The Homeward Bounders

  I looked at his wound, which was now only a nasty red cut. “They’d no call to set that vulture on you,” I said. “That was an optional extra, if you like!”

  “No it wasn’t,” he said. “It was a reminder, like the anchor. Without the vulture, I might have fallen into apathy and stopped hoping. Hope was what kept me there, you see. Hope is the forward-looking part of memory. My name means Foresight, did you know? And I think They found that humorous. They knew that as long as I had hope that you would come along, I couldn’t free myself. As long as I had hope, They could keep Their Real Place and play with unreal worlds. I couldn’t even hope that I would give up hoping, because that was still hope. And when you came a second time, I hardly dared speak, I was so full of hope. I dared not let you know.”

  “No wonder you sounded so strung up,” I said.

  The kettle began to boil then, lifting its lid and chiming it back down again in clouds of steam.

  “Good. We can wash,” he said. “But let’s have a hot drink first. Then I shall put on some proper clothes. But I’m afraid I haven’t any clothes to fit you.”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I’m about dry. Besides—” I flipped at my shirt where Vanessa had sewn on the painted sign of Shen—“I’m attached to this. And I reckon it’s good protection against Them.”

  He had got up to shake some kind of herbs into two cups he had ready. He was behaving all the time now as if he had never been chained to that rock—perfectly healthy. He must have been strong. And he stopped and looked at me under his hand that was holding the jar, sort of humorously. “You don’t need that,” he said. “You don’t need anything. No Homeward Bounder does.”

  “How’s that?” I said. “Would you mind explaining?”

  He tore a piece off his trousers and used it as a kettle-holder to pour the boiling water on the herbs. Then he handed me a cup. “Careful. It’s very hot,” he said, and sat back, sipping at his cup. The stuff looked to revive him more. His face seemed to fill out, and that seemed to have an effect on the valley around us too. By then, it was the most beautiful place I had ever seen. “The no interference rule,” he said. “You mentioned it to me yourself. Rule Two.”

  I said, “Do you mean Them—” Grammar! my mother would have said—“They are bound to keep that rule too?”

  “Yes,” he said. “If you play a game, then you have to keep the rules, or there is no game anymore. From your account, They have been very careful to keep that one.”

  “Haven’t They just!” I said furiously. “They only robbed me of my Home and my friends and a proper lifetime! That’s all!”

  “They certainly did,” he said, and he began looking very sorry for me again. “Drink your drink. It’s better hot.”

  I sipped at the stuff. It was pretty scalding. It was thin and sour and herby and it ought to have tasted awful, but it didn’t. It was some of the best stuff I have ever drunk. It cleared my head—or it may have put a few ideas into my head, I don’t know—but I know that as I sipped and he talked, I began to understand more and more. Adam had got most of it right about us Homeward Bounders, but there was more to it than we had thought.

  “They need you Homeward Bounders,” he said. “It’s not just because They enjoy playing dangerously—They have to play it that way. You see, even when worlds are Real Places, they have a way of multiplying—splitting off and making new worlds—and they do it even more when they’re drained of reality. They like that. It means more of Them can play. But, after a while, there were so many new worlds that They were playing with numbers that I hadn’t known. So I couldn’t keep these new worlds from becoming dangerously real. They found They had to have people to keep these worlds unreal for Them. They did it by promising you all a Real Place and making sure you never found it. Home.”

  “So hope did the same for us as it did for you!” I said. “But I still don’t see why it was me that rusted the anchor. Couldn’t Ahasuerus have done it for you? Or the Flying Dutchman? They both said they hadn’t a hope.”

  “They knew they hadn’t a hope of getting Home,” he said. “But they did have hope. They took care to tell them that someone was bound to release me. It was only towards the end, when the number of Homeward Bounders was almost complete, that They had to stop telling people that. Otherwise I would have given up hope.”

  “There has to be a reason,” I said, “for the numbers of us being limited. Why is that?”

  “It has to be no more than the numbers of Them,” he said. “You are very dangerous to Them anyway, because of Rule Two. For, as you pointed out, They have injured you and interfered with you considerably. If all Homeward Bounders got together and realized this, it would go hard with Them. But if there is even one more—”

  “I get you!” I said. “Then we tip the balance of reality our way, and the reality drains out of Their Real Place. And there are several more now!”

  “That,” he said, “was why They sent you Home, I think.”

  “Oh no,” I said. “The Bounds called—” And then I stopped, because I realized I was still trying to hide the truth from myself, just like I had in Adam’s world. What had happened there was that I had already seen that I was still going to have to walk the Bounds, before the Bounds called. I had, in a way, chosen to stay a Homeward Bounder. Not that there was much choice. “I think,” I said slowly, supping the last of my drink, “I may be very dangerous to Them. Am I?”

  “You are,” he said. He looked very troubled. “What else do you see?”

  “I don’t want to think about it yet,” I said. “Come on. What are we waiting for? Let’s go and finish Them off, before They think of something They can do about it.”

