The Final Nexus – Chapter Thirteen

The Final Nexus – Chapter Thirteen

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I was woken up the next morning by Xan nuzzling against me and stroking me gently, which was a lot better than his more favoured method of jumping on me and initiating a wrestling match. I’d been doing my best to persuade him that slow and gentle was at least as nice as fast and rough, but so far I didn’t think I’d managed to convince him. So to be woken up like this was a pleasant change.

“You deserve it,” he said, when I queried this. “You did something amazing yesterday, and you made me look really good in the process.”

“You’re confusing me with Dec,” I pointed out. “If he hadn’t been with us we’d never have even got on the crawler, far less up to Deck One.”

“Yes, but it was your plan. You worked out how to use his abilities. He got us up to Deck One and Ilse, Miro and I did the strong-arm bit on their crew, but none of it would have happened without you. And the general was very pleased with me, which is why I thought it would be nice to do things your way this morning.”

And so we did, with lots of nuzzling and stroking and caressing and no violence at all, and it was a far better start to the day than anything else would have been, so that by the time we had finished and showered I was feeling a lot more positive than I had the previous evening. After all, the fighting was over, I was still alive and in a week or two I might even be on my way back home, provided that we were able to open a portal that led somewhere useful.

It transpired that we were going to be staying where we were for a day or so in order to give Khan’s engineers, and the ones we sent to help, a chance to find out what needed doing and whether we had any material on board that might be useful. The aliens had fitted some machines down on Deck Six that could do a certain amount of repair work, but if something had been destroyed completely – like the window at the front of Deck One – it would have to be replaced from scratch, and in a world such as this that was only very sparsely inhabited a lot of raw materials were hard to come by.

I learned that as the crawlers had made their way westward they had stopped, often for long periods, to set up mining operations, either reopening facilities that had stopped production when the plague struck or digging new ones, and that as a result there were mines producing ores for most metals back on the continent. But because the crawlers had only just reached Britain there were as yet no mines here, except perhaps some that had been abandoned for two hundred years, and that might mean that Khan would have to return to Europe to refit his crawler if the damage was too extensive to be repaired using existing resources. I thought this would be good news, since it would leave us in undisputed control of Britain, but of course I was wrong.

“Who are we going to fight if we’re the only ones here?” asked Xan. “It could be years before any of the other generals cross the Ditch. Probably if Khan goes back we’ll have to go with him. If we can’t fight we might as well just stay here and raise sheep, or something.”

“I can think of worse ways of living,” I said.

“It’s dull! I don’t understand how people can live like that, just sitting on the same patch of mud for the rest of their lives, doing nothing except watching sheep eating grass. I think I’d go mad with boredom! Here we get to test ourselves, to live a life of action and excitement…”

“And to die before you’re sixteen,” I interrupted. “Is this life any less pointless than the life of a shepherd?”

“Jake, you have the soul of a farmer! If you’re any good you won’t die young. I certainly don’t intend to. And even if I do, to me it’s better to have lived life to the full for ten years than to have spent fifty wading through sheep-shit. All life is basically pointless, so you might as well make the most of it.”

“There are other things you could do besides killing people,” I said. “And you wouldn’t just have to sit around raising sheep, either. You could study, learn more about the world, or you could travel and find out about other people and how they live. You could make friends with people from other worlds and other backgrounds, or even with other species. Or you could find a good place to live and settle down with your friends, growing up together, helping each other, having fun together – but without having to hurt other people. I know your people have lived this way for two hundred years, but it isn’t the only way.”

“I know,” he said, quietly. “I’ve spoken to Dec and Sam, and I know there are other worlds where things are very different, worlds with proper, permanent towns and cities, worlds where you can travel long distances quickly, or even fly… but I wouldn’t fit in there. This is the world I know, and it’s where I belong. Anywhere else I’d just be another face in the crowd… Sam told me about the city called London, where millions of people live – millions, Jake! How can people live in places like that without being utterly lost in the throng?”

“Well, I lived in London for more than ten years, and I never felt I was lost in a crowd. And now I live in quite a big city, too… well, it’s true that I live right on the edge of it, but even so… but most of the time you’re not aware of it. My world is the Home where I live with my friends, and the forest where we go to play, and the local shops and swimming pool and our school and so on. I hardly ever go into the centre of Milhüsa – I don’t need to, because everything I need is close to where I live.

“The thing is, this isn’t a normal world. In a normal world you can generally choose to live in a town or in the country, and you can find a job that interests you, and if you want to travel and visit other countries it’s usually possible if you have some money. If you’re really lucky you might even be able to travel to other planets - I have a friend from another planet who could probably arrange it if I wanted to do that. If you were to come with me when I go home you could see all that for yourself.”

