The Homeward Bounders (26 page)

The ring, being the smallest part, was the first thing to fall away into brown nothing. And, as soon as it did, the whole load of heavy transparent chains came loose and fell on the rock with a rattle. That gave rise to a whole lot more rattling, further along, where he was. I looked round to see him dragging first one arm loose, then the other. And as those chains fell down, he kicked them off his feet too. I stared. I couldn't credit it. I had seen how those staples went deep into the granite.

“What did that?” I said.

The trembling had stopped by then. He was standing panting a bit, with one arm up to nurse his wound. “You did,” he said. He laughed a little. “I hope you don't think you've been tricked by me now,” he said. “I couldn't be quite honest with you. If I had, you might have started hoping again.”

“Is that so bad?” I said. “I thought it wasn't good to lose hope.”

“The way
They
use hope,” he said, “the sooner you lose it the better. Shall we get out of this place?”

“Suits me,” I said. “You must hate it a lot more than I do.”

We went down the way the stream went down, where the rocks were in jumbled stages. I'd forgotten how big he was. If he hadn't been weak and having to go slow with his wound, I'd never have kept up with him. He kept having to wait for me as it was, and he even had to help me over one or two steep places.

We got down in the end. It was a whole lot warmer down there. While we were walking to the entrance of a valley I could see further along, the rain stopped and the sky turned a misty blue.

“This used to be my Home,” he said, as we came into the valley.

It was really peculiar. It ought to have been one of the most beautiful places you ever saw. It was a long, winding valley, with the stream rushing through it and spraying among rocks. Every kind of tree was growing there, in woods up the sides and in clumps by the stream. But it all seemed faded. It wasn't faded the way things fade in autumn. It was more the way an old photograph goes, sort of faint and bleached. The grass wasn't green enough and the rocks were pale. The trees, though they had faded a bit like autumn, into yellowish and pinkish colors, were pale too, and they drooped a bit. Any birds that were singing made a slender sort of sound, as if they were too weak to raise their voices.

He sighed when he saw it. But I noticed that, as we walked along by the stream, color seemed to be draining back into the place. The sky turned bluer. The stream dashed along sharper, and seemed to nourish the grass to a better green. The trees recovered and lifted their leaves up. By the time we came to a white kind of house above the stream in a turn of the valley, everywhere was pretty beautiful, in a gentle sort of way, and the birds were singing their heads off.

There were loaded fruit trees round the house. I helped him pick fruits off them as we went up to the house—there were oranges, apples, pears and big yellow things like living custard. All the while, the valley seemed to be getting brighter and brighter. I saw, while he was reaching up into a tree, that his wound was quite a bit better. So was my arm, when I came to consider it. We took the fruit to the house. Most of the house was a sort of arched porch held up on pillars, where the sun came in good and warm, but there were rooms at the back and up on top.

The first thing he did was to go to the back room and bring out a basket for the fruit and a big kettle. “Eat what fruit you want,” he said. “We both need a wash and a warm drink, I think. Will you lay some wood for a fire while I get the water. There should be wood round the side of the house.”

There was a sort of hearth-place in the center of the porch, with the old sketchy remains of ash in it. Round the side of the house, the stacked logs and kindling were a bit greenish, but they didn't look as if they had been waiting forever and a day, as I knew they had. I brought a few loads into the porch—my arm was healing the whole time, and the rat bites on my fingers had almost gone by then—and by the time I'd got a fire laid and was looking round for some way to light it, he was back with the water.

“Ah,” he said, and knelt down and lit the fire. As he fetched a stand to go over the fire and put the kettle on it, he was laughing. His wound was doing even better than my arm. “It makes me laugh,” he said. “
They
put it about on most worlds that I was punished for lighting fires. I think only the world of Uquar knows even half the truth.”

“Helen's world?” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “If you'd talked much about me to Helen, neither of us would be here now.”

It was good to sit by the leaping fire, warm in the sun too. We ate fruit while we waited for the kettle to boil. But I was too nervous to enjoy it at first. “What will
They
do? Won't
They
know you're free?” I said.

“There's nothing
They
can do,” he said. “There's no hurry. All
They
can do is hope.
They
're bound to hope, I'm afraid.”

I couldn't help noticing the way he said “bound to hope.” It seemed to sum everything up. “Do you think you could explain a bit?” I asked him.

He pushed a lump of custard-fruit into his mouth and wiped his hands on his rags. “Of course,” he said. “You have been to
Their
Real Place. You know the ways of the worlds. You have talked of the worlds as being like many reflections in a place of glass. You know almost what I discovered in the beginning. Except,” he said, “when I discovered all this, each world was its own Real Place. They still seem that way to those who are not Homeward Bound. But they aren't, not now, and that is my fault.” He stared into the flames licking round the logs for a while, sitting with his arms wrapped round his knees and the marks of the chains still on them. “I deserved to be punished,” he said. “I saw that a place is less real if it is seen from outside, or only seen in memory; and also that if a person settles in a place and calls that place Home, then it becomes very real indeed. You saw how this valley faded because I had not been in it for a very long time. Well, it came to me that if reality were removed from the worlds, it could be concentrated in one place. And reality could be removed if someone to whom all the worlds were Home never went to any world, but only remembered them. And I mentioned this idea casually to some of
Them
.”

“What happened then?” I said.

