The guards ordered the new arrivals to begin unloading the supplies that had been crammed into the transport’s belly along with them. The crates and sacks were stamped with the numbers of work gangs. He worked without complaint, silently cursing himself with each strained muscle for not having kept in better shape.
As his vision adjusted to the dim light, he began to make out more detail in the landscape around him. At first he saw only the utter lifelessness of the plain, nothing but an unending undulation of the same ash-gray cinders that crunched under his heavy, chemical-sealed boots. His eyes kept searching for something more, until he noticed that the cinder desert was pockmarked here and there by an odd extrusion— small craters, their puckered mouths smeared with something black and tarry.
Near the transport there was a cairn heaped up from slabs of stone; probably the sign marking the landing-place. He saw no structures of any kind; but scattered over the surface of the ground, three or four meters apart for as far as he could see, there were poles—wooden, metal, he couldn’t be sure—the size of felled trees, and always laid out in a direction he guessed was east to west.
When the offloading was finished, the ring of guards moved inward, passing through the dozen men being left there like so much extra baggage among the supplies. The last guard to pass him paused, looking at him with hard, knowing eyes. “Good luck, Commander,” the guard said. “You’re going to need it.”
Gundhalinu froze, stared at him, trying to make the guard’s face into the face of someone he knew, one of the men who had once served under him. But the man was a stranger. A stranger far from home.
The guard grinned, and turned back to the transport. The hatch gaping in its underbelly took him in and sealed. The ship rose into the purple twilight with the heavy throbbing of a heartbeat, and rapidly dwindled in the distance.
Gundhalinu dropped the sack he was somehow still holding, feeling the stares of the small knot of strangers around him penetrate his flesh like needles. He said nothing, not acknowledging them, as he looked toward the men on the perimeter who had been waiting for the transport’s departure as patiently as hungry carnivores.
The work gangs came forward, each one a coherent unit, the solidarity of their members a show of strength, an act of defiance intended to keep the other gangs at bay as they came in to collect their supplies.
The men around Gundhalinu pressed closer together, instinctively, as the gangs approached and began to go through the supplies. They picked out their own shipments until the ground around the new convicts was completely empty. And then one man broke away from each pack, coming in from their territory to study the newcomers. Gundhalinu guessed that they were the gang leaders, coming to choose recruits.
He held his breath, his tension a physical pain in his stomach as he waited for someone to denounce him. But no one around him said anything, all of them suddenly preoccupied with their own fates. He realized what it would mean to be left on your own in this wasteland. At least as part of a work gang there was some chance of survival.
The gang bosses who came to pick and choose among the new arrivals were ragged and bitter; pale-skinned, dark-skinned, and everything in between. He endured, with the other new men, being inspected like an animal or a slave. The threeor four biggest, strongest-looking men went first; he began to smell desperation among the ones who remained.
“Show me your hands.” The words were in Trade, the bastard tongue that was probably the only language most of them had in common.
He glanced up into the hard, emotionless stare of one more set of eyes. He held out his hands; the other man’s heavy, callused fingers touched his smooth palms. The man snorted and shook his head. “Bureaucrat.”
“I can fix things,” Gundhalinu said, in Trade. “I’m good at fixing things.”
“Got nothing to fix,” the man said, “and you’re not pretty enough.” He moved on.
Someone else stepped into his place. “You say you can fix things?” Gundhalinu nodded, studying the other man, as he was being studied. The gang boss was about his own height, gaunt and raw-boned, not an imposing figure. His face was dark, layered with grime; his eyes were gray and deep-set. Gundhalinu couldn’t guess his homeworld, but he recognized the measuring intelligence that looked him over, still holding back judgment. “Kharemoughi?” the man said.
Gundhalinu nodded.
“Tech?”
Gundhalinu nodded again, reluctantly; sensing that the other man would know when he was being lied to.
“What was your crime?”
Surprised, he said, “Treason.”
The man grimaced, and shook his head. “I think you’re too smart,” he said. “Politicals aren’t worth the trouble.”
Gundhalinu moved suddenly, as the other man started to turn away; used a Police move to pull him off-balance. The other man went down flat on his back, taken totally off-guard. Gundhalinu stood looking down at him. “I can take care of myself,” he said.
The man got slowly to his feet, his expression a mix of self-disgust and grudging amusement. “Okay,” he said, and shrugged. “I’m Piracy. Come on, Treason.” He turned, starting away.
“But he’s a Blue!”
Piracy spun back as the prisoner still standing unclaimed beside Gundhalinu shouted out the words. There were razors in his stare. “Is that right, Treason?” Piracy asked softly. “Is it?”
“The guard called him ‘Commander.’ ‘Good luck, Commander,’ he said, ‘you’re going to need it.’ …”
“Oh, yeah?” The gang boss who had rejected Gundhalinu first pushed toward him again. At the perimeters of his vision, Gundhalinu saw heads turning, the sudden ripple of bodies starting into motion, starting inexorably in his direction, as if he had suddenly developed a magnetic field. The big man shoved him, hitting him hard m the center of his chest, so that he staggered back into the waiting arms of half a dozen other men behind him. He struggled free, kicking and elbowing, as their hands tried to get a hold on him.
He stood in the center of the small open space that was suddenly all that was left to him; ringed in now by a wall of convicts. “I’m a sibyl!” he said, hearing his voice break. “Keep away from me—!” He lifted a hand to his throat, to bare the tattoo that was also a warning sign, that meant biohazard to anyone who saw it. His fingers brushed the cold metal of the block; he remembered suddenly that the collar completely covered his tattoo.
“Where’s your proof?” somebody called.
“He’s got no proof. He’s lying.”
“Come any closer, and I’ll prove it on you!” Gundhalinu shouted.
“You want to bite me, Blue?” Someone else laughed. “You can bite my big one, you Kharemoughi cocksucker.”
“I never believed that ‘death to kill a sibyl’ shit, anyhow—”
Gundhalinu heard the catcalls starting, the muttered threats and curses in half a dozen languages—the hungry sounds of a mob starved for entertainment, for release, for a victim. He turned, slowly, balancing on the balls of his feet as the trap of human flesh closed on him.
They came at him first in ones and twos, and he held them off, sent them back into the mob again, crippled, or laid them out on the cinder field. At first his mind barely registered the blows his own body took; he had not fought, even in practice, for a long time, but the adrenaline rush of his fear honed his reflexes and deadened his pain.
And then they began to come at him in twos and threes, threes and fours, pinioning his arms, tripping him, falling on top of his struggling limbs and body Someone’s hands were at his neck, crushing the metal collar into his throat, choking him into submission. He twisted his head, opening his mouth, and used the only weapon left to him. He sank his teeth into the man’s wrist. The strangler bellowed, the pressure on his throat eased, and then came back doubled, sent the universe of stars reeling across his sight.