The Final Nexus

by David Clarke

Chapter 2

The rest of the holiday passed largely without incident. By the end of the second week of September everyone in our group had been implanted with either French or English, and as far as anyone could tell it had worked perfectly. The scientists wanted to wait for a while and then check to see that there was no sign of the effects wearing off (I thought this unlikely: it was a year since I had been implanted with both Kerpian and Grey, and as far as I could tell I hadn't forgotten anything about either language).

Once September appeared on the horizon we all had to go back to school. Of course I had missed almost an entire school year, though to balance that I'd been intending to specialise in languages at A level anyway, something that would hardly be necessary if the chairs were proved to be successful. Nonetheless, I had some catching up to do in other subjects, and of course some subjects - the scientific ones, mostly - were rather different here, because this world had some things - faster than light travel, for example - which would have been considered to be against the laws of physics back in my native world.

As the term went on my friends were each in turn given a four-day absence from school to allow them to return to the Institute to be implanted with the second language. And by half-term the scientists were ready to test their Arvelan program, and I volunteered to try it first. Stefan, predictably, insisted on coming with me, and so we both spent four days in the chair while our friends were out playing and enjoying the last remnants of the warm weather.

But once we woke up I decided that it had been worth it, because as far as I could tell the implant process had worked. I'd had a fairly feeble grasp of Arvelan before, but now it came as easily to me as English or Kerpian. Stefan and I sat and chatted with Killian and Caradoc for a while, and they agreed that we were both now fluent - though Killian accused us of using words and turns of phrase only employed by 'northern barbarians', and Caradoc thought the eccentric use of certain cases of the noun could only be understood by an illiterate San�ljan - so nothing had changed there.

Actually, that's not true, because when we first arrived back in Elsass Caradoc would never have dared to offer cheek to a Konj�auml;ssi. The fact that he could now showed that Killian had achieved his most important wish: now he was just seen as one of the group and a friend, not as a demi-god who had to be appeased at every turn. And he looked really happy about being treated like a normal kid, too.

For that reason, once we got back to the R�sidence I sent Nicky and Tommi to the Institute to be implanted with Arvelan, too: Tommi and Caradoc were very much an item, and Nicky was Killian's closest friend, and clearly it would make both relationships easier if full communication in both languages was possible.

We hadn't all gone back to school in September: Alain was almost seventeen at the start of the new term, and since his education had been neglected for so long there was no question of him continuing into higher education. Instead he now had a job: he was driving tracked vehicles - bulldozers, mainly - for a construction company. He'd found that he was good at driving our Grey tank, and Mr Jaecklin, the director of our R�sidence, had arranged for him to have some proper lessons and had then helped him to apply for a job. And, once his seventeenth birthday had been reached, at the end of October, he had been officially old enough to drive a bulldozer, and so he had started work. And he was really happy about it: he was finally earning some money doing a job that he enjoyed.

At the moment he was still living at the R�sidence, but he was hoping to move out into a small apartment once he had enough money saved up. Oli would of course be moving in with him: Mr Jaecklin had arranged for Alain to become Oli's legal guardian, and they were both looking forward to it, though only provided that they could find somewhere not too far from the R�sidence: neither of them wanted to lose touch with the rest of us.

The autumn term went on, and at last I was feeling like a normal kid again, just going to school like any other fourteen-year-old. I liked the R�sidence, I liked my school; I had plenty of friends, and Stefan seemed to love me every bit as much as I loved him. Which would make this a perfect place to end the story, except...

Except that one Friday evening in mid-November I got home from school and found that I had a visitor: once again there was a note on my door asking me to go to the director's office, and when I got there I found Narj Larzel waiting for me. This didn't worry me too much: I assumed this was purely a social visit, because I was sure he knew how I felt about portals - I hadn't exactly made it a secret.

Hello, Jake," he greeted me. "How are you?"

"Fine," I said. "I'm nicely settled in here now."

"Good. Well, we've been busy getting the Hubs back into action, and we're ready to get some of the portals opened again. And I was talking to Dr Schmitt at the Institute, and he says... well, look, the point is that we'd like the first portal we reopen at Hub Two to be the one that goes back to your world. So - how would you like to go home?"

