David Clarke

The Final Nexus

The Nexus Trilogy Book III

The story so far, as told by Jake:

The First Nexus

Chapter One

The summer of 2010 was a lot of fun. This time we'd arrived at the Résidence at the beginning of the holidays, and so we made the most of it, going out exploring the local area, riding out into the Forest to continue our search for miradors, having massive games out there, and generally behaving like kids for once.

I still had nightmares sometimes, dreams in which I saw Harlan shot over and over again, except that in the dreams he didn't die straight away: instead he stared at me reproachfully and asked why I had got him killed. And sometimes I dreamed about the others who had died, too, Marlo and Verdess in particular, though since I hadn't actually witnessed the moment of their death – Verdess hadn't been in my line of sight when the bullet hit him and I'd been unconscious when Marlo died – I didn't have those dreams quite so often. But it helped immensely that Stefan was a fairly light sleeper, because he generally woke up if I started thrashing about in my sleep, and when that happened he was able to wake me up gently and then calm me down. I was lucky that he loved me so much, because it must have been intensely irritating for him, getting woken up like that so often.

But as summer went on the dreams came less and less frequently, and by the middle of August I was starting to think that maybe I would be able to put it all behind me. As long as I was just able to go to school with my friends and settle into a normal existence I was confident that everything would be fine.

And then, one afternoon in mid-August, after Stefan and I had spent an afternoon out in the forest looking for miradors (and doing a few unrelated other things), we got back to find a note on our door summoning me to the director's office. As far as I was aware I hadn't done anything wrong, so I wasn't too worried as I made my way down to the ground floor. And as I walked into the office the first people I saw were Dr Schmitt and Dr Szabo.

"No!" I said, before either of them could speak. "No, absolutely not, there's no way I'm going through any more portals for you, no matter how many times you ask!"

"We don't want you to go through any portals," said Dr Schmitt.

"Huh?" That took the wind completely out of my sails – I'd been convinced they wanted to drag me back into the insane world of inter-reality exploration. "Well, what do you want, then?"

"We've got an agreement with the Kerpians to use their language-implanting technology, and we're setting up the first four chairs at the Institute. Obviously it has enormous potential – it'll free up large amounts of school time that can be used to teach other subjects, for a start. Instead of having to learn English and French over a period of many years, kids will be able to learn the language in less than a week. And foreign languages will be equally quick. As you know, our economy isn't quite what you were used to in your original world, but there's still a great deal of commercial use for a system like that.

"Anyway, you know that it works, and so do some of your friends, so you know it's nothing to worry about. And we were hoping that you could persuade some of your friends here to help us test it – after all, the Kerpians only used it to implant their own language and that of the reptiles, whereas we'll want to be able to implant lots of other languages. So it's a question of fine-tuning the implantation system and writing the programs for each language – we've done English and French already – and then we'll want some guinea pigs. As it's initially intended for use in schools we'd prefer to use kids, and since we know you and your friends we were hoping you'd be prepared to help us. And of course it'll be particularly helpful for two of the boys who came back with you this time around, because I understand that neither of them can speak either French or English."

"Well… okay, that sounds fine, as long as the Kerpians are helping set everything up. And you're right about it being useful for all of our friends who weren't born in English or French-speaking worlds… I'm not sure it would work on Killian, though – his physiology is a little different, and I'm not certain his brain is the same as yours or mine. Still, if he wants to try I won't try to talk him out of it."

"Good. I don't think there's any risk of damage even if it doesn't work, though – after all, we've both been through the system, too, and I'm confident it's harmless. So if you'd like to find me four or five boys who need to learn English, and about the same number who would like to learn French, we can make a start. Later we'll be looking to try other languages, too, but obviously it would be best to start with the two we'll need most."

"I'm sure I can do that," I said. "Personally I'd be interested in learning German, or maybe Elsassisch – and if you want to try it out using something a bit more unusual, I wouldn't mind trying to learn one of the languages from the Arvelan world. It might make it easier for me to talk to Killian, just in case you can't use it to teach him English."

"We don't have programs for those yet, and it would probably take a while to write one – though it would be an interesting project. Anyway, see what you can find us, and then get them to report to the Institute on Wednesday morning at eleven o'clock. Take a number 27 tram from the station and get off at Four Poplars. The ones who were there last month will recognise it from there."

"How long do you think the sessions will last?" I asked. "I seem to remember that I was in the chair for about four days when I was being implanted with Kerpian. So should I tell them to expect to be away for that long?"

"Good point… as we've only got four chairs at the moment we'll only want two candidates for each language to start with. Can I leave it to you to select four candidates for us and send them to us for Wednesday morning? Once they've been implanted we'll evaluate the results and then call the director here and get him to ask you to send us four more, and so on until everyone who wants to learn English and French has been done. And if everything works out we'll move on to some other languages after that."

Well, that sounded fine to me, and it would make it a lot easier for those of my friends whose English was still a bit lacking. Nicky and I were both more or less fluent in English and French – Nicky's French wasn't as good as his English, but it was good enough – but everyone else would no doubt benefit from implanted English, and as long as we lived here the French would also be useful. I put Markus down for the first French session because that would make it far easier for him to communicate with his girlfriend Sylvie, and I reluctantly sent Stefan to take the second French chair. As for English, I chose Alain first, because he was going to have to find a job before much longer and it would be far easier for him if he was fluent in both French (which he already spoke) and English. And that of course meant that Oli was the obvious candidate for the second chair. So I sent them off on the Wednesday morning, hoping that nothing would go wrong. There was no reason why it should – the Kerpians had been using this technology for a long time – but the way my luck worked I wasn't completely sure about it.

I hadn't actually wanted Stefan to go first, but he had insisted that it wouldn't be fair to ask anyone else to do something he wasn't prepared to do himself, and since I didn't need to be implanted with either language it was up to him to set an example. And I couldn't talk him out of it, and so off he went, leaving me worrying for the next four days.

He came back at the end of the week, in perfect health and speaking excellent French, so obviously I needn't have worried.

"They'd like you to go with the next batch," he said. "And take Killian and Caradoc – they want to try creating a program from scratch, and they think that your idea of using a language that doesn't even exist in this world would be a perfect way to try the system out."

So early on Monday morning I took the train to Strossburi, taking Radu and Tommi to learn English, Hansi and Tibor to learn French, and Killian and Caradoc to help the scientists try to set up the system to use with a hitherto-unknown language.

I hadn't been to the Institute since the day we had returned from Kerpia, and I found that it had grown a bit: there were some new buildings there now, and one of these held some quite nice living quarters. Of course, the four being implanted wouldn't need rooms because they would be in the chairs throughout the four days, but the rest of us got a room each. They weren't quite up to the standard of the hotel we had used in Hintraten, but they weren't bad.

First of all the scientists tested Killian and came to the conclusion that their equipment would work on him, and so after that he and Caradoc were installed in two of the chairs to be implanted with English. Obviously it made sense to do this first, since after that it would be a lot easier to communicate with them while the program for Arvelan was being created, but it left me wondering why I was there: I'd assumed I would be translating for them. But it turned out that the scientists had something else planned for me.

That afternoon I heard a noise outside the window, and when I looked to see what it was I saw a small flying machine of some sort land in the yard outside the laboratory. It was triangular in shape, but I couldn't immediately tell which point was the front because it was landing vertically and there was no sign of engines.

It settled onto the ground and a hatch opened on the side nearest to me, and I saw what looked like three boxes on caterpillar tracks emerge and trundle across the yard towards the entrance to the building. And a minute or so later Dr Szabo appeared and asked me to come down to the ground floor, where I found the boxes lined up in a row.

They were each a little over a metre long, a metre high and about seventy centimetres wide. They seemed to be made of some sort of plastic, coloured a dull grey, and each one had a small dome on the top about ten centimetres across.

"Jake, I'd like to introduce you to our visitors," said Dr Szabo. "These are Bob, Pat and Tom."

I wondered if he was joking, or if these were some sort of robot, but all the same I said "Hello" politely. And the box on the left promptly answered me.

"Hello, Jake," it said. "We have heard a lot about you. You are an interesting person."

The voice was obviously artificial, though it was of a very high standard: it left Stephen Hawking's voice synthesizer a long way behind it.

"Well," I said, nonplussed, "that's very kind of you… er…"

"I do not think that he knows who we are," said 'Bob'. "Has he not met our kind previously?"

"I suppose not," said Dr Szabo. "Jake, these are Tammids. You do know about the Tammids, I hope?"

"Yes," I said. "Well, a bit, anyway. But I've never met one before, or seen a picture."

"If you had seen a picture, you would not recognise us," said 'Bob'. "What you see is our travel machine. We could not survive in your atmosphere without it, just as you have to wear a space suit if you leave this planet. We find the matter of parallel interchanges a fascinating one and are hoping that you will tell us of your travels."

So that explained what I was doing there: I was going to be keeping the foreign diplomats entertained. And over the next two or three days I did exactly that, although these three were clearly scientists rather than diplomats, because they seemed interested in the exact operation of the portals. I told them I couldn't really tell them much about that and that they would do better to speak with someone from the Kerpian side of the portal, such as Mr Narj. And they said that they knew about him, and that they were scheduled to meet him the following week.

Obviously their names weren't really Bob, Pat and Tom, but their language was impossible for humans because we had totally different vocal systems, and so each had adopted a 'human' name that bore some resemblance to the first syllable of his actual name. They had a language assimilation program of their own and had come to the Institute to find out about the Kerpian system.

Anyway, I told them some of what had happened to us beyond the portals, and gave them as good a picture as I could of the various societies that we had encountered. They were particularly interested to hear about the Greys, since they were a completely unrelated but nonetheless intelligent species, and they seemed disappointed that it would not be possible for them to meet one. Personally I never wanted to meet another Grey for the rest of my life, but I suppose that point of view was rather down to my previous experiences.

Talking to them was like talking to machines, both because of their outward appearance and because of their artificial voices, and on the third day after their arrival they seemed to realise that I was finding it hard to relate to them as living creatures, because they proposed a change of venue.

"Come see our base," they invited me. "We have a breathing suit that will be of the correct size."

I wasn't sure about this: some of the places I had been to beyond the portals had been dangerous, but all of them had a breathable atmosphere, and the idea of trusting myself to an alien spacesuit wasn't at all attractive. But when I voiced this concern to Dr Szabo he said that the Tammid suits were perfectly safe, and that a couple of the scientists here had already visited the main Tammid base near Kiruna in Sweden and found the suits to be perfectly efficient.

"Besides," he added, "this is a great honour – I don't think they've invited any civilians to visit them, except for the Swedish king and his immediate advisers."

The last time anyone had wanted to pay me a great honour it had ended with me and my friends stranded in a Grey world at war. But I supposed that if I tried to back out I might cause a diplomatic incident, or something – and maybe it would be interesting, provided that nothing went wrong… But then, if the Tammids were capable of flying halfway across the galaxy I didn't think that too much was likely to go wrong on a short trip like this.

One of the scientists who had been to Kiruna, Dr Moser, came and helped me with the suit the Tammids provided. I'd had visions of the sort of thing Neil Armstrong wore on the moon, a large, solid, heavy-looking arrangement that made moving difficult, but instead it turned out to be lightweight and completely flexible, with only the helmet being hard – and even that weighed very little. It was perfectly comfortable to wear, and would apparently be warm even if I was surrounded by a vacuum. The only slightly embarrassing thing was a sort of tube arrangement which was designed to go over my penis and take care of things if I needed a pee while wearing the suit.

"There's a solids system, too, but you won't need to bother about that," Dr Moser assured me. "They have facilities for us at their base, and you won't be in the ship long enough to have to worry about it."

Once he'd shown me how to activate the various seals and where to connect the air tanks (these were small cylinders on each thigh) he stood back and let me try putting it on alone, and apparently I managed it perfectly – well, he said I wouldn't be likely to die because of the way I'd put it on, anyway.

Before I left I went and found Radu and Tommi, who were waiting for a chair to become available, and told them where I was going, because if anything went wrong I wanted my friends to know about it. And Radu seemed to share my doubts.

"Is it safe?" he asked. "And can you trust them?"

"Well, they've been here for thirty years, or something like that, so if they were evil aliens I think we'd probably know by now. And I suppose they've got a lot more experience with space travel than we have – and in any case they only want to take me to Sweden, not Aldebaran Five or somewhere. I'm a bit nervous, but I suppose it should be safe enough. It's just… well, if anything does go wrong… well, I need you to tell Stefan… you know, that…"

"Stefan already knows," he assured me. "And if anything goes wrong I imagine he'll be ready to declare war on the Tammids. Don't worry, Jake – if anything did happen I'll certainly talk to Stefan."

"Nothing's going to go wrong," said Tommi, who seemed to have spent too long talking to Oli, because the unquenchable Oli optimism seemed to have infected him. "You're indestructible – isn't that what Mr Narj said about you? You're going to have a really interesting time, and you'll come back here safely afterwards, because the idea of a world with no Jake is impossible. I just wish I was going with you."

"I bet that's because you want to find out if sex with Tammids is as interesting as sex with Greys," I said, grinning at him.

"No, it isn't!" he replied, indignantly. "I don't even know if you could have sex with a Tammid – maybe they don't even have sex. I wish I was coming with you because it would be less scary for you if there's someone with you."

"Thanks, Tommi," I said, seriously. "But, like you say, I'm sure I'll be all right. And by the time I get back you should both be speaking English perfectly, too. I bet Marc will be pleased about that."

