David Clarke
The Nexus
Chapters 9-13
Chapter Nine
Now the boys are in trouble, and things don't improve much as the chapter progresses, either – though Jake does discover a fast way to learn a foreign language…
The two Greys walked towards us, the one on the left taking his weapon, which looked like some sort of rifle, from his shoulder and pointing it at the ground in front of us, and the one on the right addressing us in a language of which we understood not a syllable. And as soon as they realised that – and in fact it looked as though they hadn't expected to be understood – the one on the right shouted something over his shoulder, and a human in a dark green uniform emerged from the house they had just left. He joined the two Greys and spoke to us, but although this was obviously a different language we couldn't understand him, either.
"Sorry," I said, shrugging. "I'm afraid I can't understand a word of what you're saying."
"Gar nichts," added Stefan.
"Pige rien," contributed Alain. And Oli just smiled.
Now they all looked surprised, and the human tried asking something – presumably this was something like 'Where have you come from?' but of course we couldn't answer him: he didn't understand anything we said. He turned and spoke to the two Greys in what seemed to be their language rather than his – their vowels were unmodified and there were a lot of 's' and 'th' sounds – and the conversation went on for a minute or so while we just stood and waited for them to come to some sort of conclusion. I hoped that this would be to just let us go on our way, but of course we were never going to be that lucky. Although we did get our lift in a lorry, because they shepherded us into the back of one of them. The Grey with the gun got in with us, and someone else – we couldn't see who, because the back of the truck was covered – got into the front and turned the engine on. In fact the noise it made was more of a hum than the usual sound of a diesel engine, but the vehicle still moved like a normal truck.
We headed away from the village – we could see out of the back of the truck and so we were able to watch it falling away behind us – and on down the road, still heading in the direction in which we had been walking. And now the road was a decent one with a proper tarmac surface, so at least the ride was smooth, even if we didn't know where we were going (though Stefan kept an eye on his compass, so we were at least able to tell that we were now heading basically east).
We went through another small hamlet without stopping and then, less than ten minutes after starting the journey, we entered a larger place. The lorry stopped and the Grey soldier motioned us to get out, and we found that we were outside a low building constructed largely of glass and steel. Two more Greys and a couple of uniformed humans were apparently waiting for us, and the human who had spoken to us in the village was there, too: apparently he had been driving the truck, as he jumped down from the cab and spoke to the humans in the welcoming committee, one of whom then ushered us into the building. First he took us to an office, where he turned on a computer and typed something into it, and then he activated the drop-down menu for languages and stood aside to let us select one we could understand. Stefan clicked on 'English' and the on-screen language changed accordingly.
We need to implant our language into your brains, it read, which wasn't exactly reassuring. Once this has been done we will be able to speak with you.
Will it hurt? I typed, and stood back to let him select his own language and so understand it.
No, he typed back. It will take a while, though. You should not worry – this is an easy procedure and will not cause you any problem.
Your language, or the language of the Greys? I typed, and he gave me a sharp look once he'd translated it.
Ours, he typed. Once it has been done we will talk.
And that seemed to be all we needed to know for now, because once we'd had a chance to read it he turned the computer off again. Then he escorted us to a room that held what looked like ten dentists' chairs, all hooked up to several cables. And there was a sort of helmet device, too, and I was sure I could see needles inside it. I looked at him nervously.
"No hurt," he said, so he'd obviously remembered some of the words I had used on the computer.
"What are these machines for?" asked Oli, who alone of us didn't seem nervous – of course, he hadn't been able to understand what our escort had typed, and he seemed to have an unshakable faith that every 'magic machine' he came across would be either fun or useful, or probably both. Alain was older and a bit more cynical, and he was looking at the set-up distrustfully.
"They're to teach us the language people speak here," I explained.
"Cool!" said Oli, and plonked himself down in the nearest chair, looking at our escort expectantly.
Well, I reasoned that we were going to have to do this anyway, both because we needed to be able to communicate and also because I thought they would do it by force unless we co-operated. So I sat in the chair next to Oli's, and that galvanised Alain into grabbing the one on Oli's other side. Finally Stefan came and sat in the one on my other side.
"If this does not work as it should… well…"
"It will," I said, with a confidence I didn't really feel. "Implanting a language directly into the brain has to be a lot faster than studying it at school for six or seven years, and to judge from the language database on their computers, languages are something this world knows all about."
A couple of men in pale green jackets came and got us into position, strapping us into the chairs and setting the helmets on our heads. By the time mine was on I couldn't move either my head or my upper body, though my legs were still free. I wondered how long this procedure would take. I was still wearing my watch, and I'd had a quick look before my head was immobilised: it was around three-thirty on Friday afternoon.
One of the green-jacketed men sprayed something onto my arm and then stuck a couple of needles into it, and it didn't hurt at all: probably the spray was some sort of anaesthetic, I thought. And then the man pressed a button on the console next to the chair and I went to sleep.
***
When I woke up the helmet had been removed and my arms had been unstrapped. I felt a bit woozy, but I supposed that was just the effects of the anaesthetic wearing off. I was rather more concerned to find that my shorts were undone, and I wondered who had been doing what to me while I was unconscious. I stood up, wobbling for a moment, and did them back up again.
"You had a catheter in," said a voice behind me, and there was the man who had escorted us into this room. "Sorry, but it had to be done, or you would have made a mess of your clothes."
"How long was I asleep for?" I asked, in the same language – which came easily.
"Oh, good, you can speak as well as understand," he said. "Of course, there's never usually a problem, but since we didn't know exactly where you came from there was always a slight possibility that your physiology would be different. Obviously it isn't. You see, we have an accurate map of the human brain, and we know which parts deal with language and communication, and how to implant information into the memory – for humans, at least.
"Anyway, to answer your question, you were asleep for four days, which is why you had to have a catheter – and if the chairs didn't have a massage system built in you'd have fallen over by now. You've had a drip-feed in your arm, too. Four days is long enough to implant all the grammar modules and enough vocabulary to give you the ability to carry out all the usual daily activities a person needs. And there was an extra module, too, but you'll find out about that later. Could you read this, please?"
He put an A4-sized card into my hand. It was written in Dead Guy's right-to-left language, but I could still read it as easily as if it had been written in English – I just wished this method had been available when I was struggling to learn Hebrew.
'The mist rolled down the side of the mountain, covering the mine-head in a thick white blanket', I read. 'Before half a kend had passed it was impossible to see anything: even the coal wagons had been swallowed up, though the track was less than ten hersps away from where I was standing. I could still make out the entrance to the furnace-room because of the red glow that lit it, but everything else…'
"That's fine," he interrupted. "Now, if you'd just like to step out here for a moment…"
He led me past where my friends were still sleeping through a set of French windows onto a balcony and closed the door behind us.
"Now, how did you get here?" he asked. "And keep your voice down."
"We came from Hub One."
"What?! You mean it's still there? We thought we'd destroyed it!"
"Well, I'm afraid you didn't."
He swore – at least, I'm fairly sure it was swearing, though for some reason they hadn't included swear words in any of the vocabulary modules they had installed in my memory. Then he went on, "When the last unit left they rigged up enough explosives to destroy the place five times over. It was wired straight into the generator, so that the Greys couldn't cut the power, and it was set to trigger if any of the barriers were disturbed or deactivated. We didn't set it off straight away in case we managed to push the Greys back into their own world, but as soon as they broke through into ours and we knew they were going to be too strong we sent the signal to detonate. And now you're telling me it didn't work?"
"Sorry. Probably the power went off before you sent the signal – Hub One is virtually dead now. Only the barriers are still working."
More swear words. Then he asked, "And how did you get to the Hub?"
"In the Capsule. We found our way into Hub Two through one of the portals… well, through three of them, in fact, because we come from three different worlds, though ours are similar enough for us to be able to talk to each other. So… are you saying the Greys have taken over here?"
"How do you know we call them Greys?"
"We read some of what was on the computer in Hub Two."
"So Hub Two is still functioning?"
"Well, just about. But the power is failing, and from what we can tell at least three of the tunnels have already gone, and another six are on the way out."
"Probably that's just as well – at least it'll limit the number of worlds the Greys can invade if the Hub Two Nexus closes before they get to it. And if we ever manage to get rid of them we can always rebuild it. That's the benefit of just mining the tunnels, as opposed to the Nexus Room itself."
"Yes, we read about it. How did the Greys get out of their world, then? Surely you'd have just triggered the explosives in their tunnel as soon as you realised they were aggressive."
"There weren't any mined tunnels at Hub One – we only installed them at Hub Two after the Greys broke through into the Hub One Nexus Room. And we couldn't close the portal, because once a portal is established it powers itself: provided it is sheltered from the elements and protected from any other disruption – such as the explosives in the tunnels at Hub Two – it'll stay open indefinitely. The only way to stop it being used is to remove the shafts and tunnels on our side, and we weren't able to do that with any of the Hub One portals. We did our best to block them, of course, but once the Greys had established themselves in the Nexus Room we couldn't shift them. We kept them bottled up for a long time by bringing down part of the tunnels that led from the Nexus Room to the Hub – though we didn't have time to blow up the tunnels completely – and by welding the doors shut, but they were still able to use all the other doors in the Nexus Room. And eventually they just dug straight up out of the room until they reached the surface, and of course that was in our world. And after that there was nothing to stop them pouring through. We're a peaceful people and we haven't needed a proper army for a very long time – all we had were a few militias, and the Greys had no trouble defeating them, especially as their weapons are more advanced than ours.
"So now this part of our world is under Grey control. So far they are unaware that Hub Two exists, and they're not even completely sure there's a Hub One, either. And provided things stay that way until Hub Two shuts down things won't get any worse. Their main interest here is natural resources: there are small amounts of uranium in these mountains, and they want it, and anything else that might be useful. So for now we're stuck with them. The good news is that the language implant system doesn't work properly on them, and that means that they can't understand our language, though we're still a bit careful about speaking in front of them: they have computers that might be able to translate for them. Instead some of us have had to learn their language so that they can pass on their orders, and I'm one of those."
"So what's going to happen to me and my friends?"
"Well, first of all you must absolutely not tell the Greys that you come from different worlds, because then they would know there's another Nexus Room somewhere. I've told them that you are from another country in this world, one that is a long way off, which is why you can't speak my language. You'd better say that taking a long journey is part of the manhood rituals in your country, or something. Make sure your friends all say the same thing. After that… well, it won't be me that decides, it'll be one of the Grey officers. If you're lucky he'll let you continue with your 'quest', but if he doesn't… anyway, you haven't got to worry about that just yet.
"Just be careful what you say to each other inside the building. I don't know for certain that the Greys have listening devices here, but it is possible – so stick to your own language if you talk to each other, and if you want to talk about anything dangerous – like the Hub, for example – try to do it outdoors, or somewhere where there is a lot of loud noise to cover what you're saying. And now we'd better go and see if your friends are ready to wake up yet."
Back in the room a couple of green-clad men were tidying the others up, removing the needles from their arms, taking the catheters out and finally undoing the restraints and removing the helmets. And one by one my friends returned to consciousness – first Oli, then Stefan, and finally Alain.
"It's okay," I said to them in French, so that they could all understand me – I didn't think to use the new language. "You probably feel a bit strange because we've been asleep for four days. They've been drip-feeding us, and they had to do one or two other things too… anyway, our friend… I'm sorry," I said to the man, in his language, "but what's your name?"
"I'm Narj Larzel," he said. "And the language I'm speaking and you're all understanding – I hope – is Kerpian. We've given you the Western version, because this is a large country and there are quite big regional differences, although someone from here would still be able to talk easily with someone from the capital, which is nine hundred ezerhersps to the east. So, can you all understand me?"
All three of them nodded.
"Good," he said. He picked up the A4 card he had used with me and handed it to Stefan. "Please could you read this?" he said. "Start from the third sentence."
'I could still make out the entrance to the furnace-room because of the red glow that lit it,' began Stefan, 'but everything else had totally disappeared. I had never seen mist as thick as this, and I wondered if it was natural, or…'
"Thank you," interrupted Larzel. He took the card and handed it to Oli. "Carry on, please."
"I can't read," Oli told him. "I never learned how."
"I think you'll find you can now. Try."
Oli took the card and his eyes grew wide. "Oh, wow," he said. "Hey, Alain, I can read! Listen to this: 'I wondered if it was natural, or if somebody had found a way to interfere with the normal weather patterns. I'd heard rumours that Lettrian scientists were working on ways to influence the weather, but it was hard to believe that they could produce such an impenetrable fog…' Gods, Alain, this is amazing! You have a go!"
Alain took the card, found the point at which Oli had stopped reading, and continued, 'I ran to the furnace room and darted into the communication kiosk, but before I could hit the button the supervisor called me.'
"Thank you, that's fine," said Larzel. "We'll find you something to eat shortly, but I expect you'd like a little time to recover and to stretch your legs. There's a courtyard at the back of the building, so why don't you go there and have a walk round? I'm sure… actually, I don't know any of your names, either…"
"I'm Jake Stone," I said. "This is Stefan, and Oli, and Alain."
"Right. Well, I'm sure Stone will tell you all about this place once you're outside." And he looked meaningfully at me.
"Okay," I said. "But my first name is Jake. Stone is my family name."
"Oh. Here we do it the other way about: family name first, personal name second. Larzel is my personal name, Narj is my family name. So here you would be Stone Jake."
Somehow I liked the idea of being Stone Jake: it was a lot better than Invisible Jake, anyway. Maybe I'd have to try to persuade everyone to call me that when I finally got back to school – if I ever did, that is.
Larzel – or Mr Narj – led us through a corridor to a door that led into a garden. I saw that there were high walls around the sides, which meant that we wouldn't be tempted to disappear before the Greys decided what to do with us. Still, at least we could be fairly sure there weren't any microphones out here, and so I led the others off to the far side of the garden, and there we sat on the grass while I passed on everything that Larzel had told me.
"So what are we going to do?" asked Alain.
"Well, there's not a lot we can do at the moment. I think the best thing would be to wait until we've spoken to the local Grey commander, try to convince him we're just boys on a sort of gap-year trip… sorry, that's taking time out from your studies to see the world. A lot of kids do it in my world, though usually when they're a lot older than us… Larzel said we should claim to be on a manhood ceremony journey, which is something boys of our age do in some cultures in my world. We could say we started out in my country, which is a long way north of here, and… what, sailed down the Rhine, or something?"
"I think that would work," said Stefan, using French as we all were. "And we could say that we left the river near Basel, crossed the mountain and are now heading for the Donau – the Danube – to continue our journey east."
"But we want to go west," I pointed out. "Back to the Vosges."
"Then perhaps we could say that our experience here has been too much and that we wish to go home – so back to the Rhein."
"I think that would work," I said. "Originally we wanted to see more of this country – Larzel said the capital was a long way east of here – but now we've chickened out and want to go home because we don't want to be in the middle of a war. I think he'll buy that. Then we stick to our original plan of crossing the Rhine and getting back to the Vosges as fast as we can. All we'll have to do then will be to find the way into Hub Two – it's probably another hut in the usual place – and get back to our own worlds. I think I could probably take Alain and Oli – they'd be better off with me than with you, I think."
We walked round the garden for a bit – Larzel was right: our legs were a bit stiff – and then just sat on the grass until he came to fetch us.
He handed each of us a chunk of dark bread and a piece of cheese and waited long enough for us to have finished most of it, and then he took us out of the building to the Rathaus, or Town Hall, which was a bit further along the road. It was a bit worrying that we were escorted by two Grey soldiers: clearly nobody was ready to trust us just yet. At the Town Hall we had to wait for about ten minutes, and then we were taken into an office where a Grey soldier was sitting behind a desk. Larzel explained where we had been found in the Grey language, the officer asked us what we were doing there, and with Larzel acting as interpreter I gave him the story we had concocted in the garden. The officer and Larzel then spoke to each other for a couple of minutes, before Larzel gave us the verdict.
"He says he's sorry, but he can't let you leave the area," he said. "There are too many spies around as it is. And neither can you just sit around doing nothing: you're going to have to work for your keep. So I'm sorry, but you'll be sent to the mine."
"Mine? What mine?"
"I told you, we're mining uranium, and there's a mine just down the road. Don't worry, you're too young to do any actual mining – we don't send anyone under fifteen into the tunnels…"
Alain had the sense to say nothing at this point.
"…not least because exposure to the radon gas is dangerous enough for adults, let alone children. But there are plenty of other jobs on the surface. As we're short of workers, all orphaned kids and those who have broken the law are having to work there at the moment, and you'll be joining them."
"How long for?" asked Stefan.
"Well, until the situation here changes. And I'm afraid that could be a long time. Sorry, boys – I did try to persuade him to let you go, but he won't budge."
We were escorted out of the Town Hall and the two Grey soldiers marched us down the road for about one and a half kilometres [1 mile], and here we could see a pit-head – at least, the winding-gear was visible, more or less the same as in pictures I had seen of mining in England and Wales before most of the pits shut down. There was also now a railway line running alongside the road and heading into the mine.
As we walked into the mine – there were gates at the entrance, though these were open – I noticed movement in the long grass beside the road. I wondered what sort of creatures could be responsible, because it couldn't have been guard dogs unless someone had hit on the idea of using dachshunds or chihuahuas for the purpose.
We were taken to the mine office, and here another human was sitting behind a desk. One of our escorts spoke to him in Grey, and the man looked us up and down.
"My name is Harsen Karel, and I'm the supervisor here. I understand you're going to be working here," he said. "I can't say I'm not glad to see you – we need the workers, because all the men who are fit enough to work are in the mine. Normally we wouldn't sink a mine for the small amounts of uranium in the area: it's too deep to be strip-mined, so normally we'd leave it, because of the costs involved. But of course here the labour is free, and so we've sunk the mine anyway. That means we have to use boys like you for all the surface jobs. We run a small power plant here to power the hoists and lights for the mine – we had to, because the main power lines have been sabotaged several times. So the main jobs are keeping the furnaces burning and running the turbines.
"I should warn you that it's hard work, especially if you're not used to it, and if you don't pull your weight you'll be in serious trouble: our Grey friends have already demonstrated their willingness to kill anyone who they think is a waste of food and water.
"The rules are fairly simple: you don't leave your designated place of work without specific instructions, and you don't go anywhere outside the site without a Grey escort." He said something in Grey, and one of the soldiers stepped outside the door for a few seconds and returned carrying what looked like a large plastic insect… no, it had too many legs. Arachnid, then – in fact it looked like a scorpion with no claws. It was about twenty-five centimetres [10in.] long. And then he put it on the floor and I realised that it wasn't plastic at all, because it moved, skittering along the floor as far as the door, where it stopped.
"We call them guardians," the man told us. "They're alive, though they're also partly artificial – the Greys developed them as watchdogs long before they came to our world. That one is a Type One – you'll notice that it has a grey-green carapace. Further outside the mine premises there are Type Twos, which are a little larger and have black and red carapaces. They are trained, or programmed – I'm not sure to what extent they really are animals, because the Greys haven't explained it to us – to attack any human who does not have a Grey with him, which is why you must never move anywhere without an escort. If a Type One stings you it will simply cause a temporary paralysis, though I'm told it's painful when it wears off, like a bad case of cramp. If a Type Two stings you, you die.
"Now, you might be thinking you can probably outrun something like that, and maybe you could, though they're faster than you might expect. But they have an extra advantage." He spoke to the Grey soldier again, and the soldier left the office. A minute or so later he called from outside the office and we were taken outside. What looked like a shop mannequin had been set up twenty-five metres [80 ft.] away from the office.
"The dummy has been sprayed with human pheromones," the supervisor told us. "Watch what happens when the Grey gets too far away from it."
The soldier walked towards us, and the guardian moved towards the dummy, though it made no threatening move until the soldier was fifteen metres [50 ft.] away. Then it raised its tail and moved closer. The Grey took another couple of steps and the guardian's tail started to quiver; two more steps, and the tail drew back and snapped forwards. We couldn't see clearly what had happened, but when the Grey took us to the dummy we could see what looked like a large black thorn sticking into the dummy's leg.
"They can project their stings at least ten hersps," the man told us. Obviously we still didn't know exactly how far a 'hersp' was, but from where the guardian had been standing I guessed it wasn't too different from a metre or a yard. "And each guardian carries five stings. Once they've all been used the Greys have to change the tail section, but that's a simple job. Right, come back to the office and we'll decide where to use you."
