Chapter 9
At the next class meeting, Keith decided to begin making friends. He sat down deliberately between the blond kid and an older, bearded elf that he hadn’t seen before. The boy winked at him again before going back to his customary whittling. Keith watched for a while with close interest, and then noticed the other fellow was watching, too. When the Elf Master was called away to attend to something at the other end of the mysterious tunnel, Keith struck up a conversation.
“Good, isn’t he?” he asked the bearded one, who seemed surprised to be addressed by a Big Person. He grunted.
“Needs practice. He’s too showy. That pipestem’d break the first time it got a look at a set of teeth.”
The boy lifted his head from his work. “Now, Marm, you know that’s not so,” he said, patiently, laying down the blade.
“It is so. You want strength in a bitty piece of work like that; you need a harder sort of wood, or work across the grain.”
“Here,” said the boy, thrusting the tiny thing past Keith, and into the other’s hands. “Look for yourself. It’s not wood. It’s bone. I suppose your eyes are getting too old to tell the difference.”
“Well,” said Keith, “for bone, that looks pretty good. I think. His wood carvings are really fine, aren’t they?” he added hopefully. The older elf grunted his approval.
Marm turned the little stick over in his hand. Keith could see that its length was covered with a pattern of interlocking broad-leaved vines. It was astonishing that anything that small should be so perfect. He couldn’t tell what Marm was complaining about. Probably just jealous. “Yah, you’re right. Must be a goat’s bone, now that I see it closely. Yah, a goat’s bone. Fine work, Maven.”
“What did he call you?” Keith demanded of the young elf, astonished.
“Maven. The Maven. That’s what everyone calls me. It’s a Yiddish word; means ‘expert.’ My name is Holl. And by the by, thanks for the compliment.”
“Sure. I meant it. Where on earth did you get a Yiddish nickname?” Keith asked, not to be diverted. Jewish elves? Holl started to answer, but stopped, and held up both hands to shush him. “Why …”
“Quiet, you widdy, can’t you hear him?” He puffed out his ruddy cheeks and blew bone fragments off his desk, then sat up straight.
“No …” But in a moment, the clicking of a pair of heels on the tunnel’s concrete floor floated up over the rest of the noise. The Elf Master was returning. In a moment, all the voices ceased, and everyone sat at polite attention.
“Quiet,” the Master said wearily, though there was no noise. “Ve vill continue. Tay,” he gestured at the second bearded elf, a pale blond with sharply tilted eyebrows, “has briefly outlined the development of modern agrarian society. Vhat, Mr. Eisley, vould you say were the primary social changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution in the agrarian countries of the vorld?”
O O O
Keith hung back when class ended, and tapped Holl on the shoulder when he got up to leave. He kept his voice low as the other students passed by him. “Listen, I think your work is really good. Do you think I could come over some time, and see other things you’ve carved?” Keith tossed his head toward the low doorway. “I couldn’t do that stuff. I’d cut my fingers off.”
Holl cocked an eyebrow and peered at him a good long time before answering, knowing full well what Keith was asking, and giving it honest consideration. “You’re a different one, Keith. I’ll see. Maybe you can come for an evening meal. The older ones won’t gripe so much about a visitor while they’re eating. And I don’t mind an audience for my work.”
“Terrific!” said Keith. “In exchange, I hereby invite you to be my guest in the dining hall. Only you probably won’t think it’s much of a favor when you’ve tasted the food.”
“A good guest never counts the dishes served, nor spits out the mouthful he’s chewing.”
“Right. Always eat every meal as though it was your last.”
“Wait here. I’ll ask now.” Holl vanished down the echoing hallway. After a while, he returned. “You can come. Wait by the big sycamore outside the back of the library building in an hour and a half. I’ll find you there. You’ll need to be on your best behavior, boy.”
“Yes, sir!” Keith saluted. His voice rang in the classroom, picked up tones from the concrete floor.
“Shush,” said Holl, turning back into the tunnel. “You’ll make them change their minds.”
Keith held his jubilation until he reached the ground level of the library. When the elevator door slid open, he could contain himself no more. He danced out and let go with a wild, “Yahoo!”