"Oh, we manage," said Radu. "We speak a sort of mix of lots of languages. But you're probably right about it being easier if I could speak English properly."

Marc and Radu were still together: Marc's parents had been a bit reluctant to let him keep spending time with us at first, but once we had promised that he wouldn't be leaving this world again – at least, not without their permission – they had relented, and now Radu and Marc were once again spending most of their spare time together. And I was glad about that, because I liked Marc a lot, and not just because his medical knowledge had been vital to us on our last journey.

When I went back to the laboratory after talking to Radu and Tommi I found the Tammids waiting for me. I'm not sure if they were afraid I'd change my mind about going with them, but in any case I didn't get a chance to do so: I was in my space suit and walking up the ramp into their ship five minutes later. They installed me in a human-shaped seat at one side of the cockpit, plugged my suit into both a computer and an air supply, pressed some buttons which gave rise to a lot of hissing – I assumed the air in the cockpit was being pumped out and replaced with whatever it was that Tammids breathed – and then 'Pat' manoeuvred his box into a sort of console in the centre of the cabin, various cables appeared from it and plugged themselves into the console, and – with scarcely any noise at all – the ship rose vertically into the air.

They had put me next to a window or viewing panel, and watching the Earth fall away beneath us was a weird experience. It wasn't like being in a high-speed lift because there was no physical sensation – clearly they had overcome the problem of inertia. We seemed to go up a very long way, though once we were above the clouds I couldn't tell where we were any longer.

The whole journey took less than an hour, and when we emerged below the clouds once more I saw a landscape of lakes and forests spread out beneath me. We fell towards it at a frightening speed – I was convinced we were going to smash into the ground – but at the last moment we slowed almost to a stop – again with no physical discomfort – flew horizontally for a few seconds and were then swallowed up inside a large building. The ship settled to the ground and I was escorted out into what I suppose was a hanger, and then through some doors and into the base proper. Finally we reached a small room equipped with some human-type chairs and some other furniture that made no sense to me at all. I was shown to a chair and my suit was again plugged into an air supply and a computer.

"Welcome to Hus Tam," said 'Bob'. "That is not our name, naturally: it is what the humans here call it. Here we have no need to remain in our travel machines, though you should be warned that our appearance is not as yours."

Obviously at this point my imagination ran riot: visions of things with tentacles, formless blue slime or the alien from those Sigourney Weaver films burst into my head, and I was wondering how fast I could run in this suit, and how long the breathable air in it would last when I pulled it away from the air connection on the wall… and then the top of Bob's machine split in half with a hiss and folded away and the real Bob appeared, and I decided I had been overreacting a bit.

My immediate thought was 'insect', because he had a segmented body like an ant, though instead of a hard chitinous covering the body looked soft. There were also twin knobbly ridges on opposite sides of his back that hinted at a pair of backbones, which made him closer to us than an insect would have been. And he was considerably larger than any insect – I'd guess he was about half my size. The head was far more insect than human, though: the eyes were compound eyes of some sort, the mouth was mandibles rather than teeth, and there were even three short antennae on the top of the head. There were four legs with more joints than any insect I had ever seen, and two shorter ones – I suppose they were really arms, rather than legs – each equipped with three claws which seemed to be adapted for grasping.

He climbed easily out of the machine and onto one of the strangely-shaped pieces of furniture, arranging himself on the top of it, his body neatly fitting its contours. Of course, I told myself: it's a chair for an outsize, soft, intelligent ant. How could I have missed that?

The other two emerged as well, and I'd guess that they were talking to each other, though I didn't understand a blind word of it – even assuming there were any actual words. To me it was a series of clicks and hisses. And while they were speaking their skin (if it was skin) changed colour: patches of different colours appeared on what had previously been a uniform beige-coloured surface. After a minute or so of this they all faced me and the one in the middle – I'd lost track of which was which – clicked something which I assumed was addressed to me.

"Sorry," I said. "I don't think the translator is turned on."

The one on the left scuttled back into its travel machine and crossed the room to a metal panel containing slots and bumps. The machine blocked my view, so I couldn't see what he was doing, but after a few seconds later I heard one of them say, "Is that better?"

"That's perfect," I replied.

"Sorry – we failed to activate the translation device. You may now speak normally and we will understand. Do you think you will find it easier to relate to us in this way?"

"Yes – though it wasn't that big a problem," I said. "It is interesting to see you as you really are, though."

"Then you may continue your story. Tell us again of the mind-readers."

So I repeated what I had told them about our time at the Central Konjässi Academy. They found the idea of humans with at least rudimentary telepathy fascinating.

"We have such a system," I was told, "because we are a hive culture, like many of the insect species of your own world, though we have considerably more independence than any of those creatures. But we are able to transmit and receive messages from a distance. It is a system that has considerable advantages, and frequently renders face to face communication unnecessary. Though it does not carry the nuances or shades of meaning of face to face communication… it would be interesting for us to examine one of these mind-reading humans."

"Well, you could talk to Killian, though I don't think he's really typical. As for the rest of them, personally I hope they never come anywhere near our world, because ordinary people like me can't handle them at all," I said. "It's the same with the Greys – I never want to meet another one of them, either."

"I do not think either type would trouble us. We would not be susceptible to mind control from another species, and we are considerably more advanced technologically than your race or any other of a similar stage of development – and it would seem from your description that the reptile race is at a similar stage of development to your own people. We understand that Narj Larzel of Kerpia is in charge of the reopening of the parallel interchanges in his own land, and we are hoping he will permit us to travel to his land and learn more of the interchanges from him, and perhaps to travel beyond one or two to see for ourselves."

"Will that be possible for you?" I asked. "I mean, you said you were a hive culture: if you went through a portal you'd be cut off from the rest of the hive. Could you survive that?"

"That would not be a problem in the short term. We are able to survive independently for long periods… at least, such is our theory. Since we have never encountered a parallel interchange before, we have not had occasion to test the theory. This is another reason why we wish to attempt it: it will permit us to discover our own limitations. But frequently small parties have been alone on a planet – though naturally the circumstances are different because the hive remained in the same dimension."

"Wow! Do you mean you remain in contact with the hive even if it's not on the same planet as you?"

"A measure of contact remains. It is insufficient for full communication but adequate for us to maintain our… I think you would talk of a sense of belonging."

"And do you just have one huge hive based on your home planet or smaller ones all over the place?"

"There are many hives, though there is contact between the queen of each and the central hive on the home planet. Our hive is here, divided between this ground station and our orbiting ship. Now, continue your story: how did you escape from the mind-readers?"

So I continued with the story. I still found it hard to talk about the death of Harlan, and when I reached that point my voice faltered and I stopped speaking.

"You appear distressed," said the one in the middle. "Yet this boy was preventing you from returning to your own world. Explain."

"He was my friend," I said. "And… wait – do you know what friendship is? Can you understand the idea of a bond between two people, or are you like the Greys? They never really got friendship at all, I don't think – except maybe Torth did, right at the end…"

"We understand. We also have friendships – we are not exactly as the hive creatures of your world. As I stated previously, we have a greater degree of independence of thought and action than they do. We frequently form attachments of that nature. It seems strange to us, however, that you should have formed such a bond with one who had enslaved you."

"It's hard to explain," I said. "Harlan never really treated me like a slave – at least, not compared to the way some of the others did. I liked him, and he liked me, too – I'm pretty sure that's true, because sometimes his feelings sort of leaked out even when he wasn't intending them to. And I was really sorry when he died… okay, it meant that we were able to get back home, but I never wanted it to happen. And because I was the one who took him there even though I knew the Greys had guns… well, Stefan has spent a long time telling me that I didn't have any choice if we were all going to escape, but that doesn't make me feel any better about it…

"Anyway, it's happened, and there's nothing I can do about it now… unless you know how to travel in time, of course?"

"That is impossible unless we have failed to grasp the nature of time in some way. And we do not believe that we have failed to do so."

"I thought not. Then it's done, and that should be the end of it." But it wasn't, of course: it didn't matter what Stefan said – I didn't think I'd ever stop blaming myself.

I went on with the story, continuing until we got back to Kerpia (and I skated over the deaths of Verdess and Marlo, too – that was another place I didn't want to have to revisit). And afterwards one of the Tammids escorted me further into the base until we came to what was clearly an airlock.

"Once you are through this lock you can switch off your bottled air supply and remove your helmet," he told me. "A room has been prepared for you – it is through the second door on the right. If you require anything you will find a radio link beside the door. The atmosphere in the area beyond the lock is that of your world, so you will not require protective clothing until you return to this side. Sleep well – we will come for you in the morning."

So I went into the airlock, which closed and hissed and beeped, and then on through the second door into what looked a bit like the accommodation at the Institute back in Strossburi. The second door on the right led to a similar hotel-type room, with a single bed, a desk and chair, an armchair, and a large window looking out at a view of an apparently endless forest. I disconnected the small air bottle strapped to my left thigh, somewhat gingerly removed the helmet – after all, maybe the Tammids' idea of humour would be to make me remove my suit in an atmosphere I couldn't breathe – found that it was safe and quickly stripped off the rest of the suit. In the corner of the room was a shower and toilet, and once I'd made use of the facilities I felt a bit more comfortable – I simply hadn't been able to bring myself to use the undignified hose connection inside the suit.

I sat at the desk and looked out of the window. It was still quite bright out, but when I looked at my watch I saw that it was already ten o'clock at night. Then I realised that I was far enough north to be in midnight sun territory. I wondered if the Tammids' home planet had similar long days, and if so, how they coped with the dark of the Arctic winter here.

There was a microwave at one side of the room with a stack of ready meals beside it. Well, I supposed it was unlikely that there would be a restaurant in this hotel, so I had a look at the offerings. It didn't help that the boxes were labelled in a language I couldn't understand – Swedish, presumably – but there were helpful pictures on the boxes, and so I settled for something that appeared to be meatballs with small boiled potatoes. I have to say that I've had better meals, and I wondered how the King of Sweden had enjoyed his stay here if this had been the cuisine on offer… but then again, nobody had asked me to eat Tammid food, so I supposed I couldn't complain.

Once I'd eaten I had a quick shower and went to bed, and even though this was the first time I had slept alone for a very long time I managed to drop off in the end.

Next morning I was up and dressed and ready to go long before they came to fetch me. I found some orange juice in a small fridge under the microwave and had a glass of it for breakfast, and then I just sat and looked out of the window, hoping they wouldn't keep me here too long: interesting though this was, I was hoping to get back to Elsass today, because I was definitely missing Stefan by now. And, after all, I'd already told them everything I knew about the portals.

Eventually there was a click from the radio beside the door and a voice told me to get my suit on and come back to the airlock, and I did that enthusiastically: at this rate I'd be back at the Institute in time for lunch. But I found I'd been counting my chickens.

Back in the same room that I had been in the previous afternoon I found myself clearing up a few points and fielding a number of follow-up questions – and then the three Tammids all seemed to freeze and their antennae moved for a couple of seconds.

"We have visitors," Bob told me. "A ship will be landing shortly. We would like you to help with their induction to this world."

"How?"

"One of them – a juvenile of your own stage of development – will remain with you for two or three days when you return to your normal environment. He will learn from you and transmit his findings to the remainder of the new group. This will prepare them for interaction with your species. We will naturally be able to transmit our own knowledge to them, but such a continuous observation of a member of the dominant native species will be most helpful."

Great, I thought: I'm going to have a mobile box on my tail for the rest of the week. But I didn't think I could really say no – the diplomatic incident was still a possibility, and I supposed the Tammids had contributed to the happy state of the world I was living in, so…

"Okay," I said. "I suppose I can do that."

"We are grateful," said Bob. "Remain here while we make the arrangements."

They left me for a few minutes. While they were gone I heard nothing at all, but that must have been due either to extremely efficient insulation in the base, or to Tammid ships having near-silent engines, because when Bob came back he had my shadow with him. At first I thought that he'd explained things to the newcomer very quickly – he'd barely been gone five minutes – but then I realised that the bulk of it had probably been transmitted telepathically, probably before the ship even landed.

The newcomer's box looked exactly the same as Bob's – no doubt they were mass-produced somewhere – but when the box opened and the Tammid inside climbed up onto one of their chairs I saw that it was smaller than Bob and was a darker colour.

"This is Jake," Bob told him. "He will show you how he lives and help you to understand his kind. Jake, this is…"

The name was like a stick running along a set of railings, and I couldn't begin to reproduce it.

"Humans cannot speak our language," Bob said, "So we take a name that they can pronounce. Jake, what do you think this name sounds like?"

And he repeated it, and it sounded, literally, like nothing on earth. I tried hard to imitate it, but it's hard to hiss at the same time as you click your mandibles – at least, it is if you haven't got any mandibles – and my attempt was nowhere near Bob's. Even I could hear that.

"Okay, that wasn't very good," I admitted. "But that first bit… could you live with 'Kirk'?"

"That would seem adequate," agreed Bob. "Now I will go and prepare the ship to return us to your Institute. You may get acquainted while I am gone."

I had no idea how to make small talk with an alien, but there was one thing I wanted to say.

"I'm sorry for mangling your name," I said. "When I was at school in England people used to forget my name, and that used to annoy me, so I know what it's like. Are you sure you don't mind being called 'Kirk'?"

"I do not understand some of the words you use," he said, "but you should not concern yourself about my name. I am sure that if the translator machine were not activated I could not utter your name, even though it is very short."

