A Larger Universe (3 page)

He followed his nose to the door with the silver plate and a
rough pottery bowl filled with brown mush in which floated darker flecks.  The
smell made his mouth water.

He lifted the wooden spoon from the bowl to his lips and
carefully licked a small amount into his mouth.  His stomach's immediate growl
made Potter raise his head from his own bowl, his eyes round.

Well
, Tommy thought,
it may look bad, but they
wouldn't poison me.  Not yet anyway.
  He ate slowly at first, then more
rapidly as his hunger overcame his qualms about the food.

By the time he had inhaled half the bowl, eating became
mechanical. 
There must be a way out of this, but how?  I'm trapped in a
room with a single door.  My captor won't show himself.  I don't have any tools
and no way to contact anyone on the outside.
  The food tasted sour.  He
took a deep breath and put the bowl back on the floor. 

He looked around the room. 
This isn't that different
from the computer games I used to play.  The hero's trapped and must find a way
out.
  He stood up and ran his hands along the wall next to the door. 
In
the adventure games, the hero escapes through a secret passageway with a hidden
lock, or by blowing a hole through the wall.
  He continued around the room,
carefully feeling the walls.  When he returned to the door with the silver
plate, he turned and searched for something that he could use. 
In the
fantasy games, the way out is usually through a magic word or magical
instrument that was picked up earlier. 

He sat down next to his food bowl. 
Well, if this is like
that, I don't see it.  I don't know any magic words or have any magical
instruments, and I don't have weapons.  And I don't see anything that looks
like the entrance to a secret passage. 

He pulled his legs in again and rocked back and forth with
his head on his knees. 
I can find a way out of this.  I have to find a way
out of this.  I just have to be patient.  Just be patient, find out what's
happening, and learn how I can get home.  There must be something here I can use.

Tommy's head jerked up at the sound of the voice. 
"Awake agan?"  This time his mind made that “Awake again?” without
effort.  "How are you feeling now?" The voice still sounded funny and
the language was stilted, but the words came through if he didn’t pay attention
to them. 

Tommy glared at the ceiling.  "Much better, thank you. 
Good enough to talk to you."

"Maybe good enough to see me, do you think?"  The
gray wall inside the picture frame cleared, revealing another gray room and a short
man sitting in a chair behind an angular desk.  The man stood up and came to
the window. 

Tommy couldn't stop himself from staring.  He was used to
being teased for being small.  This man must have been teased his whole life. 
He looked like something on the cover of a tabloid in the grocery store.  He
might have been just over five feet tall, with a head that was much too large
for his body, or maybe his narrow shoulders under the dirty brown shirt made it
look that way.  His hips were narrow, too, and tapered down to skinny calves
and ankles extending from loose-fitting pants.  He would have been childlike
except for the deep wrinkles in his face and on the backs of his hands.

"Does this answer any of your questions?" The man
gazed at him for a moment.  "From that look, I reckon not."  He
returned to the desk.  “But the tests are done, and you're safe and we're safe,
so it’s all right for you to come out.  If you were a grown man, it wouldn’t
be, but what harm can a child do?"  He touched the desktop and the door between
them opened.  "Come.  Sit out here and we'll talk."

Tommy went through the door and sat down, and then recoiled
back in the chair as a musty, animal stench enveloped him. 
I've smelled
that before, but where?

"Let’s start with names," the man said.  "I
know yours from the news program yesterday.  Mine’s the first Jack.  You may
call me Jack, unless there's another one close by."

"Another one?  Another one what?"

"Another Jack.  There’re four of us now, though the
third Mary just had a baby, and she's thinking of calling him Jack.  That would
make five.  Five Jacks, but I’m first."

"Who cares what Jack you are?  Why am I here?" 
Tommy jumped up and shouted his questions.  "You kidnapped me for the
money, didn't you?  Have you talked to my parents yet about ransoming me?  It
won't do you any good.  I'm not rich, yet.  I already told you that."

"Now, now.  Ye are gettin askert again."  Tommy
needed a moment to translate that sentence.

"Scared?  Of course I’m scared!  When’re you going to
start telling me what's going on?  Who are you?  What do you want with me? 
When can I go home?"

Jack pushed Tommy into his chair.  "Maybe you would
feel better if you had your cat.  We like cats here.  That’s why we brought
your cat with you."  He went into the other room and brought out Potter.

Why is Potter so passive?  He doesn't usually let
strangers pick him up.

"Why do you call him Potter?" Jack asked. 
"We don’t name our cats."

"He has a white mark across his forehead, like the scar
on Harry Potter."

Jack shrugged his shoulders.  "Well that don’t mean
nothing to me.  Here, take your cat."

With Potter purring in his lap, Tommy did feel calmer.  Not
safe, but calmer.

Jack's smile didn’t expose his teeth.  "I don't know
why you’re here.  I wasn't told.  We take older people, but we always return
them as soon as we're done with them, and you aren't to be returned."

