The Homeward Bounders

  Adam lent me a white shirt, and he wore the clothes he had worn to play that game in. Vanessa had what she called a white boiler suit. She had even found white boots. When the sign of Shen was fixed to the front of the boiler suit, she looked almost like a demon hunter too. Konstam was enchanted with the way she looked. He held both her hands and told her so.

  “Billing and cooing!” Adam said disgustedly.

  “Shut up, toad,” said Vanessa.

  After that, we took the objects with odd names off Frederick M. Allington and hung them round our necks or strapped them on our wrists as Konstam told us. Adam said Fred looked a little naked now. He fetched a newspaper that had arrived on the doormat and gave it to Fred to hold under his bony arm.

  “It’s the thirteenth today,” he said, and showed me the paper. It was Sunday July 13th. “I hope that’s an omen for Them.”

  “You don’t talk of omens,” Konstam said severely. “Here is a knife each. Are we ready to go now?”

  We were ready. Vanessa and Adam had both written letters to their parents—they told the exact truth in them and explained all about Them, even though I’d tried to persuade them not to. Vanessa put her letter on the hall table. Adam put his between Fred’s teeth. Then we got into the unpoetic car, with a lot of squeezing, and drove to Their fort again.

  Third time lucky, I kept telling myself nervously, while we were creeping in the uncanny silence among the bushes. The silence really got me, while we were crossing the dip and making for the other side of the fort, where the door must be. I kept looking at Joris to encourage myself. Joris was so happy after what Konstam had told him that he was smiling even now.

  We got to the gravel terrace on that side of the triangular building. And there was the door. It seemed to be plate-glass, with a handle in it. I could see the canal arches reflected in it. Konstam had said there was no point being secret, so we came boldly out of the bushes and crossed the gravel to the door. I could see all our white-clothed reflections in it as we came. I didn’t blame Adam for only seeing those reflections. I could barely see Them beyond. And that was not right. It was different from the way I had seen things at the Old Fort. They had both turned to look at us. They seemed to be smiling.

  “They knew we were coming,” I said.

  “Of course,” said Konstam. He put his white glove firmly on the door handle. “It stands to reason They know. Adam and Vanessa must show on Their table. I must be missing from mine.” He jerked the handle.

  I had a moment of pure panic. “Then—”

  “I’m relying on you three random factors,” said Konstam. I told you Konstam was brave. Nothing would have possessed me to go there, if I’d realized They’d know. “This door is shut. Helen.”

  Helen came forward, rolling up her sleeve, and her arm turned to a bar of light as she did it. Behind the glass, They looked uneasily at one another and moved back.

  “Now They’re worried,” said Konstam. “I thought They would be.”

  Helen stretched our her bar of light—it still worked like an arm—and touched the glass of the door. The glass shriveled and writhed like hot cellophane. Cracks spread out in it from Helen’s near invisible fingers. Then it was not there any more. There was just a dim space. Konstam leaped into this space with a ringing shout, and Joris and Helen followed him. As Vanessa went through, I took Adam’s arm to lead him after, but he pushed me off.

  “It’s all right. I can see Them now.” And he took his glasses off as if it was more comfortable not seeing Them too well.

  Inside, They were retreating down the triangular room, hurriedly from Konstam and very, very warily from Helen. Joris was in front of the massive door at the other end, ahead of Them. Adam, Vanessa and I spread out on either side of the machines, to make sure They didn’t try to get away this end. By that time, Konstam and Helen were going round either end of the table, under the great hanging dice. They seemed to be trapped.

  I couldn’t resist taking a look at the table. It was amazing. It didn’t seem big enough to hold all it did—but there it all was, everything in the world, down to the tiniest detail. Whatever you looked at, you saw clear, clear, and very small. I saw a mud-brown war going on somewhere in Africa, and another in the north of India. I saw a yacht capsize in an ocean. I saw the very city we were in, with tiny cars and minute people going about their Sunday business. You could see into churches and cars and houses if you wanted, although they all had roofs—I don’t know how that was done. I even saw a tiny black triangle where we should have been ourselves. But that was the one thing you couldn’t see into.

