David Clarke

The Nexus

The Nexus Trilogy Book I

Chapter One

A long time ago, before everything went weird, I used to live in Edgware.

I liked living in Edgware – okay, it's not the most exciting place on earth, but I had friends there, and if we wanted to go into Central London to go shopping or something there was a tube station not too far from my house…

Okay, I've jumped the gun here: first you need to know who I am. Well, I'm Jake Stone and I'm thirteen years old. I'm five feet two inches [1.57 m] tall, which is about average for my age, and I weigh thirty-nine kilos [86 lbs.], or about six stone four, which is a little less than average – I suppose I'm sort of skinny. I've got mid-brown wavy hair ('wavy' sounds better than 'untidy' or 'messy' which is what my mother usually calls it) and hazel eyes. Anyway, let's get back to Edgware…

The problem was that my father didn't like living in Edgware: he works in West London, so he had the choice between a long journey on public transport or a very slow journey by car, because London traffic in the rush hour is no fun at all. Plus, he came to the conclusion that it wasn't safe for me: every time there was another report on the news about a kid getting stabbed or shot in London he commented again on what a dangerous place this was, and it didn't do me any good telling him that most of the kids getting stabbed or shot lived in inner city boroughs somewhere, not out in the outer suburbs like where we were. And then, around three years ago, a boy got stabbed and killed right there in Edgware, and that was it as far as my father was concerned.

So he sold the house and moved us out to the back of beyond… well, I suppose that's not really fair – it's not like we moved to the Outer Hebrides, or anything. But to someone who had lived his whole life in London, a small village in Oxfordshire feels like the back of beyond. The only good thing was that it happened while I was still at primary school, so at least it didn't mean that I had to change schools in the middle of exams, or anything. My dad pulled some strings somewhere and got me into a school in Abingdon. It meant a bus ride to school, whereas back in Edgware I'd been in walking distance of my school, but it didn't actually take very long so I didn't mind too much. And the following year I got into a good secondary school which was also in Abingdon, and by then I was used to the bus journey.

But it was dead in the village – there was nothing to do in the evenings at all, so I ended up sitting in my room playing computer games, which is okay but not as much fun as playing out with friends. And of course when we first arrived I didn't know anyone, and I didn't make a lot of friends when I started at my secondary school, either: I'm no good at sport and I wear glasses, which doesn't exactly put me in the Mr Popular class. And none of the boys in my class lived in my village anyway, so even if I had made friends I wouldn't have been able to hang with them in the evenings.

***

Okay, that's the brief version of how I got here, and it's probably all you need to know about my history prior to the summer of 2009, because in the couple of years since I started at secondary school absolutely nothing changed: I still spent most evenings watching TV, playing video games or surfing the net, and at school I was still one of those kids who make up the numbers but aren't really part of the social life of the class. I didn't get bullied or anything, just ignored, which at least meant that when I had my thirteenth birthday towards the end of June nobody at school knew about it, so I didn't get the bumps or anything. Although sometimes I think it would be better to get the bumps every year than to go on being the invisible boy…

However, although nothing had changed at school, things at home had been changing steadily, and for the worse, too. This was mainly because my mother found the village dead, too: in Edgware she'd had plenty to do, what with visiting friends and shopping and hobbies and stuff, but here she was bored out of her head. I'd heard my parents arguing about it after I went to bed, and recently my father had been getting home later and later – apparently he'd been volunteering to work extra hours to avoid the rows at home – and things had reached a point where the word 'divorce' seemed to be just over the horizon.

At least they didn't use me as a pawn, though they had both tried that early on. I simply refused to play along, just retiring to my room whenever either party tried to get me to support their point of view (though I have to say that my sympathies were rather more with my mother than my father on this issue). Anyway, when the opportunity arose to go on a school exchange trip to France I absolutely jumped at it: for four weeks away from the arguments I'd have agreed to go pretty much anywhere.

I should say at this point that my French is excellent, for the simple reason that my mother is French. We quite often speak French at home, and I have relatives somewhere on the outskirts of Paris, and we go to visit them every now and again. So I wasn't worried at all about surviving in France for four weeks, even if it turned out that the family I was going to be staying with didn't speak any English at all. Though the way things were at home, if the school had offered me four weeks in Murmansk I would probably still have said yes straight away.

There were twenty of us kids and three teachers in the party, and we went by train – I suppose it was a bit too far to do it by coach, and it wasn't really practical to go by plane because of the limits on luggage and because it's too much of a performance to get a large party from Abingdon to Heathrow. So we took a train from Didcot to London, and then took the Eurostar to Paris, and finally an overnight train from Paris to our twin town of Colmar. I'd never heard of it before the trip was suggested, but I'd looked it up and found it was a large town in Alsace, not too far from the River Rhine and the German border. It's got about 67,000 inhabitants, so it's nearly twice the size of Abingdon, but that doesn't seem to matter to whoever fixes up all those twinning arrangements.

I didn't get a great deal of sleep on the train, so I was probably not at my best when we got off the train at Colmar, but I perked up a bit when I met the boy I was going to be staying with (the host families had come to meet us at the station). His name was Jean-Marie Kellermann, which struck me as not being very French, but apparently the majority of people living in Alsace have Germanic surnames. But it wasn't his name that interested me, but his appearance…

Okay, I didn't mention this before, but I'm gay. At least, I think I am, because I'm not remotely interested in girls, but for the past year or so I've been noticing boys in a big way. I'm not out, or anything – quite the reverse, in fact, because if I started eyeing boys up at school I'd probably get the stuffing kicked out of me. Obviously I do look at them, especially in the changing room on Games Day, but I'm very, very careful about it, and I'd never risk making a pass at a boy I fancied. If a boy were to come on to me, of course, I'd be only too happy to respond, but not too many boys are going to go after a skinny kid in glasses, so I suppose that isn't going to happen.

Anyway, Jean-Marie Kellermann was a nice-looking boy: he was a little taller than me, with quite long dark brown hair and green eyes, and I was hoping we'd be sharing a room, because he looked very fit and I wanted to see how he would look with his shirt off. His English wasn't too good, though, as I discovered when he said hello and asked how the journey had been (and I was happy to hear that his voice hadn't broken properly yet, because my voice hasn't even started to change and I'm a bit sensitive about the way I sound). So I replied in French that it had been okay but that I was a bit tired, and his face lit up as he realised he wasn't going to have to strain his English too much over the next four weeks or so. And when he was smiling he looked really good… yes, I decided, I was going to enjoy the next four weeks.

There was less than a week to go before the end of the French school term, but now that I'd met Jean-Marie I was quite looking forward to spending most of the time I was here on a one-to-one basis, and I was even contemplating breaking my usual rule by trying it on with him… right up to the point when we got to school and he introduced me to his girlfriend. And at that point my expectations for the stay plummeted once more… unless he turned out to be into girls and boys… no, I could never be that lucky.

So when Jean-Marie's class, together with their English guests, got into a coach after lunch to go on a visit to the castle of Haut-Koenigsbourg, my mood really wasn't great, and of course Jean-Marie chose to sit next to his girlfriend instead of me, which left me sitting on my own and wondering if it wouldn't have been better to have stayed at home after all.

We reached the castle, which is perched high up on the edge of the Vosges Mountains, and set off on a guided tour. Jean-Marie more or less ignored me in favour of his girlfriend, and I trailed along after them feeling like the invisible boy again. Eventually I got so annoyed about it that I told him I needed a pee and went back to the toilets near the entrance, and afterwards I decided that I couldn't face spending the rest of the afternoon looking at Jean-Marie smooching his girl, and so instead of going back into the castle I crossed the road and went for a walk along one of the paths that led off into the forest.

I quite like walking – it was about the only thing there was to do back in Oxfordshire apart from playing computer games – and it was nice here under the trees. At first it was all downhill, but eventually it levelled out. Later the path forked a couple of times, and each time I took the one that seemed to be going highest: I was hoping the path would take me up above the trees, where the view would probably be spectacular. But the paths never got above the trees, and eventually I came to the conclusion that they probably wouldn't, so I turned back…

Okay, you can see where this is going… I got turned around somehow, and I couldn't work out which path went back to the castle. I thought I was on the right path at one point, but then it went off in an unexpected direction, and so I did something stupid and left the path, convinced that if I could just keep going in a straight line I would find my way back. And of course I just got more and more lost.

I told myself that this was ridiculous: these mountains weren't out in the Western Highlands of Scotland, but in a fairly well-inhabited part of France. There were towns and villages up here, and roads – I'd looked at the map before leaving home – and so if I kept going in a straight line I would have to find a road sooner or later. But it was hard to keep to a straight line through the trees, and although I went on walking for a long time I didn't even find a path, never mind a road.

I was getting seriously worried by now, not that I wouldn't eventually find my way out of the forest, but that I'd look a complete idiot when I did get back: either everyone would be waiting for me, or the coach would have left without me. But then it started to get misty, and as the mist got thicker I got more and more worried about my chances of getting out of here at all: it would be really easy to go round and round in circles without realising it once the mist got really heavy.

I could feel a growing sense of panic: should I stop and wait for the mist to clear, or would it be better to keep walking? And, thinking about it, where had the mist come from, anyway? Early morning mist would certainly be possible, but it was mid-afternoon, and it was a fine warm summer's day. I was no weather expert, but it seemed strange to me that the mist had appeared at this time of day at all.

I kept walking because I was still hoping the mist would clear, but instead it got thicker until I could barely see five metres [15 ft] in front of me. I looked at my watch and found that it was already nearly five o'clock: I'd been walking up here for more than two hours now, and I still didn't have any idea of how far I was from civilization – probably, I thought, hardly any distance at all: I could be walking parallel to a road for all I knew. And that thought kept me moving – that and the thought of what would happen if it got dark before I found my way out.

Twenty minutes later I thought I'd made it – a building loomed up through the mist, and for a moment I thought I'd found a village, or even stumbled on the castle again. But as I got closer I saw that it was just an isolated hut, standing on its own in the middle of the forest. I guessed it would be for the use of a garde forestier, those people whose job it is to keep an eye on the forests, make sure no-one is stealing wood or hunting illegally and generally protect the wildlife – though I hadn't seen any wildlife today, not even a bird.

I found the door and was really pleased to discover that it was unlocked. I thought that if I was really lucky there might be a phone there, or more likely a radio – some means for the garde to stay in touch, anyway. (I hadn't bothered bringing my mobile to France because it cost far too much to use it abroad, and when I left home I hadn't been able to imagine any situation where I would need it). So I went inside, calling out in case there was anyone there. But of course I couldn't have been that lucky.

It was basically a rustic office – there was a desk and a chair, and on one side of the room there was a bunk, and there were some shelves and cupboards… but no radio and no phone. On the far side of the room was another door, and that led into a mini-kitchen containing a two-ring cooker run on bottled gas, a large container of water and some more empty shelves. There was no running water, no electricity… and no phone.

I went and stuck my head outside the door once more, but there was no sign of the mist lifting – in fact it looked thicker than ever. So I closed the door and went and lay down on the bunk to rest for a bit, because it would clearly be sensible to stay put until I could see where I was going. And because I hadn't slept a lot the previous night I fell asleep.

***

When I woke up it was dark, and by that I mean really dark: it wasn't like waking up at home when there are street lights outside the house and an LED alarm clock beside the bed. Here there was no light at all… except…

I sat up and saw a faint glow from one corner of the room, and when I had made my way carefully across the room I saw that there was a trapdoor in the floor. It didn't fit perfectly, and so some light was escaping around the edges – which had to mean that there was a basement, or something, and that someone had left a light burning. I was fairly sure there wasn't a generator here, because if there had been I would have heard it, so it must have been running on a battery. But I couldn't get the trapdoor open, though I couldn't really see what I was doing: if there had been a lock or something I wouldn't have been able to see it in the dark.

In the end I gave up, groped my way back to the bunk and lay down again: the trapdoor could keep until morning, I thought.

As soon as I woke up next morning I went to the door and looked outside, but the mist was still there, though at least it seemed a little more natural at this hour. Hopefully it would clear once the sun got up. In the meantime I thought I'd investigate the trapdoor, but there was no lock or bolt that I could see, and I still couldn't get it open… which must mean that it was locked or bolted from the other side. And that might mean there was someone down there, so I banged on the trapdoor and shouted for a minute or so. But there was no sound from down below and the trapdoor remained closed.

I went and sat at the desk, wondering how long it would be before the mist cleared, and whether Jean-Marie or his teachers had got people out looking for me. I'd very much appreciate being found, but I was only too aware that getting lost like this would make me look like a total dickhead. Any lingering chance I might have had of scoring with Jean-Marie had surely gone out of the window now, unless my luck changed completely.

The shelf above the desk was empty, and so were the two drawers in it, and the only thing on top of it was an empty box-file that I looked at and then put to one side – so it looked as if the hut was only used very occasionally: the garde hadn't left so much as a pencil behind. Next I went back to the kitchen and checked the cupboards in case he had left any food, but again I was out of luck. But then I noticed something strange: there was a light switch on the wall next to the cupboards. What was a light switch doing in a place with no electricity – and why put it on the opposite side of the room from the door? Most light switches are right beside the door so that you can turn the light on as you enter the room.

So I reached out and flicked the switch, and was not entirely surprised when no light came on. I flicked it back: still no light. But I heard a faint sound from the other room, and when I flicked the switch back to the 'on' position I heard it again – so apparently the switch did do something.

I went back to the main room. Nothing seemed different. So I gave a sort of mental shrug and sat down at the desk once more – and then noticed that there was a little panel at the back of the desk that had opened up, revealing another switch inside – I suppose the switch in the kitchen had opened the panel. I wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't moved the empty box file, which made me wonder if it had been left there simply to hide the panel.

Okay, I thought, let's see what this one does… I pressed the switch, and there was a louder noise from the corner of the room, and when I went over to the trapdoor I saw that it was now open, revealing a ladder going down into a lighted area.

I decided that I might just as well go and see what there was down below, so I put my shoes and jacket back on – I'd taken them off the second time I lay down – picked up my bag, slung it onto my back and climbed down the ladder. There was a door opposite the bottom of the ladder, and I went through it and found myself in a long brick-lined corridor that ran off to left and right. So I spun a coin to see which way to go and set off to my left.

The corridor curved slightly, and so soon I was out of sight of the door, but there were lights inset into the walls at regular intervals, so I wasn't worried about not being able to find my way back. I wondered where I was: this tunnel seemed too old to date from the same time as the hut up above, and I wondered if it led to the cellars of the castle – perhaps there was an old ice-house or something at the other end of the tunnel. Then I wondered if it could be part of the old Maginot Line fortifications that had been built in the 1930s to defend against a possible German invasion – much good it had done in 1940. I wasn't sure exactly where the Line had run, but this did seem a likely location. Perhaps I would come out in an old gun emplacement somewhere on the edge of the Vosges looking out towards Germany.

But eventually the corridor simply ended in a plain wooden door. There was a piece of paper pinned to this door, and on it was written, in faded ink, "Faut choisir la bonne porte."

You have to choose the right door, I translated to myself. Which seemed a bloody stupid message, considering that this was the only door in sight – or did it mean I had to go all the way to the other end of the tunnel to find out if there was another door there? Sod that, I thought, and I pulled the door open.

I found myself in a circular room about forty feet [12 m] across, and now I got the point of that cryptic message, because there were doors all around the edge of the room. There were twenty of them, all looking absolutely identical: they appeared to be metal, painted black, with no number or any other means of identification. Otherwise the room seemed to be completely empty: there was a one-metre-[3ft.]-thick metal pillar, also painted black, in the centre of the room which was presumably just there to hold the roof up, though I went and examined it, just in case there was anything painted on or stuck to the far side. But there was nothing.

And then I realised that I might be in trouble, because the door I had come in through had closed behind me – and apparently this side of it was faced in black metal, because I could no longer tell which one it was: all twenty doors looked exactly the same.

At least I knew roughly where it was – there were only three or four that it could actually be, because I'd only walked to the pillar and stepped to the far side of it. So I headed back in the general direction, and found myself looking at three doors. Or possibly four. Or maybe even five… no, if I went on thinking like that I'd end up thinking it might be any of the twenty. But even if I just limited myself to the three or four doors I could see in front of me I was in trouble, because there was nothing to indicate which door it might be.

