The Homeward Bounders (19 page)

“Tell me about you,” Adam said quickly to the nose, before it could go in again.

“I might,” said Helen. And she put a mouse she had been nursing down on the table. The critter ran like clockwork towards the biscuits.

“I didn't know you kept mice,” Adam said.

“I don't. It lives here,” said Helen. “It's quite sweet, but I'd prefer it if you had rats.” This was quite true, but what it meant was that Helen was still in a bad mood. It took me quite a while to coax her into telling Adam how she saw
Them
at
Their
game in the House of Uquar.

That story caused Adam to take his glasses off and twirl them about. He seemed to do that when he was thinking. I suspect that he thought a lot. His glasses were broken on both sides and mended with wire and sticking-plaster.

“Funny,” he said, when Helen had finished. “You seem all to have seen
Them
differently. It's given me quite a few ideas. I'm not sure I like my ideas, either. But I know what kind of games
They
were playing. Like to come and see one?”

Adam took us through the hall, past Frederick M. Allington the skeleton, and down some steps to a big basement room. Like all the rest of his house, it was beautifully polished and painted and well kept. Rich. Posh. Adam switched on a bright light over a large table in the middle of the room.

Even Helen recoiled. I jumped back. Joris had got right out of the door before Helen said, “It's only models. Come back, fool.”

She was right. But, for a moment, I could have sworn it was one of
Their
game tables. There was a real-looking landscape built on the table. Adam said it was made out of paper and glue and paint mostly. He was proud of it. He had made most of it. There were hills, a wood, bushes, a lake, and some clusters of houses. Over this landscape were arranged the soldiers and machines and guns of a mud-brown war. All the little figures were beautifully painted, to look as real as possible. Adam had done those too.

“This is called a War Game,” Adam said. “This one's a modern war I'm in the middle of playing with my father.” He went up to the table and looked over the arrangement of models. He picked up one of the rulers lying on the landscape and made some measurements. The intent way he did it made all three of us think of
Them
. “I think I've got him,” he said. “When he comes back on Sunday, I'm going to crush him. It takes real skill, you know.”

“Doesn't it depend on luck at all?” I said, nodding to the handful of dice lying near the rulers.

“
They
threw dice,” Joris said. He was staring at that table just as he had stared at Helen's arm.

“You told me,” said Adam. “You said
They
moved things on the table and sometimes threw dice after that. That was what made me sure it was War Gaming. You don't use the dice every move—that's why it takes skill—you use them to tell you the results of the battles, how many men get killed, and so on. We use dice for the weather too. We make it quite subtle. You can read the rules if you like.” He picked up a fat booklet from the edge of the table and passed it to Joris.

Helen put her hair back to stare at the table of soldiers. That meant she was impressed. “But what do
They
use the machines for?”

“Calculating the odds on this or that move, I should think,” Adam said. “Dad and I have often said we could do with a computer. Just think how much more you'd need one if you were playing with the whole world!” Adam's face took on a blissful, wistful look. “Fancy a War Game with the whole world for a table!”

“But where do
They
get the machines?” Helen persisted.

“How should I know?” said Adam. “Though what I'd do if I was
Them
, would be to let people invent them, on this world or that, and then kill the people off and take the machines myself.”

“So would I,” said Helen. “I think
They
do. But you may not be right. The game I saw
Them
playing in the House of Uquar wasn't like this.”

“Yes, it was really,” Adam assured her. “It was the kind we call Fantasy War Gaming. Any number of people can play that. Look. I can't show you it set out, because we play with just a referee and a map.” He took Helen and me over to a shelf at one side of the room where there were piles of hand-drawn maps. They looked like mazes—or pictures of the travels of an earthworm. “These are underground maps,” Adam explained, full of enthusiasm, “with masses of traps, pitfalls and monsters. Basically, the referee sets the players' men going through one of these places, and they see if they can fight their way out of it before something gets them. There's something horrendous every few yards.”

“That's Helen's world!” I said.

“You made it sound like one of my outside Fantasy maps,” Adam said, leafing through his heap. “Players can take over a fort in those. Oh, and a lot of emphasis is put on the endowments of the players' men—how strong they are, and how persistent, and whether they're fighting men or thieves or clerks, and what class of man or magic user they've got to. Is your world like that?”

“Yes,” said Helen. “I am a cleric and a magic user.” This was news to me, but, when I thought about it, what else could she have been?

Joris came up with the book of rules just then, looking puzzled. “This War isn't like ours with the demons, not really.”

“No,” said Adam. “From what you said, yours is a version of the game in Helen's world. That's why they threw dice so much. When a player's man meets a monster—or a demon—he's allowed a saving throw, to give him some kind of chance. We use these many-sided dice—”

“Some of
Their
dice had many sides,” Joris said.

Helen said loudly, “I'm angry. How dare
They
play games!”

“Quite,” said Adam. “What worries me is that this world—my world—has to be a game like the one on the table. And when
They
start playing
Their
next war, it's going to be a nuclear one. You know—radiation.”

“Demon rays,” Helen and Joris said together. I didn't say anything. I was remembering that Adam's world was ninth in a war series. My home was so like his, that it was probably tenth.
They
could be playing that kind of war there at the moment. Or worse—my Home could have been the world just before Adam's, the one with the demon rays. But I couldn't let myself think that. I couldn't!

Adam turned and opened boxes of different kinds of soldiers, red-coated, blue-coated, in armor, and in kilts. I don't think he was attending to them any more than I was. He had taken his glasses off to twiddle. “How does one get rid of
Them
?” he said.

