Young Bleys - Childe Cycle 09 (5 page)

too much problem. The room he had stepped into was clearly a large part of the house's interior. It had a rough ceiling made by lengths of saplings laid side by side, and the partitions that took the place of walls on the two sides of it that were not the exposed logs of the building's exterior were made of medium-sized logs standing upright between the floor and ceiling of saplings.

In the far wall of the house, the other outside wall that would face backward, there was a large, stone fireplace—like everything else around the house, obviously homemade—that had a good fire going in it which accounted for the warmth, and with a rack that stretched out across the flames to hold a large metal pot above them. The furniture in the room consisted of a couple of chairs with straw-stuffed tarpaulin cushions on their seats, and a rectangular table with upright chairs having no padding whatsoever. The single exception was one enormous chair, strongly built, which was pushed back into a comer. Surprisingly, the floor, which was made of split logs, had been planed almost level and had apparently been scrubbed mightily, for it was as clean as the rest of the interior and the furniture, itself.

The door opened and shut again behind him. He turned around to see Henry and the younger boy.

Henry stood aside, stepping onto the thick entry rug as did the boy, so that they were all crowded together.

"Will, meet your cousin, Bleys. Bleys, this is Will, my younger son."

"Hello," said Will, offering a smile. He looked something like Joshua, built on a more flimsy and smaller scale.

"Honored to make your acquaintance," said Bleys.

"Never mind being formal!" said Henry. "Bleys, this family doesn't speak cant and it also doesn't go in for high manners. Say hello to your cousin."

"Hello, Will," said Bleys.

Will blushed, evidently at simply being directly addressed and called by name. He said nothing.

"All right now," Henry was saying above Bleys' head, "Joshua, take Bleys to your room and find some clothes for him besides this old jacket of yours he's wearing. They'll have to be your clothes, and there's no reason he shouldn't get the older ones, since he's come later to the house. They'll be too big, but that's all right—he'll grow into them. Go along with Joshua, Bleys. Never mind about the floor. You're pretty well dripped off by this time."

Bleys followed Joshua through an entrance in a wall on then-left and directly into a relatively small room that had two chairs and three bunkbeds in it, the bunkbeds fixed to the wall. The last of these was obviously freshly carpentered, but had nothing but a mattress so far. This could only be the one intended for him.

"Here," said Joshua, holding out some pants and a shirt to Bleys. He was on his knees, rooting around in a chest that he had pulled from under the bottom one of the other two bunks, attached to the outer wall of the room. He went on, still in a commanding but, Bleys thought, not really a bullying tone. "As Father says, they'll be too big; but you can roll the sleeves and pant-cuffs back, and make do. I'll have some socks for you in a second and maybe we ought to give you a different pair of shoes. They'll be old ones of mine, which means they'll be too big but we can stuff them with some cloth. Your shoes won't stand up for five days out here. Hurry now, it's almost dinner time."

CHAPTER
4

The clothes felt
strange, heavy and stiff upon Bleys, even though the elbows of the shirt and the knees of the pants had been worn smooth by use. Happily the pants had belt loops.

"You'll need a belt—oh, you've got one," said Joshua, digging further into the chest.

Bleys indeed had a belt. This was by deliberate intent, since such things were ornaments nowadays, worn with the type of clothes he usually wore. But, even though he was still young, he had read a great many stories in which the hero, about to go into strange territory, worries about having enough funds with him to buy whatever he might turn out to need. He had been hoarding all the money he could get his hands on since his decision to challenge his mother; and in that profligate household had gathered together a surprising amount.

He had used it all to buy interstellar credits—good anywhere. The belt he now wore had a magnetic seal along the inside that opened up into a long thin envelope, in which he had folded bearer certificates for about fifteen hundred inter

stellar units—enough to buy him passage on a spaceship off this world, if it came to that.

Also, in the two weeks it had taken his mother to arrange for his being sent to where he was now, he had managed to get a bank to supply him with some small denomination Association currency, most of which he kept with the bonds. Now, he threaded the belt through the loops of the pants he had just been given, and pulled the oversize waist tight around him, before latching the buckle.

"You'll find a chest under your bunk, too," said Joshua, nodding at the single bunk on the wall opposite to the two beside which he knelt. "You can keep these spare socks and underwear there. I'll show you how to fold them. Father likes things neat."

He was about to close the chest and shove it back under the bed when he saw that Bleys was still standing, now dressed in the new clothes and shoes, but with his arms wrapped around him.

