The Homeward Bounders (8 page)

Anyway, that's enough of that. All I really meant to say was that I had been on a good hundred worlds before the next important thing happened. I had gone in a great slow circle, starting from the place where I nearly drowned, out and some way back again. If you walk the Bounds long enough, you get the feeling of where you've been, and I know that's what I'd done. I'd seen more kinds of worlds than you'd believe possible, more peculiar differences, and more samenesses than I like to think. I was a thoroughly hardened Homeward Bounder. There seemed nothing I didn't know.

Then I ran into Helen. My friendly neighborhood enemy. There really was nothing like Helen on any world I'd ever been to. I sometimes didn't think she was human at all.

It happened in a casual sort of way. I'd been landed on this real swine of a world. It really was the worst I'd ever been on. Everything about it was awful: the weather, the food, the local animals, and as for the people, they were not only brutes, but their habits were worse than that. It will show you when I say that no one lived in a house: they all lived in fortresses, half underground. Anyone outside a fortress was fair game. The
Them
playing it must have been right swine.

I was only on it a week. I've never been so glad when the Bounds called. I made haste through the pouring rain and sleet to get to the Boundary as fast as I could.

I'd still got half a mile to go—I could see something ahead through the lashing rain that had to be the Boundary—when the rain stopped. The sun came out for the first time since I'd been there. And it was typical of that beastly world that it got hotter than an oven in seconds. Instead of rain, the air was full of steam. It was like a hot fog. Worse than that, the mud I'd been wading through all that time dried out like ink on blotting paper. The water just sank away out of it and left me toiling through deep sand. I could hardly walk. I said some more of the bad words I'd been saying all that week. The Bounds were calling hard, and the slower you go the worse they get.

Then the steam cleared away like the mud had done. I was left floundering through a blazing white desert. It was so bright that I screwed my eyes almost shut and hunched in a heap. My bad words died away in a sort of moan. It was so hot and bright that it hurt.

Then I heard someone coming crunching quickly up behind me. In that world, you didn't let people come up behind you. I turned round, even though I was fairly sure this person must be another Homeward Bounder, and tried to open my eyes. Everything was blue-bright. I could only see the person as a black shape. The shape was about the same size that I was and seemed to have its back to me. I was so sure that this person was facing the other way that it gave me a real shock when the person said, “What are you waiting for? It's got to the hurry-hurry part,” and went marching past me.

I turned round as the person went past, and there wasn't a face on the back of their head either. It seemed to be black hair all round. And whoever-it-was was marching so fast through the sand that I was quite ashamed. After all, the person was no bigger than I was.

I went hastening and ploughing after. It was really heavy going. “You don't have to hurry when it says so,” I panted.

“I know I don't,” snapped the person, marching swifter than ever.

“Then why—how do you manage to walk so fast in this sand anyway?” I gasped. Both my shoes were full of sand by then.

“Because I'm used to it,” snapped the person. “I live here.” And stopped and waited for me. I crunched and waded up very cautiously, thinking that this couldn't be a Homeward Bounder after all—in which case, on that world, watch out! And yet—and yet—Well, all I can say is that you get to know the look of a Homeward Bounder, and I still thought this was. “I am Haras-uquara,” she said haughtily, when I got there. “My name is Helen in the language of the wider times.”

“Mine's Jamie,” I said, trying to look at her in the fierce sun. She must have a face, I decided, on the front of her head, in the usual way. I could just see the pointed brown tip of a nose poking out among the black hair there. But her hair really did seem to hang down the same way all round her head. She was dressed in black trousers and a black sweater and had black shoes with thick bouncy soles on her feet. Now the people in this world were a peculiar lot, but they always wore armor, and had their hair scraped back inside a helmet with a mirror-attachment so that they could see what was coming to attack from behind. And they spoke a croaking, gabbling language. She had spoken to me in English. “You can't come from here,” I said. “You're speaking English.”

“Of course,” she said. “I saw you were a stranger and I spoke to you in the language of the wider times.”

We began to shuffle towards the Boundary as she said this. You find you really have to go when they call.

“And you're a Homeward Bounder too?” I said, shuffling.

The tip of her nose stuck up disgustedly. “Is that what you call yourself? I'm an exile, condemned by the mouth of Uquar. They turned me out of the House of Uquar, and of course I got stoned. I'm angry.”

She was lucky only to have been stoned, I thought. My eyes were watering in the sun, but I could see that her black clothes were splashed with sandy white mud all over. In some places there were holes, and she was bleeding a bit where the holes came. It looked as if she was telling the truth. “Why were you turned out?” I said.

“Because of
Them,
” she said, with immense hatred.

I knew she was telling the truth. Only somebody new to the Bounds would talk about
Them
like that. “
They
don't like you to talk about
Them
,” I said.

“It's what I like, not what
They
like that matters,” she said. “I'm not
Their
slave! I'm going freely into honorable exile. So there!”

“Why?” I said.

“Because of my gift,” she said, and went stalking up the hill to the Boundary.

I suppose I should have let her go. She wasn't exactly friendly. But it narked me to see her going so fast while I floundered, and I knew that as soon as we got to the Boundary, we'd both be twitched off different ways and I'd never see her again. So I floundered hard and got to the top of the hill at the same time as she did. It was only a small Boundary. And it was typical of Helen's beastly world that it was marked out with bones.

They were great big bones, rib-bones like the skeletons of ships and leg-bones as high as lamp posts. I'd met one of the animals they came from three days before. I wasn't sure if it was a dragon or not, but it looked like one and it clearly thought I was good to eat. I only got away by hiding down the chimney of one of the fortresses. I don't think the dragon breathed fire, but it sniffed at the chimney for a good hour, until I was almost roasted from the fire down below.

