David Clarke

The Final Nexus

Chapters 13-16

Chapter Thirteen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I can think of worse ways of living," I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What was that about?" he asked.

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

"Why? There's nothing you can do about it now, is there?"

"No, but… I'd still like to know."

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

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

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

"Yes?" she said, looking at us suspiciously.

"We're looking for someone who might have been brought in yesterday," said Xan.

"Why? Hoping to finish what you started?"

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

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

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

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

'"That's right."

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

"Sorry."

She sighed. "Describe his uniform," she said.

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

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

We shook our heads.

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

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

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

"I came to see if you were alright."

"Why?"

"I was afraid I'd killed you."

"What do you mean, afraid? Weren't you trying to?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Sorry you… what sort of a soldier are you?"

"A very bad one, I'm afraid. I didn't want to kill anyone."

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

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

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

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

"Jake."

"I'm Ruslan, of Amin's Tartars."

"I ride with Xan's Golden Riders," I replied. "This is Xan."

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

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

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

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

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

"You were lucky."

"We were better!"

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

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

"I didn't know we'd lost anyone," I said. "You didn't say."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"We'll have to move the desk to the other side of the portal," I said. "Wait a moment…"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Is this what your world is like?" asked Xan.

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

"What's a library?"

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

"And what does one look like?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Are you sure you want to go?" asked Xan.

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

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

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

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

"What's that?" gasped Leila, as a train pulled out of the station.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Okay. You don't mind coming as far as London with me, though, do you?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Who's the spotter?"

"It's Indra."

"She's experienced enough not to make mistakes… put her on speaker, Sanjay."

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

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

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

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

The spotter flew closer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I thought about it briefly, but decided against it.

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

"How far away is he?" the general asked the spotter.

"Not far," she said. "He'll be here in about ten minutes, I should think."

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

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

"I'm quite looking forward to telling him to get lost," I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Very well, thanks. You?"

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

"How did you find me?"

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

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

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

"Would you be surprised if I said something like 'Thanks, but I'd prefer to stay right here'?" I asked.

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

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

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

"Yes, actually."

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

"Why?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter Fourteen

I stared at Stefan. I couldn't begin to understand how he had got here: I'd thought him safely back in Orschwiller, or more probably back in our own world, at home in Milhüsa – after all, he had no travel documents, so it shouldn't have been possible for him to get to England. But that didn't matter right now: what mattered was making sure he didn't get hurt. I took half a step forward, and Sam threw his arms around me and held tight.

"No!" he said. "You can't go, Jake – they'll kill you!"

"They won't," I replied. "At least, not yet. I have to go, Sam: that's Stefan – my boyfriend, remember?"

"Then I'm coming with you," he said stubbornly.

"No! It wouldn't be safe… except…" I started to think. It was obvious that I was going to have to go with them, but maybe it would be sensible to think about things, instead of just rushing off blindly.

"All right," I said to Aarnist, "I'll come with you. But I need to go and pack first. Give me ten minutes."

"Take your time," he said expansively. "We'll just wait for you in the car."

I turned and ushered the band back to the crawler, and once we were inside I flung off the helmet and breastplate and ran back up to Deck Two, with Dec, Sam and Xan at my heels.

"General, I've got a problem," I said, once we got back to the control room. "He's got my boyfriend, so I'm going to have to go with him. But I'd like your permission to borrow Dec for a couple of days, just as I was going to if I'd gone back through this portal."

"Of course," said the general. "As far as I'm concerned you're still a member of my horde, so we'll support you any way we can. Are you sure you don't want us to attack that man for you?"

"No, I can't risk it. Maybe Aarnist himself might not do anything to Stefan, but I don't think Irfan would hesitate for a second, so I'm going to go with them. But even if they have found the correct world – and we already know that there is more than one reptile world out there – I don't think he has any chance of getting anywhere near Torth – that's the Grey boy he wants – by going through a portal here. It would mean travelling hundreds of miles – over a thousand li – through a reptile world, and I can't imagine for a moment that the Greys would let him do that. So even if he insists on going into the reptile world he'll have to come back to Stonehenge – assuming they don't just shoot us all on sight, of course – and travel through another world to reach the place where the Kerpians had their portal to the Grey world. If he goes through there he'll only be a couple of li from where Torth is now, and he might have a chance of travelling that far.

"I'm going to persuade him to travel back through my world. I think he'll go for it: he can't make the journey in his own world because there's no portal between his world and Kerpia – as far as I know we destroyed the only way out of Arvel other than Stonehenge. But there is one between my world and Kerpia, and once he's in Kerpia we'll be able to arrange for a portal into the Grey world to be set up. And travelling through my world won't give him any problems as long as Irfan comes with us, which I'm sure he will anyway.

"So why do you need me to come with you?" asked Dec.

"I need you to hang around at Stonehenge and find out which way we're going to be travelling. If everything works out and I manage to persuade him to go through my world I'll want you to come back here. Then you can set up a radio transmitter on the other side of this portal and try to broadcast a warning to the Kerpians. If you can warn them that we're on the way, maybe Mr Narj can set up an ambush inside the Hub and rescue us."

"But we don't speak their language," protested the general. "How are we going to make them understand the warning?"

"It'll be difficult, certainly," I said. "But if you use my name a lot – I'm Stone Jake in their world – and also use the name 'Narj Larzel' several times, hopefully any Kerpian listening will recognise it and get a message to him. And the Kerpians are really good at languages, too: they have computers that can translate loads of languages. With any luck they'll be able to translate your message."

"If we can find a wavelength they use, and if they hear it, and if they recognise the names, and if they can get hold of your friend," said Dec.

"Like I said, it'll be difficult," I said. "But I can't think of anything else to try right now."

"Well, I can think of something," said the general. "If we attack this place where their portals are and take it over, they won't be able to take you anywhere."

"That's true," I said. "I don't think they'll leave the portal open after we've gone through it, though."

"No, but if I come with you like you said I'll be able to persuade them to open it again," Dec pointed out. "Once you're off in the reptile world I'll get the portal reopened, and then by the time you come back we'll have control. You just have to make sure that Irfan goes with you – I won't be able to do anything if he's hanging around inside the circle."

"That shouldn't be a problem," I said. "I'm sure he'll want to come with us anyway. That sounds like a good plan to me… have we still got your chair, Dec?"

"Yes, I think so – nothing ever gets thrown away here, you know that."

"Then it would be a good idea for you to come back in it. You look completely harmless as a cripple in a chair, and that's how they'll expect to see you anyway. You can hang around the circle until we've gone and then spring into action!"

I thought this was as good a plan as any, and it would certainly solve the problem for us. If it worked and they managed to rescue me and Stefan I thought it might also be a good idea for the general to destroy Stonehenge completely, as this would at least make it difficult for Aarnist to go after my parents even if he was so inclined. It wouldn't stop him completely, of course, because they still had the Kerpian method of opening portals, but it might delay him for long enough that I could warn my parents to go and visit granny for a month or so.

So five minutes later one of the open-top tracked vehicles drove out of the back of the crawler. Xan was sitting next to the driver, still in his helmet and breastplate, and in the back were me, Sam, Dec and Dec's chair. Sam and I had brought our bags with us, too, although I was still hoping to persuade Sam not to come with us. The driver pulled the vehicle up next to Aarnist's Jeep.

"We'll follow you," I said. "I don't want to leave my friends here, and they belong in your world anyway, so they'll have to come back with us. I was fairly sure there wouldn't be room in your vehicle for all of us, especially with Dec's chair, so I've persuaded the people here to lend me this machine and its driver."

There was a muttered conversation between Aarnist and Irfan, who was sitting in the back of the Jeep next to Stefan again.

"Very well," said Aarnist. "But please don't try to do anything stupid."

His driver turned the Jeep around and headed off back the way we had come, and we followed. Looking up, I could see a couple of spotters overhead: presumably the general wanted to make sure he could find his way to Stonehenge once we were out of sight.

It took us about an hour to get back to the five arches that was all that existed of Stonehenge in this world, and when we arrived we saw that one of the arches had now grown an extension: there was a square metal archway attached to one of the uprights, looking exactly like a garage door frame but without the door. The Jeep stopped just in front of this, and the driver got out of the vehicle, stepped through the archway and disappeared, only to reappear a few seconds later with six armed cops and a couple of Konjässiem: clearly Aarnist was taking no chances.

Sam and I unloaded Dec's chair and then lifted him out of the back of our vehicle, and he was doing a very good impression of a boy who was unable to move unassisted, which is another way of saying that he was damned heavy. We helped him into the chair and he gave us a wide grin.

"Don't forget your left arm," I whispered, and he lifted it against his chest, so that it looked exactly as it had when it was still atrophied and useless.

"Thanks," I said to Xan. "See you again very soon, I hope!"

"We'll be waiting," he promised me.

Sam and I picked up our bags and followed Aarnist through the archway, with Dec following us. This time we didn't go inside the circle straight away, but I could see that we had already crossed into Arvelan territory, because on this side of the 'garage door' I could see that the circle was complete. The Jeep drove through after us, and at once a couple of slaves come out of the circle and began very carefully to fold the arch in on itself; the crosspiece slid in on itself like one of those extending curtain-rails, and soon the garage door was no bigger than the inside of the stone arch to which it was attached. The slaves then swung it through ninety degrees so that it was actually tucked inside the stone arch, and at that point we walked through inside the circle, in time to watch the forklift truck driver removing the inner lintel stone. The portal flickered and disappeared.

"Do you like our little addition to the circle?" Aarnist asked me. "We thought fifty tuhacesu was a bit too far to walk, so Gordiss figured out a way to extend the interface and make it wide enough to get a vehicle through. Clever fellow, that Gordiss."

"He's not called Smarty-pants for nothing," I agreed. "So where do we find the reptiles?"

"Through Arch Thirty. It's a good thing we didn't try to open each arch in numerical order, or we wouldn't have got here for months… although maybe that wouldn't have been such a bad thing… anyway, we've found it now, so we might as well get on with it."

"Look, High Captain, you're not stupid," I said. "If we go through that arch accompanied by a platoon of cops bristling with weapons we won't get a hundred cesu from the arch. If we're going to survive at all we'll have to go in small numbers and peacefully, without weapons. That way at least I'll live long enough to talk to them, and if I can do that we might be okay."

"I'd already decided that would be best," he agreed. "We're only looking for information to start with, aren't we? After all, for all we know this might not even be the right reptile world, might it?"

"Exactly. So probably it would be best to send your cops back to the huts and just take me and the Konjässiem with us. That way we'll look harmless."

Irfan looked at me and I tried really hard to think only about what I was going to say to the first Greys we met.

"Have you sent a tracker through?" I asked, wanting to change the subject.

"Obviously. There's a settlement about eight tuhacesu south of here, roughly where Sarutaale is in our world. It won't take long to get there in the Jeep. We just need to wait while they open the portal for us. You might guess that we don't leave any of them open when they're not in use any longer – for some reason kids seem to keep sneaking through them when we're not looking!"

He grinned at me and went to talk to Gordiss, and Irfan strolled over to join them. I wondered if he'd caught a glimpse of Dec's plan, and very much hoped that he hadn't, because that was my best chance of getting home again. But the discussion was a short one, and soon the slave with the fork-lift was at work again, then the necessary connections were made, and then the portal under Arch Thirty sprang into life. The slaves had already set up the metal arch inside the stone one, and once the portal was open they set about swinging it out and extending it to make it big enough for the Jeep.

"Keep this one open, but make sure the rest stay closed," said Aarnist to Gordiss. "We won't be too long: this is just a preliminary visit, after all."

He shepherded me towards the Jeep. Sam tried to come with me.

"No, Sam, stay here with Dec," I said. "You heard the High Captain: we won't be gone long."

I didn't want Sam to be exposed to any more danger than could be avoided, and this was likely to be a dangerous journey, even if we were unarmed and harmless-looking: I suspected that even adult Konjässiem wouldn't be able to control the Greys mentally. Besides, I wanted a chance to talk to Stefan. So far he'd been kept away from me, and I was fairly sure from his movements and silence that he was under the control of Irfan – a free Stefan would have run to my side the moment we were inside the circle. And it would be much easier to talk to him freely without Sam literally hanging onto my arm.

Sam wasn't happy, but Aarnist backed me up, and soon I was sitting in the back of the jeep with Stefan beside me and Irfan on Stefan's other side. Aarnist was going to drive himself this time, and that left room for another Konjässi in the front passenger seat. Once we were all aboard Aarnist put the Jeep into gear and drove us slowly through the portal, and we emerged into the Grey world, which looked at first glance very like the one we had just left, except that here there was only a single arch standing in the middle of a field.

