The screen put up a result: The man in 21st clothes was unknown. Chitra looked from the man to the riders. Had they brought him in as a prisoner?
“Relax, mate,” Joe said. “Told you I wouldn’t be on there.” He tried to make his smile friendly and not grit his teeth. He felt anything but relaxed himself. The Sterkarms, looming behind him, made his shoulders prickle. He had no idea what the mad buggers might do and knew he hadn’t a prayer of controlling them if they went off on one. Sweat was gathering under his arms and running down his back. This was worse than he’d imagined, and he’d known it would be bad.
Their brief camp of the night before had been closer to the Tube than Joe had realized, and while still dark, Changeling Per had gone on foot to study the compound, to see how many guards there were and how they were posted. The men he’d left behind had tended the horses and rested.
On Per’s return, they’d all gathered around and watched as he made little maps with pebbles and stones, sprigs of heather and bits of fern. Kiddies’ playtime! Except that it had been serious. Changeling Per would point at some sprigs—Joe could no longer remember what they stood for—and then look long and hard at a couple of his men, who would nod. Something had been decided, and Joe didn’t know what.
Joe had been asked lots of questions about the office, its guards, and whether he could work the Tube. Nothing he’d said had come close to persuading them to give up on the idea of going back through “the gate” to their own world.
And now here he was, stuck between FUP’s armed guards in front of him and the Sterkarms behind him, lances resting on boots, swords and daggers at belts, bows and quivers slung behind their saddles.
“I’m Joe Sterkarm,” he said to the FUP guards. He felt the grin on his face was going to freeze and stay there forever. “Heard of me?” He saw a grudging recognition on the face of the guard who seemed to be in charge. “I don’t have any pass ’cos I’ve been, like, embedded with the Sterkarms. Not these ones—the wild buggers, I mean. I come through with ’em last time. Yeah, that’s right, I’m the bastard who helped ’em burn the Tube down, you’ve heard of that. But now I want to come back, honest. I’m sick to death of this place—it’s worse than living on the streets, but how was I to know? I want to come back to civilization.”
“Yeah?” Chitra tried to give nothing away while he weighed things up. He knew of Joe Sterkarm. The homeless man from Carloel’s streets who’d helped Per May Sterkarm fight his way back through the Tube. A 21st sider gone native.
“I know I’m not the flavor of the month with your lot,” Joe said. “I know I’ll be in trouble. I don’t care. They can prosecute me, bring it on. I know all the Sterkarm hiding places. I can take you to ’em—I can talk to ’em, they trust me. I can get you in among ’em.”
Chitra eyed him distrustfully. That was what FUP’s Sterkarms were supposed to be for. “Where’s Patterson?”
“Patterson?” Joe repeated. Behind his cheery, idiot grin, he thought: That’s who the Changelings mean when they say “Payairssen.”
“Yeah,” said Chitra. “Where is he?”
Joe’s thoughts racketed about. Were these guards in touch with Patterson, whoever and wherever he was? There were no satellites in these skies. Portable radios? Maybe, but they’d be short-range. “Oh, Patterson. He’s at the bastle houses. That’s where I found him and turned meself in. ‘Take me home,’ I said. He sent these blokes to bring me here.”
“Yeah?” Chitra said. “If you can be so useful, why didn’t you stay with him, y’know, being useful?”
Joe’s back crawled with awareness of the Changelings behind him growing impatient while he and Chitra talked. It was like being surrounded by big dogs of uncertain temper. “Her.” Joe pointed to Kaitlin, who was still sitting on their horse. “My woman. Expecting my kiddie. Couldn’t leave her with the Sterkarms, could I? They’d have killed her out of spite. Patterson wouldn’t spare any of his men to bring her her … so I said I’d got to come and see her safe into the 21st. Then I’ll go back with these to help.”
Chitra shuffled the passes again, considering. He gave the horsemen and their English friend a long stare.
Come on, Joe thought, make up your mind before this lot break the leash.
