The Homeward Bounders Page 5

  I spun round so fast then that I never knew how I missed the chains. “They did this to you!” I said to him. “How did They do it? Why?”

  He was turned to look at me. I could see he was thinking about water more than anything. I went climbing over the anchor to show him I hadn’t forgotten. “Yes, it was They,” he said.

  I put my hands under the little pouring waterfall and filled them as full as I could with water. But I was so furious for him that my hands shook, and most of the water had trickled away by the time I’d climbed back over the anchor. Even more had gone by the time I managed to stretch my hands up to him among the chains, without touching one. He was so tall and chained so close that it was quite a struggle for him to get his mouth down. I don’t think he got more than a taste the first time. But I went back and forwards, back and forwards, to the stream. I got quite nimble after a while. I even took a drink myself, after his sixth handful. He was so thirsty it was awful, and I kept thinking how he would feel if I happened to touch a chain and got twitched away just as he’d got his mouth down to the water.

  “You should have asked me straight off,” I said. “Why didn’t you? Have They forbidden you to, or something?”

  “No,” he said. “They don’t have that kind of power over me. But I could see how thirsty you were, and I’m more used to it than you.”

  “How long have you been here like this?” I said. We were talking this way as I went to and fro. “As long as the Flying Dutchman? Do you know him?”

  He smiled. He was getting more cheerful as he drank, in spite of his situation. I just wished I’d had some food I could have given him too. “From long before the Dutchman,” he said. “Long before Ahasuerus too. Almost from the beginning of the worlds.”

  I nearly said “I don’t know how you stand it!” but there was no point in saying that. He had to. “How did They get you?” I said. “Why?”

  “It was my own fault,” he said. “In a way. I thought They were friends of mine. I discovered about the Bounds, and all the ways of the worlds, and I made the bad mistake of telling Them. I’d no idea what use They would make of the discovery. When it was too late, I saw the only safeguard was to tell mankind too, but They caught up with me before I’d gone very far.”

  “Isn’t that just like Them!” I said. “Why aren’t you hating Them? I do.”

  He even laughed then. “Oh I did,” he said. “I hated Them for aeons, make no mistake. But it wore out. You’ll find that. Things wear out, specially feelings.” He didn’t seem sad about it at all. He acted as if it was a relief, not hating Them any more.

  Somehow that made me hate Them all the worse. “See here,” I said, reaching up with the tenth handful or so of water, “isn’t there any way I can get you out of this? Can’t I find an adamant saw somewhere? Or do the chains unlock anywhere?”

  He stopped before he drank and looked at me, really laughing, but trying not to, to spare my feelings. “You’re very generous,” he said. “But They don’t do things like that. If there’s any key at all to these chains, it’s over there.” And he nodded over at the anchor before he bent to drink.

  “That anchor?” I said. “When it’s rusted away, you mean?”

  “That will be at the ends of the worlds,” he said.

  I saw he was trying to tell me kindly not to be a fool. I felt very dejected as I shuffled off for the next handful of water. What could I do? I wanted to do something, on my own account as well as his. I wanted to break up his chains and tear the worlds apart. Then I wanted to get my hands on a few of Their throats. But I was simply a helpless discard, and only a boy at that.

  “One thing I can do,” I said when I came climbing back, “is to stay and keep you company and bring you water and things.”

  “I don’t advise that,” he said. “They can control you still, to some extent, and there’s nothing I can do to help you.”

  He had had enough to drink by then. He said I should go. But I sat down defiantly on the wet rock, shivering. Both of us shivered. The fog was blowing round us like the cold breath of giants. I looked up at him. He had his head leaned back again and that look on his face that was like peace but nearer death.

  “Tell me the rules,” I said. “You must know every rule there is, if you found out about them.”

  At that, his head came up and he looked almost angry. “There are no rules,” he said. “Only principles and natural laws. The rules were made by Them. They are caught inside Their own rules now, but there’s no need for you to be caught too. Stay outside. If you’re lucky, you might catch Them up in Their own rules.”

  “But there is that rule that nobody can interfere with a Homeward Bounder,” I said. I was thinking about the boy and the wagon. It still made me feel bad.

