The Homeward Bounders (22 page)

“Thank you,” Konstam said respectfully. But Helen wouldn't speak to him. “I'm sure Helen's right. And it looks as if this Real Place of
Theirs
seems different in different worlds. You all saw different versions. But this Place suits us quite well. If, as Jamie says, it's divided into triangular compartments in this cluster of worlds, we can go in and clean
Them
out of this triangle, and perhaps the next few, without taking on the whole lot. Then, when we've done that, and worked out the right way of dealing with
Them
, we can go home and muster all the demon hunters—Khans, Altunians, Smiths, Obotes, everyone—and start a major campaign.”

That was another thing about Konstam. The idea of failing never occurred to him. He had looked at
Them
. He had seen
Them
as a problem and he set about solving it. His face glowed. I did try to suggest that
They
were a little more than just a problem, but I got swept away in the general enthusiasm. Konstam was like that. His confidence was catching.

Before long, we had all agreed to take part in the assault on
Them
. I even found that I had. Konstam was very pleased. That meant we would be three to each of
Them
. That way, Konstam thought we might be able to kill the bodily part and the spirit part both at once, and prevent
Them
taking a dive to the spirit world, where, even Konstam admitted, we would have our work cut out to do anything with
Them
. The stumbling block was that
They
were in the Real Place and not likely to come out. We would have to go in. No one was sure quite how to do that—we had to suppose, you see, that
They
would know we were trying to get in and be ready to stop us. But Konstam was sure we could solve that. Meanwhile, he set about getting us all properly equipped. He drew up a list.

“This is going to take a good bit of money,” Joris said, looking it over.

Konstam smiled merrily and felt inside his leather jerkin. He seemed to have more things in there even than Joris. “I've thought of that,” he said, and brought out a big coiled fistful of shining yellow wire. “I came prepared.”

“Demon wire?” said Joris, as if this was an awful waste.

“Yes, I know,” said Konstam. “But gold
is
gold. I thought I might have to buy you back from someone. Do you have such things as pawnbrokers in this world?” he asked Vanessa.

“I—think so,” said Vanessa. “But any jeweler will give you a good price for gold at the moment.”

You should have seen Adam's face when he realized Konstam was holding a fistful of solid gold! Now he knew Konstam was rich. I began to get quite worried about Vanessa. Konstam was pretty struck with her anyway. I had been noticing that from the start. And he obviously didn't see anything wrong with owning slaves or he wouldn't have bought Joris.

It was me who went out with Konstam to sell the gold. I had sold gold on several other worlds. Konstam was quite ready to take my advice. He put on an old raincoat belonging to Adam's father to disguise his demon hunter's uniform. Unlike Joris, he didn't seem to value it at all. But in spite of that we ran into trouble.

“Where did you get this, sir?” the jeweler asked when Konstam showed him the wire.

“I use it in my work,” Konstam explained.

Oh, the rules and strictness of that blessed world! If the gold had been in any other shape but wire, it seems there would have been no trouble. But because it was wire, the dealer was sure it couldn't belong to Konstam. And Konstam, who had twice the sense of Joris, knew better than to explain about demons. In the end, the jeweler made Konstam sign a paper to say the wire was his, and we had to leave our names and Adam's address. Fuss, fuss! But he gave us quite a bit of money for it.

We bought some of the things we needed on the way back, but not all. I spent the rest of the day being sent out for other things. Back in the house, it was like a workshop. You couldn't buy demon equipment in that world at all. They had demons, Adam said, but they didn't believe in them, so they weren't a problem. This meant that Konstam and Joris had to make most of the things on the list themselves, out of metal and leather and wood and plastic, and any other material I could buy. Don't ask me what the things they made were. I didn't know what a trisp, or a nallete, or a conceptor was, any more than you do, and I still don't. I was just the errand boy.

Konstam and Joris did most of the making, because they knew what they were supposed to be doing, but they soon had Adam hard at it too, because he was so good at making things. Vanessa did the unskilled work. Helen came with me at first. When the various things were done, they hung them on Fred the skeleton. Konstam said Fred was a very good place to hang them, being human bones.

I didn't mind doing the shopping at all. It took my mind off Home and off
Them
. But I was nervous about what was going on while I was away. I was darn sure that, sooner or later, Joris would blurt out to Konstam about Helen's arm and that Konstam would decide Helen needed hunting too. And I was just as sure that, while my back was turned, Adam would offer to sell Vanessa to Konstam for sixty thousand, five hundred crowns. And I was quite right.

I came into the kitchen with a bundle of assorted knives and a paper bag of aluminium blocks. It must have been exactly one second after Adam made his offer. Joris and Vanessa were off ransacking Dr. Macready's surgery again—Konstam was using everything there that was any use: he said he'd pay for anything he took—and that had left Adam alone with Konstam. The moment I came into the kitchen was the moment Konstam seized Adam. He slung Adam on the table and started to try and beat the pants off him. Konstam did it in such a cool and professional way that I couldn't help wondering how often he had done it before.

I backed delicately out of the kitchen, with the pounding ringing in my ears, and ran into Joris in the hall. “Er—does Konstam do this often?” I said.

Joris shook his head. He was horribly ashamed. “I think Adam was asking seventy thousand,” he said.

A second later, Adam shot away upstairs, carrying the two halves of his glasses. Konstam shot to the door after him, really angry. He was going to shout something after Adam, when he saw Joris and me. “Oh good,” he said. “You got some knives.”