So I opened one of the doors at random and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the corridor stretching away in front of me – and when I stepped into the corridor and looked at the other side of the door I saw that the message was still pinned to the other side of the door, too. I stepped forward… and then I hesitated, overcome with curiosity: where did all those other doors go, I wondered? So I used my bag to prop this door open so that I wouldn't forget which one it was and then opened the one next to it…

…and was confronted with an identical view of a brick-lined corridor stretching away from me, and a note pinned to the back of the door. Oh, shit, I thought.

I walked across the room and opened another door at random, and lo, there was that same corridor and that same piece of paper pinned to the door.

Okay, this was ridiculous. Were there mirrors involved here, or was it some sort of optical illusion? I walked back across the room, picked up my bag and walked a couple of paces into the corridor, allowing the door to close behind me. Then I stopped, opened my bag, tore a bit of the wrapper off the large bar of chocolate I had packed for the train journey and then not got around to eating (and, boy, I was glad to see it now, because I hadn't eaten anything since the previous day's midday meal) and dropped the piece of paper on the floor. Then I went back into the circular room and opened the next door along: if it was a trick, my piece of paper should have been on the floor of the tunnel behind this door, too.

It wasn't.

I went back to the door I had just used and looked, and there was the piece of paper. And that meant that there really were twenty identical corridors behind the doors, not just one that magically appeared whichever door you opened.

I stepped into that corridor again, picked up the paper and stuffed it into my pocket, and then kept walking along the corridor. My hopes rose when I found a door on the right, just about where my memory said the door by the ladder had been, and when I opened it and saw a ladder they rose still further. I scampered up the ladder and found myself in the hut again – at least, it looked like the same hut. I hit the switch on the desk to reseal the trapdoor, went into the kitchen to flick the switch that closed the panel on the desk, and went and put my head outside the door. The mist was still there, but now I didn't fancy staying in the hut any longer: that underground room was just too unsettling.

I had a quick look round to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything… I couldn't remember tidying up the bunk earlier on, but I must have done, because it certainly didn't look as if anyone had slept on it. Of course, there was an alternative explanation, but I didn't want to think about what it would mean if there was an identical hut on every identical corridor, so I marched to the door, opened it and walked out into the mist.

Gradually the mist seemed to thin, and soon I was walking along in a pleasantly warm summer's day once more. The trees around me looked exactly like the ones I'd seen the previous day, and my spirits started to rise as I got further and further from the hut, even though I still didn't come across a road, or even a path.

And then I heard a voice in the distance. I couldn't make out what it was shouting, but I didn't care, because at least it proved I wasn't alone up here, and so I headed in what seemed to be the correct direction.

After a bit the voice fell silent, so I called out "where are you?" and at once whoever it was started shouting again. I followed the shouts and finally came to a point where a path (if you could call it that – it looked more like a goat track) ran along the top of a steep slope – and now the voice was coming from beneath me. I looked over the edge and saw a figure lying against a tree at the bottom of the slope.

"Stay there," I called in French. "I'm coming."

That was easier said than done: the slope was very steep and appeared to be scree, which would be very unstable, and it wouldn't help at all if I fell down the same way the other boy – for by now I could see it was a boy of around my own age – had apparently done. I went back the way I had come a little, looking for an easier way down, and eventually I found a place where the ground looked a little more stable and where there were trees growing, and I was able to move down from tree to tree, using them to brake my descent.

Once I was at the bottom of the slope I made my way back to where the other boy was lying. He was half-sitting, half-lying propped up against a tree, his legs splayed in front of him, and I wondered how long he had been there. I hoped for his sake that it hadn't been all night, because he was only wearing a pair of shorts and a running vest. But he didn't look in bad shape, so I just asked what had happened and how he was feeling now. And he answered me in German, which is a language I can't speak at all.

"I'm sorry," I told him, sticking to French. "I'm afraid I don't speak German."

"Why not?" he replied in the same language, though with a very clear German accent. "Everyone in France has to learn German."

That was news to me – even at the school in Colmar, only a short distance from the German border, I'd had the impression that at least half of the pupils chose English as their first foreign language.

"I'm not French," I told him. "I'm English."

"Good," he said, in English. "My English is better as my French. But it is the case in England too, that all children have to learn German."

"Not in the school I go to," I told him.

"That is most strange. However… I have hurt my leg. It is not broken, but this part – I do not know the English word" (he pointed to his ankle) "is hurt and I cannot walk as I should. Can you help me?"

I looked at him: like Jean-Marie he was a little taller than me, and because he was only wearing that vest I could also see that he had more in the way of muscle than me, too. I didn't think I'd be able to carry him, but maybe if he leaned on me I could help him to walk.

He was also very good-looking, with blond hair and light blue eyes, and I thought that maybe if I helped him he'd be so grateful that…

I shook that thought away quickly. "Can you stand up?" I asked.

Using the tree to support him he managed to get to his feet, though it was clear that his left leg wouldn't be able to take his weight. I moved beside him so that he could put his left arm round my shoulders and we took a couple of experimental steps. I didn't think I wanted to run a marathon like this, but I thought we could probably manage to hobble along on a flat, or fairly flat surface. But first we would have to try to get back up the slope, and that seemed likely to be extremely difficult.

In fact when we reached the point where I had come down I decided that 'impossible' was a better description, and so we continued on along the foot of the slope until finally we found a place where we could climb back up, though we had to do the steepest part with him sitting with his back to me and me hauling him upwards a few centimetres at a time. By the time we finally got to the top I was exhausted.

"You are not very fit," he commented. "But thank you – I know that it was difficult for you. What is your name?"

"Jake," I told him.

"I am Stefan," he said.

"Hello, Stefan," I said. "Do you know the way out of this forest?"

He shook his head. "I am lost," he said. "I was following a trail, but there was… I do not know the word. In German it is 'Nebel' – like the air is white?"

I nodded. So I wasn't the only one who had struggled with the mist.

"And now I do not know where I am," he went on. "And in the… whiteness I fell and hurt my leg. If you had not come I might…"

I nodded again, because I knew what he meant.

"So," he said, "can you begin again?"

I wasn't very keen, but I supposed that we couldn't just stay where we were, so I stood up and pulled him up after me.

"Wait," he said. "I need… I have to… what is the word? Yes, to piss."

And he put his left arm across my shoulders once again so that I could hold him upright, and then he undid his belt, opened his shorts, pushed both them and his white briefs down below his balls and took hold of his penis. I should probably have looked away, but I don't always do what I should and so I feasted my eyes instead. And it looked really nice: it was slightly larger than mine, but not much, and perfectly proportioned, and his balls looked about the same size as mine, too… I hoped that later we could carry out a proper comparison. And he had a little dark blond hair, and that looked perfect as well. I've got a few little hairs, but he was definitely a bit further along than me. And watching him piss felt good, too – so much so that things started to happen to me, and I looked away quickly, hoping that he wouldn't notice the twitching going on in my jeans.

He shook off and pulled his briefs and shorts back up, though he had trouble doing them and his belt up with one hand; so I supported him by holding him round the waist while he used both hands to get his clothes back the way they had been. And then he put his arm round my shoulders again and we headed back the way I had come, because even if the hut made me feel uneasy I still thought it would be best to get him there, make him comfortable on the bunk and then set off alone to try to find help.

It was slow going, but I knew we were getting close when the mist began to close in again: by now I'd decided that the mist wasn't going to leave that hut, ever. He got nervous as it got thicker, but I told him that I had found a hut the previous afternoon, and that if I could find it again he would be able to rest properly while I went for help.

I thought I'd missed the hut at first, and that was a nasty feeling, but eventually it loomed up through the mist and I breathed a sigh of relief. This time I had approached it from the side, and in trying to find the front, where the door was, I found the back instead. And here there was a small chemical toilet, which was why I hadn't found one inside, and a small shed, which contained a whole lot of useless rubbish – and an oil lamp and a can of oil. I had no idea how to use one, but Stefan said it was easy, so once I had got him safely inside and stretched out on the bunk I went back for the lamp and the oil. And there was another old can there too. This one was empty, but I took it inside as well.

"Shall we stay here until they find us?" he asked, as I set them down on the desk. "There will be people looking for me."

"Me, too, I expect. But I don't know if that mist ever goes away. If it doesn't they could walk past this place and never see it, even if they are only ten metres [30 ft] away. I thought it might be better if I went for help."

"Perhaps that would be good. Jake, you were here last night, you said?"

I nodded.

"Well… is there any food? Only I have not eaten for many hours."

"I'm afraid not. I looked yesterday. But I have got some chocolate." And I pulled the bar from my bag and broke it in half, and his eyes lit up, and he looked even nicer like that, and so I didn't mind sharing it with him even though I was extremely hungry myself. He sat up and took his half enthusiastically.

We ate it, trying not to just stuff it all into our mouths at once, and then I told him there was a container of water in the kitchen but nothing to use as a cup. He had a small water-bottle attached to his belt (and also quite a large knife, which I was pretty sure would have been illegal in England and probably in France, too) and he handed it to me and told me to go and have a drink myself and then to fill the bottle to bring back for him. So I did that, and he drank and then put the bottle down by his feet.

I brought the oil lamp over to the bunk and he showed me how to trim the wick, checked that the reservoir had some oil in and then put it on the floor beside the water bottle. I asked if he had a light, and he pulled a small cigarette lighter from his pocket.

"And I brought this other can in case you need to pee again while I'm gone," I told him. "I'm not sure that you could get round to the toilet on your own. In fact, I think I might use it myself, because that toilet didn't smell too good."

Okay, I was showing off: I was hoping that his physical reaction to seeing my equipment would be similar to mine on seeing his, and if it was I thought I might postpone the rescue mission for a bit. So I put the can on the chair, pulled my jeans and boxers right down to my knees, lifted my shirt out of the way – I wanted to make sure he didn't miss the fact that I have a little hair, too – took hold of myself, aimed into the can and started to pee, watching his reaction out of the corner of my eye. And he certainly seemed interested: he was positively staring at me.

I shook off and rearranged my clothing and then tucked the can under the desk out of the way. Then I walked over to the bunk and sat down next to him to see if anything would happen. And to start with things looked very promising indeed.

"What happened to your penis?" he asked. "Why is there no skin over it? I have never seen one like that."

I was surprised. "How old are you, Stefan?" I asked.

"Thirteen. Why do you ask?"

"I just wondered." I found it pretty amazing that he'd never, ever seen a circumcised penis before – after all, I was under the impression that there were lots of Turkish people in Germany, and they would all be circumcised. Could he possibly go to a school with no Muslims or Jews at all? "See, I've been circumcised – that means I had the skin removed when I was a week old."

"Why?"

"Because I'm Jewish."

And then things got weird again.

"You cannot be Jewish," he informed me. "There are no Jews in the west. It is not permitted."

Huh?!?

"What do you mean, 'not permitted'?" I asked.

"It is against the law. The Jews were relocated to the east a long time ago, first to the General Government and then beyond to the Ukraine and Western Siberia. And I think some went to Madagascar. The European part of the Reich is officially Jew-free."

I gaped at him. European part of the Reich? And then I looked more closely at his knife, which he had removed from his belt and put down on the bunk between us – and there was a swastika on the front of the handle. Oh, my God, I thought – I'm stuck in a hut with an escapee from the loony bin.

"Okay," I said, getting up and backing away slowly. "Well, perhaps we can discuss it later. I'd better go and see if I can find help. I'll try to find my way back to Haut-Koenigsbourg – there's sure to be someone there."

He looked at me strangely. "You mean Hoch-Königsburg? There will not be anyone there – the place is a ruin. You would be better to go the opposite way – if you head towards the border posts there are usually soldiers coming and going. The posts are always manned."

"The opposite way?" I said. "And what border?"

"The one with France," he said, looking at me as if I was mad. "Which other border is there?"

"But… but the German border is on the Rhine," I said.

"Are you insane? The border runs across the Vogesen Mountains."

"Since when?"

"Since 1940. That is nearly seventy years. Look, Jake… are you sure you are well? You seem to have lost your memory."

"Are you sure you didn't bang your head when you fell?" I countered. "You seem to have a completely different view of history."

We stared at each other, and then I returned to the bunk and sat down again.

"Okay," I said, "let's compare notes. What year is this?"

"2009."

"Good. At least we agree on that, then. What country are we in?"

"Germany."

"Ah. You see, I think we're in France. And who is the German Chancellor?"

"Erwin Müller."

"Not Angela Merkel?"

"Who is Angela Merkel?"

"Right. Do you know who the Queen of England is?"

"There is no queen. England is a Republic."

"I see. What about the President of America?"

"I am not sure. To me, it does not matter."

I took a deep breath. "So, who won the Second World War?"

He stared at me. "Germany and Japan," he said. "Everyone knows this. And Italy, I suppose."

Right, I thought: either Stefan was completely nuts, or… perhaps I had not 'chosen the right door'. And I have to say that he didn't look nuts, and that knife looked genuine, and… and now I could see that there was a small metal badge pinned to his running vest, and when I looked at it closely I saw that it depicted what appeared to be a red and white diamond with a swastika in the middle of it.

"What were you doing up here on your own?" I asked him.

"I am a cadet at the Napola in Rufach," Stefan told me. "I and some comrades were on a test run, to see if we could memorise a route and then follow it without a map. We each had a different route, and we had to follow it using only the position of the sun, the layout of the hills and our memories. And I could have succeeded, but the… whiteness hid the sun and I lost my direction. And now I will have failed the test. I will be in trouble when I return."

And that sounded entirely plausible, too, even though I had no idea what a Napola might be. So that left me with a problem: if my ill-chosen door had somehow brought me to a place where Germany had won the war and all the Jews had been deported… or worse… then I really didn't want to go looking for help, because if I found some the likelihood was that it wouldn't help me at all. Quite the reverse. So I did the only other thing I could think of.

"Look, Stefan," I said, "you're not going to believe this, but underneath this hut is a room full of doors…"

Chapter Two

So… in this chapter Jake and Stefan get to know each other a bit better (quite a lot better, in fact) and then go exploring.

"I want to see this room," said Stefan, once I had finished my exposition. "It would be interesting to see if you are right."

"Well, okay," I said. "But there's a ladder. Do you think you will be able to get down it?"

"I have two strong arms and one good leg. I do not think a ladder will be a problem. Show it me."

I went into the kitchen, clicked the switch, walked back to the desk and pressed the switch behind the panel… and only then did I realise that there was no box file on this desk. Of course, someone could have come in while I was underground and moved it, but I didn't believe that, any more than I believed the supposed someone would have stopped to tidy up the bunk. No, this was definitely not the same hut.

I helped Stefan over to the trapdoor and supported him while he got his good leg onto the ladder, and from that point he managed on his own, holding on to the ladder for support once he reached the bottom and waiting for me to come down. Once I was on the basement floor we got back into our three-legged position and I opened the door that led out into the corridor – and this time I noticed that as I opened the door the trapdoor above our heads closed automatically.

We made our way unsteadily down the corridor as far as the room of doors, but this time I made sure I held 'our' door open.

"We need to mark this door so that we know the way back," I said. "Have you got a pen or pencil?"

He shook his head, and since I didn't have one, either – I'd left my writing stuff on Jean-Marie's desk when we left the school the previous afternoon – I tried to think of a way of marking the door.

"I suppose we could spit on it," I suggested.

"Dogs mark things by pissing on them," said Stefan. "Maybe we should do that?"

Apparently – and contrary to popular belief – Germans (and even junior Nazis) do actually possess a sense of humour, I thought.

"In fact," he went on, "we could mark each door differently: spit on one, piss on one, shit on one, wipe… I do not know the word – the stuff from in your nose? Anyway, that, on one. We could try to find deposits in our ears for one. We could cut ourselves and bleed on one. And I have some stuff in my eggs… I think you say 'balls' – I could use as well, though I think you are too little."

"I'm bloody well not too little!" I informed him, indignantly. "I've probably got more than you, in fact."

"I do not think so."

"Okay, I challenge you!" I said. "Let's see which of us has got most."

He looked at me, and I realised that maybe I should have kept my stupid mouth shut: I didn't think the Nazi party liked gays very much. But then he grinned.

"I would win easily such a contest," he said. "But this is not the place for such a competition. When we are again up in the cabin, perhaps we shall try. But for now, I will mark the door with my knife."

He had attached it, and his water-bottle, to his belt before climbing down the ladder, and now he drew the knife and made a short vertical scratch down the centre of the door. To be safe I took the torn piece of chocolate wrapper from my pocket and dropped it on the floor of the corridor again, so there should be no problem in finding 'our' corridor this time.