He sat down at his desk once more and turned on a computer.
"Let's start with your names," he said.
"I'm Stone Jacob," I said.
"Kohler Stefan," added Stefan.
Neither of the other two said anything, so I asked, in French, "Do you have any name other than Alain and Olivier – a family name, perhaps?"
"Not really," said Oli. "I was just called Olivier, the son of Maxime, at least until my father died. Since then I've just been Olivier."
"I'm just Alain – though you can call me 'Alain the Great' if you prefer!"
"I don't think so." I switched back to Kerpian and said, "This is de Columbarier Alain and d'Irtengarde Olivier."
"Strange names," commented the strangely-named Harsen Karel. "Well, Kohler, you look fit and strong, so you can go to the railhead and help with unloading the wagons. Stone, you and de Columbarier: you can go to the furnace room. And… excuse me asking, but are you a boy or a girl?" he said, looking at Oli. "Because we don't allow girls to work here."
"I'm a boy," said Oli, and he lifted the front of his dress to prove it.
"Right. Then… you're too small for anything too physical yet. You'd better go with Kohler to the railhead – they can probably use another water-carrier.
"You'll work the usual pattern of four days on, one day off. Our Grey friends weren't too keen on that at first because they want the mining to go on non-stop, but we persuaded them that if we didn't observe the Ertdays the workers would quickly become too tired to work – and we need downtime for maintenance. We compromised by agreeing to run non-stop through the working days, so there's a night shift as well as a day shift. We'll start you all on the day shift, though, because adapting to night work takes a while. So you'll work a standard ten-kend day.
"If you work hard, we'll look after you. If you don't, we won't – and, as I said, the Greys don't have a lot of patience with lazy boys. If you don't work hard they'll take you out into the forest to give tracking practice to the Type Two guardians. Remember that and you'll have no problems with us. If you have any questions, your team leaders will be able to answer them when you get to your work stations."
"Just one question," I said. "We're friends, and we've been together for a while. Will we be able to see each other when we're not working?"
"Of course. You'll be too tired to socialise on working days, and you'll generally go straight from work to the dormitories, but you'll be able to get together on the Ertdays. Now, let's get you to your workstations."
He spoke to the Greys in their own language, and one of them shepherded Stefan and Oli towards the door.
"Be good, little yokel," called Alain in French. "If you let anything bad happen to yourself I'll be angry, so try to behave for once."
Oli made a rude noise at him. Meanwhile Stefan broke away long enough to shake my hand and to tell me in English to keep out of trouble until the next Ertday, whenever that would be.
"You, too," I said. "Good luck. I'll try to keep Alain out of trouble, Oli."
"That's a difficult job," commented Oli as he left.
The other Grey took me and Alain further into the complex, until eventually we went into a building, along a couple of corridors and then down a long flight of stairs into what looked like a changing room, with a long line of lockers along two walls and a number of benches across the room.
The Grey handed me a piece of paper on which was written the single Kerpian word 'Wait' and he went through another door, leaving us alone.
"What's the plan, Jake?" asked Alain.
"There isn't one yet. We'll just have to see what happens and hope we get a chance to slip away. But you saw what those guardians can do, so I think there's no sense in trying to walk out. We'll have to try to pinch a truck, or something."
"It'd better be soon. I don't like my Oli being out there somewhere without me."
"Stefan will look after him. We've just got to keep out of trouble ourselves until we find a way out. Anyway, we'll get to see them every five days, so we'll be able to plan properly next time we're all together."
The Grey returned with a human, who was reading a piece of paper as he came in.
"My name is Hass Eri, and I'm in charge of this part of the plant," he said. "It says here that you're going to be working in the furnace room. I'll take you inside in a moment, but it's noisy in there most of the time and there are a few things you need to know. First, you'll be given a pair of gloves: wear them. It's hellishly hot in there, but if you don't look after your hands you'll get blisters, and then you won't be able to work, which would be bad for us and a hell of a lot worse for you. Second, wear your breathing mask. It's up to you, but I really don't recommend breathing in a lot of coal dust. Third, watch your team leaders and handle the shovels the way they show you. And fourth, just keep your head down, do your job and you'll be fine. Mess about and you won't. Have you got any questions?"
"Yes, please," I said. "We've been travelling for a while and we've lost track of time. When is the next Ertday?"
"In three days' time. Your team leaders will tell you more about the Ertdays this evening, I expect. And, in case they didn't tell you before, it's a straight two shift system, so you work ten kends on, ten kends off. You'll eat before and after your shift, and there'll be a bite around the middle of the shift that you'll eat while you work. Water isn't normally rationed, so signal the water-boy when you need a drink, but try not to drink too much. And one other thing: you won't see me or any other adult very often, but there are cameras everywhere, so don't mess about. There are Greys in the building, and they get annoyed if they see boys not working hard, so just get on with your job. Right, now get undressed and put your clothes in one of the lockers – there are a few empty ones – and make sure you remember which locker they're in, all right?"
Suddenly this sounded really, really bad: I'd read enough about the gas chambers to know that one of the tricks the guards used to persuade people that they were just going to have a shower was to tell them to make sure they didn't forget which peg their clothes were on. Was the whole set-up just a way to disarm us into walking into a gas chamber or something like one?
"Can't we keep our clothes on?" I asked.
"I'd advise against it. It's dirty in there, and very, very hot, and you'll want to keep your clothes fairly clean and decent for Ertdays. If you're especially modest you can keep something on around your waist – some of the boys do like to do that. But I strongly advise you to take everything else off."
I still wasn't entirely convinced, but by now Alain had started to strip, and so in the end I did, too, though we both kept our boxers on. We put the rest of our clothes and my bag, which of course Alain had been carrying, into a locker and I made a mental note of the symbol on the door.
"You'll find pairs of sandals in the cupboard by the door: find a pair that fit, and take some gloves and a paper mask, too," said Mr Hass, and so we did that, and once we were properly kitted out he led us through the door, along a short corridor, and then through another door into the furnace room. And he was right about it being quite hellishly hot.
I looked around. At one side of the room were four furnaces in a row, each being tended by a team of three or four boys. On the other side was a pile of coal, and it was apparent that it was arriving through a hopper that disappeared into the ceiling. I did a quick head count and saw that there were fifteen boys in the room, mostly around my own age, though there were two smaller boys who were obviously the water-boys that Mr Hass had referred to. Eight of the boys were stark naked except for their sandals, and the remainder wore only briefs, though in a couple of cases they were so torn as to be almost falling off, and none of the others looked very clean.
Still, at least it was what Mr Hass had said it was, and that was a step up from what my imagination had been telling me, so in one way I was relieved.
"De Columbarier – you'll join Team One," said Mr Hass. "That's the one nearest us. Stone, you'll be in Team Three." He took us across and told the team leaders they had new workers, and then he turned and left us to it, no doubt keen to get out of the heat as fast as he could.
"What's your name?" my leader asked me.
"Stone Jake," I told him.
"We only use personal names here," he said. "I'm Markus, and that's Shander and Frank. And our water-boy is Tommi – he's the one with red hair. We share him with Team Four."
Markus was fourteen, he told me, and the other two were twelve and thirteen, and he didn't know how old Tommi was but he guessed he was about ten. And I thought all of them worryingly thin: somehow I didn't think gourmet meals would be anywhere on the menu.
Over the course of the afternoon they taught me how to hold a shovel, explained that keeping the furnace at an optimum temperature (there was a gauge above the door) didn't mean shovelling in as much coal as we could manage, but rather a controlled amount in an even layer, and demonstrated how to move coal from the heap under the hopper to the feet of the stokers to ensure that they didn't have to move too far while they were tending the furnace. As that was the easiest job, that's the one I started on, and I very quickly learned that shovelling coal is not a relaxing occupation.
After a bit I got thirsty and called Tommi over. Markus had explained that in order to keep coal dust out of the water, only the water-boys were allowed to handle the ladles, so Tommi held the ladle while I drank from it, and – no doubt because I was new – he tilted it faster than I could drink and spilled water down my front. And that started a game between us that went on for the rest of the day: I tried to drink quickly and he tried to dribble water down my chest.
There was an arrangement that, now that we had a full four-man team, three would work while the fourth rested. There was a large clock on the wall divided into twenty segments, and this had two hands, the same as the usual hour and minute hands, though according to Markus these hands indicated kends and huszaks – twenty huszaks to the kend and twenty kends to the day. So each person worked for six huszaks and then took the next two as a rest break, though he was expected to keep an eye on the temperature gauge while he was resting. According to my calculations that worked out as approximately twenty-one minutes working, then seven minutes off, which wasn't too bad, though by the end of the shift I thought it was definitely bad enough.
At last a bell rang and we put our shovels down, waiting by the door until the night shift teams came in to relieve us. Then we left the room, but instead of going into the changing room we went through another door and up some stairs to a shower room. I and a couple of the others still wearing underwear removed it and left it with our sandals and gloves outside, though five others kept their underwear on in the shower, and then… well, I can only say that the shower felt even better than the one in Hub Two, with the one failing that this one didn't also contain Stefan. But it did have liquid soap in a dispenser beside each shower-head, so I was able to wash the dust out of my hair and get the grime off the rest of me.
I lingered for as long as the water lasted – two huszaks, according to Markus – and then went out, where I took a thin towel from the pile by the entrance and dried myself off. And then I went back to where I had left my clothes and discovered that my boxers had disappeared.
I hunted round for them and then had a thought, and I was right: Tommi was trying unsuccessfully to hide them behind his back. I cornered him, grabbed them back and pretended to hit him, but he just grinned and ducked away from me.
"He's like Oli, that one," said a voice in my ear, and there was Alain. "And I think he likes you, too."
"He's out of luck, then, because I'm spoken for," I said.
But when we reached the dining room Tommi squeezed onto the bench next to me, and although he didn't say anything he did smile at me a lot. We were given a rather basic stew to eat, which was at least hot, though I thought I could have done a lot better myself. And there was a roll, too, which wasn't stale, exactly, just a little hard. And finally there was a cup of something which I think was probably some kind of tea, though I wouldn't swear to it. And after that we went along another corridor to the dormitory, and this was even more basic, with nothing in it but a row of double-decker bunks, though Markus showed me that through a door to the side there was an equally basic toilet consisting simply of three holes in the floor.
I'd hoped to be able to sleep next to Alain, but Markus said that the teams slept together, so that if there was an emergency and they needed a team to replace one of the night teams it would be possible to rouse one team without disturbing everyone else. Teams One and Two had the bottom bunks, and Three and Four had the top, so I climbed up and found that there were six mattresses to accommodate eight boys – eight, because Tommi slept with us and his counterpart slept on the bottom set. It should have been nine of us, but Team Four was still one person short. On the other hand, we had a blanket and a small pillow each, and I was tired enough that I thought I'd be able to sleep even if it was a bit of a squash. So I settled down with Markus on one side of me and Frank on the other, only to find that a minute or so later Tommi had somehow managed to wriggle between me and Frank.
Frank obligingly squeezed a bit closer to Shander to make a space, and Tommi parked his pillow between mine and Frank's, pulled his blanket over him and settled down facing me.
"He likes you," said Markus. "That's good – maybe you can get him to talk to you, because he never speaks at all. I don't think he's mute and he certainly isn't deaf, so perhaps it's just that he doesn't want to speak. Maybe if you make friends with him he'll open up to you."
The lights went out, though there was a window high up on the opposite wall and there was enough light coming in for me to be able to see Tommi's face. I wasn't sure why he'd latched on to me. Maybe it was my glasses – I was the only boy in the shift wearing specs. Or maybe I reminded him of a brother, or a friend, or something like that. Well, I thought, we're all in this situation together, so maybe I should try to be a friend, if that's what he needed. So I put my arm around his shoulders and pulled him close to me, and he smiled and wriggled in closer.
And then he did something that suggested it wasn't a brother he was missing after all: he put his hands on my waist and pulled my boxers down, and when I was too surprised to resist, all the way off, putting them on the shelf just above our heads with our sandals and gloves and my glasses. And then he slid a hand to my groin and took hold of me, and even though I'd said I was spoken for it was immediately clear that part of me didn't care, because soon I was nice and stiff. And then he started stroking it, very slowly.
"You don't have to do that, you know," I said, quietly, but he just smiled and kept going. So I thought I should return the compliment, but when I tried to pull his little briefs down he grabbed my wrist and shook his head vigorously.
"Are you sure?" I said. "I'd like to share."
He shook his head again.
"Well, okay," I said, moving my hand away. "But if you change your mind you only have to say… let me know, I mean."
He smiled and shook his head again and then got back to what he'd been doing before. He wasn't doing it fast enough to make me spurt, but it still felt really nice… and gradually he slowed down until finally he stopped and fell asleep. And so, eventually, did I, wondering what exactly I was getting into now.
So what's the deal with Tommi? Why doesn't he speak? The next chapter… won't answer that question, I'm afraid: you'll have to wait until Chapter 11. But quite a few other things will be happening in Chapter 10, not all of them welcome…
Chapter Ten
In this chapter Jake's situation seems to improve – at least, he's offered an opportunity to take a break from shovelling coal for a bit. But it turns out to be a case of out of the frying pan, into the fire…
Over the next couple of weeks I became good at stoking, and once I could be trusted to feed the furnace unsupervised we were able to function as a proper four-man team. On the second morning Markus produced a roll of tape and taped my hands for me straight after breakfast (a small roll and a cup of what I think was coffee), telling me that the gloves alone would not prevent blisters if I wasn't used to handling a shovel. And after that I was able to use the tape myself at the start of each day's work.
The first full day almost killed me, though: apart from the rotating two-huszak breaks (which we also had to use for toilet breaks if necessary: there was another basic three-hole set-up on the far side of the room) we never stopped work, not even at midday, when Tommi brought each of us a sort of ten-centimetre [4in.] square rice cake to eat and a cup of something that might have been soup to drink. Each of us had to get it down in the space of a two-huszak break, so it's probably a good thing that the soup wasn't very hot. Every time I looked at the clock I thought it had stopped, but it hadn't: it was just moving very, very slowly. In mid-afternoon Markus told me to take a four-huszak break instead of the usual two.
"That's not fair on the rest of you," I protested half-heartedly.
"You're not used to this yet. We all had to go through a first few days once, and there will come a time when I've gone to the mine and Frank is leader that they'll bring in another new boy, and then you'll be one of the ones working a little extra to help him to get used to it. What goes around, comes around."
"How old are you?" I asked.
"Fourteen and… about two seasons, I think," he said. "You lose track of time in here."
"So you won't be going to the mine just yet, then?"
"Not for a good while yet."
Then I sincerely hoped I wasn't going to be here long enough for another boy to come to replace him – after all, I was painfully aware that the more time I spent here, the more likely it was that the Hub Two Nexus would have closed completely before we could get back home. And this was one world I really didn't want to spend the rest of my life in.
That second evening I fell asleep almost as soon as I lay down, and I was so tired that I didn't even feel it when Tommi pulled my boxers off and put them on the shelf again. After that I got in the habit of removing them myself before lying down next to him, and he liked that, smiling and nodding the first time I did it. But he never removed his own briefs, not even in the shower. I even wondered for a while if he was really a girl, but there was a small bulge in the briefs, and occasionally when he cuddled up to me at night I could feel that he had an erection, though he never let me touch him, not even through his briefs, and in the end I stopped trying. And it was still nice enough having him handle me.
Finally the first Ertday came round. We still got up and had breakfast at the usual time, but after that most of us went down to the changing room and got properly dressed. Markus showed me the way to a very large enclosed courtyard. There were already a number of other boys here, including, Alain and I were delighted to see, Stefan and Oli. We hugged each other and went off to a corner of the yard to talk, and even though there was nobody close enough to overhear us we decided to speak French.
"What is the furnace room like, then?" asked Oli.
"It's hard work," Alain told him. "Of course, I can do it because I'm a strong, healthy town boy, not a feeble little yokel."
Oli attacked him and they wrestled happily for a while.
"He's right," I told Stefan, in English, "it's no joke in there. I don't know how long either of us can survive, because there isn't much food. We're going to have to get out of here soon. How are things where you are?"
"I am shovelling coal and pushing trolleys the whole day. It is hard. In fact, I should not say this as one who would be a soldier, but in truth it is too hard. As you say, the food is not special, and nor is there much of it. It will be hard to do this for a long time. But I can see no easy way to leave, because of those creatures. We see them sometimes as we work, so even when there are no Greys or adults around we dare not move beyond the small enclosure where we work. And I see no trucks coming into the site, so it would be not possible to take one."
"There must be lorries somewhere to take away anything they get out of the mine. I know the actual mine is down the road, but don't the lorries have to come through here to reach the mine? And what about deliveries – food and parts for the generators, and so on?"
"I can only say that I have seen no trucks. Perhaps there is another road behind the buildings that we have not yet seen."
"I suppose so. What about the railway? The coal trucks have to get here somehow – would there be any chance of hiding in an empty one so that a train takes us out of here?"
"Until now I have not seen a train arrive or leave – the coal trucks I work on were there when we arrived. But I will watch out for trains."
Alain and Oli rejoined us, and so we switched back to French, though they had nothing much to add. Oli had a little more freedom to move about the site than Stefan because he had to go to the kitchen with the other water-boys to collect the midday rice cakes and to keep the water buckets filled, but whenever he did so he was escorted by a Grey, so he was unable to wander off on his own or look round very much.
Markus wandered over to join us after a bit and I introduced him to Stefan and Oli.
"You know, you don't have to hide in the corner like this if you want to talk on your own," he said. "Go through into the garden – there are plenty of benches and shelters there, and nobody will disturb you. In fact, come with me now and I'll show you."
So we followed him through a door in the far wall and found ourselves in a proper garden, with grass and lots of bushes and small trees. There was still a high wall around the outside, but it was a lot nicer than the dusty courtyard. Here and there small huts could be seen.
"Any hut that is in use has a magenta flag outside," Markus told us. "We stay clear of those – quite often they are used for sexual purposes, and if you're going to do that you don't want to be interrupted. Find one without a flag if you want to talk in private, and if you set the flag nobody will disturb you. You'll know it's time for the meal when you hear the bell."
"You mean it's okay for boys to… well, do stuff together?" I asked. "Or are there girls working somewhere on the site?"
"No, there aren't any girls here, but there's nothing wrong with boys playing together. It's normal for boys of our age to form that sort of friendship. Doesn't that happen where you come from?"
"Well, yes, it does happen, but it's not supposed to. If people find out you're doing stuff with other boys you get given a really hard time – you're called names and bullied and stuff."
"That sounds really primitive. In this country we learned years ago that there's nothing wrong with sex, whoever you choose to do it with. I'm glad I don't live in your country… well, I suppose right now it might be a lot better than here, but we hope the Greys will go and leave us in peace once the uranium runs out."
"Have you got a boyfriend, then?" I asked.
"Not at the moment. To be honest I prefer girls, but I suppose there won't be much chance of that in the near future. Anyway, go and find yourselves a hut. I'll see you at the meal." And he wandered off.
So we followed the path through the bushes. The first couple of huts we came to were showing a magenta flag, but the third one was not and so I opened the door – and walked in on two of the boys from Team Four. I didn't know their names, but I worked in the same area and so I recognised them easily enough. They were still dressed, but they had their arms round each other and were kissing.
"Oh, shit, sorry!" I said, backing out again. (By now I'd learned a few swear words to add to my implanted vocabulary).
"Did we forget to set the flag? Oops!" said one of the boys, grinning at me and not looking at all embarrassed. He broke free from his friend's embrace and pulled a lever beside the door, and the magenta flag dropped down outside. "Don't worry about it," he said, seeing that I was still looking a bit flustered. "We'll see you at the meal, all right?"
And I backed all the way out and allowed him to close the door.
"That was interesting, was it not?" commented Stefan in English. "Perhaps we should find two free huts, and not just one."
And I thought that was a brilliant idea, and so when we came to a free hut I suggested to Alain that maybe he and Oli would like to use this one while Stefan and I found another, and Alain accepted that offer like a shot. I showed him where the lever was to set the flag and then Stefan and I walked on until we found another free hut.
There must have been eight or nine huts dotted about the garden, and I thought that this was a really thoughtful gesture on the part of whoever had built the facility – after all, for the whole of the working day and night we were sharing accommodation with more than a dozen other boys, and everyone needs a little privacy now and again. Maybe the builder hadn't had adolescent boys in mind, but then again, given what Markus had told us, maybe he had. Clearly in some ways this really would be a good world to live in, but only if the Greys could be got rid of, and there seemed no way to achieve that.
