When I was halfway to the canal, the Bounds called.
Wasn’t that just like Them? They crush us in seconds, They sling us every which way, They make sure I know just what cruel joke They’ve been playing all these years—They give me just time enough—and then They get straight back to Their game. There came the well-known dragging and yearning. I stood still and quivered with it.
It was coming from right behind me. I think it was from those vegetable patches after all. If that was the nearest Boundary, that meant I had quite a way to go. And on Sunday, with no money, in a world with all those rules and regulations, I was going to have a hard time getting there. I turned round to answer the call and start getting there. I didn’t mind leaving. Nothing mattered anymore.
Then I stopped. If nothing mattered anymore, then They didn’t matter either. “Why should I keep on letting you push me about?” I said to Them. “I’m going where I want to go for once.”
I knew where I wanted to go. And I turned right round again. There was another Boundary much nearer. The Old Fort and the triangular garden must be a Boundary, or Joris’s instrument wouldn’t have gone mad there. It was sealed off from the city somehow. That was why it was so silent in there. But I knew it was a Boundary, and I was going to use it and go where I wanted and spite Them.
The call is hard enough to bear if something stops you answering it. If you turn your back on it on purpose, it gets quite horrible. But I knew it could be done. I’d done it on that cattle-world eighty years ago. And I think all the things Konstam had made me hang round my neck and strap on my wrists helped quite a bit. Konstam knew his job, even if he had underestimated Them. Konstam was quite something. I mean, Helen and I got fed up with Joris for talking about Konstam all the time, but it was easy to see why he did. I thought it wouldn’t take me long, in my next world, to buttonhole the first Homeward Bounder I met and tell him all about Konstam too. My friend Konstam the demon hunter. Konstam raging round the hall telling me to catch rats for Helen.
The call dragged and tore and choked at me. I had to lean forward to move against it. I remember two or three people I passed staring at me—a boy with a bleeding arm and a black badge on his chest, walking downhill to the canal as if he were climbing Everest. I must have looked odd. But I kept going, thinking of my friends. Joris and Adam and Vanessa. It occurred to me that Vanessa and Konstam had fallen in love. In which case, they must be feeling terrible now. That was why Konstam had spanked Adam, of course—not out of righteous indignation—because Adam’s offer tempted him. He probably knew the rest of the Khans wouldn’t stand for him owning two slaves.
Then I thought of Helen. That was when I was trying to climb the wall into the garden, and it was really hard work. Helen hiding a withered arm in another arm made of spirit, just like she hid her face in her hair. Helen taking the Archangel out of me and snarling and snapping. She couldn’t thank people, Helen. She hated saying thank you. As I said, Helen, my friendly neighborhood enemy. I wasn’t likely to be in the same neighborhood as Helen, ever again.
That got me over the wall. And wham! The Bounds called from the other way at once—pulling and yelling and wrenching me towards the green dip in the center of the triangle.
But I didn’t answer them even then. I’d taken care to climb the wall as near the Fort as I could get. I shoved through the bushes and crunched across the gravel and glared in through the window at Them. They left Their machines and backed away from me. They were really nervous of me. I couldn’t see why They should be, but I was glad. I made a face at Them. It was the only thing left to be glad about.
Then I let myself answer the call at last. It came so hard I had to run, crashing through the bushes and careering down the slope of grass. But at the bottom, I dug my heels in the turf and went slow. I didn’t want to whizz straight to the Boundary and crash off just anywhere. There was one particular place I wanted to go. Mind you, I wasn’t sure I could get there, but I was determined to try.
So I crept up to that white statue as if I was stalking it. And when I was about a yard away from it, I stopped. I knew the Boundary must be just beside it. I leaned forward, very, very carefully, and I laid hold of one of those amazing carved stone chains hanging on the statue. When I had hold of it, I pulled myself towards the statue with it, gently, gently, and all the time I thought hard of the person the statue was really of. Him chained to his rock.
XIV
And I did it. A very severe twitch happened.