Then we closed the door and he guided me across the room to a random door on the far side. We followed the corridor behind it until we came to the door that led to the ladder, though as soon as the door closed behind us and the trapdoor above us opened we could see that this place was different: there was no hut up there, just open sky.

I climbed up the ladder and helped Stefan out of the trapdoor.

We were standing on bare grey rock, and there was nothing else in sight but more bare grey rock, stretching off in every direction. There were no trees, no plants, nothing living at all.

"I do not like this place," said Stefan, voicing my own feelings. "Let us go back."

I thought that would be sensible, not least because there was no desk up here and hence no switch for the trapdoor – if it closed we would be stuck here. So we made our way back down the ladder and opened the door, and we were both glad to see the trapdoor swing closed once more.

We made our way back to the room of doors and found 'our' door again, but I stopped as soon as I had checked that my piece of paper was still in the corridor.

"Stefan," I said, "could we try the door next to this one? Only I think it might be the one that will take me back home."

He looked unsure. "It would be interesting to see your world," he said. "But I do not want to stay there. I cannot walk without you, so… will you swear not to abandon me if we find your place?"

"Of course I won't abandon you. I've helped you so far, haven't I?"

"Yes, this is true. And I am surprised, because Jews are not truly like us, and I thought that I should not trust you… but you have been true, and so I am grateful… is it not hard to be a subhuman?"

Well, I've been called a lot of things, but never that.

"Is that what you think – that we're not really human?"

He shrugged. "That is what the books say," he said. "Of course, I have never met a Jew until today, but you are not as I had thought. I had read that all Jews have big noses and oily hair and mean little eyes, and that they care for nothing but money, but you are not like that at all. You look as a normal boy, as I am: you have an ordinary small nose, your eyes look normal and your hair is clean and looks good, and you are handsome, in a way. If I had not seen your penis, and if you had not told me, I would not know that you are a Jew. "

"Do you really think I'm handsome?" I asked, surprised. "Don't you think the glasses make me look bad? I mean, you're perfect, with your blond hair and blue eyes and strong body and perfect penis… I mean…" I tailed off, hoping that wasn't too much of a giveaway. But apparently it wasn't.

"I am an Aryan boy," he said. "I am what our leaders want. Except… sometimes it is boring when everyone looks the same. The Party's breeding program has been developed over many years, and now most true German boys look as I do. And it is good to make strong soldiers for the future… I know that what the Party has done for us is what our Fatherland needs, and I would not ever question it. But each of us is as every other, so that when we are together we must wear a tag to show our name. Even when naked we are all the same. So to see you, who are not as we are, gives me a good feeling."

I knew vaguely that the Nazi party had wanted to breed perfect Aryan specimens together to produce a race of blond-haired, blue-eyed warriors, and I supposed that if they'd been doing that for seventy years they'd have got what they wanted by now. I thought Stefan looked amazing, but I could see his point: if you are surrounded by nothing but blond, blue-eyed clones all the time it must get a bit boring – though I was surprised to find things were so boring for him that he considered me 'handsome'.

"Thank you, Stefan," I said. "Of course in my world nobody thinks us Jews are better or worse than anyone else… well, not many people think like that, anyway. And I'm happy to be friends with anyone. I'm really glad you're here, anyway – I'm not sure that I could cope with all this weird shit on my own. So I won't desert you or let you down, whatever you think of me."

"I think only good things: you saved me, you helped me to reach the hut, you shared your last food with me. What you have done has been what one comrade should do for another. That you are a Jew changes nothing. Though I think it would not be good for you to come back to Rufach with me: I would not want to see you sent to the east."

That makes two of us, I thought.

"So perhaps we should not return to my place until I can walk alone. Let us instead follow another passage, as you suggest."

Fair enough, I thought, and I opened the door to the left of the one that led back to Stefan's world and we set off down the corridor.

The door to the ladder was again in the correct place, but once I was up in the hut I realised immediately that this wasn't the one in my version of reality: not only was there no box file on the desk, but the bunk had only a bare mattress on it, and the kitchen lacked both the cooking rings and the water container. Though – and I suppose this was a plus point – a glance outside the door revealed no mist: in fact it was a bright, clear day, and rather warmer than it had been in Stefan's world.

I gave him a hand up into the room and helped him over to the bunk, explaining that this wasn't 'my' hut after all – at least, I didn't think so.

"Then, if this is neither your world not mine, it is something new," he said. "We should explore it."

"Well… okay, I guess that would be interesting. But you need to rest that ankle, or it won't heal. Maybe we should stay here overnight and see if you can walk in the morning."

He wasn't all that keen at first, but he could see the sense of allowing his ankle to recover. To be honest I wasn't all that enthusiastic about staying here either – after all, by now there would probably be a full-scale hunt on for me, and that would just make me look an even bigger idiot when I went back to the real world. But I couldn't abandon Stefan, certainly not here where he didn't belong, and I found it too exhausting to keep supporting his weight everywhere we went.

"I'll go and see if there is a light round the back," I said, but the small shed at the back of the hut was completely empty.

"Look," I said, once I was back inside, "we've got a problem here: there's no food, though I suppose we can probably survive until tomorrow without, but there's no water either, and that might not be so easy. And that bunk is far too small for us both to sleep on, unless we take it in turns. So I think I should go back to your hut and bring the mattress from that bunk, and I can bring the lamp, too – and if you give me your water-bottle I'll fill it while I'm there. I won't get lost because I know it's the door next to this one. So, will you be okay on your own for a few minutes?"

"Of course," he said. "I was on my own for a long time before you found me. But… be careful, Jake: we do not know why those doors are there, or what might come through them."

I wished he hadn't said that, but I assured him that I would be fine. I picked up my bag and began to empty it, discovering in the process an apple and a small bag of crisps that had escaped from my packed lunch of the day before, and that cheered us both up. I left them on the desk, took the empty bag to bring back the oil lamp in and went back down the ladder.

I didn't hesitate when I reached the room of doors, just going straight through the one Stefan had marked with his knife. My discarded bit of chocolate wrapper was still on the floor of the passage to reassure me, too. I jogged along the tunnel, climbed the ladder into Stefan's hut, stowed the lamp and the oilcan in my bag (being careful to keep them upright), and rolled the mattress and a couple of blankets up so that I could carry them. I refilled Stefan's bottle in the kitchen, had a last look round to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything, and then started the return journey, though getting down the ladder with the bedding took a bit of effort.

I got back as far as the room of doors and hesitated: one of the doors on the far side of the room was shimmering, and there were wisps of smoke, or maybe mist, escaping from the edges. I opened the door of the tunnel that led back to where I had left Stefan, propped it open with the bedroll and walked across the room to the shimmering door. From this close it was clear that it was mist and not smoke seeping through the edges, and so I opened the door and looked into the passage beyond.

The passage was full of mist, and the lights in the passage walls seemed to be pulsing irregularly, making the mist glow. And there was a distant humming noise, too. I thought that maybe we should explore that passage next day, and so I made a note of which door it was: eight along counting clockwise from Stefan's marked door. But I didn't want to venture into it alone, so I closed the door once more and went back to where I had left the bedding, and five minutes later I was climbing the ladder, pushing the bedding ahead of me.

The first thing I wanted to do (apart from eating – which we agreed to postpone for a bit) was to have a proper look at Stefan's ankle, so I got him to lie on the bunk while I removed his shoe and sock. The ankle didn't look bad at all, and I thought it was probably nothing more than a light strain, but Stefan still said it ought to be bandaged – apparently he'd been taught some basic first aid at his school.

I borrowed his knife and cut a strip from the underside of the cover of the mattress I had brought from his room and used it to bandage the ankle, and then I rolled up one of the blankets and put it under his foot. We both hoped that if he rested it overnight it would feel better the following morning.

I had my pocket chess set with me (it had been in my bag) but it turned out that Stefan couldn't play chess, and that left us with virtually nothing to do. So I asked him to tell me a bit about his life so far and what he liked doing in his spare time, only it turned out that he was at a boarding school (and a military one, at that) and so didn't have a lot of spare time. He'd been born in a large town called Mülhausen, which was apparently not that far away, had joined the Jungvolk, a sort of junior Hitler Youth, at ten and had got into the local military school at the age of twelve. His father was an SS officer on duty somewhere in Norway, so he hadn't seen him for a long time, and his mother was at the family home, so he only saw her during the school holidays. And he supposed that when he left school he would probably join the SS like his father.

I can't say that I had ever foreseen a moment when someone I was starting to consider a friend would tell me that his ambition in life was to join the SS, but I managed to nod and smile and say "okay" in all the right places. And then it was my turn to tell him about my life so far, and I explained why I was in this part of the world in the first place. My exposition failed to mention religion at all, because my family really isn't particularly religious. I'd had my bar-mitzvah a couple of weeks previously, but it wasn't a big thing in my life the way it had been for some of my friends back in Edgware: for me it was just something that happened around the age of thirteen, and in fact I'd been seriously considering not bothering with it at all, especially bearing in mind what a pain in the arse it was having to learn Hebrew. In the end we had decided that I probably ought to, and so I had, but I wasn't going to talk about it now.

And Stefan didn't ask about my religious life, either, though he did ask what I wanted to be when I grew up. I thought of telling him I wanted to be a money-lender, a pawnbroker or at the very least a merchant banker – after all, I'm sure that's what he was expecting. But in the end I just told him the truth, which was that I hadn't decided yet.

"Of course," he said, "you will not grow up for a long time, because you are still just a little boy… so, shall we have that contest we spoke of before?"

"If you don't mind getting completely shown up," I agreed, hardly daring to believe that he seriously wanted to do this.

"I shall not be shown up," he assured me, lifting his bottom and pushing his shorts and briefs down and then pulling his vest over his head and throwing it onto the floor.

I tried not to stare, but I couldn't help it, because he looked absolutely amazing now that he was naked from the knees up. And when he took hold of himself and started to get it hard I just couldn't tear my eyes away.

"Take off your clothes," he said, "or I shall have finished before you even go hard."

No danger of that, I thought: I was hard already, and the more I looked at him the harder I got. Finally I managed to drag my eyes away long enough to undo my belt and get my jeans down to my ankles.

"Take them right off," he advised me. "Else you will be so amazed at what I produce that you will step back and fall down."

I pulled them back up long enough to go and stick my head out of the door, but it was absolutely quiet out there, which I was confident meant that we wouldn't be interrupted. So I sat on the chair, took my shoes and socks off, removed my jeans completely and pulled my shirt over my head, and then whipped my boxers off and dropped them on the desk with my other clothes.

"Ah, so you can get a little bigger," he told me. "Come here."

I did that, standing beside the bunk and letting him look at me.

"It looks interesting like that," he said. "It is strange without the skin, but somehow I like it. So, are we trying to see who has most stuff, or who can get it fastest?"

"Both," I said, rashly. "But wait a moment: if I have to be completely naked, so do you." And I went and pulled his shorts and briefs right off, and removed his remaining shoe and sock for good measure. And while I was doing it I was able to have a good look at his penis, which by now was nicely erect. I'd guess that it was a centimetre or two longer than mine, which would have made it around twelve centimetres [4¾in.] long (I know mine is about ten and a half [4.1in.], because I measure it regularly – well, I have to be sure that everything is developing as it should, don't I?) His was a little thicker, too, and I already knew he had more hair than me (though neither of us had any on his balls yet), so I thought I would probably lose this contest, though I can honestly say that didn't bother me at all.

I went and stood next to him once more, because I wanted him to be able to watch me – there's definitely an exhibitionist streak in me somewhere.

"So, are you ready?" he asked. "Then go." And he started to wank himself, and so did I, though I was watching him rather than looking at what I was doing. I was fascinated by the way the tip of his penis appeared briefly as each downstroke drew his foreskin back. He wasn't going particularly fast – I was probably doing it faster – but fairly soon he asked if I was close yet.

"Not really," I admitted.

"Then you are going to lose," he said and, sure enough, about ten seconds later he spurted onto his chest and stomach. There were four good spurts and a dribble, and his stuff was white – okay, it was still a bit watery, but it was definitely white.

"Now I shall sleep," he said, grinning at me. "Wake me up when you are ready to do it – or tomorrow morning if that comes first." And he pretended to close his eyes, though I could tell he was still watching through his not-quite-closed eyelids.

I speeded up a little, and it wasn't too much longer (well, no more than a minute or so, anyway) before I felt it building up.

"Okay, I'm coming," I said.

"Put it onto my chest," he invited me. "There will probably not be enough to see, so perhaps I will be able to feel something – like a tiny drop of rain, perhaps."

I wasn't going to decline that opportunity, so I stood right against the bunk and spurted it onto him. I seemed to do a bit better than usual this time: there were two proper little spurts, though what emerged was still colourless. But having him watching me made it feel far more exciting than it did when I just did it alone in my bedroom.

"Ah, you have got a little bit after all," he said. "Not much, but I suppose I cannot call you a baby more. But you must admit that I am more of a man, no?"

"Okay, I admit you're a bit more mature than me," I agreed. "But I have got enough to mark a door downstairs, haven't I?"

"This is true," he admitted. "Barely, but you could mark it."

There was a small packet of tissues in one of the pockets of my bag. I have no idea why my mother had thought I might need them in the middle of summer, but she had insisted that I carry a packet anyway, and now I was glad of them. I took one out of the packet and used it to wipe Stefan's chest and stomach and even the tip of his foreskin, which gave me a chance to touch his by now softened penis briefly. Finally I wiped my own tip and dumped the tissue on one of the shelves above the desk.

As Stefan showed no sign of wanting to get dressed yet I decided that I didn't need to, either, and so I went and perched on the edge of the bunk beside his feet.

"What shall we do now?" I asked him.

"First, I need to piss," he said. "I am supposed to rest this foot now, so I should stay where I am – so if you take my penis in your mouth I shall be able to piss, and more, you will not need a share of our drinking water today. Is that acceptable?"

"I'm afraid not," I said, watching his failing attempts to keep a straight face. "Sit up and I'll help you outside."

"A true comrade would not make me leave the bunk," he said.

"Then I'll make you a deal: you drink mine first, and then I'll drink yours," I offered. And at that he sat up.

"I think I would like not to do that," he said, offering his left arm so that I could help him to his feet. "Perhaps it would be better to go out."

"Perhaps it would," I agreed, and I helped him to the door and out into the forest. We walked about ten metres [30 ft] from the door and then both pissed against a small bush.

It was really warm now, and although I was stark naked I felt really good – so much so that when we had finished pissing I helped Stefan to a patch of clear ground a few metres away and helped him to lie down beside me in the sun. We lay quietly for a while, soaking up the warmth.

"It feels good to be outside naked, does it not?" he asked. "There are places in the Reich where people go to walk and swim naked – in the south of France, on the north coast, in the mountains of Bayern and the Ostmark. And in Scandinavia people roll naked in the snow after a sauna, though I do not think I want to try that. But I do not know of any place open to the FKK – what you call nakedism?"

"Nudism," I corrected.

"Right… well, there are no places for it here in Baden-Elsass. So we are the first – or, at least, we are the only ones to practice it here."

"Have you been to any of those places?"

"No. It seems a little… strange. But now that I have tried, I can see why people like to do this. It feels good."

He was right, although probably my high impression of social nudism was because I was lying next to a perfect specimen of boyhood. Still, if he was happy staying naked, then I had no problem with it, either.

We didn't stay out in the sun for too long because we had no sun cream, and I for one didn't want to get burnt just when my life was becoming interesting. So I helped him back into the hut and put him back on the bunk with his foot raised.

"So, what do you think this place is?" I asked him.

"I do not know. It seems to be a place where you can move between one world and another, though I did not know that such a thing was possible."

"I didn't even know that there was more than one world," I said. "I thought that mine was the only one. But then I suppose you thought the same thing, and if we go out exploring tomorrow we'll probably find people who think that their world is the only real one, too. But it still doesn't explain who built this place, and why. Maybe if we try all the doors we'll find one that goes somewhere where we can find out about it.

"I know I probably ought to just go back to my own world, but I'm going to look a complete dick if I do, and frankly I don't think the next four weeks were going to be that good for me anyway – so I'm happy to stay here with you until you're well enough to go back to your school."

"Thank you, Jake. That might be some time, though – even when my foot is well I want to explore here. Then I can go and give a proper report to my instructors, and if I do that I will not be in trouble for that I failed the running test."

