Young Bleys - Childe Cycle 09 Read online

  "No!" Henry stared unchanged of face through the windscreen. "No more! No more of that, for now!"

  They drove on in silence. The skies had lowered and darkened; and Bleys was beginning to feel weary. He had been doing his best to use his trick of sitting unnaturally still. But his natural fund of eleven-year-old energy was threatening to explode inside him. He wondered how much further they would go before they got to their destination.

  Desperately, he went on waiting. Sometimes that was the only way, to let the other person lead the talking. Then you could answer with some certainty; and with a reply tailored to what was said.

  "What was her church?" demanded Henry, suddenly.

  "Her church?" said Bleys. "Oh, you mean Laura? I can't remember."

  "What were some of the prophets she taught you the names of?" demanded Henry.

  "Moses and Isaiah, Daniel, Obadiah, Malachi, John and Jesus—" On sudden impulse, on the chance that Henry's church had other prophets, Bleys threw in a couple of extra names—" 'Ali and Mohammed Ahmad—" .

  "I knew it!" Henry interrupted him fiercely, striking his fist on his knee. "She was of a Bridging church!"

  "I don't know what a Bridging church is," Bleys said. "She never mentioned anything like that."

  "Well," Henry's voice had dropped to a satisfied mutter, "it will have been one like it, it will be one of them. She taught you wrongly, boy! 'Ali and Mohammed Ahmad are not among the prophets. They are false, and those are false who name them so!"

  He sat back in the cart, more relaxed than Bleys had seen him since Bleys had first used the phrase in which he thanked God for Henry's kindness.

  "I'm glad you told me, Uncle," he said. "I wouldn't have known if you hadn't."

  Henry threw an approving glance at him.

  "Yes," he said, "you're young. But you'll learn. Though it's surprising you memorized so much from the Bible. Bleys . . . what else from that Book can you tell me?"

  "There's Moses and The Ten Commandments—" Bleys began.

  "Yes," interrupted Henry, "recite that to me." Bleys took a deep breath.

  "And Moses called all Israel, and said unto them, Hear, O Israel, the statutes and judgments which I speak in your ears this day, that ye may learn them, and keep, and do them.

  "The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb ..."

  Bleys went on reciting Chapter Five of Deuteronomy. Henry listened. His face seemed incapable of smiling, but there was a satisfied look on his face, as if he was someone listening to music well known and loved.

  While Bleys was still talking, the first few drops of rain began to strike the windscreen before them and ran down it, like drops of oil. Henry ignored it, and Bleys went on talking, even as the rain increased and thunder crackled overhead while occasionally flashes of lightning could be seen off toward the right horizon.

  Henry was no longer watching Bleys. His attention was all concentrated on what Bleys was saying. Bleys allowed himself to twitch and move on the seat, which had become very hard with its thin covering of straw and tarpaulin.

  At Henry's urging Bleys went forward from the Ten Commandments, to recite part of Chapter Thirty-eight of the Book of Job, where the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind; and from there to the Psalms. He was still reciting Psalms—in fact he was on Psalm One Hundred and Twenty, when he felt the cart lurch, and realized they had turned off the road onto a dirt track which led them off among the trees.

  The dirt road led them only a short way before coming out in the open farmyard before a one-story building of logs and a few outbuildings, also made of logs.

  "Here we are," said Henry, interrupting the Psalm.

  The rain was now coming down heavily. Through its curtain and the windscreen Bleys saw a boy a little younger than himself who ran out ahead of the goats and took hold of their reins. Meanwhile the door on Henry's side was opened and a boy a year or two older than Bleys, more heavily built and looking a great deal stronger, jerked it open.

  "Father—" he began, and then stopped, seeing Bleys beyond him.

  "This is your cousin Bleys, Joshua," said Henry stepping out into the rain as if it did not exist at all. He looked back into the cab. "Bleys, you'll have to make a run for the front door."

  Bleys stared at Joshua keenly for a second. An older, larger boy like this might offer physical aggression. Then he opened his door and stepped out into a veritable downpour of cold rain. The jacket Henry had given him seemed to be waterproof, but the rest of his clothing was soaked in an instant. Dimly he saw that, the large log building, which was obviously a dwelling, had a door in its middle right ahead of him up three steps from the miry yard in which he was now standing. He ran for it, got up the three steps, took hold of a block of wood which seemed to-do for a knob, and pushed. The door did not open.

  "You'll have to turn it," said a voice behind him, and he looked back to see the older boy, Joshua, standing just behind him. He turned it and went inside, grateful to be out of the rain and for the warmer interior of the building.

  "Stand there," said the voice of Joshua, as Bleys heard the door close behind him. "Stay on the entry rug. If you get the floor all wet Father won't like it at all."

  His voice took for granted the right to give orders.

  Bleys stood where he was, dripping onto and over the roughly woven rug, which seemed to absorb the water without

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Honored to make your acquaintance," said Bleys.

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

  "Hello, Will," said Bleys.

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

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

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

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

  CHAPTER 4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Prayer times?" asked Bleys.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Grace, Will," he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Thank you, Joshua," he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  For the cheese alone was the one thing that had at least a slightly familiar flavor. It was not quite the same as the goat cheese he had eaten on occasions with his mother, but it was