"You're cold?" asked Joshua. He reached into the chest and threw something dark and soft into Bleys' hands. "Here, you can have this sweater. It's a little worn out at the elbows, but I'll help you patch that. Do you knit? You don't? We all knit here, in the wintertime when there's nothing else to do and we're rained in. I'll teach you how."

He closed the chest and pushed it back under the bunk out of sight. Bleys had struggled into the sweater, finding it, as he had expected, too large for him, so that he had to roll back the sleeves from both wrists. It was a pullover sweater that clung to him fairly well, in spite of the fact that it was large for him; its knitted fabric fitting itself to his slim body. It was a dark blue in color.

"Now, we'd better be getting out to the dinner table," said Joshua. "Will is going to have it set and ready to dish up by now; and Father will have finished his prayers. He went into his room to pray when we came here, because he had to miss a couple of prayer times going in to get you."

"Prayer times?" asked Bleys.

"Yes." Joshua stared at him, almost as much at a loss as Bleys.

"Didn't they call them that, where you come from?" Joshua asked. "We pray four times a day. Morning, at getting up, at our midmorning break, just before lunch, and at bedtime. Some churches have their people praying six or even seven times a day; but that's not what our church is like. It's terrible how many apostate churches there are, Father says. But it can't be helped. We stick to the true gospel and the true way."

For a moment Joshua's last words echoed in Bleys' mind.
".
. . True
gospel . . ."—
"true
way." His heart bounded at the prospect of possibly finding something for which he had longed. To believe in a single truth for each and every thing—and all the stability that promised . . .

But even as he was thinking this, he was following Joshua and they were back, outside the bedroom. As Joshua had predicted, the table was already set.

Its scrubbed surface was now covered with a cloth that had originally been checkered red and white, but now had been washed so many times that it was almost all white. This cloth was laid with wooden forks and spoons; and homemade knives that were sharp enough, Bleys discovered by accident during the meal, to shave with.

"What kept you?" demanded Henry as they emerged from the boys' bedroom. "Well, never mind. Sit yourself down, sit yourself down. Will, you can serve us now."

Bleys found put before him a large wooden bowl that contained a dark-looking stew, from the iron pot that had been hanging over the fire in the fireplace. It had an odd smell, mainly of vegetables, but it was an appetizing one; and Bleys found himself suddenly weak with hunger. He realized then that it had been a long day since they had left the ship and he had last eaten.

He was about to pick up his wooden spoon and dig into the stew, when he saw that no one else at the table had done so. They were waiting with their hands in their laps looking expectantly at Henry. Finally, when everyone had been served and Will himself had climbed into a chair opposite his own bowl of stew, Henry spoke.

"Grace, Will," he said.

"Lord we thank thee and thee alone, always for the food that thou has supplied us. For all things are supplied by thee, in thy name
..."
Will's young, clear, high voice began immediately and continued for some time, the extreme earnestness of it giving a special intensity to what he said.

Bleys, looking at him, thought that the other boy could not be more than a year younger than he was; but in some ways he was much more childish. It was obvious, now, that in this moment Will was not just thanking a deity in whom he believed. He was speaking directly to an invisible, all-powerful presence that stood just behind his father at the foot of the table; and weighed every word the boy said for correctness and sincerity.

The result upon Bleys was impressive. For the first time, he
—-
appreciated emotionally how deep the dark river of believed truth in their religion and all its observation ran, in the three people with him here.

At last, Will came to an end. Still, none of the family moved until Henry took up his own spoon.

"Now we will eat," he said. "Joshua, pass your cousin the cheese and the bread."

Bleys had scarcely noticed that also on the table were two platters, one holding thick-cut slices of dark, rough-looking bread, the other a whitish cheese cut into two-inch cubes. He accepted the plates from Joshua.

"Thank you, Joshua," he said.

"Here, we say thank the Lord," said Henry. "Remember that, Bleys."

"Yes, Uncle," said Bleys. "Thank the Lord for these foods."

He waited until he had spoken before he helped himself both to the bread and a couple of cubes of the cheese and then he passed the platter back to Joshua himself, who swiftly, without taking anything, passed it to Henry.

For the first time a wintry smile showed on Henry's features, a smile directed at his oldest son,

"Bleys is just come among us, Joshua," Henry said, "and it was because you were eldest I asked you to serve him first. It

was polite of you to remember not to help yourself before passing the platters to me."

Having taken what he wanted, he passed the platters back by way of Joshua down to Will; who both, atlast, got to help themselves.

Bleys was busily searching for an understanding of the people around him—but particularly an understanding of Henry. It would be Henry he wanted to understand and bring to a liking for him. Henry, from whom in the end he could win the most in freedom and favors.

