Five

Such an Opportunity to Broaden

 

            Upon first meeting Tomas Witt, it was impossible for Dorsey Jefferson to overlook a constant tremor in the older man’s right hand.  They had come face to face in an intimate, but impressive triangular room with brushed tresanium alloy lining decoratively textured, rust-brown clay walls (what passed for the smart look of the year according to those "in the know”). 

            Dorsey was determined to impress.  A faculty job at The Sykes Academy was hanging in the balance.

            In truth, he needed to do more than make an impression.  He needed to create the illusion that he was the clear choice for the position, because, strictly speaking, he was not technically qualified.

            Even as Witt formally introduced himself and explained that Sykes preferred a seasoned faculty member such as himself to conduct the interview instead of the school's director, who was no academic, Dorsey found it difficult to ignore the quivering hand.  Moreover, as Witt extended his left hand to shake, Dorsey began to present his own right, quickly switching to his left to avoid an awkward clasp.  Dorsey felt the unexpected shivers of guilt rise up through him as they shook hands and Tomas Witt smiled brightly at him.  The lying he had been prepared to do in pursuit of the job suddenly felt far more mercenary.

            "Shall we dig in and get serious?" the older man asked with a burst of enthusiasm.

            The lies actually started well before Witt walked into the room.  Dorsey had arranged for the interview to be held on Kovetkoh, a settlement named after the company that owned and operated it.  Kovetkoh would make it appear as if Dorsey had truly arrived.  Not unlike Sykes, Kovetkoh was among the best at what they did:  creating consortiums of investors for opportunities in manufacturing and engineering.  Kovetkoh packaged deals.

            The biggest deception in the choice of location?  Dorsey didn't work there.  Didn't have a single tie to Kovetkoh other than three individuals within the company he'd managed to coax into helping him get use of the room for a few hours.  Inducing their cooperation didn't come inexpensively:  two hundred thousand dervin (the currency of choice in the region) -- every last bit of Dorsey's savings since leaving Hyland.

            Dorsey reached Kovetkoh twelve hours before Witt was scheduled to arrive.  Critical for him to be completely ready.  The three “company men” who'd taken his money were obliged to keep him under wraps; Kovetkoh was not without prying eyes.

            Fortunately, the facility was large enough to offer numerous places to stow the unauthorized Dorsey Jefferson for half a day.  But that still didn't prevent one of the three Kovetkoh men from beginning to panic just as Dorsey arrived.

            "We should just cancel this damn thing, send this blander back where he came from," urged Harebyer, the shortest of the trio.  He had a point.  They'd be discharged if anyone found out what was going on.

            "It's two hundred thousand dervin, you bihstburter!" Nin Seegahl, thin and pale, said, berating his co-conspirator.

            The shorter man was properly cowed.  His confederates' use of the most demeaning slur among men of accomplishment obviously hit a sore spot. (Bihstburter suggested a man of weakness -- one who might be capable of rising to a certain position but without the wits and heart to hold onto it.) 

            Harebyer relented and Dorsey was placed in a stifling, overheated utility room to pass the time until Witt's arrival.  Not to be completely denied his say in things, Harebyer lingered in the "hiding" room with Dorsey.

            "You put more into faking a job here than most people would give to actually get hired.  What the hell's wrong with you?"

            The perturbed little man left on that note.  A job with Kovetkoh, lucrative as it may be, didn't interest Dorsey.  A position there meant worries about extending your value to the owners, proving yourself on schedule, in perpetuity.  Harebyer was proof enough of that:  A sad, angry sort who clenched his jaw in rhythm, as if letting anxiety squirt out of his system in tiny, manageable bursts.  Kovetkoh was a trap in gold-laced wrapping. 

            Sykes, however, was something entirely different.

 

V          V          V          V

 

            Years earlier, in pursuit of a far less desirable situation than the Sykes job, Dorsey had learned a valuable lesson about appearances versus reality in the world of U-Space opportunity. 

            He'd come to be stuck in the initial stages of liberation from the suffocating confines of Hyland with virtually no prospects.  Manual labor jobs aboard cargo molkas hadn't panned out (not surprising, given that he hated them and was no good at the work).  Dorsey Jefferson badly needed a source of income.

            It was at this stage that Dorsey arrived at a facility officially named The Sipchinn-Belles Opportunity and Situation Placement Affiliate, but informally referred to as "The Wheel".

            Dorsey had no idea it even existed until he was in his fourth month away from Hyland -- another example of how much he'd been missing out on in the sheltered food processing settlement.  Once he'd been told, however, he made for it with urgency.

