David Clarke

The Final Nexus

Chapters 5-8

Chapter Five

Of course, if Stefan had been with me he would doubtless have been properly equipped with a compass, a set of supplies and a collection of maps. Naturally I had none of these things, so I didn't even know in which direction we were heading – the sun was hidden behind cloud in this world, just as it was in the one we had just left. Okay, I could make the excuse that I hadn't expected to be able to head off into a new world, but Stefan would have been properly equipped even if he'd just been going to the local shop.

"Any idea which way we're going?" I asked.

"None at all," said Declan, grinning. "But it doesn't really matter, does it? This world is inhabited, so sooner of later we'll find a road, and then we just have to follow it until we reach a town."

"Yes, but there's another problem," I told him. "There's a probe somewhere in this world, and if it comes anywhere near us it'll pick up our chips, and then they'll send someone after us to take us back. And if Aarnist thinks I was trying to do a bunk he'll lock me up for the rest of the time I'm here. So we need to get as far away from the monument as quickly as we can before the probe comes back."

"I don't think the range of the instruments on those things is all that great," he replied. "But it would still be a good idea to get away from here. Let's hope it isn't too far to a road."

We kept going for about five minutes, and then we found a track. It wasn't much of a track, just a couple of rut marks with a ridge of grass between them, but the ruts were wide enough that Declan's chair was able to fit easily into one of them, and since it hadn't rained for a while the ground was dry, which allowed him to move easily. I walked alongside him in the other rut, wondering how long it would be before the track led to a proper road.

We'd been going for around twenty minutes when the track ran into a forest, and at this point I was starting to have serious doubts about the wisdom of carrying on, given that we had no idea of where we were heading or what type of civilisation this might be: it was one thing to take a chance with a reasonably advanced civilisation that would have some means of getting me across the Channel and so provide me with an opportunity to get back to the Vosges, where there would at least be a chance of finding a portal to take me nearer home; it was another altogether to end up in a primitive society where there would be little or no chance of crossing the Channel. In that sort of world the likelihood was that, sooner or later, the Arvelans would find me, and if that happened I would be in real trouble.

But Declan seemed perfectly happy to keep going, and I didn't really think I could just abandon him here.

"What's the range of your chair?" I asked him.

"Don't worry, the battery won't need recharging for ages. Relax, Jake – this is a real chance to do something interesting for a change. And if Aarnist does try to lock you up when we get back I'll tell him I made you come with me. That should get you off the hook."

Well, I suppose that was fair enough, so I tried to put my worries to one side and kept on walking. It was a bit dark under the trees, but the track ran on clearly enough, and we made steady progress. And eventually the trees began to thin once more and we could see open country ahead of us. But before we were out of the wood we were ambushed: one moment we were walking along in a deserted wood, and the next a couple of boys jumped out onto the track ahead of us. And since the one on the left had a pistol in his hand it seemed like a good idea to stop.

I looked over my shoulder and saw that another pair of boys had stepped onto the track behind us, blocking any retreat, and now I noticed that there were more lurking off the track to the side. They were all dressed in olive shirts and black shorts, and three of them were wearing berets, too, which made me think we'd been captured by a scout troop.

"Who are you, and where are you going?" asked the one with the gun in English – and that was good news, because it would certainly help if I could communicate with them properly.

"My name's Jake and this is Declan," I told him. "We're just out for a walk. We weren't going anywhere in particular."

"And which commune do you come from?"

That was a rather more difficult question. Of course by now I'd been asked this question, in one form or another, in several different worlds, but it was still not easy to answer.

"We live in a town called Sarutaale," I told him. "I'm not completely sure, but I think the English name is Salisbury. It's not far from here, so you probably know the place I mean. It's got a cathedral with a very tall spire."

"What's a cathedral?"

Oh, dear, I thought, this isn't going to be as easy as I'd hoped.

"Well, it's a big church," I explained.

"What is a church?"

"It's a sort of big building where people go to worship God."

"There is no god – everyone knows that. Why would people build a special building for something that doesn't exist?"

"Well, most of them were built several hundred years ago, and back then people did think God existed."

"People were stupid in the past. Now we know a lot better… I didn't know that there were actually buildings used for superstition, though. I suppose they would all have been pulled down long ago, including the tall one you mentioned… so, if it isn't there – and I'm sure if it was I'd know about it – why did you mention it? You said 'It's got a cathedral' – what were you talking about?"

"Well… we come from a different place… it's a bit hard to explain. Do you think you could put the gun away? You don't really need it – we seem to be outnumbered."

"I suppose so." He put his gun away in the holster on his belt, and then he turned to Declan.

"What's the matter with you, then? What's the chair all about – and how do you make it move, come to that?"

"He doesn't speak English," I said, when Declan just stared at him.

"No? Why not? Are you spies?" And he drew his gun again.

"No, we're not spies," I said. "We just come from another place, that's all."

"Where, then?"

"Well… here, only not here… I don't suppose you've ever heard of a parallel interchange, have you?"

He shook his head.

"No, I knew it couldn't be that easy. Well, there are places where it's possible to move from one…" I'd been avoiding the word 'world' up to now because it always seemed to cause disbelief, but I didn't see how I could avoid it much longer.

"… from one world to another," I went on. "Declan and I come from different worlds: in mine this is still England, but I expect our history is rather different from yours. In my world the churches and cathedrals are still there, anyway. But in Declan's world history was completely different: there this is part of a large confederation led by…"

Another word I was sure I had to avoid was 'Atlantis', because that would certainly have them sending for the men in white coats.

"… a country called Arvel," I went on. "And they don't speak English here – instead they speak a sort of Danish, because it was the Danes who ruled here about a thousand years ago."

"And you expect us to believe that, do you?"

I sighed. "Nobody ever does, somehow. But don't you think that if I wanted to lie to you I could have come up with something you'd be more likely to believe? Like saying we were from France, for example?"

He thought about that.

"I think you'd better come and see our director," he said. "He'll know what to do with you."

"Is it far?" I asked.

"Not far, no. Come on."

He put the gun away and headed on down the track in the direction we had been going, and we followed him, the remaining five boys clustering about us to make sure I didn't make a run for it.

"So," said the leader, over his shoulder, "if he can't tell me, maybe you can: what makes his chair move? I'm sure they don't make steam engines that small."

"It's electric," I said. "There's a battery under the seat. If you undo this panel you can see it."

"Go on, then, show us."

So I asked Declan to stop and undid the panel.

"Oh, it's a sort of Volta pile," said one of the boys. "I didn't know you could use them for something like that. That's really clever! Can I have a proper look at it when we get back to the commune?"

I did a quick translation for Declan.

"As long as they don't damage it," he replied. "Not that I think we have a lot of choice at the moment: there are too many for me to be able to shut down all at once. If you fancy trying to take on two of them I can probably keep the others quiet for a few minutes, but… well."

I know what he meant: even if he left me the smallest two I would still probably be unable to deal with them. I remembered the way Godfrey and Peter had flattened me inside ten seconds.

"Sure, as long as you're careful," I told the inquisitive boy. "He won't be able to move about if you damage his chair."

"Don't worry, I'm not stupid. Those things have acid in, and I don't want to get burned. That's why I was surprised to see it being used for moving a chair, because they're a bit unstable usually. What's the casing made of? Is that some sort of ceramic?"

"No, it's plastic."

"What's plastic? Oh, hang on – it's some sort of Belgian Shellac, is it?"

"I don't think so." I was getting out of my depth here – even before my education got interrupted by my various journeys I was no great shakes at science, and I had no idea how to make plastic. All I knew was that in my world it was absolutely everywhere, and the idea of a world without plastic was hard to grasp.

"I'm afraid I'm not a scientist," I went on. "I'm happy to use things without knowing how they work."

"Oh. Well, we'll have a look when we get back to the commune. And I promise I'll be careful! I'm Sam, by the way. What were your names again?"

"Sam!" called the leader, before I could reply. "Don't fraternise! We don't know who they are yet – they might still turn out to be spies!"

"We're not, I promise," I said. "My name's Jake, and that's Declan."

Sam gave me a quick nod but then moved away – obviously he thought it would be sensible not to associate with a possible enemy. I suppose it's hard to blame them – after all, if someone had approached me a couple of years earlier and claimed to be from a different world I would have thought he was cuckoo, too.

The track had been running gently downhill as we had followed it through the wood, and once we emerged into open country again it continued to do so, until finally it reached a river. There was a bridge across the river, wide enough for a car, and at the far side of the bridge the track became a proper street that was paved with those flat stones that, I vaguely remembered from school, are called 'setts'. And a little way along the street I could see buildings, though we turned off before we reached the first one, following a slightly narrower road to a collection of buildings that, from the number of cows and chickens and pigs in the vicinity, I assumed was a farm, even though it didn't look much like the one at Irtengarde where I had briefly worked a couple of years previously. Instead the buildings looked like something that had been lifted out of a nineteenth century city and dropped in the middle of the countryside: a couple of tenement blocks and a warehouse or two, together with a number of smaller outbuildings.

The leader took us into one of the tenements, along a corridor and into what looked very much like a classroom.

"We won't get that chair upstairs," he said to me, "so your friend will have to wait here while I take you up to see the director. You'd better explain that to him so he knows what's happening. Sam, if you want to have a look at the chair, go ahead, but don't damage anything."

I told Declan what was happening and then allowed the leader to shepherd me back along the passage and up a couple of flights of stairs. He paused outside a door at the top of the stairs, took a deep breath, knocked once, opened the door and ushered me inside.

The room proved to be an office, though one that had only Spartan furnishings: a couple of basic bookcases along one wall, a big table with half a dozen upright chairs around it, and at the far end, in front of the window, a large desk. There was a man sitting at the desk, writing something. He glanced up as we came in but then went on with what he was doing, which gave me a chance to have a proper look at him: I guessed he was around fifty, with grey hair cut fairly short and a pair of round metal-framed glasses of the sort that you see people wearing in photos from the nineteen-forties. And he was wearing some sort of brown uniform.

"Well, Jack," he asked, still not looking up. "Who's this?"

"We found him and another boy in the West Wood," the leader reported. "They gave us some story about coming from a different world."

"Really? Where's the other boy, then?"

"He's a cripple. He uses a chair on wheels to get about, but it can't get up the stairs."

"A cripple?" asked the director, and now he did put down his pen and look up. "Now that is interesting. You – where do you come from?"

"I was born in London, but I've lived in several places since," I told him. "At the moment I'm living in Salisbury."

"That doesn't sound too far-fetched."

"No, but my Salisbury isn't the same as yours. I live in a different version of this world."

"Oh, really? How is that possible?"

"There are some scientists in the world I left this morning who have found a way to open a sort of gateway between their world and this one. And my friend and I sort of sneaked through when nobody was looking, just to see what things were like on the other side. We weren't trying to cause trouble or anything."

"I'm sure you weren't. Now why don't you stop lying and tell me the truth?"

I sighed. For once I wished there was a Konjässi present to confirm that I was telling the truth.

"I'm not lying," I said. "If you have a look at my friend's chair you'll see it's powered by something that apparently doesn't exist in this world, and if you get a language expert in he'll be able to confirm that the language my friend speaks doesn't exist in your world either."

"So how are you able to speak English?"

"Because the world I come from is closer to yours – I would guess your history broke away from ours much more recently. Let's see, do you know who Adolf Hitler was?"

"Who?"

"Okay, how about Napoleon?"

"Of course! Everyone knows about him – he was the French revolutionary who conquered Europe."

"But not this country?"

"No – our soldiers and sailors were stronger than his, and he wasn't able to cross the Channel."

"Good, so that narrows it down: your history was the same as ours at least until 1815. Probably if we sat down for an hour or so and asked each other questions we could work out exactly where your world and mine went in different directions."

"I've no idea what you're talking about. Certainly we'll talk some more, but only to find out who you really are and why you're here. But perhaps I should come and look at this chair first."

He came out from behind his desk and ushered us back towards the door, and that allowed me to see that there was a large portrait on either side of it. On the left – appropriately – was a stern-looking man with a huge beard, and I recognised him from my history book at school. On the right was a man I didn't recognise at all.

"I know that one's Karl Marx," I said to the director, "but who's the other one?"

"That's Sir Aubrey," said Jack, sounding shocked. "He's the People's Champion – surely you recognise him?"

"I'm not from round here, remember?" I said. "And why is Karl Marx on your wall?"

"Because he's the man who showed us the way to the future," said the director. "He was the first to show how the working people of our country were being exploited and what to do about it. And of course in the end we did – as I'm sure you know perfectly well."

"I promise you, I don't. So there was a Communist revolution in this country? When did that happen?"

"In 1916. An entire generation of young men were dying to ensure that a few rich people could continue to steal the resources of a lot of other countries, and eventually a few brave men said that enough was enough. The same thing happened in Russia, and then it spread to Germany and France, and eventually the whole of Europe overthrew the parasites who were sucking the lifeblood from the working man. It took a long time to overthrow the last of the tyrants, but there hasn't been a war in Europe since: now every country works in fraternal co-operation with its neighbours."

"Well, that's probably where the history changed, then, because in my world the revolution only happened in Russia – all the other countries kept their ruling class, and my England still has a queen. But… if this is a Communist country, how on earth can Sir Aubrey be tolerated? Surely he's part of the old nobility?"

"Of course not! In the old days if there was a dispute each party would choose a champion from among them, and the champions would fight each other instead of calling on hundreds of young men to fight a war. The person chosen was called a knight and was given the title 'Sir' to show that he was a champion of his people. Sir Aubrey is our champion. He doesn't actually have to fight in single combat any more, of course, but he guides and leads us and makes sure that we are kept safe."