Changeling Per
Seated on his horse behind Joe, Changeling Per listened as the Elf talked to the guard but understood little. His eyes flicked from one face to the other, but the guard hid his thoughts well, and Joe was playacting. …
So Per studied the steel fence and gate. Even though he’d seen it before, it was harsh and alien. Elvish. The great ring of the Elf-Gate, and the small Elf-House beside it, made him keenly aware that he was lost from his world, in an eldritch place. If he was going to die here, then take that road at a gallop! It wouldn’t improve for dawdling.
He said, “Ayn shlut til talla!” An end to talk! Securing his lance in its sling, he swung down from Fowl and led him to the gate by his bridle. Cuddy rose and followed. Holding his helmet under his arm, Per looked at the Elves and said, “Ken-gah-rrrew!”
What were the chances? Chitra asked himself. The plastic passes he held had been given to FUP’s Per Sterkarm, and the man saying the password was unmistakably a Per Sterkarm. His men, being Sterkarms, wouldn’t follow anyone else. They wouldn’t take orders from Patterson. Presumably, they wouldn’t take orders from enemy Sterkarms, either.
“Let us in for God’s sake,” Joe Sterkarm said. “I could murder a cup of tea.”
Chitra looked into Joe’s face, and decided to believe him. The man was nervous, but who wouldn’t be in his situation? It wasn’t Chitra’s place to say what should happen to somebody who’d joined the enemy and burned the old Time-Tube down—and he didn’t really care much. Though he imagined his bosses would feel differently.
He nodded to his men and stood back to let them open the gates. Per Sterkarm led his horse through, wafting a strong smell of animal, peat smoke, dung, and dirty man. The big, lean dog followed him. Chitra watched it warily but it ignored him.
The other horses filed past, the riders staring down at him. Leading them was Joe’s woman. She smiled at Chitra. She was pretty.
Joe Sterkarm grinned. “Thanks, mate!”
“That’s okay.” Chitra watched the Sterkarms cross the compound. “You understand we got to be careful, right?” He led the way toward the office.
Joe followed, pretending he was just chatting to a mate in the pub, but his smile felt fixed, and his heart hammered so he could hardly breathe. He knew the Sterkarms had murder in mind, and he just prayed that when everything blew up, Kaitlin wasn’t hurt.
“We can get you that cup of tea anyway,” Chitra said, at the office steps. “Your lady like tea?”
“Never had any,” Joe said. It was hard to find breath for talking. “It’ll be a first for her.”
Kaitlin had given her horse into the care of the Sterkarm men and now came to walk beside Joe. She looked at Chitra with large solemn eyes of clear blue set in a face of delicate rose-pink, all framed with russet hair. Chitra stood back for her to enter the office first, but she hung back at Joe’s side. Even Joe didn’t know how much it was act and how much genuine timidity.
Joe took a quick look around. He, Kaitlin, and the Changelings were now locked inside a steel-fenced compound. Guards on the gate had automatic rifles. In the office were computers connecting to the 21st—oh, and there was a bloody great Tube through which reinforcements could come.
The Changelings were leading their horses to different spots around the muddy compound. Some were already grooming them or taking feed bags from their saddles. They were armed with lances, swords, and longbows.
What could possibly go wrong?
He became aware that Chitra, slightly puzzled, was waiting for them to go into the office. “Sorry!” he said and forced a laugh as he climbed the three steps to the door, leading K
aitlin by the hand. “I’m just so glad to be back among human beings!” His boots clattered over the office’s laminate flooring.
In the compound, watched by the rifle-holding guards, the Sterkarms tied their horses to stakes and groomed them, singing old folk songs as they worked. It was a peaceful, pastoral scene.
24
16th Side:
Wild Country
Per May • Andrea • Joan Grannam
“Entraya? Entraya?”
Per’s voice. Insistent.
Per? That was from before when … She was back 21st side now and …
She gave the puzzle up. She’d been sick countless times and simply didn’t care. Her innards still ached and heaved. She shivered with cold and weakness. All she cared about, and dreaded, was when she would vomit again.
“Entraya!” She felt a hard grip on her arms, which at least distracted her from the griping in her belly. Someone shook her, and that, she didn’t like. It made her feel sick. “Entraya! We mun gan!”
“No. …”
“They’ll catch us!”
A dim memory stirred. Grannams. She longed to lie still, but the Grannams were after them.