            Although it had functioned in decades past as a hostessing niche (what would have been called a brothel on old Earth), by the time Dorsey learned about The Wheel, it had been turned into an employment exchange.  The owners and operators made their money renting bare-bones rooms to men and women in search of work.  Employers filtered in and out, scanning, scrutinizing and sometimes selecting. 

Rooms weren't terribly expensive at The Wheel, Dorsey had been told, but once you ran out of acceptable currency, there was no pity to be found among those who ran the place. 

            "They'll have you on transport out to the nearest pleph within the hour," one man familiar with The Wheel claimed while Dorsey worked beside him in a cargo molka laundry.

            Plephs, (commonspeak for refugee settlements) were to be feared.  Easy to find oneself there, damn difficult to muster the resources to get out.  No one could say how many had succumbed to hunger or sickness in such outposts, scattered across U-Space.  And if lack of resources didn't get you, hard-edged criminal types would give it their best shot.

            Still, Dorsey regarded The Wheel as his best chance to improve his lot.  He resolved to be a translator.  Better pay, better treatment and a chance to frequent the more civilized levels of U-Space.

            Dorsey selected the least expensive accommodations The Wheel had to offer:  ten square meters, floor padding passed off as a bed and one clean towel per week. 

            He stashed his belongings, washed up in the communal bathroom and began registering for interviews.  The enormous "exchange room" (once an area in which hostesses latched onto clients) perpetually spun with activity.  Interviews for all available jobs occurred there and hopefuls would bide their time waiting to get their chance.  Even when most interviews were done for the day, scores of job-seekers would congregate and swap stories of failure and near-misses.  The "end of the line" smell that wafted through the space hit Dorsey upon arrival, complementing the corroded ceiling plates, mismatched tables and chairs and metallic surfaces covered with a thin layer of pale green paint.

            "How many languages?" he was asked in his first interview by an overworked, beleaguered representative of a trading company searching for translators. 

            “Three,” Dorsey replied, listing them off:  English, French and Spanish.  He was dismissed out of hand.

            Dorsey told the next interviewer that he'd mastered four languages, brazening his way through a few half-correct phrases in Btawn (a mixture of Spanish and Chinese infrequently spoken by a handful of people on Hyland.)

            Again, no job.

            "Nobody cares about Btawn," the interviewer told him, moving on to the next candidate.

            Although Dorsey had enough currency to stay for three additional evenings, he didn't have anywhere else to go from The Wheel should nothing materialize.  That is, he had nowhere to go other than the nearest pleph.

            Shortly after his fragmented Btawn had been rejected, Dorsey looked across the room to find his successor in the interviewee seat shaking hands and smiling broadly -- a deal struck, it seemed.

            A meal was in order.  He could only afford one each day, but the disappointment of two failed attempts might be blunted by getting something to eat.  Unfortunately, the local fare went down even worse than the poxy food on Hyland -- no small feat.

            There were also various alcohol-based concoctions available for despondent souls, but they came dear for anyone on a strict budget.

            Dorsey ordered a cup of Sipchinn Stew, as it was named.

            Finishing not quite half of the tortuous blend of so-called food, Dorsey found himself making lap after lap along the edge of the Exchange Room, hands in pockets, searching for signs of hope among the ongoing activity.

            He should have been comforted by the appearance of most other hopefuls in the room.  Their clothing, blank expressions and broad shoulders told him they'd be even less likely to land a position than he would.  They were definite thumbheads in this strictly skilled-worker market, where no "hard-hands" need apply.

            Engineers and numbers people, translators, trained food preparers and comms mavens were in demand at The Wheel.  Dorsey could easily pick out the serious contenders.  He was even able to instinctively separate the engineers from everyone else.  They just had a look about them.

            And that got Dorsey to thinking.

            The truth was that in U-Space, it didn't matter who you were or who you thought you were.  All that counted was who you could convince everyone else you were.

            Already in the nine months since leaving Hyland-6A in the middle of the night he had run across people in various places who boasted descent from iconic figures in human history prior to man's foray into space.  There had been Gladstones and Garcias, Changs and Carlisles, Pettibones and Puccinis.  Most of them were convincing -- even more so than his father had been with the insistences about Thomas Jefferson.  Most of them also managed to parlay their connection to old Earth into benefits or privileges of some kind.

