“Look, I got to get back,” Meyer said. She’d done her job.
An insulation sprayer whined in the corridor. Whitish fog entered the room. Seligman sneezed and closed the door.
” `Too bad,’ he tells me,” Seligman said. ” `Too bad!’ That’s all he can say about his brother-in-law being shipped God knows where to be eaten like as not!”
“Nobody’s going to eat you—” Meyer said.
The lights went out.
The room was pitch dark. The walls crushed down on Meyer. She was alone and there was only blackness squeezing—
“—you all right?” Seligman cried. He held her arms as she sagged.
Meyer straightened. The lights were on again. She looked at herself through Seligman’s horrified eyes. She jerked the door open.
“I’m fine,” she said in a whisper. “I think . . . There must have been a short circuit, you know? I got a shock.”
She strode down the corridor, bumping her right shoulder on the bulkhead at every other step. A workman called to her.
“Fuck off,” she said without turning her head.
Alone.
The doors of Lifts Four and Six opened. Faces staring from the packed cages matched those projected on Caius Blohm’s visor.
“Come on,” he ordered, grabbing the nearer door with his hand to keep it from closing automatically. Nobody in the cages moved. A baby was wailing.
“Come on, Four East, this is your deck!”
The other door started to close. An older woman reached an arm past the people in front of her and blocked it. “This is where our quarters will be,” she called in a clear voice. “Quickly, now. Let’s clear the lift for the others.”
Blohm’s helmet AI identified the woman as Seraphina Suares. She looked alert if not cheerful. Most of the other civilians had the appearance of the human prisoners Blohm saw in the camp C41 had liberated a year and a half before.
People moved out of the cages. One of the men held the door so that Blohm could step away. “Where do we go?” asked a woman holding an infant. A man with a toddler in either hand stood beside her in the rotunda, looking gray.
Blohm shrugged. “There’s rooms,” he said. “They bunk eight.”
He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t have any connection with these people. They were a different species with their worried faces and their children. God, how many of them had children!
Another lift opened. “Here’s our deck, folks,” Sergeant Gabrilovitch called from the cage. “Everybody out for Deck Nine, that’s home till we get to Bezant.”
This duty didn’t bother Gabe. “Hey, I ran a restaurant on Verugia before I enlisted,” he’d said when Blohm complained. “What’s so hard about showing people to their stalls?”
“All right,” Suares said, “we’ll group ourselves to minimize difficulty on the voyage. Will all the families with children under ten please step this way.”
The words were a question, but the tone wasn’t. People began sorting themselves obediently. The lifts emptied and closed.
Gabrilovitch stepped close to Blohm. “Guess she’s got things under control,” the sergeant murmured. “Her husband’s a building councillor, but it looks to me like it’s her who calls the shots.”
Blohm didn’t speak. Gabe frowned, waited a moment more, and said, “Hey Blohm! You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” the striker said. He was watching the crowd of frightened civilians. The children clutched toys and extra clothing, looking around in wonder as their parents were directed to rooms.
So many children.
Day One
“Your personnel have settled in, Major?” al-Ibrahimi said. He was looking in Farrell’s direction, but his eyes were focused on the holographic display before him. Because the interference patterns were aligned toward the manager’s side of the desk, Farrell saw only an occasional shimmer like cobwebs drifting through a sunbeam.
“We’ve spent our share of time on troopships, sir,” Farrell said. “This is better than the usual. I’m not used to traveling without flight crew, but it seems to be working well enough.”
The ship trembled every few minutes as it sequenced between bubble universes, navigating by means of the differentials between constants of velocity and momentum from one continuum to the next. To those aboard 10-1442 the sensation was similar to thunder so distant that it was felt, not heard.