Evan swallowed hard. From his perspective, he had boarded the colony ship only four days ago, along with his family, various other members of the Real People Reconstructionists of Aboriginal Australia, and other groups. They were all bound for a planet named Pelagosa. Evan’s last memory was the lid of the cryo-chamber clanging shut above him. There was a slight hiss, a heavy feeling, and blackness.
The next thing Evan knew, he was being yanked shivering out of the chamber and fitted with a silvery wristband and ankleband before his half-frozen mind could comprehend what was going on. His family and the thousand-odd other colonists had been fitted with similar shackles. The slavers had unceremoniously hauled them on board their ship and stuffed them into cell-like rooms. The colony vessel was taken for salvage. Anyone who fought back or even protested received a debilitating shock from the bands. Even saying the word "escape" or "revolt" earned a shock. No amount of banging, picking, or clawing would get the bands off, though Evan’s wrist and ankle became red and raw from the attempt.
During four days of captivity, they had picked up tiny bits of information here and there, mostly from what the slavers told them. The colonists had been sleeping for either nine hundred years (real time) or fifty years (ship time), take your pick. While the colonists lay in cryo-sleep, someone had discovered something called slipspace, which allowed faster-than-light travel between solar systems. Pelagosa and hundreds of other inhabitable planets had quickly been colonized. Slower-than-light ships vanished into history and the vastness of space, their slumbering inhabitants forgotten.
But the slavers remembered.
It didn’t matter to the slavers that the colonists and crew of the ship were not legally slaves. All records of their existence had long ago been lost or purged, and in any case, Earth was under a different government trillions of kilometers away.
"Who are you going to complain to?" laughed a slaver named Feder when Evan’s parents Rhys and Rebecca Weaver had expressed outrage and disbelief. "You’re slaves because we say you are and no one who counts will say different."
Feder. Evan shot Keith a quick look. He still hadn’t taken his eyes off the floor of his platform. Maybe he was trying to hide his startling eyes. Blue was an extremely uncommon eye color among Australian Aborigines, and Keith’s eyes made an arresting contrast with his dark skin and curly black hair. Evan quietly believed that it was Keith’s eyes that had grabbed Feder’s attention in the first place. Although Keith steadfastly refused to talk about any of it, Evan knew that Feder’s attention, given in the privacy of the slaver’s own quarters, had not been kind.
A thin woman with white hair approached Keith’s platform. "Stand up, you," she said. "What’s your name?"
Keith slowly got up. "Utang, Mistress," he said, giving the Real People name he had chosen for himself only a few months before the People decided to board the colony ship. The word meant ‘strength,’ though Evan, playing the part of annoying kid brother, hadn’t been able to find it in any language database for the Aboriginal tribes. Keith had airily claimed the name had come to him in a dream. Evan rarely thought of Keith as Utang, even though Keith-Utang-used it regularly.
"Stand, boy."
Evan tensed. An older man with brown eyes and a fringe of gray hair was standing next to Evan’s platform looking up at him. Evan got to his feet feeling naked and exposed. The man made a spiral motion with one hand.
"Turn around."
Evan’s stomach tightened as he obeyed. It seemed like he could feel the man staring at him and he found his face growing warm. It was like being a dog in a kennel. The white-haired woman had moved away from Keith’s platform.
The man consulted a computer pad. "You’re twelve years old, is that right?"
Evan nodded. Suddenly he wanted his mother’s arms around him, hiding him from this. His chin quivered and tears welled up.
"You ever work a farm, boy?" the man asked. He had a hoarse voice.
Evan shook his head. "I grew up in Sydney. It’s a city in Australia. Master," he added quickly, and hated himself for it.
The man tapped the pad and moved on. Evan wondered if that was good or bad.
"Turn around, child, and let me see you," said another voice. Evan turned and saw a woman, also older. Blond, with gray eyes, perhaps ten years older than his mother. She wore a green robe with a gold frog embroidered on the shoulder.
"Walk around your platform," she ordered.
Evan did so. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the white-haired alien talking to his father. The frog woman made a note on her pad and turned to Rebecca.
"You’re the boy’s dam?" she asked.
Yes," Rebecca said. Her voice was quiet. "Mistress."
"Can you follow a recipe and cook?"
"Yes, Mistress."
The embroidered frog rippled as the woman made another note. Then without a word, she walked away.
Over the next two hours, several more humans and two different aliens examined Evan. They asked him questions and made him stand and walk. One pair of humans, a man and a woman, entered reached up to prod and poke him.
"This lot has been in cryo-sleep for nine hundred years," said the man as if Evan weren’t there. He was fat and balding, with fleshy lips and a tiny nose.
"They won’t have very many useful skills then," observed the woman. She was equally heavy and wore a heavy string of glittering gems around her neck. "I suppose this one might be able to do housework and we could teach him to drive when he’s old enough, but he isn’t really attractive enough to put out in front of guests. What do think of that one over there?"
Evan didn’t know how to react to all this, so he didn’t react at all. He merely sat in his tiny square platform. Occasionally Evan glanced at his mother. She looked frightened, though whenever she noticed him looking at her, her expression changed into something Evan supposed was meant to be reassuring. That frightened him even more. On some level, he had expected his parents to figure out what to do, how to solve their problem and get them ultimately to Pelagosa or back home to Sydney. His mother’s face, however, made it clear that she didn’t know what to do anymore than he did.
The day wore on. In the background he heard someone shouting, "Fifteen! Do I hear fifteen? Fifteen, thank you! Twenty! Do I hear twenty?" and Evan assumed a non-silent auction had started up somewhere. Later, a woman came around with food that Evan ate without really tasting. Humans and aliens looked, prodded, asked the same questions. Eventually, Evan fell into a sort of stupor. The bidders became a blur of noise and faces.
"All right, you," said a voice. "Come with me. Both of you."
Evan roused himself. The woman with the gold frog embroidered on her green robe was standing in front of him. Scattered around the echoing room, Evan saw other buyers standing in front of different slaves. One woman’s platform faded from red to green and sank to floor level. She crossed the boundary and fell into step behind the giant caterpillar. A coveralled slaver-not Feder-stood in front of Keith’s platform, and sank to the floor as well. The slaver hauled an unresisting Keith to his feet. Rhys leaped up, halting a thumblength from the edge of his own red platform.
"Where are you taking him?" Rhys demanded.
"Special delivery," was all the slaver said as he lead Keith away.
Rhys made as if to jump off his platform, then halted. Rebecca was on her feet as well. Martina started to cry. Evan’s stomach clenched and he balled up his fists. The helpless feeling dropped over him. Keith needed his help, needed his family’s help, but they couldn’t do anything. Keith shot one last blue-eyed look over his shoulder as the slaver took him away. Platforms sank to the floor all around the room. More shouts and cries started up as other families realized they were being split up.