            The survey of the deserving candidates in the exchange room also caused Dorsey to reconsider his own apparel, which he found wanting.  The common gray-weave combo that he wore wasn't distressed with signs of physical labor, but also did not meet the look of the high, wrap-around detachable collars, striped pants and pinchback shoes that were common among the more prominent set.

            With only two scheduled interviews remaining, Dorsey had no intention of reducing himself to a "last chance".  To hell with caution.  He didn't know what the consequences of larceny on The Wheel would be, but determined he had little choice. 

            Moving slowly along the corridors of the more expensive rooms, Dorsey knocked, waited for an answer and then pretended to have made a mistake if anyone opened the door.  When there was no response, he'd fiddle with the cheap lock until either finessing it open or prying it apart.  Even still, half a dozen room locks proved too much for him.

            It was only after an hour of break-ins (and within half an hour of his next scheduled interview) that Dorsey's efforts bore fruit.  He broke into the room of a man passed out in his underthings, the whiff of alcohol forceful.  Strewn across the floor were a pair of pants -- nicely made -- shingletop shirt (slightly out of style, but better than his own gray, coarse weave) and the sort of pinchback shoes that Dorsey had long yearned to own.

            None of it fit well, but he took the things anyway.

            Using every shred of guile, invention and desperation at his disposal, he sat down at the stained pink table for his next interview, twisted his body into a position that he deemed least likely to give away the poor fit of the clothes and answered the first question that came his way:  "How many languages?"

            "Seven."

            Skeptical though the third recruiter seemed, he took Dorsey's word and brief demonstration (which was mostly fairly convincing put-on) of fluency.  At that, Dorsey became the newest translator for Pekk Traders Interplanetary.

 

V          V          V          V

 

            And so it was with an ever-evolving sense of the facts of life in U-Space that Dorsey sat in the triangular room on Kovetkoh, across from Tomas Witt.  Hareyber and the other inside men played sentry, wandering the corridor outside, prepared to deflect anyone who might happen along.

            “You’re fluent in, what is it?  Eight languages?” Witt asked as one of the first questions of the interview.

            “Nine,” Dorsey replied.  It was one of the few truths he'd tell that day.  Six new tongues added to his repertoire in the course of work at a handful of jobs over eight years, translating and archiving.

            “Nine is good.  Nine is better,” Witt said with a weak smile, as if getting through the interview was a struggle for him with the quivering appendage. 

            Why had they sent this man?

            “And you were educated at Pasteroneous School,” Witt stated as fact, but seeming to wait for some reply from Dorsey.  Dorsey’s answer didn’t follow immediately, as the tremor in the older man’s right hand had oddly shifted to the left.

            “Yes, that’s right.”

            “Very disturbing to hear what happened to it.  How long had you been gone before Dirty Water reduced it to rubble?”

            “Three years.”  Dorsey knew his math had to be quick, looking Witt directly in the eye.

            “Did the demise of Pasteroneous have anything to do with your cultivating an expertise on modern criminal organizations?”

            There was now a slight twitch in Witt’s right eye.

            “In part.”

            Witt waited for a moment before speaking again.  “It sounds as though there’s more to that story.”  The tremor was back in the right hand again.

            Dorsey cleared his throat and leaned back in his seat, determined to pay no more attention to the roaming infirmities on display across the table.  Just as he was about to address Tomas Witt’s prompt for more information on modern criminal organizations, the filter between his brain and mouth finally gave out:

            “I’m sorry,” he said, “Are you having…a difficulty of some kind?”

            “What do you mean?” Witt asked, the twitch in his eye triggered again.

            “Running the risk of getting too personal…you have a persistent set of tremors.  I just…”

            “You what?”

            “Wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

            Witt smiled.  “Tell me about Dirty Water.”

 

V          V          V          V

 

            Dorsey was slightly dismayed to learn that Tomas Witt and Sykes were interested in having whomever they hired teach a healthy load of classes on contemporary criminal organizations and the cultural impact of such groups.  Languages would account for less than half of his teaching.

            “Do you, by any chance, know about the man you’d be replacing?” Tomas Witt asked as the interview was winding down.  The tremors and twitching had stopped.

            "I don't think so."

            “Ladd Bankenshoff.  Maybe you've heard of him.”

            Dorsey had.  "He did the study on corruption among settlements...advocated for organized solidarity against criminal enterprise."

            "You read it?  You're a reader?"

            "Of course," Dorsey replied, taking only a little affront to the question.  Ladd Bankenshoff was an admirable figure in Dorsey's eyes, as a thinker.  As someone who aspired to something more than what existed in his sphere of existence.

