The emigrants were nervous but hopeful. Each wore company-issue coveralls and carried the company-issued 20-liter pack which contained absolutely all the personal effects an emigrant was permitted to bring aboard. A few mothers staggered under two or three packs, their offspring’s allotment as well as their own.
“Poor stupid bastards,” Mohacks said. “Don’t they know what they’re getting into—for the rest of their life?”
“You don’t know what they’re leaving behind,” Babanguida replied.
“I don’t need to,” Mohacks said with a snort. “I’ve seen Biscay mebbe fifty times since I’ve been working this route. Each trip is one more time too many.”
The emigrants moved in units of forty-eight, each led by a member of the Emigrant Staff with a blazing red holographic arrow. Unoccupied segments of the Third Class section were open and lighted in bright pastel colors. The single bunks, laid with plaid or paisley bedding, were in four-high stacks.
The guides took their groups left or right alternatively at the head of the walkway. Individual barracks areas were set out by lines glowing on the deck. Only when a group had been marshaled within the proper position did bulkheads drop smoothly from the ceiling.
The guides remained inside the barracks rectangle until the emigrants’ first trapped panic had subsided. This was where the Emigrant Staff earned its pay. The guides spoke calmly, either through the translators on their shoulders or directly if they knew the dialect of the emigrants. Only when a section was calm did a guide back out through the door keyed to staff ID chips.
If necessary, ceiling nozzles could spray contact anesthetic. With a full manifest of four thousand plus, it would normally come to that at least once during loading.
“You think Colville’s got a bleeding heart for the Thirds, the way Ms. Holly does?” Mohacks asked idly.
“That one?” Babanguida sneered. “His heart don’t bleed for nobody, starting with himself. But I don’t think he likes us, Howie boy. Saying something about the cattle sheds—”
Babanguida waggled an elbow toward the interior of Third Class.
“—where he can hear us would be just the kind of excuse he’d like to bust us back to Ship Side and get a couple newbies he could snow.”
The black rating snorted. “He’s got games of his own, you bet. He knows we’d see through him and he’d have to cut us in.”
The barracks sections were being filled in a checkerboard pattern rather than solidly from the ends to the middle. When the bulkheads were down, they outlined a narrow corridor in woven shades of gray and pastels. Once the ship was under way, the corridor bulkheads would become transparent though those between sections remained opaque.
“Like a prison in there,” Mohacks said as his eyes followed the spaced column of emigrants. “Get out for two hours exercise in twenty-four, and that with a thousand others. Never see a woman—or a man, if you are one, ‘cepting the crew.”
“Bloody little of that this run,” Babanguida muttered. “Not till we suss out Colville, and I’m not real hopeful.”
He chuckled, then went on, “Still, so far as these Chinks go . . . It’s clean in there and it’s safe. The food’s not fancy but it’s good enough. I ate worse when I signed on with Union Traders out of Grantholm. You don’t need to feel sorry for them.”
When a staff guide had delivered a group, he or she returned quickly along the even narrower passage mounted on one side of the emigrant’s walkway. Occasionally an emigrant would be startled to see someone in uniform going in the opposite direction. The guides patted the passengers’ shoulders and murmured reassurance before they moved on.
“Sorry for them?” Mohacks said. “Not me, buddy. My brother Buck was on a tramp carrying a Mahgrabi labor battalion around the Rutskoy Cluster—harvesters, you know.”
“Your brother Buck?” Babanguida interjected. “You were on the Ildis in the Rutskoy, and I know it because I saw your experience record on your ID.”
“That may have been,” Mohacks said in an aloof voice, “but this happened to Buck. Like I was saying, they got to Marignano for the vintage and it was just good luck that there was a squad of hardcase Grantholm labor supervisors aboard because they could catch a scheduled run home from Marignano. You know that sort—they didn’t trust anybody with a dark complexion.”