Tommy trembled.  “What could you want me for?  Except for
money, how could I have anything you want?”

"I don’t know why the lords want you.  I was told to break
you in and give you something to do.  Everybody works here.  The lords have no
place for those who don’t.”  He said the last two sentences flatly, the way
Tommy’s mom always answered "Just because it is" to his questions.

Tommy shook his head.  "Lords?  Who are the
lords?"

"You'll learn that soon enough."  Jack stood up. 
"We might as well get this over with.  You won’t take it any easier if I
coddle you.  Bring your cat.  We won't be coming back.”  He opened a door on
the other side of the desk.  "Just down this passage is the path."

Tommy wiped his eyes and nose on his shirttail and got up to
follow.  What else could he do?

At the end of the passage, another door led into a room,
about the size of an elevator, with still another door on the opposite wall. 
Jack unsealed this with some difficulty, using an inset handle, and stepped
over a lip at the bottom.  When Tommy followed, his first impression was of an
enormous, dimly lit cavern smelling of rotting vegetation and animal
droppings.  Then he became aware of gigantic trees outlined in the glow. 
Trees? 
In a cavern?

"It’s night now, but the showers are finished, and the
lights will be coming on soon.  Almost everyone is asleep.  I’d be except for
you.  You’re trouble."  Jack's voice almost disappeared in the huge
space.  “Stay close, and be careful not to run into anything,” he chuckled, “or
step into anything.”

As they walked, Tommy had to struggle to hold on to a
squirming Potter, but he wasn't going to lose the one thing that still anchored
him to home.

A narrow path led from the door.  Tommy brushed against wet
bushes on both sides.  Overhead, he saw trees outlined in silhouette against
the softly glowing roof.  Something flew from one tree to another with a
whispered “whoot” that was muffled by the distant sound of moving water.  If
not for the roof overhead, he could have been in the Chattahoochee River Park
on a moonless night.  Even the roof reminded him of the glow of Atlanta's
lights against low-lying clouds.

After they had walked for a while, the smell of animal
droppings grew stronger, and the narrow path ended in a wider path covered with
something that crunched under his feet.  Jack led the way to the right as the
roof brightened. 

With the light, Tommy could see more of his surroundings, and
his uneasiness increased.  He jerked his head from side to side, trying to take
in everything around him.  He had been to a football game at the Georgia Dome
Stadium, and he was sure at least twenty Georgia Domes would fit between the
thick central column and where the roof dimly met the ground in the distance. 

He was looking over his shoulder, trying to understand how a
waterfall could come from a hole in the roof, when he bumped into Jack, who had
stopped in front of a long, low building next to the trail.

"Watch where you're going, feral.  The lords'
protection only goes so far."

Feral?  What did he mean by that
.

"We’ll stop here and see if my boys are doing their
jobs," Jack said, then hesitated, “and I need to take a pee after all this
walking.”  He stuck his head inside the unlit doorway and bellowed, “The second
Jack, come here!”

A man stepped from the building.  He was a duplicate of the
first Jack, except for smoother skin and a full head of red hair instead of
Jack’s sparse brown.  "No need to yael, Jack.  I’m rit heer."  As he
had with the first Jack, Tommy heard this as “No need to yell, Jack.  I’m right
here.” 

"It’s good you are.  Show this boy the stable while I
take care of necessities." 

"The new one, huh?  You’re worth a lot of questions,
you are.  Well, come with me."

As they stepped into the darkened barn, Tommy blurted, “What
do you mean, I’m worth a lot of questions?  I've got questions, but why should
you?  Don’t you know why I'm here?”

“None of us knows why the lords wanted you.  They must have
a reason, but we're the last to find out, if we ever do.”

Something that sounded large and menacing made a snorting noise
behind a door to Tommy’s left.  From behind an identical door on his right came
a heavy thumping.  As they walked toward the end of the building, they passed
more doors on the left and right, and the pounding increased until the barn
rumbled. 

"Awake and hungry are you?  We’ll get you fed." 
Jack looked at Tommy over his shoulder.  "You might as well help.  If the
lords gave you to the first Jack, you’ll be working here."

Jack stopped at a large bin filled with grain.  A skittering
sound came from the straw under their feet.  “Damn mice,” the second Jack said,
“and worse things.  Put your cat down.  See what he can do.” 

Before Tommy could respond, Potter leaped to the floor and
darted into the darkness behind a bale of hay.

Jack handed Tommy a bucket.  "Fill that with grain and
follow me.”

Jack stopped at the first door.  "That bucket holds
three pounds of grain.  I’ll let you know which get more.  You unfasten the
gate by removing this pin and pushing down on the handle.  Be sure to put the
pin back in when you’re done.  Some of them are tall enough to reach over the
top and open the gate.”

A chuffing came from the other side of the gate.  Tommy
edged away.  Whatever was behind the door sounded big and dangerous.  A bull
maybe.

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.