Per’s hands gripped hers, and she let him pull her into a sitting position. Immediately, her head spun hard. Gray and white sparkles blinded her, inflicting a vile nausea that made her spew again.
“Oh, Entraya …” Per’s hoarse voice held such fear and weariness—and tenderness—that tears came to Andrea’s eyes. She felt drool spill down her chin and dabbed at it with a weak, cold hand. It chapped her face as it dried.
“Entraya …” Per’s firmer hand wiped her mouth. Tears blinded her, but it felt as if he used leaves. She was so grateful for his care, but felt like a gross, mucky baby, a burden.
Per, despite the drool, gripped her hand again, put his arm tightly around her, and said, “Up!” She tried to stand. Her heart thundered, staggered, missed a beat, choked her, pounded again. What blurry vision she had vanished. Dizzy, she fell, dragging Per down, too. He fell partly on her, knocking breath from her, and sending her heart thumping into a brief, lovely moment of peace.
A long snore woke her—her own. She heard a woman’s voice. “Ecky is worse.”
Joan Grannam! The cause of this endless trek. How could she have forgotten her? Then her stomach roiled again and acid drooled from her mouth. The world shrank to her body’s pain.
“Entraya!” Per, nagging again. It could have been hours or seconds later. He sounded desperate.
“We mun leave them and gan alone.” Joan’s voice, mixed with the sound of wind in grasses.
Andrea felt herself hauled at, like a sack. …
Seconds, hours, days after that—who knew?—someone said, “Entraya, try, be so good.” Andrea opened her eyes but, strangely, saw only a little of Per’s face, as if she peered at him through a small hole cut in a white sheet. A heavy sea boomed in a cave nearby, boomed and pounded while the hole in the sheet shrank and shrank until it was all white, white, white … She drifted on the sea, the booming of the cave becoming distant and gentler, fading into silence.
Per May
They were on a hillside. There were scattered thickets of gorse and briar, but no cover where they were.
Per straightened and stood, panting, all too well aware of how easily he could be seen by anyone hiding in the woods on surrounding hillsides. He looked down at Andrea in despair.
It would have been hard to lift even the scrawny Joan to her feet if she’d been fainting and a dead weight. Andrea was not scrawny—something he’d always been glad about before. He wiped his face on his sleeve, mopping up his own sweat and Andrea’s drool.
He was badly out of breath. It felt as if a band was being now tightened, now loosened around his chest in time with the slightly unsteady skipping of his heart. His lips were numbed, as if he’d kissed ice.
There was no time to think about it. Changeling Ecky lay face down lower on the slope and Changeling Sim was throwing up his guts. Per was the only man left standing.
Andrea’s breathing, which had been rapid, was now slow. Kneeling beside her, he put his fingers to her throat. Her pulse was slow and her skin cold. He knew the signs of approaching death. “Nay!” he said, aloud, angrily, and startled Joan.
Andrea had come back to him. She left Elf-Land and her own kind just to be with him—and because of it, now she lay dying on this hillside, without even knowing he was there. It made his heart hurt as if it was wrenched between dogs. Lowering his head, he kissed her lips, not caring that they were besmeared with drool and vomit. If she’d been covered in shit, underneath it she would still have been his beautiful Elf-May.
His own lips were so numb, he hardly knew if they had touched her.
“Master Sterkarm,” Joan said, behind him. “We can no bide here.”
He turned and looked at her.
She saw an exhausted, frightened man, his face smeared with filth, and in his expression such hatred for her that she was shocked and drew back. He seemed about to speak, but something beyond her caught his eye, and his face changed.
Looking over her shoulder, she saw the Elves coming up the hill toward them, Elf-Pistols in their hands.
16th-Side A:
The FUP Compound
Joe Sterkarm • Kaitlin • Changeling Per
Kaitlin was so much shorter than Joe that as he entered the office behind her, he looked clear over her head. A large desk held several computers and a man sitting in a wheeled office chair glanced up from the screens. He saw Kaitlin and did a double-take.
Good, Joe thought. The more attention Kaitlin’s prettiness draws, the better.
