It was all going very fast now, with comforting efficiency: they had managed to do it all right. Soon people were sitting all about him. Someone took the other decklevel bunk next to his, and he saw people on either side, and facing him and angling away down the diagonal view through the uprights. The room was getting quiet again, even the nonreaders having mostly found their places, so that the PA sounded even louder. He had already spotted the small packet the PA told them about next, the plastic case lying on the pillow, and there was a massive stirring as thousands of azi reached and took theirs as he did–as they opened the covers and found hygiene kits and schedules.

“Read your schedule for exercise,” the voice instructed them. “If you don’t read, you will have a blue card or a red card. Blues are group one. Reds are group two. I will call you by those numbers; you will have half an hour at a time.”

It was not much time. Jin was already plotting how he could adjust his personal routine to follow it. There were more instructions, where one went for elimination and how one reported malaise, and instruction that they must sit or lie in the bunks at all other times because there was no room for people to walk about. “A great deal of the time we will play tape,” the voice promised them, which cheered Jin considerably.

He felt uncertain what his life had meant up to this point. He remembered well enough. But the importance he had attached to things was all revised. His life now seemed more preparatory than substantive. He looked forward to things to come. There would be a world, he believed; and he was called on to build it. He would become more and more like a born‑man and he would be on this assignment for the rest of his life, one of the most important assignments even born‑men hoped to get. All of this was due to his good fortune in having been born in the right year, on the right world, of the right gene‑set, and of course it was due to his excellent attention to his work. There would be only good tape for him, and when he had gotten where he was going, when he looked about him at a new land, there were certain things which would have to be done at once, with all the skill he had. People believed in him. They had chosen him. He was very happy, now that all the disturbing things were over, now that he could sit in his own bunk and know that he was safe…and he would have just about enough time to understand it all before they would be there, so the tape promised.

There would be Pia, for instance. He would have liked to have found Pia in all this crowd, and asked her whether the tape had talked to her about him. But he thought that it had. Usually they were very thorough about such details. And likely they had known even what he would answer: perhaps their own supervisor had had a hand in it, reaching out to take care of them, however far they had come from their beginnings. He and Pia would make born‑men together and the tape said that this would be as good as the reward tapes, a reward anytime they liked as long as they were off duty. He had a great deal of new information in that regard to think on, and information about the world they were going to, and lists of new rules and procedures. He wanted to succeed in this new place and impress his supervisors.

The PA finished instructing them. They were to lie flat on their bunks, and soon they would be asked to take trank from the ampoules given them in their personal kit. He arranged all this where he could find it, taped the trank series to the bedpost, and lay down as he was supposed to do, his head on his hands. He would be very busy for the future. He was scheduled for exercise in the 12th group, and when it was called, he wanted to proceed to the right place as quickly as possible and to plan a routine which would do as much as possible for him in the least amount of time.

He had never been so taut‑nerved and full of purpose–never had so much to look forward to, or even imagined such opportunity existed. He loved the state which first ordered his creation and now bought his contract and saw to every detail of his existence. It created Pia and all the others and took them together to a new world it planned to give them. Into the bargain it had made him strong and beautiful and intelligent, so that it would be proud of him. It felt very good to be what he was planned to be, to know that everything was precisely on schedule and that his contractholders were delighted with him. He tried very hard to please, and he felt a tingling of pleasure now that he knew he had done everything right and that they were on their way. He smiled and hugged it all inside himself, how happy he was, a preciousness beyond all past imagining.

A tape began. It talked about the new world, and he listened.

iii

T00:21:15

Venture log

“…outbound at 0244 m in good order. Estimate jump at 1200 a. All personnel secure under normal running. US Swiftand US Capablein convoy report 0332 m all stable and normal running.”

iv

T28 hours Mission Apparent Time

From the personal journal of Robert Davies

“…9/2/94. Jump completed. Four days to bend a turn after dump and we’re through this one. Out of trafficked space. We’re coming to our intended heading and now the worst part begins. Four more of these–this time without proper charts. I never liked this kind of thing.”

v

T15 days MAT

Lounge area 2, US Venture

“That’s clear on the checks,” Beaumont said, and Gutierrez, among other team chiefs, nodded. “All equipment accounted for. Venture’s been thorough. Nothing damaged, nothing left. The governor–you can call him governor from now on–wants a readiness report two days after third jump. Any problem with that?”

A general shaking of heads, among the crowd of people, military and civilian, present in the room. They filled it. It was not a large lounge; they were crowded everywhere, and the bio equipment was accessible only in printout from Swift, which swore it had been examined, that the cannisters were intact and the shock meters showed nothing disastrous. More of their hardware rode on Swiftand Capablethan on Venture. They could get at nothing. It was a singularly frustrating time–and after two weeks mission apparent time it was still humiliating to sit in the presence of military officers or ship’s crew, who had never gone through the shaving, who had no idea of the thing that bound them together, who had.

And when it broke up, when Beaumont walked out, grayhaired and venerable and with her sullen special op bearing, there was a silence.

A moving of chairs then. “Game in R15,” one of the regs said. “All welcome.”

“Game in 24,” a civ said. “40,” another added. It was what they did to pass the time. There was a newsletter, passed by hand and not on comp, which told who won what, and in what game; and that was what they did for their sanity. They paid off in favor points. This was a reg, a military custom:–because where we been, Matt Mayes put it, ain’t no surety we get free cash; but favor points, that’s a loan of something or a walk after something or whatever: no sex, no property, no tours, no gear–cut your throat if you play for solid stakes. Favor points is friendly. Don’t you get in no solid game: don’t you bet no big favors. You’re safe on favor points. You do the other thing, the Old Man’ll collect all bets and shut down the games, right?

Got us reg civs, was the way the regs put it. They’re reg civs, meaning the line was down and the regs, the military, swept them into the games and the bets and otherwise included them. And it was a strange feeling, that all their pride came from the stiff‑backboned regs, like Eron Miles, whose tattooed number was real, because he came out of the labs, who recovered his bearings as fast as any of them whose numbers were wearing dim. It was We; and the officers and the governor were They. That was the way of it.