"Excuse me," I said politely to Irfan, as Aarnist started looking for a gate out of the field, "but can I have my friend back, please?"

"I suppose so," said the Konjässi. "You'd have to be insane to try running in this world."

Stefan stirred and turned to look at me, and then his face lit up with a big smile and he flung his arms around me. I hugged him back, equally hard.

"I thought he was never going to let me go," he said. "Obviously I was controlled a few times at the school, but not for as long as today. It's horrible having no control over what your body is doing, especially when I saw you over in that other world. I wanted to run to you, but I couldn't even twitch."

He paused. "Who's the little cutie with the freckles, and why has he been hanging onto you like a limpet since the moment I clapped eyes on him?" he asked.

"That's Sam. I met him a couple of worlds ago and he's got sort of attached to me."

"Oh, really? And are you attached to him?"

"Well, yes, but not like that! I like him a lot, but we're friends, that's all."

"So you've never done anything sexual with him?"

"Well…"

"Ah, so you have? Great! I've been sitting around tearing my hair out with worry, and you've been gallivanting about hither and yon having it away with pretty boys!"

"It's not like that at all! And we never 'had it away', either! Okay, so we rubbed each other a couple of times, but…"

"Oh, thanks, Jake! So how many other boys have you been doing things with since I last saw you?"

I was silent, but it didn't do me any good not to answer.

"Seven," Irfan told him, smirking, and I almost fainted, not because I'd forgotten that a Konjässi could follow what I was saying even if I was speaking a foreign language (Kerpian, in this case) but because I hadn't actually realised it was as many as that. But of course it was: Dec, Godfrey, Peter and the twins in Sarutaale and Xan, Vanya and Sam himself on the crawler. Mercifully Miro hadn't been around the evening we had played cards for forfeits, or the answer would have been eight. Not that seven wasn't bad enough…

Stefan stared at me, and I could see the hurt in his eyes.

"I'm really sorry, Stefi," I said. "But it wasn't like you're thinking: we just played cards for forfeits a couple of times, that's all. You can ask Dec when we get back to the circle – he's the boy in the chair. He'll tell you it was just games. And as for Sam, he can tell you that he wanted me to do more stuff with him, but that I said I couldn't because you were the only one I wanted to do that with. Ask him, Stefi – or ask Irfan. He knows I'm telling the truth."

For a ghastly moment I thought Irfan was going to lie to him and tell him I'd been sleeping with every boy I had met – after all, I'd always had the impression Irfan didn't like me much, and I knew he didn't trust me. But I suppose that Konjässiem are trained to look for the truth…

"Don't think I wasn't tempted, Jacob," he said to me, demonstrating once again that he could see exactly what I was thinking when he tried to, "but… yes, Stefan, that's the truth. He enjoyed himself doing what he did with the little one, mind."

I could have done without that rather catty last sentence, but at least now Stefan knew I hadn't actually done anything more serious with anyone else. He still didn't look entirely happy, though. I wanted to find a way of changing the subject, but I didn't want to ask him how he had got here while Irfan was around, because I suspected that he probably had things to tell me that would best be kept private. He had sat back in his seat when I'd told him about Sam and was now sitting hunched up with his arms folded, so I put my arm around his shoulders and gave him a little hug. He didn't respond, but he didn't throw my hand off, either, and I supposed that was perhaps better than I deserved.

I still couldn't think of anything to say, so I looked out of the window. We were on a road now, driving through countryside that didn't look very different from the Arvelan version of this route, which I had taken several times on the bus. I knew that Greys almost all lived in towns and cities, so it was no surprise to see no houses alongside the road until we reached the edge of a town. Aarnist pulled the car over and then, after a moment's thought, turned it round so that it was pointing back the way we had come.

"Just in case we have to leave in a hurry," he explained.

We got out of the car and walked into the town. It was around four in the afternoon according to Stefan's watch, which was on Arvelan time. I'd stopped wearing mine lately – I'd put it in my bag before the battle with Khan and hadn't got around to putting it on again: crawler time was a fairly elastic concept most of the time. I'd left my bag with Dec, so there was no question of going back for my watch now. In any event, the streets were empty: this was a residential district, and I supposed that everyone would be at work.

A little further in, however, we came to an area with a couple of typical Grey snack bars and some shops, and here there were people around – and their reaction to us was more or less what I had expected. I can imagine what would have happened if a quintet of fully-dressed, man-sized bipedal lizards had walked into Abingdon, and it was much the same here: shock, some screams, a lot of staring and a rush to call the authorities. We just stood and waited for the authorities to arrive, and it didn't take long before a Grey electric car appeared at high speed with a flashing red light on the roof. It stopped three or four metres away from us, and a pair of uniformed Greys jumped out and pointed guns at us.

I raised my hands to show that I was unarmed, took a step forward and, suppressing the urge to say, "We come in peace – take me to your leader!" I settled for the rather less hackneyed, "Good afternoon."

The cops – at least, I assumed they were cops – looked at each other and then looked back at me, and then the one on the left opened his mouth and addressed me in total gibberish.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I'm afraid I didn't understand a word of that. Could you say it again, please?"

I don't know whether he said it again or whether he said something completely different, but I still didn't understand a single word of it. Something was obviously wrong here: in both Grey worlds I had seen so far they spoke the same language. Did that mean that this was a third Grey world?

One of the cops was now speaking into something that was either a radio or a mobile phone. I was starting to get a really bad feeling about this, and when a couple of minutes later a closed van, also sporting a flashing red light, appeared, the feeling got even worse: I'd been here before, of course, when Aarnist's own cops had called up a similar van to take us to the police station in Arvelan Sélestat, and I wondered how he would feel about being on the receiving end for once.

Another cop got out of the van and spoke briefly to the first two, who pointed at me. The new cop took a couple of steps towards me and stood there, apparently waiting for me to say something.

"Good afternoon," I said again. "Can you understand me?"

"Hello. I understand," said the cop. "How are you speak language of Region Two?"

So that explained it: all the Greys I had met previously came from the same area, which in our world was the Black Forest. I suppose I should have realised that Greys had different languages, just as we did, but somehow it had passed me by.

"I have visited Region Two," I said. "I was taught to speak the language by some of the people who live there. Which region is this?"

"This is Region Five. Why are you come here?"

"This man is a policeman," I said, indicating Aarnist. "He is investigating a murder, and he wants to interview one of your people, who witnessed the murder."

I thought describing Torth as a 'suspect' would probably be a bad idea.

"How is this possible? Took this place here in our land?"

I unscrambled that mentally. "No, it was in our world," I said. "Three young Greys… I mean, three boys of your people were with us when the murder took place."

"This I understand not. Come with us you must."

I suppressed a snort of laughter: the cop was turning into Yoda. But of course the situation really wasn't funny: once we were inside a police station it might not be easy to get out, as I had discovered after Aarnist's men had arrested me over a year previously. But I really couldn't see a way out, so I turned to the rest of the party and explained what was happening.

"I think I might be able to talk him into letting us go," I said, "but I don't think there's any chance of being allowed to travel all the way to Germany in this world – and even if the cops here allowed it, we'd run into trouble almost all the way, because I can't speak the local language. Anyway, I think it would help if we show willing, so let's just go and get in their van."

The adults didn't look entirely convinced, until Irfan said, "I think he's right. We can't start anything here while they've got guns pointed at us and while there are enough people around to lynch us. Inside their station we might be able to do something."

So I told the Grey cop we'd be happy to come with him and we went and got into the back of the van. The cop closed the door and got back behind the wheel, and we drove away, the police car following us.

"Can you get inside his head?" I asked Irfan.

"Barely. His brain structure is nothing like ours – it's like trying to coerce a horse."

"Would it help if you had more mental strength?"

He stared at me. "Is this the time to start insulting me?" he asked.

"No, you misunderstand. I meant to say that you can draw on outside help to boost your brain-power. If you get into physical contact with your colleague here and he keeps still and relaxes, you'll be able to use his mental energy as well as your own. It's something Harlan was working on: he found he could even make use of an ordinary person's mental energy, but it worked a lot better with another Konjässi. Look into my mind and I'll try to show you what happened – it'll be quicker than trying to describe it in words."

I showed him how Harlan had borrowed my mental energy to help him defeat the older boy at the school, and how he and Terry had combined their energy to try to get past my metal band. I wasn't particularly keen to make Irfan stronger, but in this situation we needed every advantage we could get.

"Harlan said that he and Terry working together were just starting to be able to see into Torth's head the evening before the portal reopened," I said. "So maybe the two of you can do better than just seeing and actually manage to persuade him to let us go."

"That's a pretty revolutionary idea," said Irfan, staring at me. "We generally work alone, so in the normal way of things the opportunity wouldn't arise, and it's so unorthodox that it wouldn't occur to us to try even if we were working together. But it could work."

"Then try it," I urged. "It'll take a while to answer his questions, because he's bound to want to know how we got here and how we found out about portals in the first place, and that should give you time to try a few things. And when you're ready, I'll suggest that he should let us go, and you do everything you can to persuade him to obey – and then maybe we can actually get out of here today. If it doesn't seem to be working, the rest of us will join the chain so that you can use everyone's energy. I know we don't have much to offer compared to one of you, but I made a difference to Harlan, and so maybe the three of us can give you enough to make this work."

The van pulled up and the doors were opened again, and we found ourselves in an enclosed courtyard. The cop who spoke Region Two – after a fashion – told us to follow him inside the building that took up one side of the yard, and once we were inside he led us to an interview room. His colleagues found some extra chairs for us, and once we were all seated I began to try to decipher his questions through a thick veil of mangled syntax and aberrant vocabulary.

I explained briefly – or as briefly as he would let me – what a portal was and how one had been opened between Kerpia and this world, albeit a long way away from here, more than two years previously, and how that had come to me learning the local (as it turned out) Grey language. I further explained that on another journey we had met Torth and his two colleagues, and that they had witnessed the death of the son of the Sanöljan Chancellor the previous summer, which was why Aarnist wanted to question them now. And finally I explained that we had succeeded in opening another portal only a short distance away – "Around fifteen khirokubs, I think, if you use that system."

And then I had a moment of inspiration.

"Get him to agree to this," I said over my shoulder to Irfan, and then I turned to the Grey again and said, "Perhaps you ought to come and see for yourself? After all, once you've seen that the portals really exist you'll understand the rest of what I've been telling you far more easily."

There was a pause, and I really hoped that Irfan was doing his stuff. Someone behind me took hold of my wrist and I tried to relax in order to allow Irfan to use my energy… and then the cop said, "I think this portal we should see."

He turned and spoke to his colleagues, and they seemed to argue for a moment. But our guy was insistent, and soon everyone except me was in the back of the van again. I was in the front sitting next to the driver, so that I could give him directions. Once again the other cops followed us in their car, though they recruited two others to accompany them this time: clearly they weren't sure that it would be wise to do this. Certainly if I'd been in charge I'd have arranged for all except one of our party to stay behind at the police station, but then maybe Grey cops aren't as suspicious as I am. Or perhaps he was just so eager to see this doorway into another world that he didn't stop to think it through.

I hoped there was nothing important in our Jeep, because we drove straight past it: somehow I didn't think the cop would have allowed us to drive it back to the portal if I'd asked him to. The only thing that mattered to me was getting out of this world as quickly as possible.

"It's by that arch," I said, as soon as the solitary arch that was this world's Stonehenge came into view. "I think there's a gate into the field just up here."

And there was, though it was more of a hole in the hedge than a proper gate. We drove through it, but this van wasn't designed to run off-road the way our Jeep had been, and we got stuck in the mud about halfway between the gate and the arch.

The police car wasn't doing any better, and by the time the driver and I were out of the van, three of the cops had got out of the car and were pushing it back towards the gate. Once it was able to move on its own again the driver parked up, got out and came to join his colleagues. I went and stood by the back door of the van, but by now apparently the cops had started to use their heads, because the van driver told me that my colleagues could stay where they were for now: one person would be able to show them the portal perfectly well on his own.

