Forty Thousand in Gehenna

Secretarial perso

Medical/surgical: 1

Medical/paramedic: 7

Mechanical maintenance: 20

Distribution and warehousing: 20

Security: 12

Computer service: 4

Computer maintenance: 2

Librarian: 1

Agricultural specialists: 10

Geologists: 5

Meteorologist: 1

Biologists: 6

Education: 5

Cartographer: 1

Management supervisors: 4

Biocycle engineers: 4

Construction perso

Food preparation specialists: 6

Industrial specialists: 15

Mining engineers: 2

Energy systems supervisors: 8

TOTAL MILITARY 45

TOTAL CIVILIAN SUPERVISORY 296

TOTAL CITIZEN STAFF 341; TOTAL NONASSIGNED DEPENDENTS: 111; TOTAL ALL CITIZENS: 452

ADDITIONAL NONCITIZEN PERSONNEL:

list to follow:

“A” class: 2890

“B” class: 12389

“M” class: 4566

“P” class: 20788

“V” class: 1278

TOTAL ALL NONCITIZENS: 41911

TOTAL ALL MISSION: 42363

Male/female ratio approx. 55%/45%

DEPENDENTS LIST WILL FOLLOW

NONCITIZEN LIST WILL APPEAR ON MANIFEST

iii

T‑56 hours

On Cyteen Dock, restricted area

The place was large and cold and somehow the instructions lost themselves in so strange a place. Jin 458‑9998 walked where he was told, feeling the chill in his body and most especially on his skull where they had shaved off all his hair. 9998s were darkhaired and handsome and they were A‑s, important in the order of things; but the orderliness in his world had been upset. They had taken him into the white building on the farm and given him deepteach that told him the farm was no longer important, that he would be given a new and great purpose when he got where he was going, and that there would be other tapes to tell him so, very soon.

“Yes,” he had said, because that was the appropriate acknowledgement, and the change had not vastly disturbed him at the outset. But then they had taken him, still muzzy with trank, into the med wing, which he never liked, because nothing good ever happened there, and they had taken his clothes and had him lie down on a table, after which they had shaved all the hair off him, every bit but his eyelashes, and shot him full of so many things that they used all of one arm and started on the other. It hurt, but he was used to that. He was only dismayed when he saw himself in the glass going out, and failed to recognize himself–a destruction of all his vanity.

“How do you feel about this?” the supervisor had asked him, the standard question at a change; and he searched his heart as he was supposed to do and came up with a word that covered it.

“Erased.”

“Why do you feel that way?”

“I look different.”

“Is that all?”

He thought about it a moment. “I’m leaving the farm.”

“What’s worst?”

“My looks.”

“It’s to keep you clean for a while. While you’re being shipped. Everyone has it done. They won’t laugh at you. They won’t notice you. It’ll grow back in a few weeks and you’ll have a new assignment. Tapes will explain it to you. It’s supposed to be very good. They’re taking only very expensive contracts like yours.”

That had cheered him considerably. He stopped minding the shaving and the paperthin white coveralls and the loss of himself. He stood up then and started to leave.

“Goodbye, Jin,” the supervisor said, and a little panic hit him at the thought that he was never again going to see this man who solved all his problems.

“Will someone there help me?” he asked.

“Of course there’ll be someone. Do you want to shake hands, Jin? I think they’re going to pass you a lot higher than you are here. But you have to be patient and take things as they come.”

He came back, feeling strange about taking a born‑man’s hand, and very proud in that moment. “I’ll miss you,” he said.

“Yes. But the tapes will make you happy.”

He nodded. That was so. He looked forward to it, because he was not thoroughly happy at the moment, and his ears were cold and his body felt strangely smooth and naked under the cloth. He let go the supervisor’s hand and walked out, where another attendant took him in tow and led him to a building where others as shaven as himself were waiting. The sight hit him with deep shock–that he knew some of them, and had trouble recognizing them at all; and they looked at him the same way. There were four other 9998s and they all looked alike, all like him; and there were three 687s, and seven of the 5567s–and all the small traits by which they knew each other as individuals were obliterated. Panic settled into him afresh.