“She told you I’m her father,” he said, standing by the bunk as Bracknell picked at the tray on his lap.
“She reports everything to you, doesn’t she?” Bracknell replied.
“She doesn’t have to. I watch you on the monitor when she’s in here.”
“Oh. I see.”
“So do I. Every breath you draw. Remember that.”
“She doesn’t look like you.”
The captain’s scarred lip curled into a cold sneer. “Her mother was a Hindu. Met her in Delhi when I was running Clipperships there from the States. Once her parents found out she had married a Muslim they threw her out of their home.”
“You’re a Muslim?”
“All my life. My father and his father, too.”
“And you married a Hindu.”
“In India. Very tight situation. I wanted to take her back to the States but she was trying to get her parents to approve of our marriage. They wouldn’t budge. I knew that, but she kept on trying.”
“Is your wife on the ship, too?”
Without even an eyeblink’s hesitation the captain answered, “She was killed in the food riots back in ’sixty-four. That’s where I got this lip.”
Bracknell didn’t know what to say. He stared down at his tray.
“My daughter says I shouldn’t be so hard on you.”
Looking up into the captain’s cold stone gray eyes, Bracknell said, “I think you’ve been treating me pretty well.”
“Do you.”
“You could have let them kill me, back in the hold.”
“And lost the money I get when I deliver you? No way.”
There didn’t seem to be anything else to say. Bracknell picked up his plastic fork. Then a question arose in his mind.
“How did you break up the fight? I mean, how’d you stop them from killing me?”
With a sardonic huff, the captain said, “Soon’s the automated alarm woke me up and I looked at the monitor, I turned down the air pressure in the hold until you all passed out. Brought it down to about four thousand meters’ equivalent, Earth value.”
Bracknell couldn’t help grinning at him. “Good thing none of those guys were from the Andes.”
“I’d’ve just lowered the pressure until everybody dropped,” the captain evenly. “Might cause some brain damage, but I get paid to deliver live bodies, regardless of their mental capacities.”
Alhambra arrived at Ceres at last and Bracknell was marched with the other convicts through the ship’s airlock and into the Chrysalis II habitat.
The mining community that had grown at Ceres had built the habitat that orbited the asteroid. It was a mammoth ring-shaped structure that rotated so that there was a feeling of gravity inside: the same level as the Moon’s, one-sixth of Earth normal.
Stumbling, walking haltingly in the unaccustomedly low gravity, the twenty-six men and women were led by a quartet of guards in coral-red coveralls into what looked to Bracknell like an auditorium. There was a raised platform at one end and rows of seats along the carpeted floor. The guards motioned with their stun wands for the prisoners to sit down. Most of them took seats toward the rear of the auditorium while the guards stationed themselves at the exits. Bracknell went down to the third row; no one else had chosen to sit so close to the stage.
For a few minutes nothing happened. Bracknell could hear half-whispered conversations behind him. The auditorium looked clean, sparkling, even though its walls and ceiling were bare tile. It even smelled new and fresh, although he realized the scent could be piped in through the air circulation system.
Just as the pitch of the chatter behind started to rise to the level of impatience, a huge mountain of a shaggy, red-haired man strode out onto the stage. Bracknell expected to see the stage’s floorboards sag under his weight, even in the lunar-level gravity.
“My name’s George Ambrose,” he said, in a surprisingly sweet tenor voice. “For some obscure reason folks ’round here call me Big George.”
A few wary laughs from the convicts.
“For my sins I’ve been elected chief administrator of this habitat. It’s like bein’ the mayor or the governor. Top dog. Which means everybody drops their fookin’ problems in my lap.”
Like the guards, George Ambrose wore coral-red coveralls, although his looked old and more than slightly faded. His brick-red hair was a wild thatch that merged with an equally thick beard.
Pointing at his audience, Ambrose continued, “You blokes’ve been sent here because you were found guilty of crimes. Each of you has been sentenced to a certain length of what they call penal servitude. That means you work for peanuts or less. Okay. I don’t like havin’ my home serve as a penal colony, but the powers-that-be back Earthside don’t know what else to do with you. They sure don’t want you anywhere near them!”
No one laughed.
“Okay. Here’s the way we work it here in the Belt. We don’t give a shit about your past. What’s done is done. You’re here and you’re gonna work for the length of your sentence. Some of you got life, so you’re gonna stay here in the Belt. The rest of you, if you work hard and keep your arses clean, you’ll be able to go home with a clear file once you’ve served your time. You can’t get rejuvenation treatments while you’re serving time, of course, but we can rejuve you soon’s your time’s been served, if you can afford it. Fair enough?”
Bracknell heard muttering behind him. Then someone called out, “Do we get any choice in the jobs we get?”
Ambrose’s shaggy brows rose slightly. “Some. We’ve got miners and other employers all across the Belt reviewin’ your files. Some of ’em will make requests for you. If you get more’n one request you can take your choice. Only one, then you’re stuck with it.”
A deep, heavy voice asked, “Suppose I don’t get any?”
“Then I’ll have to deal with you,” Ambrose replied. “Don’t worry, there’s plenty of work to be done out here. You won’t sit around doin’ nothing.”
I’m here for life, Bracknell said to himself. I’ll have to make a life for myself out here in the Belt. Maybe it’s a good thing that I won’t be allowed any rejuvenation treatments. I’ll just get old and die out here.
JOB OFFER
The rest of the day, the convicts were led through medical exams and psychological interviews, then shown to the quarters they would live in until assigned to a job. Bracknell noted that each of the prisoners obeyed the guards’ instructions without objection. This is all new to them, and they don’t know what to make of it, he thought. There’s no sense making trouble and there’s no place for them to run to. We’re millions of klicks from Earth now; tens of millions of kilometers.
They were served a decent meal in a cafeteria that had been cleared of all its regular customers. No mixing with the local population, Bracknell realized. Not yet, at least.
At the end of the long, strangely tense day, the guards led them down a long corridor faced with blank doors and assigned them to their sleeping quarters, two to a compartment. Bracknell was paired with a frail-looking older man, white haired and with skin that looked like creased and crumpled parchment.
The door closed behind them. He heard the lock click. Surveying the compartment, Bracknell saw a pair of bunks, a built-in desk and bureau, a folding door that opened onto the lavatory.
“Not bad,” said his companion. He went to the lower bunk and sat on it possessively. “Kinda plush, after that bucket we rode here in.”
Bracknell nodded tightly. “I’ll take the upper bunk.”
“Good. I got a fear of heights.” The older man got up and went to the bureau. Opening the top drawer he exclaimed, “Look! They even got jammies for us!”