Diana Jones - The Homeward Bounders

I looked up at him. He was a grey blurred figure behind a sheet of white reflected sky. So was the other one, and he was just about to pull down the lever. “Hey! Wait a minute!” I said. “What’s all this? What are these rules? Who made them?”

Both of Them stared at me. They looked like you would if your breakfast egg had suddenly piped up and said, “Don’t eat me!”

“You’ve no right to send me off without any explanation, like this!” I said.

He pulled the lever while I was saying it. You might whack your egg on top with your spoon the same way. The sideways twitch came while I was saying “explanation”. As I said “like this!” I was somewhere else entirely.

And I mean somewhere else. It’s hard to explain just how different it was. I was standing out in the open, just as I’d half thought that I was out in the open under the canal arches before, only this was real, solid and real. There was green grass going up and down over hills in all directions. Across the valley in front of me, there was a group of black and white animals, eating the grass. I thought they were cows, probably. I’d never seen a live cow till then. Beyond that, going up against the sunset, was a spire of smoke. And that was all. The place was empty otherwise, except for me. I turned right round to make sure, and it was the truth.

That was shock enough, if you were a city boy like me. It was a horrible feeling. I wanted to crouch down and get my eyes to the top of my head somehow, like a frog, so that I could see all round me at once. But there was more to it than that. The air in that place was soft and mild. It smelt different and it felt different. It weighed on you in a different way, sort of sluggishly. The grass didn’t look quite right, and even the sun, setting down over the hill where the spire of smoke was, was not like the sun I was used to. It was making the sunset the wrong colour.

While I was turning round the second time, it came to me that the slanting dip in the valley just behind me was the same shape as Their triangular park, where the statue was.

Then I looked very carefully over the rest of the green slopes. Yes. The valley in front was where the smart part of the city should be, and the railway, and the hill beside me, and the one where the sun was setting, were the two hills the canal went between on its arches. The slope on the other side of me was going up to where our courtyard should have been. But the city had gone.

“I hate Them!” I screamed out. Because I knew then, without having to think it out, that I was on another world. This world seemed to have the same shape as mine, but it was different in every other way. And I didn’t know how to get back to mine.

For a while, I stood there and yelled every cussword I knew at Them, and I knew quite a few, even then. Then I set off to walk to that line of smoke going up into the sunset. There must be a house there, I thought. There’s no point starving. And, as I walked, I thought over very carefully what They had said.

They had talked of Bounds and Bounder circuits and discards and random factors and rules. I could see those were words in an enormous serious game. And I was a random factor, so They had discarded me, but there were still rules for that. And these rules said—The one who spoke to me at the end might have talked as if I was an idiot, but the way he had done it was rather like a policeman talks to someone he’s arresting: “Everything you say can be taken down and may be used in evidence.” They had told me the rules, and those said I could get Home if I could manage it. Well I would. I might be a discard on the Bounder circuits, but I was a Homeward Bounder, and They had better not forget it! I was going to get Home and spite Them. Then They had better watch out!

By this time, I had got near the cows. Cows are always bigger than you expect, and their horns are sharp. They have this upsetting way of stopping eating when you come up, and staring. I stopped and stared back. I was scared. I didn’t even dare turn round and go back, in case they came galloping up behind me and pronged me on those horns like toast on a toasting fork. Heaven knows what I would have done, if some men had not come galloping up just then to round up the cows. They were hairy, dirty men, dressed in cowhide, and their horses were as bad. They all stared at me, men, horses and cows, and one of those men was the image of the printer who owned the printing press in the courtyard up the road from ours.

That made me feel much better. I didn’t think he was the printer – and he wasn’t of course – but I got on with the printer, and I thought I could get on with this copy of him too. “Hello,” I said. “You don’t happen to want a boy for odd jobs, do you?”

He grinned, a big hairy split in his beard. And he answered. And here was another blow. It was gabble. I could not understand one word. They spoke quite a different language to mine.

“Oh mother!” I wailed. “I’ll get Them for this, if it’s the last thing I do!”

In fact, the hairy herdsmen were nice to me. I was lucky in a way. Some Homeward Bounders have to begin much harder than I did. Allowing for language problems, my start wasn’t at all bad. They helped me up on the horse behind the printer, and they rode off with me and the cows to where they lived. And they lived in tents – a set of large smelly leather tents with the hair still on them in patches. The line of smoke was from the sort of bonfire they used for cooking on.

I felt I could stand that. I told myself it was an adventure. But I couldn’t stand their Chief. She was a great huge wobbly woman with a voice like a train whistle. She was always scolding. She scolded the men for bringing me and me for coming, and me for speaking gibberish and wearing peculiar clothes, and the fire for burning and the sun for setting. Or I think she did. It took me days to understand the first word of their lingo.

I’ve got used to learning languages since. You get a system. But this one was a real shocker anyhow – they had sixteen words for cow and if you got the wrong one, they fell about laughing – and I think I wasn’t trying properly. I wasn’t expecting to be there that long. I was going Home. And it didn’t help that Mrs Chief decided to give me language lessons herself. She had the idea that if she scolded loud enough I would have to understand by sheer noise-power. We used to sit cross-legged facing one another, her scolding away at top shriek, and me nodding and smiling.

“That’s right,” I would say, nodding intelligently, “Yell away, you old squish-bag.”

At this, she would be pleased, because I seemed to be trying, and scream louder than ever. And I would smile.

“And you smell too,” I would say. “Worse than any of your cows.”

Well, it kept me sane. And it gave her an interest in life. It was pretty boring, life on the cattle-range. The only excitement they had was if a bull got nasty, or another tribe of herders went by on the horizon. All the same, I had to keep telling myself very firmly, “This is not so bad. It could be worse. It’s not a bad life.” That kept me sane too.

After six weeks or so, I had the hang of the language. I could sit on a horse without finding myself sitting on the ground the next second, and I could help round up cows. I was learning how to make leather rope and tan leather and weave hurdles, and a dozen other useful things. But I never learnt how to milk a cow. That was sacred. Only women were allowed to do that. And at this stage, they took down their tents and moved on to find better grass. They never reckoned to stay in one place much over a month.

I was riding along with them, helping keep the cattle together, when, about midday, I had the most peculiar sensation. It was like being pulled, strongly and remorselessly, sideways from the way we were going. With it, came a worse feeling – from inside me. It was a terrible yearning and a longing. My throat hurt with it. And it was like an itch too. I wanted to get inside my head and scratch. Both feelings were so strong that I had to turn my horse the way they pulled me, and as soon as I had, I felt better – as if I was now doing the right thing. And, no sooner was I trotting away in that direction, than I was full of excitement. I was going Home. I was sure of it. This was how you were moved along the Bounds. I had been right to think I was only going to be a short time in this world.