Nightmare (3 page)

 "I want to see my mom," Evan repeated stubbornly. What if they were lying and Rebecca was dead or sold to someone else? And she had to be worried about him. The boy gave him a reluctant look.

 "I’ll bring you up to house," he said dubiously. "But I’m not promising nothin’. Come on."

 Evan got up off the pallet and followed the boy to a chunky wooden ladder that lead down to a large main floor. It turned out they were in the loft of a barn-like structure. The place smelled of dust and straw. Several pallets were scattered across the floor, along with a few personal items and open wooden crates that stored clothes. Evan’s white tunic had been replaced with the same brown shorts and shirt the boy wore, and he wondered who had dressed him.

 "I’m Pup," the boy said, starting down the ladder. Evan followed.

 "I’m Evan," he said. A small shock hit him and he almost lost his grip on the ladder. "Ow!"

 Pup looked up at him. "Mistress said your name’s Lizard on account of you being so small and quick."

 What? They were going to change his name? "My name is Evan," Evan repeated, and got another shock, stronger this time. "Hey!"

 Pup shrugged, continued on down the ladder. "Mistress says your name is Lizard."

 The main floor was piled with bales of golden straw. A pair of giant double doors that stretched up to the ceiling three stories above them gaped open just wide enough to let a person slip in or out. Sunshine poured through the gap, illuminating dust motes that hovered on the still air. The odd twittering noise was louder down here. Another wooden ladder lead up a loft opposite the one Evan and Pup had descended from.

 "That’s the girl’s loft," Pup told him. "Boys aren’t allowed up there, and you’ll get a shock if you get too close."

 He slipped through the gap in the doors. Evan followed him. The sunshine hit his eyes like a hammer, and the twittering noise burst into full volume around him. It was nearly deafening. He squinted and put a hand up to shield his face until his eyes adjusted. Evan caught his breath. Stretching into the distance before him was a field dotted with a series of ponds that made green and blue circles under a dazzling azure sky. Odd trees of a kind Evan had never seen before lined some of the ponds. Tall grass surrounded others, and a few had sandy shores. It was amazing. Australia had been battling constant drought when Evan had left, and he had never seen so much freestanding water in his life, except for the ocean.

 A wide strip of green grass bisected by a dirt path separated the pond area from the barn, and Evan saw people moving along other pathways between the little pools, though he couldn’t make out what they were doing. The sun was hot overhead.

 "What is it?" Evan asked, still awed at the water.

 "Frog farm," Pup said. "We take care of the frogs. Come on—the house is this way."

 Pup lead Evan around behind the barn and across another wide green field. The grass was soft and green under Evan’s soles. It felt soothing and pleasant. Plants in the Outback were scrubby, tough, and usually prickly, certainly no pleasure to walk on. Sydney was a place of concrete and broken glass. Walking barefoot on something soft was a new sensation.

 Ahead of them lay a wide, white house, three stories tall, with a gently sloping red roof. Several outbuildings dotted the grass around it like chicks around a hen, and people moved slowly among them. Bright sunlight glittered off silver bands.

 The slaves working around the house wore white, and Pup and Evan’s brown clothing drew baleful stares. Pup clearly felt uncomfortable but lead Evan around to a back door. The smells of yeast and onions floated on the air. Pup knocked shyly and a moment later, Rebecca stuck her head out. She wore a white blouse, white trousers, and a blue apron dusted with flour. Her silver wristband was coated with it.

 "Mom," Evan said, and she gathered him into her arms even though he was as tall as she was. He stayed like that for a moment, pretending everything was safe and all right.

 "Are you all right?" she asked. "They wouldn’t let me see you."

 "I’m fine." He reluctantly backed up a step, ending the embrace. "This is Pup. He took care of me. He said my name is ‘Lizard’ now." He said the last with distaste.

 "They call me ‘Bell,’ " Rebecca said. "Blanc—" she winced and clutched her wrist "—
Mistress
Blanc always renames her slaves. I guess everyone does. We’ll just have to live with it until we can figure out what else to do."

  Evan gave a grim nod. A voice from inside the kitchen said, "Bell! We need that pastry rolled out!"

 "I have to go," Rebecca said. "Here, hold on."

 She vanished into the kitchen and came back with a pair of large rolls, which she handed to Evan and Pup. The latter snatched it eagerly. Evan realized he was hungry, too.

