The Final Nexus

by David Clarke

Chapter 7

The next couple of days gave me an insight into what life would be like if I decided to stay here instead of going back to the Arvelan world, and in some ways it was quite attractive: the food was good (if not always cooked as well as it could have been), the accommodation was adequate and the company was fun to be with. And for the boys that lived here this was a fairly stress-free environment: they had everything necessary for a fairly comfortable life, and they knew that, whatever happened at school, the commune would find work of some sort for them when they reached adulthood.

It wasn't quite so stress-free for me, however. For a start, I was fairly sure that in a couple of days or so at the latest Aarnist was going to realise I'd gone missing, if he hadn't done so already, and then he was going to come looking for me. He'd probably start in his own world, but sooner or later he'd get around to checking through whichever portals were open. And Amesbury was far too close to the portal for comfort: if he sent his probes through in numbers they'd be sure to find me, because I still hadn't found a way to remove the chip in my arm.

On top of that I was worried about Declan, who was feeling completely isolated: not only was there a language barrier that prevented effective communication, but now he was also immobile unless he could find someone to push his chair for him. Sam offered to try rigging up a Volta pile, but the connections were different in this world and it was going to need a fair bit of work to make everything fit.

We spent the mornings and part of the afternoons in school and the second part of the afternoon doing anything that needed doing around the farm. At this time of year there wasn't too much going on, though the cows had to be milked and all the animals fed, and on the Tuesday afternoon I found myself mucking out the cowshed with Ron and a couple of the other older boys, and that was an experience I could have done without. But at least we were able to have a decent shower afterwards.

After classes or work and before supper we were free to do what we wanted, so after I'd had my shower I took Declan down to the river, where the scenery was nice and where we could talk privately. Of course we could talk privately anywhere, since nobody else could understand Arvelan, but I also wanted to find out if anyone would stop us from leaving the immediate area of the farm. They didn't, but I wondered if that would change if we actually went out of sight. I was fairly sure they wouldn't want us leaving.

Declan really wasn't happy: he'd been found a small room on the ground floor, which meant that we didn't have to keep carrying him and his chair up and down stairs, but which also left him completely isolated. And he was still getting bad vibes from some of the adults, too, although the kids seemed perfectly okay with him.

"We'll give them a couple more days," I suggested. "By then they should be satisfied that we've accepted the situation, and after that hopefully they won't watch us quite so closely. And maybe they'll stop locking me in the dormitory at night, too. Then we should be able to sneak away while everyone's asleep."

"I'm not so sure about that. They lock my door, too, though I can't think why - I can't move without someone to push me, unless they think I'm going to crawl away. I really don't like this, Jake. Promise me you'll get us away from here as soon as you can."

"Okay - but I think we'll need to look innocent for at least a couple more days before they take their eyes off us. In fact... let's try a little experiment."

I pushed him a little further along the bank, and soon we were in an area of woodland that screened us from the farm. I waited there for three or four minutes and then turned us round and walked slowly back out of the wood. And there were three people striding purposefully across the field towards us. We pretended not to notice and just walked slowly onwards, and by the time I ostentatiously looked at my watch a couple of minutes later and turned to head back towards the farm the three people had scattered and were all apparently out for a stroll on their own. I said "Hello!" and smiled at the nearest one as we went past, and he mumbled a greeting in return.

"Hey, I meant to ask," I added, "are there any fish in the river? Only it's nice down there, and I thought maybe we'd do a little fishing, if we can make a couple of rods. We might even catch something for the kitchen!"

"I'm not sure," he replied. "I suppose it wouldn't do any harm to try, though."

"All right, thanks!" I said, and pushed Declan onwards.

"So now we know that they're watching," I said as we approached the farm. "But if we go down to the river regularly, with any luck they'll get used to it and stop worrying if we're out of sight - hopefully now they'll just think we're fishing."

The following day at the end of morning classes Sam took me further into the main building than I had been before, along a couple of corridors, down a flight of stairs and then along a further corridor, towards the end of which was what looked like a large storage cupboard.

"This is my hideaway," he told me, pulling me inside and closing the door behind us. "This is where I come when I want to be on my own. It's perfect - as far as I can tell nobody ever comes here; it's got the little window up there to let the light in; and the furnace room is just on the other side of that wall - the pipe down there carries hot water to the washrooms, so it's always nice and warm in here, even when there's snow on the ground outside. Sometimes I sit and read in here - I pinched that chair from one of the classrooms - and sometimes I just sit and sort of daydream. And I thought that maybe, now you and me are friends, we could do stuff together."

