And it may take some time to learn what's real

When he realizes it's been around thirty years since the last time he spoke English, Jamie decides it might be time to head back to more familiar climes for a bit.

He doesn't go to Adam's world. Adam's world isn't much like Adam's world anymore in any case, any more than Adam's city was like Jamie's city; time has gone on, as it always does, and now Adam's London is full of spaceships and soaring sky-highways, just like the science fiction novels that Adam used to read. Jamie thinks whenever he's there that Adam would have liked to see it - which is why he isn't there often. The London two worlds over, though, feels about as much like Adam's London did three hundred years ago as anything could. It's got the same wide streets broken up with surprising alleys, and the same underground rumbling beneath your feet, and the same people hurrying by in dark suits.

- well, the people aren't really the same. But they might as well be.

It's so close that it would be uncomfortable, if the geography of London was anything like the geography of Jamie's home-that-was. But Jamie's city, and Adam's city, don't exist on this world. And it's nice, in a way, to hear accents he recognizes on every street corner. It's nice to be able to blend in and pass for a local for once without having to make too much of an effort.

Jamie's around sixteen years old physically now, which means that he looks fifteen and can pass for a young eighteen without doing much more than raising a few eyebrows. The first day he's there, he keeps an eye out for someone who vaguely resembles him to pass on the street and then steals their wallet. That gives him a name to use and enough money to work from until he figures out how the banking system works in this world. (This is obviously the sort of world that has banks.)

The next day he steps in on a back-alley football match - if a world's got football he always considers that something of a good-luck charm for him - and manages to score a lucky strike. That gets him an invite to the pub afterwards, which he's hoping will get the names of a few places that'll hire a fellow without too much in the way of paperwork. As it happens, he strikes it luckier than he's dared to guess. One of the boys has a father who repairs antique engines and is looking about for an assistant, and after wrangling an invite to the shop Jamie manages to talk himself into an honest job.

It wouldn't be making him much, maybe not even enough to live on, if he was paying for rent. But Jamie hasn't paid rent anywhere in two centuries - why bother, when squatting's so much easier? - and as it is he's putting away a reasonably tidy sum each month.

It's a good enough world, Jamie decides, and a good enough city. Some things about it rub the wrong way - a few too many policemen, a few too many people muttering darkly about politics, and an awfully bizarre fascination with goings-on in America, which to be fair do seem rather explosive - but he could do worse than stay here a while. (At least until some official comes to turn him out of the apartment he's broken into and set up house in.) The pub becomes his regular, and he flashes his stolen driver's license when anyone asks for ID. He flirts over the counter with the blonde girl who comes into the shop to get parts for the old cars she fixes up, and politely backs off when his boss' son expresses an interest - the girl says she likes tall fellows anyhow, which Jamie has to admit he's not a prime example of. He gets to know where to find the best fish and chips, and where to go to see the best local football matches.

He's at one of those matches when he sees a flash of blonde hair across the way, and looks over to see if it's the girl from the shop. It isn't; it's another face that's surprisingly familiar. But Jamie's not much fazed by that these days. He's run into his fair share of creepy cross-world twins, and at closer range than across a football field, too.

He leaves the stands and heads back to the apartment, buying a pasty from the vendor on his way out, and doesn't think much of it again.

If anyone had bothered to ask him before plying him with truth-inducing mind-altering drugs, Jamie could have told them that they wouldn't do anyone any good.

But of course no one ever listens to his advice.

Right now he is sitting in his cell trying to cheer himself up with the possibility that at least a mental institution might be easier to escape from than his present solitary confinement. Oddly, it is not very comforting.

This is the bit where Jamie starts to regret his choice to buy time to learn about the world by playing foreign. If he copped to knowing the language, he could talk to the doctor, crack a few jokes, get him to loosen up a bit; he doesn't seem a bad fellow, just tired.

(As an added benefit, the doctor could actually ask Jamie to move his arms around when he comes to examine him, instead of positioning them in place and saying "STAY!" like Jamie's a doll. Or a dog. Or a dog doll.)

But it's too late now - if he starts speaking in their language, they'll just ask why he didn't start before, and then he'll really be in the soup. He still has a decent chance of pulling off the lost little child bit. No military organization wants to feed a stray kid forever. Sooner or later, they'll give him a clean bill of health and send him out to some orphanage. Sooner or later, he'll figure out a way to get off this hollow metal rock and back to a proper world, with proper Bounds. Earth, for preference. Jamie's been to a million Earths, but aside from trips to Milliways he's never been off Earth before. He's thinking now that he could quite happily have gone all the hundreds and hundreds of years of his life without ever having changed that.