That took me completely unawares. It's true that I'd said something to the scientists at Strossburi to the effect that I'd like to be able to at least go back and visit my parents - but that had been over a year ago, and somehow the possibility had slipped my mind in the meantime.

"Can I think about it?" I asked. "I mean, I've sworn never to go near another portal - but on the other hand... Let me go and think about it for a bit and I'll come back later this evening. Would that be okay?"

"Of course. Take as long as you want."

So I retired to my room to think about it and to discuss it with Stefan.

"Well, we talked about this before," he reminded me. "I don't mind you going, but there are two conditions: first, you swear to come back, and second, you let me come with you."

"Don't worry," I said. "If I do go I'm certainly coming back - you'd never believe how much happier I am here than I was there. And there is absolutely no way I'm leaving you, either. It's going through portals that I'm worried about. Okay, I know what happened last time was just a freak event, but even so..."

"The Hub portals are all safely underground," he reminded me. "Nothing's going to fall on top of them. And I think the one at the Institute is safe, too. I'm not trying to talk you into going, mind - I'd be delighted if you just decided to stay here. But I've heard you talking about your parents sometimes, and I can understand if you want to see them again. I just don't want you to change your mind and decide to stay there - or if you do I want to make sure I'm with you so I can stay too. I really don't think I could stand it if you weren't around."

"I won't want to stay, I promise. But I would like to see them again - and once I'm sure the portals are completely safe it would be good if I can stay in touch, too. Perhaps they could even come and visit me here, so they can see what sort of a life I have now. Or even..."

"What?"

"Well, I suppose they could come and live in this world. That way we'd be together again, and I wouldn't have to go through any portals to see them, either. I should think my dad could find a job here..."

Stefan was silent, and I'm pretty sure I knew what he was thinking: if I lived with my parents, even if it was in this world, it would be almost impossible for us to stay together all the time - unless he moved in with us, of course, and I was fairly sure my parents wouldn't be prepared to allow that. Of course we'd still see each other every day, but we wouldn't be able to sleep together very often...

I decided I wasn't going to give that up under any circumstances.

"I wouldn't want to live in the same house as them," I said, quickly, "because I don't want to stop sharing a bed with you. Of course they might be prepared to let us, but I doubt it. So we'll keep living here, or we'll doss in with Alain and Oli if we have to - after all, the director might throw me out of here if I'm not classed as an orphan any longer..."

The more I thought about it, the more fraught the idea of inviting my parents to this world seemed. I could lose my home and, more important, I could lose my boyfriend. And I simply couldn't allow that to happen.

"I won't ask them to move here," I said. "Later, perhaps, but only if they are prepared to accept us being together."

"That's really more important to you than getting back together with your parents?"

"Of course it is. Obviously I love my parents, but I love you a whole lot more. I won't let anything come between us."

He hugged me hard. "Then I think you should go," he said. "I still want to come with you, but you don't have to tell your parents I'm anything more than a friend until you're ready to."

"Thanks, Stefi. In that case I'll tell Mr Narj I'd like to use his portal."

So I went and did exactly that. It wasn't quite a case of pack up and leave tomorrow, though: after all, the portal hadn't yet been reopened, and in any case Mr Jaecklin didn't want me to take any more time off school - I was, he pointed out, quite far enough behind already - and that meant I wouldn't be able to make the journey until the Christmas holidays.

I checked on the computer and discovered that, unfortunately, Chanukah started fairly early this year, on December 2nd, so I wouldn't be able to celebrate with my parents. On the other hand, if Stefan was coming with me maybe that would be a good thing - I wouldn't want him to feel like an outsider.

School was due to end on December 17th, and obviously I wanted to get as long a stay with my parents as possible, so if the portal was ready by then I'd want to go that weekend. Although it occurred to me that things wouldn't be completely straightforward even if the portals were working properly, because Stefan didn't have any papers that would be accepted by British border controllers. He actually had three sets - a chip in his arm that identified him as a slave in the non-existent Middle Continent; an ID document from our current home in Elsass - I suppose that might just about pass as some sort of EU document, but I didn't think so - and his original ID card which, since it was emblazoned with swastikas, would hardly pass unnoticed at Dover. I wasn't sure how to deal with that problem, so a couple of days later I gathered my friends together and we had a brainstorming session.