I wasn't sure that I wanted the secret of moving between worlds passed to the Nazis, especially since my own world was one of the ones they would then be able to move into. Somehow the idea of Nazis coming to Britain didn't appeal to me at all. Although I supposed it would be difficult to get a panzer column through those tunnels…

We cut the apple in half with Stefan's knife and ate it, and I opened the crisp packet and laid it flat on the bunk so that we could share them – and I found myself wishing that my mother had packed a much bigger packet for me. I sincerely hoped that our exploration next day would take us to somewhere where we could buy food…

And that might be interesting, come to think of it, because I was carrying euros and sterling in my wallet, while Stefan had a few reichsmarks in his, and I supposed the odds were that the world we were now in would accept none of these currencies. Still, I had a wristwatch to barter, and so did Stefan, and he also had his knife, and I had a small gold Star of David round my neck (it had been a bar-mitzvah present), and he had a little gold swastika on a chain around his (a thirteenth birthday present)… between us we could probably offer a shop-keeper something he would take in exchange for food.

We drank plenty of water to wash the meal down, and we talked some more (and I was really happy when the word 'girl' never once passed Stefan's lips – this looked like a much better prospect than Jean-Marie had been), until eventually it began to get dark outside. I put the mattress I had brought from Stefan's hut onto the floor, but he told me to move it a little further away from the bunk.

"I will put this mattress by yours," he said. "Then we can talk easily."

So I helped him to stand up and then moved his mattress from the bunk to the floor, putting it down right next to mine: we were both still naked, of course, and so I was already having some bad thoughts. And then I helped him outside so that we could pee again, and the bad thoughts didn't get any better there, either, and by the time I got him back onto the mattress those thoughts were having a visible effect on me, though he was kind enough not to comment.

It was still pretty warm, so although I gave him one of the blankets and took the other myself, putting it down beside the mattress, neither of us felt the need to use them.

We talked about this and that for a little longer and then he turned onto his side and settled down to sleep. It took me a while to drop off myself: this was the first time I had ever tried sleeping naked next to a frankly beautiful naked boy, and parts of me were in no hurry to switch off for the night. But eventually tiredness caught up with me and I fell asleep.

***

I slept really well – it was clear daylight outside when I woke up, and when I looked at my watch I saw that it was already half-past nine. But Stefan seemed to have slept even better, because he was still asleep now. And that gave me a chance to look to see if he was in the same condition I was, and so it proved. At that point he started to stir, so I lay back down quickly and tried to look innocent.

"Good morning, Jake," he said. "Have you slept well?"

"Yes, thanks. How about you?"

"I did not wake up at all, so I think it was a good sleep."

"And how does your ankle feel this morning?"

"It does not hurt. Help me, and I will try to stand."

So I helped him, which of course gave him a good chance to see my condition.

"So, it happens to you, too," he commented. "To me also, every morning. I do not know why."

"Nor do I, but I'm glad it's both of us and not just me. Otherwise you would think it only happened to subhumans."

"I do not think that of you, Jake. It is clear that the books were wrong: I think we are the same."

"Good. Okay, ready? Grab my arm, then…"

I pulled him to his feet and he balanced on his right leg for a moment before gingerly putting his left foot on the ground and trying to put his weight on it.

"It is still sore, but I think soon I will walk," he reported. "Perhaps one more day and everything shall be as it should be. So, for today… first I need to piss."

So I helped him outside, where it was already starting to warm up, guided him over to the little bush we had used before and watched him pee. By now his erection had gone, though mine hadn't, and he grinned at me as I peed through it.

"You have no control, Jake," he said. "Can you not even master your own body?"

"Apparently not. So… are we going to explore this place, or shall we go and look at the tunnel I told you about last night, the one with the mist?"

"It is good here under the sun," he said. "Let us stay above ground. Come – we can get our clothes and then we will walk."

I would have been quite happy to stay naked, but of course he was right: sooner or later we would probably meet someone, and it would be embarrassing to be found in the nude. So we went back to the hut and got dressed. We left the oil lamp and oilcan behind, because it was obvious that we would not need it outside, but I took my bag, just in case we found anything worth scavenging.

He put his arm around my shoulders once more and we set off, though he stopped regularly to cut notches into trees so that we could find our way back again (and I don't think I would have thought to do that, so once again I was glad he was with me). We were heading as close to due east as we could: the sun was in a clear blue sky once more, so it was easy to work out our direction, at least to start with. As the sun rose higher and the trees got thicker it became more difficult, but Stefan was confident that we were still heading more or less east, and I was happy to follow his lead.

After about thirty minutes we found a path, and Stefan marked the point very clearly, not only on three nearby trees but also on the path itself, by finding a fallen branch and getting me to drag it to the side of the path at the point where we had joined it. We made faster progress on the path, mainly because it was following the contours of a hill and so stayed flat, and after a further ten minutes or so the path it broadened out into a proper track. We followed the track, and eventually it met a road.

We rested for a while to get our breath back and then set off again, still heading basically downhill (and although the track we had followed was quite a wide one we still marked the point where it joined the road as clearly as we could, with a big blaze cut from a tree). And after another five minutes or so Stefan said he recognised the place: we were close to the village of Orschweiler, he said. With no hesitation he led me off the road and onto another track, and half an hour or so after that the first houses came into view.

But the village was absolutely silent: nobody was in sight and nothing was moving. I propped Stefan up against a wall and went and knocked at three different doors, but nobody came, and this didn't change as we advanced further and further into the village. There were some cars parked here and there, and once a cat scampered across the road in front of us, but there were no people anywhere.

Eventually I tried a door that turned out to be unlocked, so I helped Stefan up the path and installed him in an armchair in the main room, and then I went out and went further into the village on my own, looking for signs of life. But the shops were closed, the Mairie was locked, and every house I tried calling at was uninhabited, or possibly inhabited only by the very deaf or very suspicious.

In one of the unlocked ones I found a newspaper dated around two months previously, and I also found a couple of identical leaflets in other houses, so I took these back to the house where I had left Stefan and showed them to him. They were all in French, so I translated for him.

"The leaflets are a call to attend mass vaccination at the hospital in Sélestat," I explained, "and the news headline says 'Mutant bird flu: thousands more die.' But I wouldn't have expected the whole village to just get up and leave – I mean, some of them must have been vaccinated already, and some would have been too old or too sick to move, and some wouldn't have gone out of sheer bloody-mindedness. So where is everyone?"

"If this happened in my world everyone would go," Stefan told me. "Most obey the government without question, and the police would ensure that nobody was left behind. If the threat was serious, would not that happen in this world too?"

"I suppose so. But these leaflets are over six weeks old – why hasn't anyone come back?"

"Perhaps all the people are in… I do not know the word… where you keep people who are ill apart from those who are not?"

"Quarantine," I said. "I suppose that is possible… look, Stefan, don't you think we should get out of here? I mean, if there is a deadly disease loose in this world, shouldn't we get back to our own worlds?"

He shrugged. "Flu is transmitted from person to person," he said. "Here there are no people to give it us. And the… little particles of disease cannot live outside the body for more than a few minutes. I think we are safe here. And there will be food here, and clean water…"

That was certainly true, I thought, and immediately I got up and went to the kitchen. The power was off, which didn't surprise me much, and so the cheese in the fridge had an interesting mould growing on it. But there were several bottles of water and quite a lot of tinned food, and some breakfast cereal, and packets of rice and dried pasta. The cooker here was electric and so did not work, but I remembered the rings back in the huts in Stefan's world and in mine, and so we could take food back there to cook…

And at that point I had another thought and went back outside. Here on the edge of the mountains there would probably be no mains gas, and so a lot of houses would have their own large gas cylinder so that they could use gas appliances. This system was quite widespread in France – the householder would buy gas the same way that he would buy heating oil, and a tanker would come and refill his cylinder when necessary.

Sure enough, a few houses away I found a house with one of the six-foot-[~2 m]-long cream-coloured cylinders outside. The front door was locked, but when I went around the back I found that the back door wasn't, and when I tried the gas cooker in the kitchen it lit first time. And this householder believed in easy meals, too, because in his cupboard I found a pile of ready meals of the long life variety.

I went back to the first house and collected Stefan, and twenty minutes later we were tucking in to packet Boeuf Bourguignon, warmed through in a pan of water on the gas cooker. It was hardly the epitome of French haute cuisine, but it tasted bloody good to me.

Once we had eaten and drunk (and we also found some unopened bottles of Orangina and Gini, neither of which Stefan had tasted before, though he pronounced the Orangina almost identical to a German drink he had drunk many times) we settled back in the main room to decide what to do next.

"I think we should make this our base," suggested Stefan. "It is more comfortable as our cabin and there is a good stock of food. And the beds here shall be better as the one we used this night, too."

"'Than', I corrected. "More comfortable than, not 'as'. But… well, you're right, and your ankle will be better here, but it's a long way to walk back every time we want to explore the tunnels."

"So we do not walk. We shall take a car."

I stared at him. "But… that would be stealing," I protested.

"As is eating this person's food. But he is not here, and I do not think he will come back. As will the other people in this village not come back. They will have no need for a car."

"I suppose that's true… but do you know how to drive?"

"Well… no. That is, I have not yet driven. But I can ride a motor bicycle – I have a small one at my home in Mülhausen. And I know that some cars are very easy – we must find one that is automatic, I think."

I was surprised to learn that it was legal to ride a motorbike at thirteen in his world – or maybe he only meant a moped, and I knew that at one time those were legal for fourteen-year-olds in France, though I wasn't sure if that was still the case. And I think he was right about automatic cars, too: as far as I could make out you just had to put it in drive, take the brake off, press on the pedal and aim the right way. And since he was also right about the unlikelihood of the local people suddenly reappearing, as soon as my lunch had gone down I went out car-hunting.

It took a while, and in the end I had to break into a house to find the keys for a small automatic Citroën, but eventually I found the keys in a drawer in the hall and took them back to Stefan.

I helped him to the car and put him in the driver's seat – fortunately he wouldn't need to use his left foot at all in an automatic. We were lucky because the battery had not gone flat, and although it took a few seconds, soon the engine was running smoothly. The fuel indicator showed more than half a tank of petrol, too.

Stefan put the gear stick into 'drive', removed the handbrake and trod on the accelerator, and the car leapt forward, slamming me back into my seat. Stefan hit the footbrake just as sharply and I was flung forward again, but fortunately we had put the seatbelts on before moving.

"I think that I must be a little more gentle," commented Stefan.

"I think you must," I agreed. "After all, if we die here, probably nobody will ever find us."

So he tried again, much more carefully, and this time we moved smoothly forward. By the time we reached the end of the street he was feeling confident, and by the time we left the village I was feeling a lot happier, too, not least because he was now looking where he was going and not at his feet.

"Where shall we go?" he asked.

"We could try the next village along," I suggested. "Maybe things will be different there."

So we did, but things were no different down the road in Kintzheim.

"Now I think we should go to Schlettstadt," he said. "That is where the leaflet said people should go, so we should be able to find out what is happening there."

I wasn't sure about that at all: if the flu was serious, we'd probably end up stuck in a quarantine camp somewhere, or even shot on sight just to be sure. But Stefan said I should not worry: he would stop and go back if there was any sign of trouble. And in the end he persuaded me, and so he pointed the car in the direction of the town of Sélestat, which in his world was called Schlettstadt, and we set off, even though I was still harbouring serious doubts about this…

So what has happened in this world and where are all the people? The next chapter will provide some answers.

Chapter Three

In this chapter Jake and Stefan investigate the apparently dead world and take steps to make their journey back to the hut a lot easier. And their relationship continues to develop at the same time…

The town of Sélestat came into view soon after we left Kintzheim. We crossed the A35 motorway (and there was absolutely no traffic on the motorway, either) and drove on into town. There were no barricades, no check-points, no police or army waiting for us – in fact there was nothing to prevent us from driving right into the centre, which Stefan did, carefully. But the only difference between Sélestat and the mountain villages was that here the power still seemed to be on: traffic lights were still working, and there were lights on in some of the buildings that we passed. But there wasn't a soul in view.

Eventually we did reach a barrier across the road. It was unmanned, but as it was marked with yellow biohazard signs we thought it would be a very bad idea to go past it, and so at that point Stefan turned the car around, very carefully indeed, and we drove back the way we had come until we were a good distance from the barrier.

"Now what do we do?" I asked.

"I think this world has ended," he said. "The people are dead or are gone away. We should go back to the mountains and try another tunnel – but I still believe that this world would be a good base for us. I think we should go to the shops."

At first I felt a bit uneasy about that, just as I had felt uneasy about taking the car, but of course he was right: this world certainly did seem to have suffered some major catastrophe, and as such the people who had lived here would probably have no further need for… well, anything, really.

All the same, once we had driven to one of the commercial centres on the edge of town I asked him to stop outside an electrical shop first of all. He obviously didn't see a lot of point in stocking up with electrical equipment, given that our mountain village had no power, but I pointed out that torches would be a good idea, in case the power in the tunnels were to fail, and he agreed that it would be sensible to think about that.

So while he was finding some decent flashlights and the batteries to run them (with plenty of spares) I found a battery-powered radio, stuck some batteries in it and moved the needle slowly across the dial – and there was absolutely nothing except static. FM and medium wave were dead, and even the long wave band, which I knew could pick up stations from abroad, held nothing but dead air. There were some televisions on display, and as the mains power was still running several of them were turned on, but there was nothing but electric snow on every channel.

So I added my radio to Stefan's collection of flashlights and batteries – just in case it might pick up something higher up in the mountains – and we went and loaded up the car. The shop alarm went off as we went through the detectors by the door, but it turned itself off again a few seconds later.

Next we went to get some clothes, because we knew we couldn't keep wearing the same outfit day after day, especially since there was no electricity in our village to power a washing machine. I noticed that Stefan only chose shorts and asked why he didn't pick a pair of jeans.

"In my world boys wear only shorts until they are fourteen," he told me. "And it is summer, so shorts are more comfortable. Why do you not choose some?"

Actually I thought that was a good idea, so I found a couple of pairs to go with the spare jeans and shirts I had selected. We got plenty of socks and underwear, too, though I chose only boxers and Stefan chose only briefs, which I suppose was what he was used to.

Our shopping expedition went on: we stocked up with food at a hypermarket, choosing only canned and dried food that would last for a long time, though I did pick up a massive frozen pizza for us to eat that evening. I ignored anything else fresh or frozen: the fruit on display was virtually all rotten, and the meats in the chilled cabinets were past their sell-by date. But there were plenty of those long-life ready meals, and so I stocked up on those.

We went back into town and 'borrowed' some books from the library: there was a large foreign language section and so we were both able to find something in our native languages. We took some board games from a toy shop – after all, with no TV we would want something to do in the evenings.

And then we drove back to Orschweiler – actually, since in this world Alsace was French the sign at the edge of the village had the French version of the name, and even though there was only a very small difference I suppose I should be accurate and refer to it as Orschwiller.

We unloaded the car (actually I unloaded the car – I told Stefan to rest in the main room and let his ankle recover a bit). But an hour later he suddenly sat up straight and said he had had an idea.

"We need to go back to town," he said.

"Why?"

"Because we forgot to get a brush for our teeth."

I stared at him, unable to believe that he really intended going all the way back to Sélestat (okay, it was only about six or seven kilometres [c. 4 miles], but even so) just to pick up a toothbrush each. But he grinned at me, which made me suspect that it wasn't just toothbrushes he was thinking about.

So I stuck the pizza in the freezer (it wasn't working, but it was better than just leaving it on the kitchen table) and followed Stefan out to the car. And once we had found a couple of toothbrushes (and toothpaste and shampoo and soap and deodorant – that was my idea, because I thought that if I was going to be doing all the work for a couple of days until Stefan was on his feet again, I would be the one in danger of getting sweaty, and I didn't want Stefan thinking bad things about me) Stefan drove us to a large car dealership on the edge of town.

"Let us trade up," he said, grinning at me.

"What's wrong with this one?" I asked.

"Nothing, but I want one with a towing bar."

"Why?"

"You shall see. Come – we need an automatic with a towing bar. Let us see what we have here."

So we walked up and down the lines of cars, first looking for one with a tow-bar and then checking those out until we found an automatic. It was a Peugeot that was a little bigger than our Citroën, but Stefan thought it would be no harder to drive, and once we found the keys in the dealership office he found that this was true.

Next we drove to the nearest petrol station. This took a bit of work, as we had to work out how to turn the pumps on, but eventually we got it right and were able to fill the tank. And then Stefan drove us to a Point Vert at the edge of town, where he selected a trailer and hooked it up to the back of the car.

