Brother to Dragons

by Charles Sheffield

  “Not going to eat that?” The red-eared boy spoke for the first time. “Can I have it?” Job hardly had time to nod before it was being wolfed down.

  “Is it always like this?”

  “Like what?” The other boy did not stop eating, and he did not seem to understand the question. Job knew he had been spoiled by the quality and choices at Bracewell Mansion, but surely Cloak House food at its worst had never been this bad?

  “It’s terrible,” he said. “Smells rotten. And even if you could eat it, there’s not enough to feed a rat.”

  The boy had finished, and he turned to look at Job. “You’ll get used to it,” he said. “My name’s Skip. Skip Tolson. You don’t sound like a dimmie, so you must have been jaded. What you here for?”

  “Dimmie?”

  “Like Guppy, on the other side of you.” Tolson gestured with his spoon around Job, to where the other boy had finished eating and was impassively staring straight ahead.

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Take a look in his eyes. There’s nothing back of ’em. Rick Luciano—him over there—says Guppy used to be smart enough, but he got held under water too long when he was being questioned. Now he don’t do nothing but eat and work and sleep. You can’t get a word out of him. Lots in here like that, most of ’em born like it. Dimmies—dimwits. Not supposed to be sent here, but they are.”

  The plates were disappearing, every one of them wiped clean. “What’s your name?” said Tolson.

  “Job Salk. What did you mean about me being jaded, if I wasn’t a dimmie?”

  “You got labeled when you came in, right?” Tolson held up his wrist. “Know what that says, along with your number? J-D. Juvenile delinquent. You’ve been J-D’d, jaded, like most of us. We’re too young for the Tandies. They stick us in here with the dimmies, an’ hope we’ll just die quiet. What did you do to get here?”

  “Delivering drugs.” Job did not protest his innocence. “What do you mean, die quiet?”

  “All questions, aren’t you?” Another bell rang, and the boys began to file out. Tolson went in his turn, and Job followed him.

  “What did you mean about dying,” he said again.

  “You’d find out soon enough, so I might as well tell you. There’s four hundred of us in here—”

  “Cloak House only has enough space for two hundred!”

  “You’d be surprised.” Skip Tolson was striding upstairs, with Job panting along behind. “Four hundred. About fifty new ones come in every month, but you’ll still count only four hundred at the end of it. Five or six leave because they’re too old to be here—sent to the Tandies, mostly. The rest get sick and took down to the infirmary on the first floor. I’ve seen a couple of hundred go down, an’ only half a dozen come back up. Worse than usual this last week, ’cause it’s been so cold.”

  At the door of a dormitory he turned to face Job. His face was serious. “I’ll make a deal with you.”

  “What sort of deal?”

  “We’re not allowed to steal each other’s food. We get skull-cracked if we’re caught, and we go without the next meal. But we can give each other food if we want to. So you give me half your food—not forever, ’cause you’d die, but for two weeks, ’til it starts to taste good to you and you know the ropes round here.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because then you get to take the empty bed next to mine, and I look after you.” Skip Tolson smiled at Job’s puzzled expression. “You may not think you need it, but you will. Nobody pushes me around. But you’re pretty little. Did you sign out your bedroll an’ blanket yet?”

  “No.”

  “Lucky for you. If you had, and you’d left it any place, it’d have gone by now. You sleep without one when it’s this cold, you shiver all night an’ finish in the infirmary. I’m not making that up. You’ll see it this week.”

  The real changes were beginning to sink in for Job. This wasn’t Cloak House under Father Bonifant. It was not even Cloak House under Colonel della Porta.

  “All right.” But the skills developed in street forays with Father Bonifant had not been lost. “Not for two weeks, though. I’ll do it for just for one week, then we’ll see.”

  Tolson scowled, but at last nodded. “One week, then. Bet you change your mind at the end of it.”

  Skip Tolson had been right. Job was considering changing his mind.

  When Skip had first proposed a deal, Job had been suspicious. He knew his way around Cloak House, better maybe than Tolson did. Why should he trade food for help from anyone? But at the end of a week Job was not so sure. He felt less in control of his life than he had been at four years old.