He was silent for a few seconds. “Maybe I’ll think about it,” he said, eventually. “But not yet. Right now I fancy a ride… come on, let’s go and see how they’re getting on with the repairs!”

So we put on our riding uniform, walked down to the stable, saddled up and rode the half mile or so to Khan’s crawler. The front of it looked a mess, with a gaping, blackened hole at the top, though there were already engineers at work fitting replacement armour over the hole.

“We’re going to have to fix our guns so that you can’t do that,” Xan commented as we rode along the side of the crawler. “I suppose the aliens never envisaged the guns being captured by an enemy, but now that we know it’s possible we’ll have to fit some sort of a blocker that makes it impossible for the guns to be aimed at our own crawler. To be honest, I didn’t think it was possible now until you showed me differently. “

When we got around to the rear of the crawler we found that there were no sentries on duty today: instead one of the ramps had a sign on it bearing the hanzi for ‘Lee’, and when we rode up it we found one of our own stable-masters inside, working alongside the Khan deck-master and ground crew.

“Here to see anyone in particular?” he asked us as we handed our horses over to the stable-hands.

“Not really,” said Xan. “Just want to see how the work is going.”

I had a thought. “There is one thing,” I said. “Could you tell me where the infirmary is, please?”

“Same place as ours,” said the stable-master. “But all of our own people were taken back to our crawler yesterday afternoon.”

“Alright, thanks,” I said, and I followed Xan out of the door and into the crawler proper.

“What was that about?” he asked.

“You remember I said I thought I killed someone yesterday?” I asked. “Well, I’d like to know if I did kill him or if he made it.”

“Why? There’s nothing you can do about it now, is there?”

“No, but… I’d still like to know.”

“Come on, then,” he said, and he led me through some corridors and up some stairs until we reached an area to the rear of Deck Three.

“If their layout is the same as ours their infirmary is through this door,” he said. “We’d better ask at the office first.”

He led me through the door and into an office to the side, where we found a short, dumpy woman with her hair done up in a bun.

“Yes?” she said, looking at us suspiciously.

“We’re looking for someone who might have been brought in yesterday,” said Xan.

“Why? Hoping to finish what you started?”

“No, it’s nothing like that. My friend here hasn’t been with us long, and he has unusual views on war. See, he injured this boy – maybe killed him – and now he’s worried about him.”

She didn’t actually say “Pull the other one!” but the look she gave me was very much of that flavour.

“It’s true,” I said. “I was only trying to warn him off – I didn’t mean to actually hit him with my sword.”

“I see. So you were in a pitched battle and you were trying to warn your enemy off instead of killing him?”

‘”That’s right.”

She gave me another disbelieving look but then shrugged. “I don’t suppose you also stopped to ask for his name, did you?”

“Sorry.”

She sighed. “Describe his uniform,” she said.

“Well, he was wearing a dark blue jacket with fur trim, black trousers like ours, and a plain round helmet with a flared rim and a ridge at the top. And he fought with a type of scimitar, rather than a straight sword like we use.”

“Sounds like Amin’s Tartars,” she said. “We’ve got five of them in Recovery at the moment. Go through the second door on the left. Are either of you armed?”

We shook our heads.

“Go on, then,” she said. “And come and see me again on your way out.”

So we went through the door she had indicated and found ourselves in a largish room quite like our own accommodation area, except that here the curtains were mostly pushed back and the beds were proper beds and not merely mattresses like ours. There were a dozen beds in the room, and I was delighted to see the tall kid in the fourth one along on the left hand side.

“You!” he gasped, as I stepped close to his bed. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see if you were alright.”

“Why?”

“I was afraid I’d killed you.”

“What do you mean, afraid? Weren’t you trying to?”

I shook my head. “I was trying to protect my friend, that’s all. I wasn’t trying to hit you with my sword, but you were too quick for me. I was afraid I’d cut into your lung.”

He shook his head. “A cut to the skin and two broken ribs, that’s all. An easy repair job for the machines, but it’ll be sore for a couple of days, they tell me. And talking hurts, too.”

“Sorry. I had a cracked rib myself last year, so I know it’s uncomfortable. I’ll go now. I just wanted to see how you were.”

“Wait. I banged my head when I fell over, so I was out of it, more or less, but I remember you tying my belt around my chest. Why?”

“I was hoping it would control the bleeding until help arrived, and maybe help to seal it if there was a hole in your lung. And then someone else attacked me and I got distracted. I’m sorry I didn’t stay with you.”

“Sorry you… what sort of a soldier are you?”

“A very bad one, I’m afraid. I didn’t want to kill anyone.”

“He hasn’t been with us long,” put in Xan, and I could almost see him making ‘crazy’ gestures behind my back.