"Really? What sort of stuff did you have in mind?"

"Well, suppose you sit on the chair... and then I come and sit on your lap facing you, like this... and then we put our arms around each other, like this... right. And now we can daydream together. Or..."

"Or what?"

"Or we could sort of undress a bit first."

"A bit? How much is a bit?"

"We could just take our tops off... or I suppose we could undress a lot instead of a bit - if you want to, of course."

"That might be fun, but only if you're sure nobody's likely to come in," I said.

So he got up, walked over to the door, pulled a key from his pocket and locked it.

"I found the key in the lock the first time I came here," he said. "I don't usually bother locking it, but perhaps this time it might be a good idea."

I glanced up at the little window, but it was quite grimy, and I thought it would be hard for anyone to see much through it - and if we sat right underneath it we'd probably be out of their line of sight anyway. So when Sam started to take his clothes off I did the same thing. And he was right about the hot water pipe - it did make this room nice and warm, even when you didn't have anything on at all except for a pair of glasses and a little gold swastika on a chain...

I thought again about Stefan, once more feeling slightly guilty. But once Sam had pushed me back onto the chair and had taken up position on my lap facing me again it was hard to think of anything except Sam, and when he hugged me gently and then kissed me, I simply decided to go with the flow.

"We can't stay too long," he said. "If we miss lunch they'll come looking for us. But we've probably got a quarter of an hour, and... well... I just wanted to do this again. It felt so good when we were on the train, and here it's even better because we don't have an audience. I mean, I like Ron, and you know I like Declan, but it's nicer being on our own, don't you think?"

I did know that Sam liked Declan - in fact he'd done his best to help out since we got back, pushing the chair for him whenever I wasn't able to do it. He'd even been trying to learn a few words of Arvelan to make it easier for Declan to give him directions. And of course he was still trying to find a way to wire a local Volta pile into the chair to give Declan some of his independence back. But he was also right to say that doing this sort of thing was nicer in private, especially since this time he moved things on a little by sliding a hand down my chest and taking hold of me.

"Is this all right?" he asked, pausing. "It's just... well, boys aren't supposed to do this sort of thing together. We're only supposed to do things with girls, though even then we're not supposed to start until we're fifteen. There are laws against two boys... you know. But what happened on the train felt so good... I mean, I can understand why they want us to go with girls: the commune has to look after itself, and that means more children, so that we never run out of workers. And so obviously they're not happy about people doing stuff that doesn't end up in there being new babies. But I don't think that you and me... well, it's not going to do any harm, is it?"

"Not as long as nobody finds out about it," I said.

It sounded as if this was one of those worlds where it would be better to keep quiet about sex. Fortunately I'd started out in a world like that, so although I now lived in a much more easy-going place I still hadn't completely got out of the habit of keeping my feelings to myself.

"Good," he said. "Because I'd like to know if this feels as nice as I think it's going to." And he started to stroke me very slowly.

"It does - at least, it does for me. Perhaps I should try doing it to you at the same time."

"I think I'd like that."

And he quickly decided that he did.

"Have you done this before?" I asked.

"Well... not like this, no. But a few weeks ago I was playing strip poker with Ron, and when I lost I was a bit nervous, and so... well, you know - it was soft and so it didn't look very big. But Ron said I had to let him see it when it was hard, and when I said that I thought I'd be too nervous for that to happen he said that he could fix it for me. He took hold of it and started to stroke it like we're doing now, and it soon got nice and hard. And then he kept doing it for a bit longer, just to see if he could make it any bigger, and that felt really nice. So the next time we played I didn't mind him doing it at all. But I haven't managed to beat him yet, and I wanted to know what it would feel like doing it to someone else."

"And?"

"And it's nice, but both doing it at the same time is even better. And doing it like this, where we're really close to each other, feels perfect, somehow."

"So are you going to persuade Ron to do it like this next time you play?"

"Well... I don't know. Ron can be a bit strange: sometimes he seems to really like playing strip games, and sometimes it's like he feels guilty about it, or something like that, and when he's in that mood he doesn't want to know. I think maybe it's because he's started to grow up a bit more - you know, puberty, and that - and part of him sort of thinks he ought to be concentrating on girls now. Did you get like that when your hair started to grow?"

"Not really," I said. "But then I'm a bit unusual."

"Oh. Well, that's good, isn't it? I mean, if you still like doing this even though you're getting grown up it means we can go on doing this until I start to change, can't we?"

"Well, I wouldn't mind that at all if I was going to be here. But I'm not sure that I am. I might have to go back where I came from."