  He had learned to force down the nauseous food, though there was so little of it that after sharing with Tolson he was permanently famished and lightheaded. He had also, with Skip’s guidance, labeled his bedroll and blanket so prominently and permanently that no one could steal it without being found out, and he carried his soap always in his pocket. Those were the easy steps to survival.

  But he was smaller than average for a kid in Cloak House, and most of the time the attendants looked the other way when there was fighting. In his first few days Job saw half a dozen shivering or unconscious boys carried down to the infirmary, bones broken or bleeding from the mouth or ears. He did not see any come back. That was when he first began to appreciate Tolson’s size and strength, as well as his survival skills.

  He learned that the older boy took the task of Job’s protector seriously. One of the few things that Job owned was the cross and chain given to him by Nurse Calder. He wore it always around his neck. On his fourth day at Cloak House a blond-haired boy with a flattened nose grabbed it from him as he was washing, and bloodied Job’s mouth when he tried to get it back.

  “That’s Rolly Berhammar,” said Skip, when Job went to him. “Where is he?”

  Job led the way to the bathroom. The towheaded Berhammar and two smaller boys were still there. Skip jerked his head at them. “Out, you two. Not you, Rolly. You stay.”

  Berhammar ran for the door. Tolson grabbed him from behind by his hair, swung him around, and smashed his head against the wall. Berhammar sagged at the knees. While he was groggy Tolson reached into his pocket, pulled out Job’s cross and chain, and flung it to the ground. Job thought that would end it, but Tolson did not release his hold. He held the other boy upright by the front of his shirt and began to punch him in the gut with his other fist. Berhammar groaned, doubled over, and gasped for breath.

  Job grabbed Tolson’s arm. “Skip, you’re killing him.”

  The big lad took no notice. He went on pounding until Berhammar was making no sound at all, then let him drop headfirst to the hard floor. He nodded to Job. “All right, that should do it. Grab your stuff and let’s go.”

  “Will he be all right?”

  “Should be. Nothing’s broke. But he won’t try that on you again.”

  Job realized that Skip was right—as long as Tolson remained his protector.

  Now he could see the catch. When Rolly Berhammar learned that Skip’s protection of Job had ended—news traveled fast in Cloak House—he would come looking. Then Job would get what Rolly had got, maybe a lot more.

  The fight with Berhammar happened on Job’s fourth day. By the end of the week he had learned that Rolly’s anger was not the worst that Cloak House had to offer. He saw other young boys with their protectors. The usual price of protection was not food. It was sexual tyranny. Although sex was not important to Job personally, he was beginning to realize what it meant to others. Bracewell Mansion had been an eye-opener. It had been wholly devoted to gratification, in all its hundred-headed forms. Job hadn’t looked into many mirrors there, though he had surely seen plenty of them, but he had heard enough at Bracewell to understand that he was no beauty. Now he realized that might not be a bad thing.

  Job looked at Skip Tolson with a new eye. He decided, to his relief, that Skip’s interests did not run towards sex—yet. But Skip
had his own urgent priorities. At the end of the first week he asked Job the inevitable question: Did he want to continue the food deal?

  “I’ll tell you later,” answered Job, and headed up to the fifth floor. For the first time since his return to Cloak House he went into the dormitory where Laga used to live. It was ten minutes before dinner, and everyone else was already downstairs waiting.

  The room had twice as many bunks crammed into it as the room could reasonably hold. Job sat cross-legged on the floor near where Laga’s bed used to be. He leaned his head and back against the hard wall and felt the outside cold seeping through it into his bones.

  He understood the logic and the statistics of Cloak House now. It was more than a detention center. One eighth of the boys went to the infirmary each month; only a handful came back. If you were strong and smart enough you might live at Cloak House until you were released at sixteen—Skip was determined to, and spent all his time and energy working on it; but you had to beat the odds to do it. The dimmies especially didn’t have a chance. Rotten and insufficient food, freezing cold, lost or stolen blankets, harsh punishment, inadequate sanitation and rudimentary medical care carried them off in droves. Job had seen four dimmies, starved and shivering, collapse where they stood at the entrance to the dining room.

