Chapter 26 Wasteland Trash

The mess hall smelled of eggs.

Real ones. Out of shells. I could tell from the doorway. They were in great steel trays at the end of a long counter, yellow and steaming, next to trays of bread and bowls of something brown and a tank of water with a tap on it. There were long tables, six of them, with benches. The lamps over them were bright and white.

Forty people were already eating. The talk was loud. It had been loud since the lamp over the barracks door went white and a bell rang somewhere outside, and everyone got up and dressed and walked out together in a long gray stream, past my bed, without looking at it.

I'd waited until they'd gone. Then I followed.

Now I stood in the mess hall doorway, and the talk stopped. Spreading out from the door. Rings in water.

I walked to the counter. I took a tray. I took eggs, and a piece of bread, and water. Nobody else was at the counter. It was very quiet. My boots were loud on the floor.

Then I turned round with my tray and looked for somewhere to sit.

The tables had sorted themselves the way the hall had yesterday. In families. The red-haired ones at a table by the far wall, loud even now that everyone else was quiet, with the boy who'd been smiling at the center of it. The white-blond girls at the end of a table near the middle, eating in silence, very straight. Other families, other tables. Dark heads, brown heads, a pair of twins with gray skin who looked faintly like stone.

And at the table nearest the counter, the dark-haired group from yesterday. Five of them, all dressed exactly alike, all sitting the same way. And the tall boy with the narrow face at the head of it, watching me with his chin on his hand.

The lamps over his table were flickering.

There was one empty table. In the far corner, by the wall. I started toward it.

The lamp over my head went out.

Not flickered. Went out. With a sharp crack, like a stick breaking, and a little shower of white sparks that fell around me and fizzled on the floor. The shadow came down over me all at once. The rest of the hall stayed bright.

I stopped.

Someone laughed. Not the tall boy. A big one sitting beside him, broad as a door, with a heavy jaw and a shaved head, who laughed loud and long, slapping the table.

The lamp came back on.

Then it went out again. Crack. Sparks.

On. Off. On. Off. Each time with that crack, each time with sparks falling round me in a ring, like a little storm that had followed me across the room and stopped right over my head.

I looked at the tall boy.

He hadn't moved. His chin was still on his hand. But the fingers of his other hand, lying flat on the table, were twitching. Very slightly. Every time the lamp went out.

"Sorry," he said. He had a cool, careful voice, like somebody choosing every word. "Bad wiring down here. It doesn't like strangers."

The big one laughed harder.

"Especially," said the tall boy, "wasteland trash."

I didn't say anything.

The lamp went out again over my head. The sparks fell. A few of them landed on my tray, on the eggs, and went out with a hiss.

I'd thought about this. On the bed, last night, in the dark, with the photograph on the shelf over my head. I'd thought about what it would be like, being here. Being looked at. I'd thought about the hill. And the line of glass, running across the flats toward the dome, following my eyes.

I'd thought: whatever happens, I keep my eyes down.

So I looked at my tray. At the eggs with the sparks going out on them.

The tall boy stood up.

He came round the end of his table, not fast. He was tall, as tall as me, nearly, but thinner. Narrow everywhere. His dark hair was cut very short and very neat. As he walked, the air around him did something I could feel on my skin. It prickled. The fine hairs on my arms stood up.

He stopped a couple of yards away.

"Sigmund Friese," he said. As if it should mean something to me.

It didn't. I'd never heard it. I didn't say so.

"My father sits on the Council," said Sigmund Friese. "He was one of the first back under the Retention Act, and he's voted on every directive since. He's told me all about your family." A pause. "Your father turned a soldier into steam on his front porch. A man doing his job. Nineteen years old. My father knew his mother."

The big boy had stopped laughing. The whole hall was very quiet.

"Then he wouldn't serve," said Sigmund. "Ours did. Every family in this room. Our parents signed what they were asked to sign and did what they were asked to do, for nineteen years, so we could grow up in here. Yours went off to live in the dirt, because he thought he was too good to wear a collar." He tilted his head. "And now you come in through that door like you own it. Because you made a hole in the ground."

He said hole in the ground the way you'd say pile of dung.

The air around him was crackling now. I could hear it. A faint, dry, snapping sound, like a fire catching.

"And somebody," said Sigmund, "was humming last night. In the dark. Like a baby." His eyes went very briefly to the end of one of the tables, where a small, thin boy with a sharp face and big ears had gone completely white and was staring at his plate. Then back to me. "Was that you, Dask? Singing yourself to sleep? Missing your mother?"

I looked up.

I didn't mean to. My eyes came up off the tray all by themselves and landed on his face.

And I felt it. The floor of me giving way. The hot thing underneath coming up, all at once, the way it had on the porch with Crane's back turned. The air in front of me went tight. The steel tray in my hands started to hum.

Sigmund felt it too.

I watched him feel it. I watched the cool careful face change, for half a second, into something else. Something younger. Something that had heard about the crater from its sister, who'd cried for an hour.

He didn't step back. I'll give him that, for always. He stood there in the middle of the mess hall with the air crackling around him and his narrow face gone white, and he didn't take a single step back.

