ambition, self-seeking could have carried him through and he could have built a career on serving them, but not from love. He did notâhe could notâlove his brothers.
And yet he had no inherited ankle scar to scratch.
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Official, pompous things amused him. He chuckled still over the name Puroil Refining, Termitary & Grinding Works painted in large letters on control block walls. Every so often it was painted out, but it always reappeared. He repeated the name aloud to the others. Few laughed. Only the Great White Father, who had written it. He met this man on his first day at the plant, as he started on afternoon shift, just before the day workers went home.
He said, âThereâs our termitaryâ, as they passed the administration block in the company bus, and sure enough there were the little ant-people running up and down stairs, on view behind plate-glass, arguing silently with each other or sitting impassively for hours in offices equally on display. A glass box, completely enclosed except for tiny ventilation holes. He had worked there himself before transferring to the works, but he had never seen the building this way before. A great manorhouse watching over its feudal fields and wage-serfs.
âWhat about the grinding works?â he asked the Great White Father, who was exceedingly tall and bony and good-natured.
âThe whole thing is a grinding works. Each man, if he lets it happen, is ground down a little each day until, finely and smoothly honed of all eccentricities and irregularities and the originality that could save him, the grinding suddenly stops at sixty. Then they shot you out. You wait five years to qualify for the old age pension, and when you qualify you make your choice: whether to take the government one or carry on with the company pension. Theyâre pretty close to the same thing, in cash. Under our beneficent social system, one disqualifies you from the other. Most of us wonât have to worry, weâre all specially picked and processed so we peg out within a year or two of retiring. The system is further safeguarded; in the last few years of service they down-grade you so your pension wonât be much, anyway, in case you escape the health hazard. You see, your pension amount is tied to your earnings in your last couple of years service. Demote you, pay less. Youâre just an item of cost. The bigger the organization, the smaller the value of each man in it. And this oneâs huge.â
The very tall manâs sea-blue eyes sparkled and danced so much during this short lecture that the Samurai kept listening attentively so as not to miss the joke, which he felt sure was coming. But no, the Great White Father was serious. He seemed to enjoy talkingâthe sort of man who enjoyed everything. Laughter patterned his deeply creased face, lined with the scars and lacerations of a varied, reprehensible, non-respectable, wholly enjoyable past.
âYou said, if a man lets it happenâ¦â
âIf you let them grind you down, yes. You donât have to.â
âWhat else?â
âFight âem! Every step of the way!â
âTheyâve got the whip hand. What do you fight with?â
âSmiles, a quick wit, sex, alcohol, and never say Yes to the bastards. Once you recognize the place is a prison, youâre well off. The best that can be said is everyone draws an indefinite sentence. The final horror of a life behind barbed wire is mercifully withheld.â He glanced out at the high wire fence they were passing then, topped with several strands of barbed wire. âYou see, the battleground where they beat you is in here.â His long, friendly brown hand lay relaxed on his own high, resonant chest.
But just where the Samurai was expecting him to go on, he suddenly stood. The bus stopped. Their crew was decanted like a carelessly handled bacterial culture outside the host body of the low grey control block on their