  He laughed. “We’re waiting to rest and wash. There’s nothing They can do. They can only hope you won’t understand.”

  But of course I did understand—nearly as well as I do now. I sat and had some more of the drink and thought about it, while he went away into the back room to wash. I gave Them credit for quick thinking. When we invaded the Real Place, They had to get rid of us, and They couldn’t kill any of us because of all the protection we carried, and three of us were Homeward Bounders anyway. So They slung Adam and Vanessa and Joris and Konstam on the Bounds, knowing that Joris and Konstam, being demon hunters, could get Home quite easily. They slung Helen too, because, with her Hand of Uquar, she was a real menace to Them. But They had to send me Home, because, even when Joris and Konstam got Home, I would overload the Bounds. They thought I was the most harmless one. But then I went and chose to go on being a Homeward Bounder, and that made me Real. It made me like the joker in a pack of cards. No wonder They were scared of me!

  About this time, he came out of the back room clean and shaved and wearing clothes that put me in mind of Joris’s uniform. “Your turn to wash,” he said.

  “Do you come from the demon hunter’s world?” I said.

  “No,” he said. “I come from yours. I’m the last of a race called Titans.”

  “And where do They come from?” I said.

  “You find Them on every world,” he said. “But the chief among Them came from the world of demons.”

  “That fits,” I said. I got up to wash. “I’d better make an early call there then.” I didn’t look at him as I went. I knew he understood, and I think it upset him.

  We set off to the proper battle as soon as I was ready.

  He didn’t bother with Boundaries. He was demon-kin that way. And anyone with him didn’t need Boundaries either. We were off at the edge of things where his Home was, and at first the worlds were pretty scattered. It was like walking on stepping-stones—if you can imagine nothingness between each stone, and the stepping-stones themselves being all round you, instead of just under your feet. Then, when the worlds were closer together, it was more like walking down a corridor, lined with different skies overhead; and for walls, cities, fields, mountains and oceans, all flicking by as we walked.

  I still don’t know what called the Homew
ard Bounders. He may have done. But I think it was more likely that we had made a move in Their games, walking as we did, that canceled all the other moves and called the Homeward Bounders to us. Anyway, they kept appearing, more and more of them, and came with us in a crowd as we went. I didn’t see anyone I knew. There were so many.

  I suppose making Their kind of move meant that we were keeping Their time. Maybe we were up to a week on the way, but it didn’t feel like it. It seemed only like half an hour or so before we got to a part where worlds were so thick about us that they weren’t like a corridor any more, but really like reflections all round a place of glass. I kept peering for the Real Place inside and through all the sliding shapes of cities and deserts and skies, but not a sight of it could I get.

  “They’ve hidden Themselves,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said. “But not well enough. Someone has marked Them out.”

  He pointed. And glimmering through the shifting worlds like a small far-off star I saw the sign of Shen.

  “Oh,” I said. “That was me. I didn’t know it would show up so.”

  We sort of clove our way towards that star-sign, bringing the other Homeward Bounders with us, until Shen was hanging just in front of us. All we could see was Shen and our own many selves reflected beside it.

  “How are we going to get in at Them?” I said.

  “You can go in,” he said. “But we need your friend Helen to let in the rest of us.”

  I turned to the nearest ones in the crowd. “Give a shout for Helen Haras-uquara, will you?” I said. “She must be here somewhere.” Actually, a lot of us were late, having the usual trouble getting to the Bounds. I was lucky that Helen was there. She was at the back of the crowd. They pushed and jostled her through to us.

  She had got a new hairstyle. Most of her hair was pushed back in a ribbon. Just one hank fell down in front, right down the middle of her face. But she even pushed that away when she saw me.

  “Jamie!” she shrieked. But then she saw him standing huge beside me, and she knelt down. That astonished me. I never thought to see Helen kneel to anyone. “You are called Uquar,” she said. “We have a statue of you in chains in the House of Uquar. They say your bonds are our Bounds, and you were bound for telling us the ways of the worlds. They say only one without hope can undo them.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “Jamie undid them. Helen, get up and use the Hand of Uquar for us. We must get in there and destroy as many of Them as we can.” And he called to the rest of the crowd, “When we get in, each of you is allowed to destroy one of Them. That is Their rule.”

  “All right,” Helen said, through the cheering this caused. “Only if you make a mess of it too, I’ll never forgive you!” She was still Helen, Hand or no Hand.

  Helen got up and pulled up her sleeve, and the light of that weird arm shone on the surface of the Real Place. I tried not to look at that other withered little arm inside it. And, in fact, there wasn’t time to look, because so many things happened then. The surface of the Place shriveled and cracked and was gone, just like the glass door of the Old Fort. Only this time there was a huge opening. We were all pushing forward to pour in, when there was a lot of shouting and jerking in the front of the crowd, and a figure in white came leaping out into the opening.

  “Wait!” he shouted. It was Konstam. He had not managed to work his way Home yet. “Wait!” he shouted. “They are demons. You must kill each of Them twice!”