We went into the hut and set the flag. There was a bench along one wall, a couple of chairs, a small table and a folded mattress in one corner, and we decided that we really ought to try out the mattress, just to see if it was comfortable…
We didn't get completely undressed: instead we just took our shirts off and cuddled for a long time.
"I didn't like being apart from you," said Stefan, and now that we were alone he was speaking Kerpian, which was easier for him than English. We both knew to stay away from any contentious topics, even though I was confident that there would be no listening devices here. "We've been together every day since the time you rescued me, and I've got used to having you beside me. It's weird – I've never felt like that before. At school we generally do some things in a team and others on our own, and it's never bothered me much which I do, but now… now when you're not there I miss you a lot."
"Thanks, Stefi," I replied, hugging him. "I thought it was going to be really bad when they said we'd be working in different places – I thought I might not see you again for ages. But now we know we can see each other – and in private, like this – every five days, it's not so bad."
We stayed like that, just quietly holding each other, until a bell rang loudly, and at that we put our shirts back on, cleared the magenta flag and walked back to the main building. Today everyone was eating together, which meant that Stefan and I could sit next to each other, and so could Oli and Alain. And today the food was better, a proper piece of meat and some vegetables, and while it wouldn't have won any prizes it was still a lot better than the usual fare. We even got an apple each for dessert.
After lunch we went back out into the courtyard, where Markus asked Stefan if he would like to join in a game of team handball, and Stefan agreed at once – well, as soon as he'd checked that I didn't mind, that is. Markus asked me to play, too, but I'd never played handball in my life, and so I declined. I watched for a few minutes, trying to work out what the rules were and coming to the conclusion that, while some rules certainly existed, I was never going to work out what they were. It was certainly a fast game, and it looked as if Stefan knew how to play, too, but it was still incomprehensible to me.
And then Tommi appeared at my side.
"Hi, Tommi," I said. "Do you know how to play this game?"
He shook his head, though even if he had known the rules he could hardly have explained them without speaking, something he still hadn't done so far.
"Me neither," I said.
He took my hand and jerked his head towards the garden, and I allowed him to lead me off, through the gate and into a vacant hut. I hoped this might be because he wanted to talk to me without anyone else hearing, but apparently not, because as soon as we were in the hut with the flag set he started undoing my belt.
"Tommi, wait," I said, gently taking his hands away from me. "I've already told you that you don't have to do that to make me like you. I like you already, and I won't like you more just because you make me feel nice."
He looked at me, but as soon as I let go of his wrists he went back to undoing my belt, and this time I didn't try to stop him. I simply stood there and let him undress me completely, though once I was naked I decided that this time I wanted him to join in properly. He let me remove his tee-shirt, but when I tried for his shorts he stepped away, shaking his head vigorously.
"Why not, Tommi?" I asked. "I mean, I really like it when you touch me, and I'd like to make you feel nice, too."
But he just shook his head again.
"Okay," I said. "It's up to you – we're friends, and I'm not going to do anything you don't want."
At that he smiled and stepped back towards me, so I unfolded the mattress and lay down on it, and he came and lay down beside me. I still wasn't entirely happy about the situation: as far as I'm concerned, sex should be something you share completely, and not a one-way exercise. So as soon as he reached for my penis I said, "Tommi, are you absolutely sure this is what you want to do?"
And he nodded vigorously, and at that I decided to stop arguing and let him do what he wanted. And he did it really nicely, first stroking me and then rubbing me steadily until I spurted. But not being able to return the compliment somehow left me feeling sort of selfish, even though it was clear that Tommi didn't want to be touched.
I got up and put my boxers, shorts, socks and shoes on, though I didn't bother with my shirt because Tommi had made no attempt to put his on. Then I sat on one of the chairs and pulled Tommi onto my lap facing me, his legs on either side of my thighs, and once he was comfortable I hugged him. And I was glad to find that he hugged me back equally hard.
"Thanks, Tommi, that was really nice," I said. "Why did you want to do that for me, though?"
I hoped that putting a question like that would get an answer, but he just hugged me again without saying anything. So I gave up once more, just holding him quietly, and we sat like that for around ten minutes. Then I let go.
"Come on, let's go and see how the game is going," I said, and he stood up and put his shirt back on. I did the same thing and then we walked back to the courtyard, where the game was still going on. We watched until it finished, though at the end I was still none the wiser about the rules.
Stefan came over to where we were standing.
"I haven't played handball for a while," he said. "We played a bit when I was younger, but we generally play football at school. And the rules here are a bit different, too. Still, it was nice to get a game like that. I like your friend Markus, Jake. And who's this?"
"This is Tommi. He's our water-boy. Tommi, this is my friend Stefan."
Stefan offered his hand and Tommi took it, though he didn't say anything.
"He doesn't talk," I explained to Stefan. "I'm not sure why not, he just doesn't."
"Maybe we could persuade Alain to imitate him?" suggested Stefan. "He generally talks too much."
"I don't think there's any chance of shutting Alain up, somehow. And to be honest if he didn't talk all the time I think I'd worry there was something wrong with him…"
I tactfully passed Tommi on to Markus so that Stefan and I could go for another walk, and this time we followed the wall all the way around the garden, looking out for any cracks or weak spaces, or any part of it that was close enough to a large tree to allow us to get over it. But there was nothing: the wall was in good repair and there weren't any trees close to it.
"And even if we did get over it there would probably be guardians waiting on the other side," I said, gloomily. "I think we'll have to forget about this and start thinking about hijacking a lorry again."
"We could try getting to the other side of the main building," suggested Stefan. "Then we can see if there's a road there or not."
So we headed back to the building. We couldn't get around the outside of it because the walls of the courtyard kept us in, but the building itself was open, so that boys could go and rest on their bunks or take a shower if they wanted, and so we went back inside. But we found that we only had access to our usual rooms: the dormitory, the shower room, the dining room and the changing room. Beyond our dormitory the corridor led on to the one used by the night shift, but nowhere else. Every other door we tried was locked. Stefan's team had their own living quarters on the other side of the cloakroom, but the situation was exactly the same there: we couldn't get through any door that would take us to the far side of the building. In the end we gave up and settled for spending the rest of the afternoon sitting on one of the benches in the garden watching the clouds rolling by overhead.
There was another quite decent meal that evening – obviously the idea was to fill us up a bit on the Ertdays to make up for the crappy meals during the working week – and by the time I went to bed I had decided that, as labour camps went, it would be hard to ask for a lot more than one that gave you a totally free day every five days and also supplied discreet accommodation where you and a personal friend could… well, do personal stuff. And I even had another cute boy to cuddle up to at night. But it was hard to ignore the passing of time for very long: every minute we spent here was another minute when the power at the Hub would be getting a little more unreliable.
***
The next four days went by exactly as the previous working days had – a lot of hard work, inadequate food, a shower and bed. By the end of that week I was at least managing to work my share – no more four-huszak breaks – and I had learned how to shovel the coal into the furnace in the approved matter, so as to ensure the best use of the fuel. And each night I slept without my boxers so that Tommi could get at me easily if he wanted to (and he usually did), and each night went by without him uttering a sound. The next Ertday was spent much like the previous one, too, except that this time Stefan and I got a little more physical when we spent half an hour – or call it half a kend – in one of the huts. But none of us had found any information that would help us to get out of this place.
***
Another working week started. By now we were well into August – today was August 6th – and so it was over five weeks since I had first stumbled upon the hut in the Vosges. Heaven only knew what my parents were thinking had happened to me, but I'll bet they never envisaged me working as a stoker in a power station under the control of a race of reptiles from a parallel version of Earth…
And then, on the third working day of the week, something different happened. Shortly after I'd eaten the midday rice cake Hass Eri came into the furnace room and told me someone wanted to speak to me. I shrugged apologetically at Markus, Frank and Shander – they would obviously have to carry on as a three-man team until I got back – and then followed Mr Hass out of the furnace room. He didn't allow me to either have a shower or get dressed, so obviously it didn't matter that I was going to meet whoever wanted me covered in coal dust and wearing only a grubby pair of boxer shorts.
He took me through one of the usually locked doors (and he locked it behind us, too) to an office on an upper floor. There were a number of monitors on one wall, and I realised that this was the CCTV room – we knew there were cameras in the furnace room, and indeed here and there in other parts of the building, and this was obviously where they were monitored. There was a human operator on one chair in front of the monitors and a Grey soldier on the other, but neither seemed terribly interested in me.
However, there were two other Greys in the room, and they seemed particularly interested in me, because they were staring at me. They were smaller than any other Grey I had seen so far – in fact they were slightly shorter than me – and that suggested that they might be… well, whatever the Grey equivalent of the word 'boys' might have been, juveniles or adolescents or cubs or chicks or something.
One of them spoke in Grey to Mr Hass. His voice, though a little higher-pitched than the other Greys I had heard, was nonetheless not what I would have thought of as 'unbroken', the way mine still was, so perhaps they were older than I had initially thought, or maybe they developed more rapidly than humans.
"These two are doing a study into the differences between humans and Greys," Mr Hass told me. "They've been watching everyone work for a while and they've chosen you to help them. They didn't tell me why you, and it might just have been at random for all I know, but you're the one they've picked, so you'll have to go with them. I did say I couldn't really spare anyone, but they insisted. And you might be lucky: maybe it'll be easier than shovelling coal for a day or so."
"Right. I am coming back, then?"
"I should think so. They haven't actually said, but I don't imagine they'll need you for too long, so you'll probably be back here soon enough. Anyway, first you'll have to go to the clinic to have their language implanted. I don't suppose they'll want to bother with more than the basics, just enough for you to communicate – that's pretty much all any of us have got – so it won't take long.
"I'll take you downstairs for a quick shower, and then you can get dressed and wait at the outside door – you can't go outside because of the guardians, so I'll tell these two to come and meet you there."
He spoke briefly to the young Greys and then took me down to the shower room.
"I'll leave you to it," he said. "I've set the shower for two huszaks, which should be enough to get all the dirt off. Once you're clean go and get dressed and then wait at the outside door. And try to get them to bring you back as soon as possible!"
He turned the shower on and went back the way he had come, and I removed my boxers and sandals and got in, doing my best to clean myself up properly – if I was representing the human race I thought I ought to look presentable. Ten minutes later I was waiting by the door that led to the outside, fully dressed and with my hair as neatly combed as I could manage without a mirror.
I didn't have to wait too long: the door opened and the two Greys beckoned me to come out. I looked around nervously, but I couldn't see any guardians and so I stepped out, closing the door behind me. Of course I knew the guardians were not supposed to bother me while I had Greys with me, but having seen one in action I was still a little anxious. But the Greys strode off towards the gates and I stayed alongside them, and the one guardian that I saw, close to the gates, ignored me completely.
We walked up the road towards the town. The Greys chatted to each other, ignoring me completely, but since they couldn't talk to me – at least not if they expected an answer – that didn't bother me at all.
We walked back to the glass and steel building and they took me inside, and in due course Narj Larzel appeared. They spoke to him briefly, and he appeared a little surprised, but they obviously repeated the instruction and so he nodded and took me though into the clinic. Today a couple of the chairs were in use, but he installed me in one at the far end of a row and told me to get comfortable.
"What am I getting, a crash course in Grey for Beginners?" I asked.
"No. That's what surprised me: they want you to have the full Grey package. They didn't say why, but I suppose you're going to be spending a lot of time with them or other Greys and so will need to be able to communicate properly. And…" He lowered his voice. "I'm also giving you another module – it's one we gave visitors in the past, and it's a brief history of our country and its customs and culture. If you are going to be spending any amount of time with Greys I don't want them wondering why you know so little about this world – even someone from a different country would have a basic knowledge. I'm not going to bother implanting everything – the full package would take too long – but this one will allow you to talk about this world without having to make things up or keep saying that you don't know the answer.
"So make yourself comfortable. You know how this works by now, so you know it's nothing to worry about."
That was true, anyway. This time I undid my belt and lowered my zip, which would at least make it easier to get the catheter in, and then I sat back and offered my arm to the medical technician with the spray. And then I fell asleep once more.
***
I woke up with the same wobbly feeling as on the previous occasion, and when I checked my watch I found that I'd been in the chair for three days: it was now August 11th.
"Feeling all right?" asked Larzel, who appeared as I was doing my shorts up again.
I nodded. "I probably need another walk around the garden because my legs are feeling numb again, but otherwise I'm fine."
"Good. When did our capital move from Budd to Temishar?"
"In 2217, after the plague wiped out half of the population," I told him.
"Excellent. Now, where do you come from?"
I envisaged a map of Europe as it existed in this world. "I'm from Albia," I told him. "I and my friends are on a manhood journey. We got here by sailing down the Rajna, and originally we wanted to walk to the source of the Duna and follow it east. We thought we'd be able to travel by boat again after Ulm. But when we found what was happening here we got scared and wanted to return home."
"Good. Right, now…" He switched to Grey and asked where I had been for the past ten days and I told him in the same language that I worked in the furnace room of the power station just down the road from here.
"Very good," he said in Kerpian. "Everything seems to have taken properly. This town is called Hintraten, by the way – you ought to know the name of the place where you work. Come with me – I'll find you a snack and then you can go and wait for the Greys in the garden. That'll give you a chance to get your legs working again."
He took me back to the garden, found me a bottle of water, another chunk of bread and some cheese, and then left me to stretch my legs, and while I ate I thought about what I now knew about this world.
Here Christianity did not exist, and nor did Islam. Rome had remained committed to its Classical pantheon to the end, and when Rome fell those who had been a part of its Empire continued with a belief in Jupiter and the rest of the ancient gods, though by modern times this country was entirely secular. As in my world, the Eastern Roman empire lasted longer but was eventually brought down by pressure from the Horde of the East, which I thought probably corresponded to the Mongol Empire of Ghengis Khan and his successors. After that there were several wars between the nations of what is now Europe, with the Kingdom of Kerpia and Transkerpia finally emerging as the major power in the south, and gradually it had established a large and ultimately peaceful realm that stretched from the Black Sea to some way beyond the Vosges Mountains. Reviewing the history I had just accumulated I realised that 'Kerpia' was probably Carpathia in my world, and so the origins of the country would have been in the region of Slovakia, Hungary and Romania.
Which was interesting, but didn't really help me very much with what was looming ahead of me now: what did the two young Greys actually want me for? I was pretty certain that it wouldn't be to discuss history…
By the time they came to fetch me my legs had more or less recovered, and so when they simply led me out of the building and out of town I was able to keep up with them.
"Where are we going?" I asked as we left the town behind us.
"Hey, Haless, it speaks!" said one of them, stopping and looking at me.
"So it does," said his colleague. "How strange!" And he bared his teeth in what I suppose was a grin, although with his large jaw it was hard to be certain of his intent.
"We're going to a place we found in the forest," the first one said. "To start with, anyway. And there we're going to find out all about you, little mammal."
"Oh, yes," agreed his colleague. "Absolutely everything about you. It's going to be interesting."
We walked about a kilometre and a half [1 mile] out of town and then left the road to take a track off to the left, and this eventually led up to a cabin in a small clearing.
"Nobody seems to have been here for a long time," the first one told me, "so we thought it would do nicely as a place for us to work. It has power and running water and there's enough room for us to sleep, and that's about all we need. And we've fitted up one corner especially for you, too."
He opened the door and took us inside. It had a small kitchen, an even smaller shower-room, a separate toilet and two larger rooms, the first of which was obviously a living room, with a couple of chairs, a two-man sofa, a television, a couple of bookcases and not a lot else, and the second of which was a bedroom. And it was in the bedroom that I saw what he had meant about a corner for me, because one end of the room was now a cage – a proper one with solid bars all around.
"You don't need that," I said. "I don't mind helping you at all – it has to be easier than shovelling coal for ten kends a day."
"That's what you think now," said the first one. "You might easily change your mind later, though, so we're going to play safe. Besides, we wouldn't feel safe sleeping with a wild mammal on the loose!"
They took me back into the main room. There was a folded dining table against one wall and they set this up, collected three dining chairs from the kitchen and sat me down at the table opposite them. One of them opened a case that was leaning against one of the bookcases and took out what looked like a laptop computer, and after he had turned it on he set it on one side of the table and spoke into it.
"Mammal study project, Day One," he said. "The date is 470820 – or, in the mammal calendar…"
He gestured at me, and I consulted what I had learned over the last three days and supplied, "6 Kinnik 2762." I could have added that it was also August 11th 2009, but I didn't want to muddy the waters.
"Thank you," said the Grey. He turned to the laptop again and continued, "Conducting the study will be Haless Three Four Two Seven Seven One Nine Two and Issin Three Four Two Seven Seven One Nine Five. And our subject's name is…?"
"Stone Jake," I said.
"Is that all?" asked Issin Three Four… whatever he had said. "No numbers?"
"We don't use them. I'm just Stone Jake – though in my country we put the names the other way around, and so at home I'd be called Jake Stone. Stone is my family name, Jake is my personal name."
"What's a family?" asked Haless-plus-numbers.
"Well… in my case I have two parents, a mother and a father. The three of us are a family."
"I don't think I understand that, but we'll come back to it. If there are no numbers in your name, how will people know how old you are?"
"Well, they can ask. I'm thirteen, if you want to know."
"That seems strange. If you know my full name you know how old I am. We're thirteen, and you can tell because the first two figures of our title are the year we were hatched. So we were hatched in 7834 and it's now 7847, so we're thirteen. And you can also see where we come from in the next three digits: Region Two, Hatchery 77. The rest of it tells you the fine detail: we were hatched from Batch 19, and then I was the second of the batch to emerge from the egg and Issin was the fifth. That's why I'm stronger than he is."
Issin made what I can only assume was a rude noise and that at least suggested that the Greys had a sense of humour.
"But do your friends just call you Haless and Issin, or are they supposed to use the numbers every time they speak to you?"
"Obviously not. Most of the time we're just Haless and Issin. But you can see that our full titles explain everything about us, whereas your short name tells us nothing."
"Well, it tells you that I'm Jake, just like you're Haless, and that my family name – that's the name of our family unit – is Stone. But that's all – there's nothing about age or place of birth or anything."
"That's inefficient. And I still don't understand this 'family' thing. Explain."
"Well, fourteen years ago my parents had sex, and nine months later I was born. So I'm here because of something my father and mother did."
"They don't have eggs," Issin put in. "They've viviparous."
"I'd heard that. So you stayed inside your mother while you developed?" asked Haless.
"For the first nine months," I said. "After that I was born, which I suppose is like you hatching. But didn't your parents stay around to protect the eggs?"
"What sort of a place do you think we come from, a jungle? Once the eggs are laid – which happens at the hatchery – the staff make sure they're protected. There's no need for the one who laid the eggs to stay around. And as for the male who fertilised the eggs, why would he want to stay? Once he's engaged in the reproductive act with the female, his job is done, and once the eggs are laid, so is hers. They play no part in watching the eggs afterwards. Okay, I know that some lower reptiles are different, and sometimes the female stays around to guard the eggs, but we don't need to do that."
"So how are you raised? Who teaches you to speak and stuff like that?"
"Schools, of course. Don't you have schools? You mammals are weird… anyway, we start to learn at the hatchery, but as soon as we're able to get about on our own we go to the nursery, and from there to school once we are big enough."
"So where do you live?"
"Hey, do you mind? We're supposed to be asking the questions!"
"Yes, but if I know what you're used to it'll be easier for me to explain what's different. I mean, we have schools, too, but at the end of each day at school we go back to our parents' houses. What about you?"
"We don't go anywhere. We live in the school, and we stay at the school until we are ready for job training, whether that is manual work or using our brains. Then we go to a suitable training establishment to prepare us for that job."
"Yes, we have those, too. And we do have schools where you live full time, though most children don't use those."
"Okay, we'll just get a broad view for now: we can come back and talk about schools in detail later if we need to. So the main difference between us so far is that the adults who fertilised your egg stay with you after you're born and in fact you live with them until you train for work – is that right?"
"I suppose so."
"How weird! And does the same thing happen with each year's batch that those adults produce?"
"No – in fact most couples only have one or two children. A few have more, but not many families have more than four kids."
"What a waste of effort! You mean that your females only ever produce one or two viable eggs?"
"Well… in your terms, I suppose that's right."