"I don't think they'll let you do that, Jake," he said seriously. "I think they want you to stay here so that you can teach them all about the new technology that comes from your world. There must be masses of stuff in your head. I suppose they might let you go through with an escort, so that you could bring stuff back, but otherwise you'll probably have to stay here."

"That's what I've been worried about. I know they're watching me and Declan whenever we go outside... still, maybe it'll be all right. Some things about this world are better than the one I came here from."

That was true, anyway: at least there was no slavery here, and as far as I could tell most people seemed to be fairly happy despite the technological limitations. But I wouldn't choose it over Elsass, that was certain.

"That's all right, then, isn't it? And maybe next time we do this... well, perhaps we could try doing a little more - like rubbing it properly for each other, until... you know. I think it would be amazing to do that together. I don't think we've really got time now, but next time... what do you think?"

Actually I thought that if he kept doing what he was doing for another half-minute or so he'd find out what it was like this time around. But I supposed it would keep for next time, because if he was right and they weren't going to let me leave we'd probably have plenty of chances to do this again.

"I wouldn't mind that at all," I said.

"Great! Then I suppose we ought to get dressed and go to lunch."

And he stood up and started to get dressed, and so I did the same, though we had to hang around for a while after we were dressed in order to allow the tents in our trousers to subside.

That afternoon before supper I took Declan down to the river again. We made a show of pointing into the water, as though we were spotting fish, ands then once again I took us a short distance into the trees and waited to see how long it would be before someone came to look for us. And it turned out to be just under ten minutes, and the guy who was apparently 'out for a jog' along the river found us barely twenty yards into the woods, looking intently into the water.

"Hello, Arthur!" I greeted him. "There are loads of fish in here - we're definitely going to have to try catching some. And I'll ask if any of the other boys want to join us, too. It's ages since I did any proper fishing."

"Mind you don't get too close to the edge," he warned us. "I don't suppose your friend can swim."

"Don't worry, we'll be careful," I told him. "Actually I think we'll head back now, because we can't do a lot without a rod."

And I headed slowly back to the farm, thinking that ten minutes wasn't much of a head start. It would obviously be better to find a way to get past the locked doors and try to slip away by night. Perhaps if we held on until the weekend they'd have lowered their guard a little...

On the Friday afternoon I finally got lucky with the chores: instead of mucking out the cowshed, all I had to do was to tidy the classroom, put the text books away and clean the blackboard, and I was just finishing off when Sam burst into the room. He looked badly shaken.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"It's... I'm learning to operate the telegraph," he said. "I go round most afternoons and help to keep the place tidy, and I'm learning Morse code, too, so that I can send and receive when I'm a bit older."

"Ah, so that's why I haven't seen you covered in animal shit like the rest of us in the afternoons," I commented. "Clever!"

"Well, about fifteen minutes ago a message came in, and once he'd written it out the operator told me to take it to the director. Only I'd managed to decode part of it by listening as it came in, and so as soon as I was out of the office I opened the message and read it. Here it is." And he handed me a folded piece of paper.

"'FROM AUBREY LONDON ONE STOP UPON CONSIDERATION APPLY RULE FOURTEEN STROKE SIX TO CRIPPLE STOP RESTRAIN OTHER STOP COUNCIL ARRIVING SNOW EIGHTEEN OVERSEE PORTAL SEARCH ENDS'," I read. "What does it mean?"

"It means you're in big trouble," he said. "Rule 14/6 is the one that says that children born with deformities, or who prove to have mental weaknesses, should be killed, because they'd just be a drain on resources if they were allowed to live. So they're going to kill Declan and lock you up."

"What! You mean anyone with a disability is simply killed? That's the sort of thing the Nazis did!"

"Who?"

"Never mind... but surely there are jobs he could do? He's a very long way from being stupid."

"Yes, but he can't speak English. It's true that if a worker has an accident and loses an arm or something the commune will always try to find some sort of work for him, but Declan has two limbs that don't work and can't speak the language either, so there's nothing he's suitable for. So it's sort of logical to kill him."

"Not where I come from, it isn't! And what's that bit about snow supposed to mean?"

"This is the Month of Snow, and Snow 18 is a date - in two days' time, in fact. It sounds as if some of the Council are coming here to look for your portal. Except they want Declan disposed of first, so it's dealt with before they arrive, and they want you locked up out of the way so they can ask you more questions about your world or get you to show them where you came through without you skipping off in the meantime."

"Then they're going to be disappointed," I said. "We're getting out of here as soon as I can get Declan ready."

