The Margarets (6 page)

It seemed to me I dreamed the proctor came, just as he had. I dreamed everything he had said and we had said, up until the point where the proctor turned to me to say, “Fluency in ET languages is valuable, but few families are sensible enough to let their children learn them early, when it’s easy for them.”

“It was Mother’s idea,” I said. “She says she wishes she’d learned languages when she was little, like her brother Hy.”

“You mean her uncle, Hy?” said the proctor.

I stopped. Why had I said that?

Mother said, “My uncle Hy, yes…”

The machine interrupted with a harsh, buzzing sound. It spoke: “Duplicated reference to unverified identity, name Hy, maternal kinsperson. Possible data variance. Hold! Hold!”

The proctor sat back, his lips tightly compressed, as printed forms began to flow across the screen. He muttered, “We always compare with former records, just to be sure. There seems to be a record discrepancy.”

“Discrepancy?” Mother faltered. Her hand shook on the arm of the chair. I had started toward her, but when I saw the fear in her eyes, I stayed frozen in place.

The flow of forms stopped, leaving only one on the screen.

“A medical record,” said the proctor in a chill voice.
Ma’am, your middle name is, I believe, Hazel? We have a record here of a perinatal death on Mars, specifically on the Phobos Station. Some twelve years ago. To Hazel Bannon, your maiden name, I believe?”

Mother tried to speak and couldn’t.

Father said, “It wasn’t on Earth. The emigration laws only pertain to Earth.”

The proctor shook his head, nostrils pinched. “When the Mars projects were closed, their records were subsumed into ours. During this interview, your daughter twice mentioned an unverified identity. That triggered a universal search by the data system, all medical records and all identity banks.”

Mother’s eyes were so full of fear that I cried out, “Mother! What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong,” said the proctor, “is you, young lady. You are not a four. You’re the second born of twins. You’re a five.”

“What does that mean?” I cried.

Mother sobbed, “Oh, Margaret!”

“You could be prosecuted for attempted falsification of records,” said the proctor.

“We didn’t know,” Father cried. “Phobos never counted. We never thought we’d be coming back to Earth!”

“Well, sir. Earth is where you are. You and your wife may remain here, but your daughter, Margaret, will be required to report to the shipping point within the next ten days. The shipping officers will be in touch.”

The dream was like watching a play. It was clear. The words were clear. In the dream, the proctor went away. When the door hissed shut behind him, Mother screamed, “I told you they’d find out, Harry!”

Father yelled at me for mentioning Hy’s name.

I cowered, wept, then howled, halfway between fear and fury, “You’re sending me away!”

Mother shouted, “They’re taking you away!”

“You knew about this,” I yelled. “You told Daddy they’d find out, so you knew I wasn’t a four! Why did you go ahead and have me if you were just going to let them do this…”

It was as though they hadn’t really thought of me until that moment. Mother fell to her knees and put her arms around me. Father stooped above us both, tears flowing.

I felt something squeezing my stomach and farther down, in my belly. I cried out with the pain, scrambled away from between them, and fled to the bathroom, where I stood, looking into the mirror while my insides cramped and jumped as though I had swallowed something alive that was trying to get out and split off from me. My skin felt damp. I thought I saw a shadowy presence moving around. For a moment I thought I could see it in the mirror, standing behind me, but there was nothing there except my own chalky white, scared face staring back at me.

From somewhere outside myself I heard something, or someone, saying very firmly, slowly, in a commanding voice: “It’s all right, Margaret. Just take a deep breath, it’s going to be all right.”

I don’t remember the subway trip to the South American elevator center, I just remember being there. It was huge, surrounded by sprawling dormitory and office buildings and centered on the immense reinforced and raised platform that anchored the elevators, some dozens of them, their transport ribbons virtually invisible, their translucent cargo pods making dotted lines that faded into invisibility, interminate fingers pointed at the silver shimmer of the staging platforms and the geosynchronous shipping station orbiting far above.

The authorities tried to discourage my parents from making the trip, but they insisted. They got no farther than one of the huge intake lobbies thronged with families saying good-bye.

“I’d have thought there’d be almost no one here,” Mother murmured. “Surely people can’t still be having children that are fives and over!”