  It needed saying, but I don’t think everyone heard. I was being pushed through the opening, and Konstam was being pushed away backwards as he shouted, as all the other Homeward Bounders pressed forward to get at Them. Most of us shouted, war-cries or insults or just shouts. Not all of us had weapons, but They ran away from us whether we did or not.

  They took advantage of Konstam’s interruption to cheat. They always did cheat if They could. While he was shouting and we were all pushing in, They ran away towards the sides of the Place. As soon as I got in there, it began to get smaller. Its edges weren’t out of sight anymore. Pieces sort of dropped off it—and a number of Them seized the opportunity to drop off with the pieces. They sealed my fate by doing that—but I think it was sealed already.

  It was terrible confusion then. We were all trying to organize a line of Homeward Bounders to stop Them dropping off. He was towering off one way, and Konstam was at the other side. I shoved Helen off to hold down another end. I could see her arm blazing all through. I tried to organize my end, but most of the Homeward Bounders were so mad to get at Them that they wouldn’t stay there. I had to do most of it myself. In a way, it was easy. I had only to go near Them to have Them recoil from me in horror. But I couldn’t risk getting too near for fear They would get unreal enough to escape into the spirit world or somewhere—anyway, get too unreal to be killed. I think I could have snuffed all Them I came to out with just a touch, but that would have been cheating. I was the odd one out and I couldn’t even kill one of Them. I knew that if I cheated in any way, They would take advantage of it in time to come. So all I could do was run up and down my end swearing and shouting, and trying to herd Them into the fight in the middle of the Place. And They realized. They began to come at me in a body.

  I was in real trouble, when a boat drove up against the empty edge beside me. It was a black haggard boat with torn sails and flying ropes, and covered with barnacles. Its skinny, hollow-eyed crew looked like a set of monkeys. The one at their head looked more human, because of his coat and his seaboots. He was waving a curved knife—a cutlass maybe—and the monkeys had the same sort of knives in their shaggy mouths.

  “Hello!” I shouted, as they all came swarming down into the Real Place. “Flying Dutchman! Help me hold Them back!” And I shouted to them what was going on.

  The Dutchman grinned at me. “One each is not forbidden, eh? Kill twice? A pleasure.”

  After that, they strung out in a line and not one of Them got by. I stood with them staring at the terrible muddled battle, in and out and over the tables. They cheated all the time. I suppose They were desperate, but it didn’t make it any better the way They rolled machines on Homeward Bounders and squashed them. They would attack people who were trying to keep the rule, or push one of Them at someone who had already killed one, so that they had to fight back in self-defense. The two monkeys next to me both killed one and a half of Them that way. And that meant that They could attack the monkeys. After a bit, I don’t think anyone knew who had kept the rule and who hadn’t. Except me. I dared not cheat. And there were people like Ahasuerus, who didn’t care after a bit. Ahasuerus got one of Them who was crouching over this machine I’m talking into. I was shouting to him to come over and help the monkeys, when one of Them went for somebody small just behind the machine—it looked like Adam—and Ahasuerus got that one too, in the nick of time. Afterwards he held his hands up in the air and shouted in despair, and after that he just didn’t care anymore. He ran amok. He was terrifying.

  It was over in the end. There were humped people and humped gray shapes all over the Place, and just a huddle of Them left alive in the middle. They had known there would be. I went to look at what the one talking into the machine had been saying, and it said,

  The rules are on our side. There will be enough left of us to and Ahasuerus got him then.

  Konstam rounded up all of Them in the middle and respectfully asked him Helen called Uquar what to do with Them.

  “You’ll have to send Them over the edge,” he said.

  So we did that, shouting and waving, like driving cows, with me in the middle to keep Them scared. The edge was a lot nearer by this time.

  After that there was a time for meeting before going Home. He—the one I set free—seemed to have no trouble understanding the machines. He found a machine that sent people Home. And he told me how to work this one I’m using. But that was later. At that time, he was away in the middle of the Place helping people get to the right worlds. He said now that They were gone, even the oldest of t
hem could go Home and settle down in peace. I found Helen and Joris and Adam rushing up to me. Konstam and Vanessa were on their way over too, but they stopped on the way for a passionate hug. I was right about them.

  “Jamie, which world is yours?” said Joris. “Are you going there now?”

  “It’s the same as Adam’s,” I said. “And no, I’m not.”

  Of course they all shouted out, “Why not?”

  “Because I’m a good hundred years too late for it,” I said.

  “So that’s why you said it was like yours!” said Adam. “I see! But you can come and live with us, Jamie. I know it won’t matter.”

  “And be like Fred?” I said. “No, it won’t do, Adam. You’ve got too many rules and regulations there now. I should never get used to them. You need to be born to them.”

  Vanessa and Konstam had come over by this time. They stood with their arms round one another, looking at me. I was sitting on one of the game tables. A little world was still going on underneath me, but nobody in it knew. “Are you sure, Jamie?” Vanessa said.