I led them across the field to the arch. The arch extension was still deployed, though there appeared to be nobody guarding it. Of course, if our plan had worked Stonehenge would now be under the control of the Horde, and they would obviously not put guards outside the portal so as not to scare Aarnist off when he returned. So I stepped through the portal feeling confident that everything was going according to plan, only to realise almost immediately that it wasn't: there were half a dozen of Aarnist's cops in the circle, and Gordiss and his crew of scientists and slaves, and Dec and Sam – but they were the only members of the Horde present. I looked at Dec, and he nodded off to his right, and I saw that there were a couple more Konjässiem talking to the scientists. Of course if they had been there all along there would have been no opportunity for Dec to get the portal reopened.

"We've got a problem," I told the nearest cop. "There are reptile cops with us, and they've got the High Captain and the others. Grab your guns!"

The officer stared at me, but a couple of seconds later the Grey cop followed me into the circle, and that galvanised the cops into action. Within a couple more seconds all of them had drawn a firearm.

"Don't shoot!" I yelled. "We need him alive to get the others back!"

Of course if Stefan hadn't been in the van I'd have been a bit less worried, but the last thing I wanted was for shooting to start while he was still in Grey hands.

"Keep still," I told the Grey. "We don't want a fight, and we're not interested in harming you or invading your country. We just wanted information, like I told you. All we want now is for you to release my colleagues, then you and your colleagues can go in peace."

I could see him thinking about it, but I wasn't too worried: after all, he was the one the guns were pointing at, and I knew from experience that Greys valued self-preservation above everything.

"If you don't get them released," I went on, "you'll be the first to die."

That was enough to convince him, and so when I told him to come forward away from the portal, he complied.

"When your colleagues get here," I said, "tell them not to fight. There's no reason for anyone to die here."

And that worked, too: even though for a moment it looked as though a couple of the Greys at least were about to run back through the portal, which would have meant that our cops would have had to go after them and possibly shoot them, the first cop called to them to stay were they were, and that made life a lot easier. We got the Greys to hand over their weapons and sit on the ground while one of the Arvelan policemen took the keys from the first Grey, went out through the portal and released the others, and once everyone was back on our side of the portal there was no need to detain the Greys any longer. At least, I didn't think so, but Irfan disagreed.

"We need to practise getting into their heads," he told me. "We just about managed it in the town, but I'm sure that if we work on it we'll find an easier way."

"I'm sorry," I said, "but I promised them that if they surrendered quietly we'd let them go once you were back with us."

"You didn't have the authority to make that promise!"

"I'm the only one who can talk to them, so I had to make a decision," I said. "Otherwise they might have started shooting in here, or worse, run back to the van and tried to hold you and the others hostage. Besides, if we're really going to go ahead with this mission, the last thing we want is the authorities here telling the ones in Region Two that mammals are dangerous, treacherous and untrustworthy. We want them to give a good report of us – that way we might actually manage to persuade the ones in Germany to let us into their territory."

"That won't do any good if we can't control them!"

"But you already know you can, and if we take four of you with us instead of two, and if you practise working together on the way, by the time we get there you should be able to handle them easily."

"It won't be the same as practising with a live specimen!"

"No, I can see that. But I couldn't see any other choice. The Greys I've met all seemed to keep to their agreements, and I really think it's important that we show them that we can, too – even if it was an agreement I shouldn't have made."

"Jacob's right," said Aarnist, and I breathed a sigh of relief – after all, it was my word that had been given, and I didn't want to have to break it, even if it was due to something I had no control over. "If we're going back into that world we have to be careful what sort of impression we make now. Tell them they can go, Jacob."

So I did that. The Greys looked a little surprised, but they didn't stay to argue. I went with them to the portal and watched as they examined the view from both sides: here a full Stonehenge, there a single arch.

"Thank you for bringing us back," I said to the 'German' speaker. "We won't open this portal again – I'll make sure of that – so there's nothing to worry about."

Of course, that didn't mean that they might not try to come back and open a portal themselves, but I was virtually certain that they wouldn't be able to do that. So, provided Aarnist agreed to keep his side of the portal closed, there wouldn't be any problems with Greys here.

The Greys set off back across the field, and as soon as they were ten metres away the slaves came out and folded the portal back inside the arch, and ten seconds later it had been deactivated.

"So, are you really still intending to go to Germany and try to talk to Torth?" I asked Aarnist.

"I don't see why not."

"But… why? I really don't understand why you'd bother going all that way on a fool's errand. Even if you do get to speak to him, you must be aware that the Greys will never let you take him out of their country – so what's the point?"

"Let's go for a little walk," said Aarnist, leading me out of the circle and into the field, where we were out of earshot of everyone else.

"Jacob, you're a bright boy," he said. "Obviously we're not going to try to bring the boy out. Even if I'd been thinking about it, I'm certainly not after that little trip we just took. If Irfan can't do his stuff I'd have to be insane to try, and I can assure you I'm far from insane."

"Why, then?"

"Because fate has dropped the biggest thing to hit our country in hundreds of years right into my arms, and I'm not about to let it slip. See, I'm just a provincial cop: I come from an unimportant fishing town at the southern end of the kingdom, and I'm usually stationed about as far from Laztaale as it's possible to get, over on the German border. I don't have any influence, I haven't got any rich relatives, and I don't know anyone important, all of which means that I was likely to spend the rest of my career at the back of beyond.

"Then you fell into my lap. Nobody really believed all that stuff about other worlds at first – at least, nobody except me and Irfan, because we spoke to you in person. Everyone at headquarters thought it was either fantasy, or that if such a thing did exist it was just a passing freak of nature, something nobody could control or direct. The senior scientists in Laztaale said it was impossible, and so officially it was impossible.

"And then the Chancellor's son got killed and you and your friends escaped, and it happened under my jurisdiction. I can assure you that I didn't ask for this mission: it was dumped on me by HQ as a punishment, because they were convinced it was impossible. But once I saw the transcripts of your interrogation at the school I changed my mind completely. I became convinced that, not only do the portals exist, but that it would be possible for us to create our own. I recruited Gordiss – he's from the provinces, too, and he was as quick to see a future in this as I was. I was able to use the death of the Chancellor's son as the perfect excuse to investigate portals and to try to find a way to use them, and the result is this place. And already this is enough to get us recognised.

"But… you probably don't know this, but far too many of the portals that have been opened here go to places that are useless to us. There are deserts, radioactive wastelands, worlds apparently suffering from permanent darkness, worlds where there is nothing but ice… and most of the inhabited worlds are controlled by people who have modern civilisations like ours, which makes them impossible to exploit unless we're prepared to go to war. Now, I don't believe the circle is really cursed, but maybe we're doing something wrong. And so obviously the next move is for us to talk to the experts, and that's the Kerpians. Unfortunately we haven't found a direct way into their country, but you know how to get there, and so you can show us the way.

"I'd still like to talk to the Grey boy, just to get a statement from him, because that'll be one in the eye for all the bastards in Laztaale who said I was on… what did you call it? A fool's errand? But really it's just an excuse for us to go east. Today we proved that we can't travel through the Grey world, so if I want to complete my mission I'll have to go to Kerpia and use their portals. And maybe while we're there we'll be able to talk to their experts and find out what we're doing wrong."

"So… you never intended to arrest Torth?"

"Gods, no! Like you said, I'd never be able to. No, Torth is simply a means to an end. Ideally I'll take his statement and then spend a while in Kerpia learning about their portal technology."

I was by no means sure that the Kerpians would be ready to give the technology to someone from another advanced race without a lot of evidence as to their bona fides – in fact I was fairly sure they wouldn't. But this hardly seemed to be the time to say so.

"What about me?" I asked. "Once I've done the interpreting for you, do I get to go home, or will it be back to Laztaale?"

"Do you think I'll answer that truthfully?"

"Actually, yes. I'm fairly sure everything else you've just told me is true."

"If you help me out with the Greys, and with the Kerpians, I'll let you go," he said. "I'm not sure that Irfan will be happy about it, though, so you might have to watch out. But if I get what I want I'll make sure you do, too."

That sounded as if my freedom would depend on him getting co-operation and information from the Kerpians, and I didn't think they'd do that even to bail me out.

"So," he went on, "what would be the best way to get from here to Kerpia?"

"Through my world," I replied. "It's fairly stable, and there's a direct portal to Kerpia in the Vosges."

"Yes, thought you'd suggest that. But you need to be careful, Jacob: just because I like you, it doesn't mean that I'm going to let anything get in the way of my mission. I won't have the least hesitation in killing your friend if you try to slip away, or you either, if I catch up with you again. If I agree to travel through your world I want your parole, otherwise I'll get Irfan or one of the others to keep you under close control until we get to Kerpia. Understand?"

I'd just been starting to think of him as a reasonable man, too. The idea of travelling for six hundred miles unable to move or speak was terrifying, which I thought left me with no choice. Besides, I was quite happy to be heading for Kerpia: a few hours earlier I'd been on the point of doing exactly that under my own steam.

"All right," I said. "I'll come with you to Kerpia, and I won't try anything on the way. But… please could we stop at my parents' house on the way? They must be going frantic with worry."

He thought about that. "I don't see why not. But only you go inside. Stefan stays with Irfan in the car. Agreed?"

"Fair enough," I said, because I thought that if I could once set foot in my parents' house it would give me another opportunity to get a message to Mr Narj.

"Then do we have an agreement?" he asked.

"Yes, I think so."

"It's obvious that you don't trust me," he said. "Like I said before, I can understand that. And I don't entirely trust you, either. But if we work together we can both get what we want: I'll become the recognised authority on portals, and you'll get back home. You know I need you to translate for me, so that gives you a partial guarantee, anyway – though never forget that I don't need Stefan, which gives me a partial guarantee, too. So let's see if we can work together for a while."

He turned and headed back to the circle, and I followed him.

"So are we leaving straight away?" I asked.

"No, I don't think so. It's a bit late – we'd never get all the way to the German border without an overnight stay somewhere. Instead we'll stay here tonight and leave first thing tomorrow. I'm afraid that means you'll be back in our cell, but it will only be for one night. And of course you won't be on your own this time."

Once we were back in the circle he announced that we would be staying here for the night and then went into a huddle with Irfan, Gordiss and one of the other cops. While he was doing that I made my way over to where Dec, Sam and Stefan were waiting.

"I'm going to try to get back in here first thing tomorrow," Dec said. "With any luck they'll come over bright and early to open the next portal, and then I'll be able to get them to open the one back to the Horde world instead. By the time you've finished breakfast we'll be in control. I can't see any reason why they'd send a Konjässi to oversee the opening: we know the scientists usually do that on their own."

"With the slaves," I pointed out. "But you're right: they'll do what the scientists tell them to. Okay, Dec, that sounds like a good idea."

Certainly it would be better for us to go back to Kerpia unescorted, even though if we went through the Horde world into Kerpia I wouldn't get a chance to see my parents. But I could always phone them once we got back to the Hub – I'd just need to pop down to Orschwiller in my world to do that.

Dec and Sam headed for the nearest arch, but before they got there Aarnist stopped them.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"Back to Sarutaale," said Dec. "Now we know Jake is safe we might as well go back home."

"No, I don't think so," said Aarnist. "Young Jacob has this knack of recruiting friends everywhere he goes, and I really don't want you to go back there and then rally all your friends into some sort of crusade to rescue him. Some of my men prefer not to have to shoot kids. Tonight you can stay here. You can go back home tomorrow, once we're safely on our way."

Irfan was standing about ten feet away, so Dec didn't dare try to compel Aarnist to let him go, and instead he had to fold. He and Sam were shepherded over to the huts with Stefan and me, and once we got inside we were packed into the cell and the door was closed.

"We'll find you another mattress," Aarnist promised, and about fifteen minutes later one arrived. We would still be sleeping two to a mattress, but since I would be sharing with Stefan that didn't bother me at all. At least we were together again, though it remained to be seen if he'd forgiven me for Sam. But our situation was still very worrying, and I barely dared to contemplate what would happen if the Kerpians told Aarnist to get lost…

So now Jake knows where Aarnist is coming from. Whether it gets him any closer to a return home is less clear…

Chapter Fifteen

"Sorry," said Dec, once the door had closed on us again. "Now what?"

The four of us didn't quite have a common language: three of us spoke English, three of us spoke Horde Common, and three of us spoke Arvelan. Arvelan would have been best, because at least Sam had learned a little by now, but I thought it entirely possible that there was a listening device in here somewhere, and obviously we didn't want Aarnist to hear anything we said – at least, not in any language he could understand. So we switched about between English and Common, providing a translation for Dec or Stefan as required.

"Can we go back to the original plan?" I suggested. "Once we're gone, you and Sam can get the portal reopened – I'm fairly sure all the Konjässiem will be coming with us to help deal with the Greys – then you can get the general to set up a radio on the Kerpian side of his portal and try to get a warning to Mr Narj. Make sure you warn them to wear helmets when we get there."

