Orson Card: Hot Sleep: The Worthing Chronicle

"Accents and archaic games," the man said. "Come along now, boy. I don't know why, but somebody important wants you real bad."

Radamand, then. No one could call Hartman Tork important. But Jas went along peacefully enough. No sense struggling and increasing the man's vigilance. Just wait for an opportunity.

The opportunity was the commuter traffic in the tubes. The rush hour was starting, and as with commuters in all times and places, the signs saying enter and exit were regarded as mere decoration. Those getting off the tube rushed out, making rivulets around those struggling forward to get on. Of course there were dozens of people who stopped, greeted each other, blocked traffic — others, caught in the rush, desperately trying to reach a destination different from that of the crowd that swept them along. Three times a day the shifts changed, as the night boroughs, morning boroughs, and afternoon boroughs in each district lived their separate and rarely interconnecting days.

In the shoving and elbowing at the door, Jas lurched into the secret policeman who was holding him, then tripped and fell, ripping his shoulder painfully away from the man's hand. Someone tripped over him; someone else stepped on his leg; the crowd pulled Mother's Little Boy away from Jason. In a moment friendly hands helped Jas to his feet, and he began moving away in the crowd.

"He's cut!" shouted the security policeman. "Get him!"

He's cut? Jas realized as he threaded through the crowd that the security policeman wasn't alone. There had been more of Mother's Little Boys close enough to call to. Who?

For a moment Jas tried identifying people as they passed, before they came near him, but he couldn't — it was too dizzying, darting from mind to mind. And moving that quickly, impressions became vague, too fleeting to catch.

A hand grabbed at his hip. Jas lurched away. Again the hand was stronger than he expected, and pulling away took so much force that Jas fell to the ground. Someone stepped on his hand, hard, and Jas cried out in pain, but pulled his hand out from under the heavy boot. Blood leaped from torn–open veins, but Jas ignored it, scrambling to his feet. Hands reached for him. He swerved away, ducked, and then spotted a break in the crowd, ran through, and shoved his way into the mass of people piling up around the station doors.

Now the crowd that had helped him escape helped Mother's Little Boys to catch him. Where the people had been moving fast, his small size let him dodge through much faster than the police could. But with the crowd moving slowly, shoulder to shoulder, his small size was a disadvantage. He couldn't shove people out of the way, and Mother's Little Boys could. In a moment rough hands gripped him everywhere, and he was lifted off the ground and tossed into the air. When he came down there were six men around him.

He panted for breath. So did they. They looked angry. Wary, too, waiting for Jas to try something, to move. Jas didn't move. Blood dripped from his hand.

"What do you guys think I am?" he finally said. "Six of you to take a thirteen–year–old kid?"

The one who had first caught him smiled. "For a minute there, we were wishing for an even dozen."

"Well, you've got me," Jas said, still panting from the chase. "What now?"

But they just watched him, and the exhilaration of flight and pursuit gave way to the despairing knowledge that he was, indeed, caught, and there was no way he could stop them from doing whatever they wanted. Would it be the school, and facing charges as a Swipe? Or Radamand, and death to protect a rising politician?

Jas waited several minutes before it occurred to him that he didn't have to wait for answers to questions. He looked behind their eyes, and...

Just then a short stout man dressed in thirty year–old styles that looked brand new came up to their group.

"I'm amazed that you haven't hog–tied him," the man said.

Jas tried to find the meaning of the archaism, but hog–tied wasn't catalogued in his memory.

"Let him go," the man said. "And fix his hand, he's bleeding."

"If we let him go," one of Mother's Little Boys said, "we might never catch him again."

The stout man pushed his way into the circle, and looked at Jas with soft, kind eyes. He was so short that Jas looked down at him a little. Someone wrapped the injured hand. "Dale Carnegie cringes at their methods," the man said. This time the allusion rang a bell, and Jas smiled, reciting back: "You can catch more flies with a drop of honey than with a gallon of gall."

"Actually," the stout man interrupted, "Carnegie was only quoting someone else. Odd that you should know Carnegie and not Aesop." The man turned back to Mother's Little Boys. "He's in my custody now."

The policemen looked at each other uneasily. The man pulled out a little card and showed it to them. They nodded obsequiously and moved away.

The man turned back to Jas. "You have a name," he said.

"Jas Worthing."

"Jason Harper Worthing, a most remarkable young man. Jason Harper Worthing, don't get any clever ideas about escaping from me. Because where Mother's Little Boys trust to brute strength, I rely on technology." The cockle flashed momentarily in his hand, safety off.

"Who are you?" Jas asked.

"A question I've been trying to answer ever since adolescence. Shall we walk?" They walked. "I finally decided I was neither God nor Napoleon. I was so disappointed I didn't try to narrow it down any further."

The stout man escorted Jas to the officials — only door in the station and they went down the lift to the private cars. They got into one that looked rather old and shabby. And ridiculously out of date.

"I'm an archaist," the man said. "Like you. I collect old things. The difference is that you, being poor, can only collect ideas. I, being rich, can collect things. Things are worth much more money than ideas."

The man chuckled gently, and as the car took off, skimming the tube on its delicate magnetic balance, he laid a kind hand on Jas's knee. A good, strong hand, though small, and the gesture of affection was all it took to push Jas over the edge. The tension before had been too great — the relief now too sudden. Jas began to tremble and his breath came in short gasps like sobs.

"Please try to avoid hysteria," the man said, and then continued his pleasant conversation. "I also collect new things. But new things are hard to judge. One never knows if they'll last. One never knows if they'll appreciate or depreciate. Quite a risky investment, new things. Here we are."

The car stopped. It hadn't traveled far. The man led Jas to a door and they stepped into a lift and rose for a long time. When the ceiling was right above their heads they stepped onto a bare wooden floor.

Wood. Jas realized that it didn't feel like wood. He said so.

"Ah, your curiosity is beginning to function again. Good. It doesn't feel like wood because you've never touched wood in your life, you've touched plastic. This, Jason Worthing, is wood. From trees. I needn't tell you that you can't buy any of it on your credit allowance."

And then they were through a door and Jas gasped.

At first, for a moment, he had thought it was a park. But it was too large, and there was no ceiling. Instead the walls just ended, and a dazzling bright blue arch crested over him, just like the pictures of sky. The trees seemed to go on forever. The grass underfoot was real. Something living moved in the branches of a tree.

"I collect old things and new things," the man said. "But mostly I collect living things. Like you."

Jas turned to look at him and suddenly realized that the eyes were no longer soft and kind — had they really been before? And the man seemed to be staring past Jas's clothing and his skin and into his soul. Jas realized he had trusted this man without reason, and he looked behind his eyes.