up to him among the chains, without touching one. He was so tall and chained so close that it was quite a struggle for him to get his mouth down. I don’t think he got more than a taste the first time. But I went back and forwards, back and forwards, to the stream. I got quite nimble after a while. I even took a drink myself, after his sixth handful. He was so thirsty it was awful, and I kept thinking how he would feel if I happened to touch a chain and got twitched away just as he’d got his mouth down to the water.
“You should have asked me straight off,” I said. “Why didn’t you? Have They forbidden you to, or something?”
“No,” he said. “They don’t have that kind of power over me. But I could see how thirsty you were, and I’m more used to it than you.”
“How long have you been here like this?” I said. We were talking this way as I went to and fro. “As long as the Flying Dutchman? Do you know him?”
He smiled. He was getting more cheerful as he drank, in spite of his situation. I just wished I’d had some food I could have given him too. “From long before the Dutchman,” he said. “Long before Ahasuerus too. Almost from the beginning of the worlds.”
I nearly said “I don’t know how you stand it!” but there was no point in saying that. He had to. “How did They get you?” I said. “Why?”
“It was my own fault,” he said. “In a way. I thought They were friends of mine. I discovered about the Bounds, and all the ways of the worlds, and I made the bad mistake of telling Them. I’d no idea what use They would make of the discovery. When it was too late, I saw the only safeguard was to tell mankind too, but They caught up with me before I’d gone very far.”
“Isn’t that just like Them!” I said. “Why aren’t you hating Them? I do.”
He even laughed then. “Oh I did,” he said. “I hated Them for aeons, make no mistake. But it wore out. You’ll find that. Things wear out, specially feelings.” He didn’t seem sad about it at all. He acted as if it was a relief, not hating Them any more.
Somehow that made me hate Them all the worse. “See here,” I said, reaching up with the tenth handful or so of water, “isn’t there any way I can get you out of this? Can’t I find an adamant saw somewhere? Or do the chains unlock anywhere?”
He stopped before he drank and looked at me, really laughing, but trying not to, to spare my feelings. “You’re very generous,” he said. “But They don’t do things like that. If there’s any key at all to these chains, it’s over there.” And he nodded over at the anchor before he bent to drink.
“That anchor?” I said. “When it’s rusted away, you mean?”
“That will be at the ends of the worlds,” he said.
I saw that he was trying to tell me kindly not to be a fool. I felt very dejected as I shuffled off for the next handful of water. What could I do? I wanted to do something, on my own account as well as his. I wanted to break up his chains and tear the worlds apart. Then I wanted to get my hands on a few of Their throats. But I was simply a helpless discard, and only a boy at that.
“One thing I can do,” I said when I came climbing back, “is to stay and keep you company and bring you water and things.”
“I don’t advise that,” he said. “They can control you still, to some extent, and there’s nothing I can do to help you.”
He had had enough to drink by then. He said I should go. But I sat down defiantly on the wet rock, shivering. Both of us shivered. The fog was blowing round us like the cold breath of giants. I looked up at him. He had his head leant back again and that look on his face that was like peace but nearer death.
“Tell me the rules,” I said. “You must know every rule there is, if you found out about them.”
At that, his head came up and he looked almost angry.
“There are no rules,” he said. “Only principles and natural laws. The rules were made by Them. They are caught inside Their own rules now, but there’s no need for you to be caught too. Stay outside. If you’re lucky, you might catch Them up in Their own rules.”
“But there is that rule that nobody can interfere with a Homeward Bounder,” I said. I was thinking about the boy and the waggon. It still made me feel bad.
“Yes,” he said. “There is, isn’t there?”
Then neither of us said anything much for quite a long while. That’s the trouble with misery, or cold. It absorbs you. I still wonder how he could manage to be so human under it. Except, I think, he wasn’t human. Eventually, I put my shivering face up and asked if he’d like another drink.
He was looking off into the fog, rather intently, and shook his head slightly. “Not now, thank you. I think it’s time for the vulture to come.”
I don’t know why, but I got the point at once. I suppose I had been wondering, deep down, what made that new-looking wound of his. I found I was standing up, looking from the wound to his face and feeling ill. “Can’t I beat it off for you?”
“No,” he said, quite severely. “You can’t do things like that against Them, and you mustn’t try. Why don’t you go?”
I wanted to say that I’d stay – stay and hold his hand as it were – but I felt weak with horror. I couldn’t say a thing.
“It’s all right,” he said. “It has nothing to do with you. But do go. It’s nearly here.”
I looked up where he was looking. And sure enough, moving among the moving mist, were the shadowy wings of a huge bird. It was quite near, flapping overhead, and I could see its beak and its naked pink head. I still meant to stay. I know I did. But I was so horrified to see the bird so near that I went crouching away sideways with one hand over my head, and fell over the anchor, with the other hand on the chains.
It was nothing like the twitch that takes you through a Boundary in the normal way. It was ten times more violent. Those chains were so cold they burnt. But instead of sticking to me, the way freezing things usually seem to do, these flung me off themselves. I felt a sort of sizzling. Then I was crashing away backwards and finishing the fall I’d started, only much harder, on to a hard floor strewn with dead grass.
I lay there, winded, for a bit. I may have cried, I felt so sad. I could see I was in a big barn, a nice warm place smelling comfortably of hay. There was a great grey pile of hay to one side of me, almost up to the wooden rafters. I was a bit annoyed that I’d missed it and landed on the floor. I went on lying there, staring up at the sun flooding in through chinks in the roof and listening to mice or rats scuttling, but I was beginning to feel uneasy. Something was wrong. I knew it was. This barn ought to have been a peaceful place, but somehow it wasn’t.
I got to my knees and turned to the door. And stuck there. The door was a big square of sunlight. Outlined in it, but standing in the shadows, much nearer to me than was pleasant, was someone in a long grey cloak. This one had the hood up, but it made no difference. I knew one of Them when I saw Them. My heart knocked.
“Get up,” said the outline. “Come here.”
Now, this was a funny thing – I needn’t have done what he said. I knew I needn’t. But I was too scared not to. I got up