“Shhh!” a librarian hissed sternly.
O O O
Following instructions, he waited, concealed behind the library building. About two hours had passed since the end of class, and Keith felt if he had to stuff in one more particle of excitement, he would explode in a shower of sparks. The Maven—boy, what a name—told him to keep out of sight of the path and sit tight. They would have to wait for the right moment to let him inside. Keith had no objections. If they had managed to keep themselves hidden for this long, he wasn’t going to be the one to blow their cover. What would Marcy say if she knew where he was going? He did a little dance, which he quickly converted into jiggling around for warmth in the chilly evening air as a couple of students passed him. He smiled at them, and craned his head after them as they walked away.
He heard a grating noise from behind him, and spun around to see where it was coming from. A whole section of the stone wall four feet high, beginning an inch or two above the grass, had sunk back, leaving a deep, black opening. A hand extended through and beckoned to him. With a quick glance around, Keith dove for the hole and skittered to the side as the stone facade grated ominously back into place. He found himself standing in a passageway so narrow he had to press his shoulders together to turn around. He put out a hand to feel for the mechanism, but found nothing but the back of the stone wall. On his other side was rough brick.
“Keith Doyle,” said a voice in the dark, sounding ominous. He jumped.
“Y-yup?” he affirmed.
“Welcome, then. You’re just in time.” A lantern flamed alight, and Holl was there looking up at him. “Follow me.”
O O O
A short while later, Keith found himself sitting on a low bench, surrounded by a host of miniature humans, adults and children both. He kept his elbows very close to his sides, which meant he had to dip his head every time he wanted to take a bite from his miniature fork. Now I know how Gulliver felt, he thought, ignoring an itch along his ribs for fear of knocking over the tiny old lady on his left. Gingerly, he extended a hand to pick up the jug of milk, and poured some into his wooden cup.
Holl sat across the long table from him, occasionally studying him with a humorous twinkle in his eyes. He was aware how ridiculous the big youth felt, but it was a lesson in humility to watch how well Keith handled himself in adverse conditions. He could also see that old Keva was wearing her pincushion on her belt, and it was undoubtedly sticking into Keith’s side. To his credit, the big fellow wasn’t complaining. She had probably left it there on purpose, spiteful old hen. Good for him. He was a fair guest.
The others of Holl’s people were not demonstrating themselves to be hosts worthy of such a guest. More than once, Holl had heard an unfavorable comment, fortunately inaudible to Keith’s less sensitive ears. “What’s he want to come in here for? To gawk, I’ll bet.” “Dey neffer let us alone vonce dey know. How do ve know he has any discretion?” And from the oldsters, “His kind’ve been faithless before, for sure, darlin’. What difference will only a few generations make?”
“Uh, you know,” said Keith, “this pitcher looks just like the kind we used to have at my summer camp. They’re really indestructible. I oughta know. I used to shoot off bottle rockets from one.”
Keva stopped chewing with a shocked intake of breath. She stared at the human balefully.
“Oh,” Keith continued, misinterpreting her ire. “No one was hurt. I did it out next to the lake.”
“Are you after suggesting that we took this pitcher from your summer camp?” Keva demanded.
“Now, Keva,” Holl chided her, but the old lady ignored him. The other diners fell silent, listening.
Keith regarded her with puzzlement, his narrative dying away to silence. “No, not at all. That’s up near Chicago. They’re mass produced. There must be thousands of them around the state. It just reminded me of camp. Sort of homey. I’m sorry if you thought I meant anything by it.”
Keva nodded warily. “Well, all right then.”
“If camp was something you enjoyed,” Holl interjected, shushing Keva. “Otherwise, perhaps we should apologize to you for reminding you.”
“I didn’t mind camp,” Keith acknowledged cheerfully. “I think my parents only lived for the day when they could send all five of us to camp at once.”
There was another susurrus of whispers around the room again. From Keith, there was no sign that he could understand or even hear any of it, but Holl’s attenuated hearing translated them clearly. “Does he accuse us of stealing?” Hmmph, you old frauds, thought Holl, grinning to himself. And where did you think our things come from these long years? Do hens lay plates? Or curtains?