“Well, then, I’m glad you’re a bad soldier. Thanks. But I’ll still be trying to kill you next time.”

“Really? I think if I saw you again I’d try to stay away from you. Would you really be able to kill me if you came up against me next time?”

“Probably. It’s not that I’m ungrateful, but… well, that’s what we do, isn’t it? Although maybe I’d try not to fight you one on one if I could leave you to someone else. . What’s your name?”

“Jake.”

“I’m Ruslan, of Amin’s Tartars.”

“I ride with Xan’s Golden Riders,” I replied. “This is Xan.”

“Hello,” said Xan. “Look, can we go now, Jake? I feel the same way that Ruslan does about this: we’re likely to be trying to kill each other at some point in the future, so it’s probably better that we don’t make friends now, don’t you think?”

“Sorry,” I said. “I just prefer making friends with people, rather than trying to kill them.”

“I have tried to explain,” Xan said to Ruslan. “He thinks we’re mad, but then he is a bit strange.”

“He must be,” said Ruslan. “Well, thanks again – and try to stay away from us next time around if you want to live!”

“I think you’ve got that the wrong way round,” said Xan. “There are five of you in here, and I don’t know how many dead. I only lost two riders yesterday, so maybe you’d do best to avoid us next time!”

“You were lucky.”

“We were better!”

“Come on, Xan,” I said, pulling him back towards the door. “You can fight each other again in six months’ time when the treaty expires. Bye, Ruslan.”

We went back to the office to tell Nurse Bun that we were leaving and then found the central staircase and went up, but we were stopped at Deck Two and told that only repair crews were allowed past that point. I suppose I could understand that: Khan wouldn’t want Lee’s entire crew to have free access to his control room. So we made our way back to the stable, retrieved our horses and rode slowly back to our own crawler.

“I didn’t know we’d lost anyone,” I said. “You didn’t say.”

“I didn’t want to talk about it. I don’t like losing people, Jake. For a start it makes me look bad, but for a second… well, those were my friends. I’d known Axel for a long time, too – we rode together in Zoltan’s troop before I got my own band. And even if I’d only known Rémi for a few months he was still one of us.”

“And you still think this is the best way to live?”

“Yes. It’s our way. It’s better to remember Rémi laughing and singing and full of life than it would be to see him as a dull, bored farm-boy with nothing to look forward to except years of boredom.”

“I wonder what Rémi would choose if he could decide that for himself?”

He was silent, and he stayed that way until we got back to the crawler, and he remained quiet and introspective throughout the afternoon. In the evening we held the funeral for those who had died. The bodies were burned, as had been traditional since the start of the Horde: when the world in which you live is affected by plague this is probably sensible. We stood off to one side as the various band leaders stepped forward and said a few words about each of the dead in turn. And after it was over there was a very alcoholic wake in which I didn’t feel inclined to play more than a token part: I had a single drink and then slipped quietly away to our living quarters, where I spent the rest of the evening reading the Köninger book I’d taken from the farm at Amesbury.

When Xan finally returned at around one a.m. I helped him get undressed, forced him to drink as much water as I could in the hope of preventing a bad hangover next morning, and then turned off the light and settled in beside him.

Next morning he was feeling rather less rough than I had expected, so it looked as if the water he had drunk before going to bed had helped a bit. And because he wasn’t quite one hundred percent I was tempted to initiate a wrestling match myself: I felt that today I would have a good chance of winning. But I also felt that it would be a bit unkind, and I was sure that he wouldn’t enjoy it, and so I settled for just giving him a gentle cuddle until he felt up to getting out of bed.

Half an hour, a good shower and some more non-alcoholic liquid input later he was more or less his usual self again. He was talking about taking the whole band out on patrol, but before he could tell the others we received a summons from the control room, and when we got there the general told us that he was leaving some of his engineers behind to help with the repair work to Khan’s crawler, but that he wanted us to return to the river and make the attempt at opening a portal.

“If Khan does have to go back across the Ditch we might not have to go with him if we have somewhere else to go,” he told us. “And if this portal idea works, we might have, which is why I’m giving it priority now. So we’re heading back to where we were before. I’m going to put a screen of infantry between us and Khan, and I’ll have a couple of mounted patrols out there, too, and spotters, obviously: this is our experiment, and I don’t want the other generals getting wind of it until I’m ready to tell them about it, and I won’t do that unless it works and we’re able to make a large enough portal to take the crawler through. If we manage to do that I will consider passing it on, because it will give us all the chance of a new beginning somewhere – but that’s likely to be a while yet. So, Jake, you’d better think about who you want in your party, and whether or not you want to take your horses through.”

I thought that might be a little premature: after all, they hadn’t even established a portal yet. I thought it would be time enough to worry about forming a scouting party if they ever managed to get a portal operational. But I just nodded.