“It’s the backlog,” Father murmured in return. “They’re limited by the capacity of the elevators and the availability of transport ships. There are only four elevator terminals, one each in Sumatra and South America, two in Africa. There’s been some talk about building more of them as ocean-based platforms, but the last time that was tried, a tsunami took it out. The problem is, building more would be expensive, and Earth can’t afford it.”

“I thought people would be flowing out,” Mother insisted. “This is more of an ooze…”

“I’m not in any hurry,” I interrupted. My voice didn’t sound like me. It was a firm, solid voice, like a shield. Someone else had given it to me. I couldn’t have contrived it on my own.

“That’s the spirit,” Father said, falsely cheerful. “You’ll probably be here quite a while. We’ll find a room nearby and visit you…”

The outposting officer, a tall woman with a shaved head and sharp, black eyes, immediately made the question of visitation irrelevant. “I’m a specialist in colony assignments, Margaret. You’ve studied ET languages.”

“Some,” I acknowledged.

“Some is better than nothing. If you ask for a colony posting, we can send you there rather than into bondage. Colony planets are in need of linguists.”

Mother ventured, “Would it be…someplace where my husband and I could go with her? So we could be together?”

The officer gave her a brief smile, almost a grimace. “Sorry, ma’am. The ships aren’t ours, they’re Omniont and Mercan ships. Earthgov has negotiated for a few colonist slots on each one; it’s the only way we can afford to send additional colonists, and we send no one over twenty-five. Anyone older than that doesn’t pay back the shipping costs.”

Father said, “A colony would be better, wouldn’t it?”

The officer replied, “Most people think so, yes.”

“What…where is the colony?” I asked. “I mean, what do people do there?”

“All colonies start out as agricultural,” the officer explained. “Then we recapitulate the history of civilization, from the ground up, though we cut a few millennia off the process. We go in as agriculturists, build livestock herds, then start prospecting for natural resources. We reinforce the population with additional colonists as soon as the food supply is adequate, then begin extraction of natural resources and get some wind and hydro power plants going. Except for Eden and Cranesroost, we’re well beyond that point in our colonies.”

“So, why do they want linguists?”

“Trade. As soon as a colony has something to sell, usually agricul
tural or mining products, somebody has to sell it. The income helps support the inflow of former bondspeople from the nearby Omniont and Mercan worlds.”

I found this puzzling. “But, if the colonists have been on Omniont worlds, haven’t they learned the languages?”

“Races who buy bondspeople do not teach them the local language. They communicate through interpreters. They find the idea of conversing with their workers repulsive.”

“I’d like to use the languages I learned,” I said, surprised at a feeling of sudden warmth. I’d felt frozen for days, but this felt…it felt right. “Which colony would you send me to?”

“You’ll be randomly assigned by a ship assignment computer. It separates bondspersons and colonists, then divides the colonists up by age, sex, skills, and the like, and assigns them singly or in small groups by chance. It avoids favoritism.”

Mother cried, “But how will we know where she is?”

The officer started to speak, then looked down and shook her head slightly. I knew she was about to tell a lie. When the officer looked up, smiling, she said, “Your daughter will be able to send you a message after she’s settled, but you don’t need to worry about her. People her age are always adopted by adults. She won’t be struggling on her own.”

The words felt like truth, including the encouraging smile the officer sent my way. Something about it had been misleading, however. True, but misleading. I almost asked, “What is it you’re not telling us?” but stopped myself. There was no point in drawing out my departure.

The officer had obviously dealt with this situation before. The moment the interview was completed, an usher took me by the arm and led me away as the sounds of Mother’s farewells faded into the background. I didn’t look back. It was all I could do to stay on my feet.

The first stop was a cavernous dormitory with numbered beds, where I was told to wait. I waited. Within the hour, someone found me there and told me where the toilets were and where the commissary was while attaching an elevator number tag around my wrist and a numbered identity disk around my neck. The fasteners of both
items, I was told, were unbreakable.

“These are your coveralls, put them on. These are your shoes. Put what you’re wearing into your baggage, put the shoes on just before you move to the pods. These are your baggage tags, attach them carefully. Bags are shipped separately.”