            “He was a close friend of mine.”  Witt’s manner seemed suddenly different.  Warm, in a way, yet no-nonsense and clear.

            “Was?"

            "I suppose word hasn't reached this area yet.  Ladd didn't mind taking chances.  We don't know if it was Dirty Water, Slowe Staine...or someone else."

            Dorsey reflected on it.  Before he could stop himself, he murmured, "It wasn't Dirty Water."

            "You're sure about that?" Witt asked, causing Dorsey to come back to the moment and meet his gaze.  Finally, the older man smiled.  "Of course you are.  You have to be...if you'll be effectively teaching the students at Sykes."

            Dorsey puzzled over the implication.

            “I have the power to hire anyone I believe would be an adequate replacement.  The problem is, no adequate replacement exists.  However, I can say that you come closer than every other candidate I’ve seen in the past six months and I’m tired of traveling around to conduct these interviews.”

            Witt extended his hand.

            When the basic details were ironed out and the older man was ready to leave, Dorsey couldn’t resist asking a question:

            “Tell me something, if you don’t mind…”

            “You want to know why I appeared on the edge of a seizure most of the last hour?”

            Dorsey nodded.

            “No opportunity to see you in front of a class.  It’s good to know how someone will manage to stay on topic, remain focused in the face of an unexpected situation.”

            "I see," Dorsey said.

            “Besides, it’s fun to watch the reaction of the person sitting across the table.”  Witt smiled once more and was gone.

 

V          V          V          V

 

            Dorsey’s deciding vote on Dole Vardon had delayed, but not eliminated his appetite.  A quick excursion through the back half of the promenade would deliver him to Flood’s and a mid-afternoon meal. 

            Closing in on his destination, he caught sight of Dominic Spackle out of the corner of his eye and, when it was clear that Spackle was angling his approach to overtake him, Dorsey slowed.

An appearance by Dominic Spackle had come to be an omen of unpleasantness in Dorsey’s eyes.  As aide to Director Pietro Sklar, he could, and did, appear frequently in the daily operations of Sykes.  Spackle,  somewhere in his twenties (Dorsey guessed) and conventionally handsome, suffered from the insecurity of being considerably shorter than the average man on Sykes and of having none of the formal education that faculty members possessed.

            Spackle made up for it by being indispensible to Sklar, always having the answers or information that the director needed.  Living in a room just off his little office outside Sklar’s much larger one, Spackle made himself available every moment of every day.

            The other, most immediately obvious quality to Spackle, was the degree to which he dressed up.  High, wrap-around collars, wide gray belts, expensive fabrics and square-toed, pinchback shoes that most people on Sykes would bypass for their decided lack of comfort.

            Jokes were made behind Spackle’s back about his wardrobe, enough so that they made their way back to Pietro Sklar.

            “No one’s expecting you to dress like a magna-plusse here.  Get something more comfortable,” he finally said to his right hand man.

            But Spackle had bigger plans for himself down the line and he continued to dress for them.

            As an extension of sorts for Sklar, Spackle could occasionally take a caustic attitude with faculty members, as if they were his to command.

            “You aren’t on your way to Flood’s, by any chance, are you?” Spackle asked Dorsey.

            “Keeping track of people’s eating habits now?” Dorsey kept himself from looking at the irritating little man.

            “Only when the person in question is overdrawn...which you are as of yesterday.”

            “What?”  Dorsey stopped, glaring at Spackle.

            “You’re overdrawn on your credit.  Your next salary installment will have to be adjusted, but until then:  No more meals at Flood’s.”

            “That must to be a mistake.”

            “I don’t make those kinds of mistakes.”

            By now, faculty members and students (including Tomas Witt) were within earshot, unable to help hearing Spackle’s claim as he spoke louder and more forcefully.  Dorsey worked to avert eye contact with any of them, half-turning to face the direction from which he’d come, the route back to his rooms.

            “If you ate in the mess more often, you’d keep more of your salary.  Maybe enough to pay for a trip between terms.  I don’t think you’ve been able to do that, have you?  Such an opportunity to broaden your horizons,” Spackle said.

            "I think that Professor Jefferson gets the message, Mr. Spackle," Witt said, appearing at Dorsey’s side, pulling him away.

            The slightest glimpse of smirk could be seen on Spackle’s face as he left.

            “One of the advantages of having taught here for years:  pay rises high enough and you can afford Flood’s food every meal of the day.” Witt said privately to Dorsey.

            Dorsey shrugged, pretending it didn’t matter to him.