O O O
Keith looked around at the tables of elves, most of whom were glancing at him openly or covertly while they ate. He guessed there must be eighty or ninety of them. The little old lady had gone back to her own meal, pointedly turning her back to him as best she could in the limited space available. Keith made a mental note to apologize to her later. He sent a questioning glance to Holl, and received an amused gesture to go on eating and ignore the old lady. He figured that she must be the local equivalent of his great-aunt Martha, a woman who enjoyed bullying her relatives into believing that they had really offended her so she could demand apologies for the imaginary insults. He took another sip of milk and turned his attention to his surroundings.
The planked wooden tables were dark brown and polished smooth on top, but carved prettily around the sides. A few of the chairs at the ends were made to match, as were the benches, but a number of chairs were obvious refugees from a kindergarten. Keith had noticed one, occupied by an extremely dignified elf with black hair and silver temples, that had the alphabet and a teddy bear painted on the chair back. The dishes were mostly ceramic, hand thrown with a great deal of skill. Blue, green and yellow were their favorite colors; the elves made their clothes in the same hues they painted their dishes.
At each long table sat a few elderly elves, others that he would term “middle-aged,” and an assortment of younger ones that he guessed were up to twenty years old in Big People terms. By the common resemblances, each group represented one extended family. It was touching to see that little silvering-blond grandmother feed the tiny infant on her left to give the tired brunette on the child’s other side a rest and a chance to feed herself. There weren’t too many babies in the room. Each table had two or three, rarely more. The one behind Holl had four toddlers, all of which looked exactly alike, and each of whose little bottoms could comfortably fit on the palm of Keith’s hand. His classmates were scattered among the clans, as he called them to himself, so they probably weren’t all sisters and brothers.
The Elf Master occupied the head of a table to Keith’s left. Next to him sat Enoch, the young elf with black hair. Enoch had met Keith’s glance on his way in, and apart from that one glance, ignored him. Keith decided not to think about him, and just smiled at anyone else whose eyes he met. On Enoch’s other side was the pretty, auburn haired elf girl whose name was Maura. She smiled sweetly back when he grinned at her, and looked down again at her plate.
The food was good, what there was of it. The servers, elves of both sexes, trundled over with big (to them) steaming crocks of stew, baskets of bread and bowls of vegetables, and then sat down to serve themselves and their families. Keith prayed his stomach wouldn’t grumble as he filled his doll’s-dish with stew from the crock and took a piece of bread. He promised it the pound cake he kept sealed in a tin under his dorm bed for emergency midnight snacks. He even promised it extra breakfast if it would keep quiet for now. In his excitement over the coming meeting of the study group that afternoon, he had forgotten to eat any lunch, and he was embarrassingly hungry now. He tried to eat slowly, but in a few small bites, the plate was empty.
The crock thumped to a halt in front of him. “There’s plenty,” Laniora, his pretty brown-haired classmate coaxed him, from two seats down to Holl’s left. With a grateful smile, Keith dished himself another helping.
The bread was something special. It was soft and fresh-baked, with a crisp, thin brown crust. The aroma made him sigh and lift his eyes heavenward, which drew laughter from his tablemates.
“Dinna worship it,” snapped Keva. “Eat it!”
Obediently, he ate it. It was delicious, and he said so. A moment later, an extra portion of bread plumped down next to his plate, and the sharp pain withdrew from his side. He had forgotten all about it until it disappeared. Holl grinned at him suddenly and Keith grinned back.
At the meal’s end, Keva gave him a frosty little nod and smile, and then walked away. Keith rose and bowed to her, scratching his side. Then he bowed to the elders clustered at the end of the table. The old man at the end inclined his head and went back to his own conversation. Since Holl showed no inclination to hurry away, Keith sat down again.
“You’ve flattered Keva,” Holl told him. “It was her bread. She’s the baker. It was her pin cushion in your ribs, too.”
“Oh,” said Keith. “She your aunt?”
“She’s my sister. I’m the middle one of three. Right now three, that is,” Holl said blithely. “That was my baby sister down there at the end of the table. Three is considered a big family with us. My folks are a progressive pair.”