Indeed, in the long run, he had some hope—but it was faint—of eventually being able to in a small way, at least, influence the man, as he had literally controlled some few of the adults he had known around his mother. Nearly all of these he had been able to take some advantage of, first by the method of getting into their good graces, and then by playing on their own likes and dislikes to make them give him what he wanted. But only a few of them had become so amenable that he had been able to get anything at all he wanted from them.

Henry did not look like an easy man from whom to get anything at all.

Luckily, at the present moment, Bleys had time to think about it. There was no conversation; since mouths were full and jaws were busy with the stew, the cheese and the bread.

There were also large cups full of dark liquid standing by each plate. Bleys tasted it and discovered that it was the brew of some local herb, probably considered the equivalent of coffee. Its taste was bitter and unpleasant to him, but he drank some of it anyway, not only because he wanted to seem to like everything and be as much one of them as possible, but because he needed some kind of liquid to wash down the food he was busily eating.

Curiously, otherwise everything at the table tasted good to him. The stew was indeed mainly vegetable. But it had been enriched by small threads and chunks of fattish meat. Goat probably, Bleys guessed, since there would be no native animals here; and if there were, they would be indigestible by human digestive systems. Also he had seen no sign of other domestic animals about the place.

Later he found out that he was wrong. The planet had almost a plague of wild rabbits; and the meat in the stew had been from one of these.

The goats, he told himself now, must mean everything to this farm. Not only as draft animals to pull the cart; but to pull other things such as plows, to supply leather, hides, meat, and even the milk from which this cheese was made.

For the cheese alone was th
e one thing that had at least a
slightly familiar flavor. It was
not quite the same as the goat
cheese he had eaten on occasions with his mother, but it was
close enough to be identi
fied as basically that, and not
something else.

As far as making an attempt to ingratiate himself with Henry . . . clearly Henry's religion was everything to him and his family. Bleys had been informed by Ezekiel that things were like this with all those who lived on Harmony and Association, and belonged to one of the innumerable churches mere—which were at the same time always at each other's throats over religious ritual and doctrine.

He felt instinctively that he had scored a strong point with Henry, by his quotations from the Bible on the trip home. But, where to go from there was a question. Here, in his own house, on his own land, Henry seemed complete and invulnerable to persuasion, except along religious lines; and those lines were the only route now to the kind of freedom that Bleys wished and needed to gain for himself.

Basically, he wanted escape from all people and all restrictions, as he had wanted escape from his mother; and the chance to find a life for himself, in surroundings much more like those he had been used to during his first eleven years. The thought of living out his life in the surroundings of this rough cabin, with its rough table and homemade food, repelled him. But he had been ready to risk his life to escape from his mother; and he would not shrink from anything that turned out to be necessary.

There was a deep hunger in him-for something he could not even put into words, but which he knew he would finally recognize when he found it—if he simply kept searching for it and working to understand it. This he knew: it was bigger than what anyone else he had known—including his mother—had ever dreamed of having.

Now, for the first time, he could feel a solid hope that he could find it here, on Association. But first and foremost, it must mean freedom for him, in all respects . . .

The voice of Henry jarred him out of his thoughts.

"Bleys," his uncle was saying, "what schooling have you had?"

Bleys' mind leaped to find answers to that question. In effect, he had had no real schooling. From time to time, there —-had been tutors in one subject or another when his mother thought of it. But, since he and she were generally on the move,, it was troublesome and time-consuming to find someone for a short period. Anything else, from his mother's point of view, was unthinkable. As a result Bleys had educated himself, more than been educated; and his education had been oriented toward those things that interested him, or would impress the people before whom he showed off for her approval.

Now he tried to think of things in which his own reading might have trained him enough so that he could get by with giving the impression he had a knowledge of them; as he had hastily pretended to-have a knowledge of the Bible. Mentally, he scrambled for subjects that would make him valuable to Henry.

"I can read and write, of course," he said, reaching for the most obvious topics first, "and of course I know arithmetic, up into algebra and geometry. I know a little bit of practical mathematics, like the basics of surveying, and figuring how tall a tree is from its shadow and so forth. There's a formula—if your house was built of boards instead of logs, Uncle, I could probably make an estimate of how many board feet of lumber there were in it. Then I know something about chemistry, too, and mechanics—"

"What do you mean by mechanics?" interrupted Henry.

"Oh, how engines and things like that are put together." He took a chance on an outright lie. "I had some training in shop too, which helped."

"Shop?" demanded Henry.

"That's where they show you how to take apart and put together motors and things. It teaches you how to make them," said Bleys.

"Is that so?" said Henry; and Bleys thought that for the first time he heard interest in his voice. "What other things have you learned?"