"Yes, but as soon as the director finds out about the telegram he'll lock you up straight away."

"But he isn't going to see the telegram, is he?" I said, stuffing it into my pocket. "You can say I hit you over the head and pinched it or something."

"But the operator knows what the message said, and he's bound to mention it to the director as soon as he sees him, so just taking the message from me won't gain you more than an hour at best."

I thought for a moment. "There might be a way around that," I said. "You'd better stay out of sight for now. Stay here - I'll come back and tell you if the plan works or not."

He shook his head. "I want to help," he said.

"You've already helped. If you hadn't told me about this... anyway, wait there - I'm going to find Dec."

I found him sitting in the corner of the yard watching the world go by - someone had kindly moved his chair to a place in the sun.

"We have a problem," I told him. "Do you think you can manage to make someone forget something?"

"I don't know. It'd be difficult to make him forget one thing but remember everything else unless I could tell him mentally what the thing was, and I don't think I can manage that without knowing the language. I could probably shut him down or maybe even wipe the whole day, but he'd be acting weird afterwards and someone would be sure to notice."

"Then we're in big trouble," I said, and I explained about the telegram.

"Ah." He thought for a moment. "It might work if you explain to him what he has to forget and I just try to coerce him into obeying you. I can issue a general coercion without needing any specific vocabulary. In theory that ought to work. But I think we should leave straight afterwards, just in case it doesn't work very well."

"Okay, but I don't know how far we'll get. Even if they give us ten minutes that's not much of a start, especially as it's uphill all the way back and I'm going to have to push you."

"You could always leave me."

"No, I couldn't. I've got a rule about never leaving anyone behind, unless they're dead already, and you aren't. So let's go and talk to the telegraph operator."

I pushed him around the corner to the telegraph office, but we were too late: as we reached the office the director was just coming out. I guessed that he'd had a telegram to send and so had come to the office independent of the message about us.

"Ah, there you are!" I said, thinking quickly. "I understand that you want to see us?"

That confused him, of course - he could only just have found out about the telegram and certainly wouldn't have had time to send for us yet.

"Make him obey me," I said to Declan in Arvelan. "I'm going to get him into the office out of sight. And once we're in there I need you to put him, and the operator, to sleep for as long as you can. Do you think you'll be able to do that?"

"Oh, I should think so. It'll be easier than trying to make them forget something, anyway."

I reverted to English. "Please step back into the office," I said to the director, "and then we can sort this out."

He hesitated, but then turned round and went back into the office. I pushed Dec in after him and then closed the door.

"When you're ready," I said to Dec, and five seconds later the director crumpled to the floor. The telegraph operator gasped and got out of his chair, only to fall to the ground almost immediately.

"How long will they be out?" I asked.

"I can't be sure, but I should think we've got at least two hours, and probably a lot more - at least, we will unless anyone finds them before that. They'll take a bit of waking up, but it could be done."

"Then we'd better go. But I want to stop and warn Sam what's happened. They'll guess he told us about the telegram, but if he says he just told us that the director wanted to see us and not why he should be okay. He can say he met us on the way to deliver the telegram and told us that to make sure we didn't leave the farm. And then he went to the director's office but he wasn't there."

But when we got back to the classroom, Sam had other ideas.

"Yes, that might work," he said, when I ran this suggestion past him. "But it might not. But it doesn't matter, because I'm coming with you."

"But... you can't, Sam - it's really dangerous! What if they catch you?"

"I'll say you forced me, or something. But if I come with you they might not catch you. You know they've been watching you, but if you've got someone else with you they won't worry if you go out of sight - they'll figure I'd raise the alarm if you tried to run. Besides, we'll have to push Declan's chair all the way back to your portal, and you said that it took well over an hour. If we take it in turns we'll be able to move faster."

"Yes, but we can't ask you to leave your whole world behind! Besides, the one we're going to isn't safe - and you can't speak the language. You'd be as isolated there as Dec is here."

"No, I won't, because I'll learn. I'm good at learning - I'm top of the class in German, and I started Russian this year, so even your language having a funny alphabet won't bother me too much. And it'll be amazing to see all the things you can do in your world - there'll be so much to learn! So I'm coming, and that's all there is to it. I went and packed up my stuff while you were gone. There isn't much, so I think it'll fit in the compartment under Declan's chair where the Volta pile normally goes."

And it did, comfortably. Declan and I had arrived with no luggage, of course, since our trip through the portal hadn't been pre-planned, though Sam had brought the books I'd been reading.

