Unregulated Throughway 20-31

The road cut through the jungle like a smoking, black wound. Everyone thought so. In fact, the natives called the road officially known as Unregulated Throughway 20-31 "the scar." At first, the workers had followed their own handbook and ribboned the road around trees and hillocks. But as they looked at the maps and the surveyors' notes, and plotted the course of the road in their heads, they abandoned the handbook. They wanted to be off this detail as quickly as possible.

The jungle was hot and peppered with unnamed insects, and the men believed that each bite and sting could mean death. They had also heard about the natives' resentments for this project. The natives were widely regarded among the men as witches, or worse. Demons maybe. And more than one of the crew was kept awake by nightmares or insomnia, or wracked with intestinal distress. So they started taking shortcuts. When they discovered that following the original course plotted by men in air conditioned rooms would require them to backtrack to the tune of two weeks' labor, they improvised.

The foreman resisted. He thought of himself as a lieutenant, his general's representative, but faced with eleven men with machetes and fear in their eyes, what could he do? He agreed, and put off telling his boss about the decision. After that, carving up the jungle became easier. Even the foreman came to think of this as “adapting to on-site conditions.”

They no longer had any pretense of respect. If anything was in the way, blast it. The natives started coming around to watch the day's progress. They were silent, generally, and never hostile. That wasn't their way. But if they had had any magic, they surely would have used it. The workmen still worried about curses aimed at them as they tore at tree roots and laid down explosive charges, but they kept a revised calendar in their heads at all times. Only nineteen days left. Only eighteen days left.