“Then,” he said, “
They
went away and thought.
They
are not fools, even if
They
never make discoveries for
Themselves. They
saw
They
could use this discovery, just as
They
have since used machines and inventions made by men. After a while,
They
came back and
They
said, ‘We want to test this theory of yours. We want you to be the one who remembers the worlds.' And I saw my mistake. I said, ‘Give me time to think,' and I hastened away and began to explain my idea to mankind. It was difficult, because not all men were ready to believe me. But I persuaded the people on the world of Uquar to listen, and I had already taught them a great deal when
They
came after me. There were no rules in those days.
They
were stronger than me.
They
brought me back here and
They
chained me as you saw me, and
They
said, ‘Don't be afraid. This isn't going to be forever. It's important you know that. We just want to know if what you said is true.' And I said, ‘But it is true. There's no need to chain me.' And
They
said, ‘But there is a need. If you are chained, there will eventually be someone for whom no place is real, and he will come along and release you. And you are bound to hope that he will come.' And of course that was true too. So
They
went away and left the vulture to remind me.”

I looked at his wound, which was now only a nasty red cut. “
They'
d no call to set that vulture on you,” I said. “That was an optional extra, if you like!”

“No it wasn't,” he said. “It was a reminder, like the anchor. Without the vulture, I might have fallen into apathy and stopped hoping. Hope was what kept me there, you see. Hope is the forward-looking part of memory. My name means Foresight, did you know? And I think
They
found that humorous.
They
knew that as long as I had hope that you would come along, I couldn't free myself. As long as I had hope,
They
could keep
Their
Real Place and play with unreal worlds. I couldn't even hope that I would give up hoping, because that was still hope. And when you came a second time, I hardly dared speak, I was so full of hope. I dared not let you know.”

“No wonder you sounded so strung up,” I said.

The kettle began to boil then, lifting its lid and chiming it back down again in clouds of steam.

“Good. We can wash,” he said. “But let's have a hot drink first. Then I shall put on some proper clothes. But I'm afraid I haven't any clothes to fit you.”

“It's all right,” I said. “I'm about dry. Besides—” I flipped at my shirt where Vanessa had sewn on the painted sign of Shen—“I'm attached to this. And I reckon it's good protection against
Them
.”

He had got up to shake some kind of herbs into two cups he had ready. He was behaving all the time now as if he had never been chained to that rock—perfectly healthy. He must have been strong. And he stopped and looked at me under his hand that was holding the jar, sort of humorously. “You don't need that,” he said. “You don't need anything. No Homeward Bounder does.”

“How's that?” I said. “Would you mind explaining?”

He tore a piece off his trousers and used it as a kettle-holder to pour the boiling water on the herbs. Then he handed me a cup. “Careful. It's very hot,” he said, and sat back, sipping at his cup. The stuff looked to revive him more. His face seemed to fill out, and that seemed to have an effect on the valley around us too. By then, it was the most beautiful place I had ever seen. “The no interference rule,” he said. “You mentioned it to me yourself. Rule Two.”

I said, “Do you mean
Them
—” Grammar! my mother would have said—“
They
are bound to keep that rule too?”

“Yes,” he said. “If you play a game, then you have to keep the rules, or there is no game anymore. From your account,
They
have been very careful to keep that one.”

“Haven't
They
just!” I said furiously. “
They
only robbed me of my Home and my friends and a proper lifetime! That's all!”

“
They
certainly did,” he said, and he began looking very sorry for me again. “Drink your drink. It's better hot.”

I sipped at the stuff. It was pretty scalding. It was thin and sour and herby and it ought to have tasted awful, but it didn't. It was some of the best stuff I have ever drunk. It cleared my head—or it may have put a few ideas into my head, I don't know—but I know that as I sipped and he talked, I began to understand more and more. Adam had got most of it right about us Homeward Bounders, but there was more to it than we had thought.

“
They
need you Homeward Bounders,” he said. “It's not just because
They
enjoy playing dangerously—
They
have to play it that way. You see, even when worlds are Real Places, they have a way of multiplying—splitting off and making new worlds—and they do it even more when they're drained of reality.
They
like that. It means more of
Them
can play. But, after a while, there were so many new worlds that
They
were playing with numbers that I hadn't known. So I couldn't keep these new worlds from becoming dangerously real.
They
found
They
had to have people to keep these worlds unreal for
Them. They
did it by promising you all a Real Place and making sure you never found it. Home.”

“So hope did the same for us as it did for you!” I said. “But I still don't see why it was me that rusted the anchor. Couldn't Ahasuerus have done it for you? Or the Flying Dutchman? They both said they hadn't a hope.”

“They knew they hadn't a hope of getting Home,” he said. “But they did have hope.
They
took care to tell them that someone was bound to release me. It was only towards the end, when the number of Homeward Bounders was almost complete, that
They
had to stop telling people that. Otherwise I would have given up hope.”

“There has to be a reason,” I said, “for the numbers of us being limited. Why is that?”

“It has to be no more than the numbers of
Them
,” he said. “You are very dangerous to
Them
anyway, because of Rule Two. For, as you pointed out,
They
have injured you and interfered with you considerably. If all Homeward Bounders got together and realized this, it would go hard with
Them
. But if there is even one more—”

“I get you!” I said. “Then we tip the balance of reality our way, and the reality drains out of
Their
Real Place. And there are several more now!”

“That,” he said, “was why
They
sent you Home, I think.”

“Oh no,” I said. “The Bounds called—” And then I stopped, because I realized I was still trying to hide the truth from myself, just like I had in Adam's world. What had happened there was that I had already seen that I was still going to have to walk the Bounds,
before
the Bounds called. I had, in a way, chosen to stay a Homeward Bounder. Not that there was much choice. “I think,” I said slowly, supping the last of my drink, “I may be very dangerous to
Them
. Am I?”