  I only glanced for a second. When I looked up again, the room was one of many triangular rooms. There were rooms all round, and above and beyond and below, just as I had seen them before. Only this time, They were not strolling over for a look. They were hurrying towards us urgently.

  “Oh my Gawd!” said Adam.

  There was an awful noise. It was inhuman. I couldn’t tell whether it was a hooter or a bell—it was something like both, and quite deafening. While it was sounding, the triangles were all melting and moving and expanding. You felt as if you were tipping all ways at once. It made me dizzy. And it happened in no time at all. When it had finished, we were in what I’m now sure is the real Real Place. It was the one Joris had seen. A vast, vast hall stretched not-quite-seeably as far as we could tell in any direction, with tables and tables and tables, and dice, and multitudes of machines. And They were there in multitudes too, closing swiftly in on us, horrible and hard-to-see, in a host of gray cloaks.

  It all happened so quickly, that was the trouble. “Back to back!” Konstam shouted. Joris was already gone by then, among gray cloaks. Helen yelled something in another language and ran at Them. The beam of light that her arm cast in here whirled across a gray group of Them. I saw Their faces in it clearly for the first time. I don’t want to talk about that. They were too horrible.

  Then Helen was gone. She was not swallowed up or anything. She just wasn’t there. Konstam grabbed for Vanessa, but she was gone. Then Konstam was. I looked round for Adam, but he wasn’t there either. Then I went berserk. I turned round, and there was one of Them just behind me. I went at him with my demon knife. He went backwards very hurriedly. All I got was his cloak. Then They were all round me, and I was sort of hurled aside. They weren’t gentle. I landed with the most awful bang and cracked my head on something.

  When I had finished rolling about—I was not quite knocked silly, but not really there either—I sat up on grass. It was the same kind of mild, doubtful sunlight that we had set off to war in. The thing that I had cracked my head on was a little white statue of a man in chains. I glowered at it. It was so stupidly artistic—not like the real thing at all.

  The first thing I thought was: I’m Home!

  Then I thought: No I’m not. This is Adam’s world. But none of it has happened.

  Then I knew it had happened, and I got up—using the statue’s head to help me—and looked round. Sure enough, I was down in the dip of a small triangular garden or park. There were bushes uphill all round me, a pink fort-like building half hidden up ahead, and the arches of a canal marching across the sky at one side. And I was quite alone. Somehow, I’d hoped that at least one of the others would have been slung here with me. But I could see it made sense to split us up.

  At that, I felt terrible. My throat ached, and I could hardly see the canal arches when I turned that way. I knew that there was hardly one chance in a million that I would run into any of the others again. The Bounds are boundlessly huge. I was back in Adam’s world all right. I squeezed my eyes shut, and when I opened them again I could see it was Adam’s world from the fancy yellow brickwork of the canal arches. Where the rest of them were, They alone knew. But it looked to me that Vanessa’s theory about overloading the Bounds didn’t work. Because I knew, as sure as I knew I stood there in Adam’s world, that the rest of my friends were scattered far and wide as Homeward Bounders. They couldn’t kill any of us
with all that demon protection. They hadn’t been able to kill Joris. So it followed that we all had to be discards.

  Then I thought I’d check up on Them. They obviously didn’t care that I was wandering about in Their park. So I said to myself that I didn’t care about Them either. And I went up among the bushes and crunched out on the gravel and took a look at the door. It was back again. It looked just like glass. But I didn’t think it was glass. They were behind it. They looked rather tense when They saw me. They didn’t pretend to be busy. They stood together and stared.

