A Larger Universe (4 page)

"This is our meal room,” said Jack.  “This ain't the
only one, but you'll be eating here while you’re working for me." 

A wave of silence moved across the room as more and more of
them noticed Tommy standing next to Jack. 

"Don’t seem like much," said a voice with the same
twang.

"Why’d they make a special trip for him?" said
another.

"That’s enough," Jack said.  "You know I
don’t know more about this than you.  And this feral sure don’t know nothing. 
This here is Tommy.  That’s not a name of ours, but it’s what we’re to call
him."  He turned to Tommy.  "I’ll not introduce you to anyone now. 
You’ll meet some of them later, those you'll work with.  Let’s get something to
eat."

In a food line much like the one at his school cafeteria, a
small gray woman with the same big head and thin body as Jack gave Tommy a bowl
of the mush he had eaten earlier.  When he had his food, Jack pushed him onto a
low bench next to a table against the wall. 

Each time Tommy looked up from his bowl, he saw someone
watching him.  In his school cafeteria he had been invisible.  The only time he
had been noticed was when he had stumbled into a school jock and had been
knocked to the floor.  He wasn't invisible here.  The adults said little as
they watched him, but the younger people sitting in tight bunches at different
tables whispered and laughed as they glanced at him.  A small group of girls,
who might have been his age, were especially attentive, giggling when he
dropped food from his spoon or wiped his mouth.  The giggling increased when he
returned their stares. 

He didn't like the expressions on five boys sitting at a
table close to the giggling girls.  When their voices got loud, Jack noticed
and went over to talk with them. 

Tommy pushed his empty bowl away and stared at the wall.  He
struggled to keep from crying again.  He couldn't do anything about some silly
girls and stupid boys.  They were all kidnappers.  When he escaped, the police
would come here and make them all pay.

After the meal, Jack took Tommy down still another hallway
to a room containing four bunks.  "Shower and toilet is down the passage,”
Jack said.  You’ll be the fourth in here.”  He paused.  "I think some
other cats live in here, so you can keep yours here if he can get along. 
Otherwise, he’ll stay in the kennels when he’s not working."

"Working?  What kind of work does a cat do?"

"The work a cat always does.  I told you everybody
works here.  His job is killing small pests.  Mice mostly, or what passes for
mice.  The barn is full of them, so he’ll be with you during the day. 
Sometimes, we lock the cats in the barn at night, too."

"Lock them in?"

"To hunt at night.  But we make sure they can’t get
out.  Some of the small animals in the woods are supposed to be there.  All of
the birds are supposed to be there.  Can’t have the cats killing them."

Tommy began to understand the layout of the passages on the
way back to the open area.  He saw a pattern, and he was good with patterns. 

As they climbed the stairs, Tommy asked, "Why don’t you
live outside, in houses, rather than in these tunnels?"

"Don’t nobody live in the Commons.  The Commons is for
cleaning the air and growing things, and for animals that belong to the lords,
to keep them healthy, and for the warriors to have a place to train."  He
paused.  "And for the lords, should they want to use it.  We keep the
Commons for them, but we don’t live in it."

"Warriors?"

Jack looked over his shoulder at Tommy.  "You ask too
many questions.  Best not to speak of them."

"I can't help it if I'm curious," Tommy said. 
And
you might tell me something that will get me out of here.

Potter was in the barn when they arrived, bounding after
mice through the hay.  Two other cats, one gray and white and one calico,
observed Potter's hunt from the rafters.  They seemed to find Potter's antics
entertaining without wanting to join in.  Tommy watched Potter leap high into
the air, then pounce on movement in the straw.  He emerged with a mouse in his
teeth and laid it at Tommy's feet.  At home, Potter would play with a terrified
mouse or vole for a while before killing it:  letting it go, then chasing after
it to catch it again.  Tommy's mom hated that about cats.  Here, Tommy watched
him kill three in a few minutes.  With so many in the barn, he was killing each
one and going after another.

