all shapes, all sizes, even a few Drathians who’d run foul of the Rule-keepers. I was assigned to a stool beside a big, broad-backed animal with a face like a Halloween mask snipped out of an old inner tube and fringed with feathery red gills. The overseer talked to him in the local buzz-buzz, and went away. He looked at me with big yellow eyes like a twin-yolked egg, and said, “Welcome to the club, friend,” in perfect, unaccented lingua, in a voice that seemed to come from under a tin washtub.
He told me that his name was Fsha-fsha, that he had been left behind seventeen years before when the freighter he was shipping on had been condemned here on Drath after her linings went out, and that he had been a slave since his money ran out, three months after that.
“It’s not a bad life,” he said. “Plenty of food, a place to sleep, and the work’s not arduous, after you’ve learned the routine.”
The routine, he went on to explain, was Sorting. “It’s a high-level job,” Fsha-fsha assured me. “Only the top-category workers get this slot. And let me tell you, friend, it’s better than duty in the mines, or on the pelagic harvesting rafts!”
He explained the work; it consisted of watching an endless line of glowing spheres as they came toward us along a conveyor belt, and sorting them into one of eight categories. He told me what the types were, and demonstrated; all the while he talked, the bulbs kept coming, and his big hands flicked the keys in front of him, shunting them their separate ways. But as far as I could tell, all the bulbs were exactly alike.
“You’ll learn,” he said blandly, and flipped a switch that stopped the line. He fetched a lightweight assembly of straps from a wall locker.
“Training harness,” he explained. “It helps you catch on in a hurry.” He fitted it to me with the straps and wires crisscrossing my back and chest, along my arms, cinched up tight
He told me that his name was Fsha-fsha, that he had been left behind seventeen years before when the freighter he was shipping on had been condemned here on Drath after her linings went out, and that he had been a slave since his money ran out, three months after that.
“It’s not a bad life,” he said. “Plenty of food, a place to sleep, and the work’s not arduous, after you’ve learned the routine.”
The routine, he went on to explain, was Sorting. “It’s a high-level job,” Fsha-fsha assured me. “Only the top-category workers get this slot. And let me tell you, friend, it’s better than duty in the mines, or on the pelagic harvesting rafts!”
He explained the work; it consisted of watching an endless line of glowing spheres as they came toward us along a conveyor belt, and sorting them into one of eight categories. He told me what the types were, and demonstrated; all the while he talked, the bulbs kept coming, and his big hands flicked the keys in front of him, shunting them their separate ways. But as far as I could tell, all the bulbs were exactly alike.
“You’ll learn,” he said blandly, and flipped a switch that stopped the line. He fetched a lightweight assembly of straps from a wall locker.
“Training harness,” he explained. “It helps you catch on in a hurry.” He fitted it to me with the straps and wires crisscrossing my back and chest, along my arms, cinched up tight