He was really surprised to see me. He had been sort of hanging backwards, the way he was before, with his head tipped further back and his eyes shut. When I landed on his ledge his eyes shot open and he jumped—really jumped. He may not have been human, but he had feelings just like I did. And he was astonished.
“I didn’t expect to see you again,” he said, and he carefully dragged a loop of massive teardrop chain away from just beside me. I could have touched it and been gone again the next second.
It seemed to me that his voice had trembled a bit. It was more than astonishment. He was ten times lonelier than I was. I took a careful look at him. His wound was no worse than before, which is not saying much, and his clothes were perhaps a bit more ragged. He had made a bit of progress with the red beard he seemed to be growing, but that was all. He hadn’t changed any more than I had. He was just as cold, and wet all over.
“Yes, you’re right out of luck,” I said, joking to cheer him up a bit. “One of Them tried to make me forget all about you, but unfortunately for you, a dog rattled its chain at me a minute after, and I called you to mind again. I’ve come to get you another drink of water.”
“That’s very kind of you,” he said, smiling. “But I’m not so thirsty this time. Someone gave me a drink a while ago, and it’s raining. I’ve been drinking the rain.”
He was right it was raining. The weather was lousy up there. It was raining in chilly, mizzling gusts that covered us both with little fine drops, like miniatures of those great links of his chains. “Are you sure?” I said.
“Sure,” he said.
I sat myself down on the wet rock, leaning against the crag beside him, as near as I could get without touching the chains. There was no fog this time, only driving rain-clouds, but there was not what I’d call much of a view. Nothing but drizzling pink rocks. His rock was turned away from the sea. They hadn’t even allowed him that much pleasure. While I was thinking that this was not much to look at for all eternity, I noticed that the rocks were the same as the granite the Old Fort was built of. I wondered if They’d chosen it for hardness, or for some other reason.
“Who was it gave you a drink?” I said. “Anyone I know?”
“Ahasuerus,” he said.
“Oh him,” I said. “I met him a couple of days ago. How mad is he?”
“Pretty mad,” he said. “He’s worse every time he comes here.”
Now, I had meant to ask if They did anything to stop Ahasuerus coming, and if not, why not. But, somehow, the thought of Ahasuerus set me off. It was just as if I were Joris and someone had mentioned Konstam. Everything seemed to drop away and leave just me. “But he’s not quite crazy,” I said. “He talked some sense. He knew how it felt. I don’t blame him for being crazy after all those years. He talked about hope being a millstone round your neck—and he was right! That’s just what it is. You’re so busy staggering along hoping, that you can’t see the truth. He told me the truth. I was too busy hoping to see it. He said They lead you along with hope. And that’s just what They do! They kick you out and set you going from world to world, and They promise you that if you can get Home, the rules allow you to stay there. Rules! Utter cheat. They knew, as well as I do now, that no one who’s a Homeward Bounder can ever get Home. It just can’t be done.”
“What’s happened then?” he asked. He was really sorry for me. It always beat me how he could think of anyone else in his situation, but he could.
“What’s happened,” I said, “is that I’ve been Home, and
it wasn’t my Home anymore. I was exactly a hundred years too late for it.”
And I told him all that had happened. But you know how you can talk and have other things go through your mind at the same time. While I talked away, I heard myself talking in English, and I saw him nodding, and heard the chains drag when he did, and I knew he understood every word. And I understood when he said things like “And then what?” or laughed about Helen and the rat. Helen had told me she was taught English because it was the right language for the ways of the worlds. I always thought They spoke English. But that was another cheat, or maybe another mistake of mine. It was quite another language. It was just that I could understand it as part of being able to see Them. And I understood him for the same reason.
I told him about our useless attempt to invade Their Real Place. “And all They did was sling us straight out again, really,” I said. “They slung me so that I hit my head on a rotten statue that’s supposed to be you, and I sat up and knew I was Home. Only it wasn’t Home. It was all changed and gone. And I know They did it on purpose. They wanted to show me I hadn’t got a hope!”
“You may be wronging Them there,” he said.
“Don’t you try to be fair to Them,” I said. “Even you can’t.”
“All I meant was that They may have sent you Home,” he said, “as a way of stopping you bothering Them.”
