The Homeward Bounders (15 page)

Down the road from the vegetables there was a smallish town. The moment we set foot in its main street, I could tell this was going to be a difficult world for Homeward Bounders. It had all the signs. In some worlds, you can say you come from the next town and people believe you. Not in this one. There were wires overhead so that they could talk to the next town and ask if you did. The houses were orderly and well painted. The streets were clean. The people kept to the sidewalks and machines ran politely up and down the road. All was law and order. And people stared at us.

“Why are they staring?” Joris said nervously. “Will they arrest us?”

I suppose we did look odd. Helen would look odd in any world. Nobody was wearing red all over like me. And Joris struck even me as outlandish, all in white, with that black sign painted on his chest.

“No one bothers about what children wear,” I said airily. I said it to calm Joris. He was new to the Bounds, after all.

The words were hardly out of my mouth, when a woman stopped us. “Do tell me, dears. Red and white and black. What are you? Are you collecting for something, or is it a pageant at school?”

“A pageant,” I said promptly. “He's a demon hunter and we two are the demons.” Helen's reaction to this was to put her caterpillar collection, gently and secretly, into the woman's shopping basket. I thought it was a revenge on me, but it was for the woman. Helen's revenge on me came a minute or so later. “We must go,” I said hastily. “We have to be on the stage in five minutes.” And I hurried us away into a side street before the woman could get round to looking in her basket. “Don't
do
things like that!” I said to Helen.

Helen took even her nose inside her hair. She stood there with no face and said one word. “Cannibals.”

“Who are?” Joris said, alarmed. There was a butcher's shop across the way, and he looked at it rather narrowly. It said Family Butcher over the window.

I didn't think this was like the cannibal world, and I knew Helen didn't. “It's all right,” I said to Joris. “She just means she thinks I'm showing off. Honestly, Helen, you haven't given me a chance! I was going to tell you—this looks to be a really difficult world. I can see they have strict laws. Children are supposed to be at school. They bother about clothes. It may be one of those worlds where you have to have papers to show all the time, and we could be in real trouble. What do you say, both of you? Shall we go back to the veg and try the next world?”

If I'd known how much hung on their decision, I'd have been chewing my nails and jumping up and down on the pavement. As it was, I assumed they'd agree with me and set off up the street.

Before I'd got very far, Helen shouted, “Come back!” And when I did, she said, “This is the first decent world since Creema di Leema,
and
they speak a language we all know.”

And when I looked at Joris, he said seriously, “I think I'd like to see what the difficulties are. If we ever get separated, I'd be glad of the experience.”

“Two to one,” said Helen.

“All right,” I said. “But don't blame me if we get put in prison, and Rule Two starts killing judges and policemen all round us.”

“What do we do now?” Helen said. It was her stony manner, the one you couldn't argue with.

“Make for a city,” I said, “if there is one. Nobody knows anyone in a city, and you get away with more lies there.”

I led the way on up that street in order not to run into the woman with the caterpillars again. Helen and Joris lagged a bit, so I turned round to see why. And there was Joris grinning at Helen, and Helen parting her hair in order to smirk back. I was furious. They were taking the Archangel—as they say in some worlds. This was Helen's revenge. She and Joris thought I showed off about all my experience, so they'd chosen to stay here to see what kind of mess I got them into.

All
right
! I thought. I'll show them!

As I turned round again, there was a train going across a bridge over the street. I love trains, even more than I love flying machines. I used to love the trains at Home. This was nothing like those trains. It was flat both ends and a clean bright blue—but it was still a train. I thought, I'll show those two how to get a ride on a train, and set off to find the station.

The railway station was just round the corner. That was no good to us, because we hadn't made any money yet—if we ever could in this world—but I have never known the station where there wasn't a gate they used for parcels and things. This one had a nice wide one. I stood just outside it and spied out the land. There were railway lines and two platforms. On the platform across the way, right at the end of it, sitting on a sort of wagon, I saw a set of boys. Some of them were quite small and surely ought to have been at school, if this world was as strict as it looked. They all had notebooks and pens. Perhaps their school had sent them to study trains.

I turned to Joris. “You know,” I said, “if only we had papers and pens, we could go on to the platform and pretend we were studying trains like they are.” I said it on purpose, hoping Joris would do another white-rabbit trick.

Sure enough, Joris said, “Oh, as to that,” and felt inside his white leather jerkin. He produced a small notebook. “This is all I—Why are you laughing?”

“Never mind,” I said. “Just give us a page each, and I guarantee we'll be on the next train that comes along.”

It went like clockwork. We went through the gate on to the platform and sat on a bench, fluttering our pages and looking observant. A man in uniform glanced at us from time to time, but he never spoke to us. I think he thought the boy in white was giving the other boy and the girl a learned lecture on trains. He wasn't, of course. That was Joris talking about Konstam.

A train came in and stopped at the platform. While people were getting off, we got on, quickly, up the front. Nobody noticed at all. We sat in comfortable seats up at the empty end, and the train clattered off again. Joris began on Konstam again. We sat and looked at green countryside, until the train clattered into another station. People got off and got on. Some glanced at us curiously, but nobody spoke to us.

“Why don't we get off here?” said Helen.

“Not big enough,” I said. I caught them smirking again, and ground my teeth.

