Billister carried with him guilt, many forms of it.
As he worked the tobacco field, he tried to think back to his youth. Even just to two months before, for that matter. Hadn't he known? Hadn't the solemn parade of red-leggers, tens of thousands of them, marched directly under his upturned nose? He had been aware of something, that something was out of kilter in his pampered upbringing on Thomas Island.
He hunched in the steamy field with the other red-leggers, a chain rattling between his ankles each time he stepped to a new tobacco plant. The farm supervisors, "Ag Agency superintendents," had taught him how to sweep his hand around the stalk and tear a cluster of leaves away without damaging the entire plant. They had not taught him how to do this without damaging his back muscles.
The arrangement was that if he worked Ag duty for five years without incident, he might become eligible for a better assignment. They spoke dreamily of the indoor jobs available in Supply and Transport. They pointed to themselves, former field workers, they claimed.
But even aside from the work, it was a ghastly, regimented life. Meals of overstewed vegetables, with the rare shred of pork. No news sheets, books, or anything written—much better to pretend to be illiterate. Into bed, and up again, as the wailing sirens dictated.
Billister was not sure any human would last five years.
Priming tobacco, this was called. He and many people of his own race were primers, up to their elbows in gluelike tobacco juice. In the heat-warped distance the barbed wire fences stood sentry.
Billister was regarded with suspicion even by fellow Rafers. Occasionally he pronounced words oddly, words in his own native language. He had that manner about him—too gentlemanly, almost effeminate. His skin was soft from a protected life, and on the first day anyone had seen him—on the day of loading on Thomas Island—his fellow red-leggers had actually detected perfume, one of the incomprehensible products of the Fungus People. And he had appeared clean shaven, head and chin!
Those field workers who knew a touch of English made a play on his name—Blister, they called him, after his first day of picking. Who was this soft stranger?
If they only knew, Billister thought—thwack, he tore away a handful of tobacco leaves—they would remove my limbs just like that. He handed his shoulder bag of leaves to a field runner, who laid them on the portable conveyor belt that followed the primers up and down the rows. There the stems of the leaves were bunched around a stick and then run through a gasoline-powered stitching machine. Later, the racks of leaves were piled onto a cart and wheeled over to the curing barns to be hung.
An Ag Agency pickup truck rumbled down the dirt road between the pines and the field. It skidded to a stop at the point nearest to the primers. The red dust cloud, momentum-borne, drifted over and past the truck like a tidal wave. Odd.
Billister turned to look, wiping his face on his shoulder (he had quickly learned not to use his gooey forearms). A supervisor jabbed him in the side with the butt of his snub gun, and Billister doubled over, near vomiting, remembering the day he arrived on the mainland—the man chained in front of him trying to speak, punched in the kidney. The crisp pain produced a hallucination: the red earth between the tobacco stalks superimposed over lips of the young man who had tried to speak to him. Moving lips, trying to say what?
Weakly, Billister grabbed a few leaves, a poor effort. But the supervisor, wearing the gray cotton uniform and a straw hat, seemed satisfied.
Three men hopped out of the truck. They were not Ag Agency. They wore loose jump suits, swung rifles at their sides irreverently, and had wide utility belts slung around their hips, hung with hardware like Billister had never seen.
Billister decided he would keep his head down, stealing a glance only when his bag was full again and he had to stand erect to deliver his pickings to the field runner. There were two supervisors in this field and fifteen red-leggers—ten primers, three runners, and two operating the stitching machinery. The supervisors were talking with the new arrivals in low tones. A cigarette pack came out and they all lit up.
Eventually, the supervisors were led back to the pickup truck, looking bewildered. The oldest of the jump-suited men walked authoritatively to the stitching machine, studied its controls, and shut it off. Suddenly the field was ringing with silence. For the first time, the primers' feet could be heard whispering across the earth.
"English!" the jump-suited man shouted. "Do any of you speak English?"
The workers stared, motionless. Billister hesitated, but decided the other red-leggers already had a low opinion of him—he might as well cooperate with the Fungus Person. "Here." He raised a gum-covered arm.
The man trotted over. His shaven face was tanned, sweating, and there was a scar on the tip of his nose. His head seemed small for his body size, and a cigarette dangled from his lips, dead center. Crescent moons of moisture had formed under his arms.
"Hallo, the name's Fel Guinness," the stranger said. "Those two men, are they workers?" It was an odd accent. The man's breath smelled of ale.
"Workers?" Billister found the question peculiar. Obviously they were workers. One man had been shoving the bulky machinery down the rows on its rubber wheels while the second man aligned the leaves properly on their hanging sticks.
"What I mean is, are they supervisors like those two"—he jabbed a thumb over his shoulder—"or are they workers? Red-leggers. Laborers not here by choice."
"Ah," said Billister, feeling faint from the pounding he had taken a few minutes before. "The rest of us are, uh, workers. Yes. All of us."
The man raised his voice to a shout: "Then you will all please proceed to the barn." He pointed to the wood-frame structure a half mile away, down the dirt road at the edge of the field. Then the man about-faced and trotted back to his truck.
None of the red-leggers moved. Then Billister remembered, and shouted the instructions in Rafer.
The business at the curing barn went quickly. When Billister and his fellow field workers filed into the dim enclosure, the two supervisors stood in the center of the room. Their mouths were gagged, their hands bound behind them. Two ropes were looped on the end, fitted around their necks, and the other ends tossed over a high rafter, up where the racks of tobacco were, dripping moisture onto the crowd of curious observers.
Then Fel Guinness's younger assistants hoisted the supervisors three feet off the ground. Billister watched them kicking, pumping silently save for the dry rustle of gray cotton, the scuffing of leather, and the creak of rope.
The field workers were speechless. Guinness was smiling, sucking his cigarette down to a butt. He laid an arm around Billister's shoulder, saying, "Tell them we are from the new Government. Tell them that they are free. That we will take them into town now where we will feed them properly, until they decide how they will spend the rest of their lives."
Billister turned to the gaunt, distrusting faces in the low light and wondered how to explain the ways of the Fungus People.