"What do we need that for?" I asked. "We don't need to take that much stuff, surely?"

"You shall see," he said, getting back into the car. He headed back into town, this time going into residential areas rather than the shopping centre, and soon found what he was looking for: a fairly basic small moped.

"This way," he explained, "we will not have to walk back to the hut. The car will not pass through the woods, but this will."

"Good idea," I approved. "But will that moped take two?"

"No. That is why we must now find another."

"But… I don't know how to ride one of those!"

"I will teach you. Now, can you get this one on to the trailer?"

I could, and to start with I just put it on its side, because I thought that if I left it on its stand it would soon fall over. We had to break into the house to find the keys, but by now that had stopped bothering me. What did bother me, though, was a nasty smell drifting down from upstairs. I grabbed the keys and left in a hurry, because I thought someone might have died in that house.

Shortly after that we found another one, slightly bigger than the first, and after a lot of hard work I got them both standing upright in the trailer. We wedged them in place with an assortment of junk we found in the second house, and Stefan found some rope and used that to tie them fairly securely into position. Then we drove back to the petrol station and filled both tanks. I also suggested that it would be a good idea to fill some cans with fuel – after all, I thought it entirely likely that the power would fail sooner or later, and after that we would not be able to use the pumps. So we filled every can we could find and drove back to the car dealership.

"Why are we stopping here?" I asked.

"So that you can get out and drive the Citroën home. Two cars are better than one."

"But I can't drive!" I protested.

"It is easy. You have seen me do it, and I had never done it until today. Even a subhuman should be able to manage!" And he grinned to show that he was joking.

"Well… okay, I'll try," I agreed.

"Good." And before I could stop him Stefan put the Peugeot into 'Drive' and pulled away, leaving me standing on the pavement.

I suppose I could have walked back, but I didn't fancy walking all that way, much of it uphill, and so I got into the Citroën. I'd never driven anything before, and so at least the fact that the steering wheel was on the wrong side from a British point of view didn't bother me, but to say I was nervous would be an understatement. But I started the engine, eventually found the button on the gear-stick that allowed me to move it into 'Drive', took a deep breath and released the handbrake. And the car started to creep forward, and when I gingerly touched the right-hand pedal it moved a bit faster. I checked that the footbrake worked, though I trod on it a bit too hard, making the car stop abruptly. That reminded me to do the seat-belt up, so I did that and gently pressed the accelerator once more.

And it was easy. Of course, I didn't have to worry about other traffic, and so when I was a bit slow with the wheel at the first bend it didn't matter that I crossed onto the wrong side of the road. I kept it really slow until I got out of town… and then I caught sight of something off to my left, and so instead of going straight ahead towards the mountains I turned left instead and went to investigate.

When I got there I wished I hadn't. The bulldozer that had caught my eye was one of three or four digging machines parked at the edge of a field, one that was about half taken up with a mound of newly-turned earth, and if I had any doubt about what this was they were instantly dispelled when I saw that the next field held a large heap of still-unburied human bodies: clearly this was a mass grave.

I had to keep driving in the same direction because I was not confident about my ability to drive in reverse, and that took me past three more fields full of bodies, and by the time I finally came to a junction wide enough for me to do a U-turn I felt thoroughly sick. It looked as though the bulldozer and JCB drivers had died before they could finish the job, and now probably nobody ever would. I was a bit surprised that there were no carrion birds around, or dogs, but maybe the mutant flu had killed all the animals as well as the people… except, perhaps, for one lucky cat back in Orschwiller.

I drove slowly back to the village. When I got there I found Stefan standing next to the Peugeot looking concerned.

"What happened?" he said. "I was scared that you had crashed. If that had happened and you had been hurt it would have been my fault for leaving you – and even though there is now enough food here to keep me alive for many weeks, I would not want to be here alone. Being with you is good. So why were you so slow to return?"

Hearing that he liked us being together made me feel really good, but I put that to one side and explained about the mass graves.

"It is lucky we did not come here two months ago," he said. "But I hope that some of the tunnels under the cabin go to better worlds: so far we have found a world where there is nothing but bare rock, and a world where all the people are dead."

"Well, at least we can be fairly sure that the next place will be better than the two we've seen so far," I said, trying to be optimistic.

I helped Stefan into the house and parked him on the sofa with his foot raised and then went and began to unload the car, though I stopped after the first load and turned the cooker on to get it ready for the pizza. By the time I had unloaded everything except the two mopeds, which I left on the trailer, the cooker had preheated sufficiently and I was able to put the pizza in, and twenty minutes later we were sitting at the kitchen table tucking in. As frozen pizzas go this was pretty good, with plenty of toppings (chicken, peppers, onions and mushrooms), and we were able to wash it down with Coke. I was a little surprised to hear that Coke was available in Stefan's world, but apparently the Reich was at peace with the USA and had a normal trade existence with it. In fact in his world America had never been at war with Germany at all.

After the meal we played Monopoly for a while (and that was new to Stefan, though he took to it quickly and was actually winning when it started to get dark). We had some candles and torches, but we decided that we might just as well go to bed – the more Stefan was able to rest his ankle, the sooner we would be able to resume our exploration of the tunnels.

So I helped him up the stairs. It appeared that the owner of this house had lived alone: there were three bedrooms, but one had no bed in it and seemed to have been most recently in use as an office: there was a computer desk, a chair and some bookshelves in it. The computer was still there but of course it was useless without power. A second bedroom had a single bed that was covered only with a sheet, and we assumed that this was the guest room. And the main bedroom had a double bed, but the lack of female clothing in the wardrobe and the fairly small amount of male clothing suggested a single occupant.

"I could find some bedding and make up the spare bed," I suggested, unenthusiastically. "Or we could share this one. What do you think?"

"I would like it if we stay together," he said, which pleased me a lot.

"So would I," I replied.

"Good. Then help me to the bathroom so I can piss and use the nice tooth cleaner you found for us."

So I supported him as he went to the bathroom and then waited, trying not to make it too obvious that I was watching, as he peed, washed his hands and cleaned his teeth. And then he waited while I did the same things.

We returned to the bedroom and he removed all his clothing, including his briefs, and got into bed naked. Obviously I didn't need a further invitation to do the same thing, so I threw my clothes off too and got in beside him. But if I had any thoughts of misbehaving they quickly disappeared, because Stefan simply rolled onto his side and went to sleep.

***

Next morning I woke up wondering where I was, but it quickly came back to me: I was one of the only two people in the world – probably – and the other was a good-looking blond boy who was lying right next to me. Naked. If this was God's way of thanking me for going ahead with my bar-mitzvah, then I was definitely going to make sure I didn't miss out on any future special religious events. Just as long as He didn't expect me to start going to synagogue every week…

Stefan rolled over to face me and opened his eyes.

"Morning, Stefan," I said. "Did you sleep well?"

"Yes, thank you. And you?"

"Really well, thanks. So, are we going back to the tunnels today?"

"I think perhaps I should rest the ankle for one more day. And you have to learn to ride a motor bicycle before we go back to the cabin. So today I am going to relax – I think that I should start with breakfast here, before I leave the bed. If I do that I shall not need to walk needlessly on the stairs, no? So, I would like some of those breakfast flakes, the ones with sugar." And he looked at me, grinning.

"You seriously expect me to bring you breakfast in bed?" I asked.

"I am sure that you will do this for your injured comrade." And he grinned even more.

I supposed he had a point about not going up and down the stairs if he didn't have to, but this was one hell of a cheek. Of course he knew that, and probably he was expecting me to tell him to sod off, because when I said "Okay, then," and got out of bed he looked really surprised.

I went down to the kitchen, poured us each a bowl of Frosties (which I had been happy to see were available in this version of France as well as my own), put a carton of long-life milk on the tray, added a couple of glasses and a carton of orange juice, found a couple of spoons in a drawer and took the whole lot upstairs.

Stefan accepted his bowl gratefully, added some milk and started to eat, and I got back into bed next to him and began to eat my own breakfast. I don't much like long-life milk, but it's better than nothing, I suppose, and the orange juice removed any lingering aftertaste.

"Now I think I will take a bath," said Stefan. "I do not know for how long we will have water, so we should use it while it is here."

I supposed he was right: I had no idea what happened at a water treatment plant. I imagined most of the time it ran automatically, but if anything went wrong now there would be nobody to carry out repairs or maintenance. And of course once the electricity supply failed the water plant would eventually grind to a halt, even if they had emergency back-up generators to start with.

So I went and started to run a bath and then came back and helped Stefan into the bathroom. He said his ankle felt better today, but he felt that another day's rest would still probably be sensible.

I helped him into the bath, handed him the soap and turned to go.

"Wait," he said. "You can stay. It would be good to talk to you while I wash."

I didn't mind staying at all, so I perched on the edge of the bath and watched him washing himself. I noted that he washed his penis carefully, pulling the foreskin back to clean underneath it, and watching him doing that had the inevitable effect on me.

"Now you can wash my back," he said, handing me the soap, and naturally as soon as I stood up he could see what had happened to me.

"You really have no control, have you, Jake?" he commented. "Can you not control your penis for even five minutes?"

"No, I can't," I said, embarrassed. "It just happens, okay?"

I washed his back and then helped him to shampoo his hair. He didn't actually need help with that, but I volunteered: at least while I was doing that he had his eyes closed, which meant he couldn't see my persistent erection.

"Get in," he invited me, once his hair was rinsed. "We should make best use of the hot water."

I'd never shared a bath, and so I was curious enough to get in and stretch my legs out on either side of him, while he drew his knees up to his chest to give me room and then handed me the soap.

"Don't you think it's strange that absolutely everyone seems to be dead?" I asked, desperate to talk about something other than the state of my penis. "After all, normally some people are immune to flu."

"I do not think that this was flu," he said. "I think this was a… how would you say… a military disease?"

"You mean, it was a biological weapon?"

"I think so. As you say, an ordinary disease would not take everyone."

"But there is no sign that there's a war on. Surely if there was we would see other signs?"

"Maybe. Or this could be an accident, a disease that escaped from a laboratory, or that was spilled from a train or truck that was moving it. Or maybe it was released from a space station – that is why everyone in a big area is dead."

"But… if it isn't the flu, we could be in danger here!"

"I do not think so. We have been here for a day already, and I feel well. You said that the workers died before they could even bury the dead people, so it must happen very quickly. A weapon would have to make people die very fast and then clear so that your own army could arrive safely to the area. I am sure that this place is safe."

I was glad he was so confident, but I supposed logically he was right: if we were going to fall ill, it would have happened already. And the idea that it could be a biological weapon made sense, though it was clear from the lack of reception on the radio that it wasn't just France that had been affected. Perhaps it had been a malfunction in an orbiting space station, as Stefan suggested: perhaps it had delivered its virus across the whole planet, and not just in the area that its maker had intended. Still, it made little difference to us: for the time being, this part of the planet at least belonged solely to us.

I washed my hair (and Stefan leaned forward to help me rinse it, and somehow that felt really good), and then he got out of the bath, suggesting that I should stretch out and soak for a couple of minutes while he dried himself. So I did that, but the fact that he stood facing me while he dried himself meant that I got a really good view of the way certain things wobbled about while he was drying his back, and that meant that when I stood up to get out myself my penis, which had subsided while we were discussing death and destruction, was again misbehaving.

"Maybe we should cut that thing off," suggested Stefan, handing me a clean towel. "I shall fetch my knife if you wish."

"No, thanks," I said, wrapping the towel around myself and blushing. "I'm sorry, Stefan, but I can't help it – it just happens."

I got on with drying myself, but I was aware of him watching me and so my penis simply would not go down. As soon as I was dry I put the towel on the rail and headed back to the bedroom to get dressed, thinking that once it was covered it would subside again. But Stefan had other ideas: he followed me into the room, limping a little but able to move on his own, at least for short distances, and demanded that before we did anything else I should put a fresh bandage on his ankle to replace the one he had removed before getting into the bath.

"Can't I get dressed first?" I asked.

"No. I like to see you like that."

Well, I supposed that in that case I didn't mind quite so much. So I went to the small first-aid kit we had obtained in Sélestat and found a bandage and a safety-pin, and soon his ankle was properly bandaged once more.

"Thank you," he said. "Now you can help me to dress."

He opened one of the packets of briefs he had collected in Sélestat and I supported him while he pulled them on, and then he selected one of his new pairs of shorts and put those on, too. Next he pulled on a red tee-shirt and asked me to hand him his running vest so that he could transfer his little badge from it to the shirt. And once he was properly under wraps my over-active penis finally subsided.

"Now it is your turn," he said, but before I could reach for any of my new clothes he grabbed me and told me to sit on the bed and wait. I did that while he hunted through various drawers until he found some string, and then he cut a length off and tied it around my waist. Finally he tucked one of the householder's handkerchiefs over the string to cover my genitals.

"Now we are ready," he said. "Help me downstairs."

"What about my clothes?" I asked.

"You cannot wear clothes like a normal boy, because your penis becomes hard all the time, and it would tear your nice new clothes. So you can wear this, which will not tear next time you become hard." And he put an arm round my shoulders as usual and pulled me towards the door.

I have to admit I found this perversely exciting: there was something about wearing only a flimsy loincloth that was sort of interesting – and, of course, thinking about it and what I looked like had exactly the effect Stefan had hoped for, because he burst out laughing as the handkerchief lifted away from my body.

I got him into the main room and helped him onto the sofa, and as soon as he was seated he snatched the handkerchief away, leaving me exposed yet again.

And this time he reached out and took hold of me, and I almost spurted straight away – I had never been touched like this before, and it felt amazing. He tested its hardness and then stroked it gently, concentrating on the scar just below my knob and on the knob itself.

"You look good," he told me. "And it is very hard. And it feels interesting, too… okay, I suppose I have teased you enough: you can go and get dressed. But put on those jeans, because if you fall from the bicycle you will not want to have bare knees."

I didn't really want to get dressed now – in fact I could happily have stood there letting him play with my penis for the rest of the morning. But on the other hand I was fairly sure that if he went on doing it for another thirty seconds or so I was going to lose control of myself, and I'm not sure that he would have been happy if I had spurted onto his new shirt, even if I haven't got very much. So I went upstairs and got dressed, putting on new boxers and socks and a new tee-shirt but retaining my old jeans.

"You are a good friend to let me to tease you so," he said when I got back downstairs. "I think many boys would become angry when I talk about their penis, and none would let me touch without striking me. I should not make fun of such a good friend, so I will not do that again."

"It's okay, I don't mind," I said, quickly. "In fact I like you teasing me. I mean, you're right: it does go hard a lot. So you can tease me about it, and even touch it, whenever you want, and I won't mind if you don't let me wear clothes sometimes when it sticks up. I deserve it for not being able to control myself."

"I cannot always control mine," he admitted. "So perhaps sometimes you can tease me, too. Now, let us move to important matters: help me out of the house and you can learn about riding."

I very much liked the idea that I could sometimes tease him and made up my mind that the next time he went hard in front of me I was going to touch him and see what he said. But I had to shelve that idea for the time being because he was right: I needed to learn to ride a motorbike.

In fact it was nothing like as hard as I had feared: this was a very basic moped with no gears and no clutch to worry about, so all I had to do was to twist the right-hand grip and the moped would move forward, and the brakes were exactly the same as on a normal bicycle. Provided I remembered to twist the grip back as well as squeezing the brakes when I wanted to stop it was dead easy, and by the end of the morning I felt completely competent.

The one we had found for Stefan was a slightly larger model, and in fact there would have been room for me to sit behind him. But he said it would be better to take both because he wanted to take some of our supplies up to the hut, and there would be room behind him for a bag.

After lunch we went for a longer ride, down the road to Kintzheim and then following the road up into the forest towards Haut-Koenigsbourg. We found the castle deserted, which came as no surprise, but intact, which did surprise Stefan, who had never seen it as anything except a ruin. So we left the bikes at the entrance, which the departing guardians had obligingly left open, and went for a walk round.

"Here is a solution if the water fails," commented Stefan. "They have a well here."

"Actually, there are probably some houses in the village with wells, too," I pointed out. "A lot of the houses there have been there since long before mains water appeared. Perhaps we should look when we get back."

It felt strange being in that huge place on our own, and we didn't stay too long. On the way back we stopped at the end of the track that led up to the hut and followed it to the point where we had joined the path on our way down, and we had no trouble at all locating the point at which we would have to strike off away from the path next day. That gave us a little practice at riding off-road, and then we completed our return trip by following the path back to Orschwiller instead of going back by road via Kintzheim. And by the time we got back 'home' I felt perfectly capable of riding on any sort of terrain.

