The People of Sparks (5 page)

Ben voted yes, reluctantly.

Wilmer voted yes.

So it was agreed: They would give them a place to stay. They would help them for six months. After that, the strangers would have to take care of themselves.

Mary, Ben, and Wilmer shook hands on this agreement, but none of them said out loud what they were thinking: that even after six months, the people of Ember would be hard-pressed to start a town. The founders of Sparks had known carpentry and farming, and even so it had taken them two years just to build rough shelters and get the rocks out of the fields. They had known how to manage animals and build good soil, but still their animals sometimes died of disease and hunger in the many years when the crops failed. They had known to expect harsh weather, wolves, and bandits, and still they suffered losses from all three.

The town leaders knew in their hearts that in this vast, empty country, where there were a thousand dangers the people of Ember did not understand, they would
never
be able to take care of themselves.

CHAPTER 5

                    
The Pioneer

In the village the next morning, criers ran through the streets calling to the people of Sparks. They told them to bring out all their old blankets, pillows, towels, and rags, and any clothes they no longer needed. They were to heap these on the street in front of their houses. From the storehouse, people collected food—things that didn’t need to be cooked, like apples from the prior fall, and dried apricots, and bread, and big hunks of cheese. Doon, who had gotten up at the first sign of light in the sky, watched these preparations with rising excitement.

By midday a caravan was moving southward out of the village. It was composed of strange vehicles that the villagers called “truck-wagons,” or just “trucks.” They were made of rusty metal and had four fat black wheels. At the front was a boxy part, like a metal chest with a rounded top, and behind that was a higher box with two seats in it where the drivers sat. The back of the truck was flat; this was where the crates of supplies were loaded. Attached to each of these trucks by sturdy ropes were two big, squarish, muscular animals, by far the most enormous animals Doon had ever seen. They made snuffling noises, and sometimes a low sort of groan.

“What are they?” Doon asked someone walking near him.

“Oxen,” the man answered. “Like cows, you know? That milk comes from?”

Doon had never heard of cows. He had thought milk came as powder in a box. He didn’t say this, of course. He just nodded.

“And what does ‘truck’ mean?” he asked. He understood the “wagon” part.

The man looked surprised. “It just means ‘truck,’” he said. “You know—what people used to drive in the old times. There are millions of them, trucks and cars, everywhere. They used to run on their own, without oxen. They had engines in here.” He rapped on the front of the truck. “You poured stuff called gasleen on the engine, and it made the wheels turn. Now, since we don’t have gasleen anymore, we take the engines out, and that makes the trucks light and easy to pull.”

Doon didn’t ask what “gasleen” was. He didn’t want to show his ignorance all at once. He’d spread his questions around, find out just a few things from one person at a time.

He and his father walked along together beside one of the trucks. Doon had expected Lina to be with them, but by the time the caravan left she hadn’t come. That was all right. She’d easily find out where they’d gone and come later.

Doon’s father still had sore muscles from the long walk of the days before, so Doon soon went ahead of him. He was bursting with energy and joy and simply could not walk slowly. He took deep breaths of sweet-smelling morning air. Over his head, the sky was a deep, clear blue, a thousand times bigger than the black lid that had covered Ember, and around him the green-and-golden land seemed to stretch away without end. Doon kept wondering where the edges were. He made his way to the front of the procession and asked Wilmer, who was trotting along with his arms swinging jauntily.

“Edges?” said Wilmer, glancing down.

“Yes. I mean, if I were standing way over there”—he pointed to the horizon, where the sky seemed to meet the land—“would I be at the edge of this place? And what’s beyond the edge?”

“There is no edge,” said Wilmer, looking at Doon as if he must have something wrong with him. “The earth is a sphere—a huge, round ball. If you kept going and going, you’d eventually come back to where you started.”

This nearly knocked the breath out of Doon, it was so strange and hard to comprehend. He thought at first that Wilmer was playing a joke on him, thinking he was a fool. But Wilmer’s expression was plainly puzzled, not sly. He must be telling the truth.