Chitra, following them in, indicated Joe with his thumb. “Famous guy. Joe Sterkarm. Y’know, the homeless bloke.”
Strong swung around in his chair for a better look. “What, the one who ran off to join the Sterkarms?”
Joe held up his hands as if defending himself. “Look, it seemed like a good idea at the time!” Through the window, he could see a couple of Changelings unsaddling their horses and putting longbows on the ground. The nervousness of his laugh was genuine. “I got swept up in things. It’s hard to say no to those characters. But I wish I had now. I can’t wait to get home! I know I’m in trouble, but I’d rather face the music than stay here.”
Both Strong and Chitra laughed. Looking at Kaitlin, Strong said, “Nice souvenir.”
Joe made himself smile and glanced out of the window again. A Sterkarm was rubbing down his horse. All very peaceful. Turning back, Joe looked around the office, pretending he was savoring the sight rather than weighing up the opportunities it offered. Beside the sink, a white electric kettle stood on a counter, with cupboards and drawers below. “I ain’t had a decent cuppa for five hundred years. Me tongue’s hanging out for one.”
“Make yourself at home,” Chitra said. “You might as well. Tube only comes in once a day.”
“If you’re lucky,” Strong added.
Chitra huffed with amusement. “’Sright. Times we’ve been stuck here for a double shift ’cos something’s gone pear-shaped or they’m cost cutting. I could get through and ask—”
“No.” Joe hoped he hadn’t spoken too quickly. “Not worth it, mate. Wouldn’t want to get you into any bother. I want to go home at the end of this. Don’t want to annoy anybody more than I have to.”
He filled the kettle at the sink and set it to boil. Kaitlin followed him, close at his side. He spoke to her in Sterkarm. “Just saying I’ll teach her how to make a proper Elvish cuppa,” he said over his shoulder to Chitra and Strong. He had indeed mentioned the drinks he was making.
“In no hurry to get back to Patterson, then?” Chitra said.
“Have you met Patterson?” Joe opened the cupboards above the work surface and saw sugar and tea bags. There was also a
small brown teapot on a higher shelf. A pottery one. No one could see what nestled against the tea bags inside it. “A real teapot!” He took it down, even as guilt twisted his nerves. “Real tea in a proper teapot! You gents want one?”
“Milk and two sugars,” Chitra said.
Strong chimed in, “Yeah, same.”
Joe took down the box of tea bags, ostentatiously showing them to Kaitlin. “Right, that’s four tea bags and one for the pot. …” He spoke in Sterkarm as he dropped the bags into the pot. To the others, he said, “She’s got a lot to learn.”
“I’m sure you’re teaching her a lot,” Strong said.
Joe set mugs from the cupboard on the work surface. Kaitlin picked one up and turned it in her hands, admiring it. The mug was nothing special to 21st eyes—thick, squat, and painted with big orange flowers on a bright yellow ground.
Joe leaned against the counter, watching the men watch her. They liked her prettiness and were amused that she found the mug so fascinating.
“You can have it, my love, if you want it,” Chitra said.
She looked up at him with her big pale-blue eyes and smiled.
“She’s never seen anything like that,” Joe said. “They drink out of wooden cups. Their spoons are wood an’ all—or horn. They eat off”—he gestured with his hands—“big old stale lumps of bread.”
Joe stepped forward as he spoke, holding the men’s attention. Behind his broad back, Kaitlin put the mug she held beside the teapot. From the open pouch at her side she took a wax-sealed hazelnut and dropped it into the teapot.
From outside came singing: a loud, hoarse, not very tuneful voice, singing to a tune Joe knew. Chitra and Strong were startled, but then grinned and relaxed. It was only someone singing, after all.
16th-Side A:
The FUP Compound
The Changelings
After leading his horse through the compound’s gate, Changeling Per led it on toward the office, Cuddy pacing at his side. Sweet Milk, still mounted, followed. As Per walked, he looked to his men, and directed them with his eyes—a gaze at the man, a look toward where he wanted them to go, and another glance back at the man, who responded by briefly closing his own eyes, or with a barely perceptible nod. Per moved slowly, watching to see that the men had understood.
A Sterkarm Tryst Page 21