"You might as well finish reading them," he said, tucking them into the back of the chair. "You can always pop them back through the portal later if you feel guilty about it."

"I don't think I'm likely to feel guilty about pinching a couple of books from people who were going to murder my friend in cold blood," I said. "If they can't use him, why not just send him back through the portal?"

"They can't, not if they're going to keep you - and they'll have lots of questions for you, I'm sure," said Sam. "If Declan went back without you he'd tell them that you're being held prisoner, and then they'd come to get you. And they've probably got better weapons than we have, so that would be bad for us. Logically, they have to either lock him up or kill him, and it would be pointless to waste food on someone who isn't supporting the commune. Look, I don't agree with it, all right? I'm just telling you how they think. I can see the sense in putting tiny babies to sleep, because they don't know what's happening or anything, but to me it seems wrong to kill a boy of our age because of something that isn't his fault. Anyway, we'd better go."

Sam had brought my jacket down from the dormitory too, so I put it on. Declan was already wearing his, so there was nothing else to keep us. We emerged into the yard and made our way slowly down towards the river, making no attempt to avoid being seen or to move quickly. I talked about fish whenever anyone seemed to be within earshot, and once we reached the river I stopped, still in plain view of the farm, and pointed into the river.

"I'm telling you about the fish," I explained to Sam.

"Oh. All right. But I think there are more if we go that way," and he pointed ostentatiously off into the wooded part of the bank. "And, besides, there's a footbridge that way, too, and that might be safer than using the big bridge upstream - we might meet someone if we go that way. If we use the footbridge we can follow the river for a while and then cut across to the road where we met you, but we won't reach it until the far side of the West Wood. Since you won't be going back the way you came they might not realise you're heading back home until it's too late."

"So not that way?" I asked, grinning and gesturing extravagantly to my right.

"No," said Sam, grinning back at me and shaking his head firmly. "That way." And he pointed to our left once more.

Having gone through all this pantomime for the benefit of anyone who might be watching we strolled slowly into the trees to our left, but once we were under cover we speeded up considerably. We reached the footbridge after about three minutes, crossed it and kept going, following the bend of the river until Sam pointed out a path angling away from it and up the slope to our right. By this time we'd been moving for around twenty minutes, so I thought it likely that they'd be looking for us by now. On the other hand, with any luck the director was still asleep, and since we'd locked the telegraph office when we left and taken the key with us, it would probably take them a long time to find him, and hopefully nobody else would have the authority to mount a pursuit straight away.

We reached the track just beyond the wood and kept moving. It had rained a lot the previous day, so the ground was still muddy and it was hard to avoid leaving any tracks, but Sam had cut a small branch from a tree and was using it to obscure Declan's tyre tracks as best he could. And now we were less than half an hour from the portal, so we just needed our luck to last a little longer...

Ten minutes or so went by, and we were just passing a little strip of woodland on our right, which I remembered from the outward journey as being no more than ten minutes from Stonehenge. And then Sam stopped abruptly.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Shh!" he replied.

I couldn't hear anything myself, but Sam apparently could. There was a fairly large stone in the ground just to the left of the track, and Sam went and knelt down, putting his ear against it. I'd seen this done in some old Westerns: someone, usually an Indian, would listen to the ground and then stand up and report that six horses were coming, one of which had a sore left foreleg; that three of them were grey and the other three brown; and that the lead horse was being ridden by a man who was six feet two inches tall, had an eye-patch over his left eye and a beige-coloured ten gallon hat on his head, and who was smoking a cheroot, and that they would be there in seven and a half minutes. Sam, however, wasn't in that class.

"I think there are some horses coming," he said. "We'd better hide."

We got the wheelchair into the wood and hid it behind some bushes, and Declan and I lay down flat in the undergrowth. Sam went back onto the track and used his branch to obliterate our tracks as completely as possible, only stopping and running into the wood when we could actually hear hoof-beats. And a minute or so later three horsemen rode past. The good news was that they were going at a gallop: they were obviously not following any trail, just heading for the portal as fast as they could.

"Now what?" asked Sam. "We can't go on, because when we get to the portal they'll be waiting for us. Should we go back? They might believe us if we say we just wanted to go for a nice long walk before supper... although supper should have started ten minutes ago."

"No, we keep going," I said, helping Declan to stand up. "They don't know where the portal is."

"Yes, but they know roughly where it is," insisted Sam. "It'll be too dangerous for us to try to get there now, surely?"

"No, it won't. The portal's nowhere near where I told the Council. I thought we might need to get back through it, so I lied a bit. Well, quite a lot, actually. Come on."