Once I'd dismissed the wilder ideas ("Steal a rowing boat and cross the Channel in that" or "Hire a helicopter" or "Smuggle him in in a big suitcase or a trunk"), the best suggestion - at least in terms of practicality - seemed to be to forge a French ID card. I'd have dismissed that out of hand, had it not been pointed out to me that I was a national hero in Kerpia, and that consequently if I asked Mr Narj to help produce a fake passport he'd probably say yes.

"That's all very well," I said, "but I don't know what a genuine one looks like."

"Then we'll have to pinch one," said Alain - he and Oli hadn't yet moved out.

"Sorry, Alain, but we can't just hit some poor French kid on the head and nick his ID card," I said. "Besides, we'll never find a kid who looks just like Stefan."

"We don't need to. We can nick any old card and give it to Mr Narj to use as the basis for the fake one with Stefan's details on."

"Yes, but we'd still have to mug someone, and I don't fancy doing that. And you're not doing it either, Alain - all that stuff is behind you, and it's staying there."

"You wouldn't have to mug him," said Nicky. "He'll just hand his card over quite happily and then come back a few days later to get it back again."

"And how are you going to persuade him to do that?"

"I can't. But Killian can."

I thought about it and realised that this was true. By now Killian had been implanted with French as well as English, which meant that he'd be able to talk to French kids easily - and if he could talk to them he'd be able to persuade them to do whatever he told them.

"What do you think, Killian?" I asked. "Could you do it?"

"Of course I could! I could get him to give me his card and then forget he'd done it. Once we've finished with the card you could send it back to him, saying you'd found it, and he wouldn't know any different. That'd be easy. And... well, I'd like to help if I can. I really like it here, and I wouldn't be here if it hadn't been for you."

"There's another way to do it," Nicky pointed out. "If Killian and I come with you to England we won't need papers at all, because Killian can persuade the border guards that we've got valid papers even if we haven't."

I considered that briefly but decided it was a bit too risky - these days there were far too many guns around at the border points, and if Killian didn't manage to work his magic we could all be in trouble.

"Better not," I said. "Getting hold of an ID card would be a lot safer, I think. Let's stick with that idea for now."

I pulled out my chipfone and called the Institute, and I was lucky: Mr Narj was still there. I explained the situation, but he said that he was sorry, but he couldn't help me to break the law, even if I was a genuine Kerpian hero.

"I understand the situation," he went on, "and obviously if giving Stefan a Kerpian passport would solve the problem, then we'd be happy to do so. But I don't think that would help. Couldn't you ask your parents to meet you in France? That way Stefan wouldn't have to cross any borders."

"I suppose that's true, but I was hoping to be able to go back home for a few days... perhaps I can spend two or three days with them and then get them to come to France to meet Stefan, or even come back through the portal with me. Oh, well, thanks anyway - let me know once the portal is available again: we might have thought of a solution by then."

"Back to Square One," I told my friends, putting the phone away. "We're going to have to think of a Plan B."

But by the time that school ended for the Winter Holiday we still hadn't thought of an answer, and so we decided that Stefan would have to come through the portal with me but then stay in France, and I would try to persuade my parents to come to France with me so that he could meet them. Of course this gave us a new problem: where was Stefan going to stay? I had a few euros, but not enough to pay for several nights in a hotel, and in any case you generally had to show some sort of ID when booking in.

"Well, the money isn't a problem," Stefan pointed out. "I've got plenty in my account here, and if I buy some gold or jewellery or something we'll be able to sell it on the other side to get some local money. And I could always camp out."

"Stefan, it's the middle of December!" I said. "I doubt if the camp-sites are open, and even if they are you'd freeze in a tent."

"Then I'll persuade someone to let us stay with them," suggested Killian. "It shouldn't be too hard to find someone with a spare room, and I know I could talk them into letting us stay. Of course, it would mean you'd have to let me and Nicky come too..."

"Well, I suppose we could do that," I said. "But only if we pay them a fair price for board and lodging."

"We wouldn't need to," said Killian. "They'd be only too happy to help."

"I'm sure they would, but we're not about to start using your powers to con people, okay? We pay our way, or we don't do it that way at all."

