The Homeward Bounders (16 page)

“Don't be a fool,” I said. “You stick out like a broken leg in it. The only way we're going to get on in this world is by looking like everyone else.”

“I'm damned if I shall!” said Joris. He was really angry. I wouldn't have thought he had it in him. But I suppose he went after the demon Adrac the same way.

“Put a coat on over it then,” said Helen.

“And serve you right if you swelter!” I said. I was angry too.

After a lot of arguing, Joris consented to a coat. As if it were a great favor. Then, of course, we had to find a coat. “Let's go out towards the edge of the city,” I said. “You get clotheslines and washing there.” That is true. But the reason I suggested it was to see just how like my Home this city was. The shortest way to the outskirts from where we were would take us through the part where my courtyard should have been in my city. I wanted to see if there was anything like it here.

There wasn't, of course. When we reached that part, it was all new yellow houses being built. Since people hadn't moved into the houses yet, there were no clotheslines and no coats, and we had to go on, further out to the edge of the city. By the middle of the afternoon, Joris and Helen were exchanging meaning smirks again. They thought this world had me beat.

Luckily, we came to a long hedge about then. I could hear the sound of children's voices from behind the hedge. In my experience, wherever there are children playing, some of them are sure to have left coats or sweaters about on the ground. I pushed through the hedge.

It was better than I'd hoped. As far as I could tell, the children were all boys about the same size as me or Joris—though that was a guess, because the boys were off in the distance playing some game. They were all dressed in white. Near the hedge, a few yards away, there was a sort of house with a wooden porch in front. Beside that was one of the big machines for riding in, square, with lots of windows. I reckoned, since white was not a usual color to wear, that the boys' ordinary clothes would be either in the house or in the machine.

“I'll stay on guard,” Helen said.

Joris and I left her lurking by the machine and crept across the creaking wooden floor of the porch to look inside the house-thing. It was better and better. We were right first time. The place was hung round with clothes, plentiful supplies of dark gray trousers, black shoes, gray shirts and red-and-blue striped neckwear. The top thing hanging on each bundle of clothes was a navy-blue jacket with a badge on the top pocket. It was only a question of finding things to fit. A good third of the gray trousers were about my size. I chose the best fit and got into them.

But Joris went and had another attack of demon hunter's pride. “People do wear white here,” he said, pointing to the distant boys. “Why can't I be playing that game out there?”

“They change to play it,” I said. “They don't walk about dressed up for it. Take one of those jackets. Go on.”

Most of the jackets were too small for Joris. I told you he was bigger than me. And he was so reluctant to defile his precious uniform that he took a long time finding the one jacket that fitted him. He had just unhooked the biggest and put one arm in its sleeve when real disaster struck. Three of the boys who owned the clothes walked in.

I think they had heard us. They must have done. By that time I was swearing a blue streak at Joris. And they came quietly on purpose. When I looked at their faces, I could see they had been expecting to find people stealing their clothes. My heart sank. They were cool, scornful, unfriendly, accusing. Underneath that, they were very indignant indeed. But that was underneath the scorn. That was because these three boys really were the kind of posh boy I had taken Joris for at first, and that kind of boy keeps cool if he can. The one in front was the coolest. He was about my size and he wore glasses, glasses with thick owlish rims. The boy behind him was even bigger than Joris. I didn't see the third boy very well, because the owl-boy turned to him and snapped, “Go and get Smitty,” and that boy ran away.

Which left two to two. But the odds weren't really like that, because of Rule Two.

The big one looked at Joris, frozen with one arm half inside the coat. “My blazer, I believe,” he said.

“And my trousers, I think,” said the owl-boy, looking at me. “Do, please, go on and help yourself to my shirt while you're at it. Red shirts are not school uniform.”

“You can have the trousers back,” I said. There was nothing else to do, because of Rule Two. I couldn't get them both killed just for wanting their own clothes back. Joris, seeing I meant it, took his arm out of the big boy's blazer and hung it neatly up again. The two boys stared at the demon hunter's outfit, and then, slowly, both their heads turned to look at my red Creema di Leema trousers in a heap on the floor.

“Adam,” said the big one. “Who
are
these people?”

“Chessmen probably,” said the owlish Adam. “Red pawn and white knight, by the look of them.”

“Chessmen!” I said. “If only you knew! Let me give you the trousers back and we'll go.”

“I believe they give you special clothes to wear in prison,” Adam said. “I'll get them back then.”

Here, heavy footsteps and light ones creaked on the wooden part outside. The third boy came in with a tall, vague, bored schoolmaster. “No, sir. That wasn't quite what I meant,” the boy was saying. He sounded exasperated. “They were stealing our clothes.”

The teacher gave me and Joris a vague, bored look. Then he did the same to Adam and his friend. I began to feel hopeful. This teacher didn't know any of the boys well, and he had not the least idea what was really going on. “What are you two boys doing in here?” he said to me.

“I'm afraid we came without the proper clothes, sir,” I said.

“That's no reason for borrowing other people's,” said the teacher, “or for skulking in here. Get out on the field, both of you. You three get out there too.”

He thought Joris and I were boys at the school too. I tried not to smile. How was that for quick thinking on my part? Then I met the spectacled eye of Adam. Right! that eye seemed to say to me. You wait! And, as the big boy opened his mouth to explain, Adam kicked him on the ankle. Plainly he had done some quick thinking too.

We all went in a crowd, out of the clothes-place and across the wooden platform. The teacher was between Joris and me. He might have been bored and vague, but he was doing what he thought was his duty, and seeing that we two went out to play that game, whatever it was. All I could do was go along and hope. Rule Two really ties your hands. And I've never dared test out how much—or how little—an ordinary person can do to a Homeward Bounder before Rule Two gets him. As I said, I've been beaten, and nothing has happened; and I've been robbed and sentenced to jail, and something very much
has
.