 "I don’t know if they fed you or not," Rebecca said. "If you get short of food, come round and see me. I’ll see what I can do."

 "Where are they keeping you?" Evan asked. "Where do you sleep?"

 "In the garret with the others," she replied.

 "Bell!"

 "I’ll see you later." Rebecca stood on tiptoe to kiss the top of Evan’s head and vanished back into the house.

CHAPTER TWO

Every so often, life just sucks

—Yeoman Daniel Vik

  "Come on," Pup said, his mouth full of bread. "I’m supposed to show you around."

  He took Evan back around the house toward the pond area, and they ate as they walked. The rolls had a spicy meat filling that tasted unfamiliar to Evan, but he was hungry enough not to care.

  The heat lay hard on the boys as they walked. The very air itself was heavy with moisture, and Evan’s shirt began to stick to his back. He felt as if he were pushing his way through the muggy air. He had never felt anything like it in arid Australia, and he found it a little hard to breathe as they reached the first pond, which was partly shaded by a large tree. The shore of the pond had been landscaped so that several strips of raised earth extended like curving fingers into the water. The twittering noises continued, punctuated by odd
glumps,
and Evan realized it was the sound of frogs. When Evan and Pup reached the pond shore, alarmed plopping sounds greeted them, and a host of ripples scampered across the water. A moment later, several dozen bulbous eyes goggled suspiciously at the boys from the pond’s surface.

  "These’re American bullfrogs," Pup said. "We have sixteen ponds of them. That’s the most. They’re used in laboratories and for eating." He squatted and held out a bit of bread from his roll. A blur of movement launched itself out of the water with a great splash. Evan jumped and Pup snatched his hand back. The bread was gone.

  "They eat bread?" Evan said.

  "They eat just about anything," Pup replied, wiping his hand on his shirt. "Crickets, worms, fish, mice—"

"Mice?"

  Pup nodded. "They eat anything that fits in their mouths, so don’t hold out anything they shouldn’t have. They got no teeth, though, so you don’t need to worry about getting bit."

  "Why is the pond shaped funny?" Evan asked.

  "They all want their own bit of land," Pup said. "There ain’t enough shore for all of them, so we make more. Otherwise they’d fight all day." He gestured toward another set of ponds. "Over there are the bubble frogs. They’re valuable because they ooze this stuff that can be made into a couple of different drugs. The tree dumpies in that pond cure cancer. The winslows over that way are mostly pets but there’s some alien race that thinks they’re sacred and they buy ‘em by the hundreds. They live a long time."
The boys walked among the ponds as Pup talked on and on about frogs, and Evan’s head swam with information. Warm mud squished between his toes, and the hot sun alternated with cool shade as they made their way between trees of varying sizes. Pup explained that some frogs needed sun, others needed shade, and still others needed both, and every tree was carefully placed with the frogs’ needs in mind. Some places were more like small swamps than ponds because breeds like tomato frogs needed to burrow more than they needed to swim. The ponds themselves were sometimes clear, sometimes muddy, sometimes covered with floating plant life. Twitters, mutters,
glumps,
cheeps, and splashes followed them everywhere, though Evan saw very few actual frogs. The ones Evan did see, however, came in a surprising variety of sizes and colors, ranging from plain green to milky white to blaze orange. They crouched on banks or hid among weeds or floated serenely on water.

  Evan and Pup also encountered several brown-clad slaves, all human, ranging in age from a bit younger than Pup to gray, wrinkled oldsters. They variously worked with shovels, knelt among greenery, stood knee-deep in water, thrashed the air with nets, or popped squirming frogs into covered baskets. Pup waved to most of them, and they waved back or called greetings. He paused by one woman who stood next to a pond with a large mesh cage, her hand on the clasp.

  "Feedin’ time, Grace?" Pup said.

  "Sure is," she replied. "Want to watch?"

  "Yeah." Pup cocked a thumb in Evan’s direction. "This is Lizard. He came in with that other lot."

  "Actually," Evan put in, "my name’s Evan, not—" A shooting pain drove up his arm, interrupting him. Evan grunted and grabbed his wrist.

  "Your name’s Lizard," Pup said a bit sharply. "That shock was in case you forget. There’s a computer in your bands. It listens to what you say, so you better learn quick."