"The machine seems to work very well from your language to mine," I said. "I understand you perfectly. I hope you can understand me equally well."

"I can now. There was an error when I arrived, and my box was programmed with a different human language, the one spoken by those who live near this base. When we first came here it was believed that all humans spoke one language, and so we programmed our machines to speak this language. Only later did we find that the language of this region is spoken only locally. We had to reprogram with the language that you are hearing now, which is more widely used. It seems strange to have a means of communication that is not universally understood. Does this not cause difficulties?"

"It used to. Now it's less of a problem, and once the Kerpian technology is available, languages shouldn't be a problem at all. You'll be able to see that later today."

I thought that space aliens learning Swedish was sort of funny: it's not the standard language of deep space exploration, and I thought it would sound weird coming from one of their machines. But before I could ask him to demonstrate his antennae twitched.

"We must go," he said. "The ship is ready."

I unplugged my suit from the wall and turned on the little air bottle and then followed Kirk out of the room. For a moment I was surprised that he knew the way, given that he had only just arrived on Earth, but then I realised he'd be getting telepathic directions.

The return trip took no longer than the outward one, and soon I was able to remove the suit for what I hoped would be the last time – okay, it wasn't all that uncomfortable, but if you got an itch wearing it you couldn't scratch. I returned to the laboratory and found that nothing had changed: Killian and Caradoc were still in the English chairs, Hansi and Tibor were in the French ones and Radu and Tommi were still waiting for their turn.

"What's in the box?" asked Tommi – Kirk had followed me in, of course.

"This is Kirk," I told him. "Kirk, this is Tommi."

"Hello, Tommi," said Kirk, making Tommi jump.

"He's a Tammid," I said. "He's going to be with me for a couple of days, finding out about us. And… I think you'd be unlucky with what we talked about earlier, Tommi: I don't think you'd be able to, er, play with a Tammid the way you did with Sarleth. We can't breathe the same air, for a start."

"Oh. Well, that doesn't matter, because now I've got Caradoc, and he's even more fun than Sarleth was."

I'd assumed I was going to be staying here at the Institute while Kirk was with me, but it turned out that they wanted him to see where I usually lived and what I did in an average day. I pointed out that the school holidays weren't really average, and that normally I would be at school for eight hours a day, but they said it didn't matter: even if I wasn't at school I would still be eating and sleeping and so on, and that would be enough.

So shortly after that Kirk and I were on our way back to Milhüsa. His box wasn't a lot larger than a human wheelchair, so he was able to get it onto the train and the trams without too much difficulty, and the dome on top of the box, which contained the camera that functioned as his eyes while he was inside the box, was high enough to be able to look out of the window, so I was able to give him a commentary during the journey. I would have to suppose that most of the other passengers knew what a Tammid's travel machine looked like, because nobody seemed to think I was weird because I was talking to a box.

Once we got back to the Résidence I introduced him to the director and then took him up to my room. Stefan wasn't there, so that gave me a while to think up a way to tell him that we were going to have a house guest for a couple of days.

"Can you sleep in your box?" I asked.

"We do not sleep for long periods compared to you, but I can sleep in the machine if necessary. But it will not be necessary."

As I watched, what looked like a colourless liquid emerged from the top of the box and flowed down the sides of it, and then it seemed to set and to expand, until the box was sitting in the middle of a transparent igloo. A minute or so later the top of the box folded away and Kirk emerged, climbing to the floor, connecting a cable to the wall of the igloo, and then opening a panel at the back of the box and taking out a small version of a Tammid chair. He pressed a button on the side of this and it expanded until it fitted him perfectly.

"I can sleep here," he said. "Also you may find it easier if we talk while I am outside the machine: it seems you had a problem with addressing the machines earlier."

"Okay." I sat down cross-legged on the floor and asked him about his eating habits, and he said the box was equipped with sufficient nutrients to last him for several days. And at that point the door opened and Stefan came in.

I got to my feet and embraced him. "We've got a guest," I said. "I want you to meet Kirk. Kirk, this is Stefan – he's my boyfriend."

Stefan stared, first at Kirk, then at me.

"He's a Tammid," I explained. "He's just arrived on Earth, and he wants to find out about us as a species, so he's going to stay with us for a day or two."

"Really? Is he going to be here all night?"

"Well, yes, but I don't think it's really a problem. They seem friendly."

"Some of the boys at my school were friendly, but I wouldn't have wanted them to watch you and me… you know."

"True, but we did do stuff in front of Harlan and Terry, didn't we?"

"Not by choice! On the other hand, you've been away for a bit and I was away before that and I don't see why we should wait any longer, so provided he isn't easily shocked, I don't suppose him being here will matter."

"What might shock me?" asked Kirk, and Stefan stared again.

"They can speak English?" he asked.

"Not really. There's a translator machine in his box. But we can understand each other."

"Oh." Stefan still didn't look particularly happy.

"He's talking about sex," I explained to Kirk. "Our species isn't generally too happy about having sex with an audience."

"I understand." There was a pause. "I had been told that your species procreated on a two-gender basis, but you are both male. Explain."

"There is more to sex than procreation," I said, aware that I was blushing. "Sometimes people have sex because it feels good, or because it's a way to share things with someone you love. You don't have to be of opposite sexes to do that."

"I can understand that this might be true. But from my understanding two males would not be equipped to copulate."

"Don't worry about it," said Stefan. "I promise we can 'copulate', if you want to use that term, but we'd prefer not to do it publicly."

"I find this fascinating. You must understand that our species does not experience sex as yours does. For us, sex is a function of certain specialist males who service our queen. It plays no part in the lives of the rest of us. So I would be interested to learn how it is for you."

"Perhaps later," I said, firmly. "Right now we're going outside for a bit, and after that we'll have supper, and after that… maybe we'll want to do some fooling around before we go to sleep. So, can you leave that bubble you're in, or do you have to collapse it and rebuild it when we come back?"

"I can pass through it," he said, and he climbed back into his machine, closed the lid and then seemed to drive through the side of the bubble, which clung to the side of the box as it passed through it and sealed itself once the box had cleared it.

We went outside and parked up at the side of the five-a-side football pitch, where a few of our fellow residents were kicking a ball about. I gave Kirk a brief explanation of the rules and he watched with interest for a while.

"What is the purpose of this activity?" he asked.

"We play for fun," I said. "And to get some exercise, I suppose."

"I do not understand the concept of 'fun'."

"Well…" I couldn't think of a way to explain this in a way he might understand, so instead I said, "Maybe you should try it for yourself. Let's play."

I called the players over – most of them were younger than me – and asked if they'd mind letting Kirk have a go in goal for a bit, and they liked the idea of playing football with a Tammid. So I told Kirk to play in goal, explained that he had to stop the ball going into the goal but that he was not allowed to leave the semi-circle painted on the pitch around the goal, and then settled back to see what would happen. At first he tried staying on the goal line, parked sideways on, but that left enough of the goal visible on either side of him for the players to score without too much difficulty. But then he hit on the concept of making it more difficult by advancing and narrowing the angle available to the opposing forwards, and after that he did a lot better. And that box of his could shift when he wanted it to.

Stefan and I joined in for a bit, one on either side (and the side that got Stefan got the best of the deal) and we carried on playing until it was time for supper, by which point the kids on Kirk's team were talking to him as easily as to each other.

"I understand the principle of 'fun'" he told me as we headed for the dining room. "It is a pointless activity performed for entertainment. Is that correct?"

"Well, I wouldn't put it quite like that, but I suppose the principle is right," I agreed.

He sat and watched us eat without comment, and afterwards followed us back to our room.

"You seem to eat much," he observed. "How frequently do you eat?"

"Three times a day, usually."

"Why must you eat so much?"

"We burn a lot of energy, especially if we play football and stuff like that. Besides, we like eating, especially if the food is well-prepared. I would like to be a chef one day."

"We eat just as much as we need to function. To eat more would cause problems for our internal systems."

"Food can be a great source of pleasure," I said. "If you can't enjoy food, you're missing something. Now we're going to have a shower. You can wait here if you like."

I thought there was little chance of that, and I was right: Kirk trundled down the corridor with us to the shower room.

"Won't it damage your systems if you get water on your box?" I tried, but was less than surprised to receive the answer "No." So Stefan and I got undressed and showered with rather more decorum than usual – even when there were other people in the shower we generally washed each other's hair and scrubbed each other's backs and so on, but today we made sure we didn't do anything to get each other aroused. And then we wrapped our towels around our waists, picked up our clothes and walked back along the corridor to our room.

"I understand that coverings – clothes – are normal in your world but I do not understand why," was the next question. "Explain."

"Well, partly it's for warmth," I said. "It's sometimes very cold here, and we would be very uncomfortable without clothes. In the north of Sweden, where your base is, we could not survive without clothing during the winter months. And in most human cultures it's normal to cover certain parts of your body – people get uncomfortable with nudity. And, before you ask, I don't know why. It doesn't bother us, anyway, does it, Stefi?"

"Not usually," he said, glowering at Kirk.

"Then I would like to see you without your clothes," said Kirk.

Well, I thought, perhaps if we got it over and done with he'd be satisfied and go to sleep or something. So I dropped my towel and stood up, and Stefan unenthusiastically came and stood next to me.

"So are those your reproductive organs?" Kirk asked.

"Yes. We carry ours externally, unlike the Greys – they keep theirs inside the body most of the time."

"And how do you use them?"

Stefan opened his mouth, but I got in first.

"Usually this is a very private activity," I said. "We'll let you watch on one condition: that you keep quiet and save any questions for tomorrow. Agreed?"

"I accept."

"Good. Then back off a bit and keep quiet."

It took a little while for us to get in the mood, because at first we were both very much aware of the audience, but Kirk remained both motionless and silent and gradually we were able to ignore his presence. We went through the full range of activities, manual and oral, and concluded with the copulation he hadn't thought possible for two males but which was, thankfully, not only possible but wonderful, too. Afterwards we lay quietly until we'd got our breath back and then got up, cleaned up using the washbasin in the corner of the room, and then climbed into bed together.

"Thanks for keeping quiet, Kirk," I said. "Now we're going to sleep. Goodnight."

"I wish you a good night also," he said, trundling back to and inside his bubble. Once he was back on his chair I turned the lights off and we settled down.

Next morning he had a number of questions about what he had witnessed the previous evening, but lying comfortably in bed with our arms round each other we felt a bit more relaxed about it and did our best to answer him properly.

Over the next couple of days he trundled about the place, speaking to several other residents as well as to us, watching our various activities, examining our computers, and generally learning about the way we lived. On the second day Stefan and I rode out to the forest on a couple of the Résidence bikes and Kirk followed us, keeping up effortlessly – apparently his box was driven by a type of very long-lasting battery, though he could power it using his own strength in an emergency if the battery failed. We showed him some of the wildlife and he was able to examine and take samples of various trees and shrubs. And then on the third day he said that he was ready to go back to the Institute.

I took him there myself, wanting to see how the scientists were getting on with their attempts to prepare a program for the learning of Arvelan, and discovered that it was still in its very early stages, though by now Killian and Caradoc were out of the chairs and at work with the team. In fact Arvelan wasn't the native language for either of them, though both had been taught it from an early age, and that did give rise to some arguments about vocabulary and even grammar. I was quite happy just to say "Hello" and then leave them to it.

Before I went back to the Résidence Kirk took me to one side.

"I know that it was not easy for you to have me always with you asking questions," he said. "Particularly about private issues such as digestion, elimination and sex. I am most grateful to you, and to your partner, for allowing me such open access to your lives. As has been explained to you, we recognise the concept of friendship, and I would now consider you to be my friend. And for us friendship brings obligations. Take this."

A small panel on the front of his box swung open, and inside I found a solid bracelet of some sort of silvery-white metal.

"You will find a small panel on the inside that you can slide back," he told me. "There is a button beneath the panel. If you press that button it will send a signal to our ship that will indicate your location and inform us that you require assistance. I will respond and come to your aid, or if I am unavailable one of my colleagues will do so. Naturally you may never have need of it, but should you do so at any time in the future we will respond."

"Thanks, Kirk," I replied. "I don't expect to have to use it – after all, from now on I'm just going to be living a nice, normal, boring life. But I'm grateful, all the same, and I'll wear it anyway."

And that was it: Kirk rolled off to rejoin his colleagues and I went back to the Résidence to get on with enjoying what was left of the summer holidays. I did start wearing Kirk's present, but I'd meant what I said to him: I had no intention of doing anything or going anywhere that would put me in danger. I was convinced that part of my life was over.

I really should have known better…

Chapter Two

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I can't. But Killian can."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So we released our captives and stood up.

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

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

"Nothing much."

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

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

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

"Is that true?" I asked Luc.

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

"You're always using it!"

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

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

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

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

"Submit?" asked Didier.

"Never!"

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

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

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

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

"Okay!" agreed Luc.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"About six or seven hundred."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Naturally I lost the fight that followed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As you can see, I haven't been cured of my addiction to cliffhanger endings yet!

Chapter Three

I was too shocked to say anything in reply. I simply couldn't understand how Aarnist could possibly be standing outside my front door – after all, I was fairly confident that we'd destroyed the only portal out of the Arvelan world six months previously. And even if they had somehow managed to reopen it they would still have had to go through the Green World, Kerpia and Elsass to get back to this world, and I didn't see how that was possible.