That didn't sound like anything I'd heard before about knighthood, but I supposed I wasn't really an expert. I looked at Sir Aubrey's portrait and realised that it looked familiar: if High Captain Aarnist looked like Reinhard Heydrich as portrayed by Kenneth Branagh, so Sir Aubrey looked disconcertingly like Peter Cushing playing Grand Moff Tarkin in the first Star Wars film – he had the same gaunt, hollow-cheeked look, the same receding grey hair, and the same steely glare. The one major difference was that Sir Aubrey wasn't wearing a military uniform, or a suit of armour, either: he was dressed in a pinstriped suit.

We went back downstairs to the classroom and found Declan sitting in his chair looking out of the window, while Sam and his friends were examining the battery from Declan's chair, which they had disconnected and put on one of the desks.

"Come and look at this, Director," invited Sam as we entered the room. "I've never seen anything like this material. I thought it was a form of Belgian Shellac, but now I can see it properly I'm not so sure. And look at the way the acid is contained – it's a far better design than the usual Volta pile. And it's strong, too – I should think you could use this even on a rough surface without any risk of the acid escaping."

The director examined the battery with interest, apparently taking note of the label on the top, which was of course written in Arvelan. Then he turned his attention to the chair.

"This isn't leather," he said, examining the backrest. "In fact I don't think it's any type of hide. What is it?"

"It's called plastic," I said. "It's the same material as the battery, more or less – plastic comes in lots of different types. Don't you have plastic at all, then?"

"I don't know what that word means. And what does the writing on the… battery? … say?"

"It says 'Lightning 250 – made in Japan'," I told him. "And here it says 'Check level regularly. Top up with distilled water only. Do not overfill'."

"Distilled water?" queried Sam. "Oh, come on – it can't possibly work using water!"

"No, it uses acid, like you said. But when the level drops you're supposed to use distilled water to top it up, not more acid. I don't know why."

"Do you know how long it lasts?"

"Sorry. But if it's like the one in our car it only needs changing every three or four years, I think."

He gaped at me. "This lasts four years? They must cost the earth!"

"No, I don't think so. I don't know what financial system you use here, but I think you can buy a new one for about the cost of a day's labour at basic wages."

The director was by this point looking much less sure of himself than he had been upstairs, so I decided to push a bit harder.

"Why don't you ask Declan some questions?" I suggested. "Then you can hear that it's a different language. I can interpret for you."

"Yes, alright. Ask him why he's in that chair. Did he have an accident?"

Declan wasn't in the mood – he told me he was having problems making any sort of proper contact with the kids here because of the lack of a common language. He could see basic ideas, but he hadn't had Harlan's training in dealing with other cultures and so he was making heavy weather of seeing what the boys were thinking beyond the basics: Sam was enthusiastically interested in the battery, a couple of the others were clearly bored, but that was about all he could tell. And he thought it would be hard for him to control them properly, too: shutting them down would be easy enough, but anything else might be a problem.

"Well, let's hope it doesn't come to that," I replied. "I think they're halfway to believing us, anyway, so if you answer the boss's questions it should just about complete the job. And then, with a bit of luck, they'll let us go."

I turned to the director. "No, it wasn't an accident," I told him. "Declan was born with damage to the left side of his body."

"But how can he contribute to the work of his commune like that?"

"Well, he wouldn't be expected to yet anyway: in my culture children don't start work until they're sixteen. Before that they're usually in full-time education. Hold on and I'll check to see how things are in Declan's world."

I asked the question and relayed the answer: "In his world the minimum age for work is fifteen, but if you're talking about the sort of manual work that gets done on a farm, that's mostly done by slaves anyway, so boys like Declan wouldn't take part in it."

"Slaves? That's barbaric!"

"To be honest, I agree with you – my world abolished slavery a hundred and fifty years ago."

"So did ours. And it could never happen now: one of our most important tenets is that the working man deserves a fair reward for his labour. It's hard to believe that slavery could still exist anywhere. Does he condone it?"

I asked Declan what he thought about slavery and he just shrugged. "It's always existed, and as a system it works. It helps to keep crime to a minimum, and it frees up the rest of the population from the more menial tasks so that they can work in more interesting jobs. I don't think you'd even find too many slaves who are against the system: it's better than being executed or just locked up and forgotten about. Slavery gives them a purpose, and generally slaves are well cared for: slaves work best when they are healthy and decently-fed. Ask the ones at the monument when we get back, and I'm sure they'll tell you the same thing."

"I can tell you from personal experience that not all slaves are well cared for," I said, darkly.

"Yes, I know. But what happened to you wasn't at all typical. Of course some slaves are going to be unlucky and get put to work in difficult or dangerous activities, but for most of them it's a fairly safe and peaceful life in a factory or on a farm. Yes, they have to work hard, but then plenty of free people work hard, too."

I relayed the first part of the answer to the director, who said that it still sounded primitive to him.

"What happens to criminals here, then?" I asked.

"If it's a minor offence, they are imprisoned for a set period and then, once they are released, they are welcomed back to their commune and are able to resume a normal life. If it's for a major offence they are executed, of course."

"And what is a major offence?"

"What you would expect: murder, theft, sabotage, undermining progress, that sort of thing. Anyway, I've heard enough: I doubt if anyone would make up that stuff about slavery, and it does seem clear to me that what you and he are speaking to each other is a proper language, even though it is one I don't know personally.

"This is an unusual situation, and I'm going to have to ask for guidance from a higher level. You'll have to stay with us until I get instructions on what to do with you, but I hope that won't be long, and in the meantime you should consider yourself our guests. I'll ask Jack to show you to the eating hall shortly – it's almost time for the midday meal. You're free to ask him anything you like: we're proud of our commune, and we're ahead of production schedules, too."

He turned and left, and as soon as he was out of the door Sam started on about the battery again.

"This material is amazing!" he said. "It seems really strong – I bet I could even drop it on the floor without damaging it! The early Volta piles were made of glass, and obviously you have to be really careful with that, but even the modern ones that use ceramic have to be handled carefully. If we could find out how to make this stuff it would make a massive difference to everything we do… if your friend doesn't mind I'd like to try to find a way to take a small sample so that we can try to analyse it."

"As long as he's careful and doesn't damage it I don't care," said Declan, when I put the question to him.

"Great!"

Clearly we'd made at least one friend here, because Sam made sure he was next to me when we sat down for the midday meal.

"I hope you're not going to get into trouble for being here," he said to me quietly as we queued up to be served. "I believe you, anyway – about coming from somewhere else, I mean. I'm sure if that substance existed here I'd know about it. You're… Jake, is that right?"

"Right," I confirmed. "Jake Stone – or sometimes Stone Jake, or I suppose in Declan's world I'd be called something like Jake of Myllytalo – I think that's how my home town translates into his language. And you're Sam, aren't you? Sam what?"

He gave me a funny look. "Sam Amesbury Two, of course," he replied. "This is Communal Farm Two of the Amesbury Council Zone. Everyone here is called by the name of his commune. Doesn't that happen where you come from?"

"No – and doesn't that get confusing? What happens if there is more than one Sam in the commune?"

"There can't be, silly! When a new baby is born and comes to his Name Day the commune director gives him or her the next free name in the rota. Nobody else in this commune will be called Sam until I'm dead. This is quite a small commune, so we don't need too many names, but I've heard some very strange names given to people on bigger communes in the cities – after all, if there are two thousand males in the commune you have to have two thousand different names. Actually, I think they cheat a bit and allow a Sam A to exist at the same time as a Sam B. I think if it was me I'd sooner be Sam B than Heliogabalus or Artaxerxes or something weird like that."

"Well, I hope you haven't already got a Jake here, then," I said, "because I don't want my name changed."

"Don't worry, we haven't – at least, I'm fairly sure we haven't. So how old are you?"

"I'm fourteen. So's Declan. What about you?"

"I'm thirteen, but I'm in the class above where I should be, so if you have to stay here we'll probably be studying together. I'd like that – I think you could teach me heaps of new stuff."

The food wasn't bad, though it was a little bland: if you're going to serve mutton you really need a decent sauce to go with it. And boiling potatoes isn't very imaginative, either, although the other vegetables tasted good. I wasn't sure that I really wanted to stay here, though it was definitely a step up from Aarnist's portacabin cell, which is where I'd probably end up if we had to go back. Anyway, I thought if we did have to stay I might offer my services in the kitchen.

After we had eaten Jack and his patrol gave us a guided tour of the farm. It didn't look quite as primitive as the one at Irtengarde, but neither was it a model of gleaming modernity. Still, the animals seemed contented enough and the fields looked well tended, even though there was nothing growing at this time of year.

One thing I did notice was the lack of heavy machinery, other than a large traction-engine in a shed next to the main building, and I thought that was simply a museum-piece.

"Don't you have any tractors?" I asked.

"What's a tractor?"

"It's a machine you use to pull carts, or a plough, or a baling machine, or…" That just about exhausted what I knew about farms. "Well, other machinery."

"We've got several, only in our world they're called 'horses', said Jack.

"What, you mean you're still using horse-drawn wagons and ploughs?"

"And you don't? What do you use, then?"

"Well, tractors… that's a sort of car but with a powerful engine and big wheels designed to be used in fields."

"There's that word 'car' again," said Sam. "You said something about a car before when we were talking about the Volta pile in Declan's chair. What's a car?"

I stared at him. "What year is this?" I asked.

"The Year 94, under the new calendar. If we were still using the old one it would be…" He closed his eyes and did some quick mental arithmetic. "2011, I think."

"And nobody has invented the internal combustion engine?"

"Apparently not, because I've got no idea what you're talking about," said Jack. "What's one of those?"

Apparently I'd been wrong to assume that this world's history departed from mine in 1916 – clearly it was earlier than that. I wasn't exactly sure when the internal combustion engine had been developed – I'd have guessed during the eighteen-seventies. But it was definitely before 1916.

"A car is a vehicle that moves under its own power, like your traction engine but a lot faster, and it uses petrol rather than steam. The internal combustion engine is what makes it go. I don't know the details, but basically it's a machine that burns petrol to drive a number of pistons. In my world they are everywhere – almost every adult has a car – and every farm uses tractors and other petrol-driven machines like combine harvesters to do most of the work."

"I would definitely like to see your world, then," said Sam. "It sounds amazing."

"It isn't as good as all that, because those engines throw out exhaust gases that can cause problems. Right now everyone is trying to find a clean sort of engine that doesn't cause pollution."

"If that's true, I should think the director is going to want to find out as much as you know about it," said Jack. "Something like that would certainly offer us a giant step forwards."

We were heading back towards the main building when a younger boy ran up to us and told Jack that the director wanted to see us by the telegraph room. Jack led us around the side of the building, where we found the director standing outside a small room at the corner of the building.

"Tomorrow you're going on a journey," he told us. "The Supreme Council wants to talk to you. It's a great honour – you might even get to meet Sir Aubrey, and not too many people manage that."

I thought it was an honour I could probably do without: being noticed by important people was likely to be dangerous. I wondered if we'd be able to slip away overnight.

"And where are they?" I asked.

"In London, of course."

"Do we really have to go all that way? Couldn't we just answer their questions on the phone?"

"On the what?"

"On the telephone – you do have telephones?"

"We have a telegraph, but I've never heard of a telephone. What's one of those?"

"It's a way of speaking to someone a long way away," I said. "This is a phone."

I was still carrying both my Elsass chipfone and my English mobile, which I'd picked up at my parents' house. It was pure habit, because of course neither worked in Declan's world. I pulled the mobile, which was a fairly old model of the clam type, from my pocket and handed it to him.

"It won't work here, obviously, but this is the sort of thing everyone carries in my world," I told him. "Everyone has a number. You punch out that number using the keys and it makes the other person's phone ring, and when he opens his phone up you can talk to each other."

"Oh, come on – there aren't even any wires!" said the director.

I turned the phone on. "Look how it's lit up now," I said. "It's got a small battery – a sort of Volta pile – inside. Here, I'll show you."

I turned the phone off, slid the back cover off and indicated the battery.

"That's never a Volta pile!" exclaimed Sam. "How can there be any acid inside that?"

"Well, it's not acid – at least, not a liquid," I said. "I'm not sure exactly how it works, but it does. But before they invented these we used large telephones connected to wires, like your telegraph, except that you can speak through them. They were invented by a man called Bell. He was a Scot, but he worked in America. He lived over a hundred years ago, so I'm surprised you don't have them here."

"We have nothing to do with America," said the director, firmly. "They have a system of government that exploits the masses for the benefit of a small rich elite class. Here in Europe we view them as criminals. So we would have no knowledge of anything that might happen there."

"What, not even if they invent something useful?"

"If that should happen, I have no doubt that someone here would also make the discovery sooner or later. But this is irrelevant. What is important is that you will be travelling to London tomorrow. Jack, I want you to find a place in the dormitories for our guests, and then keep them entertained until supper-time. I'll speak to you in the morning."

The director walked away and the rest of us followed Jack back into the main building. This time he led us through a different door, one that led directly to a staircase.

"You and I can help your friend upstairs," Jack told me. "Sam and Ron can bring the chair up. The rest of you are dismissed until supper time."

So we manoeuvred Declan up the stairs. On the second floor was a dormitory containing around twenty beds. It would be fair to describe it as 'basic' – in fact it looked a lot like the slave dormitories at the Konjässi Academy in Laztaale – but I found that the beds were comfortable enough, and there was ample room in the locker beside it for everything I was carrying.