  Evan bristled but didn’t reply. His name was Evan, not Lizard. Maybe he couldn’t say it aloud, but that didn’t mean he’d lost it or accepted the change. Grace, meanwhile, nodded at him. She was a short, sturdy woman, deeply tanned with short black hair that curled tightly across her scalp. A black mass seethed inside the mesh cage with a slight hissing noise. Evan looked at it intently, changing the subject without actually saying anything.

  "Crickets," Grace explained. "Don’t try this at home."

  In one smooth motion she opened the cage and swept it in an arc. A small cloud of insects scattered over the pond, dropping into the water with a drawn-out splash. The pond instantly erupted in bubbles. The water thrashed and frothed. A few moments later, it calmed again. More peeps and croaks peppered the air. Evan didn’t see a single remaining cricket.

  "Piranha frogs," Grace said. "They got no teeth—no frog has—but they’re so aggressive you’d hardly notice."

  Evan was impressed despite his anger. "Do they attack the other frogs?"

  "They would if we let ‘em," Grace said. "But we got a whole bunch of sensors in the ground and in the trees. They notice a frog leaving its habitat, and it gets zapped with sub-sonics. We can’t hear it, but they can, and it sends ‘em straight back. Otherwise we’d have to use wire fences." She closed the cage. "What are you two on for today?"

  Pup shrugged. "I’m showing Lizard—" Evan bristled again "—around a bit. Easy day for me."

  "Then you can help me for a minute," Grace said. "Here. Take this back to the bug barn and bring back a full one. Make sure they’re dusted."

  Grumbling, Pup accepted the cage and left. A bit nonplused, Evan followed.

  "How do we know what to do?" Evan asked.

  "You and me? We do pretty much what everyone else tells us. Don’t matter who—if they’re older, we do what they say. ‘Course you pay special attention to the managers. They tell you to jump, you act like a frog and jump."

  "Managers?"

  "There’s five of ‘em—Master Ting, Master Varl, Mistress Quick, Mistress Yee, and Master Greenleaf. They ain’t slaves. They work for Mistress Blanc. She’s the owner."

  "I know that," Evan said, trying to show he knew
something.

  They approached a great white building shaped like a giant log half-buried in the ground. On one end was a set of sliding double doors large enough to drive a brace of tractors through. Pup chose a smaller door off to one side and Evan, who was starting to feel like a stray puppy, followed.

  The inside was dimly-lit and cooler, with a clean concrete floor. Rows of mesh cages and huge glass terrariums stretched the full length of the building, interspersed with sinks, gleaming worktables, and racks of equipment Evan didn’t recognize. In several places he saw what looked like bathtubs. Insects crawled, flapped, and fluttered inside various cages and containers. The air was alive with clicks, chirps, and whirrs that were very different from the frog noises outside. More people, recognizable as slaves by their silver bands, moved among the rows, though they were dressed in blue and wore shoes. One man noticed Evan and Pup and hurried over.

  "Don’t get your muddy feet on my clean floor," he said. "What do you want?"

  Pup held up the cage. "Grace sent us for more crickets. She wants ‘em vitamin-dusted, too."

  The man snatched the cage and stalked away, muttering about filthy muckers.

  "What’s his problem?" Evan whispered.

  Pup shrugged. "He’s above us. Buggers—don’t let ‘em hear you say that word—are higher up than us. Most of them sold themselves into slavery by choice to pay debts, so they get better treatment and the easier work. They got family what’s free, too."

  The man returned and all but shoved the cage—now full of crickets—at Pup. They delivered them to Grace at another pond, but before Evan got a chance to see another piranha frog feeding, Pup took him by the arm and lead him away. His hand was rough and callused.

  "Got to make a break for it before she gives us something else to do," Pup muttered. "I can stretch out showin’ you around for the rest of the day, and I mean to enjoy it."

  Pup kept his promise. Evan got a careful tour of the Blanc frog farm, including a detailed demonstration of how to scramble up a tree in time to avoid Master Ting, a short man dressed in yellow who came up the path with a purposeful stride. The slaves bent more closely over their work, and even the frog song seemed to diminish as he passed. Evan’s heart pounded as he noticed the small control on the man’s belt and wondered how much pain it would cost them if they were caught, but the manager took no notice of them. Once Pup decreed it safe, they climbed down and resumed the tour.