Out he went. The corridor was chilly. The Tosevites pressed back against the outer wall, making sure no males could come close and attack them. Nobody was foolhardy enough to try; no one who had any experience in the SSSR could doubt that the Big Uglies would cheerfully shoot any male who gave them the least bit of trouble.
The outer door at the far end of the railroad car was open. Ussmak made for it. He was used to being jammed into close quarters with many of his fellow males-he’d been a landcruiser crewmale, after all-but a little open space was welcome now and then, too. “Maybe they’ll feed us better here than they did on the train,” he said hopefully.
“Silence!” one of the weapon-toting guards bawled in the Russki language. He’d learned that command, too. He shut up.
If the corridor had been chilly, it was downright cold outside. Ussmak rapidly swiveled his eye turrets, wondering what sort of place this would be. It was certainly different from the battered city of Moskva, where he’d been brought after yielding up his base to the males of the SSSR. He’d got to see some on that journey, but he’d been a collaborator then, not a prisoner.
Dark green Tosevite trees grew in great profusion all around the open area where the train had halted. He opened his mouth a crack to let his tongue drink in their scent. It was tangy and spicy and almost put him in mind of ginger. He wished he had a taste-anything to take his mind off his predicament. He wouldn’t try to attack these Big Ugly guards. Well, he didn’t think he would, anyhow.
The Big Uglies’ shouts and gestures sent him and his comrades in misery skittering through a gateway in a fence made of many strands of the fanged stuff Tosevites used in place of razor wire, and toward some rough buildings of new, raw timber not far away. Other, more weathered buildings lay farther off, separated from these by more wire with fangs. Big Uglies in stained and faded coverings stared toward him and his companions from the grounds around those old buildings.
Ussmak didn’t have much chance to look at them. Guards yelled and waved some more to show him which way to go. Some held automatic weapons, too; others controlled snarling animals with mouths full of big, sharp yellow teeth. Ussmak had seen those Tosevite beasts before. He’d had one with an explosive charge strapped to its back run under his landcruiser, blow itself up, and blow a track off the armored fighting vehicle. If the Big Uglies could train them to do that, he was sure they could train them to run over and bite males of the Race who got out of line, too.
He didn’t get out of line, literally or figuratively. Along with the rest of the males from the train, he went into the building to which he’d been steered. He gave it the same swift, eye-swiveling inspection he’d used on the terrain surrounding it. Compared to the box in which he’d been stored in the Moskva prison, compared to the packed compartment in which he’d ridden from that prison to this place, it was spacious and luxurious. Compared to any other living quarters, even the miserable Tosevite barracks he’d had to inhabit in Besancon, it gave squalor a new synonym.
There was a small open space in the center of this barracks, with a metal contraption in the middle of it. A guard used an iron poker to open a door on the device, then flung some black stones into the fire inside it. Only when he saw the fire did Ussmak realize the thing was supposed to be a stove.
Surrounding it were row on row of bunks, five and six spaces high, built to a size that conformed to the dimensions of the Race, not those of the Big Uglies. As males hurried to get spaces of their own, the impression of roominess the barracks had given disappeared. They would be desperately crowded in here, too.
A guard shouted something at Ussmak. He didn’t know exactly what it meant, but he got moving, which seemed to satisfy the Big Ugly. He claimed a third-tier bunk in the second row of frames away from the stove. That was as close as he could get; he hoped it would be close enough. Having served in Siberia, he had an awed respect for the extremes Tosevite weather could produce.
The bunk’s sleeping platform was of bare boards, with a single smelly blanket-probably woven from the hairs of some native beast, he thought with distaste-in case that joke of a stove did not put out enough warmth. That struck Ussmak as likely. Next to nothing the Tosevites did worked the way it was supposed to, except when intended to inflict suffering. Then they managed fine.
Oyyag scrambled up into the bunk above his. “What will they do with us, superior sir?” he asked.
“I don’t know, either,” Ussmak answered. As a former land-cruiser driver, he did outrank the riflemale. But even males of the race whose body paint was fancier than his often awarded him that honorific salute now that they were captives together. None of them had ever led a mutiny or commanded a base after overcoming legitimate authority.
What they don’t know is how much I wish I hadn’t done it,Ussmak thought sadly,and how much more I wish I hadn’t yielded the base up to Soviet troops once it was in my claws. Wishes did as much good as they usually did.
The barracks quickly filled with males. As soon as the last new arrivals found bunks-bunks so far away from the stove that Ussmak pitied them when night came-another male and two Big Uglies came into the doorway and stood there waiting to be noticed. As they were, the barracks slowly quieted.
Ussmak studied the newcomers with interest. The male of the Race carried himself like someone who was someone, though his body paint had been faded and abraded till little remained by which to judge his rank. The Tosevites with him presented an interesting contrast. One wore the type of cloth wrappings typical of the guards who had oppressed Ussmak ever since he went into captivity. The other, though, had the ragged accouterments of the males who had watched from the far side of the fanged-wire fence as Ussmak and his colleagues arrived. He’d also let the hair grow out on his face, which to Ussmak made him look even more scruffy than Tosevites normally did.
The male spoke: “I am Fsseffel. Once I was an infantry combat vehicle band commander. Now I am headmale of Race Barracks One.” He paused; the Big Ugly with the fuzz on his face spoke in the Russki language to the one who wore the official-style cloth wrappings.Interpreter, Ussmak realized. He got the idea that a Big Ugly who understood his language might be a useful fellow with whom to become acquainted.
Fsseffel resumed: “Males of the Race, you are here to labor for the males of the SSSR. This will henceforth be your sole function.” He paused to let that sink in, and for translation, then went on, “How well you work, how much you produce, will determine how well you are fed.”
“That’s barbarous,” Oyyag whispered to Ussmak.
“You expect Big Uglies to behave like civilized beings?” Ussmak whispered back. Then he waved Oyyag to silence; Fsseffel was still talking-
“You will now choose for yourselves a headmale for this, Race Barracks Three. This male will be your interface with the Russki males of the People’s Commissariat for the Interior, the Tosevite organization responsible for administration of this camp.” He paused again to let the interpreter speak to the Big Ugly from the NKVD. “Choose wisely, I urge you.” He tacked an emphatic cough onto that. “If you do not make a selection, one will be made for you, more or less at random. Race Barracks Two had this happen. Results have been unsatisfactory. I urge against such a course.”
Ussmak wondered what sort of unsatisfactory results Fsseffel had in mind. All sorts of nasty possibilities occurred to him: starvation, torture, executions. He hadn’t thought in terms like those before the mutiny. His frame of reference had changed since then, and not for the better.