost nodded.
They drove along in silence for a minute or two.
"Thought you'd have gone home with Tonina," said Sost.
"She left early," said Hal. "What made you think I'd leave early when it's my party?"
Sost chuckled.
"Drinkingest twenty-year-old I ever saw," he said, half to himself. He looked at Hal. "Thought she wanted to talk to you privately about something."
"She did?" Hal stared back at him. "But she didn't say anything to me. When did she tell you she wanted to talk to me privately?"
"Saw her in Port, here, last week."
"Last week?" Hal shook his head. He had not thought Tonina had been in Port in any of the weeks recently. "What did she want to talk to me about?"
"Didn't say," answered Sost.
Chapter Twelve
Hal woke the next morning to the alarm of his chronometer and only by the sternest exercise of will got himself out of bed. By the time he was showered and dressed for work, however, he felt a great deal better.
He was digging into breakfast in the cookhall, when he became aware of Davies, across the table staring at him. Davies' face was pale and his eyes were red.
Hal slowed down in the face of that stare and finally stopped completely.
"What is it?" he asked Davies.
"I never," said Davies, "in my life saw a man with a hangover eat like that."
Hal felt embarrassed, as he usually did when people paid attention to his appetite.
"I'm hungry this morning," he said. It was his usual excuse when the matter came up—hungry this morning, this noon, or this evening.
"How do you feel?" demanded Davies.
Hal stopped to consider himself.
"Sort of washed out," he said. Actually, there was a curious feeling in him, a sort of feeling of satisfied exhaustion as if he had just finished Casting out a gang of inner devils.
"How about your head—your headache?"
"I don't have a headache," Hal said.
Davies continued to stare at him.
"And you're really hungry."
"I guess I am," said Hal.
By this time the rest of the miners within earshot, most of them fellow team members, were listening. Hal had the uncomfortable feeling that once more he had done something to mark himself as different from the rest of them.
He forgot the matter, however, as the day's work started. He was still a complete beginner with the cutting torch and it took all his efforts to do a full shift of work. In the days and weeks that followed that began to improve. It came slowly, but eventually he could cut in p
atterns that meshed efficiently with those of his neighbors on either hand at the rock face, and still keep up with the rest of them.
Some days before he reached that point, however, Tonina had rapped on his door late after one shift was over and drawn him out for a walk on the staging area; now, between shifts, deserted.
Under the high, eternal, ceiling lights of the cavern they paced back and forth together and she looked at him strangely.
"I'm leaving the Yow Dee," she said. "Moving to Port. I was going to tell you about it, the night you made torcher, but I didn't get a chance to talk to you."
"Sost said you might have wanted to talk to me."
"He did?" Her voice was sharp. "What did he say?"
"Just that he didn't know why. I thought," Hal said, "I shouldn't just go asking, that you'd tell me yourself if you really wanted to."
"Yes," her voice and eyes softened. "You would think like that."
They walked a little more in silence.
"I'm getting married," she said. "I almost got married a couple of months ago. That's why I came to the Yow Dee here. I wasn't sure. Now I am. I'm marrying a man named Blue Ennerson. He's in Headquarters, at Port."
"Headquarters?" Hal said.
She smiled a little.
"Yow Dee and about three dozen other mines and Port businesses are all part of one company," she said. "The Headquarters for that company's in Port. Blue's Section Chief of the Record Section."
"Oh," said Hal. He felt inadequate, and not only because of his youth. He had learned that most women miners, who were a minority among the other mine workers, tended to marry upwards, into staff or management. Tonina was evidently going to be one such.
"I'm leaving tomorrow, "she said.
"Tomorrow?"
"I didn't have a chance to tell you before this. You were either working, eating or sleeping, since you've become torcher."
"Yes."
There was a bleakness in him. He felt he should say something, but had no idea what was said on occasions like this. Eventually, they went back to their rooms; and before he was up the next morning she was gone.
He had expected that the mine would be hollow and empty without her, and it was—at first. But as the months wore on, it became home in almost a real sense and the other team members, although they changed frequently as some left and new workers joined, became almost the family he had imagined them the day he made torcher. At the same time, he was becoming skilled at his work. Within six months he was offered a chance to compete for the position of leader in the voting among the miners to form a new team. To his own surprise, he won; and it was exactly as Tonina had predicted. He found he was expected to make the whole mine drunk. This time he did not have to drink with everyone else; but he did have to foot the bill.