After supper we finished our game of Monopoly and then sat reading quietly until it began to get dark, and then Stefan said that we should go out for another quick ride to make sure we could manage a night journey if it should become necessary. So we rode back towards Kintzheim again, though we stopped before we reached the village and looked out across the plain.

"Do you notice something?" Stefan asked.

I couldn't see anything, and so I shook my head – and then I realised what he was getting at.

"We can't see Sélestat," I said. "That means the power has gone off there."

"That is right. So we may not have water for more than a day or so more. Perhaps we should look for a well before we go to the cabin tomorrow."

We rode back to the house again and went upstairs, taking it in turns to visit the bathroom – Stefan could get there and back unassisted by now – and then going straight to bed.

"Stefan," I said as we settled down, "thanks. I've really enjoyed today – in fact I can't remember the last time I enjoyed a day so much. Learning to ride was great, and going up to the castle together, and… well, everything. Being with you is really good."

"Thank you, Jake – I enjoyed it also. You are fun to be with. At school everyone is serious so much of the time, but with you I can laugh and relax, and that is very nice. And now that we are friends – I think we are friends, yes? So, now you should call me Stefi – it is the name that my friends use."

"We're definitely friends," I said. "I like you a lot. So I'll remember to call you 'Stefi' from now on."

I'd meant what I said, too: this really had been a brilliant day, not just because of learning to ride a moped and going out riding with Stefan, but because of the other stuff, too: sharing a bath and being made to wear only a pocket handkerchief and, above all, having him hold my penis. I thought exploring the tunnels would be exciting, and maybe we would find more worlds that actually had people in, but I didn't think anything was going to top today.

***

Next morning Stefan's ankle was even better and he was able to walk unaided, at least for short distances. But he still asked me to go with him to the bathroom so that we could wash and clean our teeth together, though he did shoo me out when he realised that he needed to shit.

"I do not mind that you see me piss," he told me, "but this is a little more personal. Perhaps when we have been together a little longer there will be nothing I will want to do alone, but now… you understand, I hope."

"Of course," I said. "Call me when you've finished."

And even with my exhibitionist streak I didn't think I want to do that in front of him, either – at least, not yet.

After breakfast we packed a bag with some canned fruit, a couple of ready meals, four big bottles of water and a couple of large flashlights and strapped it to the back of Stefan's bike. Then I went for a scout round the village, looking into the gardens of some of the older houses, and as I had expected I found three wells, though I wasn't sure whether the water in them would be safe to drink. Still, even the little village bakery had a big collection of bottled water in its stock-room, and if we did manage to use it all there was plenty more in every village shop for miles around, not to mention at the supermarkets in Sélestat and the other large towns on the plain. And that meant that we would be able to use well water for washing and bottled water for cooking and drinking.

Then we set off for the hut. We found our way to the place we had reached the previous day and then left the path and headed for the hut, taking it slowly so as not to miss any of Stefan's trail-blazing marks. Only once did we have to retrace our route a little, and when we found the place where we had left the correct trail Stefan cut a much larger mark into a tree so that we wouldn't do so again. In places it was tough going, particularly on the last stage where we were riding quite steeply uphill, but we arrived unscathed.

Once again there was no sign of the mist that had caused us such problems in our own worlds – in fact it was another fine, hot, sunny summer's day, and accordingly we were both now wearing shorts and tee shirts, though we had packed a couple of light jackets in our bags in case it was colder in the tunnels or the next world we found was less warm than this one.

We parked the bikes at the back of the hut and I carried Stefan's bag through to the kitchen and unpacked the food and water, leaving only our jackets and the flashlights in our bags. Then I opened the trapdoor and we looked at each other.

"Ready?" I asked.

"Yes. I think this shall be a good adventure, Jake."

"Me, too. Okay, let's go."

And we climbed down the ladder into the tunnel once more.

Is this one going to be a world that actually has some people in, or have our heroes picked the wrong door yet again? All will be revealed in the next chapter.

Chapter Four

Finally in this chapter our heroes find an inhabited world, though it turns out to be substantially different from their own worlds, especially in terms of religion…

As soon as we were in the tunnel we turned left and headed for the room of doors once more – I wanted to investigate the tunnel I had seen on my last visit, the one that was full of mist. Stefan seemed to be walking fairly comfortably, and when I stopped to make sure he said it was no problem.

"It's a pity we couldn't bring the mopeds down here," I commented. "If we could you wouldn't have to walk at all. The trapdoor isn't big enough, though."

"No, but if we had an axe or a…" (He made sawing motions, and I supplied the missing word) "…thank you, a saw, we could cut a bigger opening."

"But then we couldn't close the trapdoor again."

"Why would we wish to do that? There is nobody in our world who will come and find the cabin, so it should not matter that there is a hole in the floor."

"I suppose that's true… but what if someone was chasing us from down here? If there was a hole we wouldn't be able to close the trapdoor against them."

"I do not think anyone is here to chase us. But if there was such a person, we would escape more easily if we had a fast motor bicycle, would we not?"

I supposed that was true, too: we could make a far faster getaway through the tunnels on a moped than on foot, and it would get in the way of anyone chasing us if we used it to block the door into the tunnel, too.

"Or we could find some folding bicycles," I suggested. "The ones that they make for commuters, that fold up really small, so we could get them through the hatch. They wouldn't be as fast as a moped, but they would be faster than running."

"Perhaps. We can consider this before we come again."

We reached the room of doors and I stood in front of the one that led to Stefan's world and counted clockwise, but when I pushed the eighth door I found that it was blocked: I couldn't shift it. Stefan came and helped me, and eventually we managed to force it open by a couple of centimetres, and at that point fine rubble seeped out around the edge. We couldn't get it any further open because the rubble seemed to fill the entire space behind it: apparently the tunnel that had been there the last time I opened that door had now completely collapsed.

"That's a bit worrying," I said. "I wonder what made that happen? The tunnel looked exactly the same as all the others I've seen, so why did that one collapse and not any of the others?"

I paused long enough to walk around the room opening some of the other doors at random, but the remaining tunnels were still there, looking exactly the same as the one we had walked through to reach the room of doors.

"Perhaps it was not natural," suggested Stefan. "Perhaps the tunnel was closed by the people that made this place to keep some disaster out."

"Maybe. In that case I hope they can tell that we are not a disaster. I don't want them closing any of our three tunnels."

"We have been through three doors without a problem," he pointed out. "So they can see that we are harmless."

"Four, if you include whichever one it is that goes back to my world," I said. "So, okay, they know we're not dangerous. Okay, so we can't go the way I wanted – which door should we try instead? You decide."

"We know that the door that went to the bare rock was close to the collapsed tunnel – perhaps in fact that was the world beyond the blocked door. So let us try… that one." And he pointed to a door four away from the one that led to his own world.

"Okay. Can you mark our door first? I mean, we know it's next to yours, but it would be good to mark it so that we can see quickly which one it is."

"All right," he said, and he undid his shorts, pushed them and his briefs down a bit, took hold of his penis and pretended to masturbate.

"We haven't got all day," I commented, grinning at him. "Use your knife or the sun will have set before we get outside."

"I think you need to be shown once again who is superior here, subhuman," he said, doing his shorts up once more. "Perhaps we shall have another contest when we get home."

"Perhaps we should," I said, trying not to let my enthusiasm show too much. "But just use your knife now – and next time we'll have to remember to bring some paint."

He scratched two horizontal lines on 'our' door and then crossed the room to the door we were about to take and marked it with a diagonal line, top left to bottom right.

"Tonight we must draw a plan," he said. "We shall show each door, its mark and to which world it goes."

"Good idea," I said, thinking that it would also help me to find my own world again if we kept a record of every door we tried.

We pushed open the door and I was anything but surprised to see the usual tunnel curving gently away ahead of us, and in due course we came to another door, another ladder and another trapdoor – and this one led to a hut, though one that was completely lacking in signs of human habitation: the desk was there but empty and covered in dust, there was no chair, no mattress on the bunk, and no supplies of any sort in the kitchen.

"Nobody has been here since many months," commented Stefan. "Do you think that this means another empty world?"

"I hope not. I want to meet people and find out about their world. Come on, let's see what's out there."

I opened the outer door and discovered that what was out there was mist – very, very thick mist. I stepped out into it and within two paces I couldn't see a thing – not even the hut.

"We can't go out into that," I said, stepping back inside. "It might only go about ten metres [30 ft] beyond the hut for all we know, but we could step out into that and never find the hut again. Unless… we need a rope. If we had a rope one of us could stay here while the other goes out on the end of the rope, and if the mist only goes a little way out we'll be fine, and if not we can follow the rope back."

"We do not have a rope," said Stefan. "In fact… I am an idiot! I have been trained to think as a soldier, but we have approached this journey as two little children. Come – we have to go back."

And before I could argue he was off down the ladder, and so I followed him, back along the tunnel, through the room of doors and back to the hut we had left only half an hour previously.

"We need proper equipment," he said, getting onto his bike. "Leave yours and get on behind me – we will need to find another to bring back with us."

So I clung on behind him as he rode back to Orschwiller, and as soon as he got there he got straight into the Peugeot, not even stopping to unhitch the trailer. I got in with him and we drove back to Sélestat.

Somehow the place looked completely different now that the power had failed. Before it had just looked as if everyone had stopped work for lunch, or maybe to go to a big football match or something; now it looked like a dead place, completely and permanently abandoned – which I supposed it was. And now we were both aware of a faint but unpleasant smell hanging over the place.

"I do not think we will want to come back here again," commented Stefan, "so this time let us make sure we take everything we will need."

We found a camping shop and Stefan swept through the place like a hurricane, collecting a couple of tents, four or five sleeping bags, several climbing ropes, some cooking and eating utensils, some water bottles, a box of water purifying tablets, a couple of small portable gas cooking rings and spare bottles of gas, a couple of gas lanterns, two large jerry-cans, a couple of Swiss army knives and a small all-in-one pocket tool-kit, two Silva compasses and a dinky little device that enabled you to tell how many steps you had taken, two pairs of expensive binoculars, one small bag about the same size as the one I had brought from England and a couple of top-of-the-range rucksacks.

I thought that was it, but as soon as we had dumped all that lot in the trailer he went back into the shop and went to the outdoor clothing section, where he kitted us both out with a heavy jacket, a light waterproof one that could be folded up really small and some proper walking shoes.

"Now I think we are ready," he announced.

"Really? Are you sure? I mean, couldn't we have got this stuff when we actually reached the base of Everest instead of carrying it all that way?"

"Jake, we do not know what we will find," he said. "It is summer here, but perhaps in some other worlds it is winter. Here we can walk easily through the mountains; there it might not be possible without ropes. But of course we do not require all this equipment today – it is just that I do not wish to come back to town each time I find that we need something new. We shall leave much of this at home, and most of the remainder in our hut, where it can be reached easily."

I supposed that made sense, so I grabbed a couple of baseball caps, two woollen hats and, as an afterthought, a wide-brimmed hat of the type that Australians hang corks onto. I stuck the Aussie hat on my head and chucked the others into the car.

We drove away from the shopping centre and cruised the residential streets until we found another small moped, but instead of putting it in the trailer – which would have meant reorganising all our camping supplies – Stefan said I should ride it home. But instead of going straight back home he stopped at the Point Vert on the edge of town and picked up a chainsaw and then went into the builders' merchant's next door and emerged with what looked like three short pieces of scaffolding and a bag containing other bits and pieces.

I didn't ask, just sat on the moped and watched him load them into the car. The poles were too long to go inside, so he had to leave the hatch open with the poles sticking out of the back and resting on the trailer.

Then we drove back into the mountains. We didn't go straight home: instead we stopped at the point where the track up to the hut left the road, and there Stefan unloaded the poles.

"We shall have to carry these to the hut," he said. "It will not be possible to move them on the bicycles. But in any case we need to walk the journey one more time so that I may take bearings."

So we left the car and moped where they were and between us carried the metal poles up to the hut, and on the way back Stefan used the compass and pace-counter and jotted down in a little notebook exactly how to find the road from the hut. He discovered that the track actually did run more or less due east, although eventually it followed the contour of the hill and so was heading south-east when it joined the road. Clearly our first attempt at direction-finding, on our initial trip down from the hut, had been quite successful.

We drove back to Orschwiller and unpacked, leaving most of the heavy or bulky equipment – the tents, sleeping-bags, jerry-cans and thick jackets – indoors. And I chickened out of actually wearing the hat and so I left it in the bedroom with the rest of our spare clothes. We packed the ropes and most of the small stuff into one rucksack, put the chainsaw and a small can of fuel into the other, paused long enough to top up the fuel tank of my new moped from one of the cans we had stored in the garage, and then rode back up to the hut on our mopeds.

We opened the trapdoor and Stefan set to work with his chainsaw, cutting away the floor on one side of the hatchway until we had a hole big enough to get the two smaller mopeds through. Then he rigged up his scaffold poles into a tripod that he could attach a pulley to, and that made it possible for us to lower them one at a time into the small room below.

We left the large rucksacks in the hut, transferring the small amount of stuff we would need to the smaller ones: I took a fold-up waterproof jacket, a water bottle and one of the Swiss army knives, and Stefan took a jacket, a pair of binoculars, two coiled ropes, a compass, some chocolate we had liberated from the supermarket – and a small tin of white paint and a brush. He was wearing his knife and his water-bottle on his belt as usual.

We started the mopeds and rode back to the room of doors, where Stefan got to work with his paint. He painted a small 'S' on the door that went to his world, a small 'S + J' on ours, and the number 3 on the one we were about to go through. Then off we went again, and in only a couple of minutes we were back at the foot of the ladder. We left the mopeds in the little room and climbed up.

"You know, if we find the mist has gone we're going to feel a bit silly," I remarked, heading for the door.

"No, we should not. We will need this equipment, if not today then some other day."

I supposed that was true, and in fact when I opened the door I saw that we would need it today, because the mist was still there, as thick as ever.

Stefan took a rope from his bag and tied one end to my waist.

"Walk straight ahead," he said. "When you get out of the mist, stop and call me."

So I did that. I couldn't see a thing, so I took it slow and kept my arms in front of me so as not to walk into a tree, and after a bit the mist started to thin, and eventually I was out into another fine, sunny day.

"I'm out," I called over my shoulder, and a couple of minutes later Stefan appeared at my side – he had left the other end of the rope tied around the door-handle and had followed it, counting steps.

"It is about forty metres [130 ft]," he reported. "So… continue to walk straight until the rope goes tight, then take it from your waist and tie it to a tree."

I didn't really see why, but I did it anyway. Then we went back to the hut, groped our way around to the back of it and repeated the exercise with the second rope. Once I was out of the mist on that side Stefan came to join me, and once again told me to keep going until the rope ran out and then tie it to the nearest tree.

"Now," he explained, "if the mist has spread a little more when we come back it will not matter, because we have a large target: the rope extends for sixty meters [200 ft] each side of the cabin. So if our bearing is not quite correct, we still have a good chance to find a rope and follow it to the cabin."

That made good sense, and I looked at him admiringly.

"That's really clever," I said. "You're brilliant, Stefi."

"I know," he said, grinning. "You should bow down and adore me."

"I'm not sure I would go quite that far," I said. "But I am impressed. So, shall we see if we can find any civilisation?"

He got the compass out and we set off on the bearing he had taken back in our world, but we didn't find the path. He wasn't too worried: he said it would be surprising if every world had a path in exactly the same place, and he simply followed the bearings that should bring us to the road. But the road wasn't there, either.

"Oh, well, maybe they don't need roads," I suggested. "Perhaps it's a world where everyone has their own jet-pack, or something."

That thought kept me happy as we continued on the same bearing, which was more or less east south-east: even if there were no roads, eventually this should bring us to Orschwiller or some other village.

It didn't: there was no village, and for a moment we thought we'd found another uninhabited world. But we were out of the trees by now, and when we got the binoculars out and looked out over the plain we could see buildings, and there were cows in a field… and, yes, people moving about, working in another field. We looked at each other in excitement.

"Wow, Stefi, a whole other world!" I said. "I wonder if they speak French or German?"

"It could be Latin or Russian or Chinese," he pointed out. "We do not know anything of the history of this world yet… so, let us go and find out!"