“Sister? Hmm, hah, uh, how old is she?” Keith asked, amazed. “Never mind that; how old are you?”
“Old enough, my lad. In terms of this world, forty years have passed since my birth.”
“Forty? Of course you look about twelve. I should have guessed. Wow, I would have thought you were more my age. I’m nineteen.”
“Let’s shake,” Holl extended a hand. “I’m considered a young adult to my folk, too. We’ll call that common ground enough to build on.”
Keith shook the hand, engulfing it in his own, and discovered they were nearly alone in the big room. “Where’d everyone go?”
“To the living quarters. Some call it the village, but that’s a fanciful title. It’s a big place like this one, only divided up to the clans. Come and see.”
O O O
They walked through another low tunnel similar to the one that led from the schoolroom, though this one sloped down at a slight angle. The passage was dimly lit high along each side, though Keith couldn’t see the fixtures from which the flickering light issued. “You don’t get many … er, human … visitors down here, do you?”
“No, indeed not,” said Holl. “You’re the first in a long, long time.”
“Then why me?” Keith asked, walking stooped over with a hand running along the ceiling checking for rafters and bumps. “Ouch. I feel like Quasimodo.”
“The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Because you asked, Keith Doyle, and I trusted you, so you were allowed to come. I’m taking a chance on you. It’s my nature to take chances. The others think I’m too progressive, but I call it a hereditary failing. My parents don’t mind.”
“You read a lot of classics?” Keith inquired, ducking to avoid an electrical conduit.
“What else is there to do in a library?”
“I guess I never thought what it was like to live in one.” Keith had a sudden vision of the secret door in the wall opening, and thousands of elves pouring out into the library, pulling books out of the shelves, using the microfiche readers, calling up articles about leprechauns from PLATO, and stern little elf librarians hissing “Shhh!” He chuckled.
“Come on, then,” the young elf called out, disappearing around a sharp bend in the hall. Keith hurried to catch up.
O O O
“When this building was built, back along, they made this floor to be a maintenance way, to take care of the pipes and the foundation,” Holl said, stopping to point out the sheaves of conduit that ran along the ceiling here and there. “Only it was never used much. And the one below it was the foundation itself. You can see that no one your size could walk down here for long without giving himself a good backache. As long as nothing went wrong with the pipes, they had no reason to look for a way to get at them. And we make sure that nothing goes wrong with the pipes. They’ve forgotten about it, see, and the parts of the blueprints describing this level and this part of the steam tunnels were destroyed, all by accident. They kept them in this very same building,” Holl said innocently. “We had a friend who warned us to get rid of access ways and plans when we came here … but she’s no business of yours.” The elf’s tone was a definite warning.
“A good friend,” Keith said, tactfully not pushing for details. By the direction they were walking, he guessed that the rounded passage must run directly below the Student Common. He felt satisfied with the number of questions Holl was answering, and was content to let him talk. “How did you get here, Holl? And where did you come from?”
“Ireland, wasn’t it?” Holl shot him a sideways glance full of mischief. Keith’s theories were well known among his folk, and they considered them most entertaining.
“Yes, wasn’t it?” Keith asked, not letting the jibe penetrate. “I heard your relatives talking up there. I’ve got cousins that really do look like you. Not the ears, but the rest of your features. The cast of them, as my grandmother would say.”
The Maven shrugged. “Your legends may have some truth to them. I’m not saying how much. You don’t think we get pleasure out of saying we’re kin to the enemy, now do you? Simmer down, boy,” for Keith was getting red-faced and waving his arms preparatory to a verbal explosion. Holl poked him in the midsection with a forefinger. “You’re not an enemy yourself. At least I think not. But there’d be many more of us if there weren’t so many of you. What normally becomes of highly inter-bred racial mutations under your typical intensive, impersonal scientific scrutiny?”
Keith’s color faded slowly as he thought about it, and then he spoke. “Extinction.”
“Uh-huh. But fortunately among the characteristics we maintain are camouflage and silence. My kin have had much practice on their way across this continent. I can steal the eggs out of a duck’s nest if she’ll lean forward a mite.”