Bleys found himself running out of ideas and educational topics, particularly any that might interest Henry. Henry would clearly not be interested in music, literature, or ancient Earth history, and such things.

"I was taught something about first aid, and medicines," said Bleys, "but not much. But I really am quite good at arithmetic, Uncle. I can add up figures without making mistakes, and keep records."

"Can you now?" said Henry.

He sat for a minute, obviously thinking. Then he went on.

"We're not a bunch of storekeepers here," he said finally, "but there are some records that could be kept. I've kept them myself, but if you're capable of helping me with that, Bleys, it'd be a good use for you to put yourself to, as well as your other duties"—Bleys' hopes sank fearfully at the thought of what "other duties" might be—"I'll think about this; and we may talk some more about it. Is there anything else you've got to tell me about subjects you've been schooled in?"

It occurred to Bleys it was best not to claim to know too much.

"Maybe, Uncle," he said, "but I can't think of any more, right now. If I remember I'll tell you."

"I'll say one thing for you, Bleys—and your cousins"—he looked from Joshua to Will—"should take note. You're willing to be helpful. And this is the right attitude."

"Thank you, Uncle," said Bleys, with relief.

He had been unsure whether an emphasis on a sense of duty would necessarily recommend him to Henry. But from what he had learned about the Friendlies beforehand and from what he had seen of Henry himself, it seemed possible. The thought occurred to him, abruptly, that Henry might want to send him off to some local school; and that would be the last thing Bleys wanted.

Any time spent in local schooling by him would be a waste of time; and, beyond that, pure misery, since he would almost surely know more about many things than those already there. Even if he did not, he would learn all they had to teach children of his age in a few weeks; and he cringed at the thought of trying to fit in with the other students.

"Very well, then," said Henry, shoving back his chair and standing up. "Will, Joshua—get to your evening chores. Bleys, come along with me."

He headed out the front door. Bleys, following him, snatched off a peg the jacket Henry had given him earlier. Henry smiled his wintry smile again, watching Bleys struggle into it as they went down the front steps together.

Henry led him to one of the outbuildings, unlatched the rope loop that held the door, and let them inside, carefully closing the door behind them as if on something precious.

The room was dimly lit and about big enough to hold two of the goat-carts they had ridden out in, without the goats. Henry reached up on a shelf, took down a lamp with a tall glass chimney, its transparent base three-quarters full of a pale, oily liquid, and with a wick extending upward into the chimney. He removed the chimney and set the wick alight before replacing the chimney.

The glow it cast was yellow but bright. Bleys saw that they had stepped into some kind of workshop. In the center of the floor was the engine block of an internal combustion engine. Bleys recognized it from a history book as one of the simplified varieties that had been especially designed for the Younger Worlds when colonization was first started. It had three cylinders and according to what Bleys had read about it, had been designed to run on just about anything combustible that had been made into a liquid. Even wood and ordinary weeds, ground powder-fine, could be utilized by it as fuel.

This particular block had a lubrication pan below, but no head above it. Its three cylinders gaped empty. On a shelf to one side sat the three pistons that would fit into the holes, and some other parts. Bleys stared at it all, puzzled; then suddenly understood.

Henry, like a great many of the poor colonists Bleys had read about, was gradually building an engine that could be used to drive a homemade tractor or car, buying it part by part as he could squeeze.out the funds for it.

"Do you recognize this from that class of yours? What did you call it—'Shop'?" Henry asked him.

"I—think so. Yes, Uncle, I do," said Bleys. "There're different models of course. To know which one this is I'd need to look at its plans."

"I've got those here," said Henry. He reached to the back of the shelf behind where the pistons were standing on end, and came up with a sheaf of working plans printed on sheets of plastic, two by three feet in size. He spread them out on an empty section of the bench and put the lantern down beside him. "Here they are.
Look,
at them and tell me if you know this particular model of engine."

Bleys looked. The closest he had come to any plans like this had been to see reproductions of them in a book on mechanics. He had been attracted by what he saw then, as he was by everything, but particularly stories and mathematics.

Still, anything new fascinated him. All that was new showed him things, proved things to him. The stories reported and informed. So did the plans. So did the mathematics.

But the mathematics had the additional attraction of proving something. He had been particularly delighted with a volume on solid geometry. He had seen a beauty between the solid, three-dimensional shape, represented on the screen of his reader, and the proof for that shape being as it was.

Now, he looked at the plans for the motor with interest. They were not the plans he had seen in the book on mechanics; but they were close enough so that he could make a ready identification between them and those he had looked at before. Essentially, the engine had been designed so that it could be