There were a million mysteries here, Doon thought. He would explore them all! He would learn everything! That morning, he’d already learned the words
sun, tree, wind, star,
and
bird.
He’d learned
dog, chicken, goat,
and
bread.

He had never in his life felt so good. He felt as huge as the land around him and as clear and bright as the air. No laboring in dank tunnels here; no running through dark streets to escape pursuit. Now he was out in the open, free. And he was powerful, too, in a way he hadn’t been before. He had done something remarkable—saved his people from their dying city—and, along with Lina, he would be known for that deed all his life. He gazed around at this new world full of life and beauty, and he felt proud to have brought his people here.

The road passed the last houses of the village and ran along the river, which was wide and slow, with grasses bending along its banks. The trucks rattled. Clouds of dust billowed from their wheels. All around Doon rose a babble of voices as people pointed things out in tones of astonishment.

“Look—something white floating in the sky!”

“Did you see that little animal with the big tail?”

“Do you feel that? The air is
moving
!”

Children darted every which way, daring each other to touch the broad sides of the oxen, plucking blossoms from the brambles at the edge of the road, jumping onto the trucks for a quick ride until they were shooed off again.

And the sun shone down on everyone. The people of Ember loved the strange feeling of heat on the tops of their heads. They put their hands up often to touch their warm hair.

The road went up a gentle rise and around a clump of trees. “Here we are!” cried Wilmer, sweeping his arm out proudly. “The Pioneer Hotel!”

At the crest of the slope stood a building bigger than any Doon had ever seen. It was three stories high and very long, with a wing at each end perpendicular to the main part. Windows marched in three rows across its walls. In the center, overlooking a long field that sloped down to the river, was what must once have been a grand entrance—wide steps, a roof held up by columns, a double doorway. But the building was grand no more. It was very old, Doon could tell; its walls were gray and stained, and most of the windows were no more than dark holes. The roof had sagged inward in some places. Grass grew right up to the steps, and far down at the other end, Doon could see that a tree had fallen against the building and smashed a corner of it.

Ben Barlow strode across the wide, weedy field in front of the hotel and climbed the steps. Wilmer followed. He leaned against a column, and Ben took a position on the top step and waited for the crowd of refugees to assemble before him. Doon wove among the people until he found his father again, and they stood together.

Ben held up both hands and called, “Attention, please!” The crowd grew silent. “Welcome to your new home, the Pioneer Hotel,” he said.

A cheer arose from the crowd. Ben frowned and held up both hands, palms out, and the cheer died away. “It is a
temporary
home only,” he said. “We cannot, of course, keep you here in Sparks on a permanent basis. To do so would severely strain our resources and no doubt cause resentment and deprivation among our people.” Ben cleared his throat and frowned into the air. Then he went on. “We have decided you may stay here for six months—through summer and fall, to the end of the month of Chilling. After that time, with the training you’ll receive from us, you will go out into the Empty Lands and found a village of your own.”

The people of Ember glanced at each other in surprise. Found their own village? Some of them smiled eagerly at this idea; others looked uncertain. The city of Ember had been constructed
for
them. All they’d ever had to do was repair work as the buildings got older. They’d never built anything from scratch. But, Doon said to himself, thinking about all this, I’m sure we could learn.

Ben went on. “The Pioneer Hotel has seventy-five rooms,” he said, “plus a big dining room, a ballroom, offices, and a lobby. There will be adequate space for everyone.”

Excited murmurs swept through the crowd. Doon started doing the math in his head. Four hundred and seventeen people divided by seventy-five rooms equaled five or six people per room. That sounded crowded, but maybe they were big rooms. And then there were the dining room and the ballroom, whatever that was, maybe those would hold ten or twenty people. . . .

“Now, of course this building is somewhat less than fully functional,” Ben went on. “You won’t have water pumps here, as we do in the village. But the river is close, just down this slope, and the water is clean. The river will provide water for drinking, bathing, and washing clothes. Your toilets will be outside—you’ll start digging them tomorrow, once we’ve organized you into work teams. Today you’ll settle into your rooms.” He paused, frowning. The two lines between his eyebrows deepened. “There’s not much furniture left in the rooms,” he said. “Maybe a few rooms still have beds, but I think we’ve taken most of them by now. You’ll be sleeping on the floor.”

