Tunnels 01, Tunnels

particular, as he rummaged through a bedside cupboard, he thought of his real mother. He wondered where she was right at that very moment, if indeed she was still alive at all. The only person in the long history of the Colony ever to evade the Styx and survive. He set his jaw with a determined look as he caught his reflection in a mirror. Well, now there were going to be two more Jeromes with that distinction.
    On a high shelf in his mother's closet he found what he was looking for, a pair of bendy plastic sunglasses she wore on the rare occasions she ventured out in the summer. He went back to Cal, who was squinting at the television in the darkened room, completely absorbed by the midmorning talk show on which the perma-tanned and obsequious host, oozing sincerity, was comforting the inconsolable mother of a teenage drug addict. Cal's eyes were a little red and still wet with tears, but he said nothing and indeed did not shift his gaze once from the screen as Will placed the glasses on his head, looping an elastic band around the arms to hold them firmly in place.
    "Better?" Will asked.
    "Much better, yes," Cal said, adjusting them. "But I'm really hungry," he added, rubbing his stomach. "And I'm so cold." He rattled his teeth together dramatically.
    "Showers first. That'll warm you up," Will said as he lifted his arm to sample the accumulated odor of many days' sweat. "And some clean clothes."
    "Showers?" Cal peered at him blankly through the sunglass lenses.
    Will managed to get the boiler fired up and went first, the hot water stinging his flesh with painful relief as the clouds of steam enveloped him in an ecstasy of forgetfulness. Then it was Cal's turn. Will showed his fascinated brother how the shower worked and left him to it. From the closet in his bedroom he dug out clean sets of clothes for himself and Cal, although his brother's needed a little adjustment to make them fit.
    "I'm a real Topsoiler now!" Cal announced, admiring the baggy jeans with rolled-up cuffs and the voluminous shirt with two sweaters on top of it.
    "Yeah, very trendsetting," Will said with a laugh.
    Bartleby was more problematic. It took much coaxing by Cal to even get the shivering animal as far as the bathroom door, and then they had to push him for the rear, like a recalcitrant donkey, to get him in. As if he knew what was in store in the steamy room, he leaped away and tried to hide under the sink.
    "Come on, Bart, you stinker, into the bath!" Cal ordered, finally running out of patience, and the cat grudgingly crept into the bath and looked at them with the most hangdog of expressions. He let out a warbled, low whine when the water first trickled over his sagging skin, and, deciding he'd had enough, his paws scrabbled on the plastic of the tub as he tried to get out. But with Will holding him down they managed to finish the task, although all three of them were completely drenched by the end of the exercise.
    Once out of the bath, Bartleby ricocheted around the bedrooms like a whirling dervish while Will took great pleasure in ransacking Rebecca's room. As he chucked all her incredibly neatly folded clothes onto the floor, he wondered how in the world he was going to find anything that was remotely suitable to dress a giant cat. But in the end some brown legwarmers were cut down to size for the animal's hind legs and an old purple sweater took care of his top half. Will found a pair of Bugs Bunny sunglasses in Rebecca's desk drawer, and these stayed in place on the cat's head once a yellow-and-black-stirped Tibetan hat was pulled firmly down.
    Bartleby looked quite bizarre in his new outfit. Out on the landing, the two brothers stood back to admire their handiwork, promptly falling into hysterics.
    "Who's a pretty boy, then?" Cal chuckled between outbursts of breathless laughter.
    "Better-looking than most around here!" Will said.
    "Don't you worry, Bart," Cal said soothingly, patting the peeved animal on the back. "Very... uh... striking," he managed to say before they both lapsed once again into uncontrolled laughter. Behind the pink-tinted lenses, the indignant Bartleby watched them sideways out of his large eyes.
    Fortunately, Rebecca, much as Will cursed her, had left the freezer in the utility room well stocked. He read the microwave instructions and heated up three beef dinners complete with dumplings and green beans. They wolfed these down in the kitchen, Bartleby standing with both paws on the table, his tongue rasping