"What do you do in the evenings round here?" I asked. I strongly suspected that the answer wouldn't be 'watching TV', and I was right.

"Whatever you want," Jack said. "We play cards or board games, or we have a library, or you can go for a walk, though this isn't the best time of year for that. Or we've got a phonograph, though that really needs a new needle. In fact, that's a good point – perhaps you can get us some while you're in London? There aren't any places in Amesbury that sell them."

It's a pity I'd never got around to updating my mobile to one with a decent mp3 player, I thought. I wondered what this lot would make of Dizzee Rascal…

So after supper I got Sam to show me the library – I thought I might want something to read on the journey next day, which I expected to be very long and very slow. I was still only halfway through From a dusty basement, but if it took as long to get to London as I thought it might I'd be finished before we got there, and then I'd need something else to read on the way back.

"What sort of books do you like?" he asked me.

"Got any thrillers? Or perhaps detective stories – I'm sort of collecting those."

I half expected him to say that the only books approved for reading were books on Marxist dialectic or something, but instead I found that there was plenty of fiction on the shelves, too – including what looked like the complete works of Dickens. He went and ferreted about and presented me with something called Street of the Dead, by an author called Jeremy Fielding, of whom I had never heard.

"This is quite good," he told me. "Or, if you want a detective story, you could try this. It's a translation – the original is in German – but I still liked it, even if I don't know any of the places he writes about. Fielding's stories take place south of London, so it's a bit easier to envisage that area."

He handed me a book entitled Straight down the line, by…

"Hey, I know this author," I said. "I've read a couple of his before – except… hang on, he can't possibly be writing in this world, because he was a Na… I mean, he was writing in a completely different world."

"Really? I didn't even know he'd written any others," said Sam, taking the book back from me and opening it to the biographical blurb at the back. "No, I thought not – listen to this: 'Theodor Köninger worked until Year 92 as an administrator for the Bavarian Central Council. He has written a number of non-fiction books about the history of law enforcement in his native Bavaria, but this is his first work of fiction.' And it only came out this year, so I don't think he can have written any others yet. Are you sure it's the same man?"

"Pretty sure. Is the central character a man called Gustav Leine?"

"Yes, that's right… Wow, you mean he exists in your world, too? How is that possible?"

"Not in my world, no, but in another one I've been to. I really have to read this one – and I'll take the other one, too, if I can, just in case the journey is really slow."

"I don't see why not. We're allowed three at a time, and even if you don't live here I expect it would be alright. I'll put them in my name, just to make sure."

He opened a big book on the desk by the door and copied the details into it, while I thought about the ubiquitous Theodor Köninger. I supposed that there was no logical reason why someone couldn't exist in two different worlds – after all, I supposed that my grandparents would probably exist in both my world and Stefan's, because the two worlds split away from each other in their lifetime… though probably, I thought sombrely, they wouldn't have existed in Stefan's world for very long. But if Köninger could exist in different worlds, why shouldn't I? What if there was another Jake living in this world? Could I find him – and what would happen when we met?

Of course in this world it would be almost impossible to find out, since the usual methods of finding someone – Google, Facebook, telephone directories and electoral rolls – wouldn't exist here. I supposed that if I applied to the local Council they might be able to trace him, but I had no way of knowing whether this Jake lived in Edgware, or Abingdon, or somewhere else altogether. But I decided I would definitely have to try next time I found myself in a modern world, especially if it wasn't too different from the one I was born in.

Sam finished filling in the details in the book register and we went back to the dormitory, but before I could start reading Jack asked me if Declan and I fancied a game of cards.

"What do you want to play?" I asked, half expecting him to name some local game I'd never heard of, like 'Support the Proletariat!' or 'Hunt the counter-revolutionary', but instead he suggested playing bridge. I can play bridge a bit, but I'm not very good, and to be honest I think I'd have preferred to learn how to play 'Support the Proletariat!' – in fact I liked the idea of a game called that so much that I decided I'd have to invent it if it didn't already exist. Although to be honest I'm not completely sure of what exactly is meant by 'proletariat' – I'd got the impression it meant 'the workers' or something like that… anyway, then I thought that if I was playing with Declan as my partner I'd be highly unlikely to lose, so I asked him if he played bridge, and when he said no I said we'd teach him.

So Jack and I gave Declan a quick course in how to play bridge. He knew some whist games, so the actual playing part was straightforward, but it took a while to explain the bidding. I didn't bother with all the bidding conventions – come to that, I didn't know half of them myself – but I gave him enough to be going on with. And then we sat down at the table with Jack and Ron and started to play.

I had to translate everyone's bids into Arvelan, of course, but apart from that Declan was able to manage on his own. And of course he could manage extremely well, given that he could read everyone's minds well enough to see what cards they had – since this was largely a visual thing the language problem was a lot less important. I'm sure Jack had expected to win comfortably, and he was so confident that he suggested playing for a halfpenny a point. I tried to protect him from his own ignorance by saying that we didn't have any money, but he simply said he would lend us the money, and that if we lost we could pay him back from our allowance in the weeks ahead, or by some other method if it turned out we weren't going to be staying.

"What sort of method?" I asked.

"Oh, I expect we can think up some way for you to entertain us," he replied, grinning.

Sam was standing behind Jack, and when Jack said that Sam shook his head at me, clearly telling me not to accept. And if I'd been on my own, or playing with any other partner, I'd have heeded his advice. But, even though my own ability was pretty poor, I was certain that Declan could carry the partnership on his own with no trouble. And so I said yes, and Jack's grin got even wider.

Thirty minutes later the grin had disappeared, because by that time we'd already won the first rubber. And although the second rubber took a bit longer, I was never in any real doubt that we would win. Perhaps I should have felt bad about cheating, and for about two minutes I did, until Declan sent me the thought that I should watch what Jack was doing with his hands. And once I saw that Jack was giving signals to his partner I was happy to sit back and let Declan run things, allowing him to send me instructions as to which card to play when we were defending and pretty much allowing him to take complete control when we had won the bidding, even if he was supposed to be dummy.

When Jack finally ran up the white flag at the end of the second rubber we added up the scores and found that we had won by 2,850 points.

"Wow," commented Sam. "At a halfpenny a point, that's five pounds, eighteen shillings and ninepence each. I hope you've both been saving up."

From the looks on their faces it was pretty clear that they hadn't, at least not to that extent.

"So," I asked, "how much have you got?"

"A couple of pounds, I think," said Jack.

"About seventeen and six," mumbled Ron.

"Oh, dear," I said. "What were you saying earlier about 'other methods', Jack?"

He hesitated, but then said, "We'd have made you strip and snog each other, and if you'd lost badly enough we'd have made you toss each other off. That's what we do to all the new kids."

"Why did you tell him that, you moron?" cried Ron.

Jack looked as if he couldn't believe he'd actually said what he had, but I knew why: Declan had been compelling him to tell the truth. Even though there were linguistic barriers I knew Declan was capable of that.

"How much money do you get a week?" I asked Ron.

"We get an allowance of five shillings, but we sometimes get a bit more if we do extra work."

"Then give us ten shillings each," I said. "That'll be plenty. But I think you ought to use the 'other method', too – it would be a pity if everyone missed out on the entertainment."

Neither of them looked very enthusiastic, but after a few seconds Jack shrugged.

"Come on, then, Ron," he said. "After all, we've made enough other people do this." And he started to undo his shirt.

"Yes, but…" protested Ron. But there was obviously no way out, and so in the end he started to undress, too.

Once they were both naked I told them to stand in the middle of the room and kiss each other. It was obvious that neither really wanted to do this because neither had an erection. Jack was fifteen and quite well-equipped – well, he was bigger than me, anyway; Ron was fourteen and a bit smaller than me, with very little hair. But when they actually started to kiss – and I made them do it properly, with their arms around each other – Ron's body betrayed him and he started to get an erection. He gave a strangled gasp, broke free and fled to the washroom at the end of the dormitory, pursued by laughter.

"Ron thinks Jack's sexy!" commented Sam, once he managed to stop laughing.

"I doubt it," said Jack. "It just happens – and before you lot laugh too much, I bet if I paired you off and made you do it, at least half of you would go stiff. When you're kissing someone your body gets confused sometimes."

"It didn't happen to you, though," pointed out Sam.

"No, but then Ron is such an ugly sod it would take more than that to confuse my body. There's no way it could think he's a girl. Anyway, Jake, can I get dressed, or are you really going to make us… you know?"

The rest of the boys started clamouring for the full penalty to be applied, but I thought it might be better not to annoy Jack too much: he was the senior boy in the dormitory, and if we were going to be stuck here for a while it would be better to have him on my side than bearing a grudge, so I told him to get dressed, to groans of disappointment.

"He wouldn't have let you off," said Sam.

"Maybe not, but I'm not him."

Jack got dressed, someone went and told Ron it was safe to come out and he returned to the dormitory and got dressed too, though not without a certain amount of mockery. And then I settled down with Straight down the line to find out how similar this might be to the books Köninger had written in the other world. The dormitory was well-lit with gas lights, which had surprised me a bit, but apparently there was a small gasworks in Amesbury that supplied gas for lighting for the whole commune.

By the end of the first chapter it was clear that this was the same writer: the style was the same and Detective Leine had the same distrust of his superiors, the same dislike of paperwork and even the same hat, a battered, stained grey trilby. The only difference was that he was now working for the Bureau of State Security instead of the Gestapo, but there didn't seem to be a lot of difference between the two organisations.

By the time Jack told us all to get ready for bed I had read fifty pages, which was enough to demonstrate that there was in fact virtually no difference between the Marxist police in this story and the Nazi police in the other two. And that made the proposed journey to London even less attractive: I'd already seen what happened when powerful people found out about portal technology, and I didn't think the Central Council would be able to resist the lure of all that advanced technology available beyond the portals. Of course, if it simply led to the Marxists and the Arvelans knocking lumps off each other it wouldn't worry me at all, but I didn't think it would work out like that: it was far more likely that once people started fighting over portals other worlds would get drawn in or attacked – including mine.

So when Jack put the lights out I didn't go to sleep straight away: first I set the alarm on my wristwatch for two o'clock, since I was fairly sure the entire commune would be asleep by then. If I could get Declan and his chair downstairs on my own without waking anyone up, that should give us at least three hours before anyone discovered that we had gone, and that should give us plenty of time to get back to Stonehenge and out through another portal – or at the very worst, if none of the other portals was open, most of the way back to the children's home. With any luck we wouldn't even have been missed, and even if we had I thought we could talk our way out of it if we were clearly still in the world I was meant to be in. Yes, it was a bit of a risk, but it would be a lot less dangerous than what might happen to us in London.

So when the alarm went off at two o'clock I got quietly out of bed and got dressed. I thought it would be best to have a quick scout around before I woke Declan up, and so I tiptoed to the dormitory door…

…and found it locked. There was no sign of a key, and this was a big solid door that couldn't be forced without waking up everyone in the building. I swore under my breath and cursed myself for not taking lessons in lock-picking from Tibor or Radu.

I checked around the room as best I could in the dark but, as I had thought, there was no other way out. The windows were too small to offer a way out even for me, let alone for Declan and his chair. So it looked as if we were stuck here.

So Jake is looking at an uncertain future yet again. By now you'd think he'd be used to that. In the next chapter he and Declan will be travelling to London, though the journey turns out to be a bit different from what Jake was expecting…

Chapter Six

I woke up for the second time that morning at the same time as everyone else, and by the time I'd got washed and dressed and had helped Declan to do the same the door to the staircase was wide open once more. Sam and Ron carried Declan's chair back down to ground level while Jack and I carried Declan, and then we all went to the eating-hall for breakfast. As this was a farm I wasn't particularly surprised to see that eggs, bacon and sausages were on the menu, along with fresh milk that I suspected had still been inside a cow an hour or so earlier. I suppose strictly I should have avoided the meat, but, as I've mentioned before, we never observed the religious diet at home, and I thought it would be a good idea to build up my strength a bit, just in case I ended up having to run later in the day.

While we were eating the director appeared, spoke quietly to Jack for a few seconds and then came and sat next to me.

"I can't come with you myself," he said, "but I've arranged for a couple of my comrades, people who know London a bit, to accompany you. And I've asked Jack to find a couple of boys – preferably ones who can afford to miss a day's schooling – to come along as well, to help you with the chair and basically keep you company."

"Thanks," I said. "Except… schooling? Isn't it Sunday today?"

"Sunday? What…. Ah, that's the old calendar, of course. We don't have those days any more. The calendar was reorganised after the revolution. Now we work for four days and then have a rest day – the five days together are called a quinnick. There are six quinnicks in a month. Anyway, yesterday was the rest day, so today it's school as usual for most of the children here.

"So, once you've finished eating take your friend and wait outside the main entrance. Everyone else will meet you there."

So after breakfast Declan and I went to the main entrance of the building, and a few minutes later Sam and Ron came and joined us. Sam in particular looked very happy.

"I've never been to London," he told me. "In fact I've never been further away than Southampton, so this is going to be really interesting."

"I don't suppose the journey will be, though," I replied. "I hope you've brought something to read, because I should think it's going to take quite a long time."

And when two men and a woman came to join us five minutes later my expectations sank even further, because one of the men was driving a wagon that looked like something out of a John Wayne film, except that in John Wayne's day the horses were probably younger and fitter than the two pulling this wagon looked. In fact they looked almost old enough to have been John Wayne's co-stars in Stagecoach.

The two men hoisted Declan's chair into the wagon while Sam, Ron and I somehow managed to get Declan himself aboard without dropping him. There was a bench running lengthwise along each side of the wagon, so the four of us sat down while the adults got onto the driver's bench and coaxed the ancient animals into a semblance of life. And as we ambled out of the farm I found myself thinking that we'd be lucky to make Andover by nightfall, never mind London.