But that's all in the future. First, he has to convince them that he's not part of any kind of diabolical interplanetary scheme, that his arm's not about to fall off, that he's not going to give the rest of the population of this tiny space station some bizarre infectious disease - in short, that he's healthy enough and harmless enough to be let out of this white room that smells of chemicals.

And it's not like he hasn't been worse places than the white room. They feed him. There's a bed. There's even one of those cubes that shows pantomime stories. He's been plenty worse.

But it's been two months now, with only the doctor's thrice-weekly visits for company - and Jamie can't even talk properly to him, though you can do a bit to make friends through pantomime - and the fellow who comes every other day and interrogates him in Russian, and Jamie's too busy scrambling for plausible-sounding lies to do much chatting then. Jamie's used to being lonely, too, but this, he thinks, is a bit much.

He thinks to himself that he's never going to complain about the dullness of the cattle world again.




And then a few minutes later acknowledges that yes, that's a flat-out lie. But he'll complain about this more.

Just as soon as he gets out.

It's not even a particularly deadly sort of world, but the city has a bit of a wild animal problem, giant raccoon-type things that wander about at night and rummage behind restaurants for food. They set traps for them.

No one would ever want a person to be caught in the traps, of course, and so, quite naturally, they paint neon signs with that world's universal symbol for "DANGER" to warn anyone who might be coming by. It's the law.

Jamie's made himself at home with one of the semi-legalized gangs of street children that hire themselves out for days of labor, supplementing their income with minor pilfering. No one thinks to tell him what the painted triple-crosshatches mean; he speaks the language well enough to be understood, and after all, everyone, even the immigrants from far-off Stavoslan, understands that neon purple means STOP.

Unfortunately, Jamie comes from a lot further off than Stavoslan.

He's behind a bakery, rummaging in the ceramic bins that serve for dumpsters for the day's leftover bread, when he brushes against the wrong part of the wall and a spiky metal half-circle snaps down over his arm.

Jamie swallows his howl, and grimly sets to work undoing it. He's been caught in bear traps before, and traps meant to catch humans, too; this one isn't all that vicious as things go. His arm's badly bruised, scraped one or two places, and marked with a lovely deep set of grimy puncture wounds, but he doesn't think much of that. In a few hours all he'll have left is some scabs, and in a few days, not even that. Injuries don't linger on Homeward Bounders. It's one of those rules.

(One of Their rules. But when you've not been at risk of long-term injury for a hundred years, well - habit can be the most dangerous thing of all.)

Jamie finishes his dumpster-rummage and heads back to the rented bungalow with his spoils, cursing under his breath to relieve his feelings but otherwise not thinking much of it.

When he wakes up the next day his arm's still throbbing, which is odd, but they've got a job to do down by the river, and part of gang membership is that you pull your weight. Jamie likes the kids he's with, and he doesn't want to get a name for a shirker. He pulls his sleeve down and heads over with the others.

When he wakes up the day after that, he's feeling hot and light-headed, his heart's beating too fast, his arm is shrieking bloody murder all the way up to his shoulder, and there's some sort of nasty dampness seeping through the fabric.

Jamie pulls up his sleeve to look, then pulls it back down rather hastily, wishing he hadn't.

The voice in his head telling him that he's an idiot sounds remarkably like Helen's, but that's probably just because she's the person most likely to be telling Jamie he's an idiot at any given time. At any rate, even light-headed as he is, the course of action seems clear. Worlds with good hospitals also tend to want real names and records and documents - and it's a general rule that the fewer people know and care who you are, the less people are likely to be interested in the quality of the medicine that you get.

Jamie quite likes his arm, and he'd rather not lose it. That leaves one obvious place for him to go.

The nearest Bounds are four miles away, which is a perfectly fine walk when you're in health. By the time Jamie reaches them, he's feeling very unwell indeed.

Jamie ought never to have let it happen. He knew. He's the only one of them who really knew what They could do. It's not the fault of the others that they didn't quite believe how powerful They could be. It's Jamie's fault, for not convincing them how terrible an idea an assault on Them actually is.

It's over almost as soon as it begins. Helen makes her incision into Their place with her magic arm, everyone leaps eagerly inside, there's a horrible noise and everything starts shifting around and everyone starts disappearing. Then Jamie cracks his head on a set of chains and he's alone outside, in the little courtyard outside Their place, next to an Artistic statue of a prisoner without clothes. Or goosebumps.

He glares at the statue numbly as he clambers to his feet. They do like Their symbolism. Jamie's not at all fond of it himself.