"That seems insane to me. And how do the males stand it? If you told me I could only ever engage in sexual activities once or twice in my life I think I'd go mad."
"Oh, they can engage in sex as much as they want, but if they don't want any more children they have to use contraception."
"What's that? Something to do with being in season?"
"It's a way to stop eggs being fertilised," I said, trying to think in reptilian terms. "Either the female takes a drug that prevents her eggs from being fertilised, or the male puts a cover over his penis to prevent his sperm from entering the female."
They looked at me in absolute disbelief.
"I need to make something very clear here, little mammal," said Haless. "You're here to tell us the truth. If you lie to us we have ways of hurting you very, very badly."
"I'm not lying," I said. "You're right – no adults would want to go through their entire life only having sex once or twice, so we've developed ways to let them have sex whenever they want without the woman getting pregnant. Do you mean that your adults only have sex in order to produce fertilised eggs?"
"Generally, yes. Of course, our females are only in season for part of the time, and so you can have sex out of season without eggs being produced – though some females don't like that, apparently. Or it's also possible to have sex with males instead of females if you want to experience sex without fertilisation, but not many adult males enjoy being used in that way."
"What about non-adults?" I asked. Well, I had to ask: I wanted to know if gay sex existed in their world.
"Of course sometimes boys…" (and the word used clearly meant exactly the same as it does in English) "…practise sexual congress together. It leads to sexual pleasure exactly as entering a female does. And it is often pleasurable for the recipient, because the penis lies alongside the cloaca and so is stimulated by the contact. But, like with adults, a lot of boys don't like to be used like that, so we don't often speak about it."
"And do you two do that?"
"That's enough! You are not here to investigate our conduct!"
Which I was pretty sure meant 'yes', though I had the sense to let the subject drop.
"I think we should start to take a physical record," said Issin. "We need his measurements. Do you know how tall you are, little mammal?"
"Well, yes, but not in your measurements," I said. "In my country I measure five feet two inches, or one point five seven metres. Here I am counted as being one point six eight hersps." One thing I had learned while I had been asleep was how Kerpian weights and measures worked.
"You're right, that means nothing. Stand against the wall."
So I did that, and Issin marked the wall at my head and produced a measuring line.
"Three point four four kubs," he announced. "That makes you point one seven five kubs taller than me."
To me it looked like about three inches or seven and a half centimetres or eight and a half shardihersps… I'm going to stick to metric from here on in to keep it simple.
"And your weight?" he asked. "No, just stand on the scale – I don't want to know all the stupid names you have for it."
So I stood on the scale and was told I weighed 44.25 hulsks, which obviously meant nothing to me at all. Issin took my place and found he was 50.75 hulsks, which to me just meant he was heavier.
"And now we get to the real differences – the internal ones," said Haless. "We already know you mammals are viviparous, but the other obvious difference is in the blood. Later we'll take you to a clinic and run a full scan of your internal organs, but before that we're going to be looking at your blood. So you'd better take your clothes off or you'll bleed all over them."
I didn't like the sound of that at all, but when I hesitated Issin threatened to hit me, and so I removed my shirt, shoes, socks and shorts.
"And those," demanded Issin, pointing at my boxers.
"But… okay, then," I agreed as he advanced on me again.
I pulled them off and stood up straight, and they stared at me.
"Look at those stupid external organs," commented Haless. "Do you really walk around with those bits flopping about in front of you all the time?"
"Well, yes."
"Why? It looks ridiculous."
"That's just how we are," I said. "Don't you have a penis or testicles, then?"
"Of course we do, but our testicles are kept safely inside, and so is the penis, until we want to use it. Show him, Issin."
Issin didn't seem remotely embarrassed, removing his clothes – boots, jacket, trousers (both in the military red-brown of the adult Greys we had seen) and a padded shirt. He was wearing nothing else, so no underwear or socks.
I looked first at his groin – I was understandably curious. And there was nothing there but what looked like a vertical fold in his skin. As for the rest of him…
His body was much the same as mine apart from the lack of visible genitals, though he had no belly-button and no nipples. His arms and legs were like mine, too, though his feet had only four toes and his hands had an opposable thumb and three fingers – which was another reason why the Kerpian barrier controls needed a spread hand to operate them, because the Greys were a digit short. And apart from the colour his skin looked quite like mine, too – there were no obvious scales, though the ridge of his backbone was a little more pronounced than mine. We walked around each other looking each other up and down, so I got a chance to see him from both sides.
The main difference was his head. There was no hair at all, the skull was a little longer than mine, and the way the jaw protruded for an extra five centimetres [2in.] or so made his head look even longer. The lips were very thin, and when he grinned it was clear that he had rather more teeth than I did – probably that's why the jaw was longer, to accommodate all that extra biting equipment. There were no external ears, the nose was rudimentary, just two nostrils on top of the jaw and the hint of a ridge of bone above them, and the eyes were black, with an oval-shaped iris like a cat's. There were no eyelashes or eyebrows.
He allowed me to run my hand along his arm, doing the same thing to me, and he felt smooth and cool (in the temperature sense!)
"My testicles are here," he told me, pointing to the base of his groin. "Kick me there and I won't feel a thing. If I kick you there, will you feel nothing, too?"
"No, it'll hurt like hell," I admitted.
"And if I grab your penis and dig my nails in, will it hurt?" he asked, flicking his wrist and making a set of two-centimetre-long [1in.] claws appear at the end of his fingers.
"If you do it with those I should think you'd rip it off," I said, looking at the claws nervously.
"So you see already how superior we are to mammals," said Issin. "You can't damage my genitals because they are protected, whereas yours are very vulnerable."
"Let's get back to the blood," said Haless. "That's what's really different about us, after all, because you are primarily endothermic and we are ectothermic."
"Do you mean warm- and cold-blooded?" I asked.
"That's an inaccurate term," Haless reproved me. "Our blood is frequently warm. The difference is that we use external means to control our body temperature, and you use internal ones. We'll be spending a lot of time investigating the difference. We'll start off by taking a small sample of your blood for analysis, and then later we'll be able to examine your internal organs in detail. It'll be interesting, for example, to see whether your heart is heavier than one of ours or not."
"How are you going to find that out?" I asked.
"By putting it on the scales, of course."
I gaped at him. "But… I mean, you can't do that!" I protested. "I'm using it!"
"Oh, don't worry, you won't be by the time we come to weigh it. Or your liver or stomach or kidneys, come to that."
"Oh, I get it," I said, after a moment. "You're winding me up, right? Obviously you're not really going to do that, because if you were just going to kill me and cut me up you wouldn't have wasted all that time implanting me with your language, would you?"
"That wasn't a waste of time. After all, how are you going to be able to tell us what it feels like when we cut you up if you can't speak our language? It's well worth a delay of a couple of days: this will be the first time ever that anyone has dissected a specimen while it tells us how it feels to have its skin cut open and its organs removed. If we're careful you should still be able to speak right up to the point where we disconnect your heart. You're going to make history, little mammal – and we're going to be famous!"
Fame… it's overrated, I think, and I'm pretty sure Jake would agree with me, at least if this is the way to get noticed. So how is he going to avoid losing his liver?
Chapter Eleven
We left Jake facing up to the idea of being on the receiving end of a vivisection experiment. Can he find a way to escape, or will he be able to change the Grey boys' minds? Read on to find out…
I stared at them, but I couldn't see anything in their faces to suggest that they were joking. Obviously this seemed completely cold-blooded, but then again, that's what they were, and so I found myself believing they would actually be capable of doing something like this.
"How can you even think about doing that?" I asked. "I'm a human being!"
"And so you are intrinsically inferior to us. Why should we not do it?" asked Haless.
"Because it will bloody well hurt, that's why!"
"And why should that concern us?"
"Well, because…" Actually I couldn't think of a compelling reason – at least, not one that might make sense from their point of view. Except… "Well, because I'm helping you," I tried. "I'm going to do everything I can to answer your questions, so you should be grateful enough not to kill me!"
"Why? If you don't help us willingly we could force you, so why should we be grateful to you for doing something you have to do?"
"Well, bloody force me, then!" I said, angrily. "And I'm going to lie to you every time you ask a question anyway, so your results will be crap!"
"You're strange. Do you enjoy shovelling coal so much that you would prefer it to death and release?"
"Yes! At least while I'm shovelling, I'm alive! And I have friends, and on the Ertdays I get to have fun with them – okay, the shovelling isn't much fun, but the Ertdays help to make up for it."
"See, you're using strange words again. What is 'fun'? And I think I understand the concept of 'friends', but are they so very important to you?"
"Yes! Look, suppose Issin died – how would you feel about it?"
"I don't know. I suppose I would regret it."
"You'd regret it? You've been together since the day you hatched! Don't you think you're friends?"
Haless looked puzzled. "We work efficiently together," he said. "Does that make us 'friends' in your view?"
"Oh, come on! You don't just work together – you were joking about with each other on the way here. And you practise sex together, too. That must mean something."
"I never said we did that!"
"Oh, fuck off, Haless!" (The Grey vocabulary module obviously had included swear words). "It's obvious, or you'd just have denied it! Are you saying that doesn't mean anything?"
"Why should it? We've both done that with other boys, too. Are you saying that makes us friends with them?"
"God, your lives must be awful," I said. "No parents, no proper friends, nobody to be close to – how do you stand it, being alone all the time?"
"That's how we are. What is it that you think we lack?"
"Love, mostly."
"What is love?"
I stared at him. "Haless, we're never going to understand each other," I said. "If you can't understand love, you will never understand our species."
"That would be a pity. But perhaps you'll be able to show us what you're talking about… I think I've got an idea. Anyway, it's obvious there's no point in asking you anything else at the moment – you'd just lie. We'll save the questions until we've found a way to change your mind. So you might just as well go to sleep."
"Don't I get anything to eat first?"
"But we saw you eat one of those square things before you left the furnace room, so you can't need any food for a couple of days, surely?"
"Yes, I damned well do! I don't know about you lot, but we eat three times a day!"
"Three times a day? Every single day? Why?"
"Because we need it. If we don't get enough food we stop working."
"So do we, but we only need to eat every two or three days."
"That's because he's endothermic, I think," put in Issin. "He needs all that energy to keep his system operating correctly. We don't."
"That's really inefficient – fancy having to stop what you're doing to eat three times a day!"
"He's a mammal. Mammals are inefficient."
"Okay, so I'm inefficient. Are you going to feed me or not?" I asked.
"Well, you're not exactly falling over yourself to be helpful at the moment, are you?" Haless pointed out. "And I don't think there's a lot that you could eat in the house, anyway, so you'll have to manage for today. But we'll be going back to town first thing tomorrow and we'll see if we can find you something then, okay? Now go to your cage."
"Can I have…?" I couldn't find the word I needed in the vocabulary. "I need to get rid of some waste water."
"Oh. Okay, we'll go outside – I don't want you doing it in here. We have to live here, you know."
"There is a toilet," I pointed out.
"That's for us, not for animals. Come on." And they shooed me out into the clearing.
I walked as far as the nearest tree and took hold of myself.
"Oi, stop that!" shouted Haless. "You said you wanted to pass waste, not stimulate yourself!"
"I am passing waste – or I will if you shut up and let me."
I began to pee, and was surprised at the noises of disgust that this evoked in my audience.
"Oh, that's disgusting!" declared Issin. "How can you do that?"
"How can I do what?"
"Pass waste through your reproductive organ! Damn, I'm glad I'm not a human female!"
"What's wrong with it? How do you do it, then?"
"We pass waste through the cloaca, like all decent creatures do."
"You mean you…" I really wished they had a word for 'piss'. "You pass water through your arse?"
"Of course! That's the natural thing to do. That's why we have a cloaca. What happens to your waste solids, then – do they come out of your mouth?"
"No, they come out of my…" Clearly the equivalent word was this 'cloaca' they kept talking about, but it sounded odd talking about 'my' cloaca. Nevertheless… "My cloaca," I finished. "Just like you."
"Well, that's something. But why send any waste out using your reproductive system? That just seems filthy to me. Your reproductive system should just be there for sex, not have to double up in that disgusting way."
"I've never thought about it," I said, shaking off. "But, actually, there's a lot of logic in what you say. It does seem weird to have two waste systems. Mind you, it's quicker to get rid of water like we do – you just undo the zip on your trousers, take out your penis, pass the water and then do it up again. You don't have to sit down and it takes hardly any time at all."
"Next time you're dressed you can show us. But I still don't like the idea. Anyway, if you've finished you can go and lie down."
I went into the bedroom and walked into the cage, which was just about big enough for me to stand up in, just about long enough to lie down in, and just about wide enough for the mattress they had put in it. It was the same type as in our dormitory, and so it was only about sixty centimetres [2ft.] wide and not very thick at all. There was also a blanket and a bottle of water.
"Now lie down and go to sleep. If you give us any trouble we'll whip you in the morning."
I had no intention of making trouble, and so I lay down quietly. And despite my fears for the future I fell asleep quite quickly.
***
I slept through the night – I didn't even wake up when the two Greys came and lay down on the bed that was at the far end of the room, or when they got up the following morning. In the end they had to come and bang on the cage to drag me back to consciousness.
"We're going to town," Haless told me. "We'll bring you back something to eat if you behave. Do you need anything before we go?"
"Not really. But could you find me an empty bottle? That way if I need to pass water I'll be able to do it without making a mess on the floor."
They found me a bottle and went out without another word, and I lay back wondering how I was going to get out of this mess. The cage was solidly constructed, which meant I couldn't get out until they returned anyway, and after that it was hard to imagine that they were going to leave me unattended for any length of time – and in any case it would be hard for me to run away as long as I was naked, because the forest floor would doubtless have plenty of thorns and brambles all over it. And, of course, there were quite possibly guardians in the forest, too. So it looked as if I wouldn't be going anywhere unless the Greys went with me.
They were gone for a good couple of hours (I was still wearing my glasses, my swastika and my watch, which they hadn't bothered removing the previous day), and when they returned they were not alone, as I discovered when they came and took me into the main room: Tommi was standing by the door looking frightened.
"What's he doing here?" I asked.
"We looked at the recording of you in the furnace room and after," Haless told me, "covering the last three days. And it's obvious that this child is drawn to you. Perhaps he is what you'd call a 'friend'?"
I felt sick, because I had an idea where this was going. "Can he speak your language?" I asked.
"No. There's no point – you can translate anything he needs to hear. Anyway, we thought since you didn't want to help us maybe we could try using him instead. So go and sit down and we'll get him ready."
"But…"
"Go and sit down, I said!"
So I went and sat down, and Issin started to remove Tommi's clothes. He had no difficulty with the footwear or the shirt, but when he tried to remove the shorts Tommi started to struggle frantically.
"Leave him alone!" I cried, standing up, but Haless came over and pushed me back onto the sofa.
Tommi kept struggling, but Issin was far too strong, and soon the shorts came off, and then the briefs… and then Issin seemed to freeze.
"Fuck!" he said. "Someone's taken this child to hell and back. Come and have a look at this!"
Haless went and I followed him, and Issin swung Tommi round so that we could see his back. And his buttocks were covered in scars – as Issin had said, someone had beaten Tommi with a heavy cane or a whip or something similar, hard enough to break the skin over and over again.
"Oh, fuck… gods, Tommi," I gasped, and I pushed the Greys aside, spun Tommi round and hugged him hard. And his arms went round me and he began to sob.
"Is this how your adults care for your young?" asked Haless.
"No! No, this is horrible… whoever did this is a complete animal," I replied, hugging Tommi and stroking his back. "I've never seen anything this bad."
"It seems unnecessary," agreed Issin. "I can understand discipline, but this looks more like violence for the sake of it. And on a small child, too."
"What happened, Tommi?" I asked in Kerpian, forgetting for a moment that he was unlikely to answer me. "Who did this to you?"
"Don't you… don't you hate me?" he asked.
"What? Of course I don't hate you – you're my friend."
"He said… He… He said anyone who saw would know what an evil boy I was, and then they would never speak to me again. And he said that anyone who heard my voice would know straight away that I'm a liar, too… You swear you don't hate me, Jake?"
"I swear. You're my friend. So who was the bastard who did this?"
Slowly I got the story out of him, translating for the Greys as we went. It seemed that his father had died and his mother had remarried, and the new husband was a Lettrian (my history module had given me no more than a brief knowledge of the neighbouring countries, but I knew that Lettria was north of Kerpia, which put it in the region of Poland and the Baltic States in my world. And apparently the Lettrians still had a very active religion: their gods came from northern Siberia and they disapproved of just about everything – at least, everything that makes life worth living).
So the stepfather had caught Tommi playing sex games with the boy next door, who was a little older than he was, and he had gone completely berserk, hitting the neighbour boy so hard that he killed him and then thrashing Tommi so violently that he was covered in blood by the time the militia, called by the neighbour, arrived. But before he had been taken away the stepfather had drummed into Tommi the lies that he had already repeated to us.
To complete his traumatisation, Tommi's mother had been unable to cope with what had happened and had chosen to kill herself soon after Tommi came home from hospital, which left him an orphan. And he had only been at the orphanage for a couple of months when the Greys arrived and conscripted all the orphans into the mine complex. And today was the first time he had dared to utter a word since.
"And you think we have a bad life because we don't have a 'family'?" commented Haless. "Well, if that's what you think you're completely insane!"
"This isn't what's supposed to happen," I said. "Normal families love each other. It's not Tommi's fault some religious nutcase married his mother… look, can you give me a couple of minutes… I mean a huszak or so, to talk to him? Please?"
"That seems fair to me. Carry on."
In fact they were decent enough to give me a lot more than a couple of minutes, and I spent the time cuddling Tommi and telling him that it wasn't his fault, that he hadn't done anything wrong and that nobody would think badly of him if they saw him undressed. I told him that as far as I could tell everyone in teams Three and Four liked him. And gradually he seemed to calm down a bit.
"But there is one thing I don't understand," I said. "After what happened to you, weren't you worried about… you know, wanting to do sex stuff with me? Weren't you afraid I might react badly?"
He shook his head. "I knew you were nice as soon as I saw you. And somehow I never believed what… he… said about doing that, even though I believed the other stuff. I know Tibor and Hansi – you know, they're in Team Four – sometimes do stuff together, and they think it's normal. And I liked making you feel nice."
"Right, but from now on you have to let me do it for you as well, okay? If I ever get a chance to, that is…"
"What do you mean? What are these Greys doing with you?"
"Oh, it's just an investigation into what the differences are between us and them. I don't know how long it'll take, but I expect I'll be back before too long."
"And why did they bring me up here?"
"I'm not sure. I was telling them about friendship, and they knew from the cameras in the furnace building that we're friends, so perhaps they wanted to see how we behave in real life."
"Then I hope they like what we're doing now."
"I hope so, too. Look, Tommi, I'll get them to take you back as soon as possible – you'll be better off back at the mine. They've said they're going to want to take blood samples and stuff. I don't mind too much, but I don't want them sticking needles into you."
"I'll stay with you if you want."
"It's okay. I can speak their language now, so I think I'll be all right with them."
We were quiet for a while, and then Haless asked, "Is that some sort of sex thing you're doing, then?"
"What? No, of course not! We're just cuddling, that's all."
"What's cuddling?"
"It's just holding each other close to show how much you like each other."
"Oh. Are you sure it's not a sex thing, then?"
"Come and look," I said. "You can see that neither of us is aroused."
"You're right. So, does what you're doing bring pleasure in some other way?"
"Yes. It shows us that we're not alone."
I led Tommi over to the sofa and we sat down together.
"Do you understand emotions at all?" I asked them. "I mean, do you even know what it means to be happy, or sad, or angry, or scared… or anything at all?"
"Of course we do. There are things that bring us pleasure and things that we don't like, but we try very hard not to let our feelings control us. To allow your feelings to control you is weak. I'll give you an example: suppose that I said something like 'if you don't help us with our experiments we'll kill your little friend'. What would you say?"
I'd more or less expected this, but I couldn't see any way out of it.
"I'd say that I'd help you. I wouldn't like it, but I'd do it to protect Tommi."
"You see? Weakness – your feelings can be used to make you do something you don't want."
"Yes, but it's not only weakness. Suppose for a moment I managed to kill Issin – how would you feel?"
"I'd feel regret, like I told you. But I could get someone else to help me with the experiment."