We propped Declan against a tree, took the chair back to the track, carried Declan back to it and resumed our journey, keeping our eyes and ears open in case reinforcements appeared - though now we were in quite open country, so it would have been hard to hide if any had appeared. But we reached the smaller path without seeing or hearing anyone, and five minutes later we were approaching the stone arches - there were three in this world - once again.

Now we had to decide how we were going to play this. We'd been gone for almost a week, so I thought it likely that our absence had been reported. We could just go back to the Home and claim, if anyone asked, that we'd spent the week somewhere in the Arvelan world, but they'd be sure to ask us where, and if Irfan was the one asking the question... so really I didn't think that would work.

Of course, if someone had closed the portal since we had left we'd have had an even bigger problem, but Declan was confident that his instruction to leave it open would have prevailed, and when I looked carefully through the right arch I found that he was right: there was a complete Stonehenge on the far side of the archway. There were a couple of lights burning, but no signs of life, so with a bit of luck the scientists had packed up for the day, or at least had gone to have something to eat.

I pushed Declan through the arch and Sam followed us, gasping when he saw the complete structure beyond the arch. He went back through and looked at it from his side, then came back and looked at it again from ours.

"Oh, wow!" he said, staring all around. "This is amazing!"

"Isn't it?" I said. "Now if we're really lucky they'll have left all the other portals open, too, including the one to my world...stay there while I check."

I set off on a circuit of the monument, but I should have known I couldn't be that lucky: none of the other portals was open.

"Oh, well," I said as I returned to Arch 14, where the other two were waiting, "looks like I'll have to stay here, then. So...Sam, I don't want them giving you a hard time the moment you arrive, so you'd better wait at the bus stop."

"What's a bus stop?"

"It's a place where... never mind, you'll see soon enough. Just walk that way until you reach the road. Turn left, and about fifty yards along you'll see a metal pole with a flat sign on the top - the first word on it is 'bussi' and it's written like this." I scribbled the Arvelan characters in my notebook, tore the page out and gave it to Sam. "Wait there for us."

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going to tell the people here to close the portal before Sir Aubrey's army arrives. But I don't want them to know about you. Hopefully we won't be too long, but if we're not with you in half an hour I suppose you'll have to come and find us - we'll be in those huts over there." And I pointed to the temporary structure that housed the research crew.

Then I explained to Declan what I had said.

"What? You're just going to walk up to the cops and turn yourself in?" he asked.

"That's what I'd do if I was innocent, isn't it? Besides, I can't risk them leaving the portal open overnight in case someone on the other side sees the light, comes to investigate and realises that this is the portal I told them about. I'm hoping that if I'm open about it they'll accept that I always intended to come back. Of course, if you're with me that's more likely, isn't it?"

"Not if the adult Konj�auml;ssi is there," he said. "I daren't try anything in front of him or he'll spot me in an instant."

"Then let's hope he isn't," I said, and I started pushing Declan towards the huts. I was hoping the dogs wouldn't have been released yet: if the scientist had just stopped for supper they probably wouldn't have been. And in the event we reached the entrance safely.

"Hello," I said to the cop at the desk just inside the door. "Could you tell High Captain Aarnist that Jacob Stone is here, please?"

The cop pressed a button on the intercom on his desk and said "High Captain Aarnist to the front door, please", and a couple of minutes later Aarnist appeared. For a moment an expression of surprise appeared on his face, but he swiftly composed himself, his face returning to its usual mask-like appearance.

"Jacob!" he greeted me. "This is an unexpected surprise. What can I do for you?"

"Can we talk to you in private?" I asked. "We've got some information for you."

"Certainly. Come on through."

He led us to the interview room where I'd given my statement about the death of Harlan and invited me to sit down and tell him whatever it was that was bothering me.

"Well, I suppose I should start with a confession," I said. "You see, six days ago we came up to see what was happening, but the scientists were all busy trying to open another portal and I don't think they noticed us. And we found that one of the portals on the other side of the monument was open, and... well, we just slipped through it when nobody was looking."

"It was my idea," Declan butted in. "I wanted to see another world - Jake's been telling us about some of the ones he's been to, and I wanted to see for myself. We didn't intend to be gone for very long, but we ran into some people and they took us prisoner. And we only just managed to give them the slip and get back here."

"I see," said Aarnist.

I expected him to stop us there while he went to find Irfan, but maybe Irfan wasn't around, because instead he went on, "and what was it like, the world where you've been for the past six days?"