As we went out across the field, I took a look round for Helen. There was no sign of her. She must have gone through the hedge again. I looked across at Joris. He was quite placid—amused—waiting for me to get us out of this. He didn't know I couldn't. That frightened me. I couldn't remember explaining Rule Two to him, now I thought, or if I had, Joris must have been thinking of Konstam at the time and didn't listen.

The other boys in white were coming across the field towards us, staring. They knew strangers when they saw them, even if their teacher didn't. Quite a few of them drifted away behind us as we walked. Adam was signaling to them. I heard snatches of whispers.

“I know. It would be old Smitty!”

“Right then. After that.” And muffled laughter.

We got to the middle of the field where the game happened. There were two sets of three little sticks stuck in the ground some way apart, and that was all. It was the most mysterious game I ever encountered. The schoolmaster wandered away to one side. “Right. Start again from the beginning of the over,” he said. Then he looked at the sky and seemed to enter a private dream. This game bored him.

Two boys approached Joris and me with derisive smiles and handed each of us a pair of large white things with buckles flapping off them. They looked like the kind of splints you might wear if you had broken both legs. But I rather thought they were to stop your legs getting broken. The other boys stood round us in a ring. “Get those pads on,” one of them said. “You two are batting.”

There were at least twenty boys. Joris gave me a dubious look. I gave him a helpless one. Joris shrugged, and we both buckled the splints to our legs. They were huge. When I had them on, I could only walk with both legs wide apart, as if I were wading. By this time I was hating Adam. I didn't care if Rule Two got him. What better way to stop a person running away than to buckle his legs into dirty great splints?

When we were ready, they handed us each a long wooden bat and pushed each of us in front of a set of three sticks. Most of them spread out all round. The big boy picked up a red ball from somewhere and marched off beyond Joris with it. Joris turned round to stare after him, puzzled—and then turned back as the boy broke into a gallop and charged up beside him. The boy's arm whirled. Joris stuck up one elbow, thinking he was going to be hit. But the red ball whizzed out of the boy's hand and came straight at me instead, at the other end.

I saw it coming and dodged. Lucky I did. That ball was hard as a bullet. There was a wooden clatter beside me, and all three sticks fell down.

The schoolmaster came out of his dream. “Wasn't that out?”

“Oh no, sir,” said a chorus of voices. “The wicket just fell down.”

They built the sticks up again, and the big boy once more did his gallop up to Joris. But Joris, this time, had decided that his part in the game must be to stop the big boy victimizing me like this. He stuck his bat into the boy's stomach as the boy whirled his arm. The ball flew up into the air. The boy sat down.

“No ball!” shouted everyone. I was glad. I thought they had lost it.

The big boy bounced up and stuck his face into Joris's. I couldn't hear what they said, but I could see it was a fairly heated argument. Other boys gathered round and joined in. Joris's voice rose out of the crowd. “I'm damned if I'm going to stand here and watch while you throw red stones at him!”

A boy came out of the crowd, grinning rather, and approached Adam. Adam was standing near me and wearing splints too, making sure I didn't sneak off. “They don't know the first thing about it!”

“I can see that,” Adam said. “They'll have to learn, won't they?”

“Come along, boys,” said the schoolmaster, turning from the sky again.

The ball wasn't lost. The big boy took it and threw it at me five more times. These times, Joris stood glowering at the other end and did nothing but mutter remarks at the boy. I was left quite undefended. But I managed to dodge every time but once, when the ball somehow dodged with me and hit me on the leg. I was forced to hop about, which gave the boys a great deal of pleasure.

Then everyone walked about a little. While they did, Adam looked at me with contempt. “You're supposed to hit the ball,” he said, and then trudged off to stand behind Joris.

Another boy came up beside me with a sort of waddling wander, squeezing the ball in his hands as he came. Then he threw it at Joris. By now, Joris had resigned himself to just standing there. He only noticed the ball at the last minute. I think it made him angry. Anyway, he hit it. I told you Joris was athletic. There was an almighty
clop
, and the ball soared out of sight.

Immediately, everyone began shouting at us.
“Run!”

Naturally, Joris and I both dropped our bats and ran for our lives. We both thought the ball was coming down on us. And, once we were running, we both thought we might as well go on and escape.

“No!”
shouted everyone. “Come back!” Most of them ran after us. Meanwhile the ball came down and just missed the schoolmaster.

They caught us fairly quickly. I couldn't run in those splints. Joris could, but he waited for me. “Can't you let us go now?” he said, as they all came up. “You've had your fun.”

“Certainly not,” said Adam. “I want my trousers back—my way. Can you two arch-cretins get it into your heads that a
run
means from one set of sticks to the other? Backwards and forwards.”

So we went back and did it Adam's way. I thought Joris almost enjoyed it. He said he would have enjoyed it, if he hadn't felt so contemptuous. It was so easy, compared with demon hunting. He hit the ball every time they threw it at him, whatever way they threw it. Once it went right over the hedge into the road. All I seemed to do was charge up and down when they told me to. Twice they knocked the sticks down before I panted up to them. Once I knocked them down myself when I was dodging the ball. Each time, the schoolmaster came back from the clouds and asked if that meant I was out, and each time they said I wasn't. Out, I began to realize, meant that I could take the splints off and go and stand somewhere else. But they didn't want that. I might have got away.

At last, I actually hit the ball. It was coming right for my head, and I had to hit it if I didn't want to be hurt. The ball flew off sideways and Adam caught it. “You have now,” he said, “been out in every way possible. It may be a record. Shall we stop?”