"Fair enough, if that's what you want," he agreed, though I thought I might need to keep a very close eye on things once we got into France.

The portal had been reopened successfully in the week before our school holiday started, so on the morning of Saturday December 18th I packed enough clothes and other bits and pieces to last me a week or so and then travelled, with Stefan, Nicky and Killian, by public transport to the Institute in Strossburi, where Mr Narj had arranged to meet us. He took us through the Institute portal into Kerpia and then drove us up into the Vosges. We'd never seen the Kerpian version of this place - at least, not from outside - and we found that here the usual hut had been replaced by a dome-shaped metal building that (we discovered once inside) covered a spiral staircase going down into the ground.

"This is only temporary," Mr Narj explained. "Once we've finished working this will be taken out and the shaft filled in, but until then it's easier for us to get in and out this way, or by using the bigger shaft we drilled out to get the heavy machinery inside. So - here we are..."

The stairs ended at a door, and when he opened it we saw that we were in the large hall where we had fought the Greys. There were still scorch marks on the floor and walls that marked where we had used our Molotov Cocktails, and there were bullet marks all over the place, too.

"You remember we told you about fighting the Grey soldiers?" I said to Nicky. "This is where it happened."

"Wow! I'm glad I wasn't with you then, because I think I'd have wet myself," he said, staring wide-eyed at the bullet marks.

"We were lucky," I said. "We only took a couple of minor injuries. It could have been a hell of a lot worse."

We found that the arch through to the office had been repaired, and the office itself looked much as it had when we had first seen it, though someone had at least had the decency to remove what was left of our friend Dead Guy.

"There was some stuff up in the dormitory that I imagine belongs to you and your friends," Mr Narj told us. "We've put it all in the briefing room - remember to pop in and get it on your way home. Now, let's get along to the portal."

He led us through one of the doors at the side of the large hall. This tunnel had obviously been cleared out and rebuilt very recently - all of the lights were working and it looked a lot brighter than the tunnels had seemed previously. And there was a smell of cement in the air, too. I wondered if the walls and floor had been mined once again, and decided that they probably had - after all, that system had kept the Greys at bay before.

This tunnel led us all the way to the Nexus Room, and here we found that much less had been done: some of the doors were still hanging off their hinges, and when I tried pushing at a couple of the others they didn't move.

"Most of the tunnels are still blocked," Mr Narj told me. "We're not going to reopen all of them just yet - we're going to concentrate on the useful ones, like the one you told us about where everyone seemed to have died shortly before you arrived. If that one is still empty we'll be able to exploit the mineral wealth, the same as we're already doing in what you called the Green World. But we wanted to open yours first as a sort of thank-you for everything you've done to help us. So - it's this one."

He pushed open a door two away from the one we'd entered the Nexus Room through. I saw that the door next to it had the number 7 painted on it in white paint and a vertical scratch down the middle of the door.

"That one goes to my world," said Stefan. "And the one next to it is Dead Orschwiller - so if we'd tried this one instead of that one I suppose most of what happened to us wouldn't have happened at all. I'm glad we didn't, though."

"Me, too," I agreed. The door back to my world had the number 8 painted on it but had no other marks - Stefan and I hadn't considered following this tunnel.

Mr Narj led us along the tunnel to the ladder room.

"I'm sure you can manage from here," he said. "The mist generators aren't working yet, so you should be able to find the hut from outside. But you'll need a key to get inside, because we have fixed the locks." He handed me a key. "You can get another one cut for your friends - it's basically just an ordinary key. Come and see me when you get back - I'll probably be here, but if not the team working here will know how to find me. And have a good journey!"

He headed back along the tunnel while we climbed the ladder up into the hut and then stepped outside - into a snowy winter landscape. We'd all thought to put some thick clothes on, but in fact there was virtually no wind and the sun was shining, so although there was snow on the ground it wasn't too cold.

Stefan had brought his compass with him, but by now I thought that even I could probably have found my way down to Orschwiller without one. Still, Stefan was never one to leave anything to chance, so he checked the bearing carefully and led us off down the hill. The snow wasn't very deep, so it didn't hold us up.