"Obviously. But I really don't think this is going to work. Isn't there anything else we could do?"

"Probably not. I was thinking that we could let Mr Narj know what is happening when we get to the Hub, but I can already see how things are going to be when we get there: Irfan will have Stefan under full control, and if I do or say the wrong thing, he'll kill him. But maybe on the way back from the Grey world he'll be more relaxed and, if we're lucky, more careless. Or maybe he'll actually keep his word and let us go."

"I wouldn't rely too much on that," said Stefan. "I don't trust him, or Aarnist, either."

"Nor do I," I admitted. "Maybe I trust Aarnist a little more than I did before, but not enough to just sit back and do nothing. Anyway, we can come back to that: right now I want to know how he came to get his hands on you in the first place. I thought you were safely out of reach."

"Well, I was for a while, but then I came back."

"What do you mean, back?"

"Okay, I'll start at the beginning," said Stefan. "That Monday evening, your dad called Jean-Patrick's house to tell me that you'd been arrested by the police. At first I thought it was something to do with your papers being out of date, or something – after all, you'd been gone for about eighteen months, hadn't you? But then he said it wasn't the British police, it was policemen from one of the countries you'd been to, and when he gave me the cop's name… well, you can imagine my reaction. I thought I'd lost you for good.

"But I wasn't prepared just to give up. I couldn't understand how Aarnist could possibly have found you, but if he had been able to get into your country, then I was sure I could follow him back to his. So I sat down with Nicky and Killian to try to sort out what to do. Nicky wanted to go back home to collect reinforcements – he said he was sure all our friends would have wanted to come and help. But I said it would take too long, and that I wanted to get after you before the trail got cold. I insisted that Killian talk the three of us past customs and the border police, and he did it with no trouble at all.

"Anyway, we found our way to your village and then asked the lady at the shop, and she looked up your parents' address in the phone book and told us how to get there. I didn't tell your parents about us, obviously: I just said we were your friends and that we wanted to know exactly what had happened, and so first they told us what they remembered, and then Killian dug about in their heads in case they'd forgotten anything. They weren't able to tell us exactly what Aarnist had said, of course, but they were able to give us everything you had said when you were translating for him, so I knew that Aarnist was investigating what happened to Harlan, and that – according to what you told your parents – you were a witness, rather than a suspect. Not that that made me feel a lot better: I thought that once you got back into Arvel you'd be in plenty of trouble for running away, even if they didn't blame you for Harlan's death. But your dad said they'd left by car and that he had no idea which way they'd gone, or even where they were going. So we were stuck.

"I still couldn't work out how they had found you, but Killian cracked it: he said they must have managed to make a portal of their own using the information they took from us at the school, and then traced you through your chip. He said we had to get our chips removed straight away, so that they couldn't trace us the same way. But of course we couldn't do that in your country because we had no ID papers and no medical records, so we had to go back home. But before we left I asked your dad to call Jean-Patrick if he got any news about you, and on the way back we arranged for a way to get news to us. Jean-Patrick really wanted to help if he could – he and the Webers had got to know us quite well over Christmas – and so we took them up to the hut. We didn't explain exactly what the hut is, of course: I imagine Mr Narj would prefer not to have it known in your world that the portals exist, although personally I think the French kids could keep the secret. But we cut an extra key for them in the village and told them that if they got any news from your parents one of them should go up to the hut and leave a message on the desk, and later we arranged with Mr Narj that someone would check the hut for messages every day. And if he heard anything he could relay it through the Institute in Strossburi and they could call the Home and let us know."

"And is that system still working?" I asked.

"Of course – at least, it was when I got arrested."

"Then I should definitely be able to get a message to the Hub," I said. "I can call Jean-Patrick from my parents' house, and then Mr Narj will know we're coming. He might not be able to rescue us, but at least we'll have a chance."

"Provided the Kerpians are still checking the hut every day," said Stefan. "It'd be hard to blame them if they aren't: it's been nearly four months, after all."

"True, but it's worth a try. And if Dec can get the general to try radioing as well… anyway, what happened after Killian said you had to have your chips removed?"

"Well, I was in a tearing hurry, of course, and when they said we'd have to wait for the hospital to find a slot for us – it was hardly emergency surgery, after all – I got to the stage of suggesting we should get Marc to do the operation while Killian kept us asleep. I'm sure Marc could have done it, too, and when I asked him he said he'd certainly have a go at it if there was no other way. But in the end I let them persuade me that I wouldn't be able to do anything about finding you anyway, and so it would be better to let the professionals take the chips out.

"Once we'd all had the chips removed I wanted to come back, or even try to find our way back to the Arvelan world through the Green World and the Holy Roman Empire. But Killian said it would be stupid to go back into Arvel without knowing for certain where you were. He pointed out that Aarnist was based in Eastern France and that he might have taken you there, rather than back to Laztaale, and that it wouldn't be very clever if we all went and got ourselves arrested again after you'd worked so hard to get us out of that world.. And of course he was right, so for a while I tried to just carry on as usual, going to school and so on, as if there was nothing wrong. But by half term I just couldn't keep living like that, and so I persuaded Killian to take me back to your England. Once I was safely back with your parents I sent Killian home, telling him I'd stay in touch using Jean-Patrick's phone, and that I'd let them know the moment I heard anything. I couldn't do anything much except sit and wait, but I think your parents liked having me around, because at least it meant they knew they weren't the only ones worrying about you.

"And then, about a week ago, there was a knock on the door. I opened it – I thought it might even have been you, only it wasn't: it was Aarnist and Irfan. Aarnist said he'd intended using your parents as bait to get you back, but that I'd do rather better, and so they brought me back here and kept me in this room until this morning. And you know the rest."

"Right. Well, as long as Aarnist keeps his word and lets me visit my parents on the way to France I'll almost certainly be able to get a message to Jean-Patrick. Then we just have to hope that Mr Narj checks the hut before we get there – or that he picks up the general's radio message, of course. Look, Dec, I'll write you out the message I want you to send in Kerpian but using the Western alphabet, so that you and the radio operators on the crawler can read it. It won't matter if the pronunciation's a bit wonky – as long as the gist of the message gets through it'll do. Have you got a pen, Stefi?"

Silly question: of course he had, and his notebook, too. So I sat and thought for a moment and then composed a message warning the Kerpians that we were coming, explaining our situation and advising Mr Narj that everyone working in the Hub when we arrived needed to be wearing metal somewhere about their person, and preferably on their head. I wrote this out in phonetic Kerpian and then, after a moment's thought, wrote it out again in French and English on another sheet of paper.

"I don't suppose they'll let me use the phone while I'm with my parents," I said, "but if I leave this somewhere my parents will find it, they can call it through to Jean-Patrick after I've gone. Now, Dec, try reading this aloud."

I gave him the Kerpian version and spent a while teaching him the pronunciation. We had to break off at one point when the guards came in with yet more microwaved offerings from the Crappy Meal Corporation, or whoever was supplying the Arvelan police service. I ate it because I was hungry, but I sincerely hoped that this would be the last time I would get one of these. Breakfast, to judge from my previous night in this cell, would at least be edible.

After we'd eaten we decided that we might as well settle down and try to get some sleep, so when the guard came to collect the remains of our food we asked him if we could use the facilities before he locked us in for the night. We were escorted, one at a time, to use the washroom at the end of the corridor. I took the opportunity to have a look around, but there was no exit at this end of the building, and the window in the toilet was no bigger than the one in the cell. Clearly we weren't going to be able to leave that way.

I was a little worried in case Sam wanted to share with me, but I needn't have been: once we were all back in the cell he helped Dec to get undressed – just in case there was a camera somewhere that we hadn't found – and helped him to the mattress on the floor, and then he took his own clothes off, lay down next to Dec and pulled the blanket over them both. Stefan and I took our clothes off and he got into bed while I went and turned the light to its dim setting (it wouldn't turn off completely) before joining him. And when he snuggled up to me and hugged me I felt a huge sense of relief: it looked as if he wasn't going to hold a grudge against me for what I'd done with Sam.

"You missed my birthday, you know," he told me. "I hope you've got me a present."

"Once we get back home I'll buy you whatever you want," I promised him. "But until then I'm afraid the only thing I have to offer is me."

"That will do perfectly." And he hugged me hard and kissed me. "You've got no idea how much I've missed you."

"I have," I argued. "Ignore the stupid games I played with Dec and his friends – that was nothing but playing around. Even when Sam was doing his best to get close to me, I'd still have walked away from him in an instant if you'd been available."

"I know. Actually, I played a few games over Christmas, too: most days we played with the Webers and Jean-Patrick, and Luc kept winding his brothers up and provoking them into doing stuff to him, and of course you know what Killian is like for games involving forfeits: even though Nicky has more or less weaned him off anything painful, he still enjoys being stripped and teased. So we played quite a lot of forfeit games, and the fact that Luc and Killian seemed to get most of the forfeits didn't make it any less fun for the rest of us. But after we heard what had happened to you all that stopped, and I haven't done anything physical since, even though Hansi and Tibor offered to take my mind off things by giving me a massage… mind you, once we get back home I think maybe I'll take them up on it. I think it would be a pretty amazing experience."

"Not unless they're prepared to give me one at the same time," I said. "Now we're back together we're staying that way. So… what exactly would you like me to do to celebrate your birthday – even if I am about six weeks late?"

"Why don't you just try a few things, and when I find something I like I'll let you know."

It didn't take me long to find something he liked. He hadn't been kidding about not doing anything for several weeks, either, because that first time he only lasted about thirty seconds and I have no idea how I managed to swallow such a huge offering. But the second time I was able to draw it out for a lot longer, and the time after that…

Anyway, eventually we settled down to sleep, and I slept extremely well: now that Stefan and I were finally back together I felt I could face the future far better than I could have done without him.

When I woke up next morning I could hear Dec and Sam talking quietly to each other. It sounded like a disagreement, but I couldn't make out the words, so I couldn't hear what they were arguing about – at least, not until Dec realised that I was awake.

"Jake, tell him he's staying with me," he said.

"Well, of course he is – isn't he?"

"No!" said Sam. "I'm coming with you."

"No, you're not," I said. "Come on, Sam, why would you want to come with us? It's going to be really dangerous. You'll be much safer with Dec on the crawler."

"But you need me to come with you! Jake, you know that there's a good chance the Kerpians won't get our radio message, and they might not get your telegraph message either… sorry, it's a 'telephone', isn't it? Anyway, they might not get it. And like you said, you might have to go on to the reptile world anyway. But I can stay behind with the Kerpians while you do that, and so while you're away I can tell them everything they need to know – you know, about wearing metal and so on. And then when you come back from the reptile world, they'll be ready to rescue you."

"I'm sure Aarnist would never agree to leave you behind with the Kerpians," I objected. "Actually I don't think he'd agree to take you with us in the first place."

"Yes, he would. I could say I'm hurt, or too tired to carry on. Besides, if they leave me behind it means that there'll be one more of the mind-readers free to help deal with the reptiles. Otherwise he'll be having to keep me under control."

"That won't work," objected Dec. "Any of my people could see straight away that you weren't really too tired or hurt."

"But the other reason's a good one, isn't it? Besides, there's another reason why I should come: I'm a trained Horde radio operator. I can fix the Kerpians' radios to reach the general's crawler, and I know all the right wavelengths to try. And the general said there were other crawlers in the right part of the world, so if he told them how to open a portal they could come through into the Kerpian world and help us. They could stop Aarnist and say something like 'We'll let you go back to your own world, but only if you let Jake and Stefan go', or something like that. Aarnist might have thought our crawler wouldn't want to risk Stefan getting hurt, but a completely different one might be crewed by people who couldn't care less about Stefan, or you, either. Surely it's worth a try?"

I thought about that. I wasn't completely sure that a crawler popping up in front of Aarnist would be enough to persuade him to hand me and Stefan over – after all, our crawler hadn't persuaded him to hand Stefan over. We hadn't actually asked him to, of course, but I was fairly sure he wouldn't have done. But the idea of leaving Sam behind at the Hub to brief the Kerpians was a good one. Aarnist might well buy the argument that it would be better to keep his Konjässiem unencumbered so that they could work on the Greys, and we could further point out, quite truthfully, that Sam couldn't speak Kerpian, and so would be unlikely to do any harm if left behind. With any luck Aarnist wouldn't know about the extensive language banks on Kerpian computers. And then we could come back from the Grey world to find a fully-briefed Kerpian militia waiting for us, and maybe even the crew of a Horde crawler, too. And maybe that would be enough to persuade Aarnist to hand us over.

