After that they'd been given a thin, soft, snug-fitting, one-piece suit to wear "for while you're in stasis." There were no seams except in front, where they'd been open from throat to crotch. Like winter underwear but without buttons or a trapdoor. After they'd got into the sleep suits, men had shown them how to fasten the seams by pressing. He hadn't known the whys for any of it. Then, at their command, he'd rolled up his homespuns, tied them with a tape they'd provided, and fastened his high-cut moccasins to the bundle with another tape. All the while wondering if he'd ever see his real clothes again; they were a lot better than what he'd been given.
When he wakened, the lid was open on his stasis locker, and there was a faint smell in his nose, mildly sharp. He wasn't groggy, but he was briefly confused. Then he remembered. Meanwhile his bundle lay on his belly, moccasins included. At least the Terrans didn't seem to be thieves.
Then a whistle had blown, and a loud voice had bellowed instructions. Esau had climbed from his locker and changed into his own clothes, he and all the other men in his compartment. They filled the aisles. Nobody had said much, and most who spoke, spoke quietly. His stomach growled, and he felt strange.
The whistle shrilled again, cutting off the soft refugee murmur. Again the loud voice spoke, seeming to come from all around them. "ATTENTION ALL PASSENGERS! ATTENTION ALL PASSENGERS! YOU ARE ABOUT TO BE DISEMBARKED. YOU ARE ABOUT TO BE DISEMBARKED. STAY ALERT AND FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS. STAY ALERT AND FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS. WHEN ORDERED, FILE OUT IN AN ORDERLY MANNER. DO NOT PUSH. WE DO NOT WANT ANYONE CRUSHED, OR KNOCKED DOWN AND TRAMPLED. WHEN YOU GET OUTSIDE, LISTEN FOR YOUR NAME. WHEN YOU GET OUTSIDE, LISTEN FOR YOUR NAME."
Esau was pretty sure the voice wasn't human. They'd been warned that Terrans used machines to do all sorts of things for them; apparently that could include talking. As for "disembarked"-he supposed that meant getting off the ship. And they'd be calling off names! He'd listen for Jael's, and go to her regardless of anything. Anyone got in his way, too bad for them.
Meanwhile he waited. He didn't know whether three and a half months had passed, like they'd said, or three weeks, but he was pretty sure it was less than three years and more than three days. There was a vague sense of time having passed, and an even vaguer sense of having dreamt. But however long it had been, they seemed to have arrived, presumably on Terra.
Somewhere, someone must have given an order, because now the packed humanity in his aisle began to move. It was a main aisle, leading directly to an open door, toward which they moved slowly under the scowling gaze of a very tall man. He held what the refugees took to be a hand weapon of some sort. Esau's column flowed rather smoothly, out the door into a wide corridor. Like an aisle-wide subcurrent in a river of humanity, some of whose currents were female.
"You got a wife here somewhere?" asked a voice beside him. It belonged to another youth, a bit shorter but similarly built.
"I sure hope so. I did when I got on this thing."
"I wonder what it'll be like outside."
Esau had no reply for that. Just now his attention was on how he felt physically-light-footed, even light-headed. "Do you feel like I feel?" he asked.
"Might be. How's that?"
"Kind of strange. Light."
From behind them another voice spoke. "We all feel it. Things weigh less on Terra, including us. Back home I weighed three hundred and thirty pounds. Here I weigh two hundred and thirty."
Esau looked back at the man, a man about his own age. And like himself, rather tall by the standards of New Jerusalem. But not as strong-looking as most; he didn't have the look of a farmer. Also, he wore eyeglasses. Esau decided he must be a speaker of the books. Or judging by his age, a student speaker.
"How could that be?" Esau asked. "We don't look any thinner than we used to."
"Because the gravity is different here. A pound at home only weighs point-seven pounds here."
Esau wondered what a "point" had to do with it. And grabbity? "What's `grabbity'?" he asked.
"Gravity," the fellow said soberly, "is what God created for things to weigh differently on different worlds."
Esau didn't ask anything more. He didn't think much of the answers he'd already gotten. Besides, they were spilling down a ramp now, into a cold drizzle. It had been early summer when they'd left home. Here it felt like fall. Three months then, he told himself, or a little more. Seems like they told the truth about that. Combined with not stealing his clothes, it made the Terrans out to be not so bad as he'd feared. Maybe they'd changed over the centuries.
He was glad he had his homespuns on again, and not the thin Terran clothes he'd slept in. Wool would keep off the drizzle better. At the foot of the ramp, tall men dressed like the armed guards in the corridor directed them into separate columns of twos. There was a certain amount of confusion, and the guards had to do some pulling and pushing. When one of them pulled on Esau, he didn't seem very strong, just tall. Esau told himself he could take the guy down and sit on him if need be. But it went all right, though one of the guards cursed way worse than Esau had ever heard in his life. The columns separated somewhat, eight or ten feet apart. Then someone up ahead shouted "halt" in another really loud voice, and after some jostling and piling up, the columns got themselves stopped.
Looking sideways down the gap between his column and the next, Esau saw a man talking into something he held in one hand. The words came out loud enough; it seemed to Esau he could have heard them a quarter mile. The man said that when their name was called, they should go to a flag that someone up ahead was waving in the air. Then a bunch of names were called, some of men, some of women. After a bit they got to the W's-there was even a Wesley-but no Esau or Jael. Then the process started over again at a different flag.
Esau stood there in the rain through several rounds of that, while the drizzle started to soak through. The column had got a lot thinner before his name was called-his followed by Jael's-and he took off at a trot. Running was so easy, he began to believe in grabbity. Jael had already been somewhere up near the flag; now he could see her standing by it. She'd seen him, too, and was waving her arms overhead.
Their group was led to a large sort of tent, the biggest he'd ever seen. Light passed through it, but he couldn't actually see through it. There they were given a kind of food-crunchy flatbread that tasted decent enough-and water to wash it down. Then they'd been lined up, each line leading to a different man at a different table. He and Jael stayed together now, determined not to be separated again, Esau first, Jael close behind. These lines also moved slowly; another kind of "processing," Esau decided. The people doing it to them wore clothes just alike, as far as he could telclass="underline" greenish-brown. When he reached the table for their line, the man sitting there had him say his name to a small box.
"Esau Wesley," Esau said, then gestured. "Hers is Jael Wesley."
The man ignored the last part. "Esau Wesley, you need to make a decision now, the one they told you about before you left New Jerusalem. There are two kinds of jobs available to you. You can either be a soldier, and protect humankind from the invaders, or you can be a laborer. The choice is yours. But I must tell you that if we get too few soldiers, the invaders will win, and kill us all."
Esau's jaw jutted. "I'll be a soldier if my wife can be. We've got to stay together."
"No problem," the corporal said. "Now I'm going to give you instructions. Answer when I tell you to. And speak clearly." He paused. "Do you, Esau Wesley, understand that you are volunteering to be in the Commonwealth Armed Forces? And that you will be subject to all military rules and regulations? Please answer now, yes or no."