            “Don’t let Spackle bother you.  His type never goes away.”

            “Maybe, but I’m not giving up hope,” Dorsey deadpanned.

            “From what I hear, there’s at least one person in the vicinity worse off than you.  Vardon voted out, hmm?”

            Dorsey couldn’t tell if it was an observation or a criticism.

            “Burgess voted that way, too.”

            “Mmm…but you were the deciding vote of record.  Another advantage of seniority at The Sykes Academy.”

            “All of this to make me feel better?”

            “Of course not.  You did what you thought was right.” Witt said, “Let me get this meal for you at Flood's.  Half a dozen of us just started."

            Dorsey gazed at the patrons inside the favored eatery, some of whom were still keeping an eye on developments just beyond the doors.  Starting to lean toward the place, however, Dorsey felt a sudden resistance from Witt's grip on his arm.

            "Unless it would make you feel uncomfortable," Witt suggested and shrugged, as if to imply that maybe it wasn't such a good idea at the moment after all.

            "I've got a few things back at my place."

            Witt nodded and patted Dorsey on the back.  "Good.  Much better than the mess.  Plus, you can put a little reading time in there, if you know what I mean."

 

V          V          V          V

 

            Dorsey knew exactly what Tomas Witt meant.  The documents from FTC-45 had been in his comms line since shortly after Witt first mentioned it.  The alert of its presence came through on Dorsey’s fleks, the personal comms link he wore around his wrist, issued by Sykes for the sake of efficient communication.  Yet he hadn't bothered to open any of the material for so much as a quick glance.

            The syntho-cheese in Dorsey's kitchen had gone bad.  That left an abundance of rebro paste, some breadstuffs and warm ale.  It would have to do.

            Tell me about Dirty Water.

            Disposing of his bad syntho-cheese, Dorsey thought back to the interview on Kovetkoh two years earlier.  The first time Witt had tested his expertise on something.  But that had been in pursuit of filling the Sykes job.  Now, Witt, intent on converting him into an ori-chaser, sought validation of whatever material the hired rogues had brought up from the long-dead settlement on FTC-45.

            ...you can put in a little time reading, if you know what I mean.

            Witt would absolutely not relent until Dorsey read the material.  The choice was clear:  give in...or fight a fight that would go on and on, becoming more of an irritating nuisance than could be tolerated.

            There was another consideration when it came to acquiescing to Witt and it nagged Dorsey as he began his disappointing meal of rebro paste and warm ale over the kitchen table:  lingering guilt.

 

V          V          V          V

 

            Tell me about Dirty Water.

            "Dirty Water remains the preeminent criminal organization in U-Space, despite Slowe Staine's claims to the contrary."  Dorsey's opening response to Witt's prompt for an appraisal of the original U-Space "gang" during the Kovetkoh interview was met with a brief nod and expectant gaze that said, give me more.

            Dorsey provided examples.  He cited particular episodes and trends of criminal behavior  and corruption initiated by Dirty Water.  Kidnapping, smuggling, theft on a grand scale and even the subjugation of entire settlements.  The things which Dirty Water would not attempt made for a short list.

            Dirty Water were even frequent "poachers" into C-Space, hitting colonies on the fringe of Earth-controlled territory, Dorsey pointed out, naming five separate incidents.

Tomas Witt listened without the slightest sign of skepticism.  It allowed Dorsey to hit his stride in the proving his worth.  Such a receptive listener was Witt, that Dorsey nearly forgot about his most guarded secret of the day, the thing which allowed him to be so intimately acquainted with Dirty Water: he was directly affiliated with the group.

 

V          V          V          V

 

            Interviewing with Tomas Witt on Kovetkoh hadn't simply been to make a good impression.  It was an absolute necessity.  Hosting the interview at Dorsey's settlement of employment at the time would have been impossible.

            The job with Pekk Traders Interplanetary procured at The Wheel had disappointed:  shortsighted, unimaginative people at every turn, content to repeat the same functions each day.  Happy to retire to private rooms each evening where hours of pre-packaged entertainments could wash over them and rock them to slumber.  Dorsey may just as well have been back on Hyland-6A.

            Two more less-than-inspiring positions followed Pekk.  Considerations of returning to his haska began to appeal to Dorsey, as humiliating as it would have been.

            And that's when he stumbled across an opportunity at Lilligee & Company, a going concern that held promise.  Even if one didn't know the company by name, its product had dug into the consciousness of countless citizens of U-Space:  Gleeson, nutritional supplement of the age.