“I can scare one silly and get the eggs that way,” Keith volunteered. “I failed woodcraft in Boy Scouts.”
“And can’t I tell that? It’s part of the quality of being obvious that makes me want to trust you. You were making quite a racket in the stacks that day. Anyone of us could tell there was someone out there, though the rest of the Big Ones couldn’t.”
Keith opened his mouth.
Holl forestalled him. “And we heard you two days before that, when Bracey tossed you out. He’s one of us, too.”
Keith shut it again.
O O O
“This is where we live,” Holl announced, stepping aside so Keith could stand up out of the low hallway. Rubbing his back tenderly, Keith squinted down the length of the room. “We lowered the dirt floor several feet. Used to be just a few feet high, but we like our head room. It makes for a far more congenial living space.”
He certainly would never have suspected its existence. It covered an area the same size as the large library levels above but without partitions. The illusion of size was enhanced by the height of the ceiling, somewhat loftier than that of the dining hall one half-level up, and the size of the structures within, which were perfect small scale models of the ones he was used to.
They were undeniably houses, though of a peasant-like cottage type that he associated with woodcutters and Little Red Riding Hood. The roofs, solid and slanted, were naturally not needed underground to keep off the weather, but they served to give the illusion that the village was in the upper air. Groups of cottages were scattered throughout the vast room. Neighborhoods, Keith realized with delight. They must be set up by clan. He could see his tablemates going about their business in the knot of houses nearest the passageway.
The same flickering light that illuminated the passages lined the ceiling between bare rafters, though it was much brighter here, almost as bright as spring sunlight. It was as warm as springtime down here, too. The elves carried on life as usual with less noise than Keith would have thought possible for such a large number of human beings, but as Holl pointed out, he was probably mistaken about that, too.
A group of five or six children were playing tag around the corners of the small shelters, giggling as they managed to elude “it.” It was a nice, quiet little village scene, but one that reminded Keith more of a Bronze age enclosure than something that could exist in the twentieth century, especially within a hundred feet, albeit straight down, of a modern university.
Before the cottage doors, here and there, a woman in a long skirt and blouse or the same straight legged pants the men wore, sewed, usually patching clothes, and humming to herself or chatting with a neighbor. The floor was packed earth, hoed up here and there to make way for tiny flower beds and herb gardens. Bunches of greenery hung in nearly every doorway, scenting the air and adding to the springtime atmosphere. You’d never know it was October—a cold October, too—upstairs. And everywhere was the same ornamental woodwork, the sort of fine carving that Keith watched the Maven do during class for the last couple of weeks.
He fingered a small polished square panel set into the upper part of a wall, admiring the design of intertwining ivy leaves carved upon it. “Did you do this?” he asked.
“No,” Holl smiled. “But you have a good eye for a pattern. My father’s work, that one is. That panel keeps the house together.”
“Oh?”
“Aye. Cohesiveness. Knits its bones. I learned my skill from him. Scrap wood’s one thing that’s available in plenty, so I never lack for practice pieces.”
Keith leaned close to the wall, trying to see joins between the tightly fitted slabs of wood. No two pieces were exactly the same size, grain, shade, or quality. They looked as though they had been puzzle-cut together with a very sharp knife. Particle board clung to oak between bits of plywood, balsa, and pine. These elven builders could have given precision lessons to Pharaoh’s architects. “So what’s wrong with using nails?” Not that he could see any in the construction.
“They rust. They bend. Also, we tend to be a wee bit sensitive to having too much metal around.”
“I heard that cold iron dispels magic,” Keith said teasingly. “Maybe that’s why you don’t use it.”
“And maybe the effect is more like heavy metal poisoning, Keith Doyle. Call it an allergy. Don’t look for foolish explanations unless no others suffice. There’s plenty of common sense to go around. Even you could find some.”
“I believe in magic,” Keith said softly.
“But do you know it when you see it?” Holl demanded.
“Probably not,” Keith admitted cheerfully. A fragrance of spices and baking tickled his nose, and he changed the subject. “How do you do your cooking here? I never smell anything out of the ordinary in the building.”