But once we were out of the farm the horses settled into a steady walk, and while they weren't going to break any speed records we were at least moving steadily along, rather faster than I would have been able to move on foot. And the scenery was nice, too: we had the river on our right, and once the town fell away behind us we were in green countryside. It wasn't all that warm, of course: this was the beginning of January, after all. But the sun was shining, and Declan and I had left home dressed for winter, so we were warm enough. I wasn't so sure about Sam and Ron, because they were wearing their best not-quite Boy Scout uniforms, and that included shorts, but neither of them complained. At least they both had warm-looking jackets over their olive shirts and red neckerchiefs. And they were both wearing berets, too, which probably helped to keep their heads warm.

After about ten minutes we left the river and went up a steady hill, but the horses kept moving, so at least it looked as if we weren't going to have to get out and push every time we came to a slight incline. I had no idea of local geography: I assumed we'd be following the route of the modern A303 and M3, which would take us past Andover and then via Basingstoke and Camberley to the south-west borders of London. If I read all the way there I expected to finish all three of my books before we got there, which would leave me nothing to read on the way back, so I decided to ration myself: I wouldn't start reading until we'd been travelling for an hour. But well before an hour had gone by we came into another small town, and at the far side of it the wagon came to a stop outside what was clearly a railway station.

I suppose I was so used to travelling on electric trains, or diesels, that I'd simply forgotten that the railways predated both: steam power had been around for nearly two hundred years. In any event, we were clearly going to get to London rather faster than I had anticipated.

The ticket office looked like the sort of thing you find on preserved railways – no machines of any sort, just a hatch in the wall with a man behind it selling tickets. The man who had been driving the wagon didn't come into the station – apparently it was his job to take the wagon back to the farm – and while the remaining man and the woman were sorting out the tickets we went through onto the platform.

The station was called Porton, and it wasn't very big – just the two platforms, which again looked like something out of a film, mainly due to the complete absence of any sort of plastic. The benches were wooden, and the clock above the platform was a great big solid-looking thing that probably had to be wound up by hand every evening. And the train, when it arrived fifteen minutes later, was also a museum piece: the engine was a large (4-6-0, Sam told me, though I've never been particularly interested in steam engines), green-painted affair, belching smoke and steam at us as it went past, and the carriages were old-fashioned even by the behind-the-times standard of the old manual-door ones only recently withdrawn in my own world. They were divided into compartments of six seats each, but because Declan's chair took up a bit of room the two adults decided to travel in the next compartment, leaving the four of us alone and unsupervised. And, as there was no corridor, we'd obviously have to stay that way, between stations at least.

It turned out that Ron hadn't been to London before either, so he was looking forward to it as much as Sam was, and their excitement was infectious. Declan hadn't done a lot of travelling, come to that, and while I'd done rather more than I wanted over the past year and a half, even I had to admit that there was something about travelling in a steam train – whether it was the smell or the way the smoke drifted past the window I don't know, but it was still sort of fun. And, after all, this was a lot more comfortable than the wagon, and a great deal warmer, too – there was some sort of heating system in the carriage, and it worked so well that before the train even reached the next station we had all taken our jackets off.

And apparently Ron still felt too hot, because at that point he pulled a pack of cards from his pocket and challenged us to a game, saying that he wanted a chance to get Declan and me back for what had happened to him the previous evening.

"I want to make you two strip," he told us, shuffling his cards vigorously. "I think it would be funny to make you undress on the train – if you're really unlucky you'll have to do it just as we get to a big station, where there'll be lots of people to laugh at you."

"I seem to remember it was you who got laughed at last night," I pointed out. "How do you know that won't happen again?"

"That was just luck! You just got a lot of fluky cards, that's all. It won't happen again. So, are you up for it, or are you chicken?"

"Oh, we're definitely not chicken," I said. "But I like Sam and I don't want to see you drag him down with you, so why don't we play something that doesn't use partners?"

I was giving Declan a rapid translation as I went along, and he of course had no objection at all to playing card games – he could be certain that he wasn't going to lose whatever happened, unless it was a game of absolute chance, like the one we'd played with Godfrey, Peter and the twins. And when Ron suggested poker Declan agreed in a flash.

"Good," said Ron. "I'm looking forward to seeing how you two like finding yourselves with no clothes on in a public place."

"How are we going to play?" I asked. "Are we going to strip as we go – you know, lowest hand has to take something off after each round? Only that might be a bit risky – what would happen if we arrived in Basingstoke with all four of us in our underwear and someone tried to get in our compartment? I think we'd probably get into a lot of trouble."

"Well… perhaps you're right," he conceded. "Let's just keep the score, and the first person to lose ten times has to strip. And then we'll count up how many lives the others have got left – so if you've lost seven times you've got three lives left – and the loser has to stay bare for that number of minutes."

Sam and I agreed to that, and I translated it into Arvelan for Declan's benefit, adding that I thought that it would be nice if Sam and I didn't lose too often.

"Oh, no," said Declan, grinning at me. "We're going to play this game straight, with no cheating. Well, not too much cheating, anyway!"

Suddenly I felt a lot less confident: would Declan hang me out to dry? I knew he'd enjoyed making me do forfeits back at the Home… But it was too late to back out now, because Ron had already put the cards on the seat between himself and Declan and was inviting us to cut for deal.

I'd discovered the previous evening that Declan could actually hold his cards in his left hand, so he was able to manage things on his own – in fact he managed well enough that he won the first three hands, which was more than enough to make me suspicious, especially since I lost two of them. But when I glared at him he just smiled innocently at me – at least, I think it was meant to look innocent…

The game went on, and by the time we'd played ten hands I was starting to think that maybe I was misjudging Declan, because by then the losses had evened themselves out. The train had stopped at a couple of stations, but nobody had come near our compartment and we were able to play on in peace. Even when we got to Andover there were hardly any travellers waiting on the platform, and I was starting to think that we could probably have played the traditional way after all. All the same, I wasn't going to suggest it, but Ron had obviously come to the same conclusion, because he did, and when the rest of us expressed doubts he called us a bunch of chickens.

"Don't worry," said Declan when I translated this for him. "I'm sure I can persuade anyone who tries to get in here to use a different compartment instead."

I wasn't entirely convinced, but on the other hand I supposed it would be sort of exciting and so I allowed myself to be persuaded.

"Great!" exclaimed Ron. "Oh, now you're going to pay!"

We removed enough items – shoes and socks to start with – to cover the number of times we had lost so far and then started playing again. And still the game was fairly even, and I couldn't tell if Declan was manipulating things or not – I was fairly sure that he could 'persuade' me to break up a winning hand if he wanted to, but if he did that he was very skilful about it, because I was completely unaware of it.

Two more stations went by, and now it was starting to get interesting: Sam and I had only a couple of items each left, while Declan had three and Ron had four – and he was making a lot of noise about it, too, threatening to push the loser out onto the platform at the next station after they lost. But Sam was obviously enjoying the game, too, even though he was in danger of losing, and I wondered if Declan was manipulating emotions again as he had back at the Home.

"Only a little," he said, surprising me and at the same time reminding me that he could read my thoughts effortlessly. "Sam's a little worried about being caught, so I'm suppressing that a bit. But that's all – they're genuinely having fun."

Sam lost again, and then I lost again, and now Ron was threatening to push both of us out of the train at the next station. I was fairly sure he wouldn't, and equally sure that Declan wouldn't let him even if he tried, but it's hard to think positively when you're only wearing a pair of boxer shorts. Actually my boxers had both Sam and Ron staring: Sam was wearing a pair of white briefs, and I supposed that coloured boxer shorts were unknown in their world.

And then Ron lost twice in a row, reducing him to his shorts and briefs, and at that point the taunting dried up.

"Do you want to stop?" I asked him.

"Of course not! I want to see you standing on a station platform in the nude, with nowhere to hide – and probably I'll push Sam out with you, so you can both fight over one pair of underpants. Whose deal is it?"

Sam picked up the cards, shuffled and passed them to me to cut. This was where I hoped Declan would do something to make sure I didn't lose. He himself still had three things on, so it looked as though he wasn't going to lose, but I was getting nervous. But he just sat there looking inscrutable, and when I looked at my cards I realised I was on my own here: I was looking at a handful of rubbish.

"Five," I said to Sam, who grinned at me and gave me five new cards, and at least these included a pair of jacks – which turned out to be good enough to beat Sam's pair of eights.

"Hard luck, Sam," said Ron. "But I really want a chance to get even with Jake and Declan, so can we keep playing until two more people have lost?"

"I don't mind," I agreed. "Dec?"

Declan apparently didn't mind either.

"What about me?" asked Sam. "Can I keep my pants on until two more people lose?"

"No, I don't think so," said Ron. "Take them off. And you have to keep playing, too, and every time you lose from now on it'll be an extra five minutes before we let you get dressed again."

Sam didn't seem too worried: I suppose he knew Ron well enough to realise that there was no chance of him really being pushed out of the train. So he slipped his briefs off without argument, even though he turned out to have an erection. It wasn't a bad size, either, considering that he still had no hair: it was probably around eleven centimetres long (or call it four and a half inches, since this society used the old imperial measurements) and it looked very hard.

"Sammy's all excited," commented Ron. "I wonder which of you two he fancies?"

"How do you know it isn't you?" I asked.

"Oh, it isn't me. I can tell it's one of you two… perhaps we'll find out in a moment. It's Declan's deal, I think."

Declan could deal, albeit a little slowly, though one of us had to shuffle for him. So I did that and he dealt me yet another pile of rubbish, except that this time I didn't even manage to muster a pair when I took five new cards. At the end of the hand I sighed and pulled my boxers off, and immediately I started to get hard, too.

"Nice one," commented Ron. "And from the way he's staring, I think you're the one Sam fancies. What do you reckon, Sam?"

"It's big, isn't it?" said Sam, who seemed unable to tear his eyes away. "And you've got lots of hair, too. Why does the end look like that, though?"

"It was done when I was a baby," I said. "Some families do that in my world."

I could have explained why, of course, but bearing in mind that this world was not merely atheistic but had apparently demolished all the places of worship as well, I thought it might be safer not to talk about religion. Maybe that's a bit cowardly, but right then it seemed sensible.

"You can admire it later, Sammy," said Ron, shuffling the cards. This time Declan lost, which brought him level with Ron again. I helped him take his shirt off, and the other two stared at his wasted left arm.

"It's been like that since I was born, and no, it doesn't hurt," Declan told them through me. "It's a damned nuisance, but I'm used to it by now."

I lost the next hand, and Ron was quick to tell me that it would mean an extra five minutes before I could get dressed again. Then Sam lost the next one, and Ron changed his mind.

"We'll let you both off the extra time if you kiss each other, like I had to do with Jack," he offered.

"Well…" I began, but Sam quickly said, "Yes, all right!" and that decided it. Ron made us stand up, but there was a six-inch height difference, which, combined with the swaying of the train, would have made it awkward for us, and so instead he told me to lie down on the seat and let Sam lie on top of me. And that worked a lot better.

For a couple of seconds I held back, thinking of Stefan: kissing other boys when naked was something I didn't think I ought to be doing. But then Sam's lips met mine and I stopped worrying about it, because it felt sensational. I don't know whether Declan was doing anything to influence the way I was feeling or not, but having Sam's warm body pressing against mine felt amazing. So did the way his erection was rubbing against my body…

I put my arms around him and held him, and for a minute or so everything else melted away: I was no longer aware of Ron and Declan watching us, or of the movement of the carriage, or anything else, just of Sam's closeness and warmth. And I would probably have remained in that blissful state indefinitely if Declan hadn't leaned across the aisle and shaken my shoulder.

"I don't want to worry you," he said, "but we seem to be coming into quite a big town."

The look on Sam's face as he lifted his face away from mine suggested that he had been as lost in the experience as I had been myself: he looked as if he had just been woken up from a deep sleep.

"I don't think we should let them get dressed," said Ron, grinning at me over Sam's shoulder. "After all, we haven't finished the game yet. Go on, Jake, ask Declan if he agrees with me – and don't change the question!"

So I relayed the question, and Declan, the bastard, actually thought about it for a few seconds. But then he said that he thought we should put our trousers back on – "I might be able to stop anyone getting in the compartment," he went on, "but it would probably be sensible to cover up just in case I can't."

To be fair to Ron, he didn't argue, though he did say that we could only have our trousers and nothing else, not even our underwear. So we quickly pulled our trousers on, got the rest of our clothes out of sight in our bags and then looked out of the window as the train drew into Basingstoke station. I was still nervous, because although we were just about decent we were all still bare-chested and barefoot, and that would almost certainly have provoked questions if anyone had got in with us.

We sat in the station for a nerve-racking five minutes. At one point a man did seem to heading our way, but he stopped a couple of metres short and veered off to one side, having presumably decided – or been persuaded by Declan – to choose a different compartment instead. After that nobody came close, but I was still greatly relieved when the train started moving again.

"Right, now you can take them off again," said Ron. "You don't have to keep kissing –unless you lose again, of course…. It's Declan's deal, I think."

Sam and I had lost our erections while we were sitting nervously in the station, but Sam's started to return as soon as he took his shorts off, and of course that got mine interested again. I shuffled for Declan and waited for him to deal, and of course now that it was too late he dealt me three aces. In fact Ron lost that hand, and the one after, and that was effectively the end of the game.

