A Larger Universe Read online

  Today the helicopters flew above his roof and stopped, hovering, still in formation, about five hundred feet above his head. The sky flickered through the whirling blades spinning on top of each aircraft. The blade tips seemed so close that the slightest mistake by the pilots would have caused them to hit each other, and bring the helicopters crashing down on him.

  Impossibly, a square of pale red appeared in midair between two of the aircraft, in the space between the turning rotors. Inside the square, he saw movement and the outline of a head.

  He tried to get up to run inside for his parents. Potter’s claws dug into his chest, and he saw a flash of light.

  The Watcher

  The hooded man leaned over the desk, propping his chin on cupped hands, and watched the sleeping boy. The viewing window converted the mostly infrared, ambient light in the confinement room to visible wavelengths, revealing a small figure, sprawled on his back with a black and white cat stretched across his torso. The boy’s narrow chest rose and fell slowly, lifting and lowering the cat.

  The child will never survive long enough to do the job he was brought here for, the hooded man thought, even if he does have the knowledge we need, and I don’t see how that’s possible, either. No one that young could know much.

  The man stood and moved nearer the window for a better view. He pulled up his robe’s right sleeve and compared his own arm with that of the boy. At that distance and in the dim light, he couldn’t tell for sure, but the boy’s upper arm looked smaller than his own wrist, and the hooded man’s peers considered him undersized. The television broadcast had stated that the boy was thirteen. If so, then he was very small for his age.

  The boy moved his arms, and a thin, strangely accented voice came through the speakers above the hooded man’s head. “Mom? Dad? Are you there?” The boy lifted the cat off his chest and sat up.

  The man returned to the controls on the face of the desk and slowly turned up the illumination in the confinement room, allowing more visible light to come through the window.

  “You’re awake,” the man said. “It was time. Wait.” He lifted a trapdoor behind the desk and hurried down a ladder to the passageway below. He had agreed to watch until the boy awoke. His part in this would come much later.

  Chapter Two: Not in Georgia Anymore

  Tommy woke in the dark with pressure on his chest. The weight was furry and warm and had pointed ears; it had to be Potter. The surface under him felt leathery and padded, almost like a bed, but when he spread his arms and legs, he couldn’t find the edge.

  This isn’t the deck, he thought, and it doesn’t feel like a hospital bed, either. He had broken his wrist in his one attempt at rollerblading and knew what a hospital bed felt like. This wasn't it. And why would Potter be with him in the hospital?

  He took a deep breath. Why does my head feel like it’s filled with mush? He rubbed his tongue against the roof of his mouth, trying to eliminate a bitter taste.

  “Mom? Dad? Are you there?” his voice rasped in the dark.

  The ceiling glowed faintly, revealing a small gray room with padded floor and walls. The light brightened still more. He was lying in the middle of the room. Tommy carefully lifted Potter off of his chest and placed him on the floor. That’s weird, he thought. Cats don't stay asleep when they're moved.

  A voice came from somewhere. "Thow air awake. It was time. Wait.”

  "Who's there?" Tommy shouted. "Where am I?"

  He looked around the room, searching for the source of the voice. He saw featureless walls, broken only by two doors and a window frame with more of the gray wall inside it. One door had a handle set into its face, the other a silver plate.

  Tommy got to his feet and walked toward the only objects in the room, an open-topped flat box and two bowls on the floor next to the door with the inset handle. "Well, whoever they are, they've taken care of you, Potter,” He said to the still sleeping cat. “You have a litter box and water and cat food." He realized how thirsty he was. “I wish they’d done the same for me.”

  Twisting the inset door handle and pulling open the door revealed a smaller room containing a sink and a strange toilet. After getting a drink, he inspected the toilet. The base was installed much farther from the wall than any toilet he had seen, and the pipes entered the bowl from the side instead of the rear. The seat was half as high as the toilets at home, and, instead of lifting, the seat split in the middle and folded to the left and right on a hinge. A lever in the hinge mechanism made both sides scissor out at once. He opened and closed the seat a few times. That could be painful. I wonder who invented that.

  When he returned to the outer room, Potter stood up with his spine in a high arc and his mouth gaping in a wide, toothy yawn. "Potter! You’re okay!"

  Tommy sat down beside the cat and gave him a gentle hug, which the cat resisted with claws half extended. The resistance became a leap, as Potter jumped to the food bowl.

  Still coming from no specific place, a different voice startled Potter away from eating and back to Tommy's lap. “How are you feeling?” Or at least that is what Tommy made of it. The voice sounded like that of the clerk in the North Georgia store his family had visited. Sort of Southern, but biblical sounding, with some of the words clipped at the beginning or end. What he actually heard was “Ow air ye feelin?”

  Tommy stood with the cat in his arms, then winced as he felt a sharp pain inside his left elbow. A needle mark inside a bruise marked his arm. “Where am I?"

  For the first time since he woke, he felt frightened. The throb of his heart pounded in his ears and he had trouble breathing. He looked anxiously around the room, waiting for an answer to his question.

  His shout frightened Potter out of his grasp. "It’s the money, isn’t it? Why did you take my blood?"

  When he still didn't get an answer, he sat on the padded floor, pulled his bent legs close to his body, and placed his head on his knees. He spoke again in a whisper. "Mom said this might happen. You’ve kidnapped me for the money. Well, we don’t have any money yet, so you can’t get any. Keeping me here won’t do you any good."

  He lifted his head and shouted again, "Where are you? Why can’t I see you?”

  "My, ye do run on, din’t ye?" the voice said. "We will come to all thet. Jist answer me. Ow air thee?"

  Tommy gave that some effort and decided the voice meant, "My, you do run on, don’t you? We’ll get to all that. Just answer me. How are you?”

  Tommy wrapped his arms around his body. When he first woke, he had felt calm in spite of the blackness. Even the strange room hadn't bothered him at first. Now, his heart raced, and tears ran down his face. "Will I ever see my parents again? On TV, kidnapped children are killed if they've seen the kidnappers. That’s why you aren’t showing yourselves, isn’t it?"

  "Ah. The drug's wearin off. It were time if we had the dose rit. Can’t always be zackly seur, though. No, that not be the reeson we’re not shewin airselves. It be best to do this slow. Ye can’t come out for a while anyway, till the tests be done."

  Tommy couldn’t stop crying. Between sobs he said, "Do what slowly? What kind of tests? I want to go home!"

  "Maybe it be best if...," the voice said as Tommy smelled a pungent odor. The room darkened.

  When he awoke again on the floor, Potter crunched at the cat food bowl, making the only sound. The pungent smell had been replaced by the aroma of hot food.

  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 b
ecame 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.