“Oh, the chimneys over the fires are all vented together to the outside, toward the Student Common. We tried electric stoves once, but the cooks protested one and all that they couldn’t control such an impersonal element, so that was the end of that experiment. They know where they are with wood-burning, and we left it at that. The steam tunnels run by here, and we make use of them. It’s also from them that we get our heat. If you ever smelled any of the good cooking upstairs, you probably thought it was coming from the Delicatessen in the Common.” Holl wrinkled his nose. “Or, if bad, from the Home Economics department. We don’t eat fancy, as you see, so it’s never anything unusual enough to bear investigation. Strong smells linger, so we’re careful never to eat fish unless it’s fresh, or any cooked cabbages at all.”
Keith wandered between the shelters, nodding as nonchalantly as he could manage to any elf that met his eye, and most of them did, nodding back and smiling, trying to believe that he wasn’t doing something unique and extraordinary in just being near them. But they preserved the illusion for him, and he allowed himself to make a full tourist’s ramble of the big room.
He watched a handful of elves, male and female, folding sheets from a big wicker basket and gossiping over their work. Young ones played a complicated pretending game with toys on the ground. Keith saw a jointed toy horse clopping across the floor with an elfin toddler in pursuit.
“Electronic?” Keith asked Holl.
“No, it’s all wood.”
“Magic …” In delighted disbelief, he watched the horse look back over its shoulder and change direction just as the little one would have reached it. It was alive! The baby gave a crow of glee and turned to pursue his toy. Holl broke his reverie by tapping him on the shoulder.
“There’s more,” he said, beckoning him along.
“How’s that work?” Keith asked, pointing at the horse, wanting to go back and investigate.
“Just a toy,” Holl shrugged off-handedly, pulling Keith along. Keith took a quick look back before following around a corner. The child’s mother had seized him up and was washing his face with a wet cloth. It was not a task the baby enjoyed, and he kicked and cried under her ministrations. She shot an apologetic look toward Keith, who smiled at her. The brown wooden horse stood at her feet and regarded its master with glassy-eyed sympathy.
A thin pipe ran between the patterns of light on the ceiling, and divided into several smaller pipes, which descended along the wall and floor under the back of each house. Keith glanced over to Holl, eyebrows raised.
“Water,” the elf explained. “We’ve run a tap pipe from the fire sprinklers. The pressure is kept constant, and again, no one notices.”
“You think of everything.” Keith looked around admiringly. “I wouldn’t be able to work all this stuff out, even if my life depended on it. And yours do.”
Holl looked pleased. “We’ve had time to work it all out. It wasn’t so comfortable at first. But there’s more. Did you know that there’s a small river running under this building?”
“No,” said Keith, astonished. “I’ve never seen any sign of anything like that. The nearest river is way down the road.”
“Well, you’re wrong; there is one. It’s the way towns were always built. Underground rivers make a natural disposal system. And we take water out of it upstream. Look here.” He led the young man to a broad patch of growing greenery. Tay, the blond-bearded fellow from the Master’s class, waved to them and went back to pulling up carrots and tossing them into a slatted bin. The bright orange vegetables were of unusually good size, and looked amazingly alive in the artificial sunshine. Holl appropriated two from under Tay’s slapping hand, broke the greens off into a pail, passed one to Keith, and snapped a crunchy bite out of his own. “Hydroponics,” he explained as he chewed. “These have their roots dangling in the river. It’s right under the concrete at this end of the building.”
Keith brushed the water from the carrot, and took a bite. It was crisp, cold and sweet, and even tasted healthy. “Why would they have built right over water? That’s asking for trouble with the foundation.”
“Well, it didn’t start out that way. The river has changed course over the years. One more thing the University doesn’t suspect is in its basements. And it makes a perfectly viable hydroponic garden. The water’s always fresh. Waste goes in downstream.”
“Wow.” Keith didn’t hide his interest. “How do you know so much about a river no one’s ever seen?”
“Oh, well, one of our folk has an earth-wise way about her. She asked it, and she knows.”