"Not as advanced as this one," I said. "I'd say they're about a hundred years behind this world. But they could still be a problem - they took the battery out of Dec's chair because they don't have plastic, and obviously now they've seen it they'll be interested in trying to get more of it. I'm sure you could beat them if it came to a fight, but it would be better if you didn't have to. I told them the portal was somewhere else, so they're looking in the wrong place at the moment, but it would still be a good idea if you closed the portal now, just to make sure they don't stumble upon it by accident."

"I didn't know we'd left one open," said Aarnist. "Lucky for you we did, eh?"

"Very lucky," I said. "But I think you ought to close it straight away."

"So do I," said Aarnist. "Wait here, would you?"

He went out, returning about five minutes later, and I wondered if he'd been tearing a strip off Smarty-pants for leaving the portal open.

"It'll be closed within five minutes," he told us. "So, what else can you tell me about that world?"

"Probably quite a lot," I said. "We even got to meet their leader. But please could I come back and give you a full report tomorrow? Only we're pretty tired - we had to run quite a long way, and I had to push Dec's chair because they'd taken his battery. We'd really like to get back to the Home and rest. Please?"

"Well... maybe you will be able to remember things more easily when you're fresh," he said. "And ideally I'd like Irfan here, too - he should be back tomorrow. Just one thing, though - would you mind taking your jacket and pullover off and rolling up your sleeve?"

So I did that, and Aarnist peered closely at my left arm.

"Just checking," he said. "If you'd tried to get rid of your chip I wouldn't be happy with you at all, but since it's still there even though you've been out of our control for a week, it does suggest that you're telling the truth. Not that I'd advise you to try taking it out: it's in quite deep and it has little hooks to make it harder to remove it. You'd make a serious mess of your arm if you tried.

"You're lucky Irfan isn't here this evening, because I'm sure he'd advise me to lock you up again. But I think I'll trust you. After all, I knew you'd left the Home, and I suspected you might have left this world, and yet you've chosen to come back of your own volition. So take your friend back to the Home. But I want to see you back here tomorrow afternoon at two o'clock. Don't be late!"

He escorted us back to the door, where we said goodnight and then headed towards the bus stop. Sam was waiting impatiently for us.

"This is a really interesting place," he said. "What's the road made of? It looks really smooth - I bet even a really old cart with no springs wouldn't run badly on that!"

"It's called tarmac," I said. "And we don't have to travel in an old cart - in about ten minutes you'll see that for yourself, provided the bus isn't late. In fact you'll probably see quite a few things that'll be new to you - just try to hang on to the questions until we get indoors."

And the look of astonishment on his face when the brightly-lit bus arrived was priceless. And when we got off the bus in Sarutaale and he was able to look closely at the parked cars along the side of the road it was clear that, so far at least, he wasn't regretting for a moment his decision to come with us.

We didn't have any problem getting him past the manager of the Home. This was because Declan did the talking, explaining that Sam was a friend of mine who would be staying with us for only a short time, maybe only a couple of days, and that we knew there weren't any spare beds but it didn't matter because Sam would be sleeping on the floor, and he was sure the Home could find a small amount of extra food for his meals, and that really wouldn't be a problem at all, would it?

Naturally this was accompanied by some discreet coercion, and so of course the manager said no, that wouldn't be a problem at all. The only bad thing was that we'd missed supper, but I thought that a small price to pay for being safely back here... well, 'safely' was a relative term for me, of course, but clearly Declan at least was a lot safer here than he had been in the Marxist world.

While we were in the manager's office Declan asked him to order a new battery for his chair and to charge it against his allowance, and then we were able to go to our room.

"Why didn't you 'persuade' the manager to pay for the new battery?" I asked.

"That would be dishonest!" said Declan, righteously. "No, seriously, it would be wrong. We do have some standards, you know. And of course if I did that, eventually it would show up in the accounts - there'd be a discrepancy, or there'd be something to show that Home funds had been used to pay for something that should have been paid for by an individual, and then people would start asking questions, and probably they'd bring in a police Konj�auml;ssi to find out what was going on, and I wouldn't like that at all. Besides, I can afford it. Now, we've got another little problem here: there are three of us and only two beds. So, who's sharing with who - or is someone really going to sleep on the floor?"

This was tricky: I wouldn't have minded sleeping with either of them, of course, but it would be hard to choose one without risking hurting the other one's feelings.

"Sam's a guest," I said. "He can have my bed and I'll sleep on the floor."

"Don't be stupid," said Declan. "Obviously I'd like you to share with me, but I saw you and Sam on the train, remember? So I won't mind too much if you want to sleep with him."