"Now that's weakness," I said. "Because if you hurt Tommi I swear to God I'll kill you, or die trying. And I'm sure the rest of the boys who work with us would say the same thing."
"Why? That's a stupid way to behave, because if you tried to kill me you'd die yourself."
"Perhaps, but my friends would keep trying, and eventually one of us would get you. In the end you'd pay for hurting our friend."
"But that's insane – you should think of your own life, not someone else's! So what if he dies – you'd still be alive, and that's all that matters!"
"No, it isn't. That's the difference between you and us: man for man you might be stronger, but we all fight together and support each other, so in the end we'll win."
He was quiet for a while.
"See, that's why we wanted to do this," said Issin. "You really are different from us, and not just physically. We can learn a lot from you."
"To use it against us, I suppose."
"No, because I still think we're stronger than you. But it would be really interesting to find out how you mammals think."
"If you promise to help us, we'll take your friend back to the mine," said Haless.
"You'd accept my promise?"
"Yes, I think so. I mean, obviously if you let us down we could go back to the mine and collect him again, but I don't think you'd make us do that. It's strange, but I think I can trust you."
"And are you really going to cut me up alive?"
He looked at me. "What difference does it make?" he asked. "Either you promise to help us, or your friend here gets hurt. Will you really allow us to dissect you alive to protect him?"
And that was a really difficult question, but I knew that unless I agreed now I'd be putting Tommi in danger. Hopefully I'd get a chance to escape before they actually started cutting me.
"Take him back to the mine and I'll co-operate with you all the way," I said.
He looked at me for a few seconds and then nodded. "Okay," he said. "We'll take him back."
"Thanks," I said. "Now… did you bring me anything to eat?"
"Oh, yes. Here you are," and Haless tossed me one of the square rice cakes. Well, it was better than nothing, I supposed. "And we've brought some meat for supper, because we'll want to eat tonight, too."
"Okay. Do you cook your meat or eat it raw?"
"Well, we can eat it raw, but we prefer it cooked, preferably with a good sauce or seasoning."
"Then I'll cook for us all this evening," I said. "I like cooking. Put your meat in the fridge and I'll see if there's anything to go with it. Do you eat vegetables?"
"Yes, but just as a garnish. We really only need the meat itself."
"Then I'll see what I can do."
They parked me in the cage while they took Tommi back, and when they returned and let me out I told them that I was going to teach them a bit more about friendship if they'd let me, and when they agreed I persuaded them to let me get dressed and then told them that we were going to climb the mountain.
"Why?" asked Haless.
"Because it's there," I said, unoriginally. "And because it's a nice afternoon, and going for a walk in the Black Forest is the sort of thing that friends do. Come on," and I went to the door, and after a moment they followed me.
I couldn't see far because of the trees, but I knew if we walked uphill we would eventually emerge above the trees and then I'd be able to see the summit, so I headed off along a path that ran away behind the house. After a couple of kilometres we reached a road, but it seemed to be heading in the wrong direction, so I crossed it and kept going, and eventually I came out on the track that led up to the loggers' cabins.
"Do you ever do this sort of thing at home?" I asked. "Just going for a walk, I mean."
"Not really. We have to go running at school, and if we join the army I expect we'll have to march a lot, but we don't really walk just for something to do."
"Then you'll like this. Just look for wildlife, listen to the birds and enjoy the fresh air."
By the time we reached the track I became aware that they were breathing heavily: apparently they were finding it hard to keep going. So I suggested a rest for a bit, which they accepted happily.
"We're very fast over short distances," Haless told me. "We find it harder to keep going for long distances, though."
I filed that piece of information away, merely observing that in that case we would take it a bit slower and stop whenever they wanted. So we did that until we had passed the cabins and reached the point where the track forked – and now I could read the sign I saw that the west-bound path was signposted to the summit. So we rested for a little longer before pressing on to the summit, and now that the end was in sight they managed a bit better, until finally we stood on the top. We were lucky: it was a fine clear day and the view was magnificent.
"Don't you think that's an amazing view?" I asked. "And don't you feel that you've achieved something by walking all the way up here?"
"I think we would call it 'pleasurable'," agreed Haless.
"And is it better because you did it with Issin, or would it have been better alone?"
"I think it's better having done it together. Now we'll be able to talk about it later."
"See? That's one of the things about having friends: it means you can share experiences like this. Now I want you to hug each other."
"Huh?"
"Like this," I said, hugging Haless briefly. "Do that to Issin – it'll sort of seal the moment of having climbed the mountain together."
So they hugged awkwardly. I did my best to get them into position and tried to make them relax, but it did seem that hugging didn't come naturally to Greys.
"Well, that felt strange," said Haless, afterwards.
"Yes, it did," agreed Issin. "It wasn't unpleasant, but it wasn't really pleasant either. I don't think it works for us the way it did for you and the little red-haired child."
"Why do you mammals have hair?" asked Haless, as we started to go back down. "It seems pointless just having it on top of your head – it just makes you look weird. At least most other mammals have hair all over."
"I don't know, to be honest," I said. "It helps to keep the head a bit warm when the weather is cold, and I suppose we don't need hair anywhere else because we wear clothes. Mind you, we still get hair round our balls and under our arms when we get older, and I have no idea why that happens."
"We saw that you have a bit of hair round your reproductive organs," commented Issin. "There isn't very much, though."
"No, but I'll get more when I get older… I mean, if I get older. It starts to appear when we start to mature – I suppose it's a sign that we're ready to father children if we want."
"And have you?"
"God, no! I've never had sex with anyone."
"Not even with other boys, as we do?"
"Not even with other boys… well, not like you're thinking, anyway."
"What do you mean by that?" asked Haless.
"I'll explain when we get back to the cabin."
And once we got back to the cabin I took charge: I wanted to demonstrate that I was going to co-operate with them, because I thought that if I did that they might let their guard down a bit. So I got undressed as soon as we were back inside and said, "Let's talk about sex. Turn your computer on and I'll tell you how it works for us."
I waited while they set the laptop up and opened the record, and then I said, "Where I live we start to mature between about eleven and fifteen, though I'm about average – I was thirteen six or seven weeks ago. You can tell that I'm maturing because I've started to get some hair around my reproductive organs. And I can produce sperm now. You saw what Tommi looked like: no hair and smaller organs, so he hasn't started to mature yet.
"Like I said, I've never had sex, but there are ways to do stuff with friends without actually… you know, fucking each other. Would you like me to show you?"
"Go on, then."
So I lay on the sofa and began to play with myself. This felt a bit strange, but I thought that if I could do this it would establish a link between us that might persuade them not to cut me later on. And soon enough I managed to get myself hard.
"That's a bit bigger, but it isn't really very hard yet," commented Haless.
"It's hard enough for what I need. Now, you can do this yourself," and I started to rub it. "That feels nice, but it's better if you get someone else to do it for you. If one of you would like to get your penis out I'll show you."
They looked at each other and then Issin got undressed and came and took my place on the sofa, and after a few seconds the fold in his groin opened and something hard and cream-coloured poked its way out. It wasn't quite as big as mine, but I decided not to comment.
I took hold of it and he gasped, jerking.
"Fuck, that's strange," he said. "His hand is so hot, Haless… oh, fuck…"
He began to thrust against me, so all I had to do was to keep hold. It was almost a perfect cylinder with a rounded point on the top, and it felt cool and very hard.
"Is there a bone in there?" I asked.
"No," Haless told me – Issin seemed incapable of speech – "it's the same as yours: it fills up with blood when we need it to. Though it doesn't go quite as floppy as yours when we're not using it."
Issin was still thrusting and gasping, so to tease him I took my hand away.
"Don't let go!" he gasped. "That felt really good!"
"Okay, but try to keep still this time and I'll do the work," I said, and I started to rub it for him. And once again he writhed around and bucked up against me, and only a few seconds later he cried out and a substantial jet of creamy liquid shot out of the tiny hole in the tip and landed on his shoulder. Four or five equally heavy jets followed it.
"So how did that feel?" I asked, when it seemed to be over.
"Good. Not quite like fucking, but good all the same. You can do that again in a bit."
"How soon will you be ready to do it again?"
"Not long. Do it for Haless and I'll be ready again as soon as you finish with him."
"Wow, that's a fast recovery!" I commented. "It takes me a lot longer to be ready for a second go."
"That's because you're a mammal," said Issin, standing up but not bothering to dress. "Mammals are inefficient."
His penis disappeared back into his groin and he wiped himself down with a tea-towel he found in the kitchen, and while he was doing that Haless took his place on the sofa.
"This had better be good, little mammal," he growled at me. "I wouldn't normally let someone like you see my penis."
"You can call me Jake," I replied, taking hold of it and squeezing, and the reaction was the same as Issin's had been.
"Fuck!" he exclaimed. "It's like wrapping it in a hot towel!"
"I've never tried doing that, but I bet I can do more with my hand than you could with a towel." And I demonstrated, tickling it, stroking it with one finger and generally teasing him. It was slightly bigger than Issin's and so was about the same size as mine both in terms of length and thickness, though it was harder than mine and rounder, too. It felt interesting, though I much preferred the warm feeling of Stefan's.
"Do it properly!" he demanded. "Hold it like you did Issin's!"
"What's my name?" I asked, tickling the tiny hole at the tip.
He seemed reluctant to use my name, and I could understand why – in fact, this was exactly why I was insisting on it: if he started treating me as a person and not just 'the mammal' he might start to relate to me properly, and that would make it much harder for him to kill me. At least, I hoped so.
"All right!" he gasped, finally. "Your name's Jake! Now do it properly – please?"
That 'please' was even better than simply using my name, and so I took hold of it properly and began to rub it slowly. And, like Issin, he loved it, wriggling about and thrusting against me to make me do it faster, and in less than a minute there was lots of creamy liquid spurting out of him.
"Was that okay?" I asked.
"Not bad. Like Issin said, fucking feels better, but that was a pretty close second. I think that will have to be one of your duties from now on."
"Shall we fuck him?" suggested Issin. "I bet he feels really hot inside!"
I didn't fancy that at all – I'd long since decided that the only person I'd let do that would be Stefan. There was no way I wanted to lose my cherry to a pair of lizards.
"I think it would be too hot," I said. "I'm a lot hotter inside than on the surface of my hand. I think it would hurt you."
"Well, show us your cloaca and we'll see," insisted Issin.
Reluctantly I bent over the arm of the sofa and spread my legs, and Issin came and probed against my anus with a finger.
"Keep that nail sheathed!" I said, nervously.
"Don't worry. But I don't think we could get in there – that entrance is really small and tight."
Too right it was – I was keeping it as tight as I could.
"Well, if mammals are as small and tight as that, how do they reproduce?" asked Haless, getting up and coming to see for himself. "There has to be a way in there."
"We don't reproduce that way," I said. "Human females have another entrance here," and I stood up and indicated the base of my penis. "It's a bit like your sheaths, but it opens inward. That's where my penis would go if I was having sex with a female."
"Is that true?" asked Haless.
"Yes, I swear. And they get rid of waste water there, too, though the plumbing is a bit more complicated."
"Shit, you mammals are strange," said Haless. "I can't imagine having sex like that – in fact the whole idea of using the same equipment for sex as for disposing of waste water seems absolutely disgusting. Still, I suppose it feels nice to you… anyway, if your cloaca is too tight maybe we won't do that to you. You'll just have to rub it for us instead."
"Why don't you try doing it to each other?" I suggested. "It won't feel quite the same, but it'll be a useful comparison – and while you do that I'll go and start cooking supper, okay?"
"I suppose it would be an interesting experiment," said Issin, who was already exposed and clearly ready for another go. "Try it, Haless, and then we can get Jake to do it again and see which is best."
He lay down on the sofa, and at that point I left them to it and went to make a start on supper. I found five steaks in the fridge, and I assumed that was two each for them and one for me, which I thought a bit unfair, but then any steak would be a whole lot better than what I would have eaten at the mine. Elsewhere in the kitchen I found some tinned mushrooms and a couple of onions, and in the freezer were some frozen chips and peas. Normally I would have chosen either the mushrooms or the onions, but since I was hungry I decided to cook both – and if the Greys didn't like them I'd just have to eat them all myself…
So I got to work. Unlike the kitchen at Hub Two this one was fully equipped with cooking oil, condiments, butter and everything else I could ask for (which suggested that the cabin hadn't been abandoned for quite as long as the Greys had thought, because the butter was still fine), so I laid everything out ready, went into the shower room to wash my hands thoroughly, and then started trimming the steaks and chopping the vegetables. The noises emanating from the next room suggested that the Greys were having fun, but I resisted the temptation to peek round the corner of the room: I wanted to serve a really good meal and further deepen the bond I was trying to establish with them…
And then I had another thought, along completely different lines. I thought of what I knew about large snakes, how when they have eaten they often sleep for several days while they digest the meal. I didn't think the Greys would sleep for anything like that long, but they would probably sleep fairly soundly that night. And if I could persuade them not to lock me in the cage, maybe I would be able to escape while they slept… except…
I remembered the guardians. How could I get past them? The only way would be to make one of the Greys come with me… or find some way of masking my human pheromones…
By now everything was cooking nicely. I had decided to grill the steaks, since that would leave the hotplates free for the vegetables, and I thought it was time to find out exactly how Greys like their meat. So I went back into the main room and started to ask, "How do you like your steaks? Rare or…"
I broke off and stared: Issin was bent over the arm of the sofa and Haless was fucking him.
"Go away!" cried Issin, loudly.
"No, stay," contradicted Haless, grinning. "You might as well come and see how we fuck, little mammal. Come and see!"
Issin looked very unhappy and in fact seemed to be trying to get out from under, but Haless was able to keep him pinned down and went on thrusting against him steadily.
"Come and look properly," invited Haless. "Watch it going in and out. I'm sure Issin won't mind if you watch him acting like a female!"
It was obvious that Issin did mind, but there wasn't much he could do about it.
"Why didn't you come in sooner?" he said. "Then it would have been him on the receiving end – and you wouldn't have liked that, would you, Haless?"
"Obviously not. It's just your bad luck that Jake has seen you getting fucked. I'm sure he won't forget it, either."
"Look, I only came in to find out how you want your meat – well-cooked or just a bit cooked," I said, backing away. "If I'd known you were fucking I wouldn't have come in. So – well-cooked or lightly cooked?"
"Well-cooked," said Haless.
"Issin?" I asked.
"The same. Now go away, please!"
I went back to the kitchen, thinking that shame was obviously an emotion the Greys could feel, and embarrassment, too. I just hoped it wouldn't make Issin angry with me, because I really didn't want to get locked in tonight.
While everything was cooking I made a start on the washing-up, cleaning the chopping boards and washing the knives… and that gave me yet another idea, a much more drastic one. I thought it through, looking for flaws, but I was sure it would work.
I put everything away, checked on the progress of the steaks and took three plates out of the cupboard. I went and laid the table, and by now both Greys were dressed again, thought Haless looked a lot happier than Issin.
"Look, Issin," I said, "I'm really sorry I saw that. I know you all do it, and I know that you don't really like taking the female role in front of an audience, especially one like me, who isn't even the same species as you. It doesn't change anything as far as I'm concerned: I don't think badly of you, I swear."
"Why would I care what you think?" he said, though without looking at me.
"Exactly: you don't need to worry at all. I'm never going to tell anyone about it – it's none of my business, anyway. Now if you'd both like to sit down, supper is served."
I piled two plates up with two steaks each and as many chips, peas, mushrooms and onions as I could fit on the plate, and that still left plenty of everything for me. Then I took the plates through and served, adding a bottle of red wine I had found in the cupboard – I wasn't sure whether it would be any good, but I'd had a sip and it seemed fine to me.
They got stuck in and seemed to be enjoying it, so I simply got on with enjoying my own meal. I was a little worried that my recent diet might have reduced my appetite, but apparently it hadn't, and there didn't seem to be a lot wrong with their appetites, either, because their plates were both empty long before mine was.
"That was good, Jake," said Haless. "A bit too many garnishes and not quite enough meat, but it was good, all the same. You can cook for us again. What do you reckon, Issin?"
"Yes, it was good," said Issin, though he still didn't seem to be looking at me.
"Maybe we should just keep you as a pet," said Haless. "You could cook for us, and help us with sex…. Or maybe not, because that won't make us famous the way the experiment will. Still, we won't need to cut you up for a good while yet…"
So trying to establish a link didn't seem to have worked.
I collected the plates, carried everything through to the kitchen and started on the washing up, and after a few minutes Haless came in and said, "Don't be too long, little mammal: we need to sleep. Come through to the bedroom as soon as you have finished."
"Okay," I said, and proceeded to drag my feet for at least half an hour – and by the time I got into the bedroom they were already lying on the bed side by side and snoring gently. So at least the food had had the desired effect.
I ran through the plan once more, and again I couldn't see any flaws: if this went according to plan I'd be out of here and guardian-proof in about fifteen minutes. That left me trying to decide what to do after that: should I just get back to Hub One as fast as I could, hope that the Capsule had recharged and flee back to Hub Two, where I could just keep trying doors until I found the one that would take me home? That would certainly be the easiest thing to do, but I didn't think I could just abandon Stefan, Alain and Oli – or Tommi either, come to that. Somehow I would have to rescue them.
If I could find a truck in town I could drive it to the mine, but I was sure that if I just drove in unannounced the cameras would pick me up and there would be Greys everywhere by the time I got to the furnace building…
I thought about it for a long time, but I simply couldn't see a way around it – unless I tried to find some of the Kerpian Resistance. I knew they existed, because Harsen Karel had spoken about the power supply to the mine being sabotaged, but I had no idea where to find them. Still, that might well be the best way.
I collected the two largest knives from the kitchen and took them through to the bedroom, where the Greys were still sleeping. All I had to do was a couple of quick knife-strokes across their throats: that should produce plenty of blood, and if I rubbed it into my skin and clothes it would effectively mask any trace of human pheromones and so protect me from the guardians. I didn't think it would be easy, but, after all, they still intended to dissect me alive, and a quick slash of a knife across the throat would give them a far quicker and cleaner death than that. And they were the enemy, after all.
I raised the knives and stepped closer to the bed.
This is a side of Jake we haven't seen before. Is he really going to be able to do this? You'll have to read the next chapter to find out.
Chapter Twelve
Last time we left Jake on the point of taking drastic action to escape from Haless and Issin. Can he really bring himself to kill them in cold blood?
I stood beside the bed, a knife in each hand, and paused: maybe it would be safer to rely on my right hand, and so I should deal with Haless first and then Issin – there would be virtually no chance of Issin being able to react quickly enough even if he did wake up when I cut Haless. So I held the knife just above Haless's throat…
Of course I had never done this before, but I reckoned that a quick, hard, deep slash would do the job. Okay, I told myself, on three: one… two… two and a half…
I took the knife away: my hand was trembling. I knew that I had to do this, because I didn't think I'd get a better chance to escape, but it was so hard – in fact, my attempted bridge-building earlier in the day had come back to bite me, because I was starting to relate to them by now: when I looked at them I could only see two boys of my own age who were learning about the world, when what I should have been seeing was a pair of alien soldiers who were going to kill me if I didn't kill them first.
I put the knife back close to Haless's throat and tried to force myself to do it. Come on, I told myself, think about Stefan – do you really want these two to prevent you from ever seeing him again? But I still couldn't bring myself to use the knife, and this time I recognised that I just didn't have it in me to kill in cold blood like this.
"Oh, fuck!!" I shouted in frustration, hurling the knife across the room.
"Huh? What's happening?" mumbled Haless, sitting up.
"You're dead, that's what's happening," I said, showing him the other knife. "You and Issin both."
"So… why am I still here?"
I handed him the knife. "Because I can't be like you," I said. "I know if our positions were reversed you would have killed me as I slept, but I just couldn't do that. You probably think that's a serious weakness."
"Well… you realise that if you had killed us you would still be stuck here? I mean, you do know about the guardians, don't you?"
"Yes, of course. I was going to rub your blood all over me – that way they wouldn't have recognised me as a human."
He thought about it for a moment and then nodded. "I think that would have worked," he said. "It would have been even safer if you had removed the skin from one of us and wrapped it round yourself… Anyway, since you had a proper plan, why didn't you do it?"
"Because I'm not a soldier and I'm never going to be one. Maybe my friend Stefan could have done it, but I can't – I'm just a kid like you, and I simply can't see you as an enemy, even if deep down I know that you are."