Okay, that was a lot of maybes, but I still thought that perhaps I shouldn't neglect any possibility…

"You're not seriously thinking of going along with this, are you, Jake?" asked Dec.

"Well, he does make a good case for coming. I don't think Aarnist will be willing to take him, though, so it probably won't happen… although maybe we could suggest that it might be useful for him to have another hostage along in case anything happens to Stefan…"

"And you could tell him I don't belong in his world anyway," Sam added. "You could say that I only came back with you from my world because of how much I like you, and that if you went I'd have no reason to stay here. Of course, that wouldn't be true: normally I'd be completely happy to stay with Dec – I mean, he's my friend, too…"

"Do you mean that?" Dec asked him.

"Of course I do! I told you way back that the main reason I wanted to help you escape from my world was because of how brave I thought you were… anyway, you can see for yourself that I mean it, can't you? If Jake was just going back home I'd certainly want to stay with you. We could go back to the crawler and live there. It'd be brilliant… but Jake needs us to help him. He needs you to go back to the crawler and organise things there, but I'd be more use going with him and doing all that stuff we've been talking about. And if it all works out and Jake and Stefan do manage to get free I'll be able to come back to the crawler with you then, won't I?"

"But what if something goes wrong?" asked Dec. "It's bad enough Jake being in danger – I'd go mad if anything happened to you, too."

"Really?"

"Yes, really. Surely you know how much I like you?"

"Then I'll definitely come back, because I really like you, too."

At this point there seemed to be a lot of hugging going on on the other mattress, so I discreetly settled down to cuddle Stefan, and once he woke up we were too wrapped up in each other to take a lot of notice of what was happening on the other side of the room. But afterwards I did find myself caught in a dilemma: I really didn't want to take Sam into danger, and there was no doubt that this journey would be dangerous – for a start, if a Kerpian rescue attempt went wrong we might all be killed. And there was no guarantee that we would walk away from Region Two of the Grey world as easily as we had from Region Five, even if we did have the advantage there of being able to speak the local language. Quite possibly Aarnist would refuse to allow Sam to be left at the Hub, in which case he'd be sharing the dangers of the Grey world, too. But on the other hand, his plans might give us a realistic chance of being released: if Mr Narj knew what was happening and had been warned to wear something metal on his head, he could do something like closing the portal back to my world and refusing to open it again unless Stefan and I were released. So on balance, provided that he had a proper idea of what he was letting himself in for, I was in favour of taking Sam with us if possible.

By the time breakfast appeared (and I'd been right about it being a lot more appetising than supper had been) we had a couple of plans provisionally worked out, first if Sam was able to come with us, and a fall-back plan if he wasn't. He and Dec arranged that the crawler would be listening out on a particular frequency at around nine in the morning and nine at night every day, so that if Sam was able to make use of a Hub radio he'd have a good chance of being heard. He and Dec synchronised their watches so that they would agree on when 'nine o'clock' actually was – as I've observed before, crawler time was best described as 'elastic'.

If Sam was not able to come with us, though… in that case we would have to rely on the crawler being successful in its attempts to contact someone in Kerpia with my message, to which end Dec would ask them to broadcast more or less continuously.

Shortly after breakfast the guard came back in to tell us to get ready to leave, and fifteen minutes later we were all in the centre of the circle waiting for the portal to be opened. I was surprised to see that today the 'garage door' extension was nowhere in sight.

"We can't use our own vehicles this time," said Aarnist, when I asked about it. "You'll see why in a minute. But apart from that, this is a civilised country and our vehicles don't really blend in very well: we'd probably be stopped, at least when we tried to leave the country. We've made other arrangements. So, if you two are ready… your other friends can go home now if they want. By the time they get there we'll be well away."

"Ah, well, about that… Sam isn't actually from this world and he wants to come with us."

"Explain."

So I told him that Sam had come back from the Marxist world with us, that he couldn't go back there for fear of being arrested for helping us to escape, and that he couldn't really stay here either, because he couldn't speak either Arvelan or Vestdansk and because he didn't have a chip.

"And I don't want him to end up as a slave, like we did," I said. "So I said he could come with us. I'm sure you won't mind – after all, it gives you another lever to use if I were to turn awkward. Not that I'm going to, but you've only got my word for that."

He stared at me, apparently trying to work out what I was up to, but he was no Konjässi, and for some reason Irfan was nowhere in sight this morning. In the end he just shrugged and said that we could probably squeeze one more little one in.

"But make sure he knows what will happen if he does anything stupid," he warned me. "We need him even less than we need Stefan, so if he steps out of line I'll have no hesitation in getting rid of him."

I translated that for Sam, adding "Are you sure you don't want to stay here?" at the end. But he predictably said he was coming, and that was the end of it.

Then Gordiss arrived. Today he was carrying a small bag, and I realised that he was coming with us, which made sense if Aarnist thought there was any chance of the Kerpians sharing their technology with him. As soon as Gordiss arrived the scientists sprang into action, the fork-lift driver settled the inner lintel into place and the necessary connections were made, and the portal back to my world shimmered and opened. Three Konjässiem who had been talking to the scientists picked up their bags and came to join us, as did Gordiss, though there was still no sign of Irfan. But instead of waiting Aarnist picked up his own overnight bag and strode towards the portal.

"Keep up, now!" he said over his shoulder. "And don't talk to any strangers!"

I thought that was an odd thing to say, but when I emerged from the portal into my own world I saw what he meant: although it was still quite early there were already some sightseers around. A couple were looking at us as we emerged, and they looked confused, as well they might have been: from their point of view we had walked out of a circle that had been empty ten seconds earlier. Of course, these days people aren't usually allowed inside the stones, and the visitors must have been wondering who we were to have been allowed to go where most people couldn't.

The Konjässiem were wearing their usual robes and Aarnist was in his military uniform, which I suppose gave them the air of being foreign dignitaries of some sort, though I've no idea what they would have made of the three of us. For a fleeting moment I considered yelling for help and saying that we were being kidnapped, but then I realised that with three Konjässiem just behind me I probably wouldn't get beyond opening my mouth, and that even if I did they could make the visitors lose interest fairly quickly. And then I'd end up making the trip under close control, and we probably wouldn't stop at my house, either. So I kept quiet.

Aarnist led us to the path and through the underpass to the visitor centre, completely ignoring anyone who seemed inclined to speak to him, and once we were outside he took us to the far side of the car park, where we found Irfan waiting for us with a minibus and a man who seemed to be asleep on his feet.

"All aboard!" he invited us as we arrived. "Jacob, would you mind telling this man he'll be able to come and collect his bus here in three days' time? I can give him the general idea, but you can put it into words for him."

So I told the man the minibus would be back in three days, and he nodded and strolled off in the direction of the bus stop. I thought his chances of getting his bus back were not great, but perhaps I was doing Irfan a disservice: after all, I supposed that they were intending to come back here once the trip to Kerpia was over. I just hoped that I wouldn't be with them when they returned.

The bus was a nine-seater, which was perfect: the party consisted of Aarnist, who was going to drive, Gordiss, Irfan, the other three Konjässiem, Sam, Stefan and me. I wasn't sure quite how Irfan had managed to find it, but once he had I knew he would have had no trouble persuading the owner to let us 'borrow' it, even without being able to speak English.

Aarnist had a couple of problems with the gearbox at first, but by the time we were out of the car park he was driving smoothly enough, and soon we were back on the A303 heading towards London. I wasn't actually sure that he was going to let me visit my parents on the way until he turned onto the A34 heading north.

"Thanks," I said. "I appreciate it."

"Mind that you do," he replied.

He found his way to my house with no problem – this was, after all, the third time that he'd been there – and drew up outside.

"All right, Jacob," he said. "You've got ten minutes. Make the most of it."

"Come in with me," I invited. "You, too, if you want, Irfan. I'm not going to do anything stupid while you've got Stefan and Sam, am I?"

"Don't worry, we're coming," said Irfan. "We wouldn't want you to do anything you shouldn't – such as making phone calls."

I suppose I should have known it wouldn't be that easy. I got out of the bus and Aarnist and Irfan followed me up the path and waited a couple of metres back while I rang the bell. My mother opened the door, which of course led to hugs and tears and that sort of thing, and it took me a couple of minutes to actually get inside the house. By that point my father had appeared, which indicated that I'd been at least a day out in my calculations: I'd thought it was a Friday, but when I asked I was told that today was Saturday April 16th.

Finally I got everyone into the living room.

"The good news is that the High Captain's investigation is almost over," I said. "We're on our way to Germany now, and there's a place there where we'll be able to go into the reptile world and speak to the boy he needs to interview. And after that he says we'll be able to go home – that is right, isn't it, High Captain?"

Aarnist nodded solemnly when I translated the question for him, though whether I could believe him was a different matter.

"There you are," I said to my parents. "And as soon as it's over I'll call you – hopefully in a couple of days."

"Don't forget Passover starts on Monday evening," said my father. "It would be really good if you could get back here by then."

"I'm not sure if we'll be able to get back that quickly," I said. "It will depend on how quickly things happen in Germany. But I'll try to let you know what's happening, anyway."

I didn't particularly want to come back to England: once this was over, if Aarnist kept his word and let me go, I just wanted to get back to Milhüsa with Stefan and return to my normal life, at least until I was sure Aarnist had returned to Arvel. I wanted to be a long way out of his reach if he changed his mind and decided he wanted me again, and my parents' house was far too close to Stonehenge for comfort. Even if Dec managed to reopen the portal back to the Horde world, allowing the general to capture and destroy Stonehenge, I wouldn't feel safe if Aarnist knew where I was. It would be much safer to invite my parents to come and visit me instead. But this didn't seem to be the time to go into that.

"I'd like to go up to my room and get changed," I said. "These clothes need a wash, and I might not get another chance to put on something clean for a while."

I got up and left the room. I wasn't surprised when Irfan followed me: I knew he wanted to keep me away from the telephone. I just ignored him, went up to my room and got out a change of clothing. Of course everything that I had left behind in 2009 was now far too small for me, but my parents had bought me a few new things when I had been here over Christmas.

I took everything off, emptying my jeans pockets of everything except the note for Jean-Patrick: I knew that my mother always checked my pockets before putting my clothes in the wash, and I hoped that she'd remember to do so this time, too. I got dressed in my clean clothes, dumped the dirty stuff in the laundry basket and went back downstairs.

"I suppose we ought to go," I said when I reached the living room. "We've still got a long way to go."

"Wait a moment," said my father. "You said earlier that 'we'll' be able to go home after this is over. Is Stefan with you?"

"Yes, he's outside in the bus with the rest of Aarnist's men."

"And is he okay?"

"Yes, he's fine."

"Good. He seems like a nice boy… Look, Jake, about you and Stefan… Is there anything we ought to know?"

Oh, God, I thought, this really isn't the time… but I thought that I had to tell them something.

"He's my friend," I said.

"He's not just a friend, is he? We're not stupid, Jake, and he was here for quite a long time. It's obvious he cares about you very much, far more than any ordinary friend would. What I mean is, is it one way, or do you feel the same way about him?"

I took a deep breath. "It's two-way," I said. "I love him. I'm sorry you had to find out like this, but… I'm gay. It's not something I chose, or anything."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure."

"Then I want you to know that it doesn't make any difference, Jake. We still love you."

"Really? Mum?"

Mum was trying not to cry at this point, but she managed to nod and smile. "I suppose this means no grandchildren," she said. "That's a pity… but at least you've found a nice Jewish boy."

"Huh? Stefan isn't Jewish!"

"But he wears a Star of David. We saw it."

"Ah. No, I gave him that," I said. "He wanted to wear it to show how much he cares about me, but he's not Jewish himself. Is that important?"

"Is it important to you?" asked my father.

"Well, not really, to be honest. It's not as if we're particularly religious, is it?"

"No, not really. The important thing is that you're happy. So where did you meet him?"

"Up in the Vosges. I'd stumbled into his world by mistake, and we got talking… and we've been together ever since. It'll be two years soon."

"And what's his world like?"

"Not so very different from ours. Their history is a bit different, but they're at about the same technological level as ours."

This was not, I felt sure, the time to tell them that Stefan's father was a major in the SS, that he himself had been a student at a school for the sons of Nazi Party members, or that he'd been brought up to believe that Jews are both subhuman and intrinsically evil. Nor was I going to show them the little swastika neck chain he had given me in exchange for my Star of David: that was safely tucked away in my bag.

