Free Prisoner of Conscience by Susan R. Matthews Page B

dead.
    The transport came around the other side of the formation, as though it had barely paused to offload its cargo. Dump the trash. A Pyana prison-guard hopped down from the tail-gate and started to move Nurail from the formation into the back, where the bodies had been; two, three, five Nurail.
    Then they left.
    Their guards formed their company up into new rows. Darmon didn’t see; maybe they brought replacements from the other cellar rooms.
    They stood all day.
    The transport came up two more times, and twice or three times one of the prison guards came down their rows with a pail of water and let them have two dippers-full each. It wasn’t enough. But it was better than nothing.
    The sun fell below the back wall of the Domitt Prison and work-crews began to return, Nurail work-crews, some on foot and some in transports. The people who had been taken out of formation during the day were not returned to formation. Where had they gone?
    When they were taken back down to the cellar, Darmon concentrated on getting as much to drink as he could. There was enough food. Their jailers didn’t seem to be too bothered by the existence of extra portions, but they got restless before there was time to eat all that there was, so Darmon and the others stuffed what they could into their clothing surreptitiously.
    Back into the cell.
    There was room to lie down, now, and Darmon even slept. When he woke up, the extra portion of bread he had hidden away was gone; but he didn’t mind so much. Someone had been hungrier than he was. That was all.
    He was to blame for all of this.
    He had been the war-leader.
    If he hadn’t failed his people they would still be free to herd the grazing animals on home slopes, and argue about weaves. Free to kill each other over squabbles that ran uncounted generations back, without the interference of Pyana. It was his fault, and their right to demand whatever surplus he might have to offer any of them here.
    But next time he would eat the food himself, before he slept.

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    On the second or third day, they came to him as he stood in formation and made him get into the transport with two others. So now at least he’d find out what had happened to the rest of the people who had been taken away.
    He wasn’t entirely certain that he wanted to know, but he was too tired to really care about what might be about to happen to him.
    The transport took him out to a great earthwork; he was prodded into a line, to pick up a tool that lay where it had been dropped. By one of the bodies in the back of the transport?
    They were packing dirt into buckets to be carried up the slope, and further along the earthwork he could see the foundation of a dike taking form in the ditch below them. The dirt was heavy with moisture, at the bottom of the ditch, and he could smell the river from time to time. Land reclamation. Some Pyana would profit from slave labor, clearly enough; but he couldn’t spare the energy to think about it.
    It took all the strength he could command to fill his bucket before it was jerked up and away by the conveyer and an empty one moved up to fill its place. People were beaten for not filling their buckets, he could see examples enough. But the overseers brought water.
    No food, no, but water, and Darmon was grateful enough for the water after however many days of being kept dry that he was almost eager to work for a water reward. Survival meant doing whatever it took to conserve strength, to avoid punishment, to get as much to eat and drink as possible.
    He filled bucket upon bucket with damp heavy earth as the sun crossed the sky and his hands blistered.
    But when they were driven back to the prison, he didn’t go back into the cellar. He stood in work formation instead, and the overseer called off names one by one, and people went forward into the mess building as their names were called.
    Shelps. Finnie. Allo. Burice. Ettuck. Ban.
    One by one the people to his right turned away and hurried to