"Not going to invite us in?" asked Aarnist, after I'd been standing staring for a few seconds. "Irfan, persuade him to invite us in."

And so of course I invited them in – when a Konjässi persuades you to do something, you do it. Aarnist and Irfan came inside, leaving the other two cops outside the door.

"Who is it?" called my dad from the top of the stairs.

"You'd better come down," I replied. "It's the police – sort of…"'

"Now, it's up to you how we do this," Aarnist told me. "You can keep it simple and agree to come with us, or you can mess us about, in which case Irfan will have to make sure your parents are in no condition to make a fuss. It's your choice."

"And don't think that because I can't speak your language I won't know what's going on," Irfan added. "Just tell them everything's fine and I won't need to get involved."

I knew what the Konjässiem were capable of – being on the receiving end of Harlan's manipulations had been bad enough, and he had only been twelve. The thought of what an adult would be capable of was frightening, and I didn't want to expose my parents to it. So once we were all assembled in the living room I did my best to prevent them getting alarmed.

"This is High Captain Aarnist and Irfan ved… I'm sorry, I've forgotten…"

Irfan reminded me of his full name.

"Irfan ved Meluan of the Clan of the East," I continued. "They're police officers from the place I told you about – in the country that's in Atlantis, sort of, remember? Well, when we escaped from there a couple of boys got killed, and Aarnist is trying to catch the person who was responsible. Don't worry, it wasn't me, but I'm a witness, and the High Captain needs me to go with him to make a proper statement about it."

I broke off, switched to Arvelan and told Aarnist what I'd said so far.

"That's true, more or less," he agreed. "We know you didn't pull the trigger, anyway – though I'd want to hear your version completely before I decide that you're only a witness. And you'd better not give the impression you'll be back any time soon, either, because there's also the little matter of you being an escaped slave to deal with. I'm fairly sure Irfan's colleagues at the Academy are going to want you back when we've finished with you."

That brought a sick feeling to my stomach. I had no illusions about what would happen to me if I found myself back in Laztaale: this time it wouldn't be a friendly Konjässi treating me decently – instead I'd find myself in the basement being forced to torture myself, or being used as practice for the sort of medical assassination techniques Dervoran had specialised in.

"I'm afraid I'm going to be gone for quite a while," I told my parents. "Travelling between worlds isn't exactly straightforward, and I think these people came by a fairly roundabout route. I'm not sure how long I'll be gone. But you shouldn't worry – I'll be quite safe."

It took a while to deal with the rather panicky reaction of my mother – after all, nobody is too happy to hear that her son is involved in a police case, especially one involving murder. But I suspect that Irfan did something to calm them both a little, because in the end they didn't argue too much. They simply sat quietly and waited while I went upstairs to collect my bag.

"Could you phone Stefan and let him know where I've gone?" I said as I was getting ready to leave. "His number's written by the phone. Just tell him I've gone with the High Captain, otherwise he'll have no idea what's happened to me. I'll call him myself when I get back, of course, but I'm not sure how long that will be."

I didn't think there was anything Stefan could do to help me, and in fact the last thing I wanted was for him to come charging into Arvel to try to find me, but I was fairly sure he wouldn't be able to do that and so I judged that it was safe to tell him what had happened. At least then he wouldn't be left thinking I'd gone off and abandoned him.

I said goodbye to my parents and followed Aarnist out of the house – at that stage I just wanted to get Irfan away from my parents. Once we were well away from the village I'd start looking for a way to escape. At least they hadn't put me in handcuffs.

There was a perfectly ordinary car parked outside the gate. I'd been expecting a police van like the ones we'd travelled in when we were first arrested, but then I realised that if they'd come through a portal to get here they wouldn't have been able to bring a vehicle with them. And, sure enough, the car turned out to be a perfectly ordinary, British-registered Peugeot 406. I was installed in the middle of the back seat with Irfan on one side of me and Aarnist on the other, with the two cops in the front – so there was going to be no chance of just slipping out of the car at the traffic lights.

The car moved off.

"I must congratulate you on your Arvelan," Aarnist told me. "You must have worked phenomenally hard while you were at the Academy. Most foreigners find it almost impossible to master."

"I like languages," I said. "I got quite good at Sanöljan, too." I saw no reason to tell him about the Kerpians' implantation process. "And I should think if anyone deserves congratulations, it's you. How on earth did you find me?"

"Ah. Well, that was easier than you might imagine. Basically, you're the only person in this country who has an Arvelan ID chip in his arm. Once we solved the portal problem – and you'll find out about that soon enough – it was just a question of launching a tracker, and as soon as one registered an ID chip we knew we were in the right place. Of course, we knew approximately where to look for you: – do you remember telling Harlan where you lived? Well, Harlan told his cousin about it, and when we examined Harlan's computer we found a record of the map you used to show him where you lived. Simple, really."

I knew I should have had that bloody chip removed, but somehow none of us had got around to it. I wished I had known this before leaving the house, because if I had I'd have made sure I got a message to Stefan about it.

"Yes, but… I mean, how did you find a portal? There aren't any closer than the Vosges, and if you'd tried using that one I'm sure someone would have seen you."

"We didn't have to go that far: we opened our own portal instead. Actually, we didn't even know we had the information that would allow us to do so at first: we'd looked at a couple of the tapes taken from the interrogation your friends underwent at the school and found that, although they gave interesting detail about some of the worlds you've seen beyond the portals, there seemed to be no technical information, and so we didn't even bother looking at the rest of the records for some time. But eventually we got round to examining the others, and then we found that yours and your friend Stefan's contained extensive knowledge drawn from the Kerpians' computers. And when the scientists saw that they realised that we could probably open our own portals.

"They knew there would be no point in trying to establish a portal at home because of what you told Harlan about our continent not existing in any other world, so we decided to look in this country. I don't suppose you can remember everything you told Irfan's colleagues, but one of the things our scientists managed to work out was that there is some sort of rift, a kind of fault line where the various worlds are closer together, and the portals you told us about have been established along it.

"Well, if you draw a line on the map linking the two places where the Kerpians built their Nexus Rooms and then continue it in a north-westerly direction, eventually it hits this country. We weren't sure which world you'd be in, but if we started from the right country it would at least make it easier."

So apparently I'd been desperately unlucky: if they'd arrived in England at any other time they wouldn't have found any trace of my ID chip, and even if they'd managed to find my home, all my parents would have been able to tell them was that I'd disappeared eighteen months earlier.

I sat back and tried to work out where we were going. Before too long we turned onto the A34 heading south, and then we were able to speed up. There was hardly any other traffic about: this was the third day of a four-day holiday, and it seemed that nobody else was going anywhere. I hoped we'd get stopped for speeding, but then I realised that even if there were any traffic police about, it wouldn't take Irfan more than a few seconds to get rid of them.

We drove steadily down the A34 and then turned onto the A303. I wondered where we were going. I supposed that if we followed this road far enough it would take us down into Devon and then Cornwall, the part of the country nearest to where the Middle Continent would be if it existed in our world. I wondered where they had managed to open a portal… and it turned out it was a lot closer than I thought: we'd only been on the A303 for about fifteen or twenty minutes when we turned off to the right, drew into a car park and stopped.

"Here we are," said Aarnist, opening the car door. "Out you get."

There was a building to our right, and I was ushered into it. Inside were another Konjässi and three more policemen.

"Any problems?" asked Aarnist.

"None at all," the Konjässi told him. "As far as anyone is concerned, the place is closed for the holidays."

"Good. Let's go, then."

I was guided through the building, along a path, through an underpass that led beneath the road we'd just left, and up a ramp on the far side – and then I saw where we were.

"Stonehenge?" I queried. "Why did you decide to put a portal here – this place gets hundreds of visitors! How come nobody saw you?"

"Not during the holidays, it doesn't. Besides, we didn't exactly choose it. Come along – we can talk about it on the other side."

I was now surrounded by five policemen and two Konjässiem, so even though it was dark, which might have helped me if I'd managed to get a start on them, I had no chance to slip away. They guided me to one of the arches in the outer ring, and here we found another policeman and a guy in a white coat.

"Is it open?" asked Aarnist.

"Yes, it's fine. It seems to be completely stable."

"Good. Come along, then, Jacob." And Aarnist took me by the elbow and propelled me through the arch from the outside, so that we emerged into the interior of the henge – and it was immediately clear to me that I had crossed into a new world, because this place was partially lit by a number of small camping lamps and, although the light was limited, it was enough for me to be able to see that this version of Stonehenge was complete.

"Impressive, isn't it?" said Aarnist. "As far as we can tell – we haven't visited many of the others yet – this is the only one that's still intact. You'll be able to see it a lot better in the morning, and then maybe I'll get one of the scientists to tell you what we've managed to find out so far. After all, if it hadn't been for you we'd never have found this place."

"Great! So how about saying thank you by letting me go?" I asked.

Aarnist laughed. "You know, I'm starting to like you, Jacob," he said. "I do hope the death of the Chancellor's son wasn't your fault – I'd hate to have to hand you over to the Republic. Now, if you'd like to come this way…"

He paused long enough to speak quietly to the man in the white coat and then led me outside the outer ring of the henge – though not using the arch we had come in by – and across the grass to where a number of prefabricated huts were standing, looking like those temporary offices you see on building sites, or perhaps temporary classrooms at a school. He took me into one of these and along a corridor to a small room at the far end. This was furnished with a basic army bed like the ones we'd used in the Hub dormitory, a hard chair, and nothing else. There was a very small window high up in one wall.

"Make yourself comfortable," he told me. "I know it's a bit early to go to bed, but it can't be helped. I'll arrange for you to get something to eat a little later. If you need the toilet hit the little button by the door and someone will take you. And don't do anything stupid, Jacob, all right? There are dogs on patrol outside, and I wouldn't want you to get bitten. We'll talk properly in the morning."

And he went out and closed the door behind him. I didn't bother trying it: I'd heard the key turn. Instead I went and sat on the bed and tried to work out whether there was any way out of this mess.

An hour or so later I was given another of the microwave meals I'd last 'enjoyed' in the police station in Arvelan Sélestat – presumably someone somewhere had a lucrative contract to supply the entire Arvelan police force with them. I asked the officer who brought it if I could have some water and perhaps something to read, and he returned five minutes later with a plastic jug full of water and a couple of battered paperback books. I said "Thank you" nicely and, once I'd finished my gourmet supper, started reading something called From a Dusty Basement, which turned out to be a detective story about a policeman trying to solve an unsolved murder committed twenty-five years earlier. It was set in a small town in the south of Arvel, but in all other respects it was a fairly standard scenario. Still, it was quite well-written, and it kept me occupied until I felt ready to go to sleep.

Next morning another policeman brought me breakfast. I'd been expecting more tasteless porridge, but in fact it turned out to be a fresh roll, some orange juice and a cup of decent coffee. And I was just finishing this off when the door opened again and Aarnist came in.

"Good morning, Jacob," he said. "Did you sleep well?"

"Not too badly, thanks. So, what happens today – are we going back to Laztaale?"

"No. There's no hurry – unless you're really keen to get back to the Academy?"

"Not really."

"I thought not. Well, if you help me out by telling me exactly what happened last summer I might be able to arrange it so that you don't have to go back at all – or at least, not for quite a long time. After all, we're likely to need your help again when we find the other people who were involved, so I'd prefer not to send you all the way back to Laztaale if we don't have to. It would be unfortunate if one of the students killed you before we finished with you, don't you think?"

I thought 'unfortunate' wasn't the word I would have chosen myself, but I agreed entirely with the sentiment. Besides, as long as Irfan was standing next to him I'd end up co-operating with him whether I wanted to or not, so I thought it would be sensible to go along with his plans.

"Excellent," he said. "Then I'll see what we can find for you somewhere near here. Now let's go and find Irfan, and then you can give us your statement."

He paused and picked up the book I'd been reading.

"What do you think of this?" he asked.

"It's okay," I said. "It's not particularly original, but it's easy to read, and I'm interested to find out what happens next."

"That's my opinion, too. There are a whole series of these. This is one of the early ones – he's still only a sub-officer in this one. If you like I'll see if I can find you some of the others."

"Could you sign it for me?" I asked. "I was thinking of making a collection of detective stories signed by senior police officers – I've already got one from an SS Captain…"

I only asked because this felt so like Lothar Fischer and the books written by Theodor Köninger that I thought it would be fun to take the parallel as far as the signature in the front cover, but he looked pleased by the idea. And since he was going to be the one who decided what happened to me I thought that pleasing him would be no bad idea at all, so after he'd written the words 'To Jacob, from Aarnist of Tertrishippe" on the inside front cover I said "Thank you" politely and put the book away carefully in my bag.

He led me along the corridor into a larger room that looked more like the police interview rooms I'd seen on TV dramas, though this one had a camera instead of the normal tape recorder. Irfan was already there, so I said "Good morning" to him and sat down in front of the camera.

"Now you know how this works," Aarnist told me. "Irfan will be able to tell if you try to lie, and that would make me very unhappy. Tell the truth and you'll be fine. So, when I give you the sign I want you to look at the camera, start with your name, age and address – you can give the Academy as your address, since that's where you're registered in this world – and then tell us exactly what led up to the death of the Chancellor's son and what happened afterwards."

So when he gave me the signal I began, "My name is Jacob Stone and I'm fourteen years old. My registered address in Arvel is at the Central Konjässi Academy in King Juuniss the Fourteenth Street in Laztaale, though my original home address is not in this world."