So we never did know how much Adam had tried to sell Vanessa for. Konstam was not saying—and not buying either, evidently. Adam stayed upstairs sulking until Joris and I went up and mended his glasses for him. We did it with a scrap of gold demon wire Joris happened to have, to console Adam a little. But Adam was not saying what he'd said to Konstam either. All he said was, “Joris, you have my hearty sympathy, belonging to that brute Konstam.” Which offended Joris. Joris was very touchy all day anyway. Vanessa said she thought Joris was dreading going after
Them
. He probably was. He knew what
They
were like even better than I did.

When I came downstairs again, the other disaster had struck. Helen came racing into the hall, and Konstam came leaping after her.

“No—wait!” Konstam was saying.

“Don't you dare come near me!” Helen shouted. And she took hold of me and swung me round so that I was between her and Konstam. “Jamie, Joris
told
him!”

Well, I knew he would. “Leave her alone,” I said to Konstam. “She's not even half a demon. If you touch her, I'll set
Them
on you!”

He stood looking at me as if he was exasperated. “I wasn't trying to hurt her,” he said. “I just wanted to look at her arm.”

That sounded pretty sinister to me. I suppose it was because we were in a doctor's house. “With a view to amputation?” I said. “You try!”

Konstam folded his arms and took a glance at the ceiling, and then at Fred hung with queer objects. He tapped with his white boot. “Jamie,” he said patiently, “you've been in many more worlds than I have. Haven't you learned to judge people better than this?”

“I've learned enough to know you put demon hunting in front of anything else,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “I do. That's why—Listen, I think Helen is our means to get in at
Them
. You've seen her arm. Read this and see if you think so.” He fetched a little floppy book out of his jerkin and passed it to me. “Page thirty-four.”

The book was called
Mim's List 1692
. 1692 was this year's date in Konstam's world. When Vanessa saw the book later, she laughed, because in her world they have a book with the same name, which is a list of medicines. This
Mim's List
was a list of anti-demon devices. It had been read so much that it was practically falling to pieces. I put page twenty-eight back when it fell out and found page thirty-four. Weapons in order of effectiveness. Engraved knife, demon knife, spirit knife, engraved gun—and so on, with notes and drawings after each, right down to sharpened stake. The one at the top of the list was

     LIVING BLADE—deadly to demons of any

     strength on any plane. Said to be a blade

     composed of human spirit. Known only in

     legend, where it is stated that a living blade

     can carve its way through to the Otherworld.

     See Koris Khanssaga 11. 1039–44.

“Yes,” I said. “But I don't know if she can do knives.”

“Ask her!” Konstam said feverishly.

So I asked Helen, but she wouldn't even talk to me by then. She just went away and sat in the living room.

Konstam nearly went mad with frustration. He was quite, quite sure, from what Joris had told him, that Helen could carve up that triangular fort, and
Them
inside it, if she wanted. He said that if Helen had been born a Khan, she would have been the most famous demon hunter of all time. I explained that Helen had been quite highly thought of in the House of Uquar too, but her father had called her arm a deformity. Konstam cursed Helen's father. He cursed demon-fashion, which is a very startling kind of cursing. Helen probably heard him—he was raging round and round the hall—but she wouldn't speak. Not even the tip of her nose would come out of her hair.

Vanessa went and coaxed Helen. That did no good. So Konstam rounded on me and told me to
do
something.

I had to spend the rest of the afternoon collecting critters. I knew it was the only thing to do. I found a toad and a slug and half a hundred earwigs, and I put them on the living-room carpet in front of Helen. Vanessa said her mother would have fits if she knew. A waste of fits, since Helen didn't even look at them. Then Adam came out of his sulk—he was beginning to be able to sit down by then—and told me there were rats in the shed where Vanessa kept her unpoetic car. They used to be his, he said, but they got out.

So I took a handful of cheese to the shed and stalked rats for an hour. I got one too. A fat black beauty, which bit like a demon. I carried it wriggling and twisting into the living room and held it out to Helen. Her hands came out and clasped it lovingly. She put it on her knee, and the rat went all woffly and cuddly and obliging. Its whiskers shimmered happily. A small noise came from behind Helen's hair.

“What's that?” I said unwisely.

Helen's hair flung back. I got the full ready-to-bite treatment.
“I said thank you!”
Helen yelled. She was furious. I got out quick.

Vanessa was just putting stuff on my rat bites when there was a crisis in the kitchen again. The knives I'd bought were no ruddy good. The idea had been to sharpen them up and turn them into demon weapons by engraving the right signs on the blades and hilts. But it turned out that the things knives were made of in this world were not strong enough to stand the signs. Plastic handles melted under Shen. They got Shen to go on most of the blades, but any other signs just crumbled the metal away.

“Jamie!” Konstam shouted. The errand boy came running.

I was to go with Joris, Konstam said, because Joris knew good demon steel when he saw it, and we were to get the best knives we could of that kind, with handles of wood only, or pure bone. So off we trotted.

Well, I said Joris was touchy. He was worse than that. He made such a fuss over those knives that I would have hit him if he hadn't been twice as strong as me. I got really annoyed, because he drew so much attention to us in the shops. He'd consented to put on Dr. Macready's old raincoat over his demon hunter's outfit—because Konstam told him to—but he would wear it open. People noticed him because of all the fuss he made. Then they stared at the black sign on his chest and asked him if he was a judo expert. Someone else said did he swallow swords?

“Joris,” I said, when we finally came away with a bundle of knives, “I've had a hard day. And I don't think you're quite your old sunny self. In fact, I warn you, you'll have
Them
deciding you've entered play here, if you go on at this rate. Remember you're still a Homeward Bounder until you get Home.”

Joris stopped walking. He kicked a tin can that happened to be lying there. The clatter made quite a lot of people turn round and stare. Since it was late on a Saturday afternoon, there were crowds of people about. I swear Joris waited until as many people as possible were turned to look at us. Then he shouted out,
“I hate being a slave!”