A Larger Universe (5 page)

"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."

"What must we do?”

"We must have faith."

More than an hour passed between when the priest had entered
and the last person exited the labyrinth.  The priest had long before returned
to the room's center, a circle bounded by the labyrinth and those circling
him.  He stood, with his head bowed, chanting, until the last person left the
labyrinth and rejoined the congregation standing in rows next to the walls.  He
raised his arms above his head and again led the complete chant and response,
then, with head and arms lowered, the priest left the way he had come.

Jack leaned over to Tommy's ear.  "Now you can rest, if
you want."

Tommy jerked, as if splashed with ice water.  He needed a
moment to realize where he was and what he had been doing. 

When he considered what Jack had said, the idea no longer
appealed.  Well before the end of the service, the chanting and measured
walking made him feel as if he drifted in the air.  Now, he felt full of
energy.  He wanted to do something, to go somewhere, to at least begin to find
a way out of this place.

Tommy saw a person he knew among the crowd moving through
the door.  "Mark.  Wait."

Tommy worked his way to Mark.  "I’m not as tired as I
thought.  What are you doing now?  Do you want to go exploring in the
woods?"

"Can’t do that.  Didn’t the first Jack tell you?"

"In the passages, then.  Does anybody care if we go
there?"

Mark shrugged his shoulders.  "If we stay on this level
or the level circling the floor of the Commons.  What do you want to see?"

"All I've seen are the Commons and the passages we live
in.  Something besides that."

A short walk brought them to a door set at an angle to the
end of the corridor.  Beyond the double set of doors, a larger, dimly-lit
passage led to the left and right.  Mark turned to the left.  "This is one
of the fast ways from the center column to the route circling the
Commons."

That has to go by the room I woke up in that first day,
if I can just find it.

As they passed one of the doors facing the passageway, Tommy
pointed at the image painted on its surface.  "What does the symbol
mean?"

Mark glanced at him.  His expression indicated that he
thought Tommy should know the answer.  "The wheat picture shows where
wheat is stored, the corn picture where corn is stored.  That's how the
artisans mark the storage rooms.”

Artisans?  I’ll ask about that later.
  Tommy pointed
at the face of another door.  "No, I mean the symbols above the pictures. 
They look like letters, almost, but I can’t read them."

"Letters?"

"Letters in an alphabet."

"What's an alphabet?"

They walked quietly for a while, the only sound that of
their footsteps.  "You can’t read can you?" asked Tommy.

"I can read horses pretty good," Mark replied,
"but that’s not what you mean, is it?"

"No, it’s not.  It doesn’t matter.  How much
farther?"

Mark pointed at some markings on the floor.  "We just
passed the three stripes, so two more stripes to go."

He can count.  I wonder how high?  He would need to count
to work with animals and crops.  No need to read and write, though.

A half-hour later, they came to a large door covering the
end of the passage. 

"That’s always locked," Mark said.  "We
passed the stair door."

A door with picture of a stair below more symbols led them
up to the passage circling the Commons.

After a brief walk down that passage, Mark opened another
door, this one with a picture of an eye.  "I haven't been here in a while,"
Mark said.  "Sometimes there's something to see, usually not."

 At the end of a long, dimly lit tunnel, they stepped into a
larger room.  A mirror covered the far wall edge to edge and ceiling to floor,
and Tommy saw himself for the first time since his kidnapping. 

"I'll have to turn out the light for us to see
anything," Mark said, reaching for the light switch.

"Wait a minute, will you?" Tommy said.

Who is that person in the mirror?  It has to be me but…
 

The artificial sunlight of the Commons had browned his face
and hands.  He had grown taller, but it was more than that.  He was bigger all
over. 

He pulled the gray long-sleeved shirt he had been given over
his head. 

Tommy had never avoided physical activity.  Except for one
period in his life, he usually just had something better to do.  When he was
not at school, he worked on his computer or read.  In his mom’s full-length
mirror, he had been scrawny, with ribs showing like ridges through his skin,
and arms hanging straight down like sticks from his shoulders.  He had never
been bothered by the way he looked, except when one of the jocks at school had
named him "Twig" and taunted him. 

Actually, he had looked like a smaller, skinnier, version of
his kidnappers.

If Mark were right, he had been here for almost six months,
working at hard labor every day except this one.  Those months of farm work had
changed him.  The person staring back in the mirror still looked like a boy,
but his arms were muscled and his shoulders were wider.  His chest had filled
out and the ribs didn't poke through his skin.  The waist was small, but not
flabby.

Mark poked him.  "What are you looking at?" 

"I'm different."

"You've always been different."

"That's not what I meant.  Different from the way I
looked when I was brought here."  He glanced at Mark.  "Could you do
me a favor and take off your shirt?"

Mark tilted his head and gazed at Tommy for a moment, then
shrugged and complied.

Mark was muscular--he had to be to work in the barn--but his
narrow shoulders gave him the appearance of a tube with arms and a head
balanced on top.  Just like everyone else Tommy had seen.