Jamie knows there's not a chance of finding Helen or Joris or Adam or any of them. The others aren't dead - they can't be dead, They couldn't have killed them with all of the protections from Konstam's world; it could be worse - so they must all be discards. But the Bounds are endlessly huge. No, he'll not see them again. He'll get used to the thought eventually. He's gotten used to never seeing hundreds upon thousands of people again.

What now? Back to normal, he supposes. Onward ho. But not quite yet. He wanders over to the glass and looks in on Them. They stare back. He's still got the demon knife in his hand, he realizes vaguely, so he lifts it and slashes it into the stone, making a mark, a Homeward Bounder sign that doesn't really exist because there's never even any reason to use it - YOU CAN TELL THEM YOU'RE A HOMEWARD BOUNDER. It's a stupid thing to do. He'd thought it might relieve his feelings, making a joke like that - the jokes have always helped before - but it doesn't.

The sign only needs two more strokes to turn it into Shen, he realizes. It won't do any good, but he makes them anyway, and throws away the knife as it breaks. They're still staring at him. Jamie doesn't care. His arm is hurting him. He wanders away, through the streets, noting things vaguely. The sign that says THE OLD FORT outside Their place. The empty shopping center. Winding, convoluted streets. Familiar streets.

A school building. A building that looks astoundingly like the one he'd spent years trying to skive out of as much as possible - school took up too much of his life, he'd thought. At the time.

But that was a hundred worlds ago.

He keeps walking, past the street where Joris had stabbed him, towards Adam's house, where Adam and Vanessa's parents really do deserve a sort of explanation. Not that Jamie, right now, is best qualified to give it. He doesn't have answers for them. He has questions.

Adam's father tries to fuss about Jamie's arm, but Jamie can't be bothered with that. There's just a few things he needs to know. "Your grandmother. The lady doctor. You've an album in there with pictures of her. What was her name?"

"Elsie Hamilton Macready," says Adam's father, staring. And that's one.

"Do you know about the rest of Elsie's family? Her brothers. She had two brothers."

"Robert went to Australia," says Adam's father. "The elder one, James, disappeared when he was a boy. They dragged the canal for him."

And that's two.

So he knows now. Maybe he'd known ever since he saw that picture of Elsie, and just not let himself realize it. Maybe he'd known since he got there. It doesn't matter really.

He can't quite bring himself to ask the next thing. He asks about the game he played with Adam instead. He really does want to know. Only after Adam's father has explained about cricket, staring again, does he manage to say, "It's no good accusing me of fraud. That really is all I know of cricket. I only got firsthand knowledge two days ago - one last thing. Do you mind taking that newspaper from under Fred's arm and reading me out the date on it?"

And he does.

And then Jamie has to go, very far away and quickly, because he can't stand there and talk to his great-nephew. His little sister's grandson. Whose son has just gotten sent out on the Bounds, probably never to come Home, no, not probably, never to get Home, because you don't get Home, not really. You get to some parody of Home where everything's shiny and clean and people play cricket instead of football and everybody, everybody you know is dead a hundred years ago, after dragging the canal for you, but you were never found. You were off somewhere else, cursing at cows and Hoping. Hoping!

Their greatest joke. Masters of hilarity. Jamie's always thought he was a good man for a joke, but he knows when he's beaten in terms of comedy.

And it's then, of course it's then, of course the Bounds call. Onward ho! Places to go! Thanks for your visit Home, now back you go, wandering forever, don't let the gate hit you on your way out!



It hurts to resist the call and to turn in the other direction, back towards Their headquarters. It hurts, but Jamie doesn't care. He doesn't care about much right now. He just wants to show Them that he doesn't care about Them, either. There has to be a Bounds right by Their place. If he's getting sent off, he'll go from there.

So he does. He goes back to the statue of the man in chains, and the Bounds twitch, and he finds himself next to a real man in chains.

Chains that shatter when Jamie puts a hand on them.

And then the man on his rock - the Bound man, who is now free - sits up and explains to Jamie exactly what it means to be bound to Hope, and just how powerful someone can be who has nothing to Hope for anymore at all . . .

After this, there's been a lot of talk between Jamie and Uquar, and a lot of explanations Jamie only half-understands.

But the long and the short of it is this: there are more Homeward Bounders than there are of Them, now. And that means that if Uquar summons all the Homeward Bounders together - not just four or five children new to the Bounds, but all of them, all at once - the rules, Their rules allow them a chance.



And now Uquar and Jamie have led the Homeward Bounders towards the sign of Shen marking the door to Their place. If they can get inside they can launch the attack that will free the worlds of Them once and for all.

But they've got to get in first, of course.

