They came in the dark to a well-carpentered door. Baslim shoved the boy through, followed him and closed it, pressed his thumb to a personal lock, touched a switch; light came on. “Well, lad, we’re home.”
The boy stared. Long ago he had given up having expectations of any sort. But what he saw was not anything he could have expected. It was a modest decent small living room, tight, neat, and clean. Ceiling panels gave pleasant glareless light. Furniture was sparse but adequate. The boy looked around in awe; poor as it was, it was better than anything he remembered having lived in.
The beggar let go his shoulder, hopped to a stack of shelves, put down his bowl, and took up a complicated something. It was not until the beggar shucked his clout and strapped the thing in place that the boy figured out what it was: an artificial leg, so well articulated that it rivaled the efficiency of flesh and blood. The man stood up, took trousers from a chest, drew them on, and hardly seemed crippled. “Come here,” he said, in Interlingua.
The boy did not move. Baslim repeated it in other languages, shrugged, took the boy by an arm, led him into a room beyond. It was small, both kitchen and wash room; Baslim filled a pan, handed the boy a bit of soap and said, “Take a bath.” He pantomimed what he wanted.
The boy stood in mute stubbornness. The man sighed, picked up a brush suitable for floors and started as if to scrub the boy. He stopped with stiff bristles touching skin and repeated, “Take a bath. Wash yourself,” saying it in Interlingua and System English.
The boy hesitated, took off his clout and started slowly to lather himself.
Baslim said, “That’s better,” picked up the filthy breech clout, dropped it in a waste can, laid out a towel, and, turning to the kitchen side, started preparing a meal.
A few minutes later he turned and the boy was gone.
Unhurriedly he walked into the living room, found the boy naked and wet and trying very hard to open the door. The boy saw him but redoubled his futile efforts. Baslim tapped him on the shoulder, hooked a thumb toward the smaller room. “Finish your bath.”
He turned away. The boy slunk after him.
When the boy was washed and dry, Baslim put the stew he had been freshening back on the burner, turned the switch to “simmer” and opened a cupboard, from which he removed a bottle and daubs of vegetable flock. Clean, the boy was a pattern of scars and bruises, unhealed sores and cuts and abrasions, old and new. “Hold still.”
The stuff stung; the boy started to wiggle. “Hold still!” Baslim repeated in a pleasant firm tone and slapped him. The boy relaxed, tensing only as the medicine touched him. The man looked carefully at an old ulcer on the boy’s knee, then, humming softly, went again to the cupboard, came back and injected the boy in one buttock–first acting out the idea that he would slap his head off his shoulders if he failed to take it quietly. That done, he found an old cloth, motioned the boy to wrap himself a clout, turned back to his cooking.
Presently Baslim placed big bowls of stew on the table in the living room, first moving chair and table so that the boy might sit on the chest while eating. He added a handful of fresh green lentils and a couple of generous chunks of country bread, blade and hard. “Soup’s on, lad. Come and get it.”
The boy sat down on the edge of the chest but remained poised for flight and did not eat.
Baslim stopped eating. “What’s the matter?” He saw the boy’s eyes flick toward the door, then drop. “Oh, so that’s it.” He got up, steadying himself to get his false leg under him, went to the door, pressed his thumb in the lock. He faced the boy. “The door is unlocked,” he announced. “Either eat your dinner, or leave.” He repeated it several ways and was pleased when he thought that he detected understanding on using the language he surmised might be the slave’s native tongue.