  “Yes,” he said. “There is, isn’t there?”

  Then neither of us said anything much for quite a long while. That’s the trouble with misery, or cold. It absorbs you. I still wonder how he could manage to be so human under it. Except, I think, he wasn’t human. Eventually, I put my shivering face up and asked if he’d like another drink.

  He was looking off into the fog, rather intently, and shook his head slightly. “Not now, thank you. I think it’s time for the vulture to come.”

  I don’t know why, but I got the point at once. I suppose I had been wondering, deep down, what made that new-looking wound of his. I found I was standing up, looking from the wound to his face and feeling ill. “Can’t I beat it off for you?”

  “No,” he said, quite severely. “You can’t do things like that against Them, and you mustn’t try. Why don’t you go?”

  I wanted to say that I’d stay—stay and hold his hand as it were—but I felt weak with horror. I couldn’t say a thing.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “It has nothing to do with you. But do go. It’s nearly here.”

  I looked up where he was looking. And sure enough, moving among the moving mist, were the shadowy wings of a huge bird. It was quite near, flapping overhead, and I could see its beak and its naked pink head. I still meant to stay. I know I did. But I was so horrified to see the bird so near that I went crouching away sideways with one hand over my head, and fell over the anchor, with the other hand on the chains.

  It was nothing like the twitch that takes you through a Boundary in the normal way. It was ten times more violent. Those chains were so cold they burned. But instead of sticking to me, the way freezing things usually seem to do, these flung me off themselves. I felt a sort of sizzling. Then I was crashing away backwards and finishing the fall I’d started, only much harder, onto a hard floor strewn with dead grass.

  I lay there, winded, for a bit. I may have cried, I felt so sad. I could see I was in a big barn, a nice warm place smelling comfortably of hay. There was a great gray pile of hay to one side of me, almost up to the wooden rafters. I was a bit annoyed that I’d missed it and landed on the floor. I went on lying there, staring up at the sun flooding in through chinks in the roof and listening to mice or rats scuttling, but I was beginning to feel uneasy. Something was wrong. I knew it was. This barn ought to have been a peaceful place, but somehow it wasn’t.

  I got to my knees and turned to the door. And stuck there. The door was a big square of sunlight. Outlined in it, but standing in the shadows, much nearer to me than was pleasant, was someone in a long gray cloak. This one had the hood up, but it made no difference. I knew one of Them when I saw Them. My heart knocked.

  “Get up,” said the outline. “Come here.”

  Now, this was a funny thing—I needn’t have done what he said. I knew I needn’t. But I was too scared not to. I got up and went over. At first the cloaked outline seemed to shimmer against the sun, but, as I got closer, it was more wavery still, as if I’d had my knuckles pressed to my eyes before I looked at it.

  “You have been to a forbidden place,” said the wavery shape.

  “So what?” I said. “I’m a free agent. I was told that rule.”

  “You wi
ll not go there again,” was the answer, “unless you want to share the same fate.”

  “I don’t have to do what you say,” I remember starting to say—and then it all goes vague. I really do not remember the next minute at all. I know my mind was nearly a complete blank in the first part I do remember. I had forgotten who I was, why I was there and—the thing They wanted—where I’d just been. By that time, I had wandered in a dazed way out into the farmyard. The moment I remember is the moment the farmer came out of his cowshed and saw me.

  “What do you think you’re up to in there?” he roared at me. He was huge. He picked up a thick stick as huge as himself and came after me with it.

  I ran. I was not too dazed for that. I ran, with my mind as numb as a foot that’s gone to sleep, wondering what was happening and why. I swear I hadn’t a thought or a memory in my head beyond that. Around me, chickens flapped and squawked and ran. Behind me, the farmer roared. And, beside me, just as I got to the farm gate, a huge dog plunged out of a kennel to the end of its rattling chain and almost got me.

  That rattling chain. Even They don’t think of everything. If They had thought to change it to a rope, I wouldn’t be telling this tale now. I’d have forgotten. I could never hear a chain rattle after that without thinking of him, chained to his rock.