We found the track in the usual place, and it led to the road. It hadn't been cleared, but there were enough tracks in it to indicate that cars had been passing since the snow fell. Okay, there was no reason to think anything bad had happened here in my own world, but after some of what I'd seen over the past year and a half it was good to get some visual confirmation that all was well.

As usual we followed the road for a short distance and then took the track that would cut through to the village. The snow on the track was untouched, at least to start with, but about halfway to the village we saw tracks in the snow, and at the same time we heard voices away in the trees to our left. And I was pretty sure that what I was hearing was boys' voices.

It occurred to me that if we could make friends with some local kids it would make Killian's job that much easier: if the kids introduced us to their parents it would make it more likely that they'd be amenable to letting my three friends stay for a short time while I went on to England. I think Stefan had been thinking in terms of getting a bit nearer to the Channel - Paris, perhaps, or even Calais - but anywhere in this world would do, since we could stay in touch by phone, provided he was staying in a house with a phone line, or that one of the people he was staying with had a mobile.

So, indicating to my friends to keep quiet, I left the track and headed towards the voices, and the other three followed me, making sure not to step on any twigs.

Some fifty metres from the track there was a clearing. I slowed down as soon as I saw movement, but there were enough trees to mask our approach, and in any case the boys in the clearing were concentrating far too much on what they were doing to notice us creeping towards the edge of the open space.

There were four of them, and three of them had ganged up on the fourth one and pinned him down in the snow, and were now in the process of stripping him of his clothes. Once he was naked they dragged him to a tree that stood by itself in the centre of the clearing and they tied him to it, and then stepped back about five metres and started to make snowballs.

I thought this was really nasty - it was cold enough even fully dressed; getting stripped naked and having snowballs thrown at you seemed way over the top. I was about to intervene, but Killian grabbed my arm.

"He's enjoying it," he whispered. "The boy tied to the tree, I mean: he's having fun. I can see that you find that hard to understand, but I know exactly how he's feeling, because I think I'd be enjoying it, too, even though I don't do much of that sort of thing any longer."

I knew that Killian had come a long way in his fight to put his past behind him and live a normal life, but it sounded as if he hadn't quite managed to escape from the masochistic tendencies that Harlan had imposed on him. Still, I had little doubt that he knew what he was talking about, and so I kept still and waited to see what would happen.

"Firing squad, ready!" called one of the three, squeezing his snowball to make it nice and hard.

"No!" cried the boy tied to the tree, though now I could see that Killian was right: the boy was trying not to laugh. "Help! Help!"

He wasn't exactly yelling - in fact I doubt if anyone further away than we were would have heard him at all. Still, even if he didn't mean it, it still gave us an excuse to intervene. And so, as the leader of the firing squad gave the order to "Take aim" I led my friends out of hiding and charged into them. They weren't expecting it, and Stefan, Nicky and I were all a bit bigger than they were, and so within a few seconds all three of them were pinned down in the snow. Killian went and cut the prisoner free, though it was interesting to see that he didn't rush to put his clothes on. Instead he came over to where we were pinning his assailants down.

"What should we do with them?" I asked him.

"Let me see... perhaps what they were going to do to me?" he suggested. "Just let me get dressed first..."

He took his time over that, and he didn't make any effort to hide his attributes from us, either. I guessed he was thirteen or fourteen: his genitals weren't very big, but I didn't think mine would be either if they were exposed in these temperatures. And he had some hair, too - less than me, but enough to be noticeable from a distance.

Once he was dressed he came and grinned at our prisoners, concentrating on the one Nicky had pinned down.

"Ready to find out how cold it is, Didi?" he asked.

"No! Come on, Luc, this isn't fair - you know you deserved it!"

"So what? It'd be fun to see you wriggle for a change... still, I suppose you're right. You can let him go," he added to Nicky.

So we released our captives and stood up.

"I'm Luc Weber," said the boy we had rescued. "And this is Didier, and this is S�bastien - they're my brothers - and that's Jean-Patrick Tresch. He's Didier's friend. So who are you?"

"I'm Jake, and this is Stefan and Nicolas, and that's Killian. So what did you do to deserve a snowball firing-squad?"

"Nothing much."

"He borrowed loads of money from us to buy a new game and then didn't pay us back when he said he would," Didier informed us. "He's always doing stuff like that."