"Weakness," said Issin, who had also woken up. "Those emotions of yours are another case of mammals being inefficient. Except… even if I think you were stupid not to do it, I'm glad that you didn't. I'm not ready to die yet."
"Nor am I, but sometimes it happens anyway," I said. "Still, at least you know now that you don't have to worry about me – if I couldn't hurt you while you were fast asleep I'll never be able to. So you might as well go back to sleep – you probably still need to digest most of the meat you ate."
"Perhaps we should put you in your cage to be sure," said Haless.
"If you want, though I'm not going to change my mind now."
I went into the cage, took my glasses off and lay down. In one way I was mentally kicking myself for not taking the chance that had been offered… but in another I was glad I hadn't done it: I think if I had done something like that it would have haunted me for a long time. Even if failing to act was going to cost me my life I still thought I had probably made the right choice.
In fact Haless had simply gone straight back to sleep and hadn't even bothered to close the cage door, and so if I had wanted to I could still have carried out the plan. But I didn't seriously consider it again: I would have to try to find another way out, one that didn't involve hurting Haless and Issin.
Haless woke me up next morning by tapping on the cage, and when I woke up he handed me my clothes and told me to get dressed.
"We're going to make a proper start on the tests today," he told me, "and we can't do that here, so we're going on a journey. Hurry up – I want to get back to town so that we can try to arrange some transport for us."
So I got dressed and walked back to town with them. They went to the Town Hall and spoke to one of the Grey officers there, and as a result of that conversation we found ourselves, an hour or so later, sitting in the back of a lorry with half a dozen Grey soldiers. The lorry headed out of town in the direction of the village where we had been captured, but it turned off before we got there and followed a narrower road up into the forest – and I realised that this must have been the one we had crossed on our way up to the summit. The road wound its way up the side of the mountain and eventually we came to a halt at the edge of the trees and we all got out.
I could see that we were close to the summit of the mountain and I realised that we weren't all that far from the cave that held the emergency exit to Hub One – in fact, I thought it was only a short distance beyond the thin band of trees we were at the edge of. But the path we were following stopped before we got very close to the cave, and it led instead to a functional-looking building that appeared to be sitting on its own on the edge of the forest – well, not quite on its own, because there were some ruins a short distance beyond it, but that building seemed to have been almost completely demolished.
Inside there was a sort of checkpoint, rather like passport control at an airport. The soldiers went through first, and then Haless presented the Grey behind the desk with a piece of paper. The Grey looked me up and down and waved us off to our right, and after a wait of a couple of minutes another Grey took me into a small room, took a photograph of me, weighed me and measured my height ("I'm 3.44 kubs," I told him helpfully, but he still insisted on checking for himself). Then he hit a couple of keys on his computer and a laminated card appeared from a slot at the side. He handed this to Haless.
"You're responsible for him, understand?" he said. "If anything goes wrong it'll be your fault, so make sure nothing does. And don't lose his pass card, or we won't let him out again."
I was happy to hear that coming out again was still a possibility, because by now I had worked out where we were: this building had been put up over the Hub One Nexus Room. Apparently I was going to visit the Grey world.
We went through the checkpoint and then down a ramp that doubled back on itself a couple of times before ending in the middle of a slightly smaller version of our own Nexus Room: this one only had fifteen doors. The Greys were more helpful than the Kerpians had been, because each door here had a Grey numeral painted on it. One of the doors stood open (not surprisingly it was the one with a figure 1 painted on it) and Haless led us through it into the tunnel beyond. I was a bit surprised to discover that nothing had been done to widen it: it was exactly the same size as the ones at Hub Two. But perhaps the Greys had been worried that interfering with the access tunnel might in some way collapse the portal. The only thing they had done was to rig up some lighting at intervals along the tunnel: the original lights built into the walls by the Kerpians were all dead.
In due course we came to the end of the tunnel. It ended in a door that led to a ladder room (so clearly the tunnel extensions, at least for the ones that didn't lead to the Hub, were a Hub Two addition), and the ladder in turn led to the usual trapdoor in a hut, though the trapdoor itself had been removed. Of course, the fact that everything had to pass through a small trapdoor, down a ladder and then along a fairly narrow corridor had made it really difficult for the Greys because they hadn't been able to get any heavy equipment through from their side, and no doubt if the Kerpians had been equipped with tanks and the like they would have been able to repulse the invaders. But since the Kerpians were a peaceful people the invasion had succeeded.
Immediately outside the hut, and in fact built onto it, was another checkpoint, though this one was a rather simpler affair, presumably intended just to keep unauthorised people away from the portal. The guard on duty checked my pass in a rather cursory way and waved us straight through, and outside the checkpoint we found ourselves in a forest once more, though this one was a lot closer to civilisation than the ones I had visited previously at Hub Two: five minutes' walk down a recent-looking road took us out of the forest and into a small town built on the side of the mountain. Most of the people we passed as we walked through the town seemed to be in uniform, and perhaps that's why they didn't stare at me: if they had served on the other side of the portal they would have seen plenty of humans before.
Another ten minutes brought us to a cable car station, and the cable car in turn took us down into the valley below. At about the halfway point we switched to another cable car and this one ended up at the edge of a town (I thought that probably this would be the Grey version of Hintraten, though this was a substantially larger place than the one we had left earlier today) in a complex that also included a railway station and a bus station. But Haless and Issin just walked out of the complex and along a wide road that led away from it.
All the vehicles we saw – and there weren't very many – were moving almost silently, so apparently the Greys had something other than the internal combustion engine, and that got me thinking about the dangers of something like the Nexus Room: an aggressive species would have access, not only to the mineral wealth of several different worlds, but also to their technology, and that would doubtless lead to a large number of technological innovations that would in turn make their world even stronger. The Kerpians had not apparently tried to steal the technology of my world, probably because they were already in advance of much of what we knew, but I was sure that the Greys would simply grab everything and use it to develop their own world faster than would otherwise have been possible.
We walked for ten minutes or so and then left the main thoroughfare and headed off into smaller side roads, and in due course we reached a building that Haless said housed their school and home. I'd already seen that Grey architects liked round corners and curves, but even despite the lack of straight edges this building looked stark and unwelcoming. Maybe that was because the windows weren't very big, or the colour was a dull dark grey, but I was still glad I didn't have to live in it.
They led me inside and took me to an office close to the front door, and here they presented me to their study director, who was wearing the ubiquitous military uniform. I wondered for a moment if this was a bit like China under Mao, where everyone wore exactly the same clothes, but perhaps it was just because this was a military school a bit like Stefan's, because when I was sent back into the hall to wait while Haless and Issin discussed their plans with the director I saw a couple of other Greys go past outside in the street, and they were wearing different clothes.
"Okay, Jake," said Haless, emerging from the room, "come with us. After what happened last night we reckon we can trust you, so we're not going to lock you up in a cupboard like we had been going to. Instead you can live with us between experiments: you can sleep in our dormitory and eat with us. I'll have to try to arrange for some food for you between our meals, though, or you're likely to get very hungry…. Anyway, come with us now and we'll introduce you to the rest of our study group."
They took me up some stairs – Grey stairs had shorter risers and longer treads than ours – and along a couple of dark corridors to what looked to me like a small classroom: there were ten desks informally scattered about the room and a large screen at the front, which was currently showing an adult Grey holding forth about the mineral deposits of Region Nine. Eight young Greys were following the program with a lot more attention than would have happened in my school if there had been no teacher present, as was the case here.
"Pause program," said Haless into a microphone beside the screen, and the image froze. "Okay, put your computers away: I want you to meet our pet mammal. It's called Jake, it's a male and it's going to be helping us with the experiments we talked about ten days ago."
The other Greys looked at me with interest and I looked back: even without hair to help me differentiate I had found that I could see the difference between Haless and Issin straight away, and their eight colleagues were also fairly easily distinguishable – a scar on the cheek here, a split lip there, eyes closer together or further apart, a heavier jaw, narrower nostrils, slightly lighter or darker skin…
Most of the desks were set in twos or threes, presumably indicating what passed for 'friendship' in this world, though there was one Grey sitting alone on one side of the room. Yup, I thought, every class has its Invisible Jake: that looks like my counterpart in this one.
"We'll be doing a whole range of tests over the next few days," Haless went on. "Issin is going to be the control, so we'll be measuring his results against the mammal's. We've got Lab Four booked, and the director says he'd like us all to get involved, so come and watch whenever you want. We'll get a timetable printed out later today."
"Can it talk?" asked a Grey sitting in the group of three.
"Yes, it can," I butted in before Haless could answer: I was getting irritated with being spoken about as though I wasn't there. "And I'm a he, same as you lot. So you can't tell rude jokes about me thinking I won't understand, because I will."
"What are rude jokes?" asked the Grey.
"Comments about the way us mammals have sex or stuff like that."
"Really? How do you have sex, then?"
"Shut up, Rathyk," said Haless, before I could answer. "You'll get a chance to find out all about it later. And Jake has never had sex, because he's still too young, he says. And he's never even practised with another boy, so there really isn't anything he can tell you. Anyway, we might as well continue with normal lessons for now: in the pause I'll sort out which experiments we want to do first and then we can start on them after midday.
"Jake, grab a chair from the pile at the back and follow the lesson – in fact, try to remember as much as you can. We'll test you later to see how good your memory is. Issin, don't activate your computer, just try to remember without it."
He and Issin sat down at the two empty desks and a laptop-sized computer rose up onto Haless's desk; Issin's desk remained empty. I took a chair from the pile and went and sat next to the boy I was already thinking of as Grey Jake, but as soon as I sat down Haless told me to move.
"Not there," he said. "You don't want to be sitting next to him. Anywhere else will do."
"Why, what's wrong with him?" I asked.
"We'll tell you later. Just take it from me, you don't want to be too close to him."
So I moved the chair a short distance away. 'Grey Jake' just sat there without saying anything, though he didn't look happy.
Haless reactivated the lesson, and I sat and tried to take in how much iron ore a week was being mined in the north of Region Nine, what happened to it after it was out of the ground and why it was so important to the regional economy. Fortunately I'd learned a bit about iron and steel production the previous year at school, and while the words 'Bessemer' and 'Linz-Donawitz' were unsurprisingly missing from the exposition I was watching now, at least I could remember the basics of each and so could understand most of what this program was talking about.
And when Haless tested us on the content of the lesson later that afternoon I found that I'd remembered a lot more than Issin had.
"But I think that's mainly because you're used to relying on your computers," I said. "Normally you just enter the important stuff into the machines and then you know you can forget it. We don't do that at my school: we have to keep stuff in our heads. And, anyway, I learned a lot about steel last year, so this wasn't a fair test. If you really want to see which of us is best at remembering stuff you should give us a test using random information or something later on."
Issin looked grateful at that and I hoped it might have made up for witnessing his shame the previous evening.
The three of us were in the laboratory Haless had booked for us, and since we were alone I went on, "So what's wrong with the boy who sits on his own, then?"
"His name's Ssyrl, and he's a fucking disgrace. To start with he works a lot outside normal study hours and that just makes the rest of us look bad. But the real problem with him is that he's a pervert. You know how we help each other out by playing the female part in sex, but that we don't really enjoy it too much? Well, Ssyrl never minded when one of us asked him to do it, and at first we thought he was just being helpful, perhaps to make up for working too hard. But then we compared notes and found that he'd never asked any of us to play the female role for him, and that seemed really strange. So we started watching him, and we found that sometimes he would sneak off to a cupboard in the basement, and once we knew where he went we rigged the cupboard up with cameras and microphones, and so the next time he went there we found out exactly what he did: he stripped off, bent over one of the storage racks, and pushed a piece of plastic up his cloaca. And he manipulated it until he got excited."
"See, it's normal for boys to practise together occasionally," added Issin, "but if you only want to play the female role there's something seriously wrong with you. I mean, we know that some people are like that, but we're supposed to be training to join the army, and to be a soldier you have to be strong and brave and, well, masculine. And Ssyrl obviously wishes he was a female, and so he shouldn't be in this school."
"Would he be able to go to a different school if he asked?" I wondered aloud.
"Well, probably… I can't imagine it having come up before, though," said Issin. "But he shames all of us – if the other study groups knew we had a male who acts like a female among us they'd laugh at us."
"We fixed him, though," said Haless. "We challenged him, and he denied it, and then we showed him the film and he didn't know what to say. We were going to beat him up for it properly – claws and all – but I thought of a better way to make him pay: we held him down and glued his sheath shut, and once the glue had set he couldn't get his penis out. Then we all fucked him. He probably enjoyed that bit, but of course because he couldn't open his sheath, every time he spurted out his seed it was trapped inside, and afterwards he couldn't clean himself up. It itches like hell if you can't clean it off, and after a bit it starts to stink a bit, too. But we kept him glued up for five days, and every evening we made him put his piece of plastic up himself and play with it until he spurted again. We tied him to the bed at night so that he couldn't sneak off and try to find the solvent, and we supervised him all through the days, making sure he was never left alone, not even when passing waste. After five days he swore he'd never pleasure himself like that again if we let him clean himself up, and although we kept him like it for another five days, in the end we agreed, because by then he smelled awful. So we gave him the solvent and he ran off to open himself up and have a very long bath.
"And we thought he'd learned his lesson, but Rathyk tells me he's found a new cupboard and he's started doing it again, so obviously we're going to have to do something more drastic this time. Maybe we'll have to cut his penis off, or something."
Obviously I found myself sympathising with Ssyrl: this was definitely not a gay-friendly society. Still, there didn't seem to be much I could do about it, and I wasn't going to open my mouth to defend him, either. I know that's a bit cowardly, but my own position here was precarious as it was, and alienating Haless and Issin would be like handing them a scalpel and telling them which organ to cut out of me first.
"Maybe we should hold him down and let you fuck him," suggested Issin. "I should think even he would die of shame if he got fucked by a mammal."
"No, thanks," I said. "If I ever do that it'll be with someone I like, not with some boy I've never even spoken to – and preferably not with a member of another species, either."
"Okay, but we could threaten him with it," insisted Issin. "You could play along a bit even if you're not really going to do it. It'd be interesting to watch his face if you put your penis against him."
"Well, I suppose I could do that," I agreed. Especially if it keeps you two in a good mood, I didn't add.
That afternoon we started the tests, beginning with mental exercises and tests of reactions. In general I did a bit better at the head work, while Issin had slightly faster reactions. I gave a blood sample and allowed them to take me to what I supposed was a clinic or hospital and put me through a scanner, though this one produced a final photograph that even I could understand: it showed clearly where each of my vital organs was situated. On the way back to the school they stopped at a small kiosk and bought me a snack, which was basically a rather undercooked beef-or-some-other-meat-burger on a small round of unleavened bread.
"We don't usually eat the bread, though it is edible," Haless told me. "Generally we just discard it, though – scavengers will clean it away."
I ate it anyway and thought it didn't taste too bad, but the meat could have done with a couple more minutes on the grill.
That evening they moved another bunk into their dormitory for me. When I got undressed they all gathered round to look at me, making comments about the stupid way I kept my genitals outside my body and wondering why on earth I had those pathetic wisps of hair in a place where they were doing nothing useful at all. Haless toyed with me until I went hard, and that drew some more comments along the lines of 'call that hard?' and 'that's really ugly' and 'do you even know what it's for, little mammal?'
"You're all just jealous because it's bigger than any of yours," I retorted.
"I suppose it's not a bad size," said Haless. "Hey, Ssyrl, what do you think of it?"
Ssyrl didn't seem to want to comment, but he had been staring at me ever since my boxers came off.
"It's a lot bigger than yours, isn't it?" Haless went on. "I bet you're wondering how nice it would feel inside you, aren't you? It'd certainly be better than that piece of plastic you use. Go on, Jake, put it up him – he'd really like that."
There was a trapped look on Ssyrl's face, but I could also see that if we'd been alone he might have wanted to try: he kept casting glances at my erection. But he was never going to admit that in front of all the others, so he just shook his head hard and tried to back away. The others grabbed him and held him down across one of the bunks.
"Go on, Jake, give him one!" encouraged Issin, and the others joined in, calling for me to show them what I could do. I let them push me into position, close enough for the tip of my penis to actually touch Ssyrl's opening (and it even twitched open for a moment in a reflex that I don't think he could control). But that was as far as I was going.
"No, thanks," I said, backing away. "I only want to do that with females, or with friends."
"Ssyrl's almost a female," said Rathyk. "He acts like one, anyway."
"I meant a human female. And I don't fancy Ssyrl at all."
They didn't exactly roll on the floor laughing – I don't think the Grey sense of humour was like that – but they seemed to appreciate it, as one or two made a sort of snickering sound and a couple more clapped me on the back. In any case they let me move away, and at the same time they released Ssyrl, who scuttled back to his own bed looking chastened. I wondered how much of this he could take: even though friendships weren't important here, it must be hard being disliked by everyone around you. I felt sorry for him, but I thought I'd done my own position a bit of good – the more the boys liked me, the less likely I was to get dissected. At least, that's what I hoped.
I slept fairly well, and the next day we got properly into the tests, both physical (tests of strength, speed and stamina) and mental (the sort of puzzles I'd seen on IQ tests back home). In between the tests I went out of my way to chat to the various Greys who came to watch, doing my best to act in a friendly way towards them, and in the evenings I joked about with the Greys, having impromptu wrestling matches with them (I always lost, but sometimes lasted longer than at others) and answering their questions as best I could. Haless kept me fed by taking me round a variety of kiosks and stalls that sold snacks for Greys who were away from home and so have missed their normal eating days, and I shared a proper meal with them when their eating day came round on my third day at the school.
By the fifth day I thought I was making excellent progress: the other Greys seemed to like me, teasing me about my perceived mammalian shortcomings (by now they had all witnessed the 'disgusting' way I unloaded waste water, for example), and I thought that I now had a genuine chance of getting out of this alive.
On that fifth day we started investigating my reaction to extremes of temperature: Issin and I were put in a small room naked, and the room temperature was then raised steadily. We had to keep working at IQ test puzzles for as long as we could, though we had both been told we could leave the room when we felt too uncomfortable. Neither of us enjoyed it, but my ability to sweat helped me to last a little longer than Issin.
And then they reversed things and made the room get steadily colder, and this time I was definitely better equipped to survive. But Issin was reluctant to leave because, having in his view lost the hot challenge, he didn't feel he could accept defeat on the cold one, too. He sat at his machine, but slowly his hands stopped moving over the keys.
"Hey, Issin, are you okay?" I asked, shivering but still functioning fairly well.
"Fine," he said, still without moving. But a couple of minutes later he didn't even respond to my voice, and at that point I got up and called to Haless to stop the experiment and turn the heat back on. But nothing happened.
When I touched Issin his skin was cold, and he didn't react to me at all, and at that point I decided that enough was enough: I grabbed hold of his chair, which fortunately was on castors, and towed it to the door.
"Why didn't you turn the heat on?" I asked Haless, once I got outside. "Issin's really cold – is he okay?"
"What, you care about him?" asked Rathyk, who was there watching with three of the others. "Why?"
"Well… I suppose it's just that we've been through all the experiments together, so even if we're probably not really friends, at least I've got to know him a bit. And I don't like seeing people I know in trouble."
"He'll be fine," said Haless, putting one of the padded shirts they wore onto Issin and pressing the button in the corner – apparently these were like a sort of portable electric blanket, very useful if the weather was cold. Not that it was cold here very often – in fact it was rather hot most of the time – but for trips into the Kerpian world, or any other that could be reached from the Nexus Room, the heated shirts would probably be a sensible idea.
"Any chance of one of those shirts?" I asked, and they found another one for me. It worked very well, too: within a couple of minutes I was feeling comfortable again, and it wasn't too long before Issin was back to normal, too. But we decided to stop work for a bit until we were both fully recovered.
At midday Haless took me out to a small restaurant not too far from the school and bought me lunch, which consisted almost exclusively of a steak, though the sauce it was served in was really nice. And as I ate he talked to me.
"I suppose you know we're not actually going to cut you up now," he began. "I asked around, and none of the boys wanted to do that to you, even before you pulled Issin out of the cold room this morning. You seem to have become our pet mammal, like a mascot or something, and nobody wants you dead. To be honest, Issin and I knew we couldn't really do that even before we brought you back here: like Issin said, not killing us was a weak way to behave, but I'm glad you didn't. So once we've finished the tests you'll be able to go back to shovelling coal – unless you want to stay here with us?"
