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about Potter?” Tommy asked the second Jack.
    "Potter?”
    “My cat!”
    “He seems happy enough.  I'll bring him along later."
    At the entrance, the second Jack waved Tommy goodbye. 
"You can learn the rest of your job when Jack gets through with you.”
    As they continued down the trail, Tommy looked for ways to
escape.  If this place is underground, I'll be able to find the exit
tunnel.  That waterfall could get me close to where I came in.  The central
column won't help, though; it looks the same from every side.
    Lights around the top of the column provided sunshine for
the vast cavern and forced Tommy to squint when he looked in that direction. 
The column's base was stranger than the column.  His mind wanted the column to
cast a shadow, and there was none.
    As they neared the column, Tommy looked back at the
waterfall to mark its location.  From this perspective, he saw a cliff towering
above the trees, and water pouring through a flat hole high in the cliff's
side, not from the roof.
    Jack led the way through a door in the base of the column
and down two flights of metal stairs.  Rotting leaf litter covered the stair
treads and made them slippery.  The narrow corridor at the bottom smelled of
sweat and ammonia, like the locker room at his school. 
    "Pay attention," Jack said.  "You’ll be
coming this way."  Five turns later, Tommy felt as though he was being led
through a gigantic maze.
    The aroma of cooking food gradually overwhelmed the faint
stench of mildew and too many people living close together.  The smells made
him realize that breakfast was a long time and a long walk away.  Another turn
took them into a broad room crowded with tables and chattering people, all of
them short, with narrow torsos and oversized heads like Jack's. 
    "This is our meal room,” said Jack.  “This ain't the
only one, but you'll be eating here while you’re working for me." 
    A wave of silence moved across the room as more and more of
them noticed Tommy standing next to Jack. 
    "Don’t seem like much," said a voice with the same
twang.
    "Why’d they make a special trip for him?" said
another.
    "That’s enough," Jack said.  "You know I
don’t know more about this than you.  And this feral sure don’t know nothing. 
This here is Tommy.  That’s not a name of ours, but it’s what we’re to call
him."  He turned to Tommy.  "I’ll not introduce you to anyone now. 
You’ll meet some of them later, those you'll work with.  Let’s get something to
eat."
    In a food line much like the one at his school cafeteria, a
small gray woman with the same big head and thin body as Jack gave Tommy a bowl
of the mush he had eaten earlier.  When he had his food, Jack pushed him onto a
low bench next to a table against the wall. 
    Each time Tommy looked up from his bowl, he saw someone
watching him.  In his school cafeteria he had been invisible.  The only time he
had been noticed was when he had stumbled into a school jock and had been
knocked to the floor.  He wasn't invisible here.  The adults said little as
they watched him, but the younger people sitting in tight bunches at different
tables whispered and laughed as they glanced at him.  A small group of girls,
who might have been his age, were especially attentive, giggling when he
dropped food from his spoon or wiped his mouth.  The giggling increased when he
returned their stares. 
    He didn't like the expressions on five boys sitting at a
table close to the giggling girls.  When their voices got loud, Jack noticed
and went over to talk with them. 
    Tommy pushed his empty bowl away and stared at the wall.  He
struggled to keep from crying again.  He couldn't do anything about some silly
girls and stupid boys.  They were all kidnappers.  When he escaped, the police
would come here and make them all pay.
    After the meal, Jack took Tommy down still another hallway
to a room containing four bunks.  "Shower and toilet is down the passage,”
Jack