"Yes, but I always pay you back in the end, don't I?"

"Only after we've had to teach you a lesson. And this time we thought the lesson should be a bit more serious."

"Is that true?" I asked Luc.

"Well, sort of. But I was going to pay them back - and I said they could use the game when I'm not using it."

"You're always using it!"

"Sounds like perhaps we shouldn't have rescued you," I said. "Perhaps we should just stand back and let them snowball you."

"Well... maybe that would be fair," agreed Luc, surprising me until I caught sight of Killian nodding knowingly. "But at least let me fight back, huh? I'll strip off again, but this time I don't get tied to the tree. Fair?"

The other three quickly agreed that this was fair, and so Luc started to undress again, though this time he kept his shoes on. And then we just stepped back to watch the fight.

I've never tried naked snowballing, and nothing I saw now persuaded me that it would be a good idea to try. Luc landed several hits, but he took a lot more in return, and unlike his brothers and their friend there were no clothes on Luc to absorb the shock. The other three showed no sign of wanting to finish things off too quickly: they were obviously quite happy for Luc's punishment to go on for some time. But eventually they rushed him, pushed him over and pinned him down on his back.

"Submit?" asked Didier.

"Never!"

So the brothers held him while Jean-Patrick made a massive snowball and then ground it into Luc's genitals. And that got the required surrender very quickly.

"So when are you going to pay us back?" asked Didier.

"Next week - I promise! As soon as I get my Christmas money!"

"Well, okay, then - but if that money isn't in our hands by St Stephen's Day we'll bring you back up here and bury you in the deepest snowdrift we can find, okay?"

"Okay!" agreed Luc.

"Good. And we've got witnesses, don't forget: if you try to back out of it they can come and help us turn you into an ice cube if they want."

"That sounds like fun," said Killian. "We might still be here, too... have you got a spare room, by any chance?"

"I'm afraid not," said Luc, standing up and trying to brush snow out of his pubic hair. "I suppose we could squeeze one of you in with us..."

"We've got a spare room," said Jean-Patrick. "Do you need somewhere to stay, then?"

This seemed very generous, but then I realised that Killian was already at work, so I kept quiet and let him get on with it. And by the time Luc was dressed Jean-Patrick had already promised to ask his parents if we could stay with him for a few days. Of course we still had to persuade his parents to go along with it, but I was confident that Killian would find that no more of a challenge. Next we had to think up a plausible reason, but Killian was ahead of me again.

"We're on holiday," he told them. "We've been doing some walking on the lower slopes, and later we're going to head over to Germany and visit the Black Forest. Except Jake's had a call from his parents and he's going to have to go home for three or four days - his little sister's ill and he's got to help look after her until his dad's holidays start. And the rest of us can't really afford to stay in a hotel, so we were hoping we could find something a bit cheaper until Jake gets back..."

I thought that wasn't a bad story at all. Of course I haven't got a little sister, but if I had this would be a valid reason for being called home.

"I think there's a Youth Hostel in Colmar, but it might be closed at this time of year," Luc said. "You'd probably be a lot more comfortable at JP's place, anyway - his mum is a great cook. Come on - we'll come with you to introduce you."

So we walked back down the track to Orschwiller, and by the time we reached Jean-Patrick's house (which was, like the Webers', on the flatter ground at the end of the village nearest to S�lestat), we had learned that Luc was fourteen (just - it had been his birthday three weeks previously), that Didier and Jean-Patrick were twelve and that S�bastien was eleven, that they'd lived here all their lives and that they went to school in S�lestat.

Once we reached the house I once again stood back and let Killian do his stuff, and by the time he'd finished Jean-Patrick's parents couldn't wait to offer us the use of their spare room for as long as it took me to get to England and back. I was hoping it wouldn't be too long: if all went well I'd be able to persuade my parents to come back to France with me, then they could meet Stefan - I thought a week ought to be long enough for me to be able to prepare the ground for that - and possibly even come back through the portal to see our new world.