I thought about that for a few seconds – after all, I didn't exactly enjoy working as a stoker. But:
"No, thanks," I said. "I sort of like you and the others now, but I'd still sooner be with my own species – and I've got friends there I'd like to get back to. Plus, I'm not sure that what I'm eating here is really good for me: we're designed to eat meat, but I like eating other things, too."
"And you don't mind working in that furnace room?"
"It certainly isn't my idea of a perfect career, but, like I said, at least I have friends there. I can handle it."
"Okay. I reckon another couple of days will be enough to finish the tests, and then we'll take you back."
That evening in the dormitory they were giving Ssyrl a hard time again, openly debating what would be the best way to punish him for being a pervert: permanently sealing his sheath, cutting his penis off, ramming broom handles into him and similar appalling suggestions. And suddenly I had an absolutely brilliant idea.
"Do you know what would be the best way to punish him?" I said. "Send him back with me and have him work in the furnace room for a couple of weeks. You can bet none of the kids there like you Greys too much, so he'd have a really miserable time. And he'd have to try doing some honest work. It might even toughen him up and make him a bit more masculine."
And they liked that idea a lot, speculating on how many times a day he'd be whipped by 'the mammals' for not pulling his weight, laughing when I explained that he'd get no opportunity to stick things up himself because we were always together (I didn't mention Ertdays or huts in the garden because I didn't want to spoil the effect) and happily trying to guess how long it would be before the constant hostility there drove him insane. Personally I thought that if he could cope with the hostility here he would find the furnace room a doddle, but I didn't say so.
"Why just a couple of weeks, though?" said Rathyk. "I reckon we should ship him there permanently – it's not like he belongs here, is it?"
And they liked that idea, too, and apparently they didn't take long to get official approval (I wasn't too surprised that the director of a military school would be keen to get rid of 'perverts') because next day Haless told me that the training would be interrupted while he and Issin transported Ssyrl to the mine at Hintraten.
"Can I come, too?" I asked. "I can't do much here without you, and I'd like to see some of my friends again, even if it's only for a few minutes."
"I don't see why not," agreed Haless.
I hoped I would get a chance to talk to Ssyrl alone before we reached Hintraten: there were a couple of things I wanted to explain to him. And I also hoped I'd get a chance to talk to Markus when we got there, for the same reason.
The four of us walked back to the cable car station. Ssyrl didn't seem to want to talk to anyone, and it was obvious that Haless and Issin weren't going to let him out of their sight, which meant I wasn't going to get a chance to talk to him just yet.
We walked back up to the checkpoint, where we were once again quickly waved through into the hut.
We went down the ladder. I went first, and while I was waiting for the others I noticed something very interesting indeed: there were cobwebs strung between the edge of the open door and the wall ten centimetres [4in.] away. And I remembered that the trapdoor had been removed completely, which I supposed made sense, since there were soldiers using it regularly. So now I had another idea. I wasn't quite sure how to put it into action, but it gave me something to think about as we walked through the tunnel to the Nexus Room and up the ramp into the frontier post. My pass was scanned by the soldier on duty and we went outside into another fine day.
There were trucks running between the post and the town twice a day to ferry troops to and from the Nexus Room, but we had missed the morning truck. So, rather than wait for the afternoon truck, Haless said we should walk. But even the long walk back down the mountain to Hintraten didn't give me a chance to speak to Ssyrl, and we had almost reached the town before the last piece of my plan fell into place.
"I've been thinking, Haless," I said. "Why don't we take Tommi back with us? If you have a slightly younger human to compare me with you'll be able to add a section on how mammals mature and what happens to us as our bodies change from child to adult. And Tommi knows you now, so he wouldn't be worried about coming with us, especially if it's only going to be for a couple of days."
"Yes, why not?" agreed Haless. "It might be interesting to include that, especially since you don't really see it with us: most of our changes are internal."
We went on to the mine. This time I was scanning around carefully, and I was delighted to see only two cameras outside the building: one on one of the gate-posts pointing at the road outside the mine as it approached the gates, and one on the outside of the furnace building pointing at the yard. Inside there were rather more of them, but I already knew where most of those were.
Before we got to the furnace building we went to the mine office so that Haless could explain to Harsen Karel that he was getting an extra worker (though he didn't go into a lot of detail as to why) and subsequently he gave the same explanation to Hass Eri when we reached the furnace building. Mr Hass seemed surprised, but he didn't seem remotely inclined to turn down the offer of another worker. He sent for the senior Grey on duty so that Haless could explain things to him, and this time Haless gave him the real reason, and the Grey clearly approved.
"I'm glad to see Stone back, too," added Mr Hass. "We've been short-handed for too long."
"I'm afraid I'm not quite back yet," I said. "I have to go back with them for another couple of days, and I'm afraid they want Tommi the water-boy to come with us. But they have promised it'll only be for two more days."
He wasn't quite so happy about that, but accepted it – not that he had a lot of choice, because it was a Grey giving the orders. I'd hoped to be able to go down to the furnace room, but instead Haless took Ssyrl downstairs, with Mr Hass alongside to translate for him, while I stayed outside in the yard with Issin.
"Make sure you explain to them why he's being punished," I said just before they left us.
"Oh, don't worry, I will," promised Haless. And I hoped that if he did my fellow stokers would go easy on Ssyrl – after all, I knew their sexual attitudes would be far more accepting of him than his Grey colleagues'.
Around ten minutes later Haless reappeared with Tommi, who ran to greet me and hugged me hard.
"Our Grey friends have agreed to let you come and help with their research for a couple of days, so you're going to see another world," I told him. "I've been there, and it's really interesting."
There was only one more hurdle to get over if my plan was going to succeed, and this seemed to be a good time to try to deal with it.
"You know," I said to Haless, "it would be worth giving Tommi the basic Grey language program. That way you could do experiments with both of us at the same time and you wouldn't have to keep getting me to translate for you."
"Well… I was hoping to get back today."
"Okay, but if we could put him on it overnight that would give him enough vocabulary and grammar to get by, and it would also give me a chance to cook you another meal. And if we're going to shop for something to eat tonight I can stock up with food to take back with us, and then you won't have to keep taking us out to a burger stall three times a day. And we could make sure we were ready to take the morning truck back up to the border, too, which would be better than walking."
"Okay, I suppose you're right. Let's do that, then: we'll go to the shop and get some food for you and some meat for us for tonight, and then we can drop the red-head off at the clinic for the night."
So we headed to the supermarket. It was all I could do not to let my state of mind show, because as long as everything worked the way I hoped it would I might really be able to solve a whole lot of problems over the next couple of days. Of course, there were still some fairly large obstacles to get past, but at least now I had a viable plan.
We stocked up with enough food to keep me and Tommi fed for at least three days – I felt it was better to play safe – and we also found some more steaks for Haless and Issin to eat that evening, together with the ingredients for a good pepper sauce. And then we walked up the road to the clinic.
I was delighted to see that Narj Larzel was still there, and I waited while Haless told him that he wanted Tommi to have the basic Grey package, together with any additional vocabulary they could get into him overnight. Larzel said that shouldn't be a problem, and that he'd make sure Tommi was fit to travel in good time to catch the morning truck up to the border post.
"I'd better stay with Tommi and get him settled in," I said. "He doesn't like needles much and it'll be easier for him if I'm here. You head on up to the cabin and I'll catch up with you as soon as Tommi's asleep."
"You can't walk up there without us," Haless pointed out. "Or have you forgotten the guardians?"
Oh, crap, I thought, because that's exactly what I had done.
"Don't worry, we'll wait for you," Haless went on. "Go and deal with the red-head; we'll wait in the reception bit at the front. There are some decent chairs there."
That was lucky, I thought: if they'd wanted to come in with us it would have been really difficult to talk to Larzel – I'd have had to risk talking to him in Kerpian inside the room, and I know he'd have been very nervous about doing that, especially when he heard what I wanted. But now that the Greys had decided to wait for me in Reception I wouldn't have to worry about that.
I went with Tommi and Larzel into the room with the chairs and we strapped him in, told him not to worry and said we'd be there when he woke up. The technician applied the anaesthetic, implanted the needles and hit the button, and Tommi went straight to sleep. And at that point I grabbed Larzel by the elbow and steered him out onto the balcony.
"I need you to do something for me – well, for all of us, really," I said.
"What's that?"
"I want you to find me a bomb."
To quote Inspector Clouseau: "A berm? Were we expecting a berm?" Well, probably not, but Jake thinks he's come up with a Cunning Plan, and in the next chapter we'll find out exactly what this is.
Chapter Thirteen
So, what is Jake's plan? Why does he need a bomb? In the course of this chapter he's going to find out that the problem with complicated plans is that you can't always be certain things will pan out the way you want them to…
"I'm sorry, did you say 'a bomb'?"
"That's right. What I really need is one that's fairly small, with a timer device. If you can find one I think I can solve your main problem here."
"Explain," said Larzel.
"Well, I'm going back through the portal into the Grey world tomorrow morning. There's no guard on the portal itself, and the door from the ladder room to the tunnel hasn't been closed for ages – there are cobwebs all over it. And so there's a little space between the door and the wall about ten centimetres [4in.]… sorry, eleven or twelve shardihersps – wide, and if I were to slip a small explosive device in there it's a pretty good bet that nobody would notice it.
"And then, once I'm safely back on this side, it explodes and destroys the portal, and provided the Greys haven't worked out how to open a portal themselves yet it will stay closed. Okay, you'll still have to deal with however many Greys will be trapped this side of the portal, but they won't be getting any reinforcements, and if they're sensible they'll just surrender instead of fighting a war they can't win. What do you think?"
"I think it's an excellent idea. I don't think there are too many Greys permanently stationed in our world – though they probably have expeditions in some of the other Nexus worlds, too, and if you destroy the portal to their home world those will still be around to cause a nuisance. Still, if they can't get reinforcements we'll be able to deal with them, even if their weapons are better than ours and we don't have a lot of experienced fighters. I'm sure I can find you a suitable device. But don't let them catch you with it or we'll all be in big trouble."
"That's why I want one with a good long timer: I daren't carry it around in the Grey world because I'm expecting to be there for two days and someone would be sure to look in my bag during that time, so I want to plant it on the way out and not have it explode until after I get back – preferably a good couple of days after, because you can bet that I'll be about the only human going through the portal in the days before the bomb goes off, so they're sure to come looking for me afterwards and I want to be well away by the time that happens. Even if there aren't many of them left on this side by then, I don't want to be their Public Enemy Number One."
"How are you going to manage to avoid them? They know you work in the mine."
"I've got a plan to get out of the mine, but I'll probably need a couple of days to make it work. So I really need at least a five-day timer."
"I'll see what I can do. I'll have it ready when you come to collect your friend in the morning."
I went back out to Reception, where the Greys were waiting for me, and together we walked up to the cabin. During the afternoon we talked a bit about how the tests were going so far, and later they asked me to help them with an experiment of their own.
"Oh, yes?" I said. "What's that?"
"We want to see which of us is the most mature. So we want you to hold us like you did before, and we'll see which of us produces his seed first – and who has most of it, too."
"I don't mind that," I told them.
And so they stripped off and lay next to each other on the bed, and when they were both good and stiff I took hold of a penis in each hand and let them do the work by bucking and thrusting against me. It was fun, to be honest: they were so intent on beating each other that they were writhing about like mad, and all I had to do was to hold on.
Haless won by about five seconds, and in my judgement managed about half a spurt more, too. I went and got the tea-towel from the kitchen (making a mental note not to use it when I came to do the washing up that evening!) and watched them clean up. I thought that would be it, but at that point Haless asked, "So, can you do that yet?"
"Well… just about. I haven't got anything like as much sperm as you two, but then you seem to mature faster than we do, so perhaps that's not surprising. And I suppose you need more than us because you're trying to fertilise several eggs at a time, whereas we only have to fertilise one."
"I think we ought to find out exactly how much you've got. Get undressed and lie on the bed."
So I did that, and Haless sat beside me and took hold of me, and it stiffened up in his hand.
"It'll probably take quite a bit longer than it does with you," I warned him. "Your cool hand doesn't affect me in quite the same way that my warm hand affects you."
"We'll see," he said, and he started to rub me. It felt very strange: his hand was a lot colder than either Stefan's or Tommi's, and when he popped out his claws and scratched lightly around it and across my balls it felt a bit scary, but somehow exciting at the same time. But after a bit of teasing he just got on with it and did it properly, and it wasn't bad at all, even though emotionally it was nothing like as good as when Stefan did it for me.
Eventually I tensed up and produced my usual couple of spurts, and he gave it a final hard squeeze and let go.
"Is that all there is?" asked Issin, peering closely at my stomach. "It was hardly worth the effort if that's all you've got."
"Shut up, Issin. We already know you mature faster than we do. And my cock is still bigger than yours."
"And about half as hard. And after all that effort you just managed a couple of tiny dribbles. You mammals are so…"
"Inefficient, I know," I finished for him. "We're better in cold conditions that you are, though."
"That's about the only thing you've beaten me at so far!" he protested.
"Issin, it's not really a competition," I pointed out. "All species have things they are good at, and we cope better with extremes of temperature, while you are stronger than we are. Your reactions are faster than mine, but I can think through puzzles faster than you. In a really perfect world we'd be allies and friends, living together and co-operating in everything, each race using its strong points to benefit everyone. It's a pity this world isn't like that."
"I think it would be difficult in a world like that," said Haless. "We think differently, too, and it would make it hard for us to completely trust each other. Okay, we trust you as an individual, and you obviously trust us now too, or you wouldn't have risked bringing your little red-head with us, but that's just because we've got to know each other. Our politicians don't even trust each other, so they certainly wouldn't trust those of a different species, and I bet it's the same here."
"Probably. It's a pity, though."
I got dressed and went into the kitchen, where we had put all the food we had bought. My bag was still here: I'd brought it with me when Haless and Issin had first taken me from the furnace room – after all, at that stage I hadn't been sure I would ever be going back there. But I hadn't bothered taking it to their world because the only thing in it was a torch, and I didn't think I'd need one on that journey. So now I took the torch out of it and packed it with all the food I had bought to keep myself and Tommi going in the Grey world. There wasn't enough room in my bag for everything, so I kept one of the supermarket bags to hold the rest of it.
Then I got to work on our supper. Again there were five steaks, but this time I decided that I was going to have the largest one: if I was only getting one that seemed only fair. Tonight I made a pepper sauce to go with the steaks, and I served them with the remainder of the peas and chips that I had left over from the previous meal. I didn't bother with any other vegetables this time, and in fact they said that this time the balance was about right (that is, their meal consisted of about 75% meat and only 25% vegetables). And they really liked the sauce, too.
"We wouldn't mind at all if you decided to stay and cook for us all in future," Haless told me. "The food at school is boring: nobody bothers to make a decent sauce."
"Thank you, but I'd still prefer to stay here with my own species. I'm glad you liked it, though."
I slept that night in the cage with the door open – there wasn't really enough room on the floor to put the mattress anywhere else – and this time I woke up before they did, probably because they were still digesting supper. I got dressed and then realised that I couldn't walk down to the clinic on my own, and that meant that it might be difficult for Larzel to give me the bomb, if he'd found one for me. Somehow I would have to try to get a couple of minutes with him alone.
But in the event it was easy: Haless and Issin just sat down in Reception and told me to go and get Tommi.
"I'll probably have to walk him round the garden for a bit," I warned them. "Even if he was only in the chair overnight he'll still need to get his legs moving again, because I don't want to end up having to carry him."
"That's fine – we've got plenty of time before the truck leaves."
So I went into the clinic and found Larzel already disconnecting Tommi's needles. "Is everything okay?" I asked.
"Yes," he said. "He'll be conscious in a huszak or so." And he jerked his head towards the French windows, and so I went out onto the balcony and found a package waiting for me, about half the size of a shoe box (same length and width but about half the depth). There was a small sliding section at one end, a bit like the battery cover on a portable CD player, and when I slid this open I saw a key and a digital display that was currently turned off.
"Turn the key and remove it, then close the cover and plant the bomb," said Larzel's voice from over my shoulder. "It's set for 99 kends and 19 huszaks, which is as long as the timer will allow, but that's the five days you asked for, so I hope it'll be long enough."
"It should be," I said, emptying my supermarket bag and putting the bomb at the bottom of it before putting the food back on top. "As long as I can plant it without them seeing me I think everything will work out fine."
"Well, just be careful, for your own sake and for ours: if they find the bomb they'll trace it back here."
"Is it big enough to do the job?"
"Oh, yes. That'll demolish the door frame, and that will in turn disrupt and destroy the portal. It should also bring down enough of the tunnel to make any sort of repair out of the question for a long time even if they have worked out the technology, and that ought to give us long enough to recapture the Nexus Room and destroy that tunnel completely. And after that I'm hoping the Greys left on our side will have the sense to surrender."
We went back inside and waited for Tommi to wake up, and then I took him for a short walk in the garden. In fact his legs recovered almost at once – he'd been in the chair for less than a day, after all.
Larzel checked that the implant had worked and then said we were ready to go, and so we went back to Reception, where Tommi greeted Haless and Issin in Grey.
"Hey, Haless, this funny-coloured little mammal speaks our language!" commented Issin.
"If anyone is a funny colour, it's you two," replied Tommi.
"Don't be cheeky, or we'll have to whip you," threatened Haless.
"You wouldn't… would they, Jake?"
"They might. They haven't whipped me yet, but then I'm polite. And, seriously, you'd better behave while we're travelling, because there will be adult Greys around, and I don't think the Grey sense of humour is all that well-developed."
So he shut up after that. We walked down to the Town Hall to wait for the truck, and not too long afterwards we were heading back up to the Nexus Room again.
We got off the truck and started walking up to the checkpoint, and now I was starting to get really nervous: if they found the bomb I would probably be killed on the spot – and what about Tommi? Would they think he was involved and hurt him, too? Suddenly I wished I hadn't suggested bringing him with us… but of course I had had to do that, because otherwise I wouldn't have had any reason to go to the clinic, and that was the only way to get a bomb. But that didn't make me feel any better now.
We followed the soldiers into the checkpoint and let them go through ahead of us again. Fortunately the desk guy was the same one who had been there when I went through for the first time, so at least he'd seen me before.
"What's this?" he asked Haless. "Are you starting a zoo back home?"
"No, this one's just coming to help us finish off the experiment. They'll both be coming back in a couple of days' time. And the little one would be no use if we wanted to start a zoo, anyway: he's a male, same as Jake here."
"Well, go and get him a card," said the desk guy. "You know where to go now."
So Haless took Tommi off to the right to get a pass card issued… and that of course left me and Issin waiting by the barrier, which probably wasn't where I wanted to be. At first the soldier talked to Issin about the experiment, asking what sort of tests they were doing. And then he turned to me and asked, "So what have you got in the bag, then?"
Oh, shit, I thought. "It's just some food for me and Tommi," I said. "We have to eat three times a day, and I thought it would be better to bring some stuff with me rather than keep making Haless and Issin take us out to a stall all the time."
I held the bag open so that he could see into it, holding my breath: if he wanted to look at it properly it would all be over.
"You have to eat three times a day?" he asked. "Why?"
"We're endothermic – we have to keep eating to keep our bodies working."
"They're really inefficient," put in Issin, predictably.
The guard grunted. "And the other bag," he said. "Is that more food?"
I handed my backpack to him. "Some of that's for us, but I've brought the ingredients to make some sauces," I said, trying to keep my voice steady. "They were complaining that the food they get at school is boring, so I thought I'd show whoever does the cooking how to make a couple of decent sauces to make the meat more interesting."
The soldier rummaged through my bag, looking at some of the ingredients.
"I think I'd just prefer a good thick steak," he said. "Still, maybe school food does get a bit boring after a while. What else have you got?" And he looked at the supermarket bag.
"That's just stuff for me and Tommi – bread and stuff," I said. I pulled a loaf out of the bag and showed it to him, horribly aware that the bomb was now actually visible if anyone looked into the bag. "I don't think you eat things like that at all."
"Can't say I've ever tried," said the guard.
So I broke off a piece of the loaf and handed it to him, and he took a small nibble.
"Tasteless," he said. "How can you eat stuff like that? What else…"
At which point God smiled on me once more, because Tommi and Haless emerged from the photo room. Haless handed the guard Tommi's card, and the guard duly made a note of the number, gave the card back and waved us through.
