I Am M’urgi/on My Way to B’yurngrad
…I drew away from him. “But you were so enthusiastic about your new residency!”
Bryan almost snarled at me, face darkened with passion. “Damn it, Margaret, listen to me, I’ve given it up. It doesn’t matter what you say, yes or no, I can’t get it back. It’s gone!”
The world clanged at me as though I were inside a huge bell! Something inside me snapped. If I had to be dragged away against my will, let it be by Earthgov, by the Dominion, by someone I could hate. Let me not be eternally burdened with someone else’s sacrifice! “No, Bryan. No,” I screamed at him. “You had no right to do this without my agreement. I will not.”
Brian turned white, stared at me in disbelief, then turned on his heel and left me without another word. Numbly, I took up my pack, waiting only a moment to be sure he was gone. I would leave now, while Father was out of the room. I would find my own way to the assembly point and avoid his reproaches for not accepting Bryan’s offer. During the previous sleepless night I had written a farewell note. Let that suffice.
At the assembly point, the usher led me through vaults sonorous with regret. “What do they call this place?”
“We just call it the separation lobby. People from their kin. Earth people from their planet. The optimistic from their hopes, and the pessimistic from their estimations of how bad it can be. The answers are always none and worse.”
I was stunned. “You don’t try to be comforting, do you?”
“If we’re honest, there’s nothing comforting we can say. Some of us lie. Some of us don’t, like me. I have to put it into words I can handle or the scope of it swallows me. We see millions go through here, and damn few of them go smiling. Today it’ll be a bit easier on you. Several ships have come in for immediate loading, so we’re sending people directly to the subways. Here’s your check-in pass, follow the red line down that way. It takes almost a day to get there, use the toilet before you go, don’t drink anything after.”
I stumbled away amid others, to join the long queue of émigrés lined up to board the continental subway that would move us a daylong journey to the elevators. Away. Going away, and I couldn’t feel anything.
When I arrived at preshipping, one of the ubiquitous ushers saw me standing alone, and said, “Down that hallway, that’s your dormitory. Lately we’ve sped up the process. You shouldn’t be here more than a day.”
“And then where?”
“You’ll probably be in the third or fourth ship out. Either way, you’ll be going to B’yurngrad in the Omniont Federation. Actually B’yurngrad is an Earth-colony planet in Omniont Fed space, but it’s also a transshipment point for the Omniont worlds in the area. You’ll probably change ships there.”
“Probably?”
“To smaller ships that’ll take the cargo to various Omniont planets. You should be glad it’s Omniont space, by the way.”
“Why is that?”
“Omniont Federation is marginally better than Mercan Combine.”
“How do you know that?”
“We know how many ships go to bondslave worlds, and how many go from those worlds to the colonies. Omniont and Mercan get about equal numbers of bondspeople to start with, but more of those from Omniont worlds survive to go on to the colonies later.
“Don’t let it get you down. You look strong. You’ll make it. And don’t think about sending messages. Travel through space is also through time. Bondspeople are always asking us how they send messages back to their people here on Earth. We tell them, don’t bother. More likely it will get here after your people are all dead.”
“But…representatives from our colonies have meetings every year, on Mars!”
“Sure, and the Gentherans provide the travel on little ships that go point to point with a technology no one else has. No one knows how they do it but them. They say it wouldn’t help the trading races, because trading ships are too huge to use it, though the time problem is one reason the ET long-distance ships are so huge. They carry whole families aboard. Toward galactic center, among the crowded worlds, time is less of an issue. You can actually travel among them without losing all your friends every time you leave one world to go to another.”
I gaped at him. No one had ever mentioned this.
“You probably haven’t slept much lately. Go that way, then right to section ninety-seven, row eighty-eight’s at the back, bed five-A will be extreme left, here’s your bed ticket. Get some rest.”
Wondering how the usher expected anyone to rest, I plodded into the cavernous dormitory. Though almost every bed had an occupant, it was almost frighteningly quiet. I found the row and section without difficulty, thrust my bags under bed 97-88-5A, and fell onto it. I was exhausted, I was frightened. I admitted to myself that I should have gone with Bryan. Finally, I told myself I had the choice to cry about it or throw a tantrum or to go to sleep. Of the three, only one would do me any good, so I turned on my side, shut my eyes, and concentrated my whole attention on not screaming. Eventually, I actually did sleep.
Later, how much later I have no idea, I was awakened by a loudspeaker. “Any outshippers able to speak any Omniont or Mercan languages, please report to your dormitory office at once.”
I heard it perfectly well, but decided it was part of the frustrating dream I’d been