"We haven’t had a good mouser in a while," said a
voice from behind him.  Tommy turned to see the second Jack pushing a
wheelbarrow containing a flat shovel.  The first Jack had disappeared. 
"Your cat is something," the second Jack continued.  He glanced at
the mouse corpses scattered in the hay.  "Though he does need someone to
clean up after him."  He looked up at the cats lounging on the rafters. 
"Even the lords can't make a cat hunt if she doesn't want to."

"He was a wild cat," Tommy explained.  "He
hunted his own food for the first year or so of his life, as far as we know. 
He was skinny but healthy when I started feeding him."  Tears ran down
Tommy’s cheeks. 

"Hey, now.  We don’t have time for that.  Get behind
this wheelbarrow and follow me."  Jack went to the stall with the horse
Tommy had fed that morning.  "The stall on the other side's empty.  Move
the horse in this stall into the empty stall.  Shovel everything on the bottom
of this stall into the wheelbarrow."  He grinned.  "You'll need more
than one load.  Push the wheelbarrow out the side door and dump it onto the
pile.  When you finish cleaning this stall, cover the floor with straw, put the
horse in, and start on the next stall.  I’ll check on you later."

The horse knew the routine and followed Tommy’s tugs on her
lead without trouble.  The first time, he filled the wheelbarrow but couldn’t
move it.  He had to shovel out two-thirds of the load to push the wheelbarrow
out the door.  By the fifth trip, he was so tired he was happy to move three
scoops at a time. 

When he finished the first stall, he was sure he couldn't do
any more.  He stood next to the manure pile, his hands pressed into his back. 
Every part of his body hurt, except for his arms.  They were numb.  And the
pile seemed no bigger than when he started.

A scream of "Get him" turned him halfway around. 

Hands grabbed his arms and legs and lifted him off the
ground.  He was in the air, then in the manure pile before he could begin to
struggle. 

He was too tired to fight back, anyway.  The air he sucked
in trying to scream filled his mouth with fresh manure.  His first thought was,
"I'm going to die." 

He sat up, coughed, and wiped his eyes. 

The five boys from the meal room stood next to his
wheelbarrow.

"Feral freak!" screamed one.

"We'll teach you your place," yelled another.

From beyond the boys came the voice of the second Jack. 
"Why aren't you working?  What're you doing?"

The boys scattered, and Tommy saw the second Jack looking
down at him.

"You won't finish sitting," Jack said.  "Get
up.  Get back to work."

Tommy put his head between his knees and sobbed.  Brown
tears dropped from his chin and nose onto his ankles.  How was he ever going to
get home?

The first Jack watched from behind the corner of the barn. 
Tears streaked the manure on the boy's face, and he looked as if someone had
slapped him.  Maybe someone
should
slap him to stop his whining.

The old men told a story about the lords bringing in some
feral human adults during Jack's great-grandfather's time.  No one below the
commons had ever found out why.  According to the story, the ferals had killed
twenty warriors before they were killed. 

What a fool's business this is
, thought Jack. 
Ferals
can't learn proper respect, and this child is close enough to adult, even if
he's just a twig of a thing.

The lords had told him to put the boy to work in his stable
for a while.  They had plans for him after. 
Don't pay to call the lords
fools.  Don't hurt to think it, though, and it has to be lunacy to mess with
the way things are.  Farming and stable work are for farmers.  That's the way
it's always been, and that's the way it'll always be.
  He reflexively bowed
his head and clasped his hands at his waist. 
Until He comes to take us
Home.

He looked up at the boy. 
It's plain that this child
don't have the makings of a farmer.  Looks like he never did a day's work in
his life.  He'll need a babysitter, and we've no time for that.  If a horse
don't kick him, working in the stable will wear him to death before anyone gets
any real use out of him, whatever the lords want. 

That almost brought a smile to his stiff face. 

Things are running smooth since I took over, and I don't
need this trouble.  Maybe I should encourage those boys a bit.  Shouldn't take
much to push this child over the edge
.  The smile faded.  
But if
something does happen, I don't want anyone to think it was my fault.