“No,” I said. “They had the Bounds call me right after that. I’m still a Homeward Bounder. Only I’m not Bound to any Home. I’m just bound the way you are. I can see that now.”
There was a bit of a silence. The cold rain made little pittering sounds, and the wind sighed. Then he shifted in his chains, sort of cautiously. I didn’t blame him for being restive. He must have ached all over.
“Perhaps you could fetch me a drink, after all,” he said.
I got up at once and started edging past the chains. I was glad he’d asked, since it was what I’d come here for. As I shuffled sideways past him, it did strike me that he was standing differently, standing not leaning, but I thought nothing of it. He had to ease his bones somehow.
I got to the place where I had to climb over the chains because they were hooked up on the anchor. I stopped to look at that anchor. I could have sworn it was rustier than last time.
“You can put your hand on the anchor,” he said, “when you climb over. As long as you don’t touch the chains.” There was a sort of edge to his voice as he said that, which I didn’t understand. It was almost as if he was nervous.
He’s keener for a drink than he’ll say, I thought. I wished he had let me get him one straightaway. And I put my hand on the big pointed fluke of the anchor, ready to hoist a leg over the chains.
It was a wonder I didn’t pitch forward onto my face. There was a sort of trembling to everything, right through the rock, combined with a strong sideways twitch. I thought I must have touched a chain after all. But I was still there, holding the fluke of the anchor. And that great sharp piece of iron was sinking and shifting under my hand. It split as it sank, into dozens of pointed orange slivers. You know the way iron goes when it rusts. And that anchor rusted as I touched it—rusted so badly in half a second that it was crumbling away into orange dust and bluish flakes before I could get my hand off it. It didn’t stop when I let go of it, either. While I was swaying about to get balanced it went on crumbling and flaking, the ring and the shank too, as well as the fluke.
The ring, being the smallest part, was the first thing to fall away into brown nothing. And, as soon as it did, the whole load of heavy transparent chains came loose and fell on the rock with a rattle. That gave rise to a whole lot more rattling, further along, where he was. I looked round to see him dragging first one arm loose, then the other. And as those chains fell down, he kicked them off his feet too. I stared. I couldn’t credit it. I had seen how those staples went deep into the granite.
“What did that?” I said.
The trembling had stopped by then. He was standing panting a bit, with one arm up to nurse his wound. “You did,” he said. He laughed a little. “I hope you don’t think you’ve been tricked by me now,” he said. “I couldn’t be quite honest with you. If I had, you might have started hoping again.”
“Is that so bad?” I said. “I thought it wasn’t good to lose hope.”
“The way They use hope,” he said, “the sooner you lose it the better. Shall we get out of this place?”
“Suits me,” I said. “You must hate it a lot more than I do.”
We went down the way the stream went down, where the rocks were in jumbled stages. I’d forgotten how big he was. If he hadn’t been weak and having to go slow with his wound, I’d never have kept up with him. He kept having to wait for me as it was, and he even had to help me over one or two steep places.
We got down in the end. It was a whole lot warmer down there. While we were walking to the entrance of a valley I could see further along, the rain stopped and the sky turned a misty blue.
“This used to be my Home,” he said, as we came into the valley.
It was really peculiar. It ought to have been one of the most beautiful places you ever saw. It was a long, winding valley, with the stream rushing through it and spraying among rocks. Every kind of tree was growing there, in woods up the sides and in clumps by the stream. But it all seemed faded. It wasn’t faded the way things fade in autumn. It was more the way an old photograph goes, sort of faint and bleached. The grass wasn’t green enough and the rocks were pale. The trees, though they had faded a bit like autumn, into yellowish and pinkish colors, were pale too, and they drooped a bit. Any birds that were singing made a slender sort of sound, as if they were too weak to raise their voices.
He sighed when he saw it. But I noticed that, as we walked along by the stream, color seemed to be draining back into the place. The sky turned bluer. The stream dashed along sharper, and seemed to nourish the grass to a better green. The trees recovered and lifted their leaves up. By the time we came to a white kind of house above the stream in a turn of the valley, everywhere was pretty beautiful, in a gentle sort of way, and the birds were singing their heads off.