"We ought to be going," said Irfan, breaking into my thoughts. "Would you ask your parents to go upstairs to their bedroom, please, Jacob?"

"Why?"

"Just do it."

So of course I just did it, because I didn't have any choice. We all went up to my parents' room and Irfan instructed them through me to lie down on the bed.

"We don't want you to cause us any problems – such as calling the police or the border guards and telling them to stop our vehicle," he said. "So you're going to go to sleep for a while."

"Just sleep?" I asked, urgently. "You promise?"

"I promise," he said. "I just want them to stay here, away from the telephone, for a few hours, until we're safely out of the country. Explain that to them, please."

So I did, and before they could argue or ask questions Irfan closed them both down. He let me wait until I was sure I could see their chests rising and falling and then shepherded me back outside to the bus, closing the door carefully behind him.

"How long will they sleep?" I asked him.

"Ten hours or so," he said. "I could have made it less, but it's better to be sure. By then we'll definitely be out of the country, even if we have to wait for transport across the sea. What's the best way to do that, by the way?"

I knew there was no point in lying, so I told him to head for Folkestone, explaining that there was a tunnel under the sea, and that we could simply drive onto a train and drive off again in France.

The journey to Folkestone was uneventful. I thought perhaps that we might have problems getting a ticket for the train, but it turned out that Irfan had plenty of UK money with him. I suppose it's not hard to get money if you're a Konjässi: you just knock on someone's door, make them invite you in and then shut them down and pinch their wallet. Do that a few times and you've probably got enough cash to keep you going for quite a long time. Irfan must have been busy, because he had enough cash to pay for the crossing, with plenty left over to pay for fuel and motorway tolls on the other side. I went to the exchange kiosk and changed a couple of hundred pounds into Euros for him: I was fairly sure that would be enough for a return trip.

Passport control was no problem at all: I simply told the various officials that they had seen our papers, and Irfan did the rest. The guards all waved us through straight away.

Aarnist had bought a French road atlas at the terminal and spent the crossing planning a route, which meant that as soon as we arrived at Sangatte we were able to head straight off. These days you can do almost the entire journey to Strasbourg on motorways, and although the scenery isn't very interesting if you do a long journey that way it does pass by fairly quickly. In only a little over five hours we could see the Vosges off to our right, and another hour or so brought us to Sélestat. I directed Aarnist up through Kintzheim to the beginning of the track that led up to the hut, and he parked the bus in an open space across the road from the track.

Stefan led us the rest of the way, though by now he hardly needed to glance at his compass once, and finally we arrived at the hut. The mist generators were either not yet working or were turned off, because we found it with no trouble at all. Stefan unlocked the door and led us inside.

There was no note on the desk. That didn't surprise me: if Irfan's forecast had been correct my parents were only just starting to stir. By the time they woke up properly it might well be too late in the day for my mother to think about laundry, in which case she wouldn't find my note for another fifteen hours or so.

I went into the kitchen to flick the panel switch and then opened the trapdoor, leading the party down the ladder and along the tunnel to the Nexus Room. Gordiss was fascinated by it.

"Why did they decide to build it underground?" he asked me.

"Because they discovered that portals can be disrupted by bad weather," I said. "Here the whole operation is sheltered from the elements."

"That's interesting. Maybe we should construct a dome over the Circle when we get back."

I was by no means sure that the circle would still be there when they got back, but obviously I didn't say so. Instead I opened the door marked 10, which was the one that led back to the Hub, and led the party along it until the door to the Hub was in sight. I wondered if the barrier would be set, and how Aarnist would react if it was and I told him the only way to pass it was to strip naked and leave all the equipment behind. But in fact there was no barrier there, and so we were able to walk through and open the door to the Hub. And the moment the door opened I felt Irfan's control close around me.

"Be very, very careful," he warned me. "I'm going to release you in a moment, but if you do anything to make me suspicious – anything at all – my colleagues know what to do. So if you want to be able to talk to your boyfriend ever again you need to tread very carefully indeed. Understand?"

"I understand," I replied.

"Good. Just remember that I'm going to be inside your head from now on."

He released me and I was able to step forward through the door into the Hub. I realised almost at once that our radio message hadn't got through either, because there were militiamen and workers in the hall, and none of them was wearing a helmet.

"Excuse me," I called to the nearest one, and everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at us. The room fell silent and a couple of the militiamen went and picked up their rifles.

"I'm Stone Jake," I went on. "Is Narj Larzel here?"

They seemed to relax a bit at that. One of the militiamen went through the arch that led to the office and returned with Mr Narj, who took one look at me and came to meet me almost at a run, smiling at first, but then frowning a little when he saw the people with me.

"Hello, Jake," he greeted me. "Who are all these people?"

I took a deep breath. This was going to be really tricky…

So Jake is back where he wanted to be, but whether he can successfully wriggle his way free remains to be seen.

Chapter Sixteen

"Hello again," I said. "This is High Captain Aarnist, and this is Irfan ved Meluan of the Clan of the East, and this is Viisas Gordiss of… somewhere or other…"

"Poicheeme," said Irfan's voice in my head.

"Poicheeme, right," I went on. "And these three are… colleagues of Irfan…"

I hadn't been formally introduced to the other three Konjässiem, and had just been thinking of them as 'The Three Musketeers', which I guessed was good enough.

"You know Stefan, of course, and this is Sam Amesbury Two. And we're here because we need to ask for a favour. The High Captain is investigating the death of one of the boys who died while we were on our way back last year – you remember I told you about that? Well, he wants to interview the Grey boys who were with us in order to get a witness statement from them. And so we need you to open us a portal into the Grey world."

Mr Narj stared at me. "You've come all this way just to get a witness statement?" he asked.

"The High Captain is very anxious to prove to his superiors that when he investigates something he does a thorough job," I said.

"Yes, he must be. Are you sure there isn't more to it? Something you're not telling me?"

There was a lot I wasn't telling him, but I was in no position to say so.

"Not really," I said. I turned and spoke to Aarnist in Arvelan. "Would you like me to broach the subject of portal technology now, or would you prefer to wait until we get back from the reptile world?" I asked.

"You can ask, if you like. Just float the question and let's see what happens."

"Well," I said, reverting to Kerpian, "the thing is, the Arvelans have managed to open some portals of their own – in fact they've found a place where there's a really ancient Nexus. You might be interested in that at some point in the future: there are ancient instruction sheets and everything. But they're still in the very early stages, and Aarnist was hoping that you might perhaps be prepared to help them learn more about the whole science of portals."

"I'm not sure about that," said Mr Narj, looking troubled. "It was one thing to share the technology with the people from Elsass: they're clearly a settled and peaceful people, and they had things to offer in return: access to the Tammids, in particular. We don't know anything about Arvel other than what you told us last year, and that wasn't exactly a glowing reference: slavery, a history of warfare, and all that stuff about mental domination and forcing people to do things they don't want to. I'm sure the High Captain can recognise that we don't want to give the science to someone who might easily use it against us, or against our allies."

"I don't think they'd be likely to do that," I said, emphasising the 'think' to hint that I had serious doubts – I hoped Irfan wouldn't pick up on a nuance of language like that. "Aarnist says they're more interested in finding empty worlds they can use for mineral extraction, or for colonisation with their growing population."

"But you're not sure?"

That was far too dangerous to answer directly.

"All I can say is that so far the High Captain hasn't broken his word to me," I said.

"Well, obviously I can't decide something like that myself," said Mr Narj. "I'd need authority from Temishar before I could enter into negotiations with a foreign power, and they'll certainly want to send someone senior from the Foreign Affairs Ministry. Tomorrow is an Ertday, but I can send the necessary mail to Kirai Gabor, the Under-Minister, this evening, and we should get a reply in two days' time.

"As for going into the Grey World, I'd advise against it. Although we were on fairly good terms with the ones who got stranded here when you sabotaged their portal, they're not the friendliest of people."

"We know," I said. "The Arvelans managed to open a portal into their world and we went visiting. We were probably lucky to get out in one piece. But it'll be easier over in the Black Forest: first, I can speak the language, and second, if we get as far as the school I know several of the boys there, and I've met their director, too."

"So they speak a different language where you opened the other portal? That's interesting. I suppose it's logical that they have different languages, though… well, if you're absolutely sure you want to go I don't see why we can't arrange it. I'd better send a message to Hub One and tell them we'll need a team there tomorrow."

I translated this for Aarnist.

"Tomorrow?" he queried. "Why not today?"

"It's too late," said Mr Narj. "It takes about an hour to get to Hub One, and then it'll probably take you a little while to sort things out on the Grey side before they let you go to the school – if they do, of course. By the time you get there it'll be dark. You don't want to be over there in the dark, and we certainly don't want to open a portal to bring you back in the dark. Obviously we're not going to leave the portal open while you're there, and we want to see clearly what is waiting for us when we reopen it to bring you back. So you'll have to stay here tonight and make the journey tomorrow, and if you're going to be travelling on an Ertday I need to get on the radio now and make the arrangements. Otherwise you'll arrive at Hub One and find that everyone has gone out for the day."

I explained that to Aarnist, and although he clearly wasn't happy, he accepted it, mainly because there was no alternative. Mr Narj went to the office to make his calls, and we waited for him by the arch.

By now the hall had been cleaned up and redecorated, and so there was no longer any sign of the fight we had had there in the summer of 2009. Instead of smelling of petrol and gunpowder, the hall now smelled only of fresh paint.

Mr Narj came back ten minutes later and said that he had arranged for a team of scientists to be available at Hub One the following day, and that he had also transmitted a request for technical assistance for Arvel to the Ministry in Temishar.

"Of course, we're after office hours now – you know what civil servants are like," he said. "That means they won't get the message until the day after tomorrow. But I've marked it 'Very Urgent', so hopefully they'll get straight to it as soon as they open it. Now, as far as tonight is concerned, you can either go back down to Ortsvill or Oriavar and find a hotel – actually, I don't think there is one in Ortsvill because it's too small, so you'd probably have to go right down to Oriavar – or we can put you up here. Our accommodation is a bit basic, but it will save you some money."

I translated that, and Aarnist said straight away that we would stay here. So Mr Narj took us upstairs to the dining hall, where we got a meal that was rather better than the rough-and-ready fare I'd served up when I'd used that same kitchen, and then Irfan told me that the three of us were going to bed.

"But it's still early!" I protested.

"I don't care. I want you safely out of things. I know that means we won't be able to communicate very easily, but that doesn't matter. Besides, if anything important happens I can always wake you up."

He took us to the far end of the dormitory and told us to get ready for bed, and fifteen minutes later he came and shut us all down. And the next thing I knew he was shaking my shoulder and telling me that it was morning and time to get up.

"Time for breakfast," he told me. "Then we'll be on our way. So far you seem to have been sensible – mind it stays that way!"

We got up, washed, dressed and ate breakfast in the dining hall, and then the whole party went downstairs. Mr Narj was waiting for us, and so was a unit of militia.

"Just a precaution," he assured me. "It's been a while since we had any contact with the Greys, and if we're going to open a portal into their world I want to make sure nothing unfortunate happens. So, if you're ready…?"

"Just a moment," I said, and I turned to Irfan.

"You guys are going to need your hands free if you're going to be able to deal with the Greys," I said. "I know there's no point in asking you to leave Stefan behind, but why don't we leave Sam here? He can't speak Kerpian, so he can't cause trouble for you."

"No, I don't think so," said Irfan. "I don't think we'll need to control him, or Stefan either, once we're through the portal – after all, what are they going to do in the reptile world, especially since neither of them can speak the language? No, I think it's a much better idea if we keep the party together. Come along."

And he made a 'carry on', gesture to Mr Narj, who turned and led us into the Capsule station.

Damn, I thought, another idea bites the dust. I wasn't completely surprised, but it was a pity, all the same. Now we would just have to hope that my mother found my message and got it to Jean-Patrick before we came back from Hub One.

The Capsule had obviously been repaired as soon as the renovations had started. Probably there hadn't been a lot to do to get it back into operation: as far as I'd been able to tell, it was simply a problem with the power supply that had caused it to leave us stranded between the two Hubs back in 2009. This time it ran smoothly, and although the journey took almost an hour – which was longer than our one completed journey in it had taken – we arrived at the other end without incident.