            Settlements with high levels of physical labor imported the stuff by the ton to keep their workforce going.

            With Gleeson, for Better Living, Better Life.

            Generations of U-Spacers knew the longtime slogan almost as well as their own names.

            A product and history such as that was worth a try, Dorsey reasoned, and joined Lilligee & Company as a translator and comms coordinator.

            Unfortunately, it took only hours following his arrival at the Lilligee compound to discover that the company was a front for Dirty Water.  No real phenomenal deduction; people within Lilligee made no attempt to hide the fact.  Days  began translating, forging transmission signals (which he learned to do under duress) and generally aiding in corruption flowing in and out of Lilligee's confines.

            It was bad enough that Gleeson turned out to be a marginally toxic concoction masquerading as a nutritional supplement.  Lilligee involvement in scores of Dirty Water's other illegal endeavors created a whole spectrum of sins to which Dorsey had become an accomplice. 

            Dorsey had to perform well to keep from running afoul of the people in charge of Lilligee.  In turn, his exemplary work rendered him indispensible.  The thuggish head of Dorsey's sector, Kivvington, rewarded this proficiency with a declaration of 'ownership'. 

Generally referred to as Chief Bossman, Kivvington was a strange baldheaded specimen who never seemed to forget anything.

            "You’re just too damn good at what you do," he told Dorsey, explaining his reason for the declaration.  “I’d never find a good replacement for you.”

            Not that Dorsey wasn't treated somewhat well.  He ate the best food of his life and enjoyed a comfortable set of rooms in which he was provided with various creature comforts (Dorsey's favorite was the air filtration system that circulated pleasantly scented oxygen into his sleeping quarters with a tranquilizing effect, assuring deep sleep every evening).

            Moreover, once each year, the staff of Lilligee who demonstrated proper motivation in their work and engendered trust were allowed an annual sojourn to any Dirty Water controlled settlement in U-Space.  An old Earth tradition:  vacation.

 

V          V          V          V

 

            Dorsey valued his friendship with Tomas Witt and it had grown strong since his arrival at Sykes.  That didn't change the fact that he could never tell the man for whom he had enormous respect the truth.  And that left him with the guilt which would lie dormant for periods, but always surface, as it did in the face of the material Witt urged him to read.

            He triggered the ether-screen to a position over the table that held his sorry meal and  began.

            Initially, there was nothing but transport manifests, shift assignments and official decrees of death for half a dozen or so unfortunates.  Uninspired, these in no way offered a revelation about the possibility of forced migration.  And then, the flow of information from FTC-45 was interrupted by a personal note from Witt, separating the underwhelming appetizer from the main course of the exercise:

 

Dorsey,

No more numbers.  One man’s story.  Scour it, if you will, for clues in the language:  syntax, idiom, vocabulary and the rest to tell me you believe it to be as old as its written date indicates (and I’m confident you will).  Once you do, I plan to spread it across U-Space.  Can you think of a more noble puruit?

p.s. – No shame in joining a cause late in the day…so long as you join.

Tomas

 

Dorsey read on:

 

7 February 2163

 

This record of the days following removal from my home in Islington is the best available means to maintain sanity and exert some measure of control over my life.  That is my purpose in this exercise.  I've no way of knowing if anyone besides myself will  ever read these words, nor if they'll be sympathetic to my point of view.

 

I've heard that similar attempts to chronicle what's going on off-Earth have been met with hostility by those running the relocation centers of the sort I'm in right now.  Some have been beaten and, rumor has it, others killed.  As a physician, I've been given greater freedom and special treatment to administer to the sick.  Consequently, I've been left out of personal searches thus far.

 

I can't say exactly where this place is in relation to Earth, but all indications suggest that we are far beyond the outer reaches of solar system and destined never again to be any closer to the planet on which we were born.

 

Around seventy of us from Islington (complete families and all) were gathered and eventually joined with several hundred more from other parts of London.  We were then transported to the space elevators just outside of Bath.  Years ago, as a boy, I saw the Bath lifts from a distance at night.  That image of soft, green glowing tentacles rising from the surface of Earth and disappearing into the sky, far past the point that I could follow them with my unaided eye presented the most exotic, imagination-stirring sight of my young life.  Platforms were racing up and down those glowing lines, back and forth between the near reaches of space and the ground on which we all walked.  I also recall commenting on the incredible nature of it all.  My parents remained silent, not even acknowledging that I'd spoken.