"How old are you, Mark?"

"Our Priest says I’m fourteen."

"I was almost fourteen when I was kidnapped.  I must be
fourteen now."  Tommy turned to the mirror.  The top of Mark’s head was
even with Tommy’s eyebrows.  He had definitely grown taller.  "I hope I'm
not hurting your feelings, but why are all of you so small?"

Mark’s answer was abrupt.  "Because the lords want us
that way."  He put his shirt back on.  "Can I turn off the light
now?"

At first, the room was completely black, but, as Tommy’s
eyes adjusted, he saw a soft luminance coming from the mirror.  The glow
resolved into tiny, moving, hard spots of light gleaming into the room, making
faint shadows behind his legs.  As his eyes adjusted more, a swirling powder of
shining dust became visible among the harder lights. 

Tommy slumped to the floor and crawled to the wall.  He was
either watching the largest television screen he had ever seen, or he was
looking out a window at the stars.  If it were a window, he should see ground
below, but all he saw when he looked that way was more stars and blackness.  He
turned to look at Mark, standing against the far wall.  "Where are we?”

"This is a viewing room," said Mark.  "I like
coming here on rest days because the other boys never do.  I thought you might
like it, too.  Sometimes I sit here for hours."

"No.  I mean what are we looking at outside this
window?"

"How would I know?" said Mark.  "We're wherever
the lords want us to be, looking at what's there."

A white and blue crescent appeared at the bottom of the wall
and slowly expanded until the crescent became a ball, filling the window and
the entire room with its light. 

"When we're traveling, the window's black," said
Mark.  "I think I've seen this world before.  If I'm right, we'll be
getting some new animals in the stable." 

The ball rolled out of the window and the room was dark
again, except for light from the hard points of stars.

"We're in a spaceship," Tommy almost whispered the
words.  "I'm in a spaceship."

Tommy felt tears rolling down his cheeks.  He thought he was
done crying.

"Yes.  Where did you think we were?"

Tommy pushed away from the emptiness beyond the window. 
"In a big cave.  A hidden colony, but somewhere on Earth."  His voice
was hoarse.  "I never thought about being on a spaceship.  How could we be
in a spaceship?  I never feel anything moving.  It's not possible."

The planet rolled into the window again.  Light glinted from
an oval object growing larger in the window. 

"That's one of the landers," Mark said.  "It’ll
be bringing something from that planet."

"A lander.  Is that what was used to kidnap me?"

"I don't know anything about that."

"I'll never see my parents again," Tommy said. 
"I'll never go home."

Mark's voice seemed to echo, "I don't know why you ever
thought you would."

Forset, the priest, hesitated in front of Tommy’s cabin.  He
made a few unnecessary adjustments to his robe, and then rapped firmly on the
door.  Three heavy thuds from within, followed by a quick drum roll of softer thumps,
forced him back half a step. 
This is silly.  Four farmer boys live in this
room.  There’s nothing to worry about.

He turned the latch and stepped into a dimly lit four meter
by five meter room. 
Looks like the one I lived in, including the piles of
clothes on the floor.  The light switch should be...
  He flipped a recessed
switch and the room brightened.

One of the piles moved, and an orange cat raced under one of
the bunks.  “Lords!”  He quickly shut the door.  “Letting you out would be a
bad start.”

He crouched and addressed the cat under the bunk, “Were you
told when to expect anyone to return?”  He straightened.  “I suppose not.  You
won’t mind if I wait?”  He shrugged and sat on the edge of another bunk on the
opposite side of the room.

A tentative “meow” came from behind his feet.

“Another cat.”  Forset bent over, moving his hand in a
scratching motion near the floor.  “Come out.  I won’t hurt you.”  He made a chirping
sound with his tongue.

The cat meowed again.  The overhead light reflected from
yellow eyes, and a black head with a diagonal white stripe across the forehead
appeared.

“You’re Tommy’s cat, Potter, aren’t you?  Is this Tommy’s
bunk?”

As if in answer, the cat leaped in one smooth motion onto
the bunk and sat primly on the pillow, black front legs straight and white paws
together, white chest thrust forward.

“It’s your bunk then.”  Forset turned to face the cat.  “But
you
do
share it with Tommy?”

They stared at each other for a moment.  “I really should
stop talking to cats as if they were people.  You never answer back.”

The cat meowed again and lay down on the pillow.

“That was an answer, I suppose.  Not much information,
though.”  He reached out, holding his hand where Potter could sniff it.  “As
close as you are to the boy, if you could talk, you could answer some questions
that are troubling.” 

Potter leaned his head into Forset’s fingers.  “Decided to
be friends?”  He scratched along the cat’s jaw and behind his ears.  Potter
responded with a barely audible purr.  “I saw you that first day, in case
you’re wondering how I know you.  I was behind the glass, watching, when Tommy
woke up.”  Potter lifted slightly on his front legs so Forset could scratch
under his chin.  “You act like you don’t get enough attention.  Has Tommy been
working too much?  I know the first Jack has been keeping him busy.”