The Alexei Makarov was not a Bureau of Relocation ship. It was a tramp ore carrier on contract to Kennicott. They'd put in temporary facilities in the cargo holds, to take immigrants on the return trip. We slept in stacks of narrow bunks, used long common latrines, and ate standing up.
At the start there were 2,436 men and boys, and 1,179 women and girls, thirteen years old or older. There had been more than three hundred younger children with the internees, but someone in the government got them taken away before we shuttled up. The woman in charge of taking them said they'd be settled with people on Earth; mat conditions on Haven were too extreme for young children. That didn't help the children born aboard the Makarov. And it wouldn't help those who'd be born after we arrived on Haven. Or their mothers.
One of the first things Marilyn told me, when we got together, was that she'd started getting morning sickness while she was interned; we were going to be parents. She didn't know what that meant. I did-I'd read about childbirth on Haven-but I didn't tell her.
Meanwhile there were more than 3,600 of the Dinneh living in badly crowded conditions on the Makarov. I got the numbers from George Frank, the Navajo Tribal Chairman, who was the prisoner in charge of prisoners. He was the man responsible to the marine commandant for our organization and behavior. Bad colds broke out as soon as the Makarov left orbit. Practically everyone got one, and quite a few went into pneumonia. The marine medics didn't have facilities to handle relocs, so only those whose condition was recognized as critical got taken to the clinic. Eleven died. We thought that was pretty bad. We'd learn later what bad really was.
George organized the Navajos according to clan, and the rest of us by tribe. Although I was only adopted Mescalero, the Mescaleros made me their spokesman because I could speak Navajo pretty well. From the start, most of the Apaches could pretty much carry on a conversation with each other, including the Navajos, each speaking his own dialect. But Mescalero is less like the others, and at first the Mescaleros had trouble understanding and being understood. And no one felt like speaking English; we felt betrayed by the English-language government.
More and more, the Navajos included us in. All of us were Dinneh, George said-we were all "the people."
It was the Russian language that complicated things. Like all Americans, we'd taken Russian in school, and the Russian marines and crew had all taken English, but not many on either side could understand what the other said very well. You had to talk very slowly and keep it simple. Marilyn was an exception. Her MA at the University of New Mexico had been in Native American Languages, but as an undergrad she'd had two years of Russian, on top of the three required years in grade school and a fourth year by choice in high school. So she was our spokesperson with the Russians, who liked her because she used their language so well.
Most of the Russians were all right. Whatever prejudices they had didn't include one against American Indians. But there wasn't anything they could do about too many people in too little space. It was always too hot in the hold. Water was rationed, and there weren't any showers. We could only wash once a day. After a while the holds smelled pretty bad. The food was poor and monotonous, but it nourished us all right, and on two meals a day, fat people lost weight.
To help pass the time, we'd sit in groups and tell stories. People would tell books they'd read, or movies they'd seen, or places they'd been, or they'd make up stories. At first only a few people would tell stories, but pretty soon more and more told them. Also we slept a lot. George set it up so everyone had a chance to do aerobic exercises once a day, in small groups. Most people did them-it was something to do-and it proved to be a good thing. But it did make it hotter in the holds.
Marilyn got to know the marines' liaison officer, a woman lieutenant named Toloconnicov, who gave her a little book about Haven. It frightened Marilyn to read it. It didn't sound as bad as the technical articles had, but I didn't say anything. We'd find out when we got there. It might not be as bad as I expected.
Something more surprising came from her friendship with Lieutenant Toloconnicov. One day the lieutenant gave Marilyn an envelope, and waited while she read what was inside: a formal invitation in English for both of us to have supper with the marine commander, Major Shcherbatov. Marilyn told the lieutenant that we'd like to go, but we hadn't had a shower or washed our clothes for nearly five months. The lieutenant wrote us a permission to use showers in the sickbay, and said there'd be clean clothes for us there.
It felt good to shower and put clean clothes on.
The major had been stationed in eastern Siberia for a couple of years, and gotten interested in the Chukchi people there. From that he'd gotten interested in American Indians, so he had lots of questions about the Navajo. When he learned that not all of us were Navajo, he had questions about the other Apache tribes, and the Chippewa, and Sioux. We had supper with him twice, and talked for about three hours each time.
Marilyn asked him questions about Haven, but he claimed he didn't know much about it. I didn't believe him. He picked up his wine glass when he said it, which kept him from having to look at her. It didn't make me feel any better about what we'd find there.
It took the Makarov more than thirteen months to reach Haven. In that time we received four different series of shots, broad-spectrum vaccines to keep us safe from disease on Haven, as safe as possible. Also, Marilyn gave birth to a boy. We named him Marcel, after my grandfather.
The week before we entered the Byers' System, George said he didn't feel qualified to be chief on Haven, and proposed Tom Spotted Horse, a retired marine master sergeant in his forties. The council agreed, so Tom was our chief. He organized us into squads, platoons, companies, and battalions, and made sure we all knew what we belonged to. We picked our own officers and sergeants. That was tradition, and Tom didn't know most of the people.
A few days before we landed, Lieutenant Toloconnicov gave Marilyn a military topographic map of the district where we were supposed to land. Marilyn let me look at it before she took it to Tom. The latitude was subtropical; on a planet known for its cold climate, that was hopeful. The top half of the map showed the south part of a plateau that broke away into badlands. South of the badlands was a basin with the word desert on it. There were no towns or roads, but the plateau had a few thin broken lines with the words livestock driveway, and across it in large letters, the word KAZAKHS. The Kazakhs, I knew, were a people in Asia, and I remembered reading, years before, that a tribe of Kazakh traditionalists, herdsmen, had gotten the Soviet government to sponsor a Kazakh colony on Haven. This must be where it was.
An X had been marked on the plateau with a marker pen. The only reason I could think of for that was, we were supposed to be put down there. I went with Marilyn and told Tom what I'd made of the map; he listened, and then made me his technical aide.
The next day, forming up to load into the shuttles, most of us were feeling glad to be getting there at last. Even I was. At least I'd know what we were in for. Instead of putting us down where the X was, they put us on a mesa isolated from the plateau by broken lands. Lieutenant Toloconnicov said the major was responsible for that. He believed that if he landed us at the X, the Kazakhs, who were armed, would attack us and make slaves out of the prisoners they took.