I changed into the overalls and packed my clothes. I set the shoes on the foot of my bed, where I wouldn’t forget to put them on. I tagged my baggage. Time passed while I sat in a cocoon of fog, too deadened to be afraid. Eventually, a loudspeaker summoned everyone to the adjacent commissary for a meal. The food was like all food, tasteless. No one seemed to be hungry. Back in the dormitory, after slow hours of nothing, I fell asleep, only to be wakened by another usher with a list.

“Ship change,” the woman said. “You’ll be going up this morning.”

I fought down a surge of panic, telling myself it was better to be going anywhere than staying where I was. “Going up” meant putting on the required shoes, making a required trip to the toilets, then joining a queue that wound in a snakelike curve toward the elevator pods. As each one filled, it shifted sideways, locked on to the rising nanotube-reinforced ribbon, and departed, as did the one I was in, packed among hundreds of others, each with an oxygen mask, each in an identical coverall, each with number tags on wrist and around neck.

A voice said: “This stage of your journey will last approximately three days. When we reach the staging platforms at nine thousand miles out, you will have a brief recess while your pod is shifted to the higher-velocity elevators that will take you on the next lap, another twenty thousand miles to the export station. That journey will also take about three days. The officers passing among you will give you a dose of tranquilizers and one of time-release Halt, to shut down excretory function.”

There were no windows. There was no wasted space. Rows of heads stretched in every direction. No one spoke. When the pod clamped on to the belt, a few people gasped, but only momentarily. Evidently it didn’t clamp on all at once; it slid a little at first, then gradually firmed up so we didn’t get jerked around. The feeling of being crushed eased, and after about three hours, I noticed that I felt
lighter, though I didn’t care greatly. Endless hours passed in a kind of dim nothingness. Orderlies came through, checking pulses. One or two of the people in seats nearby went limp, were unbelted and taken away. I was just starting to feel nausea when the pod abruptly unlocked from the belt and slid off to one side. The doors opened. People stumbled to their feet, out onto the domed, transparent-floored platform where we all stared disbelievingly downward at the Earth, a large blue ball, floating in blackness.

I had to go. So did everyone. As we filed toward the toilets, we were given premoistened cloths to wash hands and faces. There were no mirrors. I noticed men rubbing their hands over their stubbly faces. We were given something tasteless to drink before going into the next pod. The same announcement. The same shots. The same dimness and detachment.

At thirty thousand miles, the doors opened, we filed out. This time the drink they gave us was slightly larger, the time in the toilets was a bit longer.

“Pick up your baggage to your left,” we were commanded. Our line shuffled forward, picked up our baggage, joined a new queue.

“Colonist number seven-seven-zero-five-nine-zero-two,” said the checker, rubbing his eyes. “That way, to your left…To your right…”

I was so drugged and distant that when I felt myself split, it didn’t seem to matter. One of me turned left, one right, into areas seemingly open to space. Half a dozen ships hung high above, tethered to the station by swaying skeins of boarding umbilici. Five of the ships were immense. The sixth ship hanging above the transparent dome was small in comparison to the others. The access lane leading to it stretched empty across the wide lobby space, while those of the larger vessels held seemingly endless lines of boarders.

“Margaret Bain,” said a uniformed officer, glancing from my forehead to his list. “Number seven-seven-zero-five-nine-zero-two.” He stepped to the lane divider and opened a gate. “Through there,” he said, pointing at the empty access lane leading to the smaller ship.

“But, am I the only one going there?” I asked.

“Your number is the only number going there right now.” The officer glowered. “Get over there and stop asking questions…”

I stared at the empty lane doubtfully. “Is that a colony ship?”

“Look, little girl. That’s the ship you’re supposed to be on. Now get over there before I have to call security.”

I opened my mouth to say, no, it’s wrong, but the officer was red in the face, angry enough to let me know it would do no good to argue. Cowed, I turned into the empty access lane, meeting the glances of those occupying the crowded lanes far to my right, a few staring at me curiously. Among those crowded bodies was another me, walking away, just the way Wilvia had walked away years ago, going somewhere else. I opened my mouth to yell at her…me…but couldn’t think what I would say, even if she, I, looked back.