So we kept going down towards the plain until we found a road running along at the foot of the mountains. It wasn't much of a road, to be honest: it was basically a cart-track, with a couple of bald areas that showed where the wheels of passing vehicles had run, with a grassy strip down the middle. We turned right onto it to head south, as it had been in that direction that we had seen the buildings, and we walked along pointlessly speculating about what sort of a world we had found. The lack of proper roads reinforced my hope that this would be a world where everyone flew everywhere, though I had to admit that I hadn't seen anything flying at all except for a few birds.

After a further couple of kilometres we found another track leading off to the left, heading towards some buildings, so we turned that way and found ourselves walking next to a field in which a score of brown cattle were grazing. There was also a boy sitting on the fence keeping an eye on them, and when he saw us he stared, which wasn't too surprising considering that we were wearing standard western attire and he was dressed in what looked like a rough, drab brown home-made tunic with a rope belt and, so far as we could tell, nothing else: his feet were bare, anyway.

"Hello," I said, in English, which drew no reaction at all.

"Guten Tag," tried Stefan. "Or maybe 'Güeter Daj' – that's the old local dialect," he added to me. But the boy didn't understand that, either. Well, I thought, if it isn't French we're in trouble, because I don't think I can carry on a conversation in Latin, and as for Russian and Chinese…

"Bonjour," I said, and he smiled and said 'Bonjour' back, and I stuck to French and asked where we were.

"This is the farm of the commune of Irtengarde," he told me. "If you continue on the path you will find the master farmer in the big house. Tell him that Phiphi le Bossu sent you, then he will know that I am not sleeping!"

He jumped off the fence, and now I could see that he was indeed hunchbacked, as his surname suggested, and probably a little older than us. I could see that he wanted to ask about our clothes, so I told him that we were travellers from a distant country, and that seemed to satisfy him.

"I do not think you will get your wish to fly here," commented Stefan as we walked on. "This would seem to be a primitive world."

"Doesn't mean it won't be interesting, though," I replied.

We walked on to the farmhouse, a stone edifice of two storeys that even had glass in the windows – so maybe it wasn't completely primitive after all – and knocked at the back door, which seemed a safer bet: maybe in this world a master farmer was really important and so would not want strangers appearing at his front door. A large woman (it was hard to imagine her being anything but the cook) opened the door and I explained that we were travellers who had been on the road for a long time… and that was as far as I got before she told me to wait and left the room.

She came back a minute or so later and beckoned us to follow her, leading us through to a much bigger room in which a couple of men were sitting at a table with a pile of paper (or something that looked like paper) in front of them – it looked as if they had been discussing finance, because there was also an abacus on the table.

"I am Master Farmer," said one of them, making it sound like his name rather than his title. "You are from a far country, you say?"

"Well, yes, Sir. We have travelled a long way, and I was hoping that maybe you would let us rest here awhile – and perhaps spare us some food? We would be happy to work for it." Or we could pay you in euros or reichsmarks, I didn't bother adding, because somehow I thought neither currency would count for much here.

"You have a very strange accent," said the farmer, which seemed a bit unfair, since if anyone had an accent it was him. There were also a few words that I had difficulty understanding, as had also been the case with Phiphi, although this was still recognisably French, and not the equivalent of Chaucerian English. And at least that meant that we could still communicate.

"We are from far away, beyond the mountains," I said, and he stared at me, while the other man muttered an oath.

"You crossed the mountains? That is impossible – there are demons in the mountains! None may set foot on them."

"Oh. Well, we didn't actually cross them," I said. "You see, if you go north from here, around a hundred kilometres [60 miles], there is a place where the mountains end and you can go around them."

"You speak of things I do not understand. What are these kill… things?"

"Oh, it is a measure of distance where we come from. From the house to the road is about half a kilometre [1600ft.]."

"So why would you undertake such a long journey – unless… have you done wrong in your own land? Are you fleeing from your master?"

"No, we have done nothing wrong. We wanted adventure, that's all."

"I still don't understand. What of your families – do they know where you are?"

"Well, not exactly. We have no families." I thought that would probably save a lot of explanations, and also explain why we had gone off on an adventure alone.

"I see. But your land must be very far away: I have never seen clothing like that. What is it made of?"

"Cotton, I think. Mostly."

"What is cotton?"

"It is a plant that grows… I'm not sure where, to be honest. Across the sea to the west, I think."

"Show me."

I shrugged, took my bag off and then slipped my shirt over my head and handed it to him. He and the other man examined it with interest.

"See how fine the stitches are," he commented. "And this pattern around the neck – it must have taken many weeks to make. So your father was a noble?"

"No, just a normal man. That shirt was made using a machine, though I don't know how. Everyone wears things like that in our country."

"I have never heard of such a land – though I have never travelled. Probably our lord knows of your country, though – he and the other great rulers travel widely and trade with many nations. And… what is that frame around your eyes?"

"My glasses, you mean? They help me to see properly. Try looking through them and you will see what I mean."

I handed them over and he looked through them.

"It makes things bend," he said. "And yet you say it makes you see better? I don't understand, and nor do I understand how such a thing could be made. There must be wizards in your land."

"Not really. All glass will bend light if it is not absolutely perfect. If you look through your windows there will be a similar effect where the glass is not true."

"He's right," said the second man. "I have noticed such a thing."

The farmer grunted. "And that badge around your neck – what is that star?"

"It's the symbol of my religion."

"Ah, so you have a guardian god? Well, that at least is normal. And I see your friend has another."

Stefan's swastika was outside his shirt and so visible.

"It is wise to choose a companion with a different protector," the farmer went on. "That way there are two gods to watch over you. Now, you say you would like to rest a while?"

"Yes, please, Sir," I said.

"Well, I'm not sure that…"

The other man leaned forward and whispered into the farmer's ear for a while, and at that the farmer's expression changed.

"You say that you are very far from home, and that your people do not know you are here?"

I nodded.

"Then… would you like to stay with us for a while? I mean for several days, or longer if you want. You can rest and regain your strength, because I see that you are very thin from your long journey. Of course, you will work with the other commune boys, but it is not too arduous. We would be glad to have you as our guests."

"What do you reckon?" I said to Stefan in English. "Shall we stay for a day or so? It might be interesting to see how these people live, and it'll give you a bit more to put in your report. Okay, really I should go back to my world, but since I'm going to get shouted at when I get there whether I go now or in three weeks' time I'm happy to stay here with you for a bit. So, shall we? I mean, we can always slip away if we don't like it."

"Why not?" he replied, and so I turned to the farmer and switched to French.

"Thank you, Sir, that is very kind. We'd be glad to stay in your commune for a while."

"Good. Now, I think perhaps it would be sensible if we lent you some clothes while you are here: your own clothing will mean that everyone will pester you with questions about your origins. We can keep it for you until you are ready to leave. And if you can see without the glass thing, it would be best to keep that hidden, too."

I could see the sense of that, and my eyesight was fairly good in daylight: it was around dusk that it seemed to get worse. As long as I wasn't going to be expected to drive a car or go to the cinema I didn't think I'd be in too much difficulty without them. On the other hand, I wanted to keep control of where our stuff was, just in case we had to sneak away at night or something, so I said, "You're obviously right about the clothes, Sir, but I'd prefer to keep everything with us. So we'll willingly accept your offer of a change of clothing provided that you can find us a couple of plain sacks to keep our own stuff in. That way we'll be able to keep them with us."

"Of course," he said, with no hesitation. "Tell me: has anyone seen you, apart from the two of us and the housekeeper?"

"Only Phiphi the hunchback," I said. "He told us to come and see you."

"Phiphi won't say anything," said the farmer. "You see, if word gets out that we have visitors from a distant land our lord will hear of it and come to investigate, and really I wouldn't want to put him to the trouble. So if you'd like to go back to the kitchen, Hélène will find you some tunics."

I said thank you again and we went back to the kitchen. The housekeeper took us to a small side-room and handed us a tunic and a rope-belt each and then turned to go.

"Hang on," I said. "Is this it? I mean, what do we wear underneath it?"

"Well, nothing," she replied, looking surprised. "Boys of your age don't wear hose, and at this time of year you don't need anything more. Of course, if you are still here when winter comes there will be more to wear – then you will want small-clothes and perhaps a coat. But for now, the tunic is all you require. I will find you each a pouch for your small items."

"She must have spoken of you," said Stefan in English once she had left the room. "Only you have small items – my items are big." And he removed his shorts and briefs and waved his 'items' at me.

"I don't think that the sort of pouch she meant," I said, getting undressed myself. "I think it's something like a pocket or wallet that we can keep our money and stuff in, if we ever get any that's worth anything in this world."

We took everything off, including our watches and jewellery, which would be sure to invite comment if we kept it on, and then pulled the tunics over our heads and tied the rope around our waists. The material wasn't as rough as I had feared, and the tunic came down to within three inches [8 cm] of my knees, so I wasn't in danger of showing everything off every time I moved. But it still felt really strange having no underwear on. I'd have kept my boxers on, but I felt sure that sooner or later someone would notice – and, as I said before, I do have exhibitionist tendencies…

Stefan could more easily have retained his briefs, which wouldn't have been visible unless someone looked right up his tunic, and which even then would probably have passed muster as they were plain white ones, unlike my red and black-striped boxers. But he simply put them on the pile with the rest of his clothes.

"This feels… interesting," he commented. "I think going with no shoes may be difficult at first: boys here will have toughened soles, but we do not."

"It seems to be mostly grass and earth, though," I pointed out. "We haven't seen any concrete or gravel, have we? I think we'll be fine."

The housekeeper came back with a small linen pouch for each or us and a bit of thin rope that we could use to attach them to our belts with. She also had a sack for each of us, so we put our jewellery, watches and my glasses into the pouches and we stowed our clothes, shoes and bags into the sacks, and then went back to see the farmer.

"Ah, now you look like ordinary travellers," he commented. "Good. Now if you go with Master Clerk he will show you where you will sleep, and then you can look around until the evening meal. You can start working tomorrow."

The other man – the clerk, apparently – took us to an outbuilding that held ten mattresses and little else.

"This is where the orphans of the commune sleep," he explained. "There are six of them at present, so there is room for you. Place your sacks in the loft." He indicated a small part-loft with a wooden ladder leading to it. "Once the others return they can tell you which mattresses are free. The well is by the kitchen door if you require water, and the soil-ditch is by the cowshed. I don't think there is anything else you will need. When the gong is rung, come to the kitchen and Hélène will show you where you eat. Have you any questions?"

"No, thank you," I said. "We'll have a wander round, like Master Farmer suggested. And thank you for your help."

We stuck our sacks in the loft and went outside to see what was going on. First we went back to the field where Phiphi was watching the cows.

"Ah, now you look normal. So, you're staying, then?" he asked.

"For a while," I answered. "It'll be good to see how a farm is run in this country."

"Oh, the same as anywhere, I expect. We have cows and sheep and pigs and chickens and goats, and we grow maize and barley and vegetables. It will be hard work at Harvest, but until then it is not too hard. And anyway, they don't expect too much of me, so I usually end up watching the animals. Though you may end up working the river, or clearing the far field… even so, life here is not hard, and Master Farmer is a fair master. I would advise you to move on before the harvest starts, though."

I didn't think that would be a problem – as far as I knew Harvest was in September, and it was barely July, so we would be long gone before the hard work started.

We left Phiphi and walked round the edge of the farm, following the fence that marked its limits. We saw the three large fields, one of maize, one of barley and the third where just grass was growing; we found another meadow where the sheep were grazing under the less-than-watchful eye of a couple of boys (actually they seemed to be asleep); we found the point where some men were constructing a raised wooden channel to bring water from the river closer to the crops; and we found Phiphi's far field, where some men were engaged on digging out stones, of which there seemed to be a hell of a lot. But that was the only job that looked to be really hard work.

Eventually the gong went and we followed everyone else to the house, and here Hélène guided us into a large hall and installed us at a long table with six other boys, the youngest of whom looked to be about eight and the oldest a year or so older than us.

But before they got a chance to ask who we were Master Farmer stood up at the top table and gave a blessing, and that's when we found that this really was a pagan world. I mean, all that stuff about us both having a guardian god should have been warning enough, but now here was the head of the farm calling on the Powers of the Earth, of the Sky and of the River, and on the lesser gods of the crops and livestock, to bless our endeavours. He also thanked them for supplying the food we were about to eat.

And then, almost without pausing for breath, he told the company about us, saying that we were two travellers very far from home who would be joining the commune for a while. He asked everyone to make us feel welcome, and then sat down. And looking around the room I saw some odd reactions: most of the adults were nodding and smiling, and most of the children seemed quite ridiculously happy to find two strangers in their midst – in fact a couple of boys on the far side of the room actually hugged each other.

And Stefan noticed it, too. "That is strange, is it not?" he said quietly in English, nodding across the room to where a mother was hugging her daughter with a happy smile on her face. "You would think that we were sons of a king come to shower wealth upon their community, and not just two boys passing through."

"Well, I suppose they could just be really friendly people," I said, "but it does seem a bit bizarre. Oh, well, I expect we'll find out what it's about soon enough."

The meal was passed around, and I have to say that it was rather better than I had expected: there was a large bowl of something that could have been a thick vegetable soup but was more probably a vegetable stew, together with some unleavened bread to eat it with (there were no eating utensils supplied). We got the hang of it in the end, but we did manage to spill a bit first.

After supper we went to the dormitory with the six orphans and they pointed out which four mattresses were unoccupied, so we took two that were side by side at one end of the room and pushed them together, which surprised them a bit.

"It is the way we like it," I explained. "We're a long way from home and so we like to be close together for comfort."

They seemed to understand that. Then they went around the room giving us their names, from Leo (the eldest) to Sylvain (the youngest), via the four in the middle whose names I wouldn't learn properly for another day or two.

"And I'm Jake, and he's Stefan," I said, "and it's nice to be here… but why is everyone so very happy to see us? I mean, we're just passing through."

At that nobody seemed to want to look at me, though Leo did manage to say that we didn't get visitors very often, and so everyone appreciated meeting new people. And it was clear that I wasn't going to get any more out of them, and so I let it go, even though I was sure something wasn't quite right here.

We noted that everyone else kept their tunics on to sleep and so we did the same, though like them we took our belts off, and in the event we slept pretty well, considering that this was just a straw mattress. We went and ate some sort of porridge for breakfast, which wasn't exactly tasty but did fill us up, and then we went off for our first day's work: Stefan got the short straw and went to help clear the far field, while I landed on my feet and found myself watching the sheep in the furthest meadow along with Olivier, one of my fellow orphans. This, Olivier told me, was about the easiest number on the farm: all you had to do was to keep half an eye on the sheep to make sure they didn't wander off and then drive them back to the farm in the evening. To pass the time he had brought a catapult he had made for when it was his turn to scare the birds from the crops and we took it in turns to hit, first a tree-trunk, then a leaf that he stuck to the tree using a pellet of sheep-shit, and finally just a small part of a leaf. And he was brilliant – I couldn't get close to his ability. And that made him happy, which in turn made him chatty.

I played it safe and didn't talk about myself at all: instead I asked about him, how he came to be living on the farm and whether he liked it here. And he told me that he was twelve (which surprised me – I'd thought him younger) and that he'd been living here since his parents died of… well, some sort of illness, he wasn't sure what – when he was nine. So he'd been here for three years, and he thought it was a good place – the food was good, the farmer was a fair man and the work was not excessive except during harvest and planting.

"But that doesn't last too long," he concluded. "And apart from that – and the Quarter Days, of course – everything's great."

"Quarter Days?" I queried.

"What, don't you celebrate Quarter Days in your country?" he asked.

I shook my head.

"Oh. So that's why… well, anyway, they're just boring – it's all the praying and stuff to make sure we get a good harvest, or to help us survive the winter, or whatever else. We have to get up early on those days, too. But they only come four times a year, so…" And he shrugged.

"Oh. When's the next one?"

"In about two weeks' time – so you'll probably get to see for yourself. Anyway, let's find another leaf and see if you can get anywhere near it this time…"

The following day Oli and I drew bird-scaring, and while the other kids dealt with birds by running about and shouting a lot, Oli used his catapult to good effect. By the end of the day he had seven kills, which he handed in to the kitchen, saying that he wasn't sure if they were edible or not, but if not the pigs would probably get them. And the day after we did the same thing, and by the end of the third day I was getting on really well with Oli and thinking that there were worse places to live.

And the next morning we really hit the jackpot: Master Clerk was taking a wagon into town and needed a couple of boys along to help load the supplies.