  I cannoned into the gatepost and the dog just missed me. I made off down a muddy lane, remembering him on his rock at least. I thought, as I floundered along, that it had probably been a vision. Everything else in my head was vague, though it was coming back to me, in prickles, like your foot does when it stops being asleep. As I said, there are still times when I think he was a vision, but I try not to believe that, because I know They wanted me to. He was real. For that time, he was the only real thing I knew. It took days for the rest of my mind to come back. I had a terrible time too, because I had to start almost from scratch, as if I’d never been a Homeward Bounder before. And that was not an easy world to be a beginner in—believe you me! Thanks to Them, I never got to see the sign on the Boundary barn, but it didn’t matter. I knew what it was. It was UNFRIENDLY.

  After that, I traveled on. I was on near on a hundred worlds, wandering on and on. You wouldn’t believe how tired you get. You just get settled, and get to know some of the people and some of their ways, and you find a job you can do, or a school that will have you—if it’s that kind of strict world—and you’re just getting used to it, when bang! up starts the dragging and the yearning, and you’re on your way again. In the end, you never do get settled, because it’s always at the back of your mind that you’re going to move on.

  I got to be past master at making my way in a world. I took pride in it. The knack is not to care too much. Treat it as a joke. I got so that I didn’t care what I said, or how much I stole, or what dirty work I did. I found out that if people upped and blamed me, I could get out of trouble best by making them laugh. The only time this didn’t work was when a solemn old priest tried to adopt me. Nothing would make him laugh. Nothing would make him believe I wasn’t going to grow up into a priest too. He said he was going to save my soul. I only managed to get out of that when the Bounds were calling so strongly that I was near screaming.

  Of course, the best way to get on in a new world would be to tell them you’re a Homeward Bounder and why. But you find you can’t do that. They don’t believe you. Most of the time they think you’re mad. Or they may believe that you’re condemned to wander forever, but they never believe that you have to do it on more than their own world. And nothing will make anyone believe in Them. They make sure of that. If you start talking of Them, people cut you short and ask you what sin you were condemned for. They’re always sure you’ve sinned if you talk about Them. And you find yourself inventing a suitable sin to satisfy them. On the few occasions I talked about it, my story was that I had spied on forbidden sacred mysteries. True enough, in a way.

  I didn’t talk about it much. I really didn’t dare. After the way the Flying Dutchman had carried on about things not being permitted, and Them doing that to my mind straight after it, I was scared to say much even to other Homeward Bounders.

  I met quite a lot of Homeward Bounders as time went on. You find the Bounds are quite crowded if you walk them long enough. Homeward Bounders always help one another. It stands to reason. We’re usually very friendly to one another in a quick, jolly, shallow sort of way. We tell one another the jokes from our latest world, and help one another get set up in a new world if we happen to meet coming through a Boundary. But I never saw much point in confiding in any of them. You never meet the same one more than once. And, though they were all sorts and conditions of people—I’ve met kings and queens, crooks and artists, several actors and a six-foot lady who wrote sermons—they were one and all grown-up, and they all rather looked down on me for being only a boy.

  It didn’t matter. As soon as the Bounds called and I got to the Boundary with whomever it was, that was the end of the acquaintance. We both got twitched to different worlds. That seemed to be another rule. I hadn’t known at first that a Boundary could send people to more than one place, but they can. And they always do. They can’t have Homeward Bounders getting together. Oh no. That wouldn’t do at all.

  You wouldn’t believe how lonely you get. I got so bad sometimes that I couldn’t think of anything but Home. I remembered it over and over, those ordinary twelve years, until I felt it was plainer to me than when I lived there. I even used to dwell on the rows I had with Rob, and the way Rob and I used to tease Elsie. Elsie was good to tease, having ginger hair and a hot temper. I remembered her stamping and yelling, “I’m better at football than you! So!” Maybe she was better. She never kicked the ball into people’s washing, the way I did. It would give me that cold foot ache inside, wanting to go back and play football in the alley again. I knew it was all there, just the same as I remembered, waiting for me to come back. I knew it must be. Otherwise I wouldn’t still be a boy.

  When I got really miserable, I found I couldn’t help remembering him on his rock too. That always made me worse. He was still there too. I think I never hated Them as much on my own account as I did on his.

  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.

  V

  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 ha
rdly 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.”