A Larger Universe

by James L Gillaspy

  Jack laughed. "You'll have to get over that. They can tell you're afraid." He pulled on the gate, revealing a medium-sized, brown horse. "She won’t hurt you. Give her the grain."

  He remembered now. This explained the first Jack's odor. Tommy had never been this close to a horse before, but when he visited his grandmother in the country, he used to stand for hours near her fence and look at her neighbor’s horses. When the horses had come back from being ridden, they always reeked like the first Jack, until they were rubbed down. When they grazed in the neighbor's field, the horses had tried to reach him through the fence, but he had always been too afraid to feed them grass as his grandmother had encouraged him to do.

  The horse bumped the bucket with her nose until Tommy edged forward and poured the grain into a container in front of the stall.

  “Jack,” the first Jack’s voice echoed down the barn. "Bring the boy here. We have some more places to go.”

  "What about Potter?” Tommy asked the second Jack.

  "Potter?”

  “My cat!”

  “He seems happy enough. I'll bring him along later."

  At the entrance, the second Jack waved Tommy goodbye. "You can learn the rest of your job when Jack gets through with you.”

  As they continued down the trail, Tommy looked for ways to escape. If this place is underground, I'll be able to find the exit tunnel. That waterfall could get me close to where I came in. The central column won't help, though; it looks the same from every side.

  Lights around the top of the column provided sunshine for the vast cavern and forced Tommy to squint when he looked in that direction. The column's base was stranger than the column. His mind wanted the column to cast a shadow, and there was none.

  As they neared the column, Tommy looked back at the waterfall to mark its location. From this perspective, he saw a cliff towering above the trees, and water pouring through a flat hole high in the cliff's side, not from the roof.

  Jack led the way through a door in the base of the column and down two flights of metal stairs. Rotting leaf litter covered the stair treads and made them slippery. The narrow corridor at the bottom smelled of sweat and ammonia, like the locker room at his school.

  "Pay attention," Jack said. "You’ll be coming this way." Five turns later, Tommy felt as though he was being led through a gigantic maze.

  The aroma of cooking food gradually overwhelmed the faint stench of mildew and too many people living close together. The smells made him realize that breakfast was a long time and a long walk away. Another turn took them into a broad room crowded with tables and chattering people, all of them short, with narrow torsos and oversized heads like Jack's.

  "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

  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.

  Chapter Three: Discovery

  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.

  "They are not our Lord," the crowd replied.

  "We are their servants," the leader said.

  "We still have our souls," the crowd replied.

  "We go where they will," the leader said.

  "We will return," the crowd replied
.

  "We have no one to lead us," the leader said.

  "He will come," the crowd replied.

  “Why will He come?” the leader asked.

  "Our faith will bring Him," the crowd replied.

  "What must we do?" the leader asked.

  "We must have faith," the crowd replied.

  The hooded man lowered his arms and walked toward the entrance. He turned before he reached the edge of the crowd, bowed his head, and slowly returned to the center. Individuals formed a line behind him, marching in step with his steps. With each step of his left foot, the hooded man chanted, "What must we do?" With each step of his right foot, the congregation responded, "We must have faith." He turned at a right angle and circled the room. Behind him, the congregation continued to join the line, each person with his or her head down and fingers interlocked in front. The priest turned sharply back the way he had come, moving beside the file following him. As each person came to the place where the priest had turned, that person turned also, and the line continued to move, curving snakelike as the priest made turn after turn, doubling back in an intricate pattern.

  Jack joined the line and Tommy followed.

  The chant continued:

  Left foot. "What must we do?”

  Right foot. "We must have faith."

  Left foot. "What must we do?”

  Right foot. "We must have faith."

  The priest followed a path painted on the floor. It’s a labyrinth, Tommy thought. His church in Atlanta had one of these on its grounds; not like this one, though.

  "What must we do?”

  "We must have faith."

  "What must we do?”

  "We must have faith."

  The priest stayed on the right side of the room until that side of the pattern filled with shuffling worshipers. When the priest reached the far end of the room and wound his way back on the other side, Tommy almost said aloud: it’s a reflection labyrinth. One side is a reflection of the other.

  "What must we do?”

  "We must have faith."