“Sleeping on the floor!” The voice came from somewhere behind Doon. Its tone was somewhere between outrage and amused disbelief. Doon turned around to see whose it was. In the middle of the crowd he spotted a tall boy, a young man really, who seemed to be standing up on something—maybe a rock or tree stump—so he could look out over people’s heads. He was handsome in a sharp-edged way. His jaw was square-cornered. His shoulders were straight as a board. His dark hair was combed back from his face and slicked down, so his head looked neat and round and hard, and his eyes were as pale as bits of sky.

Doon recognized this boy, though he didn’t know him—his name was Mick, or Trick, or Mack, or something like that.

“On the floor, yes,” said Ben. “But we’ll give you as many blankets as we can.”

The boy’s sharp voice came again, rising above the others. “One more question, sir: What about food?”

The question rippled through the crowd: Yes, food. What will we eat?

Ben raised his voice. “Please listen!” he shouted. “Listen!” All faces turned toward him again. Doon could see that Ben’s eyes were fixed on the boy with the sharp voice. Ben had the look of a teacher speaking to a slightly unruly class. “Eating will work this way,” he said. “You will be assigned to households in the village—four or five people to each house. At noontime, you’ll go there for your main meal.” He paused and frowned. “As for breakfast and dinner—your lunchtime family will give you food to take away with you, some to eat in the evening, and some to save for the next morning. They will be as generous as they can. But remember—we do not have an
abundance
of extra food. Your arrival means less for everyone.” He gazed at the crowd for a moment and took a breath. “Is that clear?” he said. “Any questions?”

No one spoke for a moment, and then the tall boy said, “No, sir. Lead on.”

So Ben led the way into the lobby of the ancient Pioneer Hotel. Doon and his father stayed close together, stepping carefully. It was hard to see. The only light came from the doorway behind them and from a hole in a great dirt-encrusted glass dome three stories above their heads. The floor was littered with chunks of fallen plaster and gritty with dirt that had blown in over the years.

“This place needs work,” Doon whispered to his father.

His father brushed a spiderweb away from his face. “Yes,” he said. “But we’re lucky to be here. We could be sleeping on the ground.”

Ben led them down a hall to the left, to a vast room with high windows, where dusty sunshine slanted across the broken tiles of the floor. “This was the dining room,” Ben called out. Doon saw only a few chairs, lying on their sides, most of them with a leg broken or missing.

Beyond the dining room was a room even more immense, with a raised platform at one end, a high ceiling, and a wooden floor. “The ballroom,” Ben said. “In earlier years, before the Disaster, musicians sat up there on the stage. People danced out here.” At the great high windows hung tatters of faded rose-colored cloth that had been curtains years ago.

“Smells moldy in here.” It was that boy again. His clear, sharp voice carried over other voices even though it wasn’t much louder. “Reminds me of home.”

People laughed. It was true—the smell of mold was common in the underground city of Ember. There was a bit of comfort in it.

Doon suddenly remembered the name of this tall boy who kept speaking out. It was Tick—Tick Hassler. In Ember, Doon recalled, Tick had been a hauler. He had pulled carts full of produce from the greenhouses to the stores, and garbage from the stores out to the trash heaps. Doon hadn’t known him then, but he remembered seeing him, pulling his loaded cart with his whole long body slanted forward and a fierce grin of effort on his face. He’d pulled his carts faster than anyone else.

Ben led them to the stairs, and they climbed to the floors above. Long, dim corridors lined with doors stretched the length of the building. Some of the doors were open. Doon looked through them as he passed. All the rooms were more or less the same: windows across one wall, a stained and faded carpet, a couple of broken lamps lying on the floor. A few of the rooms had beds, and several had other furniture—chests with their drawers hanging crookedly out, end tables, a chair or two. He stepped into some of the rooms and found that they had bathrooms as well, with rust-stained sinks and bathtubs that were homes to spiders.