  I wanted Them to know I didn’t care. I still had my demon knife in my hand. Just to show Them, I slashed at the pink granite of the building, beside the door. I think there was a deal of virtue in those signs Konstam had put on the knife. You can’t usually carve granite with a knife. But this knife made a nice deep mark. So I slashed away until I had carved out that sign I had never seen, the rarest one of all. A joke. It said: YOU CAN TELL THEM YOU’RE A HOMEWARD BOUNDER. Inside, They seemed to relax when They saw that was all I was doing. That annoyed me. I didn’t see what They had to be scared of in me, but I didn’t mind Them being scared. I looked at the sign. It was not so unlike Shen. I squinted down at Shen on my chest to make sure. It only needed two more strokes to be Shen. So I put those two strokes in. The knife broke on the last one, so I threw it down and went away. I didn’t care how They felt any longer.

  It was hard work getting over the wall. It made my arm hurt a lot. But I got over and went up along the side street. There was Vanessa’s unpoetic car parked at the top of the street. That would stay there until they did whatever they did with leftover cars. Vanessa wouldn’t be back for some time—if ever. I went round the corner to the front of the pink granite building. No harpoons. But there were broken off ends of railings along the wall in front. I went and looked at the front door. There was a plate on this one too. It didn’t say as much as the one I had remembered. Just THE OLD FORT and a crowned anchor underneath.

  “I suppose They call them all Old Forts,” I said, and I went away, uphill through the empty shopping center. Funny—in every world I’ve known, when a place is empty there is always paper blowing about. A depressing fact.

  I didn’t know where I was going—but I sort of did, if you know what I mean. The cold foot ache was beginning to gather in my chest, worse than I had ever known it. I suppose I knew, even then. I went on and up, through a pattern of streets that I knew from Home, past buildings I had never seen before. And at last I was in a part where the pattern was awfully, dreadfully, drearily familiar. And I thought: Do I want to go on? And I did want to. I went round a corner and up a short hill and came to a school. It was exactly where my old school, Churt House, would have been, but it was nearly quite different.

  There was a lot more of this school. It was behind a long railing. Most of it was the square new kind of building Adam’s world seemed to go in for, with lots of windows. But I went along to a high gate made of bars, with a painted shield fixed to the bars. The design on the shield was the same as the badge on Adam’s blazer. And I peered through the gate, among the new buildings. One building in the midst of them was older, and small and chapel-shaped. I knew that building all right—though not as well as I had thought. I stepped back and looked at the gate again to be sure. The school’s name was on a board by the gate. It said:

  QUEEN ELIZABETH ACADEMY

  (formerly CHURT HOUSE)

  Then I knew, really. But there was something else I had to make sure of first. I went on, still uphill, to the street with trees and broad pavements, where Ahasuerus had been asleep, and up the alley where Joris’s knife had got me. There was still a little dark patch of my blood there.

  Adam’s house was fourth along of the big pleasant houses in the street above the alley. I went into the drive. The trees hid the house. I didn’t notice until I was right up to the house that there was an extremely nice-looking car outside the front door. Really that car was almost poetic. Beyond it, the front door was open.

  Oh well, I thought. There’ll be someone to ask. And I ought to explain to their parents anyway.

  I didn’t ring the doorbell. I just went straight in. Both parents were there. She was standing in the kitchen doorway, in the good light, reading Vanessa’s letter. She was a nice-looking fussy lady who wore glasses. He was standing by Fred, reading Adam’s letter. He was a tall man, thick-built, and he wore a little beard. Both of them were still and hushed with worry. While I stood there, the big black rat I’d caught for Helen yesterday went scampering across the hall. She looked at it, watched it scamper, and didn’t really notice it. That was how worried she was. She was the kind who would have torn the place apart over that rat in the ordinary way.

  I decided not to bother her. He was the one I needed to ask anyway. He had already looked up and seen me. I don’t know if he saw the rat at all.

  “Are you Dr. Macready?” I said.

  “Yes, I am,” he said. He noticed nothing but my size at first. “I’m afraid Adam’s not here at the moment,” he said.

  “I know he isn’t,” I said. “I came to ask you something.”

  He made himself look at me a little more at that. And, as he looked, I could see him trying to collect his doctordom. It was like someone trying to put on a coat when the sleeves are inside out. He couldn’t really get into being a doctor, but he did his best. “About that arm?” he said. “I’m not really on call at the moment, you know. You’d better take it down to Casualty at the Royal Free.”

