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 bothitems, 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 feltlighter, 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
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 bothitems, 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 feltlighter, 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
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