The train went on, and Joris went on again too, all about Konstam. This time it was how kind and understanding Konstam had been on Joris's first demon hunt. I switched my ears off. Helen's hair moved in the way that meant she was yawning. Joris talked on, glowing with enthusiasm. The train kept stopping, but Joris never stopped, not once. By the time we were beginning to come to a city, my cold foot ache was back worse than it ever had been, and I was near screaming at him to stop. But that didn't seem kind. So I looked out at rows of little pink houses, and high glass buildings with pipes at the top which squirted smoke and steam, and a sickly green river winding in and out under the train, and prayed that Joris would talk Konstam out of his system soon.

Then a guard or something came up the train calling out, “Tickets, please!”

Joris didn't stop talking, but I saw him glance at me expectantly. Among Helen's hair I could see a beady eye, also watching me. I pretended not to see.

“All tickets, please,” said the guard, standing above us.

I pointed back down the train. “My mother's got our tickets. She's er—she's er—”

The guard grunted and went away to rattle at a door marked TO LET. Luckily, the train drew into another station just then.

“Here's where we get off,” I said. “Quick.”

I do think Helen and Joris might have stopped their joke after I got us off that city station too. I did know what I was doing, and I did it pretty well. It was a newish station, built of concrete, and small enough for there to be a man asking for tickets at the door marked WAY OUT. I marched boldly up to him and said they'd taken our tickets on the train, and he let us through. When we were outside in the station yard, I turned round to suggest to Helen and Joris that I'd taken enough of the Archangel now, and to come off it.

Almost overhead, very close, a canal went marching above the houses, and above the station, on a set of huge yellow arches.

My heart seemed to stop. Then it began banging away so hard that I could hear and feel nothing else. I seemed to have lost the lower half of me and be floating. For a moment, I could have sworn I was Home. The disappointment—I can't tell you the thump the disappointment hit me with, as if I were really floating and then had fallen, when I looked round and saw that I couldn't be Home. The place was full of machines buzzing about. In my world, people walked, or used carriages. The trains were different. People's clothes were different. The buildings were different: taller than in my Home, and straight and boxlike, with lots of windows. And now I came to look at the canal arches, they were different too: not so high, and made of dirty yellow brick, in fancy patterns.

“What's the matter?” Joris said. I must have looked peculiar.

“Nothing,” I said. “I reckon we ought to look for some lunch.”

I said it almost without thinking. Hope was beginning to build and roar in me again. You see, you often get sets of worlds that are very much alike—like the war set we'd just come through. In these sets, the language and the landscape and the climate and the shape of the cities can be almost identical, though the actual way people live is usually different, because that depends on the
Them
playing the world. But the nearer two worlds are in a set, the more alike they are. And I had only to look about to see that the shape of this city—the canal, the railway and the roads—was the same as the one I had been born in. And that meant I was really close to Home. It could even be next world on.

But first there were Helen and Joris to look after. I had to find them some lunch, and show them how to manage in a world like this. I took them to the shops—they were where the smart part of my city had been. And things didn't go so well there. We all got confused in the traffic, and all the shops seemed to have people watching for robbers. We had no chance to get hold of food, even in a covered-over sort of market. The trouble was, we were too noticeable, one in black, one in red and one in white. We looked like counters in a game. People looked at us all the time. It was not that they didn't wear bright clothes here—they did. Some even wore black all over like Helen. But not a soul dressed all in white with a black sign on their chest, like Joris. I began to see that we really would have to find Joris something different to wear.

In the end, I told Helen and Joris—who smirked—that I would try the “lost my money” trick in the next food shop we came to. You know—you go in and you choose a kind-looking person to do it near, and you ask them behind the counter for the food you want. Then you put your hands in your pockets and discover your money's been stolen. I've worked that dozens of times. The kind person nearly always buys you at least some of the food.

This shop said LUNCH TO TAKE AWAY. I left Helen and Joris outside and went in. The LUNCH was piles of crisp round rolls with ham and lettuce in them, stacked up behind a glass wall on the counter. And the smell of them! As soon as I got in there, I was carried away with misery. They smelled just the same as the rolls we used to stock in our shop. The baker's van used to deliver them still warm at breakfast time every day except Sunday. And my mother always used to give Rob and Elsie and me two each, with cheese, to take to school for lunch. As I stood there, smelling those rolls, it was like yesterday. I could see my mother, with a piece of hair falling down over her forehead and her face all irritable, dragging the cheese-wire down through the big lump of cheese and cutting off a small lump for each of us. And Elsie would be hanging round to pounce on any bits that crumbled off. I can't tell you how miserable it made me. I just stood there, and didn't even bother to look for a kind person.

Next thing I knew, a kind lady was saying, “What's up, my duck? You
do
look mournful.”

Thank goodness Helen and Joris were outside! I looked up at her, and I meant to say the piece about having lost my money. But you know what I said? I said, “I've lost my mummy!” I truly did. Just as if I were four years old!

Luckily, she didn't believe her ears. She obviously thought I was too old to say things like that. Well I was. “Lost your money, have you, my duck?” she said. “Never mind. I'll buy you a roll. Two ham rolls, please miss.”

I came out of the shop with a big crusty roll and practically in tears.

“Not much between three,” said Helen. “What
is
wrong with you, Jamie?”

“Nothing,” I said. I shared out the roll. Then I said, “It's bothering me the way we look. We're too noticeable. We really must get Joris something else to wear at least. Your clothes will do, Helen. I'd be all right if I had darker trousers, but Joris is the one who's urgent. Nobody here wears white all over.”

I met a snag here. Once he saw that I meant it, the white, hurt look settled on Joris's face. “Oh no,” he said. “This is the proper dress for a demon hunter, and I'm proud to wear it. I refuse to sneak about dressed as something else!”