It didn’t take us too long to get the crawler back to the place it had been before Khan’s crawler had been spotted. Again a general check of the area was made and spotters were flown all around, but since we knew where Khan was and were aware that he would not be able to interfere the checking of the area was fairly cursory. And indeed, half an hour later the spotters had all reported that they could see no trace of anyone who might cause a nuisance: there was a small village around ten li away on the far side of the river, but no other signs of life at all.

So the scientific types who were in charge of opening the portal started to set up their equipment, beginning with the two two-metre tall vertical poles, between which the portal was intended to open. I watched them fixing the poles in place and then wandered off to look at the river, because I was fairly certain it was going to take quite some time, probably a matter of days (if not weeks) before they actually managed to open anything.

I suppose I was overlooking the fact that the computers that had been carrying out the analysis of my memories were hugely more advanced than anything the Kerpians or Arvelans had. In any event, in less than an hour the scientists were able to report that they had established a portal.

I thought the Arvelan approach to new portals was entirely sensible, and so I said that we should send a spotter through before we risked any of our crew. The engineers had rigged up a spotter control desk next to the portal, connected to the crawler by a number of cables, and so once everything was set up one of the spotter controllers sent his aircraft through the portal. And almost immediately it flew over a fair-sized town.

“We’re going to have to move the portal,” I said. “It’s far too close to civilisation – someone’s bound to stumble into it. Get the spotter to have a look for a wood or some derelict buildings or something like that, preferably close to the river.”

The operator turned the spotter around and brought it back in our direction. A short distance beyond the portal there was a piece of woodland, but he made the mistake of flying past the portal to have a closer look at it, and as soon as the spotter passed beyond the line of sight the operator lost contact with it.

“Damn!” exclaimed the general, who was standing next to me. “We really can’t afford to lose a spotter. How can we bring it back?”

“We’ll have to move the desk to the other side of the portal,” I said. “Wait a moment…”

I took a deep breath and stepped through the portal, finding myself in a field next to a towpath that ran alongside the river. The first buildings of the town were only a few hundred yards away, but fortunately there were no people in sight.

I ducked back through the portal and told the engineers to carry the desk through, and once it was in the same world as the spotter the operator was able to regain control and bring it back. As soon as it was safely back through the portal I had the desk carried back and followed it myself.

“I’d say we need to move the portal about half a mile – sorry, one or two li – upriver,” I said. “If we can open it on the far side of that wood the spotter saw we’ll at least be out of sight of the town. But even then it might be best not to leave the portal open permanently. I’d suggest we open it for five minutes every hour. That way it’s far less likely that anyone will stumble into it, and it’ll still mean that my team will be able to get back easily without having to wait too long for the next opening.”

So we moved the crawler two li upriver and tried again. The first attempt to reopen the portal failed, presumably because there were trees or some other obstacle in the way on the other side, but the second attempt was successful. And this time the portal was far better situated: it turned out to be actually inside the wood, close to the edge but still concealed from the casual passer-by.

The only thing left to do was to decide who was coming with me. I needed Dec, whose abilities would hopefully help us to stay out of trouble, and Xan insisted on coming in his capacity as my commanding officer. Sam wanted to come, too, but I didn’t really want to take him into possible danger.

“Draw lots,” said Xan, when I asked him quietly how I could turn Sam down without hurting his feelings. “We’ll put the name of every member of the band into the hat and draw one at random. Sam’s name will be in there, so he’ll have a fair chance, but the odds are that he won’t be picked. And it’ll give one of the others a chance to see a new world, too.”

That seemed a sensible suggestion: after all, there were now thirteen of us in the band as a result of the deaths of Axel and Rémi. Two were still in hospital following the battle and three of us were going already, so that meant that the odds against Sam’s name being drawn were seven to one, and that was good enough for me. So we did that, and when Sam’s name didn’t come out he accepted it without argument.

The name that did come out was that of Leila, the third girl in the band. I didn’t know much about her other than that she was a fine rider, but she told me that she was fourteen, that her ancestry was from somewhere in the Persian Gulf, and that she thought I was lucky that Xan preferred boys, because otherwise she would certainly have moved in on him by now.

We decided that it would be better not to go in uniform, so we each wore clothes we were comfortable in, which in my case meant the ‘civilian’ trousers and shirt I had ordered from the crawler stores. Dec’s clothes were similar to mine, and Xan and Leila wore their riding trousers but with non-matching shirts. They were both also wearing fur hats, and I decided to do likewise, even though it wasn’t particularly cold.

“I only want to do a short reconnaissance to start with,” I told the general, “so we should be back well before dark. If we’re not, please could you keep opening the portal every hour through the night? And if we’re not back by morning, maybe you should send a search party after us. But I really hope that won’t be necessary. Perhaps I’m going to get lucky for a change: perhaps this will be a nice, friendly world where strangers are made welcome.”

