Free Brothers to Dragons by Charles Sheffield Page B

gestured with his spoon around Job, to where the other boy had finished eating and was impassively staring straight ahead.
    "What's wrong with him?"
    "Take a look in his eyes. There's nothing back of'em. Rick Luciano—him over there—says Guppy used to be smart enough, but he got held under water too long when he was being questioned. Now he don't do nothing but eat and work and sleep. You can't get a word out of him. Lots in here like that, most of 'em born like it. Dimmies—dimwits. Not supposed to be sent here, but they are."
    The plates were disappearing, every one of them wiped clean. "What's your name?" said Tolson.
    "Job Salk. What did you mean about me being jaded, if I wasn't a dimmie?"
    "You got labeled when you came in, right?" Tolson held up his wrist. "Know what that says, along with your number? J-D. Juvenile delinquent. You've been J-D'd, jaded, like most of us. We're too young for the Tandies. They stick us in here with the dimmies, an' hope we'll just die quiet. What did you do to get here?"
    "Delivering drugs." Job did not protest his innocence. "What do you mean, die quiet?"
    "All questions, aren't you?" Another bell rang, and the boys began to file out. Tolson went in his turn, and Job followed him.
    "What did you mean about dying ," he said again.
    "You'd find out soon enough, so I might as well tell you. There's four hundred of us in here—"
    "Cloak House only has enough space for two hundred!"
    "You'd be surprised." Skip Tolson was striding upstairs, with Job panting along behind. "Four hundred. About fifty new ones come in every month, but you'll still count only four hundred at the end of it. Five or six leave because they're too old to be here—sent to the Tandies, mostly. The rest get sick and took down to the infirmary on the first floor. I've seen a couple of hundred go down, an' only half a dozen come back up. Worse than usual this last week, 'cause it's been so cold."
    At the door of a dormitory he turned to face Job. His face was serious. "I'll make a deal with you."
    "What sort of deal?"
    "We're not allowed to steal each other's food. We get skull-cracked if we're caught, and we go without the next meal. But we can give each other food if we want to. So you give me half your food—not forever, 'cause you'd die, but for two weeks, 'til it starts to taste good to you and you know the ropes round here."
    "Why should I?"
    "Because then you get to take the empty bed next to mine, and I look after you." Skip Tolson smiled at Job's puzzled expression. "You may not think you need it, but you will. Nobody pushes me around. But you're pretty little. Did you sign out your bedroll an' blanket yet?"
    "No."
    "Lucky for you. If you had, and you'd left it any place, it'd have gone by now. You sleep without one when it's this cold, you shiver all night an' finish in the infirmary. I'm not making that up. You'll see it this week."
    The real changes were beginning to sink in for Job. This wasn't Cloak House under Father Bonifant. It was not even Cloak House under Colonel della Porta.
    "All right." But the skills developed in street forays with Father Bonifant had not been lost. "Not for two weeks, though. I'll do it for just for one week, then we'll see."
    Tolson scowled, but at last nodded. "One week, then. Bet you change your mind at the end of it."
    * * *
    Skip Tolson had been right. Job was considering changing his mind.
    When Skip had first proposed a deal, Job had been suspicious. He knew his way around Cloak House, better maybe than Tolson did. Why should he trade food for help from anyone? But at the end of a week Job was not so sure. He felt less in control of his life than he had been at four years old.
    He had learned to force down the nauseous food, though there was so little of it that after sharing with Tolson he was permanently famished and lightheaded. He had also, with Skip's guidance, labeled his bedroll and blanket so prominently and permanently that no one could steal it without being