The Homeward Bounders (24 page)

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:

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.”