"You're so lucky," said Ron to Declan as he removed his briefs. "But I'm still going to get you back: we'll play again on the way home. Anyway, I suppose we might as well get dressed now."

He picked up his briefs again, but Declan stopped him.

"You shouldn't get away with losing that easily," he said. "I think you three should play one more hand. The winner can get dressed, but the other two have to stay naked until we've stopped at three more stations."

I translated that, and Ron didn't look too enthusiastic.

"Chicken!" I added, and that did the trick.

"Right," he said, "but if you two lose you'll have to do some more kissing. After all, you both lost before I did."

So we played another hand, which Ron won comprehensively, and as soon as he was dressed he got Sam to lie down on top of me again. And once again the touch of his lips on mine drove everything else out of my head, and the next thing I knew was Ron tapping me on the shoulder and telling me to wake up.

""We're in another town," he said. "It might even be London, so I suppose you'd better get dressed."

He helped Sam to sit up, and I managed to stand up and get my bag down from the luggage rack. The first thing I put on was my boxers, and the second was my watch, which seemed to have gone haywire.

"What time is it?" I asked Ron.

"Half past ten. You two were lying there for over half an hour. We didn't want to disturb you because you looked so sweet."

I stared at him. I couldn't remember anything about the last half hour at all, just that it had felt warm and relaxing and exciting at the same time, and that it had been amazing. Ron was trying to look superior, but there was another expression that was slipping through…

"He's jealous," Declan told me. "He was feeling something of what you two were feeling, and he wishes he could feel like that, too. So do I, if I'm honest, because that was pretty deep. All right, I did help it along a little, but I don't think I really needed to. It was fairly clear before we even started playing that Sam likes you a lot, and now I think he's in love with you. So it's a good thing you like him too, isn't it?"

"Yes, but… bloody hell, Dec, I'm spoken for!"

"Not at the moment, you're not: your Stefan isn't even in the same world as you. Besides, you were happy to share my bed, so I know you're not strict about only having one partner at a time anyway. And quite right, too – that's a stupid attitude.

"Look, you know you're not going to stay in this world indefinitely: you're only here for as long as it takes to find a way back to the world you belong in. So if someone's prepared to offer you friendship while you're here, why not take it? I would."

I thought about that as I got dressed. It was true that virtually all of the worlds I'd been in – certainly the ones I'd liked most – seemed not to set great store on exclusive relationships, and it was also true that it might be a long time before I found my way back to Stefan. And it was also the case that I'd got physical with other boys since Stefan and I got together: Alain, the Grey boys Haless and Issin, Harlan, Terry (and Caradoc) – and of course I'd played sex games with Declan and the other boys at the Home in Sarutaale. But in every case that had just been sex… well, perhaps it was a bit deeper than that with Harlan, but even so…

But this felt different, somehow. Although we'd been naked, this hadn't been about sex, but about closeness. There was no denying that I liked Sam – his enthusiasm, his cheerful attitude, his inquisitiveness, and his intelligence were all attractive, and physically he was really good-looking: he had eyes of the same sort of green as Nicky and Hansi, and I've always found eyes of that colour attractive. His hair was a nondescript mid-brown and cut fairly short, like that of all of the boys I had met in this world, but he had a little splash of freckles across his nose (I also like freckles) and a stunning smile, and all in all I found it amazing that such a perfect boy could be interested in me…

The train stopped as I was tying my shoelaces, and when I looked out of the window I found that this was Kingston, so we still had a while to go before we were in central London. I looked at Sam and he smiled at me, not seeming remotely embarrassed about what had happened. And at that point I decided that Declan was right: I wasn't going to be in this world for very long, and it would be stupid to push Sam away. And so I returned the smile, and he scooted closer to me, and I put an arm around his shoulders and gave him a quick hug.

The train started moving again, and about half an hour later we reached Waterloo. By then I'd discovered that this version of London was substantially different from mine: the buildings alongside the tracks were mostly drab, dirty-looking tenements, interspersed with warehouses and occasional factories. And when we emerged from the station it looked even less like my world, because there were no cars, just large numbers of horse-drawn vehicles. In theory the lack of cars ought to have made the air clearer, but it wasn't: instead there was a pall of smoke over everything, and I realised that virtually every building was probably using coal for heating – at least, every building seemed to have chimneys that were contributing to the general haze.

Joe and Karen, our two adult escorts, led us out of the station. Declan's chair was getting some funny looks, and after we had gone a hundred yards or so Joe suggested that I should push the chair, rather than letting it move under its own power, since that would look rather less strange. So I took up position behind the chair and pushed it, though for some reason that didn't entirely stop the peculiar glances of passers-by.

After a bit we turned onto Westminster Bridge, and here at least was something that looked familiar: the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben looked exactly the same as in my world. But the smoky atmosphere and the horse-drawn vehicles made it feel more like being inside a Sherlock Holmes story. The only jarring note was that a large percentage of the passers-by were wearing the same near-military jackets and trousers that Joe was.

At the far side of the bridge we kept going for a short distance and then turned right into a cul-de-sac, at the end of which was a monolithic office block. We had to carry Declan and his chair up the flight of stairs that led to the entrance – whoever had designed this place hadn't been told about wheelchair ramps – though once we were inside the building and had passed the security desk just inside the entrance we discovered that things were a little easier: at least someone in this world had got around to inventing the lift. We travelled up to the tenth floor, where we were met by a couple of armed guards who escorted us along a corridor and into a waiting room.

After about half an hour a woman pushed a trolley into the room and served us all with sandwiches (a very basic cheese or a very basic ham – they might have invented the lift, but apparently nobody had invented a decent sandwich) and a cup of tea served from a teapot and using a tea-strainer the way my granny did it – granny didn't believe in teabags, and neither, apparently, did the Marxist civil service. Though, to be fair, the tea tasted quite good.

Then we waited some more. We were just starting to wonder if anyone would be offended if we got the cards out again when a guard came in and asked Joe to go with him, so at least it looked as if someone was aware that we had arrived. And fifteen minutes later the same guard came back and asked the rest of us to follow him.

He took us down a corridor and into a large conference room, most of which was taken up by a long oval table with nineteen chairs around it, though not all of them were occupied: twelve of the chairs were in use, holding nine men and three women, all of whom were wearing some sort of non-dress military uniform. And I recognised the one at the head of the table: Sir Aubrey, who today looked even more like Grand Moff Tarkin than he had in his portrait, because now he was also in uniform. The guard directed us to a set of chairs beyond the far end of the table, one of which was already occupied by Joe, and told us to sit down.

Sir Aubrey himself said nothing, leaving it to an elderly woman in glasses to conduct the interview.

"Good afternoon," she began. "I am Edith Leamington Five, Commissar for Science and Technology. Would you introduce yourselves, please?"

I let Karen, Ron and Sam go first, and then I said, "I'm Jake Stone of Harrow…" I thought my place of birth would cause less eyebrow-raising than the main alternative, which would have been Milhüsa. "And this is Declan of Sarutaale. I'm afraid he can't speak English."

"And why is he in that chair? Was it the result of an accident?"

"No, he was born disabled," I told her.

For some reason that caused a murmuring around the table, though Commissar Edith ignored it and went on, "We understand that you claim to come from a different world – a claim, I should say, that the Director of Amesbury Two gives some credence to. If he did not you would not be here. So we'd like you to tell us what brought you here and where you came into our world."

"She doesn't believe it," said Declan quietly. "Not do most of the others. They think we're wasting their time."

"Do you have a map of the area west of Amesbury?" I asked. "I don't think I'll be able to show you exactly where we arrived, but I can probably get fairly close."

The man on Sir Aubrey's left got up and left the room, presumably to look for a map. I decided to carry on.

"Some scientists in Declan's world have been doing research into parallel interchanges," I explained. "That's a place where it's possible to move from one version of reality, or of history if you prefer, to another. And apparently they cracked it, because first they took me from my world into theirs, and then later, when they opened another portal into this world, Declan and I managed to sneak through when they weren't looking. Really I want to be able to get back to my own world, but it is interesting to see someone else's world – and obviously Declan has never had a chance to see a different world before…"

"Obviously," she said. "Is there any way you can substantiate this improbable claim?"

"I expect the director told you about Declan's chair," I said. "It's mostly made of a substance that doesn't exist in this world."

I helped Declan to move to one of the spare chairs alongside mine and then pushed the wheelchair over to the conference table.

"This is called plastic," I said to the Commissar. "It comes in different types – soft, like the cushion and the back of the chair, and hard, like the handles at the back and the little joystick here on the right armrest that Declan uses to control it. See for yourself. And it's powered by a battery – Sam, why don't you tell them about that?"

Until now Sam had been sitting quietly, trying not to be noticed: normally he never met anyone important. But now his enthusiasm overruled his nerves, and he quickly opened the panel at the back of the chair, disconnected the battery and put it on the table.

"This is a Volta pile," he said. "But it's far stronger than the usual type – and look how well the top fits on! You could use this almost anywhere without it breaking or spilling the acid."

Sir Aubrey got up and came to have a look, and at that the rest of them followed suit. I stepped back out of the way and let Sam show them the battery and explain about it only needing distilled water for top-ups.

"And apparently these last for years!" he ended. "Isn't it amazing?"

"Yes, I should say that it is," agreed Sir Aubrey, thoughtfully. "And clearly this 'plastic' has a great many possibilities, too…. You'd better tell us a bit more about the place where this chair was made, I think. Do the people there have a large army?"

Apparently Sir Aubrey had moved straight through acceptance of the existence of another world into wondering if it could be successfully invaded.

"Big enough, I think," I said. "And of course their military technology is quite advanced, too. And they control the portal, so they could close it at any time."

"Then we'll just have to ask our own scientists to find a way to open one. After all, if someone else can do it, so can we."

Just like your scientists have already invented the telephone, the internal combustion engine and the electric train, I thought.

"Or perhaps we could persuade them to sell it to us," he went on.

"Well, perhaps," I said, "but there's going to be a language problem. Nobody in that world can speak English. I've had to learn the local language, and that isn't easy – as you can see, it doesn't even use the same alphabet as we do." And I indicated the label on top of the battery.

"I see. Then perhaps the best thing to do would be to get our scientists to take that apart, analyse its composition and work out how to make it themselves," he said, looking at the battery. "And they could do the same thing with the different types on the chair."

"Yes, but… I mean, Declan needs his chair – he can't move without it," I protested.

"Well, I suppose we could just take samples. But you can push the chair, so he won't need the Volta pile. Ah, here's the map you wanted…"

His colleague had just returned with a number of maps, one of which covered the area around Amesbury. I had no intention of telling them where we had really come through, of course: at the moment it looked as if the only way out of this world would be back through the same portal, and I didn't want to find our access to it blocked by either the Marxist army or a mob of political negotiators. So instead I traced a path back past Stonehenge and then followed a smaller path a couple of miles south and west of the monument.

"It was somewhere round here," I said, indicating a piece of woodland. "I'm afraid I can't be more exact, but it was somewhere around that point. We'd been walking for about an hour and a quarter when Sam and his friends captured us, and that was in this wood here – wasn't it, Sam?"

Sam checked the map and confirmed that this was indeed the West Wood, where we had first met.

"All right," said Sir Aubrey. "Now I'd like you and your friends to go back to the waiting room while we discuss what's to be done about this."

So we went back to the waiting room – and this time Joe came with us – and sat about for the best part of an hour, before one of the guards came and summoned Joe back on his own. And while he was gone a couple of studious-looking types came in and cut some tiny samples from various parts of Declan's chair. They were careful about it, only taking small amounts, but they were thorough, too, making sure they had a sample of each different type of plastic.

Joe came back just as they were finishing up. He waited until they had gone and then told us that the council had no more questions for us at the moment, and that we could go back to Amesbury.

"They said that if they have any urgent questions they'll send a telegram, but that one or more of them will probably come out to visit us and to look for the place where you crossed over in a week or so," he went on. "I just have to go back for five minutes or so to collect a despatch they're writing now for our director. Get your things together so you're ready to leave as soon as I get back."

"I don't like the feel of this," Declan said quietly, once Joe had gone. "It's not just the way they completely ignored me, either: there was a lot of hostility around that table."

"Really?" I said. "Are you sure? They seemed all right to me."

"It wasn't you they were hostile to. It's not because I'm a foreigner, because otherwise they would have been the same with you, but they weren't – at least, I don't think so. Perhaps they just don't feel comfortable around people in wheelchairs. I know there are people like that…"

"I'd trust your feelings over mine any day," I said. "Okay then, perhaps it's time we headed back to your world."

"How? I'm immobilised now that they've pinched my battery, unless you're thinking of pushing me all the way."

"I will if I have to, but we can get a bit closer before I start, I think. If we manage to keep the adults out of our compartment on the way back it'll be easy enough: all you have to do is shut Sam and Ron down – as long as you can do it without hurting them, of course – and then we'll be able to slip off the train in Andover. It shouldn't be too hard to find someone with a wagon, and then you can persuade him to drive us back to Stonehenge. We know that communication is pretty primitive in the world, so there's almost no chance of them being able to alert anyone before it's too late."

"That sounds good. And even if the adults do come with us I think I should be able to send them all to sleep. They won't wake up until the train reaches the terminus, wherever that is, and by that time we should be almost back home. But do you think it'll be safe for you to come back? If they've missed us, your copper's going to be pretty mad at you."

"I don't think he'll be half so angry if I go back of my own accord," I said. "If I tell him we just wanted to explore a bit and then come back I might be okay. Of course, if Irfan asks me about it I could be in more trouble, but even then the fact that I went back voluntarily should help. And we'll be able to tell them quite a bit about this world, too, and that has to count for something."