The next weeks were the most painful of Tommy's life.  He
was up for breakfast before the lights came on in the Commons, shoveling manure
until lunch, shoveling more manure until dinner, and falling into his bunk at
night with Potter asleep between his legs. 

His meals duplicated his first: he ate gruel, and no one
would talk with him as he sat alone.  At night, his bunkmates walked and talked
around him as if he didn't exist--a situation Potter didn't share: after a day
of hissing and posturing, Potter and the other cats in the room became the best
of friends.

He didn’t have the energy to think about home, or his
parents, or escaping.  He wasn’t alone in mucking the stalls, and someone took
the horses out each day for exercise, but none of that seemed real.  Only the
pain in his arms, shoulders, legs, and back, and the tricks the other boys
continued to play on him had any meaning.  He lost track of how many days and
weeks had passed. 

Just when the work seemed easier, the first Jack added more
to Tommy's day.  Before beginning his usual tasks, Tommy had to unload grain
sacks from the supply wagon. 

On the first day of his new chore, another boy waited for
him by the wagon.  Except for his blond instead of red hair, he could have been
a smaller version of the second Jack. 

"I heard Jack assigned you to this.  It takes two, but
I was hoping he would move me to something else.  No help for it.  I'm the
third Mark."

These were the first words, other than orders, that anyone
had spoken to Tommy since the day he had arrived.

"What do I do?" asked Tommy.

"Nothing to it.  Get in the wagon."  When Tommy
did so, Mark followed him.  "Now, we each grab the end of a sack and throw
it into that wheelbarrow.  When the wheelbarrow is full, we roll it into the
barn, and unload the sacks onto the piles."

By the third wheelbarrow load, grain dust and sweat covered
Tommy in a thick paste.  "Does this ever end?" Tommy grunted as he
let go of a sack.

"No,” Mark answered.  “But we do get rest days, except
for feeding the animals.  Sometimes, all the animals are sold, and we don't
have much to do until we get more."  He pointed at the fields of crops a
quarter way around the dome.  "The dirt farmers work all the time, except
for rest days.”

Tommy put his hands into the small of his back and
stretched.  "When is the next rest day?  I could use one!"

"Every three months.  The next one is the last day of
this week.  I could use a rest, too."

Tommy reflected for a moment.  He had lost all track of
time.  "I must've been here for almost three months."

"Closer to six," Mark said.  "The first Jack
made you work through the last one."

Tommy gave Mark a long stare.  "You've never been one
of those playing tricks on me.  Why not?"

Mark shrugged.  "Them boys picked on me till you came
along.  I was the bottom chicken in the yard.  Now, you are.  I like being left
alone too much to harass you."

"What have they got against me?  I've never done
anything to them."

"You look different.  You talk funny.  They've never
needed much excuse.  I was the smallest.  That was enough."

That night Tommy crawled into his bunk with a different set
of blisters to go with his pains but with something to look forward to.

#   #   #

The morning of the rest day, Tommy went with the other
farmers to feed the animals.  With that done, he hurried back to the bunkroom for
a day of extra sleep.  As he undressed for bed, the first Jack stuck his head
into Tommy’s bunkroom. 

"What're you doing?  Get ready for services."

"Services?"  Tommy shook his head, confused. 
"I thought this was a rest day."

"I’m still responsible for you.  I made you work
through the last service because the lords told me to.  Now, you've been here
long enough.  Services first, then rest."  He held out a bundle. 
"Put these on."

Jack led him down an unfamiliar passage.  They became part
of a larger and larger group until all of them filed into a room many times
bigger than the meal room. 

"Pay attention and don't ask questions,” Jack whispered
to Tommy.  “Do what I do, and don’t make a fool of yourself, or me.”

The crowd circled the room leaving
a large space in the center and a pathway back to the entrance.  A man dressed
in a hooded robe entered the room and walked to its center.  He turned to face
the entrance and raised his arms.

"We are far from home," the hooded man said.

"We carry our home with us," the crowd replied.

"They are our lords," the leader said.