sight lines in the hanging coal dust. Clogged miners burst out of the smog, clattered across the slate-strewn floor, headlamps swinging like beacons, then vanished as abruptly as they appeared. And from the depths, like the sound of combat drifting back over the supply lines, came the shudder and boom of blasting, the rush of newly dropped coal streaming down the chutes.
The fire boss’s badge said, “YOUR SAFETY IS OUR BUSINESS ,” but his blank eyes suggested that he had more pressing business elsewhere, and he delivered his safety lecture in the tone of a man passing on a rumor he didn’t personally believe in.
They trooped past him one by one to sign the pit bottom log and check out their Davy lamps. When Li reached the front of the line, he scribbled her lamp number in the logbook and pushed the coal-smudged pit log toward her without even looking up. Li started to put her hand to where the scan plate should have been, then realized the log wasn’t even smart fiche. She signed it laboriously.
The new shift was coming on-clock as Haas’s crew rigged up. The coal haulers came down first, as always. Some were jumping off the cage as Li stepped out of the fire office. Others, brought down in the last trip, were already preparing their carts and sorting their traces. They moved nimbly, with the lightlimbed agility of children—which was exactly what they were.
They’d been called pit ponies when Li was their age, even though no pony had set hoof on this planet or any other in two centuries. A few of the incoming shift’s ponies had pit dogs with them: heavy-boned, coal-stained mongrels strong enough to pull the coal carts. The rest would hook up to the draw chains and drag the heavy coal carts themselves. They worked in a world of man, child, and animal power. A world where it took a whole family to earn a living and sweat cost less than diesel fuel.
“Don’t get foggy-eyed about them,” Haas said, coming up behind her. “I started out carting when I was their age. Day I turned ten. They’ve got their chance, same as the rest of us.”
“Sure,” Li said, though she didn’t know if she believed it or not.
A pit pony from the outgoing shift passed by, hauling a carefully packed flat of live-cut condensate. He had a string of pearls—a long row of coal scars that came from scraping bare backbones on ceiling joists day after day and having blue coal dust ground into the cuts. But Li barely noticed it; she was looking at the crystals.
They gleamed like distant stars under their heavy coating of coal dust. They looked like crystals—the miners even called them crystals—but Li knew they’d light up a quantum scan like no mere rock. They were quantum-level anomalies, an unheard of, unimagined substance that every physical law said couldn’t exist above zero Kelvin, or in an atmosphere, or in a minable, transportable, usable form. They were impossible, and they were the daily miracle that the UN worlds lived on.
But they were notoriously fragile. Blasting cracked them. Power tools damaged them. Even a hot mine fire could destroy them—though another fire, unpredictably, might burn the coal out around the crystals and leave whole subterranean cathedral vaults of them standing. It was all a skilled miner could do, working with wedges, picks, and hard-earned handicraft, to cut a strike out of the coal without ruining it. “Getting them out live,” Li’s father called it.
She reached out and brushed her fingers along the smooth upper facet of the nearest condensate as the cart passed. It felt warm as flesh. The miner, somewhere down there in the choking darkness, had gotten it out live.
* * *
Sharifi’s site lay in the newly opened Trinidad—the deeper and richer of the Anaconda’s two coal veins. It was six kilometers from Pit 3 as the crow flies, eight or more along the mine’s twisting and dipping underground passages.
They rode the first four kilometers in a squat, neon green mine truck,
The fire boss’s badge said, “YOUR SAFETY IS OUR BUSINESS ,” but his blank eyes suggested that he had more pressing business elsewhere, and he delivered his safety lecture in the tone of a man passing on a rumor he didn’t personally believe in.
They trooped past him one by one to sign the pit bottom log and check out their Davy lamps. When Li reached the front of the line, he scribbled her lamp number in the logbook and pushed the coal-smudged pit log toward her without even looking up. Li started to put her hand to where the scan plate should have been, then realized the log wasn’t even smart fiche. She signed it laboriously.
The new shift was coming on-clock as Haas’s crew rigged up. The coal haulers came down first, as always. Some were jumping off the cage as Li stepped out of the fire office. Others, brought down in the last trip, were already preparing their carts and sorting their traces. They moved nimbly, with the lightlimbed agility of children—which was exactly what they were.
They’d been called pit ponies when Li was their age, even though no pony had set hoof on this planet or any other in two centuries. A few of the incoming shift’s ponies had pit dogs with them: heavy-boned, coal-stained mongrels strong enough to pull the coal carts. The rest would hook up to the draw chains and drag the heavy coal carts themselves. They worked in a world of man, child, and animal power. A world where it took a whole family to earn a living and sweat cost less than diesel fuel.
“Don’t get foggy-eyed about them,” Haas said, coming up behind her. “I started out carting when I was their age. Day I turned ten. They’ve got their chance, same as the rest of us.”
“Sure,” Li said, though she didn’t know if she believed it or not.
A pit pony from the outgoing shift passed by, hauling a carefully packed flat of live-cut condensate. He had a string of pearls—a long row of coal scars that came from scraping bare backbones on ceiling joists day after day and having blue coal dust ground into the cuts. But Li barely noticed it; she was looking at the crystals.
They gleamed like distant stars under their heavy coating of coal dust. They looked like crystals—the miners even called them crystals—but Li knew they’d light up a quantum scan like no mere rock. They were quantum-level anomalies, an unheard of, unimagined substance that every physical law said couldn’t exist above zero Kelvin, or in an atmosphere, or in a minable, transportable, usable form. They were impossible, and they were the daily miracle that the UN worlds lived on.
But they were notoriously fragile. Blasting cracked them. Power tools damaged them. Even a hot mine fire could destroy them—though another fire, unpredictably, might burn the coal out around the crystals and leave whole subterranean cathedral vaults of them standing. It was all a skilled miner could do, working with wedges, picks, and hard-earned handicraft, to cut a strike out of the coal without ruining it. “Getting them out live,” Li’s father called it.
She reached out and brushed her fingers along the smooth upper facet of the nearest condensate as the cart passed. It felt warm as flesh. The miner, somewhere down there in the choking darkness, had gotten it out live.
* * *
Sharifi’s site lay in the newly opened Trinidad—the deeper and richer of the Anaconda’s two coal veins. It was six kilometers from Pit 3 as the crow flies, eight or more along the mine’s twisting and dipping underground passages.
They rode the first four kilometers in a squat, neon green mine truck,
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