  I looked at my arm. Blood was oozing through the shirt Adam had lent me. Not surprising. “I didn’t come about that,” I said.

  He went on trying to get into being a doctor. He really tried. “Playing a dressing-up game, were you?” he said. He had seen Shen on my chest. “And it went and got rough, I suppose.”

  I began to wonder if he’d ever listen to me. “See here,” I said. “I just came to ask you a couple of questions. When you’ve answered them, I’ll go. I know you don’t want to be bothered with me just now.”

  That made him look at me in a different way. Being a doctor, I suppose he was used to dealing with people in funny states of mind. Anyway, he could see I was in at least as bad a way as he was. “What do you want to know?” he said cautiously.

  “Your grandmother,” I said. “The lady doctor. You’ve an album in there with pictures of her. What was her name?”

  “Elsie,” he said. “Elsie Hamilton Macready.”

  So it was Elsie. I would have liked to ask how she came by the expensive shoes, but I let that pass. Elsie could get hold of anything she set her mind on. “She must have married one of the Macready boys in the next court,” I said. “We used to play football with them. Which one was it? The eldest—John—or the other one—Will?”

  “No, no. It was Graham,” he said, staring at me. “The youngest.”

  “Graham!” I said. “I hardly knew Graham! He was no good at football at all. He read books all the time.” But he was Elsie’s age, come to think of it. “Do you know about the rest of Elsie’s family?” I asked. “Her brothers. She had two brothers.”

  Now he was really staring. “Robert went to Australia,” he said. “The elder one, James, disappeared when he was a boy. They dragged the canal for him.”

  And now you’re going to do it for Adam, I thought. I ought to have gone then. He was staring at me as if I were Fred suddenly come to life and speaking. Which I was in a way. She was beginning to stare too. “Two more things,” I said. “What’s that game people dress up in white for?”

  “Eh?” he said. “You mean cricket?”

  “Oh,” I said. I’d heard of the game, of course. “Cricket! That really foxed me, not knowing it was cricket. We only played football. I thought you played cricket in shiny top hats, with a bent sort of bat.”

  “They certainly used to,” he said. “But that was over a hundred years ago.”

  “It’s no good accusing me of fraud,” I said. I was past caring. “That
really is all I know of cricket. I only got firsthand knowledge two days ago. One last thing. Do you mind taking that newspaper from under Fred’s arm and reading me out the date on it?”

  He looked at me sidewise, but he took out the paper and he read out the date on it, just as I remembered it from earlier that morning. “July the thirteenth, nineteen-eighty.”

  “Thanks,” I said. My voice was dithering about. I could hardly speak. “Then it is over a hundred years. When I was last here, it was eighteen seventy-nine.”

  Then I turned round and went away. I didn’t want to be a living Fred to them. I went quite fast, but he came after me. Beard and all, he was not so unlike my father, and my father would have run after his great-uncle too. “Hey!” he shouted. “Let me see to that arm anyway!” Which shows he understood.

  “No thanks,” I shouted. “You’ve got one Fred!” Then I ran and left him standing by his shiny poetic car.

  I ran back downhill. I wanted to check up on that canal. I’d remembered it wrong all these years. And how many years was the real shock! I hadn’t thought I’d spent a hundred years Homeward Bound. What fooled me was the way time jerks about from world to world. I thought it went on in one place and stayed the same at Home. But I have been on over a hundred worlds, and I suppose it does average out at a year a world. So I suppose it was no wonder that I’d forgotten and things had changed.

  But, you see, I hadn’t forgotten, not really. The moment I first saw those canal arches, I’d known. But I just wouldn’t believe it. I just couldn’t believe that even They could be such cheats. I’d gone about working overtime not to believe it. I’d noticed all the differences, as hard as I could, and all the time the sameness had been creeping, creeping up on me. I’d known as soon as my head banged that statue that They had sent me Home. Except that I wasn’t Home. I never could be.