The Homeward Bounders (13 page)

Joris gulped and shed tears here. It took him a while to get going again. It really had been only that day, it turned out, that he had been made a Homeward Bounder for going after a demon too hard.

That morning, Joris and Konstam had been called out to investigate a case of demon-infestation at a remote farm. It was nothing very bad, the farm people said. They had found a sheep with all the blood sucked out of it, and no animals would go near the old barn up the hill. But the demon hadn't shown itself or tried to harm the humans, which made them think it could only be a small one. Konstam had warned Joris to be careful, though. When a demon hides up and starts sucking blood, that means it's thinking of having a brood of baby demons. It gets very vicious then.

Anyway, they went to the barn and took readings and, sure enough, it seemed to be a small demon. So they set to work to tempt it out. Now, it all got very technical here, but, as far as I could gather, Joris's main job, as soon as the demon came out, was to stop it escaping into the spirit world so that Konstam could get a shot at it and kill the part of it that passed for its body—the corporeal part. They used stuff called demon wire for that.

Here Joris broke off and got all unhappy again. He kept tapping the sign on his chest and saying, “But I
can't
be taken to the spirit world! I carry all sorts of equipment to stop it. Konstam insists. I don't know
what
happened!”

“Do you mean that sign should stop you?” said Helen.

“That?” said Joris. “No that's Shen. That's just power over demons. No, I have all sorts of other things. Anyway—”

Well, the demon came charging out, and it seemed pretty small. Joris did his stuff, while Konstam stood ready to shoot, and he did it well and got a loop of his wire round the demon. Then all hell broke loose. Because the demon had been cunningly concealing its size. It wasn't a small one at all. It was one of the long white human-looking kind, only one of the very biggest, the kind they call Great Demons, a sort of Demon King, really. Its name was Adrac, and it was almost all spirit. The body part of it was so small that Konstam missed it with his first shot, and all his other shots went wide, because the demon was dragging Joris hither and yon and trying to put Joris in the way of Konstam's bullets. They have to be silver bullets, Joris said. But any bullet kills a human, and Konstam obviously didn't want to shoot a valuable slave. So Konstam dropped his gun and came after Adrac with his demon knife. Joris said that was very brave of Konstam.

As for what happened next, Joris didn't tell it quite like this, but my guess is that his slavish devotion took over. He had been told by the Great God Konstam never, on any account, to let go of a demon once he had it wired, and he didn't. He hung on. Konstam seems to have had more sense. The last thing Joris heard of him, Konstam was shouting to him to let go. But it was too late then. The demon took Joris into another world.

“What? Through a Boundary, you mean?” I said.

“Oh no,” said Joris. “We keep the Boundaries sealed off or the demons would be infesting every world by now. But there are an awful lot of weak places where a strong demon can burst through into another world. We use the weak places ourselves sometimes, to go after escaped demons.”

Helen and I were both quite dumbfounded by this. We had thought no one but Homeward Bounders went from world to world. But, it turned out, Joris had actually been on quite a number of other worlds himself. With Great God Konstam, of course.

“I wonder
They
allow you to,” Helen said.

Joris looked as if he was going to say it would take more than
Them
to stop Konstam, but maybe he had doubts about that, because he said, “Well, I think
They
like to keep the game between humans and demons as even as possible, and it wouldn't be even if we couldn't go after them.”

On this occasion, Adrac didn't stop when he had dragged Joris into the next world. He (or it) went on, from one world to another, and Joris hung on, with worlds flipping past him like sleepers under a railway train, long after most people with any sense would have let go. Adrac kept turning round and saying, “Why don't you let go?” and Joris kept saying, “No, I'm damned if I shall!” And Adrac said, “I shall suck your blood. I'll take your mind away!” And Joris said, “You can't, not with this wire.” So Adrac said, “We'll take a plunge into the spirit world then, and you'll be at my mercy there.” I can't think why Joris wasn't scared silly. But he said he wasn't scared, not then, because he knew Adrac couldn't do any of those things. Konstam's equipment was too good. So the demon went on scudding from world to world, and Joris went on hanging on. He unhooked the white gauntlets from his belt to show us how the wire had almost cut through them. His hands were still sore, he said.

Finally Adrac got quite exasperated. “I'll give you one last chance,” he said. “Will you let go, or shall I see what
They
can do to you?”

And Joris said, “No.” He had never heard of
Them
. He thought it was another empty threat.

Adrac said, “Right, then!” And, Joris said, the demon seemed to change direction and plunge off a new way, from world to world, until suddenly they crashed into quite a different place. Joris could tell it was different from the worlds they had been racing through up to then. For one thing, it hurt Joris to crash through into it. He yelled with pain, and Adrac turned and gave a nasty laugh. For another thing, though the place felt more intense and solid than anywhere he had ever been, Joris couldn't see it very well. It was a vast, quiet, shadowy place. Machines hummed and flickered there. And
They
were there, at
Their
gaming tables.

There was a table every few yards, Joris said, for further than he could see on all sides of him.
They
bent over the tables. He saw
Them
consult machines, and then carefully move pieces this way and that on the tables, and then sometimes
They
shook dice and consulted over that. Some played in pairs, others in companies. It was all very intent. Part of the horror was the terrible intentness of
Them
.

The intensity and the sheer numbers of
Them
shook Joris to the core. And the nature of
Their
game. The nearest table he could see was his own world.
They
were moving humans and demons about in it. But, an instant or so after Adrac had come crashing in beside the table with Joris, a blue light began blinking at one end of the table, and
They
turned round to look.