Hub One looked a lot better than it had the last time we'd seen it, too. Mr Narj went into the office briefly and returned with a pair of men in white coats, and then he led us along a tunnel to the Nexus Room. The ramp up to the Grey checkpoint was still there, which surprised me a little.

"We'll probably take it out eventually," he said when I asked about it. "But we've been using it to bring in materials for the repairs: it saved us having to dig a new shaft. And of course the Greys put in a proper road up to the checkpoint, too, which helps. Now… you know how this works: we'll open a temporary portal here, which we'll close as soon as you're through it. We'll reopen it at regular intervals… how long do you think it'll take?"

"I should think it's about twenty minutes… sorry, about six huszaks – each way, and then we'll need maybe half a kend for the actual interview. And it'll probably take a while to persuade them to let us go down to the school at all – we should probably allow another half a kend or so for that. Let's say anything from a kend to a kend and a half, depending how quickly we can persuade them. On the other hand, they might just turn us down flat, and if they do I don't want to be stuck over there for ages until the portal reopens. So I'd suggest you open it after about five huszaks, in case they tell us to get lost, and if we're not there then, try again a kend later, and after that at intervals of half a kend. Does that sound reasonable?"

"I should think so. But if we open the portal and see the remotest sign of Grey soldiers waiting, we'll close it again. You'd better make sure your policeman knows that you could all get stuck over there, because we're not risking having Greys come through the portal in strength."

I explained this to Aarnist, adding, "Are you sure you want to do this? We could get stranded over there if it goes wrong."

"I don't think it'll go wrong," he said. "I'm confident Irfan can handle things."

"Okay, but… look, you really don't need to take Stefan and Sam," I pleaded. "I'm not going to let you down, I swear! Come to that, you don't need to take Gordiss, either, so he could stay here and keep an eye on them, if you're worried about what they might do."

"I'm coming," said Gordiss, firmly. "I'm not going to miss the chance to see a reptile society first hand."

"And so are Stefan and Sam," said Irfan, firmly. And that was the end of the argument.

"Looks like we're all going," I told Mr Narj. "Can one of your men lend me a Kerpian watch? Mine doesn't use the same units."

Mr Narj persuaded one of his militiamen to lend me his watch and we agreed on what the time was and when the portal would be reopened. And then we stepped back out of the way while the scientists connected their temporary portal to the power supply and did whatever it is that scientists do (and they made sure they were doing it with their backs to our party, too, which clearly disappointed Gordiss), and then the portal flickered into life.

"Good luck," said Mr Narj. "I'll see you when you get back."

"I hope so," I agreed, and I stepped through the portal.

The original portal had emerged in a hut that was actually in a stretch of woodland, but this temporary portal was of course not in the same place, and we found ourselves just beyond the edge of the wood. I made a note of where we were so that we could find the portal again and then, once I had got my bearings, I led the party around the corner of the wood to the small Grey town beyond. And of course as soon as we got close enough to the town we were spotted, though here the reaction was rather less panicky than it had been in Region Five: these Greys, after all, had been in contact with mammals before. In less than five minutes we were facing a unit of Grey soldiers carrying their usual automatic rifles.

"Good morning," I greeted them, and that did cause a surprised reaction: only a few mammals had been implanted with the Grey language during the occupation.

"My name is Stone Jake," I went on. "Please could we speak to your commanding officer?"

The Greys looked at each other. It was fairly clear that none of them knew what to do with us, so the opportunity to pass us on to someone else was too good to miss.

"Come with us," said their unit leader, turning and leading us into the town.

There was a small military post not far from the cable car station, and we were ushered inside and told to wait while the unit leader went in search of an officer. A minute or so later he returned and led us into a small office, where we found an older officer sitting behind a desk and a younger one standing behind him. The unit leader stayed in the room, and two of his soldiers took up station by the door with their rifles still in their hands. It wasn't exactly what you'd call a warm welcome.

Once again I explained who Aarnist was and why we were here, and once again the response was one of incredulity.

"You've come all this way just to take a statement about something that happened in a different world?" asked the senior man.

"Well, it's not that far," I pointed out. "The shooting happened only about a hundred and fifty khirokubs from here. It's true that it was also in a different world, but you know how simple it is to step from one world to another."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Well," I said, surprised by his rather aggressive tone, "you were using a portal yourself just up the mountain a couple of years ago, so you know it's just a case of stepping through a doorway."

The younger officer leaned forward and whispered into the senior man's ear. The Grey sense of hearing isn't as good as ours, as I'd discovered when I went through Haless's tests the last time I'd been here, so probably they weren't aware that I could make out the odd word here and there: I heard 'excuse' and 'spy' and 'timing' as they muttered to each other.

I turned to Irfan and said, "I'm about to make a pitch for us to be allowed to go down to the school. Time for you and your colleagues to get together and persuade him to accept what I'm saying."

Then I coughed gently to get the Grey officer's attention.

"Look," I said, "I know you probably don't like humans very much, but really Aarnist is just an officer like yourself trying to do his job. We're not going to make a nuisance of ourselves: we just want your permission to go down to the school in the town below and interview the two boys who saw what happened. We'd be perfectly happy for you to send an escort with us to make sure we go straight there and come straight back. If you let us go down there now we'll be back very soon – so what about it?"

There was a brief silence, and then the officer said, "All right."

The junior started to speak, clearly not agreeing, but the senior officer raised his hand to cut him off.

"But there are conditions," he said. "First, you certainly don't need a party as large as this to carry out a simple interview, so most of your party can stay here – and that way they'll also act as a surety for the rest of you. Your policeman can go, and I suppose he needs you as a translator, but the rest can stay here. Second, I'll be sending some of my men with you, and you're to do what they tell you and not go anywhere except straight to the school and back. If you can accept that, you have my permission to proceed."

I translated this for Aarnist.

"See if you can persuade them to let one other person come," he said. "It's not that I don't trust you, especially if Stefan and Sam are going to be here with the rest of the party, but I'd prefer to have Irfan along if possible."

"I'll try," I said, and turned back to the officer.

"Interviews are normally carried out by pairs of officers," I said. "I'm not a policeman, obviously, so he'd like to take one other officer with him to make sure everything is done according to law. The rest can certainly stay here with you. Would that be acceptable?"

"I should think so. You'd better tell the others they'll be staying here for a while, and then you can go. If you leave now you should be back well before midday."

So I warned the rest of the party what was happening.

"Be careful," Stefan told me. "I don't want to find you disappearing again now that I've finally caught up with you."

"Trust me," I said. "I really don't want to stay in this world any longer than I have to."

The junior officer still didn't look very happy, but at least he'd stopped arguing, although he insisted on accompanying us to the school and back himself. He collected four riflemen and more or less marched us to the cable car station.

"I see you've replaced the cable cars," I commented as one arrived in the station. "The old ones were wooden and a bit creaky. This looks a lot more solid."

"You've been here before?" asked the officer.

"Yes, I was here two years ago." I dug into my bag and handed him the pass card that had been made for me at the time. "A couple of boys at the school were doing a project on the differences between my species and yours, and they brought me here to run the experiment."

"And what were the results?"

"As you might expect, I suppose: there are things you do better than us, and things we do better than you."

"Really?" he asked, as the car began to take us down the mountain. "What do you do better than us, then?"

"Well, on most physical things you're better than we are, but we have better stamina over long distances. And we adapt far better to extremes of temperature, of course, because we're warm-blooded – endothermic, I mean. But you see far better than we do, and in average conditions your reactions are faster than ours. We do a bit better at figuring out problems, though. I always thought that if we worked together we'd be really hard to beat."

"I think you'd have to admit that we're generally hard to beat on our own," he said. "If it hadn't been for the interface malfunction we'd still be running things in your country now."

"Oh, Kerpia isn't our country," I said. "We just came through it to get here. We come from two different worlds, and we'll be going back there once we're finished here. We only came this way to make use of the Kerpians' portal into your world."

"I see," he said, handing the card back.

For some reason he seemed to relax a bit, though why it should have made any difference which world we came from was beyond me. But for whatever reason he seemed a little less hostile for the remainder of the journey down to the town, and when we got there he was happy for me to lead the way to the school.

I remembered the way easily enough, though it wasn't difficult, and soon we had reached the school. I knew where the director's office was, too, so I led the officer and two of his guards there while the other two stayed with Aarnist and Irfan in the hall.

"I don't know if you remember me," I began, as we entered the director's office.

"Certainly I do. You were the subject of the mammal project two years ago. What are you doing here now? Come back for an update?"

"Not exactly. See…"

Once again I explained the situation, and the officer backed me up.

"I can't see any reason why your policeman shouldn't speak to Torth," said the director. "Provided he only wants to speak to him, of course. Obviously there's no question of Torth going anywhere to appear in a trial or anything like that."

"No, he just wants to interview him," I said, hoping that Aarnist wasn't intending to try to issue summary justice with his pistol, which – for reasons that eluded me – he had not been asked to hand over.

"Come along, then," said the director, and he led us upstairs and ushered us into an empty classroom. He went out and returned a few minutes later with Torth, who looked positively amazed to see me.

"Jake!" he exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm interpreting for this guy," I said, indicating Aarnist. "He's a cop, and he's investigating what happened to Harlan."

Torth took a step back. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"Don't worry, he only wants a statement. Actually I think he's more interested in scoring points against his bosses, rather than trying to get you into trouble. He said to me some time ago that he doesn't think he can really try to apply his country's laws to a member of a different species, so all you have to do is tell him what happened from your point of view. And that's all there is to it. Don't worry: there is no way that your people would let him arrest you, and neither would I, come to that. As far as I'm concerned, you did what you had to in order to save Stefan's life."

"Well, actually, I was only…" He stopped and thought for a moment. "Of course, that's partly why… anyway, I'll give him his statement if you're sure it'll be all right."

"I'm sure. Sit down."

Aarnist had brought a small camera with him, and he set this up where it would be pointing at Torth. I sat next to Torth to translate for him, and the director, the Grey officer and Irfan stepped back out of the way.

Aarnist asked Torth to start by telling him exactly what had happened, and Torth did so, explaining that he, Verdess and Sarleth had been waiting for us for several weeks, stranded by the failure of the portal to reappear, and that when it finally did appear they were determined that nothing was going to stop them going through it. Harlan had tried to stop them by holding a gun to Stefan's head, not realising that the Greys weren't concerned with what happened to anyone else.

"But since he had a gun we thought we should use one of ours, too," Torth continued. "So I pointed my rifle at him and told him to put his gun down. He said he would shoot Stefan if I didn't put mine down, and when I said I didn't care if he did he didn't seem to know what to do next."

"Why didn't you shoot him straight away?" I asked. Aarnist hadn't asked that question, but I wanted to get the answer on the tape, because I thought it would be helpful. "After all, he wasn't pointing his gun at you, was he?"

"No, but you said that if I shot him he would probably pull the trigger automatically and shoot Stefan. I was in no danger, so I decided to wait. And then he moved the gun away from Stefan and I was able to shoot him safely."

"Did you think you had to shoot him in order to get through the portal?" asked Aarnist.

"I thought he was dangerous, and that if I didn't shoot him he might shoot me. So I shot first, as was logical."

"And you say that he produced his gun before you got yours?" asked Aarnist.

"That's right."

It sounded to me as if Aarnist was doing his best to exonerate Torth here, and for a moment I wondered why. Then I realised that, since there was no realistic chance of arresting him, Aarnist had decided to tidy the case up as best he could by suggesting that Torth had acted in self-defence. If Torth had been answering these questions in Arvel, of course, the questions, and the outcome, might well have been different, but as it was…

"Thank you," said Aarnist, turning the camera off. "I think that's all I need."

"Is that it?" asked Torth.

"That's it. You can go now."

"Right." Torth looked surprised, but not unhappy. "Then since he's here, can we borrow Jake for a few minutes? I'm sure Haless would like to get up-to-date measurements for his mammal project."

"That's a good idea," said the director. "He'll be able to add a bit about rate of development. I'd say that ours is probably a little faster." He turned to the officer. "Do you mind?" he asked. "I don't suppose it'll take long."

The officer shrugged. "If you want," he said.

Nobody asked Aarnist, and I wasn't going to, either.

"I've got to go and let them take my measurements," I told him. "I worked on a project with them about the differences between mammals and reptiles last time I was here, and they want to update it. I won't be long." And without waiting for permission I followed Torth out of the room: I was curious to see how Haless and Issin had grown since I last saw them.