Privately I wasn't sure that this was true. Although I hadn't left the Arvelan world with the clear intention of not going back, it's certainly true that if there had been even a sniff of another portal in this world I'd have taken it. And so if Irfan asked the wrong question I could still find myself in trouble. But I wasn't sure that I wanted to stay in this world, either. Okay, I liked Sam and Ron and the other boys I'd met, but this was still a world lacking in modern conveniences, and I had the clear impression that all that awaited most of the boys when they left school was a life of manual work on the farm. And that wasn't my idea of the perfect career.

I was reasonably confident that the plan would work: in fact it would work best if the adults travelled with us, since that way Declan would be able to send them to sleep, and by the time the train reached its destination – which if we were really lucky might turn out to be Exeter, Plymouth or even Penzance – we'd be long gone. But in the event we never got the chance to find out.

Joe came back ten minutes later, looking very happy with life.

"They were pleased with us for finding you two and bringing you here," he told me, "and so they've fixed it for us to go home in style. They've arranged for us to travel on the Irish Mail."

That didn't mean anything to me. I assumed it was a fast train heading for a port on the west coast somewhere, but I was wrong, as I discovered when we were led out of a rear door to the building and out into a large open space – in the middle of which an airship was tethered. It was about the size of the one I'd flown in while we were in Vogesia, but it looked more old-fashioned, somehow.

"What does it use for lift?" I asked Sam, quietly: I assumed he'd be likely to know, and I was right.

"Hydrogen, of course!" he replied. "You don't think it would work with just hot air, surely?"

"No, I was rather hoping it would use helium," I said, seeing a nasty mental image of the end of the Hindenburg.

"Helium? But that's quite rare, isn't it?"

"I suppose it probably is in this world. I think most of it's in America, and as you don't have any contact with them… oh, well, I suppose they don't crash that often…"

"What, airships?" Sam looked shocked. "Of course they don't! They're very safe – I don't think I've ever heard of one crashing."

"Yes, but since you don't have radio or TV I don't suppose you hear of very much that doesn't happen in Amesbury, do you?"

"Well… no, not really, unless it's something that affects us – like if the quotas are increased, or something. Then the director tells us at mealtimes. So… are you saying airships are unsafe?"

"No, not really. Actually they haven't been used in my world since 1937. I've travelled in one in another world, though – though I think that one used helium."

In fact I didn't know whether the Vogesian ship had used helium or not, but since there was regular contact with the USA in that world I'd just assumed it did. Still, the sky was clear and there wasn't a lot of wind, and so I supposed it would be safe enough. And once we were aboard and it had started its ascent I stopped worrying about it and just enjoyed the view.

London seemed to be rather smaller in this world, and there was an almost abrupt boundary between the edge of London and the surrounding countryside. In my world the built-up area continued beyond the M25, following the motorways, but of course in this world there weren't any, and once we left the city behind the scene below the ship was one of open green fields, woodland and the occasional village or small town.

None of the other boys had ever flown before, and they loved it, staring out of the gondola windows, pointing excitedly at the villages below and marvelling at how small everything looked, We probably weren't that high, in fact – after all, there were no aircraft flight paths to avoid, so there was no need to fly higher than five or six hundred feet. I doubted that the engines would have the power for too much work, anyway. When I asked Sam about the power supply, he was happy to tell me all about it.

"There are four rotators," he said, "and they run off Volta piles – it's safe enough to use them in an airship, of course, because there are no big bumps or sudden movements. They're in the third gondola, so you can't see them from here, but perhaps they'll let us look when we land. There are an awful lot of them, though – maybe if our scientists can use Declan's one as a base they'll be able to design something more efficient, and that'll give the ships a greater range. As it is they have to change them over halfway through the journey.

"The crew are mostly in the first gondola, and passengers travel in this one. That means that we don't get in the crew's way."

And it also meant that Declan couldn't 'persuade' the captain to land us anywhere other than at a proper airfield. Not that he would have been able to do anything on this trip, because we weren't the only passengers: with us in the gondola were one of the Council members ("Dan Dublin Industry Eight" was how he introduced himself) with three guards, and two other men in a rather more formal military uniform. And that was far more people than Declan could send to sleep at one go.

So I settled back to enjoy the flight. Without the main roads to guide me it was hard to make out exactly where we were, but the view was interesting: I could see a dusting of snow on some hills off to our right – the Chilterns, I thought – and further on we flew over a couple of towns, one of which I thought had to be Basingstoke, though really it was impossible to tell from up here. And then the airship started to descend.

It was starting to get dark by now, and I thought that it might be possible for us to slip away, especially if Declan was able to shut down our adult escort: I hoped that Ron and Sam wouldn't do anything to stop us. But that hope was dashed as soon as we landed: apparently a telegram had been sent, because the director and three other adults were waiting to meet us. They had brought a couple of wagons with them, and soon we were aboard and on our way back to the farm – and it only took ten minutes, because the airship had landed right on the edge of Amesbury.

Once again it looked as if we were stuck where we were…

So Jake and Declan are back where they were at the end of the previous chapter, except that their situation is now rather worse. Just how much worse it is will become clear in the next chapter…

Chapter Seven

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Or what?"

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

"A bit? How much is a bit?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I think I'd like that."

And he quickly decided that he did.

"Have you done this before?" I asked.

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

"And?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What's wrong?" I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Who?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You could always leave me."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What is it?" I asked.

"Shh!" he replied.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What's a bus stop?"

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

"Where are you going?"

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

Then I explained to Declan what I had said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Certainly. Come on through."

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

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

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

"I see," said Aarnist.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes. Why?"

"Just hand me one."

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that made him blush even more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Great!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, on the plus side Jake has a new companion for his journeys, but on the minus side he's no closer to getting home than he was three chapters ago. Where does he go from here?

Chapter Eight

The next day was Saturday, so we didn't have to get up quite so early. In fact Sam woke me up rather earlier than I would normally have got up on a Saturday: to him this was just another working day, and his body clock was telling him that he ought to be out of bed by now and on his way to breakfast.

"No, you haven't," I told him, sleepily. "It's Saturday, so breakfast isn't until eight o'clock."

"What's 'Saturday' mean?"

"It means it's a rest day. Here we work for five days and then have two days to rest. So we haven't got to get up for at least another thirty minutes."

"Oh. So what are we going to do for the next half hour?"

"I'm sure you'll think of something," came Declan's voice from the other bed.

"I already have," said Sam. "Let's snuggle some more."

And he wriggled up close to me and put an arm round me, and I didn't mind that at all. Based on what he had said when we had been in his hideaway cupboard at the farm I half expected him to want to do more than cuddle, but perhaps he was inhibited by the presence of Declan, as he seemed perfectly content just to lie close to me.

Eventually we dragged ourselves out of bed and went to breakfast (and this was Sam's first disappointment with his new world: somehow a roll and a cup of coffee didn't match up to the eggs, sausages and bacon that constituted the normal breakfast in Amesbury), and after breakfast I showed him round the rest of the house. After that he wanted to make a start at learning Arvelan, so I asked Peter and Godfrey if they had any suggestions about books or other material that might be useful.

"No," said Peter, "but I bet Rob and Erik can help."

Robert and Erik were the last two members of the household. They were eight and nine respectively and so were thought to be too young to spend much time with – and definitely too young to join in with the sex games. But Robert hadn't known any Arvelan at all until he was orphaned a year ago, and so Peter was sure he would have some books written for beginners. And so he did.

"I'll lend them to you," he told me when I went to ask if we could use them. "But you have to let me and Erik help to teach him. We always get left out of stuff, and this way you'll have to let us join in for once."

So they all put their heads together and came up with a plan: Erik and Rob would start him off, teaching him the Arvelan alphabet and how to count and tell the time in Arvelan, and everyone else would try to come up with lists of vocabulary based on various themes – food, travel, clothes and so on. Declan would help by providing a mental image of each item on the vocabulary lists. And I would provide translations into English if all else failed, though I wasn't going to be around to do that after lunch because I had an appointment with Aarnist. At first Declan wanted to come with me, but I didn't think that was a good idea.

"We know Irfan's going to be there this time," I said, "and we don't want him rumbling you if it can be avoided, because you're my only chance of getting away through another portal. As long as he doesn't know about you he won't do anything to counteract you – like stationing one of the Konjässiem with the scientists, for example. If he did that we'd never be able to escape. So I need you to stay out of sight while Irfan's around."

"Yes, but… I mean, last night I was able to nudge a bit to make sure Aarnist didn't lock you up," he said. "I didn't have to do much because he was leaning towards trusting you anyway, but it might be different today if Irfan is there."

"Yes, but you couldn't do anything to help if he is," I pointed out. "You'd just get yourself noticed, and that wouldn't help either of us. I'll be all right: Aarnist still needs me at the moment – and, like you said, he trusts me, more or less. You should stay here and teach Sam how to read Janet and John, or whatever it is, in Arvelan. I'll be back for supper, I'm sure."

Actually I wasn't sure at all, but I didn't see the point in bringing Declan to Irfan's attention, and so I got on the bus alone to make my way back to Stonehenge. I was feeling nervous as I walked from the bus stop to the huts, and when I got to the door I felt more nervous still, because Irfan was there waiting for me.

"You look guilty," he greeted me.

"You're a Konjässi," I said. "Everyone looks guilty to you."

"That's because everyone I see usually is guilty," he replied. "You'd better come in."

He took me to the interview room. Aarnist was already there getting the camera ready.

"Ah, good afternoon, Jacob," he said. "You're early. Good – let's make a start. Sit down… Right, just tell us exactly what happened since you went through the portal. We'll stop you if we have any questions along the way, and when you've finished we'll ask you some more if there's anything you haven't covered. Just wait till the light comes on, and then start like you did last time with your name and so on. Ready? Go."

So I told the camera who I was, though this time I gave my address as the Home in Sarutaale rather than the school in the capital. And then I told my story as completely and as accurately as I could, suppressing only the way in which Declan had immobilised the director and telegraph operator when we left the farm. Oh, and I didn't bother telling them about what we had done on the train or what Sam and I had done in his basement hideaway, either – that was definitely none of their business. And obviously I omitted to mention that Sam had come back with us.

Afterwards they had quite a lot of questions about the Marxists' level of technology, their military capability and so on, and I answered as best I could – though because I had no more wish to see the Arvelans attacking the Marxists than I did vice versa I made a point of saying that there was apparently a high level of co-operation between the various European states, including Russia, and that I thought that an attack on one country would probably bring the others in as well. Or, at least, that's how I interpreted the director's remark about the Europeans powers now working in 'fraternal co-operation' with each other.

The whole session took most of the afternoon, and when finally they ran out of questions Aarnist turned to Irfan.

"Any worries?" he asked.

"No," relied Irfan, grudgingly. "As far as I could tell, every word of that was true. Maybe you were right – but I still think he's not entirely to be trusted."

"Oh, come on!" I said, doing my best to sound annoyed. "I came here freely and I've told you everything I could find out about that world, and that's a lot better than the information you'd get from simply sending the probes in. I could easily have just gone straight back to the Home last night – after all, for all I knew you hadn't even missed me. But instead I came here to tell you everything I knew. What more do you want?"

"You really wouldn't like what I want," said Irfan. "It's true that this time you decided it was in your interest to come and talk to us, but if what you told us about your friend is true you didn't have a lot of choice but to come back, did you?"

"Well, I could have brought Dec back but chosen to stay myself," I pointed out. "They might not have been too happy about it, but I'd still have been there myself to answer their questions, and I think they'd have understood that I didn't want to see my friend killed. And at least they're not planning to ship me back as a slave to a place where I'll be dead within a couple of weeks of arriving. Surely it would have been much more in my interest to take my chances with them, rather than with you?"

"So why did you come back, then?"

"Honestly? Because, although I think I could have made a life for myself there, I'd still prefer to be able to go home. That wouldn't be possible from that world, but if I keep my part of the bargain and help you to identify Torth – and if you keep yours, of course – at least I have a chance of getting home from this one."

I could see Irfan thinking about that.

"All right," he said, finally. "That seems to be the truth, more or less. But I'll be watching you, understand? Step out of line just once more and you'll be under lock and key for the remainder of this operation, no matter how long it takes."

So I was allowed to walk back out into the outside world, and very relieved I was about it, too. I had no doubt that Irfan meant what he said, which meant that we'd have to be very careful about choosing our next portal: probably I'd only get one more chance.

I explained this to Declan when I got back to the Home – I found him studying on his own in our room. Sam was apparently off somewhere learning Arvelan.

"Then perhaps it would be better to let some time go by," he suggested. "If we let them open five or six more portals there's got to be a possibility of them finding one where there's a good chance of you being able to travel back to one of those other Nexus places you told me about. Obviously it would be better still if you could get back to your own world, but unless Aarnist is completely stupid that's one portal they won't reopen while you're around."

"Couldn't you 'persuade' them to?" I asked.

"I don't think so. There are five or six scientists there, plus the slaves – and we'd need them to be there to move the lintel-stones – and I don't think I could deal with that number at once. And that's assuming Aarnist and the other coppers aren't there too, of course. It's one thing to persuade them all to look the other way for five seconds while we slip through a portal that's already open; it's another thing altogether to get them to open a portal especially for us. And it won't be enough just to go through it, because Aarnist will know where you're heading and come after you the moment he finds out that you've gone."

"Well, I don't have to go back home: I could just head for Southampton and try to get on a cross-channel ferry. But I'm pretty sure I don't have enough money for a ticket… no, you're probably right – we'd do better to just nip through a different portal while they're not looking. The problem is finding a good one."