There were loaded fruit trees round the house. I helped him pick fruits off them as we went up to the house—there were oranges, apples, pears and big yellow things like living custard. All the while, the valley seemed to be getting brighter and brighter. I saw, while he was reaching up into a tree, that his wound was quite a bit better. So was my arm, when I came to consider it. We took the fruit to the house. Most of the house was a sort of arched porch held up on pillars, where the sun came in good and warm, but there were rooms at the back and up on top.
The first thing he did was to go to the back room and bring out a basket for the fruit and a big kettle. “Eat what fruit you want,” he said. “We both need a wash and a warm drink, I think. Will you lay some wood for a fire while I get the water. There should be wood round the side of the house.”
There was a sort of hearth-place in the center of the porch, with the old sketchy remains of ash in it. Round the side of the house, the stacked logs and kindling were a bit greenish, but they didn’t look as if they had been waiting forever and a day, as I knew they had. I brought a few loads into the porch—my arm was healing the whole time, and the rat bites on my fingers had almost gone by then—and by the time I’d got a fire laid and was looking round for some way to light it, he was back with the water.
“Ah,” he said, and knelt down and lit the fire. As he fetched a stand to go over the fire and put the kettle on it, he was laughing. His wound was doing even better than my arm. “It makes me laugh,” he said. “They put it about on most worlds that I was punished for lighting fires. I think only the world of Uquar knows even half the truth.”
“Helen’s world?” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “If you’d talked much about me to Helen, neither of us would be here now.”
It was good to sit by the leaping fire, warm in the sun too. We ate fruit while w
e waited for the kettle to boil. But I was too nervous to enjoy it at first. “What will They do? Won’t They know you’re free?” I said.
“There’s nothing They can do,” he said. “There’s no hurry. All They can do is hope. They’re bound to hope, I’m afraid.”
I couldn’t help noticing the way he said “bound to hope.” It seemed to sum everything up. “Do you think you could explain a bit?” I asked him.
He pushed a lump of custard-fruit into his mouth and wiped his hands on his rags. “Of course,” he said. “You have been to Their Real Place. You know the ways of the worlds. You have talked of the worlds as being like many reflections in a place of glass. You know almost what I discovered in the beginning. Except,” he said, “when I discovered all this, each world was its own Real Place. They still seem that way to those who are not Homeward Bound. But they aren’t, not now, and that is my fault.” He stared into the flames licking round the logs for a while, sitting with his arms wrapped round his knees and the marks of the chains still on them. “I deserved to be punished,” he said. “I saw that a place is less real if it is seen from outside, or only seen in memory; and also that if a person settles in a place and calls that place Home, then it becomes very real indeed. You saw how this valley faded because I had not been in it for a very long time. Well, it came to me that if reality were removed from the worlds, it could be concentrated in one place. And reality could be removed if someone to whom all the worlds were Home never went to any world, but only remembered them. And I mentioned this idea casually to some of Them.”
“What happened then?” I said.
“Then,” he said, “They went away and thought. They are not fools, even if They never make discoveries for Themselves. They saw They could use this discovery, just as They have since used machines and inventions made by men. After a while, They came back and They said, ‘We want to test this theory of yours. We want you to be the one who remembers the worlds.’ And I saw my mistake. I said, ‘Give me time to think,’ and I hastened away and began to explain my idea to mankind. It was difficult, because not all men were ready to believe me. But I persuaded the people on the world of Uquar to listen, and I had already taught them a great deal when They came after me. There were no rules in those days. They were stronger than me. They brought me back here and They chained me as you saw me, and They said, ‘Don’t be afraid. This isn’t going to be forever. It’s important you know that. We just want to know if what you said is true.’ And I said, ‘But it is true. There’s no need to chain me.’ And They said, ‘But there is a need. If you are chained, there will eventually be someone for whom no place is real, and he will come along and release you. And you are bound to hope that he will come.’ And of course that was true too. So They went away and left the vulture to remind me.”