Torth took me to another classroom, where I found the entire study group I'd met on my previous visit – including Ssyrl, who was no longer sitting on his own. Torth paused the program they were working on and closed the door behind us. I'd expected a fairly friendly welcome, but what I got was surprise, shock and, in one of two cases, what looked almost like fear. I wondered what was wrong. Surely I hadn't changed that much?

It was Ssyrl who reacted first.

"Jake," he greeted me. "What are you doing here – and how the hell did you get past the guards? Are they looking for you?"

"Not as far as I know. I came with a cop from another world who wanted to interview Torth about something that happened last year while he was with us. The guards let us through easily enough – okay, they sent an escort with us, but that's all. Why, what's the matter?"

The boys looked at each other.

"I said I'd bring him so that we could update his measurements for our project," said Torth. "So perhaps we should do that? And the laboratory would be a better place to welcome him back, don't you think?"

"Yes, you're right," said Ssyrl. "Let's get along there. Haless, bring your computer – and Rathyk, could you go and find Sarleth and Trethar? We'll meet you at Lab Four."

Well, Ssyrl's status had clearly changed, because everyone simply followed his instructions without arguing. I still didn't know what was going on, but I assumed they would tell me when it suited them, and so on the way to the laboratory I asked him about how he had been treated when he got back from Kerpia.

"It's been interesting," he said. "Force Leader Nass gave me a glowing testimonial and the High Council gave me a commendation and sent me back here, and suddenly everyone was saying nice things about me. The director made me group leader and everyone else has been nice to me ever since, and nobody says anything at all about me preferring the passive role – in fact they seem to think it's an honour to be allowed to practise sex with me. Obviously being a hero is more important than being a pervert. Isn't life strange?" And he grinned at me.

We reached the laboratory and Haless set up his computer, attached the camera to it and pointed it at the scale on the wall.

"Get undressed, then" he said to me. "We'll want to weigh you in a moment. And I want to know if those stupid external genitals of yours have got any bigger."

Well, this had happened here before, but I wasn't entirely enthusiastic about having to strip in front of the entire study group again. Actually at first they just went into a huddle and seemed to be having some sort of serious discussion between themselves, though it was conducted in voices too low for me to be able to hear: this lot apparently had better hearing than the senior officer had. But the moment I took my underwear off they started making comments about me. I did my best to ignore them while I went and stood against the measuring scale on the wall.

"You're now three point seven five kubs," Haless told me. "You're growing, but Issin is growing faster. Show him, Issin."

Issin stripped off and took my place against the scale. The first time we had done this I had been point one seven five kubs taller than Issin; now he was point two five kubs taller than me. He'd been heavier than me to start with, and he still was, only more so.

"So it appears that once we start to mature we do so faster than you," Haless said. "Though your ridiculous genitals still seem to be growing, and you've got even more of that pointless hair, too. Have you found out what it's for yet?"

"The hair? No," I admitted. "We all get it sooner or later, though. What about you, Issin? Has your penis got any bigger?"

"No," he admitted. "I told you last time that it had already almost reached its full size. It just proves that we mature faster than you."

I was about to comment on the difference in size between his genitals and mine, but I didn't get a chance.

"Get dressed, Jake," said Ssyrl. "Turn the computer off, Haless. Now… are we all agreed on this?"

One or two of them looked uncertain, but the ones I knew best – Haless, Issin, Rathyk, Torth and the two younger boys – all said "Yes" loudly enough to carry the mood.

"If anyone isn't sure about this, you can leave now," Ssyrl said. "I can understand if you're uncertain – after all, probably it's only really those of us who have spent time in the mammal worlds who truly understand the situation. If you'd sooner not be here, we're not going to force you."

But nobody moved. I suppose even the ones who hadn't been through the portal had got to know me and Tommi a bit while we were here in 2009, which perhaps explained what followed.

"All right, Jake," said Ssyrl. "We want to tell you something very important: our scientists have worked out how to create our own interfaces. They put together a lot of information from examining the ones they captured while we were in your world, but that wasn't enough to actually construct one. But last year the mammals opened a temporary interface to send Torth and Sarleth through to us, and they got careless and did it in front of them. And when our scientists questioned them, both face to face and under hypnosis, they obtained enough additional information to let them start work on making an interface of our own. And now they've succeeded, which means that we can now move between worlds, just as the mammals can. The interface has been extensively tested, and it's stable, and now…"

"What?" I asked, wondering about the hushed tones and the conspiratorial atmosphere.

"Now we're going to use it," Ssyrl went on. "The plan is to open an interface and use it to invade Kerpia again. Except this time the interface will be on the surface, and it'll be big enough to allow armoured vehicles through. They're going to open it some way west of here, where there's a wide plain that will be easy for our tanks to manoeuvre through…"

"You remember where we went after we crossed the big river?" Sarleth interrupted. "After Torth got shot, I mean. That's the plain we're talking about."

That was the southern end of Alsace, of course.

"We've got two complete armoured divisions lined up," Ssyrl went on. "That's close to four hundred tanks, with supporting infantry."

"Right, but… why are you telling me this?" I asked.

"Two reasons," said Torth. "First, because we think this is wrong. Most people, and the High Council in particular, seem to think mammals are just animals, and that we shouldn't treat them as proper people like ourselves. But all of us who have spent time with mammals know that isn't true. It wasn't just you and your friends, either: all of the other mammals we met treated us like proper people. The religious men in the place with all the interfaces treated us exactly the same as they treated you, giving us food and shelter; the people in the hot world were the same, and the boys there played with us just like they did with you; and even the Kerpians were good to us, helping us to get here even though they'd been at war with the people of this world very recently. And you and your friends saved my life more than once: you led us out of the mountains to find food and shelter – and you even carried Sarleth when he couldn't walk. And when I got shot by the river, Verdess told me you risked your own life to rescue me. I know it goes against the way we usually think, but you proved to me that mammals and reptiles can live together. So that's the first reason: we think you are real people, and that we shouldn't be on the point of invading your country and killing you just because we want the minerals and land you have."

"And the second reason?" I asked.

"Well, we know the Kerpians don't have much of an army," said Ssyrl. "Nothing's going to stop the invasion. So we wanted to warn you so that you and your friends can get out of Kerpia before it's too late."

"Why? When is the invasion going to happen?"

"In two days' time."

"Oh, my God…'

Of course we could get out of Kerpia before then. In fact I expected to be out of Kerpia later today, either – if Aarnist kept his word – back to Elsass, or – if he didn't – back to my own world. But I didn't simply want to walk away and leave Kerpia to its fate – and besides, I didn't for a moment think the Greys would be content with one world, not if they really could create their own portals. And there were already portals to Elsass in Kerpia, both at Hub Two and in Strasbourg: if Hub Two fell to the Greys, Elsass could be next in line for invasion. And in the Elsass world Europe had been at peace for two hundred years, so they didn't have much of an army, either.

"Do you know exactly where the interface is gong to be?" I asked.

"Sorry," said Ssyrl. "They're keeping that a secret. We know it's going to be on the plain we told you about, and somewhere near the southern end of the mountain range to the west of the plain, but that's all. Jake, there's nothing you can do to stop it. We just want you to be out of the way when it happens."

"You know I'll have to tell the Kerpians, don't you?" I asked.

"We thought you would. That's why we were a bit worried about telling you, because if the High Council find out that we leaked the information we'll be in serious trouble. If you can find a way to blame someone else for letting it slip we'd appreciate it. As you know, we don't usually do anything to put ourselves at risk, but this time we thought we had to. But that doesn't mean we want to get caught!"

"I'll do my best to make sure that you aren't," I promised. "Now I'd better go before they come looking for me. Torth, can you take me back to where we left the others?"

I said goodbye to the rest of the Grey boys and followed Torth back to the other classroom, doing my best to compose my features when I got there.

"So, how do you compare now?" the director asked me.

"You were right," I said. "Issin has matured faster than me. I'm still developing and I've probably still got another half a kub or so to grow, but Issin's just about full-grown."

"You see? That's another advantage of our race," he said. "My boys will all be fully grown and ready to join the army long before their mammal equivalents."

"Oh, we don't have much of an army," I said, as nonchalantly as I could. "We're fairly peaceful these days – in the land where I live there hasn't been a war for two hundred years, and I really hope there isn't another one for at least two hundred more."

The director said nothing, and nor did the Grey officer, though they must have been thinking interesting thoughts at that point. It was a real pity that Irfan couldn't read Grey minds, because I'm sure they would have given him plenty to think about.

"Shall we go?" I invited Aarnist. "I think I'd like to get out of here before they change their minds about us."

"Why should they do that?"

"No reason," I said. Or at least, none that I could mention. Now I understood the argument between the two officers up at the post near the portal: they must have wondered if we'd caught a sniff of the invasion somehow and had come to nose around. I was fairly sure now that if Irfan and his colleagues hadn't done some mental leaning we'd have been kicked straight back through the portal.

We said goodbye to Torth and the director and collected our escort from the room near the entrance where they had been waiting, and then we walked back through the town and took the cable car back up the mountain. I was wondering if the senior officer had recovered from whatever Irfan had done to persuade him, and what he might do to us if he had: we could all be locked up, at least until the invasion had taken place. Or we could all simply be shot. So I was more than a little nervous when we got back to the army post.

The junior officer told us to wait outside and went in to report to his superior. I'd been doing my best to act normally, though Irfan had clearly realised that something was bothering me, and if the Greys had had Konjässiem of their own we'd have been done for. But five minutes later the two officers came out accompanied by the rest of our party, so it looked as if we were going to be allowed to leave.

"I gather you got what you came for," the senior officer said.

"Yes, thank you," I replied. "We appreciate your help."

He gave a grunt and went back inside, but the junior and his men seemed disinclined to leave us.

"We're going now," I said. "Our interface should be available in a very short time."

"Then we'll come and see you off," he said, and they stuck with us while we walked back to the place where the portal was due to reappear in around ten minutes' time. And they stayed with us until it did reappear, too, though they stayed far enough back not to frighten the Kerpians off when the portal was first opened.

I was extremely glad to be able to step through it after the others: if I never set foot in that world again I wouldn't complain, even though I had some good friends there… and at that point my train of thought was abruptly derailed as someone grabbed me and shoved a steel helmet on my head. Behind me the portal flickered and disappeared, but I scarcely noticed: instead I was staring at what was going on in front of me. The unit of Kerpian militia was there, in full uniform including helmets, and Mr Narj himself, similarly dressed in the uniform of a Kerpian militia colonel, but also wearing a helmet instead of the more usual peaked cap. And someone had also stuck helmets onto the heads of Stefan and Sam. The Arvelans were off to one side with a number of rifles pointing at them.

"It's good to see you back in one piece," Mr Narj told me. "We thought this would be the best time to rescue you: they'd have been expecting to see an armed unit here anyway after what we said this morning, so it was just a question of getting you three under a helmet each. Are you all right?"

"Yes, thank you. But how did you know we needed rescuing?"

"Well, we knew something was wrong last night when Stefan didn't say a single word. That's not like him at all. And so late last night I tried to wake you up to talk to you, but you were so fast asleep it was obvious that you'd been drugged. And then this morning, about a kend ago, a message arrived at the hut that leads to your native world. We might have a security problem there, because there were a couple of engineers around the back of the hut at the time working on the mist generators, and they'd left the trapdoor open. They caught the kid who brought the message halfway down the ladder… anyway, we can deal with that when we get back to Hub Two. What do you want me to do with these six? We can shoot them if you like, or we can just shove them through a random portal and let someone else decide what to do with them. Or we could even send them back to their world if you prefer."

"No, right now I think you should just bring them back to Hub Two with us," I said. "There's something you need to know, and it's a lot more important than anything else: in two days' time you're going to be up to your neck in Greys."

I told him exactly what Ssyrl had told me, and his face drained of colour.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"Absolutely. It took some courage for those boys to tell me about it, and I'm certain they weren't making it up. In two days' time Upper Alsace is going to be crawling with Grey tanks unless you can find a way to stop it from happening."

"I don't see how we can. You say you don't know where the portal is going to be, and unless we can destroy it the moment it appears we can't hold out against tanks anyway. That's farming country, so there aren't any militia there at all, and even if we rush everything we've got that way, two days isn't enough time to get any significant number of guns there. Look, I must go down to the office and call Temishar. You'd better come with me – I'm sure the brass will have questions for you."

He issued some quick orders to his second-in-command and hurried into the checkpoint, and I went after him. It sounded to me as if, unless there was a miracle, this war was going to be over before it had even begun.

Well, the good news is that Jake and his friends are free again. The bad news is they might all be dead in a couple of days' time…

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