Once the groundwork had been done the four of us walked down to S�lestat to sell the jewellery we had brought with us. Eventually we found a pawnbroker in a side street. I had no idea that such places still existed, but apparently they did, because this one was there, looking like something transported from one of Dickens' tales of Victorian London: dingy entrance, dirty windows through which a dusty array of odds and ends could be seen, and even the three brass balls hanging above the door. We went inside and found a man behind the counter who seemed to be in the wrong place: my mental image of a pawnbroker was a little, stooped old man with frayed clothes, untidy hair, glasses and those woollen gloves with the fingers cut off. Instead we saw a tidily-dressed young man in his late twenties, with no glasses and definitely no gloves.

"What can you give us for these?" I asked, handing over our collection.

The man looked at me sharply. "Just a moment," he said, and pulled a folder out from underneath the counter.

It was fairly obvious that he was checking to see if any of our offerings were on a list of stolen property, but since I knew they weren't I was quite happy just to wait. Eventually he put the folder away and started to examine our collection properly.

"Well, I would say they're worth maybe two hundred and fifty Euros," he said, eventually. "I could give you a hundred and seventy-five."

Killian looked the man in the eye. "How much are they really worth?" he asked.

"About six or seven hundred."

"Then you can give us... what do you think, Jake - will five hundred be enough?"

"I should think so," I said. I was pretty sure a train ticket wouldn't cost anything like that.

"Give us five hundred,"' said Killian. "And make the ticket out for a hundred and seventy-five."

That was a bit rough on the pawnbroker, but then he shouldn't have tried to rip us off quite that blatantly, so I wasn't going to argue.

Once we had the money we walked on to the railway station, where I bought a ticket through to London for the following morning. I kept a further fifty Euros to buy something to eat on the journey and to change into sterling to get me back to Oxfordshire and then gave the rest to Stefan, telling him to give it to Jean-Patrick's mother to pay for food.

Jean-Patrick's spare room had one large bed, and that meant that two of us were going to be spending the night in sleeping bags on the rug. Normally in these circumstances I'd have suggested playing a game of strip poker for it, but I knew that only a complete idiot would risk playing cards against a Konj�auml;ssi - even if Killian wasn't as good at reading other people's cards as Harlan had been I still wasn't going to risk it - and so I suggested we simply spin a coin instead. And Stefan and I lost, so we might as well have played cards after all. At least that way we might have had some fun losing.

At least we'd brought our zip-together sleeping bags with us, so although the floor was rather harder than the bed would have been we were still able to have a good cuddle before we went to sleep.

"I hope you manage to sleep okay without me," I said at one point.

"Oh, don't worry: if I get too fed up with being on my own I can always go and share with Jean-Patrick."

Naturally I lost the fight that followed.

Next morning I got up fairly early because I expected to have to walk to S�lestat, but as it was a Sunday Jean-Patrick's father was at home and he offered us a lift to the station. Stefan came with me to see me off, and to make sure I hadn't forgotten to write Jean-Patrick's phone number in my notebook.

"I'll call you as soon as I arrive," I promised him, "and every day afterwards, too. And when I get back I'm going to ask Nicky what you did while I was away, and if he says anything about you sharing Jean-Patrick's bed you'll be in serious trouble, okay?"

"Don't worry - I'll make sure Nicky doesn't tell you anything of the kind!" He grinned at me, but then he became serious. "Be careful, Jake," he said. "Don't do anything stupid. I want you back in one piece."

"Hey, don't worry - I won't be going anywhere near any portals. I'm going to be safe and sound in my own country - and, believe me, where I live is about the quietest place on Earth. Nothing's going to happen to me there."

I gave him a hug and got onto the train, and a couple of minutes later I was on my way. The journey was completely uneventful: I changed trains in Strasbourg, got off the TGV at the Gare de l'Est in Paris and walked the short distance to the Gare du Nord to catch the Eurostar to London. I did wonder if I might get stopped at passport control - after all, I'd probably been reported missing the previous year. But nothing happened when the officer swiped my passport through his machine, and when I got off the train at St Pancras in London there was nobody waiting for me.