Jamie turns to Uquar; Uquar answers, "You can go in, but we need your friend Helen to let the rest of us in."

Of course - Jamie hadn't thought it, but Helen's got to be there with the rest, and Joris too, and maybe even Adam and Vanessa. He hadn't thought to see any of them again, and his chest gives a kind of leap at the thought, but now is not the time to indulge it.

He turns to the nearest edges of the crowd and says, calmly, "Give a shout for Helen Haras-uquara, will you? She must be in there somewhere."

"I'm training to be a doctor," Vanessa tells Jamie, as she unwraps the towel with firm efficiency, "so you can have every confidence. I'll get this wrapped up properly for you and -"

Her eyes widen, and Jamie can see, through his muzzy fog, that she's shocked at how deep the cut is. It turns out demon knives are nasty things. He's got to give her points for cool, though; it must run in the family.

"- and that should hold you," she says, her briskness just slightly more manic, "until we get you to the hospital where you can get it stitched up."

"No!" Jamie says hastily. "No no no, no need for a hospital -" That would be disaster on a well-organized world like this. They'll ask for ID, which he hasn't got, and they'll ask him where his parents are, which of course he hasn't got either, and in his present state he'll likely end up saying something that will end him in a madhouse.

He tries a winning smile for Vanessa. It's not his best effort. He must look awfully gray. He feels gray. Damn Joris and his demon knife! "I have got every confidence in you, really. You shouldn't have to pay for a doctor for -"

"I'm only nineteen," Vanessa says, fetching down items from a shelf, "and only a first-year student. Jamie, you need real professional care for this -"

Jamie shakes his head vehemently, and then wishes he hadn't. It's a funny thing, but the instant someone gets all solicitous over you, you start feeling twice as ill. "I don't! No, it looks much worse than it is, really. And I've had far worse than this, I lost near half my arm once in this town called -"

He hasn't the faintest idea of what he's saying, by this point, but he's got to distract Vanessa somehow. He forges on, saying whatever words come into his head and forgetting them a moment later - he can't even make sense of what Vanessa says in response, though he's fairly sure she must be humoring him, he must sound madder than ever - but if he sounds mad enough maybe she'll decide it's not worth the effort taking responsibility for him and forget this whole doctor business, and -

He realizes that she's tugging on his good arm, and blinks. Oh - there's a dressing on the other arm. She must be finished. He babbles something nervously - is she taking him out to the doctor's? - and she says, "Don't be silly, you need to lie down," and then he blinks and he's lying on a couch in a room - a living room, Vanessa says, but it's far too posh to be a living room, in Jamie's time they'd have called it a parlor, he thinks. It's got pianos and wax fruit and photographs, the whole bit. But the photographs are posh too, all stiff whiskers and fancy hats, but one of them hasn't got the whiskers because it's quite a nice-looking young lady, and Jamie is still puzzling over it when he realizes that he's been asleep for some time and someone else has come into the parlor. Living room. Whatever they call it.

He doesn't bother to open his eyes, but he can hear Adam's voice and Vanessa's.

"That knife just leaped at him!" Adam is whispering. "I've never seen anything like it! Joris thought he'd killed him. He is OK, isn't he?"

"Yes, but it's a nasty cut," Vanessa whispers back. "I wish he'd go to the hospital. Adam, don't slide off. Have they told you -? If all this about Them is true, oughtn't we to do something?"

Oh, damn, Jamie thinks, what on earth did I tell her? And she seems to be believing it - damn, damn, triple damn!

"I know we ought! It's serious. I'm not going to sit around waiting to be someone's toy soldier."

"Or something's," Vanessa says, darkly.

"Too right!"

Jamie means to stay awake to hear what they say next, really he does, but somehow when he's next paying attention Adam is gone and Joris is there with Vanessa instead.

[OOC: From here.]

"I've killed you!" Joris says, and the only reason Jamie doesn't roll his eyes straight up is that - well, now it's beginning to hurt.

You say things you shouldn't say, when you've had a shock.

"Now you'll see what a mortal wound's like a Homeward Bounder," he snaps at Joris, ignoring the presence of the twelve or so other boys. "I won't die, you fool! Rule One."

When Jamie Hamilton was sixteen years old, he might have gotten fed up with the quarrels his parents were having constantly about his future. He might have run away and lied about his age to get a job on the railroad running between his home city and London.

It might have been his first time away from Home, and although he might have had the occasional twangs of guilt about his parents, he might really have loved the adventure. He might have loved the work. He always did love trains, the speed and shine of them on the outside and the complicated twisty grinding of machinery going on inside, and he always liked seeing new places and talking to people, that was a real treat for him. It might have been a really good thing. Maybe he could see himself doing it forever – and forever would have seemed an awful long time to young Jamie Hamilton. A few decades at least.