“On holy days we bring a bone and plant it here,” Helen explained.

I made a grunt and pushed past her to go inside the ring of bones. The white sand inside was criss-crossed with the black shadows of the bones. It took me an instant to see that the sand among the shadows was squiggling. I stopped at once and pretended to be getting the sand out of my shoes. It was not imagination, or the heat. The place was alive with snakes.

Helen came up beside me. I could feel she was disgusted at my cowardice. She clapped her hands, briskly and loudly. “Go away!” she said.

The sand among the shadows sort of seethed, and the snakes went. I could see them pouring out between the bones on the other side of the circle. “Thanks,” I said. “Is that your gift?”

“Great Uquar, no!” she said. “Those were only snakes.”

“I know,” I said. “I didn't care to be stung.”

“They don't sting. They bite,” she said. “Shall I show you my gift?”

“If you want,” I said, and I stepped into the circle of bones, meaning to be off elsewhere next second.

“As a great favor,” she said. “Look.”

When someone says “Look,” you do. I looked in spite of the Bounds calling away. My eyes were getting used to the glare by then. Helen was rolling up the right sleeve of her black sweater. Her skin was a lot browner than mine, but her arm was an ordinary arm, bruised in one place and scratched in another.

“Snap!” I said. “Only mine's pinker.”

A laugh came from behind Helen's sheet of black hair. The arm went gray. It started at Helen's fingers and grew gray the whole way up, and with every inch or so of grayness it grew a deep wrinkle, until it was gray and wrinkled right up to her shoulder. The skin of it seemed to get thick and dry, with just a few long black hairs growing on it. Where Helen's hand had been were a couple of fleshy points, with two pinker holes deep inside. This gray arm swung and curled up. I could see it hadn't any bone in it any longer.

I said,
“Eeeurgh!”
and backed away. As I did, the gray arm shot out suddenly to twice its length, almost straightening out all its wrinkles, and wrapped itself round my neck. It felt warm and leathery.
“Stop that!”
I said. I backed away and tried to untwist the warm gray snake from my neck, but it was unbelievably strong. It clung and clung. Helen thought it was ever so funny. She threw back her head, so that I almost saw face behind the hair, and laughed and laughed at me, and went on hanging on. I went on going backwards, pulling at the gray arm and shouting at her to stop it, and pulling Helen along with me because she wouldn't let go.

Then we got to the place where the twitch came. And we both went together. I was so surprised that I stopped shouting. There we were, both of us, in much mistier sunlight, which made me feel almost blind for a moment. Helen had difficulty seeing too. She had one hand up, parting her front hair a bit, and there was a bright black eye showing. She was watching her gray arm turn brown and smooth again, from the shoulder downwards. I recognized it as it began to vanish.

“That's an elephant's trunk!” I said. “How did you do that?”

“That's my gift,” she said. “I can just do it. Where are we?”

“In another world,” I said. I looked round while I was tipping the sand out of my shoes and began to feel regretful. We were not going to be here long, and it looked really inviting. We were in an open space in a tropical sort of forest. Everything was unbelievably bright and fruitful. The green, green trees were hung with bunches of fruit and draped with creepers growing blue and white flowers as big as plates. The only reason I didn't find this hot sun dazzling was because I'd just been in the desert in Helen's world. It was the kind of sun that brings scents and colors out. The place smelled wonderful. It was quiet, except for one or two peaceful rustlings. I took that to be squirrels or monkeys. There weren't any birds singing, but that is not the kind of thing you notice after Helen's world. “This is a jungle,” I said to Helen.

“I can see that,” she said. “What do we do? Can we eat any of that fruit?”

“It's better not to try,” I said.

The tip of the nose came out of the black hair and pointed haughtily at me. “We can't die. I was told that.”

“Then you were lucky. You were told more than I was,” I said. “But I've eaten things that made me sorry I
couldn't
die, before I learned to be careful.”

“Then say what we
do
,” said the haughty tip of nose.

I was quite annoyed by then. She was so superior. Who was she, just new to the Bounds, to behave this way
and
play a silly trick on me? I had ten times her experience. I set out to show her. “The best thing,” I said patronizingly, “is not to eat until you see what the natives are eating. We're not going to be here long—”

“I can tell that,” she snapped.

“—So we needn't eat at all,” I said. I was mad. “Yes, you'll find you get a feeling about how long you're going to be in a place. You're coming on very nicely. The next thing to do is to go and look for any marks that other Homeward Bounders have left. There's a sort of path over there. The signs should be in a tree near it.”

I led the way loftily over to a bushy sort of opening at the edge of the clearing. I looked knowingly up and around. There was a sign. It was slashed into the trunk of a tree that looked like a huge fern. And—this would have to happen!—it was one I didn't know.

“There it is,” I said, pointing to it, trying to think what I should say next. “It's a very rare sign, that is.”

Helen's nose pointed up to it. “You don't know what it means.”

“Yes, I do,” I said. “It means VERY PLEASANT WORLD. Those are very rare.”

“Yes,” she said. “Then what?”

“We go and look for some natives,” I said, “but carefully, not to alarm them. I should think they'd be rather primitive in a place like this.”

We set off down the path. It was like a green tunnel, with fruit and huge flowers hanging down and brushing our heads.

“Suppose these natives of yours speak a different language,” Helen said. “What do we do?”

“Learn it,” I said gloomily. “But don't worry. I know hundreds of languages by now. An awful lot of them are quite alike. You let me do the talking and we'll be all right.”