Barch muttered, "I wonder how much longer we'll be in this hold."
"Are you anxious for Magarak?"
"No, but I don't like the smell here."
"You might sometime wish yourself back in this cell."
"Do you think they'll separate us?"
"Certainly," she said in a flat voice. "First the slaves are graded at rough intellectual levels; they must pass through a hall filled with traps, pitfalls, obstacles, unpleasant sensations, and the like, which they avoid according to their intelligence. After this first division, the lower grades are classified by physique, agility, dexterity." She looked across the cell. "These serfs will probably go out to the mud-flats along Xolboar Sea, a great reclamation project, which uses up thousands of labor-units a year."
"And how about us?"
"A thousand possibilities."
Barch awoke to a sound of harsh voices. He crouched instinctively, slowly relaxed. Two of the blank-faced serfs were fighting, clawing clumsily at each other's faces. The remaining men and the women watched critically.
"Disgusting animals," said Komeitk Lelianr.
One of the contestants suddenly ceased to fight. The other put his legs against the square back, jerked back at the head. The eyes stared up, the neck snapped. There came a sudden raucous babble.
"What are they fighting about?" Barch asked in bewilderment.
"Impossible to say."
"Look!"
The two women were slapping at the man who had conquered, stolidly without anger. At last he threw up his hands as if in defeat, crossed to a man who had been watching, caught him by the neck, smashed his head against the wall until the skull became like jelly. The women spoke on angrily for a few moments, then appeared to lose interest. No one heeded the limp bodies. There were a few dark glances cast toward Barch and Komeitk Lelianr, one or two monosyllables, then silence.
Barch said speculatively, "I wonder what would happen…" He looked thoughtfully at Komeitk Lelianr. "Off hand, would you say that these creatures will be well-treated on Magarak?"
She examined him curiously. "I have no idea. We know very little of Magarak. I assume that they are not as strictly supervised as the technical workers."
"Suppose the Klau found a body in your clothes and a body in mine…"
Komeitk Lelianr shuddered. "You want me to wear those clothes?"
"We have nothing to lose, perhaps something to gain."
She shook her head. "But I see no reason-"
"If we get sent out to those mud-flats, we go out together!"
"Oh," said Komeitk Lelianr in sudden enlightenment. "The dynamic attitude, this tinkering with destiny…"
"Yes," said Barch grimly. "If I couldn't be doing something, I might as well throw in the sponge. Are you game?"
She shrugged. "It makes no difference."
Barch flushed. "If you'd rather go it alone, say so."
"No, Roy. I don't object to you personally."
"Thanks," growled Barch.
She smiled. "Maybe our friends won't like us undressing their dead."
"We'll soon see…"
He pushed himself over to the nearest body, and with a challenging survey of the six white faces, began to jerk the gray garment loose.
There was an undertone of muttering. Black eyes became beady and thoughtful. No one stirred. Underneath the jacket was a skin-tight coverall of matted fiber. "This is the smallest," said Barch. "Let's have your clothes."
Komeitk Lelianr slipped out of the white and black harlequin costume, climbed gingerly into the black smock.
Barch stripped the second corpse down to the gray matted undersuit, pulled off his coat and trousers. Closing his nostrils to the sour odor of the garment, he pulled it over his head.
There was motion along the wall. Barch looked up sharply. One of the men was feeling the material of his coat. My good gray flannel, thought Barch. He jerked it away, started to pull it on the corpse.
Now there were mutters. The older of the women made a furious babbling sound; the other made a gesture with stiff fingers against her lips. Barch ignored the noise, buttoned the coat, began to pull the legs into the trousers. The legs were too short; the cuffs dragged ridiculously over the yellow blobs of wax or resin that covered the dead man's feet.
From the corner of his eye Barch saw Komeitk Lelianr deftly thrusting the second body into her black and white costume. He turned, critically inspected her gleaming silver hair. "You don't make a very good peasant."
He looked around the cell. One of the Modoks wore a loose conical cap. Barch pushed himself forward, reached out, took the cap. The man half-heartedly clutched for the cap, then backed away, eyes staring with frantic alarm.
The women babbled in approval.
Barch yanked the cap down on Komeitk Lelianr's hair. "There," he said, inspecting her, "that's a little better." He turned to look at their cellmates. "They're certainly an odd-acting bunch."
"It's all relative," said Komeitk Lelianr. "They undoubtedly think the same of us."
Barch looked down at his shoes, at Komeitk Lelianr's sandals. "Do you think we'll pass?"
"I couldn't say."
The ship shivered; they heard deep clanking sounds, like an anchor-chain running down a hawse-pipe. "What's that?"
"I don't know. Perhaps we have arrived."
"If so, we didn't get changed any too soon."
The ship jarred; the red glow in the wall pulsed bright and dim. A moment later the cell burst open. Gravity seized at the ten bodies-eight living, two dead. They slid down the cell wall, together with all the accumulated litter, trash and refuse, down to a smooth chute. Fresh air was cold on their faces; sound roared at their ears.
Barch's eyes smarted under the sudden light, his legs felt limp at the knees. "Ellen!" he cried. "Ellen, where are you?"
Blinking, he looked around him. They stood in a fenced enclosure, like a cattle pen. Komeitk Lelianr was a few feet distant, holding to her cap, which the original owner was attempting to reclaim. Barch staggered over, struck the man with his fist.
Something stung at his back, burning like fire; he turned, snarling. Above him, on a ramp, stood a tremendous man with blood-red skin. Black spikes of hair extended like quills on all sides of his head. He had eyes with red four-starred centers, like the Klau, and he carried a tube with a flickering serpent of light darting up, down, in, out.
He roared at Barch in a voice like a brass horn, flourished the flail. A disturbance in the adjoining pen attracted his attention. He pounded down the ramp. The flickering light-snake curled out. Barch heard a sharp cry.
He gained Komeitk Lelianr's side, dazed and angry, shook his head as if to clear it of confusion, glowered up at the trumpeting red whip-wielders.
Directly overhead a hatch opened; a stream of bodies plummeted at him. He jumped aside, pushed Komeitk Lelianr against the fence, away from the milling center of the pen, and here he caught his breath.
The ship continued to discharge. Men and women tumbled, slid, spewed from orifices under the ship, their fall broken by the bawling bodies below.
Past the great hulk, Barch glimpsed the shapes of the two other ships. Beyond rose the facade of a building a mile high, the roof-line blurred in fog. There was a steady roar in the air, like the sound of surf; a smell of mud, rust and ammonia hung across the pens.
Komeitk Lelianr said coolly in his ear, "We're part of a not-too-valuable cargo. We'll be worked very hard; we'll die very quickly."
He looked at her truculently. "You sound as if you don't care."