Keith nodded, trying to picture an elf-woman talking to a river. It sounded plausible as far as he could tell. Though there was a quiet buzz of conversation, and the occasional click-zizz! of a saw or tap-tap of a hammer, the loudest single noise in the place was the sound of his own shoes banging along on the concrete floor. Most of the elves’ footgear was a kind of soft-soled sock-shoe, sewn of suede or leather, and pulled on without lacings. The children generally wore a ribbon tied around each ankle to keep their shoes from falling off, but a slower form of locomotion than running wouldn’t dislodge them. Holl was watching him wisely, noting Keith’s study with silent approval.
“It’s peaceful here,” Keith said at last.
Holl smiled. “It is that.”
O O O
Nothing seemed ever to be wasted by the little people. Keith saw the same stiff flowered fabric used over and over again in different applications. Two little girls’ dresses, several window curtains, an old woman’s apron, and a gaudy young man’s shirt had obviously all come from the same bolt. “And bed coverlets, too,” Holl affirmed, after Keith mentioned it to him. “There are no looms in this place. That much wood we cannot spare, so textiles are some of the hardest things to come by. You’ll see the same scrap of cloth recycled a dozen times before it’s too badly worn to mend. It’s a sure sign that fabric’s on the way out when it becomes curtains. No wear to the body of the cloth, you see.”
“Sure, I see,” said Keith, musing. Now that he was aware of it, he saw that most of the fabrics here were well cared for, but old and worn, including his friend’s clothes. Patches were skillfully blended on trouser-knees and jacket-elbows. Probably re-dyed for camouflage. “Textiles, huh?”
“Huh. What we can’t grow for ourselves, or make, or … er, find, we do without. Now, Lee Eisley, in the class, has a handy job as an assistant in the Food Services. He has been known to drop packages of meat in our way, and a few other feats of kindness, after … well, when we lost another source of supply.”
“Don’t you ever buy stuff you need?” Keith asked impetuously, and then wished he hadn’t.
Holl gave him a pitying look. “How and with what, Keith Doyle? Shall I go out and get a job selling cookies? Or maybe helping out Santa Claus at a shopping mall?”
“Well, why not?” Keith had a sudden delighted vision of dainty, point-eared elf helpers escorting hulking human children to Santa’s throne. “No one would believe you were real, under the right circumstances. Nobody knows who Santa’s helpers are.”
“Why not?” Holl echoed. “Because these nameless workers have got backgrounds, backgrounds that your government knows about, and takes for granted. Maybe you don’t know who they are, but they are known. It’s a casual thing for you to have a job. It’s your world. You’ve got a social security number. Everyone knows where you came from. An adult, especially one that looks like me, popping out of nowhere prompts questions, questions that we don’t want answered in public, starting with ‘where did you get them ears?’” His eyebrows drew together, and his voice took on the tone of a moronic teenager.
“I’m sorry. I feel awkward asking such dumb questions, but I don’t how else to ask what I want to know.”
Holl’s face relaxed and he slapped Keith companionably on the back, taking him solidly in the kidneys. Keith winced. “The trouble with you is that you have a basically honest heart. Haven’t you heard it said to you by a thousand professors, Keith Doyle, that there are no dumb questions?”
“… Just dumb people,” Keith finished self-deprecatingly. The curious illumination in the ceiling was dimming, shading more toward a sunset finish: reds and oranges on one side, and already blue-black on the other. Some special effects. Whoever did the programming on that ceiling was good, Keith thought. It had been cloudy and rainy all day outside, and it was already long past dark up there, but here he was watching the sun go down in a perfectly clear sky. He envied the elves for being able to delay sunset as long as they wanted. They sure knew how to live. The little children were being called in by their parents. “Look, I’d better go,” Keith insisted. “I’ve got some homework to finish tonight.”
“Mm-hmm. Late for us, too. You’re welcome here. I’ll ask you to guest again sometime. You’ve not met my family, yet.”
“Yeah, I’d love to. Thanks for asking me! When would you like to come to dinner in the dorm? The food’s not much to brag about, but there’s lots of it.”
A broad smile lit Holl’s face. “I’ll come with joy any time you like, if only to see how you explain me away to your friends, Keith Doyle.”
“I’ll think of something,” Keith promised, smiling down at him.
“That’s what I’m looking forward to.”
***