"Try eating more meat," he told me as I went through. "You're far too thin. That other stuff can't be good for you."
We walked down to the Nexus Room and along the tunnel.
"We're going to climb a ladder in a bit," I told Tommi in Kerpian. "When we get there I want you to slip when you're a rung or two up and land badly. Pretend you've hurt your ankle. I'll explain later."
"Why?"
"Trust me."
Fortunately he seemed happy to do that, and when we reached the ladder room he played his part well, seeming to slip off the ladder and landing hard. His 'Ouch!' wasn't entirely convincing, but I hoped the Greys wouldn't be able to recognise that.
"What's the matter?" asked Haless – he'd gone up the ladder first, and so he was now looking down at us from inside the hut.
"I hurt my foot," said Tommi, holding his ankle in a way that wouldn't have been in any danger of winning an Oscar.
I dropped the supermarket bag by the door and went and knelt beside him, pretending to examine the ankle. "I don't think there's any serious damage – I expect he'll be okay shortly," I said. "It would be a good idea if you could help him up the ladder, though: Issin, you're stronger than me, so perhaps you could climb up just behind him and make sure he doesn't slip again?"
"Okay," agreed Issin, helping Tommi to his feet. Tommi limped back to the ladder, overacting again, but once he was on the ladder Issin more or less climbed it with him, lifting him up and keeping his arms around him.
I stepped back to the bag and, without taking my eyes off the ladder, moved the bomb to the top and slid the cover open long enough to turn the key and remove it. I closed the cover and slipped the key into the pocket of my shorts.
"Okay, Tommi?" I asked, standing up.
"I think so," he replied.
I didn't move until Issin was busy helping Tommi up into the hut, and then I grabbed the bomb and shoved it into the gap between the door and the wall… or at least I tried. But the bomb was marginally too wide.
Somehow I managed not to panic, pulling the door a couple of centimetres away from the wall and then shoving the bomb into the gap and pushing it as far as I could. I straightened up just as Issin turned round to see if I was following.
"You okay up there, Tommi?" I called, picking up the bag and casually leaning against the door to push it that couple of centimetres closer to the wall once more.
"Yes, thanks," came Tommi's voice.
"Great," I said, moving to the foot of the ladder and handing the bag up to Issin, who took it and disappeared through the trapdoor. I scampered up the ladder after him, taking a last look round as I did so. A couple of the strands of cobweb had broken, but not all of them, and I guessed the ones that were drifting about in the draught would get stuck to the door or the wall very soon. Apart from that everything looked as it had been.
Up in the hut I took the bag back from Issin, who had already hoisted Tommi onto his shoulders. I surreptitiously pressed the button to start the stopwatch on my watch and followed them out into the checkpoint – where again there was no problem: presumably the guard there felt that as we'd already passed the main checkpoint at the other end there was no reason for him to waste time with us – and on into the forest.
Tommi did draw quite a bit of attention as we walked through the town: his hair colour was certainly noticeable, and the fact that he was riding on a Grey boy's shoulders also made him hard to miss. But nobody said anything, at least not in my hearing, and Tommi seemed to be enjoying himself no end, especially when we reached the cable car station: he thought this was a really exciting way to travel. And I remembered what Alain had said about Tommi, how he was like Oli, and I thought that Oli too would have thoroughly enjoyed a ride in a cable car. I decided that if we ever got out of this mess and got back to my own world I'd make sure he got one.
The other boys in the class were interested in Tommi, asking the obvious question ("Why is his hair that stupid colour?") and some slightly less obvious ones ("Why isn't his hair the same colour as Jake's?") and that led to me trying to tell the class the very little that I knew about genetics. I explained that there were some boys of our race who had fair hair or very dark hair, and there were other races of humans whose skin was a different colour to ours, and that most of them had black hair.
"None of us has grey skin, though. Do you have races with different coloured skin?"
"Not really. Some have skin that is slightly lighter or slightly darker, but we're all basically grey," Haless told me. "And none of us have any hair, either."
We decided to carry on with the tests we had been doing before I suggested bringing Tommi back with us, and so Issin and I undertook a series of physical challenges that lasted for the remainder of the day. In general he out-performed me on sprinting and other short-term exercises, but I outlasted him at anything requiring stamina. And he swam a lot better than I did, too, though I'd never been much good at swimming in the first place, which meant that I was hardly the ideal representative of the species if we were going to have an inter-species Olympics.
That evening they got me permission to use the kitchen to prepare some food for myself and Tommi – it wasn't one of their eating days – and so I made us cheese on toast, since that was something I could do quickly and easily. Haless had a taste and was not impressed at all.
"You can keep that!" he said, thrusting it back at me. "I hope you brought some meat with you, too."
"Well, no – I assumed I could use some of the meat that's already here," I said. "But I did bring enough stuff to make a couple of good sauces, and some vegetables and stuff that I was going to use to make something for me and Tommi tomorrow. There'll be meat in that one, so you might like it more."
"We'll see. But whatever you make it has to be better than this greasy yellow stuff."
When we went to the dormitory to get ready to sleep the other Greys were interested in the contrast between Tommi's body and mine. They pointed out that by the time Greys reached Tommi's age – ten – they were generally already sexually mature.
"Well, I might not be mature yet, but I know how to do it," Tommi pointed out.
"Really? It's a pity we haven't got a human female here for you, then," said Haless.
"It's a pity we sent Ssyrl away," corrected Rathyk. "Watching him getting taken by a little immature mammal would have been even funnier than it would have been if Jake had done it to him."
"I don't think Tommi would have been physically able to do it," said Issin. "That little penis probably doesn't get hard yet."
"Oh, yes, it does!" Tommi told him. "Do you want me to prove it?"
"Go on, then."
Tommi sat on the bed and started to fondle himself, and pretty soon it got hard – very hard, in fact: it was jutting up as stiffly as the Greys' did, no more than thirty degrees away from his body.
"So you can," admitted Issin. "In fact that's a lot better than Jake's floppy effort: he can't get as hard as that."
Of course I had to try, but mine has only ever stuck up a little above the horizontal, and although it was solid enough, the Greys all said they thought Tommi's looked better, and that pleased him no end. But he was still my friend, and so he pointed out that his was a lot smaller than mine.
"It's not bad for ten, though," said Issin. "Most of us were smaller than that at ten. I think if I'm honest I'd admit that you mammals are a bit bigger than us there: Jake says his is still growing, but mine won't grow a lot more now. On the other hand, we have a lot more seed than he has – haven't we, Jake?"
"Yes, okay, you don't have to go on about it," I mumbled.
They offered to let Tommi sleep in Ssyrl's bed, but he said he'd prefer to share with me, and I didn't mind that at all. This was of course the first time that we'd actually slept naked together, and it meant that when he started stroking me as he usually did I was able to do it for him, too. I felt slightly guilty because, after all, I was only supposed to do this sort of thing with Stefan, but I thought he would probably forgive me in the circumstances: we were in an alien world and we had to keep our morale up somehow, didn't we?
The following day we finished the tests that Haless had chosen for us and I was able to relax, because I was fairly sure there would be nothing to keep us here any longer, and that meant we would be safely back in the Kerpian world long before the bomb went off. In the afternoon we did a short report to Haless's computer on puberty in mammals, pointing out the differences between me and Tommi and explaining exactly how boys developed as puberty arrived and the general time-scale for the entire process. Issin and I demonstrated to the camera what our erect penises looked like and masturbated each other into a Petri dish so that the quantity, colour and consistency of our seed could be assessed. It was immediately obvious which of us was the most potent.
And then for comparison purposes Haless went and recruited a ten-year-old Grey called Trethar from another study group and ran though the same process with him and Tommi. Tommi was slightly larger, but Trethar already had sperm – a lot more than me, to be honest.
"Can we do some of the other tests together – like the ones Jake was doing with Issin?" asked Tommi. "Like running and stuff? That'd be fun."
"I'm not sure what would be 'fun' about it, but it would be interesting to see if the same trends are true at a younger age," agreed Haless. "So, okay, we can try some of the other tests. We'll start tomorrow."
That made me sit up in a hurry: 'start' tomorrow? I was hoping to be out of here next day, not find myself at the start of another load of tests. "You're not going to do the whole lot, surely?" I said.
"No, of course not, because I expect the results to go the same way. But it would be useful to run a few tests just to confirm the earlier findings – though if there are signs that the results are turning out different we'll be able to investigate further."
And now I was really worried, because if the results did turn out to be different Haless would want to do a major investigation, which could take days. And we didn't have days. I didn't particularly want to get stranded in the Kerpian world, but it would be infinitely better than getting stranded here, especially if they found out what had happened to the portal.
"Can I show the mammal to the rest of my study group?" asked Trethar. Haless said that would be fine, and so Trethar and Tommi ran off together.
I didn't see him again until supper-time. Today I made a beef Bourguignon, using a chunk of meat supplied by the school and a lot of other ingredients I'd brought with me, and I served it with pasta. Tommi loved it, and Haless liked it, too, though he thought it was a lot better without 'those yellow tubes'.
"I think I know how to survive on your food," he said. "Don't eat anything yellow! Anyway, what are you going to cook for us all tomorrow night?"
"Tomorrow?" I queried.
"Yes, it's an eating day, and I promised everyone you'd make us a sauce to go with our meat."
"Oh. Right… Yes, of course I will. Can I work here with your own cooks?"
"Yes, I'm sure you can."
"Hey, Jake," Tommi butted in, "I'm going to sleep with Trethar and his friends tonight, okay? I'll see you in the morning!" And he ran off without waiting for an answer.
The last thing I wanted was for Tommi to get friendly with Trethar, or any other Grey, for that matter: I wanted to be out of here as quickly as possible, and if Tommi decided that he liked it here and wanted to do the full range of tests with Trethar I'd be in deep trouble. It looked as though we were stuck here for at least one more day anyway, so that I could display my cooking skills to Haless's study-group, but if we stayed any longer I'd never have time to get us away from the mine before the bomb went off. I was already wishing I'd risked keeping it with me so that I could plant it on the way out, but at the time I had been sure it would be too dangerous, and it was too late to think about it now.
When Tommi arrived at the kitchen for breakfast next day – and I'd only bothered bringing bread and cheese for breakfast – his hair was wet.
"Trethar and his friends had to give me a bath," he told me when I asked about it. "We were playing a sex game last night, and I got a little sticky."
"Really?" I asked, handing him a cheese sandwich.
"Yes. See, Trethar told me there's a tradition here: when everyone in a dormitory can produce sperm except for one boy, the others help him along: he lies on a bed and every other boy in the dormitory makes his sperm shoot out all over him, and they do it for ages, loads of times until none of them can make any more. Then they rub it all into him and he goes to sleep like that. It itches a bit, but a lot of it gets into him through his skin, and all the masculine stuff in it helps him to get mature faster. So maybe soon I'll be able to make my own sperm shoot out like you can! But I had to have a bath this morning because there was a lot of dried stuff all over me and in my hair, and it smelled a bit funny."
"Right. I'm not sure if it's going to help you a lot, though, because you're a different species from them, so their masculine stuff probably won't work on you."
"Oh. That would be a pity…. it was still fun, though: some of Trethar's friends have got really little ones, but they can still make loads of sperm shoot out. And some of them let me do the rubbing for them – in fact, they all wanted me to, but I got tired because they kept coming back for more, and after that they had to do it themselves."
I thought it would have been fun to watch that: even if I thought Trethar and his study-group had been taking advantage of Tommi, it was obvious that he'd enjoyed every minute of it. And he must have been absolutely covered in their stuff, if the amount Trethar had produced into Haless's Petri dish the previous afternoon was anything to go by.
After breakfast Haless got Tommi and Trethar started on the tests he wanted them to take. I watched them for most of the morning, and in the afternoon I went to the kitchen and showed the staff there – all males, which surprised me a bit – my recipes for three different sauces. I had no idea if the ingredients could be obtained in this world, but I'd brought enough with me to make a sauce forestière for tonight at least. And apparently there were mushrooms in this world, so this one at least ought to be possible for them to make after I had left.
I got engrossed in what I was doing, which at least meant that I didn't keep worrying about the way time was passing, and the meal itself got a generally positive response from the study group (and members of other groups came by to ask about it, though I said I hadn't had enough ingredients this time, but that the kitchen staff now had the recipes and so might be able to make enough for everyone next time).
Tommi went off to sleep with Trethar again that evening, which I wasn't really happy about, but at least when I asked Haless how the tests had gone he said he was happy with it.
"The results all confirm what happened with you and Issin, so we don't need to do a lot more," he said. "We'll be finished tomorrow morning. But we really wouldn't mind if you wanted to stay, Jake – and now you've got Tommi here you won't feel on your own any more, will you?"
"I haven't got Tommi," I pointed out. "Trethar has. Actually I was going to ask you about that…" and I told him what Tommi had told me at breakfast. I wouldn't have been surprised if Haless had told me that Trethar had invented the whole sperm thing, but in fact Haless confirmed that the tradition existed.
"Issin was the last boy in our group to get his sperm, so we performed the ritual on him – three or four times, in fact. And it worked in the end, because now he can make plenty of his own. But I keep reminding him that even Ssyrl had sperm before he did. Of course, we didn't know about Ssyrl being a pervert back then, but since we found out it's made Issin really embarrassed about being less mature than a would-be female."
"Oh," I said, making a mental note not to mention this unless Issin really annoyed me. "Still, Tommi spending his time with Trethar isn't really the point. It's interesting being here and learning about you, but I think having us about will distract you from your studies if we stay too long. And it really isn't fair on the other boys in the furnace room: we've left them short-handed. I know Ssyrl's there now, but I'm not sure how much use he'll be at manual work, to be honest."
"He'd better be pulling his weight. It'd be pleasurable thinking of him getting whipped, but he's supposed to be working."
"Yes, but even with him there they're still short-staffed. I really think we ought to get back as soon as we can. Look, how long is it going to take you to put all the data together and produce the finished project?"
"Four or five days, I should think. Why?"
"Well, I'd quite like to see how it all turned out, so perhaps we can come back and visit? Let's see – today's 16 Kinnik… four days will be a bit too soon, so how about we come back to visit on 25 Kinnik, which is nine days from today? It's an Ertday, so we won't be working that day, and that means we won't be leaving our friends short-handed again. If you can arrange an escort for us to come up with the morning truck, we'll be able to spend most of the day here and still be back in time for the next day's shift."
The bomb was due to go off in mid-morning on 19 Kinnik, so I sincerely hoped that there would be absolutely no chance of coming back on the 25th, but I hoped this suggestion would sound reasonable. And apparently it did.
"That's sounds like a good idea. Probably me and Issin will come to pick you up – if we come the previous day we can come and watch Ssyrl working himself into a coma as well. That would be highly pleasurable."
Next morning Tommi and Trethar finished their tests, which apparently mirrored the ones I had done with Issin right down the line. Tommi seemed keen to stay longer, but I played the 'duty' card, and eventually he allowed himself to be persuaded. We left shortly after midday – in fact I was so keen to get back that I skipped lunch completely, and Tommi and I nibbled biscuits and chocolate in the cable car and as we walked back to the checkpoint.
I was a bit nervous as we approached it: if the bomb had been found they would be waiting for us. But the checkpoint was manned only by one bored-looking guard, and he waved as through as soon as he had checked our pass cards.
We climbed down the ladder, and I resisted the temptation to try looking into the gap between the door and the wall: to do that I would have had to put my head right against the wall, which would have looked very suspicious, and in any case I could see that there were still cobwebs between the door and the wall, which there certainly wouldn't be if anyone had opened the door to remove something from behind it.
Once we were through the checkpoint above the Nexus Room I turned to Haless and said that he and Issin might as well go back: there were some soldiers waiting for the afternoon truck, and I said I was sure they could see that we got back to the mine. So Haless spoke to an officer and arranged for us to escorted back, and then he and Issin turned to go back into the checkpoint.
"Aren't you going to say goodbye?" I asked.
"Why?" asked Issin. "We'll be coming back for you in a few days' time."
"Yes, of course you will," I said, realising I'd blundered. "But I still wanted to say thanks for picking me to help you. And for not dissecting me, of course."
"That's all right," said Haless. "We'll just wait for you to drop dead from overwork in your mine, and then we'll claim the corpse and cut it up to complete the record. At least you won't feel it then."
I wasn't sure if he was joking or not: bearing in mind that their sense of humour was at best atrophied I thought that maybe he wasn't. Perhaps it was just as well that I wouldn't be seeing them again – it wasn't impossible that they might change their minds on the vivisection thing again.
So I said "Goodbye" and watched them go back into the checkpoint, and then we waited with the Grey soldiers until the truck arrived to take us back to Hintraten. A couple of soldiers were delegated to escort us back to the mine, where they handed us over to Hass Eri, and as there was still a good couple of kends before the end of the shift he took us straight down to the changing room. We got undressed except for our underwear, collected gloves, masks and sandals and went back to work.
Markus was glad to see me, because he, Frank and Shander had been working as a three-man team in my absence: as I had hoped, Ssyrl had been given to Team Four, who had been short-handed previously. I'd hoped it would be that team he joined because I knew that Tibor and Hansi at least would be sympathetic to his situation.
I was even more delighted to see that Oli had been lent to the furnace room to cover for Tommi, and he was equally happy to see me, putting down his bucket and ladle carefully in a corner and running to hug and kiss me.
"We've been so worried," he told me. "Stefan's been going mad – he was afraid you'd been caught trying to escape and shot, or stung by one of those big insect things. He'll be really happy when I tell him you're safe."
I was still recovering from the shock of that kiss, but it was a nice shock, and I noticed that Alain, who was also waiting to greet me – he must have been on a break – didn't look remotely jealous. And in fact as soon as Oli let go of me Alain hugged and kissed me himself.
"Oli, I'm hoping that now Tommi's back they'll send you back to Stefan's team tonight," I told him. "I need you to tell him something." I switched to French and added, "We're getting out of here tomorrow night. Tell him, and anyone else on his team who wants to leave, to be ready a couple of hours after the shift ends."
"How?" asked Alain. "Have you found us one of those big wagon things?"
"No. Look, just trust me. Oli, is Stefan's dormitory locked at night?"
"No. I suppose they know we can't go anywhere because of the insects, so they don't bother."
"Good. Then tell him to meet us in the changing room at half-past nine tomorrow night, or two kends after the end of his shift if you can't remember that. Make sure you avoid the cameras, if there are any – I don't think there are any on our corridor, but I've only been up on his side of the changing room once and I can't remember if there are any there or not. Just make sure that if there are any, they don't see you."
I went and took my place in Team Three, moving coal from the hopper to the stokers' feet, and I was glad this was only going to be a small part of a complete shift: over the past few days I had forgotten just how hard this was. I kept an eye on Ssyrl – as far as I could see he was being treated exactly like everyone else, but because nobody could speak Grey he must have been feeling really isolated. As soon as his turn for a two-huszak break came round I told Markus I really had to speak with the Grey boy and asked if he would swap breaks with me – he was about to start a break himself. He didn't look too happy, but he agreed, and so I was able to take Ssyrl to one side.
"Are you okay?" I asked him in Grey.
He shrugged. "Not really. This is really hard work, and I hate not being able to understand what's happening. Why did you get them to send me here? Do you despise me the same way they do?"
"God, no! I thought you'd be treated better here, actually, and now I can interpret for you I'm sure you will be. Boys in this country do a lot of sex stuff your study group wouldn't like at all, so nobody is going to hate you for being like you are. But there's another reason, too, and to be honest this is the real reason I suggested sending you here: you're a Grey, and so the guardians won't bother you – or anyone who is with you…"
"So?"
"So, you can just walk out of here any time, and so can we if we come with you. I arranged for you to come here so that we can all escape."
He stared at me. "You're completely insane!" he said. "Have you any idea what the High Council would do to me if I helped a load of slave workers escape? If you lot weren't here the power station could only work part-time – it would slow production at the mine by half at least! It would be sabotage in time of war. They'd drag me back home and then publicly roast me alive. So I'm not doing it, and that's final!"
I stared at him in horror: I'd been sure he would go along with the plan. But now I was really in trouble: in a day and a half the bomb would explode, and I'd still be stuck here with no way out. It wouldn't be Ssyrl that got roasted: it would be me.
Oops… that's a bit of a fly in Jake's ointment. And just when he thought his plan was going to work out perfectly, too. Obviously you'll have to read the next chapter to find out what happens next…
PART
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