He opened his eyes, then he sat up. The room was at least as large as the big dorm, and might have been larger. It was hard to judge, since it looked completely different from the big dorm and was, in comparison, almost empty. Instead of twenty beds, side by side, it had one very large bed, where Jarl lay, and a big dresser in a corner, then a desk under the wall.
The man he’d seen the day before was walking towards the bed, carrying a tray. “Good morning, sleepyhead. Jane said that I should bring you food so that you didn’t freak at the robot servers, which you were likely to do otherwise. I thought you might be starving, as much as you were tired, considering you fell asleep and nothing would wake you and I had to carry you in.”
He set a tray on the little table next to the bed. Jarl stared at it agog. “Yeah. Jane said they didn’t look like they’d fed you much. Considering that you boys are their pride and hope for the future, you’d think— But they only know one way to do things, and when you consider humans tools . . .” He shrugged. “Anyway, I don’t have time to talk to you just now except to tell you quickly that we have given you a temporary spoofing treatment. A more . . . permanent one can be procured, but it will have to be elsewhere, because it needs several treatments. This one will keep you safe while Jane and I . . . While we do what we came here to do.”
Jarl set the tray on his knees and started eating. There were three eggs, and large buttered slices of bread, and orange juice, and milk, and thick slices of bacon. Surely there was enough here for three people? But Mr. Alterman didn’t stop him as he ate, and after a while, Jarl drank a sip of the milk and said, “Please, sir, can you put me on the other side of the zipway tonight, so I can get back to Hoffnungshaus?”
Alterman frowned. “You want to go back?”
“I have to go back. Otherwise if I’m caught I’ll be killed. I—”
“You didn’t understand a word I said, did you? You don’t need to go back. We can do a very minor operation and remove your artifact ring. And the genetics can be changed permanently, given enough time and treatments.”
“But they’ll catch me before that!”
The man smiled. It was the first time that Jarl saw him smile, and it was a surprisingly cheery expression. “Not where we’re taking you. But first . . . There are other people we are here to help. So Jane and I have to go out. We’ll be back before tonight. We’ll arrange it all then. Meanwhile you have this room. No one should come in. I recommend you bathe, and then—Jane put some clothes in that dresser over there. Dress in clean clothes, and wait for us. Don’t talk to anyone. There is a gem reader there and some gems. Or you can sleep. It will be a long trip for all of us, so you might as well be rested.”
He left before Jarl finished eating. He went through a door on the side of the room, into what looked like a connecting room. Alterman left the door open, and Jarl could hear him talking and Jane responding, but he had no idea what they were saying.
By the time he set his empty tray aside, they were gone. He knew this, because he poked his head in the room next door, and found it empty except for some luggage in the corner.
Then Jarl used the fresher and later he would be ashamed of how long he took about it. Part of it was that he’d never seen a fresher like this. They had freshers at Hoffnungshaus, of course. But washing consisted of standing beneath tepid jets of water and scrubbing as fast as you could before the jet turned on again to rinse you.
Here the jets of water massaged and soothed, and there was a little machine by the side of the shower which cleaned your clothes at the press of a button. Only Jarl was in his underwear—he suddenly blushed at the idea the woman might have undressed him, an idea so strange as to be unbelievable—and he couldn’t find the suit they’d given him the day before.
The fresher had mirrors, too. Hoffnungshaus didn’t. He’d seen himself before, of course, on darkened windows and other surfaces. But he’d never seen himself this clearly: too-thin freckled face, wide green eyes and his hair . . . He saw what Jane had meant. His hair was a wild straggle all around his face. He could not cut it—but after bathing—in a real tub, immersed in water, and with all the time in the world, he found an elastic strip and tied it back. Then he found a suit that fit him in the drawers in the dresser in his room. It was royal blue, and the type of clothes he saw teenagers wearing in holos—almost shapeless and stretchy. But it felt comfortable, it was not too thin or too tight or too small, and it looked like something he might have worn if he’d been one of the normal people out there, or their children.