I wanted to make it clear that I wasn't just a slave and the property of the school.

I went on to give an accurate description of what had happened: how Harlan had wanted to try out his skills on the Greys, and how eventually one of them had shot him. I made no attempt to hide the fact that I'd been only too happy to escape through the portal afterwards, though I also said that I was truly sorry that Harlan had died.

"I knew the Greys had weapons, but I never wanted them to shoot anyone," I said. "Harlan was my friend, and I really wish he hadn't died. You can see that's true, can't you?" I said to Irfan.

Irfan didn't speak, but he did nod.

"What part did Killian ved Carran play in all this?" Aarnist asked me.

"Well, none that I could tell. Afterwards Terry… I mean Terraxian ved… I'm sorry, I can't remember Terry's father's name…"

"Merlian", supplied Irfan. "Of the Clan of the Founder."

"Right… well, anyway, Terry said afterwards that Killian had done something to distract Harlan, and that it made him move his gun away from Stefan, and that once the gun wasn't pointing at any of us Torth – that's the Grey boy who had the rifle – was able to shoot him without anyone else getting hurt. But I don't know if that's true or not. I guess only Killian or Terry could tell you that."

"And what happened after you went through the portal?" asked Aarnist.

"Well, eventually we found a way back to our own world. We sent Torth and Sarleth – that's the other Grey who survived – through to a world where their own species lives, and then we just got on with our lives. But while I'm not sorry at all about escaping from the school – I think anyone would have done that if they could – I'm really sorry about what happened to Harlan. I still have bad dreams about it sometimes even now."

"And where can we find the world where you sent the two reptiles?" asked Aarnist.

"Well… through a portal, I suppose. I'm sorry, but I really don't know much about how you aim a portal at a particular world. I don't think the Kerpians actually did that, anyway: I think they just opened portals wherever they could and then explored the worlds they led to. In fact it was accidentally opening a portal to the reptile world that caused them so many problems a couple of years ago – I'm sure if they'd known what was beyond the portal they would never have opened it."

Aarnist looked at Irfan, who nodded again. "That's the truth as he knows it," he confirmed.

"Pity. Still, perhaps if the scientists can work out how to use the henge properly we won't have to stumble about blindly like that. All right, thank you, Jacob."

He turned the camera off. "What you've told us is more or less exactly what Terraxian ved Merlian said in his statement. And he made a point of saying that you liked Harlan and that Harlan liked you, and that you were clearly unhappy about his death. Obviously he didn't blame you for his cousin's death at all, even though you were the one who organised things… anyway, we need to talk to Killian ved Carran, and we need to find the reptile Torth. I'm not sure myself whether we could legitimately charge a member of another species with breaking our laws, but I'm also fairly sure that the Sanöljan Chancellor doesn't share my doubts: he just wants someone to pay for the death of his son."

He took me out of the building and we headed back towards this world's version of Stonehenge, and now I could see how amazing it looked: the outer ring of stones was complete and intact, with all of the lintel stones in place as well, forming a complete and unbroken ring. And when he led me inside the ring I could see that everything else seemed to be in place, too: the five large trilithons were all intact, the smaller stones all appeared to be in place, and the altar stone, instead of lying flat on the ground, was actually set vertically. And it was around this that a trio of white-coated individuals were standing, talking in low voices.

"Good morning," Aarnist greeted them. "How's it going?"

"We think we've found another configuration," one of the scientists told him. "We're going to try it later this morning. It's a pity the sheet is so worn – it's extremely difficult to make out some of the writing, and obviously we don't want to make the wrong connections in case we sabotage the whole thing. We're having the images of the plates enhanced, but it might take some time to bring back some of the details, and I'm afraid some of it is probably too far gone to recover.

"On the other hand, it looks as if it might be possible to open more than one portal at a time: none of the configurations we've deciphered so far overlap, and if we're right about the role of the trilithons it might even turn out that it's possible to open every portal simultaneously. The connections would be hellishly complicated, but I think it could be done."

"Interesting," commented Aarnist. "It would speed things up if we could open more than one at a time. I'll send for some more tracker drones."

"There's no rush," the scientist warned him. "We're nowhere near that stage yet. I'll let you know well before we try opening two at a time, and we won't want to risk more than two until we're sure it's safe."

"Fine, but don't take too long over it. I need to find the world with the reptiles in."

He led me back outside the circle again and we strolled over to the huts. There was a bench outside the nearest one, and he invited me to take a seat and then sat down himself.

"Last night I started telling you about coming to this country in the hope of finding a portal here," he said. "Would you like to hear the rest of it?"

"Yes, please," I replied. It was obvious that he wanted to tell me: he was clearly delighted with the way things were going. And I wanted to hear it, too, because the more I learned about portals in England, the better my chances of escaping through one would become.

"Well, in fact the projected line from the two portals you told us about passes some way east of here. We weren't sure that it had to be a straight line, though – after all, the planet's tectonic plates don't follow straight lines. Anyway, we knew that there are ways to tell if you're near a point where the barrier between worlds is thin – you told us that, actually, but I don't suppose you remember. And we got a massive reading on our instruments as we were passing over this place, and so we started to investigate – and it appears that this structure is an ancient nexus, like the ones the Kerpians built, only thousands of years older.

"The local people here only know that the monument has been here for a very long time. Nobody has the remotest idea what it is, though – people seem to think it's a temple that dates back to long before the Romans arrived, and they also think it's cursed: usually nobody comes near it. There are lots of stories of people disappearing here, which I suppose is quite possible, given what it really is.

"Anyway, we weren't interested in its history at first: we just wanted to try opening a portal here, since apparently the worlds were closer here than anywhere else we had found. So we picked an arch at random – it's easiest to keep a portal open if it has a proper frame, apparently – and our scientists set to work. It took them quite a long time, of course – even with the information you and your friend Stefan provided there were still some gaps. And while the scientists were working, some of my men started digging about to see what they could find, and after a while they unearthed a cache buried under a flat slab laid in front of the control stone. It contained a number of square metal plates, some with writing of some sort on and some with diagrams, and there was one larger one that we think was originally fixed to the control stone.

"Unfortunately the plates were all quite worn, which has made it hard to read them. But the scientists have worked out that they are the operating instructions that were used to open portals into different worlds. I don't pretend to understand how it worked, but it seems that the monument is in fact a massive electrical circuit, and that if you join some of the small inner circle stones together in a particular way and connect them to one of the trilithons, you can open a portal into a particular world. They think the trilithons were some sort of electrical storage unit: the theory is that the original users rigged up metal poles during thunderstorms and somehow stored the energy that came from the lightning strikes in the trilithons, so that it could later be used to power the portals. They admit that they could be completely wrong about that, but the first users obviously had some means of powering it.

"So far we've opened three portals – one at a time – using the Kerpians' methods, and the third one turned out to be the one you were in, so that was our first objective achieved. And now they're trying to do it using the original technology – well, they're cheating and using mains electricity, but apart from that they want to do it using the ancient circuits. And they've already succeeded once, so obviously the ancients actually had a working system. It's astounding – this was so far back that even our civilizations were barely getting started, and yet in this place it was already possible to travel between worlds."

"And is there a place like this on the other side of all the portals?" I asked. "Last night you said something about this being the only one that was intact, didn't you?"

"That's right. We think this was the master circuit, and that the ones in the other worlds were initially only slave circuits – in other words, you could only travel to and from the master circuit, not from one slave circuit to another. But later they started to develop it further, building complete circuits in the destination worlds, too, so that eventually it would have been possible to go from any world to any other world without coming to this one on the way. Of course, we're just speculating, but the circuit in your world was obviously complete at one time, whereas the ones in the other two worlds I've seen are only partial.

"Probably we'll never know how extensive their network was, or what happened to stop them using it – because something obviously did, or they would still have been using it when proper recorded history started here with the Romans. But perhaps we can restore it to its former glory. That would be good, wouldn't it?"

"It depends what you're going to do with it," I said. "If you're thinking of exploring and establishing peaceful relations with the people beyond the portals, fine, but if you're thinking of using them for military purposes…"

"Now, Jacob, what do you take us for? We're a civilised people – in fact, we're the oldest civilization on the planet. Our days of military adventurism are a long way behind us… well, a fairly long way, anyway. Of course, it would certainly be useful to develop alternative sources for certain minerals… and we do have an expanding population to accommodate, too, so extra living space would be handy…"

He grinned at me. "Anyway, it won't be your problem. Let's go and find out if Irfan has had any luck finding you somewhere to stay."

And it turned out that he had. "There's a small children's home in Sarutaale," he told us. "They'd be happy to take him in the short term, or for however long it takes us to locate the reptile world. Though I still wonder if we ought to put him somewhere more secure…"

"No, I think we can trust him," said Aarnist. "After all, if he does run off it won't take us too long to find him – and I can assure you, Jacob, you wouldn't enjoy what happened to you when we caught up with you. If you're sensible you'll stay in the place Irfan's found for you, because the alternative would be spending the rest of your time here in that room you were in last night. So, can I trust you?"

Clearly my chances of slipping away would be impossible if I was stuck in the cell here, so I decided straight away to take up the place in the children's home. I knew that, while it might be easy to slip away from there, it would be really hard to avoid recapture, and it would be impossible unless I could get the chip out of my arm: I knew they could track me straight away as long as I was carrying that. But, one step at a time…

"I don't think I could really disappear in this world," I said. "It would be pretty silly to try. So I'll be happy to stay at the Home you've found. Except… would I be allowed to come back here and see how the scientists are getting on? It's pretty amazing, and I'd like to see how the original users did it."

"Of course you can. I'll arrange a pass for you. Now if you'd like to go and fetch your bag we'll run you into Sarutaale and you can start to get settled in."

I walked back to the room I'd spent the night in and collected my bag. I'd meant what I'd said to Aarnist: I had no intention of trying to run in this world. My only real chance of escape would be to use one of the portals – if I could get rid of the chip first, they wouldn't be able to track me if they didn't know which world I was in. Obviously my own world would be best, but I'd settle for another one if I had to, because I knew that, once he had no more use for me, Aarnist wouldn't hesitate to send me back to the Academy. Right now he was playing Good Cop to get me to co-operate, but I was pretty sure that it wouldn't last.

Five minutes later I was sitting beside Irfan in the back of a small electric car heading south. It only took around ten minutes to reach the children's home, which was on the northern edge of a large town. Irfan took me inside and introduced me to the manager, and then he took me to one side.

"There's a bus stop just down the road where you can get a bus back to the monument," he told me. "The manager is going to get your chip credited with enough money to make the journey every two or three days. If we need you sooner we'll come and get you. And don't do anything stupid – we're going to be keeping an eye on you."

And he turned and left. I hadn't actually needed that last warning: I'd already come to the conclusion that, unless Aarnist was a complete idiot, there would be a tracker drone keeping an eye on me for the first two or three days at least. So I intended to behave perfectly for long enough to convince them that I was going to play ball.

By the time I got back to the manager's office he'd been joined by a pair of blond boys who looked so alike that they had to be twins.

"This is Clovis and Carlis," he told me. "They'll show you your room."

"I'm Clovis, he's Carlis," said the first one as they let me along a corridor. "Who are you?"

"I'm Jake," I said. "How many kids live here?"

"In this building, you're the eighth. There's another building next door for girls, but they keep us apart from them, so if you were hoping to get yourself a girlfriend here, unlucky."

"That wasn't the first thing on my mind, no. What's it like here?"

"It's all right. The food's not bad, the rooms are pretty good and they leave us alone most of the time. Of course, when I say the rooms are good, it does depend who you find yourself sharing with."

For some reason that sent both of them off into a fit of the giggles.

"So who am I sharing with?" I asked.

"You'll see," said Clovis, between giggles.

Oh, great, I thought, they've put me in with someone who snores, or who sleepwalks, or who's about seven feet tall, is built like Schwarzenegger and likes beating up his room-mates. But when they knocked and opened the door at the end of the corridor the only inhabitant was a weedy-looking kid of about my own age.

"You've got a new roomie," Clovis told him. "Can we stay and watch?"

"Of course," the kid said. "It's more fun with an audience."

I had no idea what he was talking about. I know I'm not a great fighter, but this kid was skinny, with a pinched face and with his left arm held against his chest in a way that made me think it was damaged somehow. He had short hair the same shade of dark brown as mine, and brown eyes, and a big smile that worried me a bit: was I going to have to share a room with a loony?

And then I dropped my bag, rapidly removed all my clothes and stood in the middle of the room stark naked. It wasn't my idea, but there was nothing I could do about it, because the kid wasn't a loony: he was a Konjässi.

"Nice," he said, approvingly.

"He's quite big, isn't he?" commented Clovis – the twins had come closer to admire the view. "How old is he?"

"He's fourteen," answered the Konjässi, before I could even open my mouth. "And… that's interesting: it looks like that because of some religious rite that was carried out when he was a baby. I've never heard of that before. Shall we see how big I can make it?"

He was good, this kid, at least as good as Harlan had been, because I began to feel really great: it felt exciting to be naked, and when I felt my penis begin to twitch it felt even better. Soon it was fully erect.

"That is quite big, isn't it?" said the Konjässi. "What do you two think?"

"I like it," said Carlis, and to prove it he started to stroke it. And I still couldn't move a muscle, though I didn't really want to at that point. Clovis joined in, feeling my hair and stroking my balls, and I was getting to the point where I was going to lose control of myself… and then the Konjässi said "You'd better stop – he's getting too close. But he definitely likes it – don't you?"