I shut my eyes.

I stood there with my eyes shut and the tray humming in my hands. Not here. Not him. Not anyone. In. Out. I felt for the bottom of it, the way Mother said. I felt it coming. I held on.

The tray stopped humming.

When I opened my eyes, I was looking at the floor.

"Look at that," said the big one.

He'd got up from the table. I heard the bench scrape. I heard him coming, heavy, across the floor, and I kept my eyes down and watched his boots arrive in front of mine. Big boots. Scuffed at the toes.

"Shut his eyes," he said. "Like a kid in the dark. Siggy said boo and he shut his eyes." He laughed. "Big crater man."

"Leave it, Brock," said Sigmund. His voice had gone a little strange.

Brock didn't leave it. He put one huge hand flat on the edge of my tray and pushed it down, slowly, so it tilted, and my eggs and my bread and my water slid off it, all together, and hit the floor with a wet slap between our boots.

"Oops," said Brock.

I looked at the eggs on the floor.

Real eggs. Out of shells. I'd watched Mr. Dunmore crack one, two weeks ago, and it had been the first time I'd ever seen it, and I'd stood in the doorway like an idiot.

Brock's hand came up off the tray and onto my chest. Flat. The way the soldier at the locks held his rifle. So I'd know.

I felt his skin change.

Right there, through my shirt. His palm, which had been ordinary warm skin, went hard. Hard and cold and heavy, like a stone. Like a sheet of iron. I could feel it spread up his wrist, under his sleeve. Whatever his family was, that was what they did. They turned themselves to armor.

He started to push.

And his sleeve caught fire.

It went up all at once, from the cuff to the elbow, with a soft whump. Not a big fire. Bright, though. Orange and yellow and very hot, so hot I could feel it on my face.

Brock yelled. He snatched his hand back off my chest and stared at his arm and yelled again and started beating at it with his other hand, which went to iron too, so the slaps rang like a bell. The fire went out as fast as it had started. All of it, at once, as if somebody had pinched it.

There was a large black hole in Brock's sleeve. His arm inside it was perfectly fine. Iron-gray, and fine, and not even pink.

"Oh," said a voice behind me. "Sorry. Bad wiring down here. It doesn't like bullies."

I turned round.

It was the red-haired boy. The one who'd been smiling in the assembly hall. He was standing a few feet behind me with a piece of toast in one hand and nothing in the other, except a small brass thing, like a lighter, with a wheel on it, that he was spinning between his fingers. He had a long freckled face and a wide mouth and hair the color of a stove's heart, sticking up in every direction.

He was smiling. Not a nice smile, at that moment. Not at Brock.

"You burned me," said Brock, staring.

"Didn't, though," said the red-haired boy. "Burned your shirt. Very different. If I'd burned you, you'd know it." He took a bite of his toast. "And you'd have stopped pushing a lot sooner."

Brock looked at Sigmund.

Sigmund was still standing a couple of yards away. The crackle in the air around him had died down. He was looking at the red-haired boy with an expression I couldn't read. Not frightened. Not angry, exactly. Calculating.

"This isn't your business, Calder," he said.

"Everything's my business," said the red-haired boy cheerfully. "I'm terribly nosy. Ask anyone. Ask my sister." He nodded toward the far table, where a girl with the same flame-colored hair, a year or so younger, was sitting with her arms crossed, watching all of this with an expression of absolute disgust. "She'll tell you. She'll tell you at length."

The girl didn't say anything. She just glared. At him. And then at me.

Sigmund looked at the red-haired boy for a long moment. Then at me. Then at the eggs on the floor.

"Come on, Brock," he said.

He turned and went back to his table, unhurried. Brock followed him, holding his burnt sleeve, and gave me one long look on the way that promised it wasn't finished.

The lamp over my head stayed on.

The talk came back to the mess hall slowly, a table at a time.

The red-haired boy looked down at my eggs on the floor. Then at me.

"Shame about the eggs," he said. "They're the best thing they do here. Everything else tastes like cardboard."

I didn't say anything. I didn't know what to say. Nobody in the dome had stood next to me on purpose before. Not Miss Pell, who'd been sent. Not Dr. Halloway, who'd been doing her job. Nobody my age. Nobody who didn't have to.

"Liam," he said. He wiped his hand on his trousers and held it out. "Liam Calder."

I looked at it. A long freckled hand, with calluses on the fingers from the brass lighter, and a little burn scar across the back of it, old and white.

I shook it.

It was warm. Very warm. Warmer than a hand should be, like holding a cup of tea.

"Lucas," I said.

"Oh, I know," said Liam Calder. "Everybody knows. You're the most interesting thing that's happened down here in six years. You're going to have to do something very boring very fast if you want people to stop talking about you." He let go of my hand and jerked his head toward the far wall, where the red-haired table was. "Come and sit with us. We're the loud table. Nobody will hear anything anybody says about you over us. That's the main advantage."

He was already walking. He didn't wait to see if I'd come.

I looked down at the eggs on the floor.

Then I went back to the counter, and got another tray, and more eggs, and followed him.