He raced off, brandishing the whip.
Hanson tried to make himself inconspicuous after that. The wounds would
heal, and the beatings could never kill him; but there had been no
provision in his new body for the suppression of pain. He hungered,
thirsted and suffered like anyone else. Maybe he was learning to take
it, here, but not to like it.
At the expense of a hundred slaves and considerable deterioration of the
whips, one block of stone was in place before the sun was high overhead
in the coppery, mottled sky. Then there was the blessing of a moment's
pause. Men were coming down the long lines, handing something to the
slaves. Food, Hanson anticipated.
He was wrong. When the slave with the wicker basket came closer he could
see that the contents were not food but some powdery stuff that was
dipped out with carved spoons into the eager hands of the slaves. Hanson
smelled his portion dubiously. It was cloying, sickly sweet.
Hashish! Or opium, heroin, hemp--Hanson was no expert. But it was
certainly some kind of drug. Judging by the avid way the other slaves
were gulping it down, each one of them had been exposed to it before.
Hanson cautiously made the pretense of swallowing his before he allowed
it to slip through his fingers to mingle with the sand. Drug addiction
was obviously a convenient way to make the slaves forget their aches and
fears, to keep them everlasting anxious to please whatever was necessary
to make sure the precious, deadly ration never stopped.
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