Of course, when I thought some more I realised that I was probably being over-optimistic: after all, for every nice, welcoming world like Elsass or Vogesia there seemed to be two or three rather less friendly places. But the glimpse of the town the spotter had given us looked peaceful enough, so maybe…

I took a deep breath, hoisted my bag onto my back and led my three colleagues through the portal and into another new world. This time I wanted one thing, and one thing only: a way to get back either to my birth world or to Elsass. If I was very lucky indeed this would be an advanced world with its own portal technology; if I was less fortunate it would have the transport infrastructure to allow me to return to the Vosges or the Black Forest, where I could at least hope to find a portal.

We walked through the wood and emerged at the far side in sight of the town, and now that we were able to look around properly I realised that most of the town was on the far side of the river. On our side there were a few houses and a couple of larger buildings, but the bulk of the town was on the far side of a bridge that we could see about a quarter mile ahead of us.

There was a clear path running along the bank of the river, though there were no people in sight. I wondered if it was a holiday: I’d done some calculations while I was waiting for the second opening of the portal, and I’d come to the conclusion that today was April 14th in my calendar, though it was hard to be sure: having lived under the thirteen-month Arvelan calendar, the Marxists’ Revolutionary one and the equally eccentric one on the crawler, which I still hadn’t completely worked out yet, it wouldn’t have surprised me at all if I’d been told my calculations were several days out. So it could easily be a Sunday or the equivalent rest day here.

But as we got closer to the bridge we began to see signs of life. There were a few cars using it, cars which, once we got close enough to see, looked not so very different from the ones in my birth world. There were some larger vehicles, too, vans and lorries, which clearly suggested a world with well-developed transport links. My hopes began to rise.

Nonetheless, I was still wary as we passed the first house at the edge of the town – after all, some of my recent experiences when meeting people in a new world for the first time hadn’t been too encouraging: I’d been taken prisoner by Xan’s band and by Sam’s scouts, I’d been arrested by one of Aarnist’s policemen in Arvelan Sélestat, and even in laid-back and friendly Vogesia the first person we had met had been a police officer. Just for once I wanted to be able to walk into a new town unmolested.

The path we were on joined the pavement alongside the road and we turned left towards the bridge, and here we saw our first pedestrians, a young couple walking slowly towards us across the bridge. They passed us by without a second glance, which at least indicated clearly that this wasn’t a Grey world: the young couple were definitely mammals, and perfectly normal-looking ones at that.

We crossed the bridge, which was quite a long one – in fact it was in two parts, with a wooded island halfway across - and now we could see that there were some boats drawn up south of the bridge on the far bank, and again these looked much like the small private cabin cruisers that used the Thames in my own world. I was already aware that this was not my world, simply because the traffic was driving on the right hand side of the road. Of course, I supposed that this could be Stefan’s world: no doubt the Nazis would have imposed uniformity of traffic laws throughout the Reich. But I saw no signs of military vehicles and no swastika banners, and not one of the pedestrians we saw was wearing any sort of uniform, which led me to believe that this wasn’t a Nazi world after all.

At the far end of the bridge on the left was a Post Office and a couple of other small shops, and the names were all written in English. More good news: I wasn’t going to have any language problems in this world. And a short distance beyond the Post Office we came into the town proper, a built-up area of shops, houses and something that looked like a small school.

This didn’t look so very different to the outskirts of Salisbury, and so Dec took it in his stride, but of course Xan and Leila had never seen anywhere like this: the only inhabited settlements in their world were small villages clustered around farms. Such cities as they had seen in Old France were mere ruins, and the idea of a modern town was completely new: they stared around with their mouths open.

“Is this what your world is like?” asked Xan.

“More or less. The architecture is a little different, but it’s still close. Now if we can find a shop I might be able to get a map – or if there’s a library that would be even better…”

“What’s a library?”

“It’s a place where you can borrow books and DVDs and… never mind. It’s also somewhere where they keep lots of reference books, so if we can find one I should be able to find out everything we need to know about this world.”

“And what does one look like?”

“Well, it’s usually… to be honest, it depends. But if this is anything like my world, a town this big ought to have one.”

So I walked into the next shop we came to and asked the woman behind the counter if there was a library in town.

“Well, it’s only a small one, but we have got one,” she said. “Go up the street a little way and you’ll see an alley going off to your right. That takes you to a car park. Keep going out of the far side of the car park, and when you come out on Station Road you’ll see the library almost opposite you.”

I said thank you, went back outside and led Xan and Leila up the street, along the alley and into the car park. And at that point they stopped and stared some more – they’d seen a few cars on the street as we’d walked into town, but here there were thirty or so all in one small area.

