“Understood.”
“But you have to make it mix, don’t you? I sure don’t envy you the job.”
“New world,” he said, a shrug. The liquor made him numb. He felt disconnected, and at once in a familiar place, a ship like a dozen other ships, a moment lived and relived. But no Jean, That was different. “It works because it has to work, that’s all. They need each other. That’s how it all fits together.”
Engles pressed a button on the console. “We’ll get your cabin set up. Anything you need, you let me know.”
The aide came back. “The colonel wants his cabin,” Engles said quietly.
“Thanks,” Conn said, took the hand offered a second time, followed the black‑uniformed spacer out into the corridors, blinking in the warmth of the liquor.
The scars were there…the aide was too young to know; scars predating the clean, the modern corridors. The rebellion at Fargone; the war–the tunnels and the deep digs…
Jean had been with him then. But twenty years the peace had held, uneasy detente between Union and the merchanter Alliance. Peace was profitable, because neither side had anything to gain in confrontation…yet. There was a border. Alliance built warships the Accord of Pell forbade; Union built merchant ships the Accord limited to farside space…cargo ships that could dump their loads and move; warships that could clamp on frames and hauclass="underline" the designs were oddly similar, tokening a new age in the Between, with echoes of the old. Push would come to shove again; he believed it; Engles likely did.
And the Council must believe it…making moves like this, establishing supply, the longterm advantage of bases on worlds, which were unstrikable under the civilized accords; most of all assuring an abundance of worldbred troops who could not retreat. Union seeded worlds, strategically placed or otherwise…every site which could marginally support human life…an entrenched, immovable expansion which would bottle Alliance in close to their own center and thoroughly infiltrate any territory Alliance might gain in war or negotiations.
The building of carrier ships like Venturewas part of it.
And the other part rested in the hands of special op, and employees of the government who for various reasons, volunteered.
v
T‑20 hours
Cyteen dock
The lines fell into order, white‑clad, shaven headed, a slow procession across the dock, and no one paid it more than the curiosity the event was due–the loading of cloned‑man workers onto transports, which always shocked Alliance citizens and sent a shiver up the staunchest of Union backbones. It was an aspect of life most citizens never had to see, the reminder of the lab‑born ancestry of many of them–the labor pool on which worlds were built. Azi workers served in citizen homes, and worked on farms and took jobs others found undesirable–quiet and cheerful workers in the main.
But these were quiet indeed, and the lines were unnaturally patient, and the shaved heads and faces and the white sameness was grim and without illusion.
And to stand in that line–himself shaven and blank except for the small blue triangle on his right cheek and a number on his hand–Marco Gutierrez felt a constant panic. Keep the eyes unfocused or fixed, they had said onworld, when they were loaded onto the shuttles. Don’t worry. The numbers you’re wearing are specially flagged in the comp. The same system that lets the azi all get the right tape will get you no worse than an informational lecture. They’ll know who you are.
The azi frightened him–all of them, so silent, so fixed on what they did and where they went. He stared at the whiteclad shoulders in front of him, which by the hips belonged to a woman, but he could not tell for sure from the back. There were sets of these workers, twins and triplets, quads and quints. But of some he had seen only a single example, unique. He had not gotten a wrong tape when they passed through the lab: he had lain down under the machine terrified that they might slip him a wrong one, and he might end by needing psychiatric help–his mind, his mind, that was his life, all the years of study–But it had come out right, and he had only the dimmest impression of what they had fed him–
Unless–the thought occurred to him–that was the same confidence all of them in the lines had, and they were all being deceived and programmed. The imagination that something might have been done to him without his knowledge sent the sweat coursing over a shaved, too‑smooth body. He trusted his government. But mistakes were made with the push of a computer key. And sometimes the government had done harsh things in harsh times–and lied–
Eyes blank. He heard noises, the crash of machinery, and the movement of vehicles. He was aware of people on the sidelines staring at them; at him. It was hard not to be human, hard not to turn and look, or to shift the feet or to fret in line or make some small random movement–but the azi did not.
At least some of these close to him must be citizens like him. He had no idea how many. He knew that some of his colleagues were with him, but he had lost track of them, in the shifting of the lines. They were boarding. They went toward the ship; and they moved with incredible slowness.
There had been a time, in that white‑tiled room on Cyteen where he and others of his group had last been human–that they had been able to laugh about it; that they made jokes and took it lightly. But that was before they had been taken singly into the next room and shaved, before they had had a number stamped on them and individually gotten the instruction on behavior, before they had fallen into the lines at the shuttleport and been lost.
There was no more humor in it, no more at all. There was terror…and humiliation, the violation of privacy, the fear of coercion. All he had to do to back out now was to turn and walk away from the line, which no azi could do; and something was holding him there, a constraint he believed was his own volition, his courage keeping him where he was.
But lately all realities had shifted. And he was no longer certain.
What, he thought as the line inched its way toward the access ramp, in sight now, what if things had gone totally wrong? And what if the people who were to recognize him did not?
But the tape had been harmless; and therefore the computer had the number right.
He trusted. And inched up the ramp step by step, never making a move some azi in front of him had not made. He picked the quietest and the steadiest for his models, in the hope that others behind him were likewise taking their cues from him.
The line entered the dark of the hold, and they approached a desk, one by one; one by one the azi held out their right hands for the inspection of the clerks.
But none of them were pulled out of line, and Gutierrez’ heart beat harder and harder.
His own turn came, and he offered his falsely tattooed hand to the recorder, who took it and wrote down the number. The slip went to a comp tech. “Move on,” a supervisor said, and Gutierrez moved, less and less in command of his knees. He passed the inner lock in the same shuffling line, and a kind of paralysis had set in, past the time that he thought he should have made a protest–that it was too great a silence to break, that hypnotic oneness that drew him into step and kept him there.
“789‑5678?” a male voice asked him. He looked that direction; one could look, when a number was called. A guard beckoned him. He came; and they called another number and another, so that now there were a group of them being called out of the lines and let into a side corridor.
“You’ll just come this way,” the guard said. “We’ve got your id all set up; you’re all right and your gear is boarded. They’ll get you all, don’t worry.”