"Yes," I admitted. "It feels brilliant."

"Good. Then you're going to fit in really well."

He released me and I was able to move again. There didn't seem to be any point in rushing to get dressed, so instead I just picked up my clothes, carried them to the bed at the other side of the room and sat down.

"My name's Jake," I told him. "Of course, I expect you know that already – in fact you probably know everything there is to know about me."

"Not quite," he said. "I couldn't make out where you come from, for a start. But I got your name. I'm Declan."

"Just Declan?" I queried. "No patronymic? No Clan?"

"Just Declan," he said, and I caught a feeling of sadness. "I've no idea who my father was – my parents took one look at me and dumped me. I can't say I blame them, though – who wants a cripple for a son?"

I could also tell that he did blame them, but I thought this wasn't the time to say so.

"What's wrong with you?" I asked. "You look okay to me."

"No, I don't. You've already noticed the arm, so don't pretend you haven't. And my left leg doesn't work, either."

"Well, there's nothing wrong with your brain," I said. "You've got excellent control – there was nothing I could do, and you did it without making me puke, too."

"Ah, you've been controlled before, then. Well, yes, I am quite good – but then you didn't really mind what we did to you, did you?"

"I suppose not," I admitted, a bit embarrassed. "But I still wouldn't have stripped off before we'd even been introduced if you hadn't made me."

"I guess not. Anyway, you'd better get dressed in case the other kids come to meet the new arrival."

So I did that, and then I told them a bit about myself, and in particular where I lived and the short version of how I came to find myself in this world.

"Oh, come on!" said Clovis, scornfully. "Another world? That's crap!"

"No, it isn't," said Declan. "He's telling the truth. It's hard to believe, but he isn't making it up. So you got here through the Cursed Circle? And there are scientists trying to open more of these portals there now?"

"That's right. I'll be going back tomorrow to see how they're doing. You can come with me, if you like – I'm sure Aarnist won't mind."

I didn't know if he would mind or not, but I thought it would be fun to have some other boys of my own age with me. Well, the twins were obviously a year or two younger than me…

"They're twelve," said Declan, disconcertingly. And that indicated that I wasn't going to keep even my casual thoughts private unless I could find a metal band.

"You can have one later," he added. "The twins have them, and I suppose it would be fair to let you have one too, since you're going to be sharing the room. But it is fun being able to see everything you're thinking."

At lunchtime I was introduced to the remaining four residents, and that came as rather a shock too: Clovis told me they were local kids, rather than of Middle Continental stock like himself and his brother, and so when he introduced me to the nearest of them, whose name was Peter, I addressed him in English, introducing myself and saying I was pleased to meet him. And he looked at me blankly.

"Hvad saejer du?" he asked. "Jeg førstor deg ikk."

"Huh? Aren't you English?"

That just brought a shrug, so I switched back to Arvelan and asked the same question – though there didn't seem to be a word for 'English', so I left it in English.

Peter blinked. "What's 'English'?" he asked. "I'm a Vestdansker. What are you?"

"Well…where I come from people speak a language called 'English'," I said.

"There was a dialect called Anglish a long time ago," said Declan. "It was spoken by some of the Germanic invaders about fourteen hundred years ago, I think. But now everyone here speaks Vestdansk, and that's been spoken here for well over a thousand years."

Well, I suppose there was a certain logic to it: if William the Conqueror had never invaded, leaving Britain under the Saxons and the Norsemen instead, the English language wouldn't have developed as it had in my world. But it meant that in this world I couldn't even speak what should have been my own native language.

After lunch the twins took me for a walk into town and showed me the local shops, though since I didn't have any credit on my chip I couldn't actually buy anything. But they also showed me where I could catch the bus back to Stonehenge, and that was something I did need to know.

After supper Declan asked if I would help him to take a bath.

"The twins normally do it," he said, "but since you're my roomie now it would be good if you could do it instead. I can wash myself, it's just getting into and out of the bath that's a struggle on my own."

So of course I said I wouldn't mind at all, and I helped him get undressed. And when I was down to his briefs and I could see his body for the first time I realised how difficult it was for him: the left arm and left leg were both atrophied, making it impossible for him to walk, or even use crutches: if he wanted to go anywhere he would have to use his electric wheelchair, or persuade someone to carry him. And…

"Hey, Jake, do you mean that?" he asked.

"Do I mean what?"

"What you're thinking – that it must suck to be me?"

"Well, sort of. I was thinking how tough it must be to have a mega-massive brain and at the same time to be stuck in a body that doesn't work properly. I'm really sorry, Declan."

"Yes, you really are," he said. "Wow, Jake, you're the first person to react like that. Most people are either so scared of what I can do that they think it serves me right to be crippled, or the ones who don't feel like that – like the twins – usually just pretend there's nothing wrong with me at all. I mean, obviously that's better, but you're the first person who has actually understood, and who genuinely sympathises. Thanks."

"That's okay. Now, how do we do this? Do I carry you to the bathroom, or do you use the chair?"

"Well, it might be fun to see if you can carry me without dropping me, but I think I'd prefer to play safe. I'll use the chair, and you can help me into the bath when we get there."

So I helped him into his wheelchair and then followed him a short distance down the corridor and into the bathroom. He ran the bath and wriggled his way out of his briefs, and then I helped him into the bath.

"Do you like it?" he asked.

I'd been trying not to stare, but of course it was hopeless to try to hide what I was thinking from him. I really did need to find a metal band.

"Yes, I can see that you do," he went on. "All right, it's not as big as yours, but it's not too bad, and I've got some hair now… yes, I have, on my balls. Look more closely – see? The twins tease me because they're getting some and they're two years younger than me, but I've told them that if they annoy me too much about it I'll make them shave theirs off and keep them shaved until they're eighteen. I mean, I wouldn't, not really, but the threat keeps them from getting too lippy."

"And is it… I mean, you know, does it…?

"Does it work, you mean? Oh, yes. It's only the arm and leg that don't. Do you want to see how big it can get? Go on, then, wash it for me."

Okay, maybe I should have thought of Stefan and refused, but I thought it unlikely that Declan had very much of a sex life – except possibly from the twins, and somehow that wouldn't be the same as a one-on-one – and so I did as he suggested, and pretty soon I got the result he wanted. And it looked good, too: it was very hard, about the same thickness as mine and maybe a centimetre and a half shorter. There was no visible hair at the base of it, but he was right about there being a few on his balls.

"That'll do," he said. "I don't want any accidents. But I'm glad you like doing that – we'll have to do it some more later."

.I stood back and let him get on with washing himself and then helped him by washing his hair for him.

"I thought the Konjässiem all had long hair," I queried.

"I'm not exactly a standard Konjässi," he replied. "No father, no Clan, so I don't bother about the clothes or the haircut, either. People look at me and just see a boy in a wheelchair, so they don't try to hide what they're thinking the way they might if they knew what I was. It's sometimes useful not to advertise."

He finished off and stood up, supporting himself against the wall while I dried him off, and then I helped him back into his chair and followed him back to our room. He stopped the chair beside the bed and transferred himself expertly onto it.

"Aren't you going to wear anything in bed?" I asked.

"Not tonight. And I don't think you should, either."

He pushed himself to the far side of the bed and lay there waiting, the covers still pushed back invitingly. And I barely hesitated: I didn't like sleeping on my own if I didn't have to, and clearly I wasn't going to have to while I was here. I went back to my own bed, got undressed, piled my clothes up on the bed and then walked back across the room and got in beside him.

"So," I asked, pulling the covers over us, "do you do this with every new kid?"

"No… Sure, I play sex games with the twins, and with Peter and Godfrey too, sometimes – and I hope you're going to join in with those. But this is different: this is about just being with someone."

"But you've only just met me!"

"You're forgetting what I am: I've had a good chance to explore inside your head now, and I really like what I've seen. But I don't know too much about your world, or the detail of how you ended up here. I'd like to, though…"

I wondered very briefly if this was some sort of ploy by Irfan to get me to open up – after all, Declan was a Konjässi, and a skilled one, too: someone had clearly been training him, even if he didn't consider himself part of any of the Clans. But I dismissed the idea almost at once – after all, he would have no trouble at all taking me over and making me speak if he wanted to. Besides, I'd already told Irfan the truth, so there would be no harm in talking to Declan now.

So I snuggled up to him and told him the first part of my story. I told him about Stefan, too, explaining how I felt about him.

"That's all right," he said. "I'm only borrowing you."

And that was good enough for me. I settled down and went to sleep.

So now you know what Stonehenge was really for… possibly. Anyway, Jake's on his own this time: no Stefan, and none of his other friends, either. How is he going to cope? Not too badly, to judge from his new fellow residents…

Chapter Four

The following morning I was woken up by someone pulling the covers off us, and when I looked up blearily I saw the twins standing beside the bed, grinning at me. And today they each had a metal band on his head, presumably in case Declan was unhappy about being woken up in this abrupt manner.

"See?" said Clovis to his brother. "Told you he'd be hard. I bet they were doing stuff together all night."

"No, we weren't," I said, pulling the covers back over us. "We were asleep."

"So why have you got a stiff one, then?"

"I often wake up like this. Don't you?"

"Well… okay, sometimes. But do you really expect us to believe you two didn't do anything last night?"

"Jake's only just got here," Declan told him. "And I can wait – we're not sex mad like you two."

"You're just jealous because we're mature, not a little baldy like someone I can think of."

"I hope you realise what's going to happen the next time you take that band off," said Declan, levering himself into a sitting position using my shoulder.

"You wouldn't really make us shave," said Clovis, confidently. "You're not as nasty as that."

"Watch me," said Declan, darkly. "Still, if you bring the chair over, maybe I won't do it just yet."

Carlis went and positioned the wheelchair next to the bed and I helped Declan into it. Declan went and collected some clean clothes from a drawer and then headed for the door.

"Do you need a hand with washing?" I offered.

"No, thanks. I won't be long."

Once he'd gone I stood up, intending to go to my own bed and get dressed, but the twins just pushed me back onto the bed.

"We were talking about you last night," Clovis told me, "and we were wondering whether you do things differently in your world – sex things, in particular. So we decided that you're going to show us how you play with yourself in your country."

"And suppose I don't want to show you?"

"Then we might have to beat you up a bit."

"Don't you think Declan might not be happy about that? He seems to like me, after all."

"Don't worry, we can deal with Declan. He lets us wear the bands most of the time anyway, and if he gets too lippy we'll get Peter and Godfrey to help us, and there's no way he can handle four of us. So you'd better get on with it, hadn't you?"

"Get stuffed!" I said.

To be honest I suppose I wouldn't have minded too much, but I didn't see any reason why I should surrender tamely without at least a bit of resistance. So I tried to get up, but they just pushed me onto my back and pinned me down, and then Clovis started stroking my balls. And although my erection had subsided in the couple of minutes since I had woken up, pretty soon I was showing clear signs of interest once again.

"Now," said Clovis, "either you can show us how you do it, or we'll have to pull your balls off."

"Well, how do you do it?" I countered. "It's probably exactly the same."

"We don't do it to ourselves at all – only feeble loners have to do that. Sometimes we do it to each other, or if we're feeling lazy Peter does it for us instead."

"Well, I don't do it to myself, either," I replied. "I've got a friend who does it for me."

"Good for you. But you're still going to show us how to do it yourself, or else."

"Okay, then. But I'm definitely going to suggest to Declan that he makes you two shave – if you've even got anything worth shaving, that is."

"We've got more than he has!" declared Carlis, "And it's staying that way, too, because if you try to talk him into making us shave, we'll shave you, too. And you've got a lot more to lose than we have."

I supposed that was true, so I decided to shut up and get on with it. I gave them a five-second demonstration, but they weren't satisfied with that.

"Do it properly, or I'll go and get the scissors," said Carlis.

So I did it properly, this time for about twenty seconds, but then I stopped and sat up.

"That's it," I said, firmly. "Now it's up to you: either you can let me get dressed, or you can stay here when Declan and I go to find out what the scientists are doing."

They looked at each other.

"Well… all right, then. It would be boring being left behind. But next time we might not let you off quite so easily."

"Next time maybe we'll catch you without the bands, and then it'll be you who end up giving the demonstration."

"Like that's going to happen!"

But they stood up and let me get dressed anyway, and by the time Declan came back from the bathroom we were ready to go. Of course we had to have breakfast first – you should never go on an expedition on an empty stomach. And after that I had to ask the manager to credit my chip with enough money to make the bus trip a few times. He wasn't too keen to put more than a minimum amount on the chip at first, but then Declan had a word with him, and after that there were no further objections.

"Well," Declan explained as we waited at the bus stop, "we might want to make this trip a few times, and it'll be easier if we don't have to keep waiting around for him to decide whether to give you two crowns or three this week. So now you've got enough for at least the next month."

The bus dropped us a hundred metres or so from the monument. Strangely, there was no visitor centre in this world, even though the stone circle was intact and thus even more spectacular than the ruins in my own world. Perhaps the supposed curse and the stories of people disappearing kept visitors away.

Because this wasn't a tourist attraction in this world there were no paths leading to the stone circle, but Declan's wheelchair coped with the rough terrain, and soon we were inside the henge. And Aarnist and Irfan were there waiting for us, which seemed to be confirmation that I was being watched by one of the High Captain's tracker drones, and probably of the fact that he wanted me to know about it, too.

