Nothing was beyond the reach of hard work. And when someone like Buska, who had fought in wars and worked as a technician and was now an engineer, put his mind to something, the results were naturally twice as good.
He led his little group of helpers and spent three days organizing the 150,000 laborers into teams. Then he spent a week teaching them basic reading and writing, as well as how to use powered gloves and basic tools.
At last, construction of the maglev line was on the right track.
They couldn't handle technical work such as assembling the track's main structures, laying the electromagnetic equipment and rails, or calibrating the voltage and magnetic fields. But wearing work gloves, they could at least take over all the purely physical labor.
And that wasn't all. In addition to organizing the laborers into work companies of one hundred people each, Buska grouped five companies into a battalion. He equipped each camp with a terminal and projector, and installed literacy software designed for three-year-old children for the Sandfolk laborers to use. He required every work company to set aside one evening each week for class.
The Sandfolk laborers couldn't understand it at all. They said reading and writing were things for lords, so what did it have to do with lowly people like them? Wasn't it enough just to have work and food?
After all, they now earned twenty jin of grain each day they worked. Every ten days or so, they also got salted fish and insect cakes, along with medicine and other daily necessities as bonuses—enough to keep their entire families alive. What's more, they no longer risked being casually beaten to death by some lord and fed to a lizard just for stepping off with their left foot. For