 

Riding one of the lifts just days ago for the very first time gave me anxiety equal in measure to the enthusiasm I felt as a boy.

 

The transport on which we were loaded carried a total of more than three hundred people.  In turn, when we arrived at the relocation facility, the three hundred from our vessel were herded into an area that held thousands.  I heard French and Spanish spoken in close proximity along with the English that can only come from Americans.

 

We were provided meals twice a day and padding on which to sleep, but the food was bloody awful and sleep only came as the result of days on end without slumber.  The chaotic, rumbling quality of the large, unpartitioned area we are in has made it difficult to lay down, close eyes and find peace.

 

They left us with nothing to occupy our time, only the uncertainty of the future to contemplate.  After nearly a full day under the conditions, it was a group of Americans just down the way from our Islington bunch who provided the first bit of entertainment.

 

Grey-uniformed "facilitators" have been present in small bunches ever since our arrival.  Their stated purpose is to aid in our transition to new lives, but their demeanor and occasional forcefulness suggests a more sinister reality.  One week ago, they began to appear, little by little, in our cavernous holding area.  Before long, there were several dozen of them.  The only weapons visible among them were the batons harnessed across their backs, easily retrieved.  None of them spoke at first.  The rest of us let our conversations dwindle. 

 

A pointy-nosed facilitator arrived and spoke, informing us that we should be prepared to move and be sorted for final destinations shortly.  He repeated the message again and again as he walked through the crowd, dozens of his men behind him.  Pointy-nose didn't bother to raise his voice much.  He seemed to want anyone just out of range to make the effort to get closer and hear him.  He was cocksure and cold.  Proudly insensitive to the anxiety and suffering around him.

 

The other facilitators began separating people from the few personal possessions they'd been allowed to bring -- small bags at most.  If you couldn't wear it on your person, it was taken away.  Worse yet, confiscation did not end with material goods.  The groups from various parts of the globe which had remained segregated until arriving in the holding area had started to disperse and blend into one another.  Facilitators, under the watchful eye of pointy-nose, began shoving people back into point-of-origin categories.

 

One group I knew to be French were addressed by pointy-nose:  "You will all take the surname of Grenoble."

 

The message was related in French by one of the other facilitators.  Immediately after the translation, another gaggle of these unctuous authority figures went from man to woman and child, recording them one by one on devices that indicated "rebirth", erasing previous identities.  I could hear small bits of complaint exchanged between the new "Grenobles", but my French is so poor that none of it made sense.

 

This is roughly where the Americans brilliantly entered the picture.

 

As facilitators followed pointy-nose down through the crowd, the Americans watched from perhaps fifty meters away, figuring out what was happening and chattering among themselves.  The pushing, pulling and renaming of people drew ever closer to the refugees from the U.S.

 

I suppose it's not only Americans who would have done what they were cooking up.  They certainly had time to assemble a plan.  Yet, there was something quite "Yankee" about it -- insofar as I claim to understand the American nature and spirit.

 

One facilitator asked a trio of U.S. men what city they came from, only to receive defiant stares and replies such as, "Figure it out yourself" and "Your ass".  Another American announced that he was from the moon and had only been on Earth to visit relatives.

 

"You made a big mistake dragging me all the way out here.  When everybody on the moon learns about this, you'll lose your fancy uniforms."

 

We all laughed.  All of us that understand English, anyroad (as my Yorkshire-born countrymen  just down the way from me would have said).  Even those who didn't speak the language began to laugh, as such responses are infectious.

 

When the facilitator stood straighter, tightened his jaw and demanded the names of each person in the little group, they responded with names that I recognized as those of past American presidents.  Theodore Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Stuart Abramson.  One large man with a beard close by, wanting to get in on the action, identified himself as former president Elizabeth Steele.  The laughter continued.  More barbs from observers on the fringe and general merriment made us all feel a tad brighter.  It seemed as critical as oxygen in that moment for everyone there to feel that they could give as well as take in this stark nightmare.

 

However, any pleasure we grabbed ended there.  Pointy-nose arrived, conferred with several of his underlings and made his way to the large, bearded Yank.

 

"I'm told that you're Elizabeth Steele," he said.

 

The response didn't come immediately.  The man who had been last to join in on the lampooning of the facilitators looked to his companions.  He didn't seem to want to lose face along with everything else he'd had taken away.

           

"You've heard of me.  That’s flattering."

 

Pointy-nose took hold of his baton and delivered a swooping uppercut to the chin of the bearded man, giving off a sound that I knew to be the fracturing of bone.  Once on the ground, nearly senseless, the victim of the blow tried to sit up.  Before he could do so, pointy-nose drew a weapon from inside his uniform and fired one shot into his skull.

