The Spring Between Us

Chapter 59: Uranium and Wolves

The assay shed stood at the eastern edge of the company land where the canyon opened out into the flat country, a long low building of corrugated iron with a stack on the roof and a fence around it and a gate with a chain on it.

We came across the flat at first light with the sun behind us and twenty warriors spread out in a line, and there was one man on the gate and he had a rifle and he was young and his hands were shaking.

Sten went up to the gate alone with his hands open. He talked to the man for a while. Then the man put the rifle down and unlocked the chain and stood aside.

The shed was full of machinery and dust and the smell of oil and hot metal, and at the far end of it there was the pump, a great iron thing on a concrete pad with a wheel on it and a pipe going down into the floor, and beside the pump there was a tank.

The tank was lead and it was about the height of a man and it had a lid on it that was sealed with tar, and there was a sign painted on the side of it in yellow paint.

The sign was a trefoil. Three blades of yellow on a black ground.

Hank stopped six paces from it and did not go any closer.

"That is not uranium ore," he said. "I have seen uranium ore on the wagons from the north. It comes in sacks and it is grey and it does not need a lead lid on it." He looked at the tank. "That is something else."

Owen came up beside us with his cap in his hands. "That is what I have been told not to look at for six years. It comes down from the north face in a locked wagon and it goes into that tank and the tank goes out on the water wagon to the railhead at Green River. I have never seen what is inside it. I have signed for it a hundred times and I have never seen inside it."

"Then we open it," I said.

"Luna." Owen's face was grey. "The men who work this shed wear badges and the badges have that mark on them and two of them have been sick this year. One of them is in the town and he cannot get out of his bed and the doctor does not know what is wrong with him."

I looked at the tank with the yellow trefoil on it.

"Then we do not open it here," I said. "We do not open it at all. We put it on a cart and we take it down to the Council hall and we put it in the yard in front of the Council man and we ask him what is in it." I turned to Sten. "Get the cart. Get four horses. Get a rope. We are going to put that tank on the cart and we are going to take it down that road."

Sten looked at the tank. "Luna. If it is what I think it is, I do not want it on my cart."

"Then you can walk behind the cart." I looked at Owen. "Is there a lead sheet in this shed? A blanket? Anything?"

Owen went to the back of the shed and came back with a sheet of lead and two men carrying it. We wrapped the tank in the lead sheet and roped it onto the cart, and it took six of us to lift it and the horses did not like it and we had to put blinders on them. By the time it was on the cart the sun was high and the packs were waiting on the road and the town was waiting behind them with the cask.

We went down the canyon road at noon with the cart in the middle of the line and the pack on either side of it and the town behind and the cask on its own cart in front. The soldiers on the road saw us coming and stood aside. They did not stop us and they did not draw and they did not say a word. There were four of them and there were a hundred wolves and a town, and they stood aside.

The yard of the Council hall was full when we came in.

The Council man was on the steps of the hall with his hat in his hand and his clerk behind him and the healer behind the clerk and a table on the steps with the Council seal on it. The yard was full of wolves and men and the whole canyon had come up the road to see it.

Silas looked at the cart with the lead sheet on it and then at me and his pleasant face did not change.

"Luna," he said. "You are late. The hearing was at noon."

"It is noon now," I said. "And I have brought you a thing."

I had the cart brought to the middle of the yard. I had the lead sheet taken off. And I stood beside the tank with the yellow trefoil on it and the whole yard looked at it and did not know what it was.

"This tank came out of an assay shed at the eastern edge of the company land," I said. "It has been there for six years and it has been shipped out on the water wagons to the railhead at Green River and it has a lead lid and a yellow trefoil on the side of it. Two men who work that shed have been sick this year and one of them cannot get out of his bed. The foreman of the company has signed for it a hundred times and has never seen inside it." I looked at Silas. "So I am asking you, in front of the Council and both packs and the town. What is in this tank?"

The yard was silent.

Silas looked at the tank for a long moment. Then he said, "I do not know what is in that tank. I am a Council envoy and I have never been in that shed."

"You have been in that shed." Owen came out of the line with his cap in his hand and his face grey. "You have been in that shed six times a year for six years and you have signed for that tank yourself and I have the papers in my office and they have your name on them."

Silas's face did not change. "The foreman is a company man and a liar and he has been paid by the Luna to say this."

"The foreman is a Council man," I said. "He has been on the Council's water account for six years and I have the ledger and I have the pump logs and I have the lease and I have the list my mother wrote and I have the pact and the two rings and the second key." I held them up one by one. "And I have a rogue in a cell in this hall who will say in front of the Council that you paid her to put a rope on my mother's wrists and on my Beta's wrists and on a warrior's wrists on the south ledge. So you can stand on those steps and call the foreman a liar, and then you can explain to this yard why a Council envoy has a radium tank in a company shed with his name on the papers."

The yard made a sound.

Silas looked at me. His pale blue eyes were very steady and his pleasant face was very calm and he said, "Luna. Do you know what that tank is?"

"I know what it looks like."

"It is not a radium tank." Silas came down one step. "It is a tank of pitchblende concentrate and it is not dangerous and it is not hidden. It is a company product and it is shipped under Council licence and the licence is in the Council file and the file is in the Council hall in the capital and it has my name on it because I signed it." He came down another step. "You have brought a company product into a Council yard and called it a crime. That is not evidence, Luna. That is a cart."

The yard stirred.

And then a voice from the back of the yard said, "It is not pitchblende."

The yard turned. A man was coming through the crowd, an old man in a doctor's coat with a bag in his hand and a woman on his arm, and the woman was thin and grey and her hair was coming out.

"It is not pitchblende," the old man said again. "I am the doctor from the town and this is the wife of the man who cannot get out of his bed. I have been a doctor for forty years and I have never seen a sickness like the one her husband has. His hair is coming out and his hands are burned and he cannot keep his food down and there is a mark on his chest like a sunburn that will not heal. And I have been reading the company's own papers for a week because the foreman brought them to me." He put his bag down on the ground. "That tank has radium in it. Not pitchblende. Radium. And the man who has been shipping it out of this canyon for six years has been shipping it in a water wagon through a town where children play in the dust."