"Good morning, Jacob," said Aarnist. "I see you've made some friends already. Good – you might as well enjoy yourself while you're here. How's the accommodation?"

"A lot better than that room I was in a couple of nights ago. Thanks for letting me do this – I appreciate it."

"Well, you're going to help us to identify the reptile we're looking for, so I think we can afford to be generous, even if Irfan still thinks we'd be better to lock you away somewhere – don't you, Irfan?"

"He'd still like to escape," said Irfan, looking at me darkly. "He'd be safer in a prison cell."

"Well, of course he'd like to escape," said Aarnist. "He'd be stupid not to, especially if there's any chance of finding himself back at the Academy. And he's not stupid – are you, Jacob? You know you wouldn't be very popular back there. But as long as you help us out we'll look after you, and if everything works out the way we want I'll see if I can fix it for you to stay where you are now – or maybe even go back to your own world. No promises, mind, but I'll see what I can do. Fair enough?"

"Yes, thank you," I said, even though I didn't really believe him.

"Good. Then we'll leave you to have a look round. Don't get in the scientists' way, mind!" And he and Irfan walked away.

"Did he mean that, or was he just stringing me along?" I asked Declan, as soon as they were out of earshot.

"I'm not sure. I didn't want to root about in his head too much in case the Konjässi caught me at it – I'm pretty sure he hasn't worked out what I am yet, and I don't want to draw his attention to me. But I think the copper's not quite sure what to do with you – it'll probably depend on how things work out. I don't think you should trust him, though."

"I won't. But… do you really mean that Irfan didn't spot you for a Konjässi? How did you manage that?"

"Well, he didn't give me or the twins more than a quick glance, and I have a fairly good shield – he'll have just seen an unimportant cripple, because that's what I wanted him to see. Of course if he decided to look at me properly he'd see past the shield in no time – he's an adult, after all. But he hasn't done that yet."

"Your shield must be pretty good, then. And I've been meaning to ask: if you don't belong to the clan system, who's been training you?"

"Ah. Well; at first they wanted me to go to the nearest Konjässi Academy, but it's in Belgalæjre, which is about twenty-five kilometres away, and the journey would have been a nightmare. And the school wasn't really equipped to take a wheelchair, either. It was cheaper for the authorities to get someone to come to me. So they found an old guy who lives in Søderhamvik. He comes in to train me four days a week, and he leaves me plenty to do when he's not here, too." He shrugged. "Probably I get a better education from him than I would have at the school – everything is on a one-to-one basis, for a start. What about you – are you going to have to go to school when the holidays end?"

"I don't know. Aarnist didn't say anything about it, but I'll bet the manager raises it with him once everyone else goes back to school. Of course, I can't speak Vestdansk, so that might give me an excuse to stay at home…"

"And it might not, because most of the teaching is done in Arvelan. Vestdansk is only a minority language, after all: everyone has to learn Arvelan. And you can speak that perfectly well, so if you do have to go to school you'll be able to follow most of the lessons."

To be honest I was beginning to worry just a little about my future, because my education over the past couple of years had been – to put it mildly – patchy. Of course I'd learned some practical skills instead, like how to shovel coal, how to fire a rifle (inaccurately), how to load the main armament of a tank, how to drive a jeep, how to communicate with members of alien species… I supposed some of those might actually be useful one day, though as I had no intention of joining the army, some of them would be no use at all. I hoped I wouldn't be here long enough to have to go to school, but if I was still here when the time came, maybe any education would be better than none.

We made out way over to the control stone, where a couple of the scientists were standing around a trestle table and looking at one of the metal sheets.

"How's it going?" I asked.

"Not well," said the nearest one. "It's hard to make out if some of these faint lines are supposed to be connections, or if they're just scratches."

"Who are these kids?" asked a voice from behind me, and when I turned round I saw an older man glaring at me. He was bald and thin, which gave his face a skull-like appearance, and he was wearing a lab coat that was white enough to have come straight out of an ad for soap powder.

"Well, that one's called Jacob Stone," said the one who had spoken before. "I don't know about the others. But High Captain Aarnist said he could come and see what we're doing. Apparently he has quite a lot of first-hand experience travelling through portals."

"Has he?" said Skullhead, looking at me with interest. "Wait a moment… yes, Stone – you're one of the ones who supplied the information about the portals in the first place, weren't you? I was under the impression you'd left our world."

"I did," I said. "Aarnist brought me back."

"Ah. In that case I'm surprised to see you walking about freely… still, I suppose Aarnist knows what he's doing. Well, I'm Viisas Gordiss of Poicheeme, and I'm responsible for getting this place fully operational again.  And that would be a lot easier if we could read the instruction manual…"

I stared at him: according to my understanding of the Arvelan language, 'Viisas' translated as 'Clever-clogs' or 'Smarty-pants' or something similar. It seemed unlikely that a humourless-looking individual such as this would give himself a name like that, so I assumed that my linguistic knowledge – which, after all, came from Killian and Caradoc, neither of whom was a native speaker of Arvelan – was faulty. Probably it was a genuine title like 'Doctor' or something similar.

I put that out of my head and asked, "Can't you just use the Kerpian method, like you did to open the portal to my world?"

"We can't find any other co-ordinates that work. We know there must be some, because it's clear that this place used to lead to several worlds, but they didn't leave us any lists of co-ordinates, just these worn connection diagrams. If we can open a portal using the old method we can probably work out its co-ordinates once it's open, and that means we'd be able to use either method in the future."

"I thought you'd already managed to do it the old way once?"

"We did, but it took us to the same world as one of the ones we found the Kerpian way. And as that place seemed to be frozen solid, with a temperature of almost thirty below zero, we decided not to waste a lot of time with it."

Well, that world sounded familiar, and I suppose it gave me a way home, sort of: if I could get into the Frozen World here, I could theoretically get out of it again back at the monastery, and then I could get from the monastery back into the Green World and so via the mine at Wittenheim back into Kerpia. Of course, that depended on a number of things: had we destroyed the portal from the Empire to the Green World for good when we shelled it? Had the Arvelans already invaded the Holy Roman Empire? And, most important, would I be able to travel on foot from here to the Vosges in the Frozen World? I thought the answer to that last question at least was a resounding 'No' – crossing the Channel would be impossible, unless it had actually frozen over, and I would need a huge amount of cold weather gear to attempt a journey of that length even without the Channel in the way.

"What about the other one you tried using the Kerpian method?" I asked. "What was that one like?"

"It looked quite primitive. There were a few fairly small settlements, but most of the people our tracker observed seemed to be nomadic herdsmen. There wasn't much life overall, at least not in this part of the world. We checked in the direction you were supposed to be, found nothing and came back. Of course, if that world is as primitive as it looks I expect the High Captain will have his eye on it as a source of minerals, but that's not really our concern."

I wondered if that could be the world Alain and Oli came from. That was primitive by modern standards, with a sort of feudal set-up and an agrarian society. Of course in their part of that world people weren't nomadic, but I supposed they could be here in Britain. The problem was that there had to be an infinite number of worlds out there, some not too dissimilar to others – and the crunch was that if this wasn't Oli's world there wouldn't be a portal up in the Vosges. Of course, the portal from Kerpia to Oli's world was probably still closed at the moment…

I sighed. What I really needed was for the scientists to open a portal into a world I knew, like the Green World or Dead Orschwiller, and then for everyone to turn their backs for about a week while I escaped through it and disappeared. But somehow I thought that was unlikely to happen.

We watched for a while as the scientists argued over the marks on their sheet of metal, and then we watched for a while longer as they directed a team of men who were wearing the black clothing of slaves into changing the configuration of the inner ring of stones by adding or removing lintel-stones. They did this using something that looked like a cross between a fork-lift truck and a cherry-picker, moving the lintels one at a time until the scientists were sure they had the configuration they wanted.

Next they started connecting the various stones together using long metal poles.

"How is that going to do anything?" I asked Mr Smarty-pants. "Stones don't conduct electricity, surely?"

"These do. We found traces of rust on some of the lintels, and in a couple of places you could see where there had been metal studs driven into the stones. We're fairly sure that originally there were two metal bands running lengthways around the outside of each lintel-stone, and more on the upright stones, too. We've fitted about a third of the stones with bands, and those are the ones we're using to test the diagrams on the control sheets."

One of the scientists put on a pair of heavy gloves and connected the last long metal pole to one of the trilithons – and absolutely nothing happened.

"I told you that was just a scratch," said one of his colleagues.

"Then let's try again without that link," replied another of them, and that led to some more juggling about with the metal poles, but not to the creation of a portal. After an hour or so of this the twins had got bored and were off chasing each other round the stones on the far side of the circle, and after another half-hour or so Declan and I had given up, too. We collected the twins and headed back to the bus stop, telling the scientists that we'd probably come back in a couple of days' time.

"Sorry that was such a waste of time," I apologised.

"No, actually it was sort of interesting," said Declan. "Once the Konjässi left I was able to have a dig about in their heads, and they're all convinced the ancient system is going to work again if they can get the connections right. They weren't telling us everything, though – some of them think there's some other power source involved apart from electricity, something drawn from the earth, though even the ones who think that aren't sure what it is. Anyway, I reckon that if I keep coming with you I'll be able to persuade them to tell us all there is to know about it. And if they do get it to work I want to be here when it happens, because I think it would be amazing to see a completely different world."

"Depends what it's like," I said. "Some of them are really nice, and some are places you definitely wouldn't want to be stuck in. Trust me, I've seen them."

"What are they like?" asked Carlis.

So I started telling them about some of the worlds I'd seen: the good ones, like Kerpia and Vogesia, and the bad ones, like the Frozen World and the Grey world at war. The only one I didn't mention at all was Elsass – I was pretty sure I could trust these three, but I knew that an adult Konjässi like Irfan could pluck the details out of their heads really easily and I wanted to keep my permanent home a secret for as long as possible, even if I had probably already spilled the beans about it when I was drugged and interviewed back at the academy.

"I like the sound of the one with the beach," said Declan. "I wouldn't mind going there."

"I'm pretty sure they won't be able to a portal from here to that world," I said, "because in that world this whole area is probably under water. But perhaps they could open a portal to the Holy Roman Empire, and we could go from there to Vogesia."

Actually I wondered what would happen if the scientists inadvertently opened a portal to the Vogesian world. In theory you can only establish a portal between two places with the same geography. I knew you couldn't open a portal in mid-air, but I thought that maybe if the only difference between the two worlds was a higher sea level in one of them it might be possible to establish a portal – though I suspected that it wouldn't take more than a few seconds of sea-water gushing through the portal before all the electrics shorted out and the portal collapsed again. It was an interesting thought, though.

The bus arrived eventually and took us back to Sarutaale. I'd hoped that the others would have thought of something for us to do together after lunch, but I was out of luck: the twins had already arranged to help the manager with the shopping, and Declan's tutor was coming in to give him a lesson.

"But we're on holiday!" I protested.

"I'm not. Actually it was my idea: I want to get as good as I can, and it's a good thing he's coming, too: if I'm going to be trying to pass unnoticed under the nose of an adult Konjässi I need to develop my shield some more. Sorry, Jake, but when I arranged it I didn't know you were going to be here."

"That's okay," I said. "I'll go and read in the garden or something."

So I took From a Dusty Basement out into the garden behind the house, found a quiet spot at the far end, parked the chair I'd borrowed from the dining room in a patch of sunlight and started to read. It wasn't particularly warm out, but it was okay as long as I was in the sun, and soon I was back in the world of sub-officer Boskiss and his long-dormant murder.

"Aren't you cold, sitting about out here?" asked a voice in my ear.

"Huh?" I'd been totally immersed in the book and I hadn't heard Peter and Godfrey approaching.

"I said, aren't you cold?" repeated Godfrey.

"No, not really…" I glanced at my watch and saw that I'd been sitting here for three-quarters of an hour. "Anyway, I can't use my own room because Declan's having a lesson in there."

"Then you should have come and knocked on our door," said Godfrey. "Or you could have used the twins' room. They wouldn't mind, and even if they did they wouldn't have said anything to annoy you in case you got Declan to make them pull each other's ears off, or something like that. Or you could even have sat in the dining room."

"I like being outdoors," I said. "But I suppose it isn't all that warm…"

"Good, then you can come and play with us for a bit," said Godfrey. "Come on." And he marched off towards the house with Peter trailing along behind him.

I returned the chair to the dining room and followed them up to their room, which was on the top floor. It was a bit smaller than ours, but it had something ours didn't, and that was a games console. I'd seen one like it before – there had been one in Harlan's bedroom in the Imperial Palace in Sanöve, though that one had been in better condition than this one, which looked a bit battered. But it worked, and I guess that's all that mattered.

I spent the rest of the afternoon playing on it, or watching Godfrey and Peter playing on it. I wasn't very good at first because the controls weren't anything like the ones on games consoles in my world, and on top of that I'd never played any of these games before, either. As a result I lost the first six times I played. But then I started getting used to it, and when I finally won a game against Peter, Godfrey congratulated me briefly before pouring scorn on Peter for losing to a klutz like me.

I'd worked out by now that Godfrey was the loud, extrovert one and Peter was a quiet boy who seemed happy to let Godfrey do the talking even though Godfrey was eighteen months younger than he was. Both had mousy brown hair and blue eyes, though Godfrey wore his hair fairly long and Peter's was quite short. Peter was a couple of inches taller and had rather prominent front teeth, but neither of them would have stood out in a crowd. They both went to the secondary school half a mile down the road and they wanted to know if I was going to be joining them the following Monday, when school was due to start again.