"No, we'll spin a coin," I said. I switched to English. "Sam, have you got a coin on you?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Just hand me one."

Sam shrugged and gave me a large copper coin that had 'One penny' engraved on it. On one side was an engraving of Tower Bridge, and on the other was a square with a star in each corner.

"Okay," I said. "The stars are Sam, the bridge is Dec." And I spun the coin, allowing it to fall onto the floor... stars upward.

"Do you mind sharing a bed tonight?" I asked Sam. "I mean it's all right if you'd prefer a bed to yourself, because Dec and I don't mind sharing..."

"No, I'd like to share," replied Sam immediately. "Except... I didn't bring any pyjamas - there wasn't room in my bag. So I'll have to sleep in my pants. I hope you don't mind?"

He blushed as he was saying this, which made his freckles even more noticeable.

"I don't mind at all," I said. "After all, we weren't even wearing underwear on the train, were we?"

And that made him blush even more.

At that point we were interrupted: apparently the twins had heard that we were back, and they burst into the room with Peter and Godfrey and subjected us to a barrage of questions. This at least gave me a chance to introduce Sam to everyone, though I warned them that he couldn't speak either Arvelan or Vestdansk.

"That's all right," said Clovis. "We'll teach him. I'm sure Declan can help - you know, sort of stick a picture of a bus in his head while we all say the word, or something. It'll be fun. And... can he play cards?"

"Yes," I said, "but not very well."

"Perfect!" said Carlis. "Then we'll get him naked really easily. I wonder if he's got any hair yet?"

"No, he hasn't," I said, "but he's quite big. Bigger than you two, anyway."

"How do you know? Have you been peeping in the showers?"

"No, we played strip poker on a train once."

"On a train? Are you mad? What would have happened if someone had seen you?"

"Then we'd have been in trouble, I suppose. But Dec was there, and he thought he could stop anyone getting into our compartment. Mind you, he couldn't speak the language, so he might not have been able to. That made it sort of exciting."

"So you stripped on a train, and you played cards against Declan? You're mad twice over," Carlis told me.

"I know. But it was still fun. And we didn't get caught, either."

"Is he bigger than me?" asked Godfrey, anxiously.

"No. And he's a year older than you, too, so you're still our king."

"Great! I love choosing the forfeits! We'll have to make him play really soon - it'll be fun making a new kid do all the bad ones..."

"Give him a chance to settle in," I protested. "A couple of days, anyway."

"Well, all right," agreed Godfrey, grudgingly. "But that'll just give me time to think of some new forfeits. And I'll think of some specially bad ones, just for you."

So I grabbed him and tried to tickle him, and that led to a free-for-all, in which Sam was quick to join. And when we finally managed to eject all the other boys from our room so that we could get ready for bed Sam said, "I like your friends, Jake. I think I'm going to fit in nicely here. You'll definitely have to start teaching me the language tomorrow."

"We all will," I said. "The others have already said they want to help."

"Great!"

I pushed Declan to the bathroom and helped him to wash, washed myself and then took him back to the bedroom. Sam went and washed while I got Declan into bed, and when Sam came back I was already in bed waiting for him.

"I really like these electric lights," Sam commented as he got undressed. "They're much more efficient than the gas ones back ho... back in Amesbury. I'm definitely going to like this place."

He piled his clothes on the chair at the foot of the bed, except for his briefs, which he kept on, and then slid into bed next to me.

"Hey, you're not wearing your underwear!" he commented.

"No, I thought maybe it would be nicer not to."

"Yes, you're right!" he declared enthusiastically, and he pulled his briefs off and threw them towards the chair. Then I turned the light off using the switch by the bed and settled down... but within ten seconds Sam had turned me onto my back and wriggled on top of me. And surprise, surprise, he had an erection.

"I don't suppose we can sleep like this," he said, "but it'd be nice to sort of snuggle a bit before we go to sleep, don't you think?"

"Definitely," I agreed, putting my arms round him.

We lay quietly for a few minutes, and then he rolled off me and lay on his side facing me.

"Thanks for letting me come with you, Jake," he said, quietly.

"I'm glad you did," I replied.

He settled down and so did I. Yes, I was glad Sam had come with me: I liked him a lot, and... well, I suppose you can never have too many friends. But at the back of my mind was the thought that my overall situation had probably got worse: I was still stuck in the Arvelan world, and so still in danger of being sent back to the school in Laztaale, but now that Aarnist was aware of my trip into the Marxist world he would almost certainly take steps to make sure I couldn't slip away again. There seemed to be no way out...