  And it was no accident. Cloak House was designed to operate this way. It was a microcosm of the whole world that Professor Buckler had described since the Quiebra Grande. The economic crash had been like a great, global flood whose effects went on still, surging through every level of society, washing away kindness, sweeping away altruism, leaching away compassion, until all that remained was ruthless self-interest. And in that flood, God help anyone who had to rely on charity or mercy.

  The dinner bell sounded below, but Job did not move. He felt doomed, devoid of choice. If he paid Skip to fight on his behalf, he would starve. Refuse the protection, and he would be pulped, robbed, and frozen.

  He had pushed away thoughts of death since that dreadful day when Laga died and he fled from Cloak House. Now he could ignore them no longer. Unless he acted, he would be with her in a couple of months. But what action could possibly help him?

  The answer was obvious: escape from Cloak House. Which was impossible. The doors were locked and guarded, the warders armed, the barred windows charged with stunning levels of electricity.

  Job recalled Skip Tolson’s ironic comment, when they had talked of getting away: “Sure, plenty of people tried. There’s two ways out: sixteen years old and standing up, or through the infirmary lying down.”

  Job knew he could not survive to sixteen.

  He stood up, went to his dormitory, and placed in Skip’s bedroll his few personal possessions. The only exception was his cross and chain, which he kept around his neck. He went to the stairs and listened. He didn’t have much time. Dinner was almost over. In a few more minutes the attendants would release the boys and head back for their own quarters.

  The infirmary was on the first floor of Cloak House, by the loading bay at the rear of the building. Job crept downstairs, past the dining room and on to the door of the infirmary. It was closed, but not locked. It did not need to be. Except to bring sick boys under warder threat of punishment, no one would go near the place.

  Job stood with his ear to the door and listened. The recent terrible cold in the dormitories had sent scores here in the past week, but he could not hear a sound. After a minute’s hesitation he steeled himself, eased the door open, and stepped inside.

  The freezing air in the dimly lit room hit him like a wave. After a few seconds he realized that the icy draft came from the windows on the left hand side. They had bars in them, but no glass. All along that side stood row after row of beds, and on each one, without covers, lay a boy. They were so silent and unmoving that at first Job thought they were all dead. He was about to turn and run when he saw shallow movement in the chest of the boy nearest to him. He recognized his face; it was a new arrival at Cloak House, a dimmie called Manuel Torval. Job had been there a day earlier, when Torval swung at a warder who had told him to wash a floor a second time. He had seen Torval dragged away with a broken arm, cursing and crying.

  But Torval had been in good shape when he arrived, pudgy-faced and apparently well-fed. There was no reason for him to lie here, unconscious and probably freezing to death. Job walked along the lines of beds. Torval was no different from the rest. Not one boy was awake. Most were in deeply drugged sleep, and some seemed already dead. He continued to the end of the long room, where part of the floor by the loading bay was covered with a lumpy gray sheet. He bent and lifted one corner, and shuddered at what he saw. Twenty or thirty bodies lay on the icy tiles, flat on their backs. Their eyes had been closed and weighted, and around each boy’s right wrist was a twist of wire holding a small square of cardboard. Job forced himself to lean close and read off a name followed by the standard three letters and five digits of a Cloak House ID.

  Job was tempted to turn around and run back upstairs. He knew there would be a pickup of bodies some time during the night or the next morning, to make room for the next batch of those who no longer needed the infirmary beds. But he also knew one other thing. There was no way that he could force himself to lie down among those sheeted dead and just wait until the loading bay opened and the grim cargo was shipped out.

  He made another circuit of the infirmary. There were drugs and hypodermic syringes, but no sign of other medical supplies. He found a box filled with wire loops, and another of cardboard squares with a pencil alongside. After a moment he picked up a square and wrote JOB NAPOLEON SALK in careful capitals. He followed that with his ID number, placed the cardboard on a wire loop, and set it tentatively around his own skinny wrist.