 

The air was taken from the room and the only voices to be heard were from those not close enough to have seen what happened.

 

"No place at all is this for such esteemed people," pointy-nose said to us, eyes fixed unsympathetically on the dead man.  "Stuart Abramson?"

 

As pointy-nose scanned the people on all sides of him, the man who had originally claimed the name of the long-dead president said nothing.  His eyes drifted to the ground and remained there.

 

It did him no good.  One of the original facilitators on the scene pointed him out and "Stuart Abramson" was brought forward.

 

"I have a mess here that needs cleaning up, Mr. President," pointy-nose sneered at the man whose eyes remained lowered.  Pointy then faced the rest of us and circled the dead man.

 

"You'll all receive DNA and retinal scans for your identity profiles which will follow you to your final destination.  This," he raised his voice for emphasis while pointing at the shell-shocked man beside him, "is Stuart Abramson, former President of the United States.  Any person referring to him by another name while you're still at this facility will not make it beyond our boundaries.  I hope I make myself clear on this point."

 

Rumblings further back in the crowd were quickly shushed by others who didn't want to see any more violence.  Pointy-nose continued:

 

"The identities you are supplied with here will be permanent.  They are the names you'll carry for the rest of your lives.  Since so many of you are inclined to be someone else, I will indulge your wish as a gesture of hospitality."

 

He picked a small, excessively frightened man from the group and dubbed him Rourke Pelowinski, the famed American spree killer of thirty years ago.  An overweight man who had difficulty walking became Hector Padilla, top-tier Mexican footballer.  When a muscular, rough-looking figure was pulled from the crowd, pointy-nose paused for a moment, thought and finally announced:  "Sir Isaac Newton."

 

And on it went.  A source of considerable amusement for the facilitators, pointy-nose left his subordinates to continue the renaming process.  None of them seemed to tire of the humiliating exercise and it made me wonder how people of this sort, with no apparent ability to empathize, are made.  Is there one of these in each of us?  I pray not.

 

That was seven days ago, and as I conclude this entry, I will oversee a final patient of mine here at the relocation facility before being sent to my ultimate destination.  All of the men and women who were with me upon arrival are long since departed to their worlds and I can only wish them peace in their lives going forward.

 

V          V          V          V

 

            Dorsey felt sick.  He told himself that the rebro paste had gone as bad as the syntho-cheese and that he should have disposed of it.  Shutting down the ether screen, he proceeded into his bedroom and rolled onto the mattress that was not nearly as nice as the sleeper he'd had at Lilligee.

            He considered, for a moment, all the people he'd known since leaving Hyland.  Specifically, he remembered Rene Pappas, a "numbers" man with Lilligee who sat very near him in the workspace and lived just across the corridor.  They'd become friendly, trusting one another just enough to share their mutual contempt for Dirty Water.

            But Rene Pappas took it farther.  Dorsey knew for some time that Pappas had been embezzling currency from Lilligee (and, thus, Dirty Water), but he wanted no part of the scheme.  Chief Bossman discovered the pilfering (which had reached a significant take) and physically dismembered him in front of every single individual who even remotely knew Pappas.  The killing was immediately followed by the most sumptuous, multi-course meal ever offered up on Lilligee.

            Dorsey excused himself, claiming nausea.  Chief Bossman seemed to write it off to a weak will on Dorsey's part, permitting it with the apparent knowledge that there was one member of his team he didn't need to worry about violating the rules.

            The bribe for the three Kovetkohvites would never have been possible if Dorsey didn't know the location of the currency Pappas had liberated from Dirty Water.  On the premise of a vacation, Dorsey took the two hundred thousand dervin and jumped ships at a transport exchange.  If the interview for the Sykes job hadn't panned out, he'd need to find a place he could hide from Chief Bossman. 

Not a simple proposition.  Dirty Water had a long reach.

            Dorsey felt bad for Rene Pappas.  He felt bad about lying to Tomas Witt to get the job, felt bad about all the others he left behind on Lilligee who seemed decent enough.  Now he felt bad for people he'd never met.  People described in a journal that he would have liked to say seemed unlikely, but which he knew rang genuine.  Dorsey even felt a little guilty about the three schemers on Kovetkoh who, in the weeks that followed their deal with him, ended up with worthless currency when the dervin ceased to be recognized and fell into oblivion with dozens of other forms of currency before.