But, just then there was a terrific clatter of feet, and someone with flaming red hair in a flaming rage came shooting down the steps into the basement. “Adam!
Adam!
I draw the
line
at pet mice on the kitchen table!” She was a grown-up lady, but she really was pretty, in spite of too much makeup and the rage she was in. She would have been worth every penny of sixty thousand crowns. “A tame mouse!” she shouted. “Eating biscuits on the table!”

“It wasn't tame,” said Adam. “It was quite, quite wild. I hoped it would tear you to bits.” And he said to us, “My sister. Vanessa.” He had introduced Fred the skeleton in a much more friendly way.

“Oh you
would
have visitors!” said Vanessa. “You always do when I'm really mad with you!” She came towards us trying to pretend it was a joke. But it wasn't. I could see Adam really annoyed her.

Joris backed away from her. He was thoroughly embarrassed. He remembered the conversation about the price of handsome virgins as well as I did. Helen was ashamed about the mouse. Her hair came down like a curtain. Which left me standing out in front.

Vanessa wasn't very tall. Even with the high-heeled shoes ladies wore in Adam's world, she wasn't much taller than me or Adam. That made me feel I knew her quite well, somehow. Her face, the same level as mine, lost its annoyance and its false smile as soon as she looked at me. She looked at my arm in the kitchen towel, and she looked back at my face. “What's been happening to you? You look really ill!”

“It's a long story,” I said. “I had a bit of an accident.”

“It was me—” began Joris.

“Not to worry,” Adam cut in quickly. “Joris and me gave him First Aid. He's Jamie, by the way. This is Helen, the one without a face.”

It was no good. Vanessa was used to Adam. She just stuck to her point. “Let me look at it at once,” she said to me. “Adam doesn't know the first thing—”

“I do,” Joris said timidly, and Adam said, “I
do
!” but Vanessa took not the blindest bit of notice of either. She simply dragged me off to a place where there were a great many strong-smelling medicines and bandages and things. While she stripped off the kitchen towel, she told me she was nineteen and had just started training to be a doctor, so I could have every confidence. Then she saw the cut. It gave her rather a shock—demon knives are pretty vicious things—and she wanted to rush me off to the hospital at once to have it stitched.

I refused to go. I knew it would mean no end of trouble in a well-organized world like this one. I thought they would probably end up putting me in a madhouse. So I talked and talked at Vanessa to persuade her to forget about the hospital. I haven't the faintest memory of what I said. It's a funny thing—if people get sympathetic and start worrying about you, you always feel twice as ill. I felt really gray. I remember talking, and Vanessa answering in a humoring sort of way, but I've no idea what I said. But it turns out I told her all about Adam and the game and the alley, and half my life as a Homeward Bounder as well. Helen swore I did, so I suppose I must have done. I must have thought Vanessa wouldn't believe a word.

Anyway, she put a dressing on my arm and made it much more comfortable. Then she made me go and lie down in their front room. I thought of it as their parlor—we'd have called it a parlor at Home. It had smart velvet chairs and a piano and wax fruit and photographs of relatives, just as ours did. But I think they called it a living room. That was daft, because the room was much posher than our parlor. Even the relatives in the photographs were all much posher than ours—imposing old fellows in whiskers and ladies in a lot of hat. There was one photograph of a lady in a hat just over the smart sofa I was lying on, and I kept staring at it. The lady didn't look at all like Vanessa—when do relatives in photos ever look like anyone alive?—but I kept thinking I'd seen her before. I dozed off, and woke up, and looked at the photographed lady several times, and each time she looked more familiar.

The rest of them thought I was asleep all the time. They kept creeping in, pretending they were having a look at me, in order to have private talks.

I woke up to hear Adam whispering. “That knife just leaped at him. I've never seen anything like it! Joris thought he'd killed him. He is OK, isn't he?”

“Yes, but it's a nasty cut,” Vanessa whispered back. “I wish he'd go to the hospital. Adam, don't slide off. Have they told you—? If all this about
Them
is true, oughtn't we to do something?”

“I know we ought!” Adam whispered. “It's serious. I'm not going to sit about waiting to be someone's toy soldier.”

“Or some
thing
's,” said Vanessa.

“Too right!” said Adam.

A bit later on, I opened my eyes to look at the lady in the photograph and heard Joris talking: “… all my fault,” he was saying, “because it was a silly joke between me and Helen. Only Helen won't talk to me now, so can I talk to you?”

“Yes, if you want,” Vanessa said. “But don't wake Jamie up.”

“Helen says Jamie kept getting her into messes,” said Joris. “She said he showed off. But I don't think that was fair, because Jamie
does
know. It was my fault. I took too long stealing a coat, and then I lost my head in the alley. I hate myself. And there's another thing.”

“What is that?” said Vanessa.

Joris said, “I think slavery is wrong.”

“Well,” said Vanessa, “you should know.”

“No, but I don't,” said Joris. “Not from my own experience. Konstam never treats me like a slave. Konstam—”

Once he was on Konstam again, I went straight back to sleep. I was amused. I could see Joris was trying to warn Vanessa about Adam's plans for her. I wondered what made him so sure that being a slave would be a bad thing for Vanessa, if it wasn't for him.

The next time I woke up and looked at the familiar lady in the photograph, it was because someone was crying. I moved round very gently and sort of stretched my eyes sideways to see who it was. I thought it was Joris again, to tell the truth. But it was Helen! I was shocked. I hadn't thought Helen
could
cry. But there she was, sitting on the sofa across from mine, with her hands to her face, howling her eyes out. Vanessa was sitting on the floor beside the sofa with both arms round Helen. I thought, poor Vanessa! She's having quite a time among all of us!