I changed my remaining Euros into sterling and caught the tube to Paddington, but before I went any further I found a public telephone and called home - after all, it had been nearly eighteen months since I left, and I supposed it was always possible that my parents might have moved - or at least, that one of them might have done so. I supposed that if they weren't there I could always head for my granny's place in Stanmore... but in the event my father answered the phone. My voice had changed while I'd been away and he probably wouldn't have recognised it, but I hung up straight away because I didn't want to spoil the surprise,

I bought a ticket to Didcot. There was a lot of snow on the ground and it was very cold, but this train at least was still running, and when I got to Didcot I found that the taxis that served the station were still running, too, so I was able to take one the rest of the way home. And then I walked up the garden path, took a deep breath and rang the doorbell.

I'll gloss over the next ten minutes or so - it's not too hard to imagine what my mother's reaction was like, anyway. Though, to be honest, I was so glad to see them again - and still together, too - that I probably contributed as much to the emotional overload as she did. In any event, eventually things calmed down a bit and I had to give an explanation of where I'd been for the past year and a half. So I told the truth, albeit in a condensed form.

Naturally this was greeted with a certain amount of incredulity, but I'd brought a few things with me to support the narrative: my Elsass ID card, the pass card I'd been issued with by the Grey guards at Hub One when I went through to their world with Haless and Issin, the copy of The Opening Line I'd been given by SS Captain Fischer with his inscription on the inside cover, the bracelet Kirk had given me with the summons button concealed inside, and the gallantry medal I'd been awarded by the King of Kerpia. Okay, I know I said I wasn't going to mention that again, but these were my parents, and I think it's okay for you to want your parents to be proud of you, even if you're not sure that you deserved the honour in the first place.

I'm not sure that they believed me straight away, even with these artefacts as supporting evidence, but gradually I think I convinced them that I hadn't lost my marbles and spent the past year and a half in the local asylum.

"And if you can take a couple of days off after Christmas you can come and see for yourself," I finished. "Some of my friends are waiting for me in France, and if we can go together you can meet them and we'll take you through to the world I've been living in since... well, since summer last year, though I was away quite a lot. It's a really good world - you'll see."

Neither parent seemed keen on the idea of going through an underground tunnel into a different world - in fact, now that I was back it was fairly clear that they didn't want any of us going anywhere. But I was confident that if I worked on them for a while they'd come around.

For the next couple of days I didn't even mention my new world, though when they wanted to know how I was doing at school I was able to demonstrate that, at least as far as languages were concerned, I was doing very well. Of course both Arvelan and Kerpian were complete gibberish to them, but I was at least able to demonstrate that my German was coming along a bit.

"My best friend's German," I said, "so I'd like to be able to speak it better, even though we both speak Kerpian fluently. It'd be good if my German was as good as his English, anyway. You'll meet him if you come to France with me."

They changed the subject and I didn't push it, and for the rest of the week we gradually got back to something like the way we'd been before I left, though without the arguments. My father had to go to work on the first three days of the week, but he got home a lot earlier than he had back in 2009.

I called Stefan up every evening, though I wasn't able to speak to him for too long because I didn't want to run my parents' phone bill up too much. Stefan said that he was fine, that they spent most days out playing with Jean-Patrick and the Weber brothers, and that he was missing me. Every day he asked when I was coming back, and every day I said I wasn't sure, but that I was hoping to get them to come with me on the Wednesday or Thursday after Christmas (Monday and Tuesday were both Bank Holidays, of course).

Obviously we don't celebrate Christmas, but it's still pretty good being at home with your family over the Christmas weekend, watching television and lounging about, and I made the most of it. My father had managed to wangle the Wednesday to Friday of the week after Christmas off, which meant that there would be nothing to stop us going to France on the Wednesday and coming back the following Sunday evening, which would give us plenty of time to get to Orschwiller and spend a day or two on the other side of the portal. So on the Monday I got back to work on them, telling them how much I wanted them to see where I'd been living since the summer, and by Monday evening I was fairly sure I'd won them over.

And then, at about six o'clock on the Monday evening, the doorbell rang. My mother was in the kitchen cooking and my father was in the bedroom looking for their passports, and so I answered the door myself.

Standing on the path outside were three men in uniform and one in a long robe, and the one in the officer's uniform looked horribly familiar.

"Good evening," said High Captain Aarnist of the Arvelan police. "Jacob Stone, I'm arresting you in connection with the murder of Harlan ved Istian of the Clan of the Founder..."