"Not really. That's another reason for leaving it for a while – after they've done some basic exploration they'll know a bit about each one, and I should be able to persuade the bald guy to tell me about them. Then we'll know which one to choose."

"If they leave them open."

"True. But we'll worry about that later."

"Dec… you don't have to come with me next time, you know. You're safe here, and I don't want to risk anything happening to you, like nearly happened this time."

"I know. But I think I'll chance it. After all, my life here isn't exactly awash with excitement, is it? Maybe there's a world out there that worships boys with wheels!"

"And maybe there's one that worships nerdy Jews with glasses, but somehow I doubt it. Oh well… I think I'll go and look for Sam. Thanks, Dec."

I went upstairs to the twins' room, but it was empty, so I went along the corridor to Godfrey's room, and here I found Sam, though he wasn't working on his Arvelan: instead he was playing video games with the twins, Godfrey and Peter. When I walked in he was watching Godfrey roundly thrashing Peter at some sort of martial arts game.

"Hi, Jake!" he greeted me. "I love these games things! They're incredible!"

"Aren't you supposed to be studying?" I asked.

"Well, yes, but… we sort of got distracted. But I've learned the alphabet and the numbers, and I can write my name now, so that's a start. And Erik's going to test me on it tomorrow. He says if I don't get it right he'll have to beat me."

"You'd better get it right, then," I said. "You can't let a nine-year-old beat you. Have you had a go at this yet?"

"No, I'm still watching to see how the controls work. I'm going to play the winner of this game."

The first time I'd used the console Godfrey had slaughtered me, and he duly slaughtered Sam, too, though Sam was still obviously enjoying himself.

"I'll just have to practise," said Sam, standing up and handing the controller to Clovis. "It can't be that difficult."

We stayed with the others until supper time, and after supper we went back to our room. I suggested to Declan that he try to understand what Sam and I were saying to each other by following our thoughts – "It's good practice," I added. "If you can communicate through thoughts you won't find yourself too stuck next time you're in a world where they don't speak Arvelan."

"I'll try," he said. "It'll help if you both speak slowly and try not to let your minds wander away from what you're talking about."

"So," I said to Sam, "have you really learned the alphabet and the numbers, or were you just saying that so I wouldn't drag you away from the games?"

"No, I've learned them. I think. It was quite fun, really: Erik was pretending to be a real school-master and threatening to spank me if I made any mistakes. But he thinks I ought to go to school with him and Rob on Monday, because the school has proper machines to help you learn – I didn't really understand it, but there's a sort of machine that has voices inside, or something. Anyway, Erik says I'll learn much faster if I use something like that."

"He's probably right," I said. "But it'll mean going to the little kids' school, at least to start with. Do you think you could survive that?"

"I expect so. And once I've learned the basics I'll be able to come to the older kids' school with you and Dec, won't I?"

"Ah… not exactly. See, Dec studies here – he has a tutor come in to help him."

"Oh, right. Is that because getting to the school is too difficult in his chair?"

"Partly. And it's partly because he's special – he learns stuff that only his race studies. And as for me… I don't really know what I'm supposed to be doing. Probably I ought to go to school, but I only got here during the school holidays and nobody's told me yet what I'm supposed to be doing. But it'll be boring staying here all day, and I'll have to leave Dec in peace so that he can have his own lessons… so I suppose I probably will go to school with Godfrey, Peter and the twins. Especially as Dec reckons we should leave it for a while before going back to try to find another portal."

"Another… why? What's wrong with this place? Why do you want to go somewhere else – this world looks great to me!"

"There are things about this world that you don't know. It certainly isn't safe for me here, and probably it wouldn't be safe for you to stay too long either. See, officially I'm still a slave, and since you haven't got anyone to look after you or any means of supporting yourself they'd probably want to make you one, too. You'll be all right if they think you have a proper address and so on, and as long as you're staying here you should be okay. But it would be a lot safer if we can find another world. What I really want is to get back to the place I've been living for the last year and a half. You'd really like it there – it's safe, the place where I live is really nice, and they even have space travel. I've even got a sort of friend there from another planet. He gave me this."

I went and got my bracelet from my bag. I hadn't been wearing it since I left the Elsass world because I didn't want to risk losing it, and of course Kirk's alert button wouldn't work outside of that world either, but I was still carrying it with me.

"I think they must have made it specially, because only a human could wear this. Tammids don't have wrists – they're sort of like giant termites, or something." And I went on to tell Sam about my trip to Kiruna.

"So you've actually been in a space-ship?" he said. "Then I definitely want to get to your world! I've got to try that!"

"Me, too!" put in Declan, which suggested that he was following the conversation successfully. Of course he could generally understand me because even when I was speaking English it was apparently possible for him to see a sort of simultaneous Arvelan translation in my head, as well as picking up visual images, such as my description of a Tammid.

"If we ever get back there I'll certainly ask," I promised them.

At bed-time I said that I would sleep with Declan that night. Sam seemed disappointed, but I said that it would be fairer if we rotated, since that way nobody would feel left out. And I was aware that Dec was all in favour of this idea – in fact I suppose it's entirely possible that he put it into my head in the first place. Still, I didn't think it was a bad idea at all, even though it meant that one night in three I would have to sleep on my own while Sam slept in Dec's bed.

By Monday morning I had made up my mind to go to school, both because I wanted to know more about this country, and because (as I had told Sam) it would have got very boring just sitting around reading while everyone else was in school. And so I went with Peter, Godfrey and the twins to the secondary school a mile down the road. I explained to the school secretary that I normally lived in Laztaale but that I was staying in this area for the foreseeable future, gave her the phone number of the Home and said that if she needed any further information she should contact High Captain Aarnist, who was currently based at the monument known locally as the Cursed Circle. Flashing Aarnist's name about seemed to do the trick, and I was soon officially on the books. I thought that back in England it would have taken weeks to cut through the bureaucracy, but here there was no such problem.

I said that my schooling had been a bit erratic recently and that I would be happy to start in a class below my age group, adding that I knew Peter Larsson, who I was sure could help me out with getting to know the school. And I was duly sent to join Peter's class.

This was a much smaller school than the one I had belonged to in England – the Arvelans appeared to believe in small classes and small schools, as there were only twenty pupils in my new class and only five hundred in the entire school. And it didn't take me too long to settle in, even though there were several subjects which I didn't know very much about – history, in particular.

By the end of the first day I'd decided that I liked this school: the teachers seemed patient, the other kids were basically okay, even if some of them did make remarks about my glasses, and Peter went out of his way to be helpful whenever I found myself floundering. I hoped I wouldn't have to stay here too long, but until a suitable portal presented itself I thought I would be happy enough here. And when I got back home I found that Sam felt much the same.

Dec and I had given him a letter of introduction explaining that he came from a small community in north-west Germany where they usually only spoke a local dialect (this was our explanation of English) but that he could get by in mainstream German. His parents, worried about the unrest between Germany and Arvel, had decided to get him out of the country and had therefore sent him to stay with his cousin (me) for a while until they could arrange to move to England permanently themselves. And it seemed to have worked perfectly.

"There's a teacher who speaks German," he told me, "so I was actually able to talk to someone. I told her that Rob and Erik had taught me the Arvelan alphabet and numbers, and she said that I should work on my own for a few days to build on that. And she showed me this amazing machine – it's got a window, like Godfrey's games machine, and some little padded things that go over your ears, and it talks to you In Arvelan and German.. And writing comes up on the window, and you read it aloud, and if it's right a little bell rings and another word comes up, and if it's wrong it makes a sort of clonking noise and then a voice comes on and reads it how it's meant to sound. It's really good!

"Anyway, Erik wants me to go and do a test to see what I learned today, so I'll see you at supper."

After supper I'd expected us to go back to our room, but instead Sam led me upstairs.

"After I'd done my test with Erik I went exploring," he told me, "and guess what I found?"

"I give up," I said.

"I'll show you," he said, carrying on up to the top floor. "If you go past the bedrooms you come to this door here. It looks like a cupboard, but it isn't. Look!"

He opened the door, revealing that there was a ladder behind it.

"And if you go up – come on! – you come out here."

'Here' was an attic. It was a bit dusty and there were a few cobwebs, but it had a proper floor and enough room to stand upright. There were some boxes, cases and a few items of old furniture at the far end, and Sam had already retrieved an old upright chair and put it in the middle of the floor.

"See?" he said. "We've got a new hideaway. We've got a light and a chair, and if you pull the ladder up nobody can interrupt us. If we clean it up a bit it'll be perfect. What do you think?"

"I think you're a genius," I said. He was right: this would be a really good place to get away from everyone else once in a while – I mean, I liked the other boys a lot, but they were all in the habit of just walking into each other's rooms without knocking, which would be highly embarrassing if you were doing anything you shouldn't be.

We went back to the ground floor, found the cleaning cupboard, borrowed a broom and some dusters and spent the next hour or so sweeping and dusting and getting rid of the cobwebs. And then we thought we ought to check that the chair was strong enough to take both of us, so we pulled the ladder up and closed the hatch.

"We'd weigh a bit less if we took our clothes off, wouldn't we?" commented Sam.

"I suppose we would," I agreed.

And so we got undressed and sat down the way we had back in Sam's basement in Amesbury. And the chair showed no sign of collapsing, though we agreed that it would still be better not to take the risk of adding the weight of our clothes.

"What we really need is an old mattress," he said, resting his head on my shoulder. "There must be some in a place this big. We'll have to nose around."

"Or we could just ask," I suggested. "If I say there's a spring digging into me I expect the manager will replace my mattress, and then all we have to do is to watch and see what he does with the old one."

"Good idea! Now, let's see: last time I think we did this." And he took hold of me and started to stroke me. "And you were doing it to me, too," he prompted, and so I did. And it felt really, really good.

"Do you want to hear something funny?" he asked, after a few seconds of this. "You know how alike some of the Arvelan letters are – like 'T' is the same as 'D' but with an extra stroke? Well, I keep getting those two mixed up, and I'm not used to there being a separate letter for 'TH', either. So I didn't pass Erik's test. And so he spanked me. All right, it didn't really hurt, but he says next time I mess it up he's going to make me take all my clothes off and be spanked in front of everyone. And while he was spanking me his thing got hard – I could feel it, even through his clothes and mine. I don't think those two are quite as innocent as Dec seems to think they are."

"Serves you right for being a bad student," I said, grinning at him. "How did you understand that bit about spanking you in public, though?"

"They mimed it – pretty well, actually. I got the message, anyway – I'll make sure I don't get it wrong again."

"Pity," I said. "It'd be funny watching you get spanked in the altogether."

At that he grabbed hold of me and twisted sharply, and I had to apologise before he would let go.

"Some friend you are," he said.

"I know you'd do exactly the same if it was me."

"Well, maybe. Or I could do something much nicer – like this, for example."

He started to rub it steadily.

"How does that feel?" he asked.

"It feels like this," I said, and I started to do the same thing to him.

"Oh… that's… special," he breathed. "Please don't stop."

So I didn't. I wasn't going particularly fast, but it took very little time before he was writhing around.

"Do you want me to stop?" I asked.

"No! No, it's… I'm almost… aaahhh!"

A couple of little jets of colourless liquid spurted from him, which I thought not bad at all, considering that he still had no hair. I held on until he told me it would be all right to let go, and then he leaned forward and kissed me gently.

"Thanks, Jake," he said. "That was perfect. And now it's your turn."

And I have to say that 'perfect' was a pretty good description of what followed. Again, it didn't take long, and the resulting eruption seemed to go on for ages – I thought that Stefan would be impressed: I could probably mark several Nexus Room doors now. And I decided that he and I were going to have to try this position as soon as we got back together, even if the results were a bit messy.

I actually didn't feel guilty about him this time: I was sure he would understand that Sam was special, and that it was better for us both to have someone to be close to, rather than trying to survive alone. And of course I'd share the benefits – such as the discovery of this new position – with Stefan as soon as I could.

Sam kissed me once again and for a couple of minutes we sat hugging each other. Then we got up, cleaned up using one of the dusters, got dressed and went back to our room.

"I know what you've been doing," Declan greeted me. "Was it good?"

"It was wonderful… can you really tell?"

"Oh, yes. You're both sort of glowing."

"You don't mind, do you?" I asked, a little anxiously. "We weren't trying to make you jealous or anything."

"No, of course not. Though if you want to let me join in occasionally I won't object."

"I expect we can manage that. But in return I want you to keep Godfrey at bay for a week or so – he wants to inflict all the bad forfeits on Sam, and I don't want him to just yet. I'm not sure how much Sam knows about sex, and I don't want Godfrey going overboard and making him do anything too horrible until I've had a chance to find out what he knows and to prepare him a bit for what he doesn't."

"Fair enough – we won't play cards for at least a week, then. And when we do I'll hold Godfrey back a bit if he looks like overdoing it."

The rest of the week went by without incident. I didn't actually need to ask the manager for a replacement mattress: when I mentioned it to Declan he told me where the storeroom was, and then I was just able to go and help myself. And having a mattress in the attic made it even better. While we were borrowing the mattress we took a pillow and a couple of blankets to go with it: it wasn't cold in the attic at all, because the insulation was in the form of padding topped by reflective sheeting fixed to the beams, rather than the traditional fluffy stuff under the attic floorboards that we used in my birth world, but having a couple of blankets meant that we could stay naked for a long time without getting even a little bit cold.

When we went up to the attic after supper on the Friday I asked Sam how much he knew about sex.

"I know what you have to do if you want to have a baby," he told me. "And I know about… you know, rubbing it to make it feel nice. Why, is there something else I ought to know?"