“Don’t they have horses in this world?” Leila asked, watching a woman get into a small vehicle and drive away.

“If it’s anything like mine, they do have horses, but only a few people use them,” I said. “Most people have one of these – they’re called cars.”

“Why? Surely a horse is better,” said Xan. “Those little boxes can only run on flat, smooth ground. A horse can go anywhere.”

“These things go faster, though,” I told him. “You can do about two hundred li in an hour in a car.”

They gaped at me again, and I took advantage of the temporary silence by leading them onward, out of the car park and on to the road beyond it. And there was the library.

We went inside and I asked the man at the desk if they had an atlas I could look at, and he directed me to a corner of the room where there were a number of maps and map books. I started with a world atlas, because I wanted to be absolutely sure that there wasn’t anything in mid-Atlantic that wasn’t supposed to be there: as far as I knew, the Middle Continent only existed in one world, and it clearly wasn’t this one because here people weren’t speaking Vestdansk, but it doesn’t hurt to be sure. And I was delighted to see that in this world there was nothing more substantial in the Atlantic than the Azores.

Next I turned to Europe. The nearest country to England was still France, and then, further east, came…

“Yes!” I shouted, and I actually jumped into the air, because now I was home and dry. I’d wanted to get back to either my birth world or to Elsass, but this was a very close third: beyond France in the atlas was the broad expanse of Kerpia. And Kerpia had a permanent and direct portal back to Elsass.

“Sorry!” I said, raising a hand to the librarian. I took a deep breath and reined my enthusiasm in for a moment – after all, this might not be my Kerpia. So I scoured the nearby shelves for a travel book about Kerpia, and found one that listed the capital as Temishar since 2217, previously Budd (which was exactly as in the version of Kerpia I knew) and told me that the current king was Jerj XI, helpfully including a photograph, and I found myself looking at the man who had pinned my medal on eighteen months earlier.

“I can go home!” I said, sinking into the nearest chair. “Okay, I haven’t got any money, but if Dec comes with me I won’t need any – he can persuade any ticket inspector who comes along that we’ve got tickets. We should be able to get all the way to Strasbourg – I mean Utkravar – like that. Or I could just go to the Kerpian Embassy in London and get them to call Narj Larzel – if I show them my medal I’m sure they won’t mind making a call or two for me. And Mr Narj will be able to arrange to get me home, I’m sure.”

I still had my medal at the bottom of my bag: I’d brought it to England to show my parents and it had been in my bag ever since. I was sure it would be enough to get me into the Kerpian Embassy.

“Are you sure you want to go?” asked Xan.

“Yes, I think so. But you could probably come with me if you want – just for a visit, anyway. This world is stable enough, so you could travel to my country with me, stay for a while and then come back when you find you’re missing your world too much. In fact, now that the general can open a portal here whenever he wants you could probably come and visit regularly if you wanted to.”

Provided the general didn’t decide he wanted to bring his crawler through and start looking for people to fight, I didn’t add. As far as I knew the Kerpian world was peaceful and didn’t have any standing armies.

At first I thought it a miracle that the first portal Lee’s scientists had opened had come to the Kerpian world. But when I thought about it I supposed it wasn’t that surprising: the information, including the co-ordinates, must have been in my head all along, because the Elsass scientists had also been able to use my memories of the Hub computers to construct a portal to Kerpia. And Lee’s computers, being much more sophisticated, would have been able to use that information more effectively – at least Lee’s portal had been a compact affair that seemed secure, not a wobbly two-interface tunnel prone to throwing the user off into some unpleasant and uncharted third world.

I put the atlas and the travel book back where I had found them, apologised again to the librarian for disturbing the peace, and led my two colleagues back to the street. I was about to head back the way we had come when I had another thought: the woman in the shop had called this ‘Station Road’… So I turned right - turning left would have simply taken us back to the river – and followed the road for another two hundred yards or so. And there, as I had hoped, was a railway station.

“What’s that?” gasped Leila, as a train pulled out of the station.

“That’s a train. They travel even faster than cars. Those long tubes have seats in, and they can carry… actually I’m not sure how many you can fit in a railway carriage, but lots of people, anyway.”

“I think I’d like to try that,” she said. “It’s hard to imagine travelling faster than a horse…”

I took them back the way we had come, through the car park, back over the bridge and along the towpath to the wood. We’d only been gone for about an hour, so the portal was still open. A couple of infantrymen were hanging around nearby, presumably to make sure that nobody from this world stumbled into it by mistake, but they waved us straight through, and soon I was reporting my findings to the general.