"This will be the first time I've been to town," said Oli, happily. "You've brought me luck, Jake!"

Well, I was glad he was happy, but I'd seen as much of Sélestat as I wanted recently and thought I could survive without seeing this world's version of it. But in the event we didn't head for Sélestat at all – in fact we were going in the opposite direction, towards the south.

"Where are we going?" I asked Master Clerk.

"To the town."

"Yes, but what is it called?"

"Just… well, I think officially it's called the Town of Pigeons, or something, but we just call it 'the town'."

It took a large part of the morning to get there. I wasn't sure how fast our wagon was moving, but it didn't seem very fast to me, not a lot faster than I would have walked, so it probably wasn't a lot more than ten or twelve miles, but since the scenery was pretty much the same all the way – mountains off to the right, farmland off to the left – it wasn't a very exciting journey. But the town was interesting because the buildings looked sort of medieval, with timbers and jutting corners and walls that didn't look straight, but also new, as if the bad architecture had happened only a couple of years ago. We drove into the centre of town to a large open square that presumably housed a market on certain days, and Master Clerk stopped outside a shop that had a smithy at the side, and here, calling us to follow him, he went inside and purchased a number of tools, some timber and some nails. At least, I supposed he purchased them, though I saw no signs of any money.

"How did you pay for these?" I asked as we loaded the wagon.

"With a portion of our harvest. The smith has our lord's sealed promise to pay the worth of these tools in barley, which he will sell on to the brewers – for a small profit, I expect."

"And what happens if the harvest fails?"

"It won't fail. It has not failed in living memory. Our gods have never abandoned us, and they won't this year, either."

We went on to another shop across the square. This seemed to be one of those shops where you can buy almost anything, and I looked around, surprised at some of the things that were on sale – not least the strips of rubber that Master Clerk actually bought (though again without any money changing hands).

"Where does this come from?" I asked. "I didn't think rubber trees could grow in this country."

"They don't," Master Clerk told me. "The Lords have a great trading network across many other lands, and this will have come from somewhere distant, no doubt. But such items as can be used by the common people to make our beasts more healthy or to improve the crops are made available to us, and we can use this material to make our irrigation channel more efficient.

"Now, I am going to visit the alehouse; you can go and explore the town a little. But you must be back when the midday bell sounds from the guildhall, or you will have to walk home."

So Oli and I scampered off to have a look round. I have to say that there was a bit of a smell of sewage in the air, though I supposed you got used to it if you lived here. And otherwise it was sort of interesting – there were roads big enough for carts, but many others that were more like alleys, and we followed a couple of these to see where they might go. Actually they led us into an area of dirty-looking houses with unglazed windows, and the smell was worse here, too, so I turned to go back – and heard a call for help.

I ran towards the voice, turning after a few metres into a narrow side-alley, and I saw a boy lying on the ground about halfway along it.

"Wait, Jake," said Oli. "It might not be safe."

"But he might be hurt. I think I should check to see if I can help."

I ran to the fallen boy's side, and Oli came with me looking nervous.

"Are you all right?" I asked, kneeling beside the boy.

"Yes, thanks, mate," he said, jumping to his feet and producing a knife. I turned to run back the way we had come and saw three other boys blocking the end of the alley and walking towards us, and when I looked the other way there were a couple more boys there, too. None of them looked older than me, but they were all wearing some sort of leggings, and some of them even had shoes – and all of them had weapons of some sort, clubs and sticks and even a small axe.

"Well, now," said the boy with the knife. "Looks like we've found ourselves a couple of little yokels to play with. Bring them in, boys, and then we can find out what they're hiding under their dresses."

We were hustled through a door and down a rickety staircase into a basement, lit by an unglazed but barred window high up in the wall (and so just above street level) and by a number of candles.

"Welcome to our home, yokels," said the boy with the knife. "Shall we start with the little one? Get his tunic off and we'll see what he has to offer."

Oli struggled a bit, but it only took the boys a few seconds to undo his belt and pull his tunic off, and then they held his arms so that he couldn't cover himself while the leader examined him.

"What a sweet little wee-wee!" commented the leader, looking at Oli's undeveloped little genitals and grinning. "Go on, Emile, see if you can make it stick up. And you two," he added to the boys holding me, "get his tunic off, too. I bet he's got a nice hole we can use for a while…"

I struggled as well, but it was pointless and soon I was naked.

"Hey, Alain, come and look at this," said one of my captors. "He's got hair. And – something's been done to his prick, too."

"Shit, look at that," said the boy with the knife, who I assumed was called Alain. "The skin's been cut off the end of it. What happened to it, country boy? Was it some sort of punishment?"

"I bet it was," said one of the others. "I bet he played with it all the time and wouldn't stop, and in the end they cut it so that he wouldn't enjoy doing it any more."

"Gods, that's a bad punishment," said Alain. "Is that right, country boy? Did you get punished for fiddling with it too much?"

"No, it was nothing like that. It's a religious thing – every family that follows our god has that done to its sons. It was done when I was only a week old, so obviously I don't remember it."

"Shit, that's a tough god," said Alain. "Having your prick damaged to keep your god happy? I think I'd be looking for another god. Still… in some ways I suppose it could be a good deal – like, you do this little sacrifice when you're a baby and that protects you from bigger sacrifices when you're older. No Quarter Day worries for you, huh? But does it still work like that – I mean, can you still fuck?"

"Well, yes – I mean, I suppose so. I've never… you know, done that. But it still works properly – I can still get sperm out, anyway."

"You've got sperm? Wow… but doesn't it hurt if you rub it? I know that my knob gets sore if you touch it under the skin."

"No, it's fine. I think the nerve endings in the tip become less sensitive after a bit. It doesn't hurt when I rub it, anyway."

"And you've really got sperm?"

I nodded.

"All right, prove it. If you can make some sperm come out we'll let you go."

Okay, I've said several times that I'm a bit of an exhibitionist sometimes, but playing with myself in front of six boys I didn't know was asking a bit much – and then there was Olivier, whom I did know and whom I liked, too: it would be embarrassing having to do that in front of a friend. But then, if the alternative was getting either gang-fucked or stabbed I thought that maybe the embarrassment would be bearable.

So I took hold of myself and started to squeeze. It took a little longer than usual, but in the end it got hard and I started to rub, but Alain made me stop after a few strokes so that he could look at it.

"It looks weird, doesn't it, boys?" he commented. "Interesting, but weird. Let's see what it feels like." And he took hold of me and squeezed gently.

I have to say that I wasn't as keen as I had been when Stefan did this to me. For a start, Alain had a bit to learn about personal hygiene: he whiffed a bit, and his hands were grubby, and his clothes hadn't been anywhere near soap and water for a very long time. But my penis had ideas of its own about being handled by another boy: it liked it. I could feel it twitching in his hand, and so could he. He rubbed it for a few seconds and that made it even harder.

"It feels different – sort of tighter," he reported. "Bring his mate over and then we can test the difference."

So Oli was pulled over to stand beside me, and then every member of the gang gave us both a little rub, and by the time the last one took hold of me I was on the brink of climax.

"I think his looks good," commented the last one, giving it an extra stroke or two. "I like the way it twitches, too… hey, look, his sperm's coming out!"

It was, too, and once again I managed a good couple of proper little spurts. The gang gathered round making noises of excitement and appreciation, and I was aware of Oli looking at me in the same way, too.

"Not bad," commented Alain. "None of us can do that yet… well, I get a bit wet, but I can't make it shoot out like that. How old are you?"

"I'm thirteen."

For some reason that drew a chorus of disbelief.

"You're never only thirteen," said Alain. "You have to be at least sixteen, looking like that – I mean, with the sperm and the hair, and all. And you're taller than most of us, and we're all older than you – except for Ulysse over there: he's only twelve."

Now it was my turn to be surprised: I'd have sworn that none of the gang was a day older than me, and that most of them were no more than ten or eleven.

"It's strange," I agreed. "Perhaps boys grow up faster in my country, or something – see, I come from somewhere a long way away. I'm just visiting this country, and I'll be going back soon."

In fact I could vaguely remember a history teacher telling us that the modern diet meant that children developed faster and grew taller than they had even as little as fifty years ago, and that we were now considerably taller than people had been in the more distant past. And it looked as if that might well be true.

"Really?" said Alain. "And… well, is it better in your country?"

"I suppose so. Some things here are really good, like the way everyone helps each other, and especially the way everyone made me feel welcome when I got here. But I like my place better."

"Well… when you go back… could I come with you?" asked Alain. "Only I'll be sixteen in a few weeks' time, and then I'll be liable for the corvée – and if they find out I've been thieving it won't just be for a few months, either. I've been thinking of running for a while, but I don't know what happens in other countries, and I didn't dare go in case things were worse and not better. But if you come from somewhere decent… And, after all, you do owe me, don't you? I've promised to let you go now we've seen your sperm, and I'll keep that promise, so instead of us all ramming you up the arse you can just go. That's got to be worth something, hasn't it?"

To be totally honest I've wondered for a while what it would feel like to be fucked – I mean, I do find the concept sort of exciting. But if it was going to happen to me I'd want it to happen somewhere quiet and comfortable with someone I really liked – such as Stefan, say – and not through being gang-raped in a smelly cellar by a group of dirty street kids. I saw no harm in taking Alain with us, anyway – after all, if he didn't like it he could always come back. So…

"Okay," I said. "I'm staying on the farm in Irtengarde, about three or four hours' walk north of here. You can't come back with us now – I'm sure Master Clerk wouldn't allow it. But if you can get there on your own you can come and ask for me, and I expect Master Farmer will let you work for a few days until we're ready to leave. Is that all right?"

"Yes, and thanks. I won't come for a few days, I shouldn't think, because I'll want to say goodbye to some people, but I will get there – so you'd better wait for me. All right, you can get dressed and go. I'm sure your mate will be able to keep us entertained on his own."

"Huh? Oh, no, that's not the deal at all," I said. "Oli's my friend – you can't expect me to just leave him with you. He's coming with me."

"Not until we've finished with him, he isn't."

"Then the deal's off."

"Then we'll have to fuck you, too."

I hesitated, but there was no way I could leave Oli here to be raped.

"All right, then," I said. "You can have both of us. But the deal's still off – and if you do come looking for me you'll be in big trouble."

The gang went into a huddle, and while they were whispering Oli said quietly that I should go. "I'll be fine," he said. "There's no reason for both of us to… well, you know."

"Sod that," I said. "You're my friend. There's no way I'm going to walk out on you. When I leave, you're coming with me."

"Look," said Alain, emerging from the huddle, "I really do want to get out of here… but you can't expect us just to let you go. So the deal is, you have to rub all of us until we get excited."

I looked at Oli. "Is that all right with you?" I asked.

"Well, it's a lot better than… you know, the other thing."

"All right, you're on," I agreed. "Who's first?"

They had apparently agreed on youngest first, as Ulysse and one of the other smaller kids threw off their tunics and underwear. Ulysse had to tell Oli how to do it, but I got straight into a rhythm with the other kid and soon had him wriggling about.

It didn't take that long: I got through three of them while Oli dealt with Ulysse and one other, and all of them seemed to enjoy it. It was still really hard to believe that all three of mine were thirteen or fourteen because none had any hair and all of them had smaller ones than mine: probably none of them was more than nine or ten centimetres [3½-4in.] long.

"What about you?" I asked Alain, once the others were all dressed once more.

"Well, see, I want a bit more," he said, stripping off to reveal a penis that might just have been marginally bigger than mine but which was still completely hairless. "I want to be sucked." And he pushed me to his knees and shoved his erection in my face.

"No chance," I said, standing up. "Sorry, Alain but that wasn't in the deal. Besides, you stink – if I put that in my mouth I'll puke all over you."

"Really?" he said, hopping over to the table and picking up his knife.

"Really. Look, there's no need for the knife, we've already got a deal. But… all right, I'll add something to the deal: if you come back to my country and get cleaned up I'll suck it for you."

"Yeah, except once it's just me on my own without the boys you'll tell me to fuck off."

"No, I won't: I keep my word. I swear I'll do it once you've had a bath. And, in any case, there's nothing to stop you bringing some of the boys along with you if you want."

He thought about that. "I think you lot would probably prefer to stay, wouldn't you?" he asked, and got a few nods of the head in response. "See, I'm the only one who's fifteen, so this lot won't have to worry about the corvée for ages yet. And leaving your home town isn't easy – I wouldn't be doing it myself if I was younger. But thanks for the offer, anyway – if any of the boys decide to come I'll bring them with me. And… all right, I'm going to trust you: you swear you'll suck me when we get to your country?"

"I swear it."

"Right. Then you can rub it for me instead."

"It's my turn," Oli butted in. "I've only done two – we should be fair about it."

"I don't mind," said Alain, moving over to where Oli was standing. "As long as you do a good job I don't care which of you does it."

So Oli came and stood close behind him, reached around and started to masturbate him, and from the expression on Alain's face he was doing a pretty good job, too. Within a minute the older boy cried out, jerking, and after he finished he turned to show us that the tip of his penis was indeed wet.

"See?" he said. "I have got some… anyway, that was good, country boy. Thank you."

"My name's Olivier," Oli told him. "And… well, I didn't mind doing it, to be honest."

Obviously not, I thought: Oli had an erection.

"And I'm Jake," I said, pulling my tunic back on. "So now you know who to ask for if you decide to come home with me."

"Right. Now you'd both better finish getting dressed before I change my mind and decide to fuck you anyway."

So we finished dressing and the gang stood aside and let us leave.

"Well, that was interesting," I said, as we headed back to the market square.

"Yes, it was. But it could have been very nasty… thank you, Jake. I'd have understood if you had gone when he told you to, because you're not from our country, after all. But I'm really glad you didn't."

"I told you, you're my friend, and I never abandon my friends."

And he went quiet after that, and he stayed quiet all the way back to the farm. And after supper that evening he asked me to go for a walk with him and so I went. He took me off towards the river until we came to a point that he said was right in the middle of the farm's land, and there he showed me a large chunk of shaped stone that looked a bit like one of the lintel-stones at Stonehenge.

"Do you really not have Quarter Days in your country?" he asked.

"No," I said. "I told you that."

"Then you don't know what this is?"

I shook my head.

"Well," he said, "they told us not to say anything to you about it, but… well, I like you – it's been fun working with you. And after you stuck up for me today…

"See, three of the Quarter Days are just boring, like I said, but the fourth one – the one that's coming up – is different, because it's the one where we ask the gods to bless us with a good harvest. And to honour the gods there has to be a sacrifice. So every summer a child is brought here and sacrificed on this stone…"

"Oh, my God," I breathed, because now I understood all the smiling faces at the first meal and the evasions of the other kids… and Master Farmer had gone out of his way to confirm that we were far from home and that nobody knew where we were. So this year the commune wouldn't have to kill one of its own children to appease the gods: this year they had two outsiders to choose from.

"So it's going to be either me or Stefan?" I asked.

"I don't know. But… well…"

"Right. But… well, I don't know much about this stuff, but I always thought it had to be a girl that got sacrificed? I mean, that's how it is in stories."

"Not here. In our commune it can be a boy or a girl, depending on the drawing of the lots. It was a girl last year, in fact, but as there are more boys in the commune this year we thought it would probably be a boy. The words of the ceremony just talk about the sacrifice of 'a pure child', and there's nothing about it having to be either a girl or a boy."

"And now it looks as if it will definitely be a boy, doesn't it?"

Oli shrugged. "Maybe not," he said. "Now I've told you you'll be able to leave, and once you've gone we'll be back where we were before you came: it could be any of us."

I stared at him. "Then why did you tell me?" I asked. "Before I found out about it you were safe; if Stefan and I go, you'll be in danger again. So why?"

He shrugged. "Like I said, I like you, especially after you protected me today. And it seems unfair to take someone who knows nothing of the custom. And if the gods agree with me, my name will not be the one the lot falls on this year."

"I hope you're right. Thanks, Oli. And now I'd better go and find Stefan."

I ran back to the dormitory and found Stefan getting ready for bed.

"Put your belt back on, Stefi," I said in English. "We're leaving."

I scampered up the ladder to the loft to collect our things… and found the loft empty: our sacks had gone. And before I reached the foot of the ladder again the door opened and Master Clerk came in, and he had two of the adult labourers with him.

"Jake, Stefan," he said, "would you please come with me? Master Farmer wants to see you."

I'd guess that neither of our heroes fancies being a human sacrifice much – but can they talk their way out of it? All will be revealed in the next chapter.

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