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He paused, and his face, already pocked with the scars of skin cancers economically removed, flushed dark. "I'm sorry, Professor. But it wouldn't do either of us a damn bit of good.
"And you can hate my guts all you want. Damned if I care. I don't have to do this, you know. There are people out there who'd be grateful if I spent more time with them."
Wyn bowed her head, fighting panic. I'm not equipped for this, she thought. Read, listen, stay at home; why join the rat race? she'd been told all her life. Her family was too old for people like her to go haring around the universe. Space travel-she tried to recall what she knew of it and was embarrassed she knew so little.
She wasn't going to live through this, she thought abruptly. But other exiles had survived. If she were weak, if she let her life slip away, she only let her brother and his trained slaves win that much earlier.
Listen; remember; try to keep alive. "Now, you've got one hour, one hour before you ship out. It's going to be rough. And if you're as smart as your records say"-incredulous headshake-"you'll help me prepare you to survive."
I don't believe this. I just don't believe it. She shook her head, waving away the offer of a trank. This was one nightmare for which she had to be conscious.
"Go ahead, Doctor," she said in the crisp voice she would use with her own specialists. "Maybe you could start by telling me what I face."
"First, Lunabase, then Outsystem. Tanith, maybe, or Haven." Coerced, perhaps, by her tone, he tapped in an inquiry on the computer, muttering under his breath as it beeped and sputtered. "There's a ship bound for Haven scheduled to reach Lunabase. Cold-weather world. I can make sure you're not dropsick, that your immunizations are up to strength, and that your circulation is in as good shape as it can be."
I'll live, Wyn vowed to herself. Living well-living at all-is the best revenge. And I'll get back . . .
He shook his head. Compassion replaced his earlier defensiveness. "Something else," he said. "I need your permission to inhibit your fertility."
Wyn burst out laughing.
"At my age?" she demanded. "Whom-or what do you think I'm going to meet on Lunabase . . . ."
"Lady, you listen to me. You're still at risk. And there's damn few contraceptives on board ship, and those'll go to the younger women, if they're lucky. If they're damned lucky. You don't want to be pregnant when a ship Jumps, believe me. Not with what they've got for medical care on board if you miscarry . . . ."
Wyn raised her eyebrows at him. "Doctor, I am not sexually active."
He shook his head at her. "Dr. Baker, you've got to understand. This trip's long. And it makes steerage look like a yacht. You won't be Dr. Winthrop Baker on board a BuReloc ship. You won't be much of anything except a female body. I can't tell you what to do with your own body. But if you've got any sense, you'll take the implant. It'll suppress menstruation, too. And believe me: you want that."
Ultimately, she did. Feeling vaguely queasy, she slid down off the examination table and dressed in the coverall he handed her, a coarse thing of greenish gray. Ship issue? she wondered and wondered even more to find herself curious.
"Better move it," said the medic. "But before you do . . ." he handed over her bookbag. "Your things are packed in it. I wouldn't let anyone handle that, if I were you. I added a few more medical supplies. You'll need them."
"Why?" she asked bluntly. "And how much?"
"I haven't sunk that low. Yet." He flushed, and the scars of his surgeries for skin cancer flushed darker than the rest of his face. "Guard this stuff; it's all you have. Your money's been impounded, you know," he told her. She hadn't. She was not surprised. "God bless. It's time."
She drew herself up and walked to the door, then whirled back to shake Dr. Ryan's hand. She forced him to meet her eyes, to see the respect-reluctant but genuine-in her own. She was glad his face brightened a little at it.
"Good-bye, Doctor," she said. "And thank you."
There was blood in the air. And the stinks of sweat, of packaged food gone rancid, sickness, and babies too long left unchanged assaulted Wyn, backing her against the stained white concrete walls of the processing center. She gagged, drew a careful breath, and then another.
Two Marines walked by, careful of their weapons and of the crowd of families awaiting processing as if they were criminals instead of willing immigrants. They walked right by her, their glances dismissing her: a middle-aged woman, tired, scared, and shabby-in other words, no threat and virtually invisible. Given the wailings and babblings all about her, she doubted if they'd even hear her.
Cold from the concrete spread into her back as she stared at the dusty light panels in the ceiling. Past her flowed the crowd: families with screaming children; brothers and sisters huddling together; here and there a solitary man swaggering toward the ship that would carry him into exile; the occasional woman, blowsy or terrified, shrinking against the walls: people angry, frightened, or numbed by what they faced.
Dr. Ryan's shabby office seemed like a paradise of reason and care by comparison. Hard to believe she had ever sat in a chair, been treated, and thanked someone like him in a cool, civil voice as if she had a right to care, without appreciating the privilege.
"Move it, sister." A trusty gestured to her.
Wyn moved it, her bookbag with her pathetic few supplies and her clothes, the jewels still sewn into the seams, bumping on one shoulder.
It was really happening. It was happening to her. Ahead of her, someone sank to his knees, moaning, and was shoved back to his feet and on ahead. No: no use in collapse, then. She walked toward the wire cages that held interviewers enthroned behind battered metal desks for processing. Her footsteps took on a rhythm that, gradually, she recognized. One of the Herald's speeches, she thought. March to the ships of the Achaeans whenever the commanders of the army sound the shrill note of the echoing trumpet. March into exile. March into slavery. Euripides had written that after Melos; and all the Athenians, blood upon their hands, had wept. She would have wept if she could find her tears and if they would do any good.
"Baker," said the trusty seated at the desk. His coverall, the same gray as the guards wore, was too tight and stained by food. He glanced down at the screen built into his desk. "Political." Wyn drew breath to make some sort of last appeal.
"Move it."
She stared at him. What about the records checks, the checks for medical clearance-?
"Move it, traitor bitch, or I call the guards."
He glared and gestured. A Marine ambled over, the bell-shaped muzzle of his sonic stu
The trusty pushed a button. A door opened in the wall, and Wyn went through, into a maze of narrow white corridors and then into the blinding yellow sunlight she would never see again. She drew a deep breath of air blessedly free of the taints of blood, filth, and old sweat. Moored at the end of it wasn't after all one of the black ships out of Greek tragedy, the blue eye warding off evil at its prow, but a huge-winged landing ship.
Ahead of her stretched a narrow gangway, crowded with guards and transportees. "Get a move on it," muttered a guard, gesturing at her with a prod and a whip. "Haul ass!"
Wyn moved it. Five more steps and she would be at the end of the gangplank where it fed into the ship. The Florida sun was warm, almost a benediction on her aching back. Before she entered the ship, she turned and took a hasty, hungry look at the violent crimsons and golds of the last sunset she would ever see on her world.
Moments later, the hatches clanged shut. She was shoved onto a padded shelf and secured like merchandise. The screams of the other transportees rose about her. Then the shrieks of the ship's engines drowned them out and seemed to hurl them all on top of her.