“I don’t think that world would be any use to you,” I said. “It’s very structured, and I’d guess that there are millions of people in this country alone over there. What you really need is either one with a hostile and warlike population you can fight, or another completely empty one where you could travel the whole length of Europe and Asia again, like you did in this one. But it suits me perfectly, because I know that I can get home from there. I’m going to need Dec to come part of the way with me, but after that it’ll be up to him: he might well decide he’d prefer to stay here. We’ll talk about it over lunch and I’ll let you know what we’ve decided after we’ve eaten.”

I left Xan and Leila to describe the Kerpian world for the general and went to find Dec and Sam, and while we were eating in one of the self-service eating bars I explained what I wanted to do.

“If either or both of you want to come with me I’ll happily take you, but if you prefer to stay here I won’t try to talk you out of it,” I said. “Although probably you won’t have to decide once and for all: now the general knows how to open a portal to the Kerpian world he’ll be able to do so whenever he wants, so it might be possible to come and go a bit. So you could come and try my world for a while and then come back here if you prefer. What do you think?”

“I’d like to come with you,” said Sam. “At least for a while. I like it here a lot, but it is a bit dangerous, and maybe it would be safer in your world.”

“I think I ought to stay here for a while,” said Dec. “I can be useful here, and I still owe them. But if we can keep a portal available, maybe I could come to your world later.”

“Okay. You don’t mind coming as far as London with me, though, do you?”

“As long as you tell me how to get back. I don’t speak your language, remember?”

“I’ll make sure you have proper instructions in Arvelan. Right, then: let’s get our stuff packed and then go and tell the general what we want to do.”

Packing didn’t take long: I only intended taking my original clothes and one change, because I didn’t think it would take more than a couple of days to get back to Milhüsa, and other than clothes I only had some odds and ends: the stuff I’d been carrying since I left Milhüsa the previous December, the three books I’d acquired since and some washing kit. I packed everything into my bag, waited for Sam (though he had even less to pack than I did) and Dec (who was bringing only a small bag to carry some food for the return journey from London) and then, leaving our bags on our beds, we went back up to the control room, where I explained my intentions to the general.

“It would be nice if we could come back to visit if we wanted,” I said. “Perhaps we can arrange it that you open a portal on the first couple of days of each month, or something like that. And you have a radio, so if we can find a frequency that works you can broadcast your location when you open the portal, and then we’ll know where to look for you. I’m sure I can persuade the Kerpians to listen out for your broadcasts for me. Only Sam and I have both got good friends here – not just Dec, but everyone – and we don’t want to just lose touch.”

“I’d like to stay in touch, too,” said the general. “After all, you know a lot about the different worlds you can reach through the portals, and it would be useful if we could talk to you whenever we open a new one. Because we will want to do that if the world you went to today is unsuitable for us, and Xan says it…”

“Sorry, General,” interrupted the communications officer. “Spotter Five has picked up a vehicle heading our way. It’s not one of Khan’s – it’s coming from the wrong direction.”

“Who’s the spotter?”

“It’s Indra.”

“She’s experienced enough not to make mistakes… put her on speaker, Sanjay.”

The communications man flicked a switch. “Go ahead, Indra,” he said. “I’ve connected you to the general’s console. What have you got?”

“It’s a four-wheeled vehicle approaching us from the south-west,” came a female voice through the speakers. “Wait one moment and I’ll put it on screen for you…. got it?”

The screen on the general’s desk lit up with a view of a vehicle that looked like a large Jeep heading towards the spotter and following the trail left by the crawler.

“We have it,” confirmed the general. “Can you get close enough to see who is in it?”

The spotter flew closer.

“He can probably see it now,” the operator warned us.

“I don’t think that matters,” said Lee. “He’s following our trail, so he knows we’re here. Get as close as you can – I can’t see any weapons on their vehicle, so you should be safe enough.”

The spotter flew towards the front of the vehicle, close enough for us to be able to see two people sitting in the two front seats, and when it turned around and flew back over the vehicle from the rear we could see that there were more people in the rear as well.

“Can you replay the tape, General?” I asked. “I want another look at the people in the front.”

So the general rewound the film and then moved it forward slowly until we could see the front fairly clearly. The spotter had been moving quite fast and the Jeep was bouncing about, but I had seen all I needed to.

“It’s Aarnist,” I told Sam and Dec. “The bastard’s found us. Well, he’s going to have a hell of a job getting me back from here.”

“Do you want us to blast him?” asked Lee. “In fact, if you want to go upstairs and do it yourself I’d have no problem with that.”

I thought about it briefly, but decided against it.