Joris said he was scared stiff then. “I think it
must
have been the spirit world, in spite of my equipment,” he said. “It felt so different. And I hadn't any protection with me against the spirit world at all, because Konstam always did that part. I knew I was done for. There were so many of
Them
, and I could see
They
were all demons.”

“All demons?” Helen and I said together.

“Oh yes.” Joris was surprised we hadn't known. “
They
're not any kind I've ever seen before, but
They
certainly are demons.
They
're more corporeal than Adrac, and a good deal larger, and the strongest I've ever come across, but there was no mistaking it. I could see
Their
spirit part shimmering round
Them
. And I was really frightened.”

Adrac seemed fairly subdued too. He and Joris both stood there waiting, until, one by one, each table of
Them
turned
Their
hard-to-see faces to look at the two. When
They
were all looking, one in the distance said, “What are you doing here, Adrac?”

“I've come to complain,” said Adrac. “You haven't kept your promises.”

Another of
Them
, a nearer one, said, “Mind your manners, Adrac. Speak to us like that again, and you'll be punished.”

Adrac said, in a mutinous, polite way, “Well, is it fair? We Great Demons agreed to play, if you promised not to let the humans cull among us. You agreed they could catch the small fry, and you promised we'd be allowed to breed in peace. You said you'd keep them off. I go to a quiet farm to start a family and—Well, look at me! Look at
it
!”

The hard-to-see faces turned to Joris.

“How did this happen?” one of
Them
in the distance asked
Them
at the table of Joris's world.

They
looked over
Their
table, consulted a machine, and looked carefully at the table again. One of
Them
turned to Adrac. “We apologize, Adrac. This seems to be a random factor we didn't notice.”

“Well, kill it for me then,” said Adrac.

“Can't you?” said one of
Them
.

“I wish I could,” said Adrac. “But look at it. It's hung about with every kind of protection. I can't touch it, even here. You'll have to do it.”

They
started moving towards Joris then, numbers of
Them
, tall and vague and gray. Joris said he dropped the demon wire in sheer terror and hardly knew what happened the next few seconds, he was so frightened. It was only when
They
stopped, in a ring round him, that he noticed he was still alive and untouched, with his demon knife in his hand.

“Leave me alone,” he said. “I was only doing my duty.”

They
didn't seem to notice that he'd spoken. “No good,” said one.

“Why were they allowed this much protection?” asked another.

“I said all along that it was a mistake,” Adrac said righteously.

They
ignored Adrac too. Joris said it was the queerest feeling to find Adrac, one of his world's Great Demons, treated as a nobody. He would have enjoyed it, if he hadn't been less than nobody himself.

“This is a nuisance,” said another of
Them
. “You'll have to make a discard instead.”

“Have the Bounds room for any more?” asked another one.

A voice of
Them
in the distance said, “There is room for two more discards only. Can't it really be touched?”

“No it can't!” one of
Them
round Joris said, quite irritably. “The only solution is a discard.”

“Well get on and discard then,” said another of
Them
in the distance. “You're holding up play.”

So the nearest of
Them
turned to Joris and said just what
They
said to me. “You are now a discard. We have no further use for you in play. You are free to walk the Bounds as you please, except that it is against the rules for you to enter play in any world. To ensure that you keep this rule, you will be transferred to another field of play every time a move ends in the field where you are. The rules also state that you are allowed to return Home if you can. If you succeed in returning, you may enter play again in the normal manner.”

Adrac laughed meanly, and Joris found himself a Homeward Bounder. The next thing he knew, he was in the middle of the war.

Helen had spent the time collecting critters. She had about twenty woodlice in front of her on the sack, and she was arranging them into an armor-plated pattern. “Never mind,” she said. “At least you're not a slave any longer.”

Joris burst into tears. “You don't understand! I belong to Konstam!”

“Stop howling,” said Helen, “or you won't hear me when I tell you what happened to me. Or Jamie, when he tells.”

“I don't think we should,” I said. “I was told it was against the rules.”

Helen sighed angrily. “There are no rules. There are only principles and—”

“I know, I know!” I said. “But I broke a rule once.”

“Well,
They
don't seem to have eaten you,” said Helen. “
They
probably don't care. To
Them
, we're only discarded randoms, and children too. When I was born, Joris, I was born with a gift.”

I dozed off while Helen told it. The guns outside were still crumping and yattering, but you get used to them, and then they make you feel tired. But I remember noticing that Helen played down her peculiar arm when she told it to Joris. She kept calling it just her gift. Then she woke me up and made me tell Joris what had happened to me, while she paid me back by going to sleep over the sack, with her face in the woodlice. After that, Joris told me a great deal more about ten-foot Konstam's godlike virtues, and I went to sleep again too. I think we were all three asleep when a mud-brown officer came hammering on our metal roof.

“Put that light out, you in there! The dawn offensive is due to start any moment now!”

I suppose it was typical of each of us, the way we took that. Joris jumped up before he was really awake and obediently blew out the light. I woke up and growled out, “Very good, sir. Sorry, sir,” in a voice I hoped sounded like a soldier's. Helen did nothing but wake up and glower.

“Don't let it occur again,” said the officer. And he went away without looking inside, to our relief.

We sat in the dark and listened to the din. It was offensive all right. If the officer hadn't woken us, the noise would have done. Our ears hurt with it. The earth in our hole quivered. It sounded as if all the guns outside were firing at once, nonstop. Feet ran across our roof quite often, adding to the din, and once I think one of the machines ran over it too. It certainly sounded like it from underneath. At last, when we could see chinks of quite bright daylight round the sacking, the noise all moved away into the distance. It was most peaceful. We actually heard a bird sing.