After a year or so, having established a real place for himself, he might have gone home to tell his family that he wasn’t going to be a doctor or a greengrocer either, that both of those things bored him stiff, that he was going to stay with the railroad and see new places and have some fun with his life. He’d bring back some of his earnings when he was in town, and they ought to be pleased enough with that. His mum and dad might have ranted til their tongues fell straight out of their head but it might have been all right eventually, because at that point his sister Elsie might have declared that if Jamie was going to be stupid enough to throw away opportunity she wasn’t, and that she was going to become a doctor herself. Rob might have taken over the store. He might never have had the idea of going to Australia; it was a fool idea anyways, Rob was born to run that greengrocer’s shop.

Elsie might have studied and his parents might have grown quietly older and Rob might have started taking things on, and they all might have stayed in one place, with Jamie coming and going, and bringing back money when he did. He might not have been the most responsible boy, old Jamie Hamilton – he might not have ever learned to be, cushy setup he had going on for him when he was a boy– but he always did have a commercial mind, so it stands to reason he might have saved up a fair bit in the end to give to his parents. He might not have been such a great disappointment to them, once they’d had time to get used to him.

He might have met plenty of girls on the line, living his life of adventure, but he might never have been serious about any of them. It’s hard to imagine him being serious about a girl who didn’t have her hair in her face and a sharp temper and who hadn’t saved his life a time or two. Girls almost always wore their hair up, then. But Elsie would have married the youngest Macready boy sooner or later, and Jamie might have been a best man at their wedding. He might have been a brilliant uncle. Everyone loves the uncle who pops up every so often with a story to tell and then he’s off, and Jamie might have been one of that sort. It's true he might have been a bit of a bad influence, but not enough that Elsie would ever have gotten really cross with him. Besides, Elsie might have been a bit of a bad influence herself, with that temper of hers, so she might not have had any room to complain.

After a while he might have got bored with trains, running the same route all the time. He might have branched out. He might have met someone working with flight, trying to get planes in the sky. By that time he would have been a real grown-up person, work-hardened and calloused and maybe looking a bit like his dad – though mum and dad both might have been awfully old by then. His teeth probably would have been dreadful, but oh well, he might have had charm to make up for it. He was a good liar anyways, though he might never have really had to become a great one.

Being all grown-up like that, and having mostly done what he needed to do, having stuck things out, so to speak, Jamie might even have developed a bit more of what you’d call an assertive personality. He might have liked to keep moving, but that doesn’t mean he might have always been running away.

Anyways, he might have learned to fly a plane, might have found it a bit more exciting than riding the trains, though trains would have always been his first love. He might have got good enough at it that when the first Great War rolled around he might have signed up for the Royal Naval Air Service – or, no, he might have been too old then. It’s hard to imagine, that. If they’d reckoned flying was more a young man’s game, he might have gotten stuck with the infantry. He might have got married to some sweetheart before getting shipped out, after years of bachelordom, just to say he had. To have someone to write letters to, most likely.

Whether he was flying or on his own two feet, that might have been the first ever time he’d left England. He might have appreciated that, even with everything going on, getting to see a bit of France.

He might have made it out of the Great War. He might not have. He’d have been getting old after that, either way, and he probably wouldn’t make it too much longer, what with the coal in his lungs from the trains and the scrambling in his brain from the shellshock. He might have had a kid or two with the missus, or, if there was no missus after all, he might have gone to stay with Elsie and her husband when the end started approaching – always assuming her husband made it out too. Well, Elsie would have been a real doctor for ages by then, she could have fixed them up. Either way, it might not have been a bad end for old Jamie. He wouldn’t have had to be alone, is the thing.

When Jamie was twelve years old, he might not have gone exploring in a quiet bit behind the market.

But I did go exploring, and so I’m not that Jamie Hamilton who might have done all those things. Though I’ve ridden the rails, and been a brilliant uncle – with a couple of greats added on – and flown in flying machines, and fought in my fair share of wars, I’m not that Jamie Hamilton at all.

Sometimes, though, you can’t help but wonder.

That meme thing! Comment with your character's name (past or present) and the name of one of mine, and I will tell you:

1) how my character's opinion of the named character has changed over time, or
2) why my character does or does not get along/like/other with the named pup.

Currently valid for Mary mmquitecontrary, Jamie walksthebounds, Sophie talkstohats, Jayne swinging_cod, Paul pwyll_twiceborn, and Meg balletrat if you want to kick it old-school.