"I don't know," I said. "I suppose so, but nobody's actually told me yet. I suppose I ought to ask Aarnist next time I'm up at the monument."

"Who's Aarnist?" asked Godfrey. "And what monument?"

So I gave them the potted version of who I was and where I came from, and their reaction was pretty much the same as that of the twins. The difference was that Declan wasn't here to confirm that I was telling the truth, and consequently they took a bit of persuading before they would accept that it was possible to move between completely different worlds.

"All right, but if you come from another world, how come you can speak Arvelan?" asked Godfrey.

"Well, I've been to this world before, and I have some friends from here, and they taught me, sort of," I said.

"So they speak different languages where you come from?"

"Yes. You already know that, Peter, because I tried talking to you before in my own language, remember?"

"That's true," Peter confirmed. "Anglish, or something."

"That's close enough. And I learned other languages in other worlds, too." And I demonstrated by speaking French and Kerpian to them, and while they couldn't understand anything they could at least tell that they were proper languages.

"So it's true, then," said Godfrey. "Lucky for you we believe you, 'cos we beat up people who tell lies."

"Oh, so you think you could beat me up, do you?" I asked.

"Obviously. Even Peter could, and he's totally feeble."

The next half hour or so was spent play-fighting, which was fun: although I really can't fight, I was eight months older than Peter and more than two years older than Godfrey, and Peter turned out to be a hopeless fighter too, so at least I didn't lose every fight. Godfrey was a lot tougher, though, and I had to work hard to keep him from beating me in the first ten seconds. Of course, when they ganged up on me I had no chance – at least, not until the door flew open and the twins burst into the room and joined in the fight on my side.

"No bullying the new kid," Clovis admonished Godfrey. "Only we're allowed to do that."

The fight lasted until the manager came upstairs to tell us to keep the noise down, and by that time I was confident that I would be happy enough if I had to stay here for any length of time: whether it was because coming from another world made me more interesting, or whether it was because I was a bit older than the other residents, at least here I wasn't going to be Invisible Jake again.

I decided to give the scientists a couple of days to work on the connection problem before I went back to the monument, and so for those two days I stayed at the Home, playing cards and video games and having wrestling matches with the others. By the Friday, which was New Year's Eve in my world but just another day in this one (here the new year started at the Winter Solstice) it was pretty clear that all five of them had completely accepted me, because that afternoon Declan invited us all to his room to play cards with him. And I quickly discovered that this was going to be one of those interesting card games that lead to forfeits of a personal nature.

I wondered why the twins hadn't brought their metal bands with them. Did they even know that Declan might be capable of reading their cards? But it turned out that the cards were a fairly unimportant part of proceedings.

"We have a new player," said Declan, once the door was shut and bolted. "And I think it might be worth him issuing a challenge."

"Who, me?" I queried, when I saw they were all looking at me. "What sort of a challenge?"

"Just say that you want to issue a challenge," said Clovis.

"Okay, then: I want to issue a challenge."

"Right," said Declan, turning his computer on. "When's your date of birth?"

"The twelfth of June, 1996," I said. "That's… hang on, I can remember this… the fourth day of the seventh month, 6679, in your calendar."

Declan typed this into his machine, hit a couple more keys and reported, "So you're twenty-six months older than our existing champion, so that's an allowance of two and a half stoicesu… I think this challenge is going to fail by a distance, but I suppose we ought to check. Get undressed, Jake."

Somehow I knew we were going to get to this point sooner or later. Still, I was fairly sure I wouldn't be the only one to find himself without his clothes, so I did as I was told.

"Not bad," commented Peter, who hadn't of course seen me undressed before. "But you're still going to lose."

Clovis fetched a ruler; stroked me until it was good and hard and then announced that it was eleven and a half stoicesu long. I hadn't measured myself recently, but I guessed I was probably around five and a half inches by this time, which meant that the local unit of measurement wasn't too far away from half an inch.

"Last time we checked Godfrey he was eleven stoicesu," said Declan, "and that was at least three months ago, so with an age allowance of two and a half stoicesu he's got you thrashed, Jake. Unlucky. So Godfrey's still our king."

"Obviously," said Godfrey, looking down his nose at what I had to offer.

"How do I know you're not just making that up?" I demanded.

"Oh, you want proof?" said Godfrey. "All right, then." And he threw his clothes off.

Once he was naked Peter went and fondled him until he was fully erect, and then he held the ruler alongside – though I didn't need the ruler to see that Godfrey was a hell of a lot bigger than I'd been at his age.

"I make it eleven and a half," said Peter. "So they're the same size. Of course, Jake's got hair as well, but I don't think that matters, does it?"

"Not really," agreed Declan. "So Godfrey's still in charge. Hand me the cards."

He held the pack while each of us drew one card, selected one himself at random and then went around us and tried to see which card each of us was holding. But that was just to allow him to practise, because once he's finished guessing – well, it wasn't really guessing because he got three exactly right and got the rank and colour right in the other two cases – we simply turned the cards face up. And the person with the lowest card – in this case Carlis – got a forfeit chosen by Godfrey.

I'd have to admit the afternoon was a lot of fun, though it was a bit of an eye-opener, too: Godfrey had a thoroughly dirty imagination. By the time we stopped for supper pretty much everyone had been made to do something to everyone else, and I'd had a good chance to check out all of my new friends. And the twins did have more visible hair than Declan, though they weren't as big, and they had the sense not to flaunt it – they weren't wearing their metal bands, of course.

Once we were in bed that night – and we were sharing again, as we had every night so far – I asked Declan if he'd been using his abilities on us during the afternoon.

"Of course," he said. "I try to make everyone enjoy it as much as possible, so there are things I can do… yes, like you're thinking now, the same sort of stuff that your friend Harlan used to do. That's why everyone enjoys it so much, even Peter. Somehow he seems to end up getting the worst forfeits every time, but he still keeps coming back for more. So, did you enjoy yourself?"

"Yes, I did, even when Godfrey made me… you know, do that to him. And I'm not sure that I should have enjoyed any of it because, after all, I've got a steady boyfriend, and normally I'd only ever do stuff with him. That why I was pretty sure you'd been sort of lowering my inhibitions a bit, because I don't think I'd have been quite that quick to join in otherwise."

"Oh. So would you prefer not to do that again?"

I thought about Stefan. If he'd got my message he'd probably be worried about me right now, although perhaps that shouldn't make any difference to how I behaved. And of course if he hadn't got my message he'd probably still be eyeing up Jean-Patrick… actually I was sure he wouldn't be doing that, but, even so…

"Well, I did have fun," I admitted. "And I liked making you feel good, too – I really don't mind doing that any time."

"Only because you feel sorry for me."

"No! Well… okay, I do feel sorry for you, but I wouldn't mind doing things with you even if you were a super-athlete. It's good sharing stuff with a Konjässi because I get to share in the feedback. I remember how good Harlan made me feel…"

I tailed off, remembering again what had happened to Harlan. Although the bad dreams had more or less finished I still felt horribly responsible for Harlan's death…

"You shouldn't blame yourself," Declan said, quietly. "I know you were desperate to get your friends away, and so would anyone else have been. And you did it, too, which was the most important thing. I know you didn't want him to die. Besides, you gave him something really special first: most ordinary humans are far too scared of us to make friends with us, but you did that – you gave him your friendship. I promise you that would have meant a lot to him."

"Really? It's just… well, as far as I can see everyone here likes you – or are you making them?"

"Not really. Yes, I make them feel good when we're playing sex games, but apart from that I don't try to influence any of them into liking me. But I'm not exactly typical, am I? I'm on my own, for a start, not in a school full of other Konjässiem. And physically I'm no threat to anyone – even Peter can beat me in a fight if he's got a metal band on. Hell, even the two little kids probably could. Besides, most of them have no idea of what I could do if I really tried, because they hadn't had a lot of contact with my people before they met me. You, on the other hand, have been a slave in a school full of us, so you know exactly what we can do – and yet here you are, still sharing my bed. And I promise I'm not doing anything to make you do that. So that must mean that you genuinely do like me.

"Anyway… if we're going back to talk to the scientists tomorrow we might as well get some sleep first, don't you think?"

And he settled down and went to sleep.

***

Next morning he and I set off for Stonehenge straight after breakfast. We'd invited the twins to come with us, but they hadn't been all that impressed on our first visit and said that they'd wait until we actually had a chance to go to another world. I presumed there was still a tracker drone keeping an eye on me, but this time there was no reception committee and we were able to go straight into the heart of the stone circle, where Smarty-pants Gordiss and his colleagues were watching the slaves shunting lintel-stones about once more.

"How's it going?" I asked. "Any luck?"

"It's going very well," Gordiss told me, looking a lot less irritated than he had on our previous visit. "We've managed to open a couple of portals since you were last here. It's true that one of them looks like a complete waste of time from an exploring point of view, but to be honest I'm mainly concerned with opening the portals and nothing more – what happens on the other side of them is Aarnist's concern, not mine."

"Can we see?" asked Declan.

There was a pause, and I suspected that Declan was being silently persuasive. If he was, it worked.

"I don't see why not," said Gordiss. "We haven't dismantled the stone settings on the second one, so that one's still open: we've found that once a portal is open it stays that way unless we remove the relevant lintel-stone. Wait while we finish setting up this new one and then I'll tell you about those two, and I'll be able to show you one of them."

So we stood quietly to one side while the slaves finished setting up the new circuit and then watched as the last couple of metal poles were connected. And this time there was a humming noise, and then the arch everyone was looking at seemed to flicker for a moment. And when the flickering stopped we could see clear blue sky through that arch – the sky above us was grey and overcast. I stepped forward, wanting to see what was on the far side, but one of the scientists pulled me back.

"Wait!" he said. "We don't know what's through there – we need to run a scan first in case the atmosphere is poisonous, or there is radioactivity or some other problem."

Two of his colleagues left the circle and returned a few minutes later carrying what looked like a large model aircraft. They fiddled about with this for a while and then started its engines and more or less chucked it through the arch into the newly-discovered world. We watched the probe as it flew straight ahead into the new world.

"Standard nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, no obvious poisons," announced the man who was standing by the console that was receiving signals from the probe. "No significant radioactivity – it's up a little on our own world, but not to any dangerous level. Air purity is excellent – no sign of any contaminants. It's hot through there – around forty Celsius – but it looks perfectly safe. On the other hand, there's not much to look at – so far I can only see what looks like a lot of grey dust. I'll send it higher and see what there is a bit further away."

So we waited for a bit longer.

"No change," the man said. "Just lots of grey dust. It's as if we're in the middle of a large desert."

"Can I look?" I asked.

"Wait one moment," said Gordiss.

One of his colleagues stepped forward with what looked like a metal detector with a very long handle, and he stuck this through the portal, studied the reading on the handle and then pressed a button, and a small scoop appeared at the side of the business end of the instrument and collected a sample of the dust.

"No sign of life – in fact it seems to be completely inert," he reported. "It should be safe enough to go through."

I looked at Gordiss, and he nodded, and so I stepped through the portal, and immediately sank up to my ankles in the grey sand, or whatever it was. Declan followed me through the arch, but his chair quickly sank by about six inches. And it was hot, too – we were dressed for December. It reminded me of the first time we drove into Vogesia, except that this place seemed even hotter.

I had a quick look to either side, but there was nothing in sight except grey dust. And this seemed to be the only arch in this version of Stonehenge, too – there was nothing but dust where the rest of the circle should have been.

I stepped past Declan and then pulled his chair back through the arch into the Arvelan world.

"That has to be the most boring world I've seen yet," I remarked. "Except perhaps for the one that was nothing but bare rock. Sorry, Declan – I'd have liked your first foreign world to be more interesting than that."

"Don't worry," he said. "At least I can say I've been to another world now – for about ten seconds."

"Well, perhaps the other ones they've found are more interesting," I said, and I turned to Gordiss. "You were going to show us the others you found?"

"Well, we can show you one of them," he said. "There appears to be a war on in the other one, so we're staying out of the way until it stabilises a bit. But the first one is a bit more interesting."

He led us across the circle to an arch on the far side from the one that had just been opened. For the first time I noticed that a small piece of plastic had been attached to each lintel-stone, and each piece carried an Arvelan numeral. The one on the arch Gordiss was indicating carried the number 14.

"This portal is still open," he told us. "As I said, we've found out that unless we actually remove one of the smaller lintels the portal remains open. That's what we meant when we said that there's some other power source at work here, because the electric circuit that opened this portal has been disconnected. We've still got a probe in this world at the moment. It's inhabited, but most of the people seem to be in large towns, and the nearest one that we've seen so far is about twenty tuhacesu away, so you should be able to have a short walk around without bumping into too many of the natives."

"Thanks," I said, a bit surprised that he was prepared to let us go through on our own. But then I caught sight of the look of concentration on Declan's face and I realised that he was up to something in Gordiss's head.

"Don't wait up for us!" said Declan, brightly. And he pointed his chair at the arch, made an 'after you!' gesture and then followed me through into the new world.

"Wait!" I said. "We didn't ask him how long we've got."

"We've got as long as we want," Declan told me, grinning. "Gordiss has already forgotten we were ever here today, and so have his colleagues. He'll leave the portal open, too – I made sure of that – so we can take our time. Now – where should we go first?"

So Jake's off to explore another unknown world. Will it offer him a way back home? Only time – and another chapter – can tell…

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