  The act felt like death itself. He could not go on. He was removing the wire, ready to tear up the cardboard and stick it in his pocket, when he heard footsteps outside. He dropped to the floor and saw the legs of a warder as she entered the room. She muttered at the cold, rubbed her hands together, and walked briskly along the lines examining each boy. Job eased himself farther under one of the beds, wondering what the punishment would be if he were caught here.

  But it was too cold for her to stay long. Another minute and she was gone. She closed the door behind her. And locked it. Job realized that she saw no danger of anyone wanting to get into the infirmary. She wanted to be sure that no drug-dazed but waking boy was able to get out.

  The decision had been made for him. There was no way to go back upstairs. The question now was of surviving until the loading bay opened.

  Still he could not face the idea of lying down among the corpses of the children. In any case, it would be fatal to do so. The cold air was settling into the bottom of his lungs, his half-starved body had no protective layers of fat, and Job was shivering with bone-deep spasms.

  He had to find a way to get warm and stay warm.

  He went back to the gray winding sheet and lifted it again from the bodies. About half of the dead boys still wore their jackets. He removed a dozen of them, trembling at the touch of icy hands and arms. When he was done he carried the jackets to an empty bed as far as possible from the open windows. He swaddled himself in the clothing, wrapping some around his head and body and some around his legs, and carefully tucking in the arms so that every inch was covered with several layers. It took half an hour and four tries before Job was satisfied that he had done everything as well as he could.

  He lay down on the bed, facing the windows and staring out through a little slit in the wrapped clothing that he had left at eye level. He intended to remain awake and wait for dawn, or for the opening of the loading bay. But he was exhausted, physically and emotionally. He gradually warmed within the cocoon of layered jackets, and fell asleep without knowing it.

  The sound of a diesel engine and a grinding clank of metal awakened him. He sat up, hindered by the multiple layers of clothing, and stared around. It was morning. The sliding door of the loading bay w
as lifting upwards.

  Job jerked around to face the door of the infirmary that led into Cloak House. It was still closed tightly. Whoever picked up the bodies knew their job, and the warders were not needed to help them do it.

  Job dropped to the floor and crawled over to a bed near the gray winding sheet. The biggest problem was still ahead. He could remove the jackets—he was peeling them off as he moved—and he could lie down among the dead. But he could not be cold and lifeless as they were. If anyone picked him up, or touched his hands or face, they would know at once that they were handling a living boy.

  He watched as the loading bay opened fully and a truck was backed up to it. The rear door of the truck folded down to meet the edge of the loading bay. Two men rolled a big, wheeled trolley out onto the infirmary floor. They were chatting to each other as they worked, complaining as they removed the gray sheet from the silent rows of bodies. “Cold enough here to freeze your knackers off,” said one man. “Sooner we get to the incinerator an’ warm our hands, the better.”

  If they picked the corpses up one by one, and placed them in the trolley, Job was done for. He would be discovered as soon as they touched his too-warm flesh.

  What he saw was worse than that. The men were inspecting each body before they loaded it, turning out pockets, stripping off some of the clothes, sometimes removing the shoes. By the time half the boys were in the trolley a substantial heap of clothes and trinkets stood on a brown cloth bag at the edge of the gray sheet. The men stood and looked at it.

  “They’re sure wiping ’em out this week,” said one of them. “Hold on, we’re gonna need another sack.”

  He went back to the loading bay and into the open rear of the truck. The other followed to the edge of the bay, clapping his gloved hands together. “Better bring a couple. We got a ton of stuff here.”

  Job shuffled rapidly across the floor and climbed up into the trolley. He shuddered as he lay facedown on top of those cold, half-clad bodies. There was no time to burrow down into the heap even if he had been able to force himself to do it, for seconds after he was in position the men were back. They dropped the next body on top of Job without a second look. In ten minutes he was lying beneath the weight of a dozen more corpses, nauseated and almost suffocated.