"Well, there are some other things you can do," I said. "Some of them are a bit surprising, so I thought perhaps I should tell you about them now, because otherwise it'll come as a bit of a shock next time we play cards with Godfrey and the others."

"Why? What sort of card games do you play?"

"Strip ones, but with forfeits. Godfrey chooses the forfeits, and he'll want to shock you by giving you things to do that you've never done before… of course you don't have to play if you don't want to. Nobody is going to mind if you decide that you'd prefer to stay out of it."

"No, I'd like to play – it sounds like fun!"

"Then you need to know about a couple of things. For example, you know it feels nice when I rub it for you, but it feels even better if I do this…"

I spent the next ten minutes or so teaching him everything I knew about oral sex, and he took to it with enormous enthusiasm; insisting on doing it to me to see if he'd understood the technique. And I have to say that he had understood it: he did an incredible job. When I said I was getting close he did pause long enough to ask if it would be safe to allow me to shoot in his mouth, but when I assured him that it was he got on with it with fervour undiminished. And although he didn't have Stefan's technique or his understanding of when to stop to prolong the experience, for a first effort it was extremely impressive. And when I returned the favour and took him all the way he said it had been the best feeling he'd ever had.

"So you won't mind if we have to do that with an audience?" I asked.

"Not really, no – as long as everyone else has to do stuff, too. Of course, I'd prefer to keep it private, but then we can do it in private every time we come up here, can't we?"

"I'm sure we can," I said.

"Great!"

I decided that further lessons could wait: I was confident that I could persuade Declan to keep Godfrey from going beyond oral sex, at least with Sam, for our first game at least.

But something happened to postpone our cards for a while: when we woke up on the Saturday morning we found it had been snowing overnight, and obviously getting out in the garden for a snowball fight was more important than merely playing cards. Erik and Rob were able to join in with this, and even Dec could throw a mean snowball, provided that Sam or I made them for him. Snow-related activities kept us occupied for most of the weekend, although our attempt at building an igloo was entirely unsuccessful. It was fun trying, though.

The snow continued for most of the following week. It wasn't enough to stop us from going to school, which the twins in particular said was a pity, but it did make break times more interesting. And by the following weekend Godfrey had caught a really bad cold and didn't feel up to doing anything, so that was another weekend with no cards.

The snow had disappeared by the weekend after that, but by now it had been three weeks since we had returned from the Marxist world and I thought it would be a good idea to go and find out how much progress the scientists had made: maybe by now they had some promising portals for us to choose from. So after lunch on the Saturday I caught the bus up to the monument together with Declan, Sam and the twins.

We approached the circle carefully: one glimpse of a Konjässi and I'd have suggested that Sam take Declan off out of sight while I made enquiries on my own. Dec's battery had arrived a couple of days after our return, so he was self-sufficient again in that respect, but I didn't want a Konjässi getting too close a look at Sam either: I was sure it would immediately be apparent that he wasn't from this world, and that would be sure to start a line of questions I didn't want to get into.

But the only people in the circle were four of the scientists and a trio of slaves, so we simply made our way up to the control stone, where they were working, and said hello.

"Ah, Stone," said Gordiss. "Come looking for another world to scout out for us, have you?"

"Well, I'd be happy to do that as long as Aarnist says I can," I said, surprised that it should even be suggested. "Why, have you found one you want investigated?"

"There are two or three, but no, I wasn't being serious. Though I understand you brought back some useful material from World Fourteen. No, for the moment we're just using probes, though there might well be worlds out there where your language skills could be useful. I expect they'll want to send you with a proper escort next time, though. We wouldn't want you to get lost, would we?"

And that suggested that Irfan had been talking to him, as well as Aarnist: I didn't think they'd let me go through any more portals unless I was escorted by a platoon of cops. Of course, Declan would probably be able to solve that problem…

"So what have you found since we last spoke?" asked Declan.

There was a moment's silence, which I took to indicate that Declan was in the process of persuading Gordiss to tell us things he normally wouldn't.

"Come over here," said Gordiss, leading us to a trestle table that had been set up behind the control stone and turning on the computer that was sitting on it. "We've got ten portals open now… that is, openable, because some of them have been closed again. You'll understand why in a moment. If we go around the circle from Arch One, World Two is the one you saw us open last time, where there's nothing but grey dust. World Five is one where there is a very high radiation count – we think there was a nuclear war there. We closed that one again straight away. World Eight is the one where your friend Stone comes from – that one has to stay closed, by order of the High Captain."

"Told you," said Dec, quietly.

"World Twelve is the one where there's a war going on – that one is closed, too," continued Gordiss. "Fourteen is the one you went to, and we closed that one to stop the people in that world from finding it. In Sixteen there's a temporary problem with the weather – at least, we hope it's temporary: there's a very strong wind, almost hurricane force. Our probe was destroyed within ten seconds. We've closed that one to let the weather settle.

"Nineteen is interesting: it has a proper civilisation like our own, with a full transport infrastructure including air travel."

That sounded very hopeful: at the very least it sounded as though I should be able to get back to the Vosges in that world, provided I could get hold of some money.

"So it's almost the same as the world I come from?" I asked.

"In a lot of ways, though we've sent a number of probes through, and it would seem that the primary language is German, not that gobbledegook they speak in your world."

"Ah. I don't suppose you have any images from the probes, do you?" I asked.

"Of course. Wait one moment…"

He fiddled with the computer, and after a few seconds a film began to play. At first it just showed fields passing below the camera, but then the probe had reached a town – Salisbury, I thought, judging from the quick glimpse I got of a tall spire. It headed on towards the town centre, and at one point it passed over a public building of some sort that was flying a flag.

"Stop!" I said. "Can you back up slowly for a few seconds? A bit more… yes, a couple more frames… right. Thanks – that's what I thought."

The flag was a swastika. It seemed probable that this was Stefan's world, and that made it virtually useless for my purposes: even though I knew there was a portal between that world and Kerpia in the Vosges – or there would be, once the Kerpians got around to reopening it – the chances of a Jewish kid with no papers being able to get there were tiny, and they became even tinier if he was accompanied by a disabled boy with no papers, even if that boy was a Konjässi. I wasn't going to risk my life on Declan's ability to make people obey him, especially since he couldn't speak German.

"I'd advise against going into that world," I told Gordiss. "They have a very efficient military, and they don't like foreigners."

"Thank you," he said. "I'll pass that on to Aarnist."

He turned off the film and returned to his list of portals.

"World Twenty is the primitive society I told you about before," he said. "There appears to be little or no technology, just a nomadic society with few inhabitants. Twenty-six is the Ice World where everything is frozen solid, and Twenty-Eight looks inhospitable, too: we can't see a lot because it seems to be constantly night-time, but it's very cold and we haven't found any life. And that's it. As you can see, most of the worlds we've seen so far aren't all that useful in terms of obtaining advanced technology, though some of them could be exploited for mineral wealth, I imagine. But there are still another twenty to find – assuming that every arch goes somewhere – so there are sure to be some more advanced worlds out there somewhere. And of course we haven't found the reptiles yet, either."

I thought it possible that the radioactive world could have been the reptile world that Torth originally came from: we'd left that one in the midst of a nuclear war, after all. But it wasn't the one he'd gone to, and that was the one Aarnist wanted to find.

None of the new worlds sounded as if it was any good to me, either: only Stefan's world had the sort of transport links I needed to cross the Channel, and I certainly wasn't going to risk going there. So we said "Thank you" to Gordiss, promised to check back in two or three weeks' time, collected Sam and the twins and headed back to the bus stop.

"We'll just have to wait a bit longer," I said. "I just hope they don't find the reptile world too quickly, because I really think going into that one and making demands would be a big mistake. If Aarnist does that we'll probably all get shot."

On the bus journey home I thought a bit about the new worlds Gordiss had found. It seemed strange to me that less than half of them were actually inhabited, and only three – mine, Stefan's and the Marxists' – had anything approaching a modern civilisation. From what we'd seen on the Hub computer, almost all of the worlds the Kerpians had discovered were inhabited – that's why the discovery of the empty Green World, with its mineral wealth that was ripe for exploitation, had been such a big deal. So why were things different here? I suppose the scientists could just have happened to find all the uninhabited worlds first – and of course the one affected by radiation had almost certainly been inhabited, at least until recently. But perhaps the monument was called the Cursed Circle for a good reason: perhaps most of the worlds it led to were cursed.

And that brought me back to the origins of the monument: why exactly had the original builders stopped using it? I was starting to wonder if they'd opened a portal to something really bad, like a plague-infested world or one containing venomous or disease-carrying insects, or something like that. And if that was the case, there was a danger that sooner or later Gordiss and his colleagues would open a portal that would be far better left closed. I resolved that we would definitely have to get out of this world as soon as a suitable destination world became available – and this time we would have to make sure that they closed the portal after us. That way we would be safe if they did subsequently open the wrong portal.

On Sunday afternoon we finally got around to playing cards. Sam was amazed by Declan's ability to guess what the cards were – we hadn't explained in detail how the director and telegraph operator had been immobilised, and although he'd been told that Declan was of a different race to the rest of us, he hadn't been aware of quite how different he was.

"I wish I could do that," he said. "It'd be really useful – I'd never lose a game of cards again… hang on, is this how you won the game we played on the train?"

I translated this for Declan – Sam was still speaking English, though he could at least manage some basic phrases in Arvelan by now.

"No," Declan replied. "After all, being able to see the cards doesn't really help when you're playing that sort of game, does it? If we'd been betting on the hands, of course, that would have been different. But that's why we only play games of absolute chance when we're playing for forfeits – that way I can't cheat."

We played a standard strip game to start with, and once the first person was naked Godfrey began dishing out forfeits to anyone who lost a hand having already lost all his clothes. I'm not sure whether Declan had actually spoken to him or if he was applying some sort of mental control, but today Godfrey was rather more restrained than he had been the first time we had played. He started out with some solo forfeits, then with manual ones on one another, and only after that did he move on to oral activities. By the time we stopped for supper Sam had been made to suck Declan and Godfrey, and he and I had been made to do each other at the same time. And it felt amazing: I knew that Declan was enhancing things for us, but that didn't alter how incredible this felt.

To finish things off Godfrey fucked Peter. Sam was positively goggling at that, because it was completely new to him, but he didn't say anything – at least, not right then. Once Godfrey had finished everyone got dressed, though Declan asked me to take him to the bathroom first: he could generally manage on his own, but he found it easier if someone helped him by supporting him as he moved from his chair to the throne.

"Sam enjoyed himself, in case you're worrying," he told me. "Obviously I helped things along as usual, but he was having a great time even before I did anything. He's going to fit in perfectly here… yes, I know you're not planning on staying, but it doesn't look as if we'll be able to leave just yet, does it?"

"I suppose not. But I want to be out of here before they find the Grey world, Dec: I really don't want to have to go there surrounded by a lot of gun-waving coppers. I don't think the Greys would like that at all."

After supper Sam took me up to the attic

"Do you play that sort of game often?" he asked, once we were lying comfortably on the mattress.

"Yes, I think so. I haven't been here that long myself, remember," I said.

"Good, because it was magical – I don't think I've ever felt like that. Obviously it's nice when you and I do things up here, but somehow that was even better, and when I got excited at the end it seemed to go on for far longer than usual. I definitely want to do that again."

"Me, too," I admitted. "Some of the way we feel is down to Declan, though. He doesn't just do mind-reading to see what card you've got – he can actually change the way you feel. His people are really quite dangerous, because they can force you to do things you don't want to, too, although Dec isn't exactly an average Konjässi… that's what they're called, by the way. I'll get Dec to demonstrate later on. But it means he can make nice feelings into incredible ones, and when we play sex games he always tries to make everyone enjoy it as much as possible. That's why the games are so much fun."

"Oh. I was wondering about what Godfrey and Peter did at the end – I thought that it must have been really bad for Peter, but while you were taking Dec to the toilet I asked him, and he said it was wonderful… I had to use the dictionary to ask him the question, but 'wonderful' was definitely the way he described it. They both really like doing that. So I wondered… maybe you and I should try it?"

"Well… I don't think so," I said. "See, I have a proper boyfriend at home, and he's the only person I've ever done that with. It wouldn't feel right doing it with someone else."

"Oh," he said, and his disappointment was obvious. "But you might not see him again for ages – in fact you might never see him again at all, unless things change at the monument. And I'm sure he'd understand…"

"Maybe he would, but I still don't think I should. But I'm sure Dec will do it with you if you ask him."

"It wouldn't be the same," he said. "You know I really like Dec, but… well, you and me, it's sort of special. You're really the only person I'd want to do something like that with. Will you at least think about it? Please?"

I sighed. I'd managed to hold out against Nicky when he had come on to me in the police cell in Sélestat, but this was going to be a great deal harder. I hadn't really known Nicky very well at the time, but by now I knew Sam a lot better, and I really liked him, too: he was bright, happy, enthusiastic and, above all, extremely attractive, what with those green eyes and the freckles and the big smile… If Stefan hadn't existed I'd have said 'yes' like a shot. And he was right to say that I might never get back to either my birth world or to Elsass: as things stood I had a far better chance of getting shot by the Greys or being sent back to my death at the school in Laztaale.

"Please?" he said again.

"Well… all right, I'll think about it," I said.

"Great! Thanks, Jake!"

He hugged me and kissed me on the cheek, and I realised that my life had just become even more complicated…

So Jake's having fun, but really he's not getting any closer to finding a way home. And what effect is Sam going to have on Jake's relationship with Stefan?

NEXT PART