“No,” I said. “I know he’s been stringing me along, but he’s still treated me pretty fairly – letting me stay at the Home instead of locking me up, in particular. I don’t think he deserves to die for that. No, I’ll wait until he gets here and then just tell him to go away – if Xan and some of his band come with us I don’t think he’ll risk trying to grab me. And then if he refuses to go we can start shooting, but I’d sooner just let him go peacefully. But everyone who comes out there with me needs to be wearing a helmet – I’ll be amazed if there isn’t at least one Konjässi out there.”

“How far away is he?” the general asked the spotter.

“Not far,” she said. “He’ll be here in about ten minutes, I should think.”

“Could you get Xan and some of his band to meet us at the stable?” I asked. “We’ve got time to get kitted out in helmets and breastplates, even if we don’t need the horses.”

The general nodded to Sanjay, who turned on the intercom and broadcast a message for Xan’s band to head for the stable, and the three of us set out to meet them there.

“I’m quite looking forward to telling him to get lost,” I said.

“You don’t think he’ll go and take it out on your parents, do you?” asked Dec.

“I don’t think so. He’s persistent, but I don’t think he’s petty enough to go and shoot someone’s relatives just because he didn’t get his way.”

I genuinely didn’t think Aarnist was that sort of man. Irfan, on the other hand… I tried to put that thought out of my head. Surely Aarnist would keep him in check?

Only Sam was actually wearing his riding kit – he liked it and intended wearing it for our journey – but once we had the breastplate and helmet on Dec and I didn’t look too out of place to the remainder of the band, who were mostly in the proper uniform. Once everyone was ready we walked down the ramp and round to the side of the crawler, ready to meet the Jeep when it arrived.

“Stay at the back,” I said to Dec. “I don’t think for a moment that anything’s going to go wrong here, but if they do come out shooting there’s no reason for you to be in the front row. The general needs you. You, too, Sam – I want you at the back as well.”

“Hard luck, then, because I’m staying right here,” said Sam stubbornly, grabbing my left arm in a death grip.

Now we could see the Jeep approaching, and it drove to a point about twenty yards away and stopped, facing us. And Aarnist got out of the front passenger seat, identified me immediately despite the helmet and smiled at me.

“Good afternoon, Jacob!” he greeted me. “How are you?”

“Very well, thanks. You?”

“Oh, mustn’t grumble. You really are good at making friends, aren’t you? Every time you go somewhere new you seem to reappear a day or so later with new friends around you. Of course, it’s been a little longer than that this time.”

“How did you find me?”

“Your chip, of course! Did you think it wouldn’t broadcast just because you were inside a massive pile of metal? We sent a probe through a few days ago, and it followed the trail that monstrosity left getting here, and there was your chip, still broadcasting away happily. And your friend’s too. I can’t imagine why you didn’t get rid of them.”

I thought I had, but then I realised that I had just told the medics to take it out, not to destroy it. They’d probably removed it and then just dumped it in a waste bin, and so it was still on the crawler, broadcasting away regardless. I wanted to kick myself.

“So,” Aarnist went on, “we’ve been busy while you’ve been away, and now we’ve found the reptile world. So we need you to come and show us which is the one we’re looking for.”

“Would you be surprised if I said something like ‘Thanks, but I’d prefer to stay right here’?” I asked.

“And there I was, thinking we had an agreement,” he said.

“Do you really think I trust you to send me home afterwards?” I said. “I know how it works: I lead you to Torth, and ten minutes later I’d be on a ship heading back to the Academy in Laztaale.”

“Jacob, you wound me!” he said, reproachfully. “Do you really think I’d do something like that?”

“Yes, actually.”

He sighed. “Well, I suppose it’s hard to blame you. Still, I really think you ought to come with us.”

“Why?”

“Don’t go, Jake!” said Sam, grabbing hold of me, presumably in case I had a sudden rush of blood to the head and decided to go with him after all.

“Well,” said Aarnist, “after we found you again we watched for a little while and came to the conclusion that you’d decided to settle in here, and so we thought you might need a little persuading to come back with us. So we went back to your world. Originally I was intending to get Irfan to ask your parents to come back with us, but when we got there we found an even better solution.”

He turned and nodded over his shoulder to whoever was sitting in the back of the Jeep, and I was less than surprised to see Irfan climb out of the vehicle.

“So I’m sure you’ll change your mind about it,” Aarnist went on. “After all, it would be a terrible shame if anything happened to your friend, wouldn’t it?”

And someone else got out of the car and came to stand next to him, and to my utter horror and disbelief I saw that it was Stefan.

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This can't be good... and just when Jake thought he was safely on his way back home, too. How's he going to handle this? Come back next week and you'll find out...

You know the routine by now: if you have anything to say about the way the story is progressing, send a message to me at gothmog@nyms.net and I'll be happy to respond.

Copyright 2011: all rights reserved. Please do not reprint, repost or otherwise reproduce this or any part of it anywhere without my written permission.

David Clarke