by Susan Price
“Kommer meth migh,” Per said.
“Per, no!” The girl went to him and tried to take the money. He pushed her away, held her off with one hand, and held the wallet high in the air with the other. “Joe, don’t, you mustn’t go there, you’ll be in trouble!”
Even without the girl’s protests, Joe knew that taking the money would be wrong. Where did a loopy kid, with no shoes and socks on his feet, get fifty quid in a nice leather wallet? He’d either nicked it, or … If it belonged to the kid, taking it from him was even worse, in a way. He took a step forward. “Now, where did—”
The kid moved back fast, from both him and the girl. He stuck the wallet between his teeth and brought his hands together again—only Joe knew what that movement meant now. The kid’s hand was on the hilt of his knife, ready to draw it.
Joe lifted both his hands. “All right! Calm down. I’m not going to try and take it from you. Tell you what, give me half.”
“Halv?”
The young woman darted at him. “Joe! No, you can’t!”
“Half now.” Joe pointed to the ground at his feet. “Half when we get to Dilsmead Hall. Fair?”
“Joe, don’t.”
Per backed off a little further, took the wallet from his mouth, then hesitated. If the money had been in coins, he could have thrown it to Joe, but if he tried to throw these bits of paper, they would drift in the air. He pulled all but two sheets of the paper from the wallet, put the folded paper between his teeth, and then tossed the wallet to Joe. It landed on the tiles at his feet, and Andrea stooped, grabbing at it. Joe caught her wrist and Per stiffened, his hand going to his dagger’s hilt again. But Joe, though he held her wrist tightly, only twisted the wallet from her hand—he couldn’t be blamed for that—and then let her go.
“Joe,” Andrea said. “Don’t take him there. Don’t. I don’t mean to be rude, but … why don’t you just take what you’ve got there and go away?”
Joe opened the wallet and saw the twenty pounds inside. He looked at her. “I want the rest.”
“Quit while you’re ahead—easy money. If you go to Dilsmead Hall, you’re only going to get into trouble.”
It was true that, even if he cut out now, he was still twenty quid ahead, but … Well, Dilsmead Hall wasn’t that far away, and he had nothing better to do, and all these hints and threats made him bloody curious. Besides, fifty quid was a lot better than twenty. Trying to sound like a tough guy from a film, he said, “Happen I like trouble.”
Per had come closer again and said, impatiently, “Gaw vi?”
“Aye,” Joe said, and beckoned. “Come on.”
Per grinned, darted over to Joe and took his hand. Joe, startled, tried to pull away, but Per held on. “Let go,” Joe said, and began prying his fingers loose. Per, to whom it was natural to hold hands with a friend, was puzzled and hurt, and looked to Andrea for an explanation.
Oh, don’t look at me, she thought. I’m an Elf and not to be trusted. Why should I help? She was trying to think ahead to what would happen when Per and Joe reached Dilsmead Hall. Of course, if Joe collected his money at the gates and went off, nothing much, probably. Especially if she could keep up with them. She could join up with Per again and try to get him through the Elf-Gate with her.
But the thought of the security guards worried her. Some of them had guns, and she couldn’t predict what Per and Joe would do once they reached the Hall. People were always doing stupid things. Per, convinced he was close to the way home, would draw his dagger and fight … “Joe, you don’t know what you’re getting into. Please don’t go. You’re going to get hurt.”
“We can look after oursen,” Joe said.
“Oh, Joe!” Macho men who could look after themselves! She’d like to line them all up and slap their silly faces. “Listen, Joe, listen!” She shouldn’t say this, but … “You’re not going to believe this …” She was trying to think of any other way she could dissuade Joe from going to Dilsmead Hall, but nothing came to her. “You’re going to think I’m mad, but I don’t want you to get hurt, and—”
Joe stopped moving away, and looked at her, Per standing beside him. “Well?” he said. “What aren’t I going to believe?”
“What Per calls the Elf-Gate …” Why am I saying this? she thought. I signed an agreement to say I wouldn’t tell anyone, and he’s just going to laugh anyway. “It’s a time machine.”
Joe looked from her to Per and back again. He looked about at the dingy, muddied tube of the underpass. “A time machine.”
“Kom, Chyo,” Per said.
Joe held up a hand. “Hang on.”
“We call it the Time Tube,” Andrea said, “because it’s a tube.” And she formed her fingers into a circle, just as the lad had done when trying to describe an Elf-Gate.
Joe came back toward her and then stopped, feeling that he was never going to move again. It was bats, what she’d just said, it was alien abductions and talking with fairies, but it made sense. He’d seen pieces in the newspapers about time-travel research. In one, some scientist would be saying that in fifty years’ time there’d be practical, working time machines and we’d all be taking vacations with the dinosaurs. In another, a different scientist would be saying that time travel was impossible, and that no reputable scientists believed it could ever be achieved. “You telling me that somebody’s done it? Built a time machine? A real one, that works?”
“Here,” she said. “In the labs at Dilsmead Hall. FUP’s done it.”
Per came to stand beside Joe, looking curiously at them. He’d caught the mention of Dilsmead Hall.
FUP, Joe thought. Dilsmead Hall. There’d been stories doing the rounds about what had been going on in Dilsmead Hall. Gruesome animal experiments, new forms of nuclear power that would poison everybody, the building of genetic monsters … Joe had never taken much notice, and nobody, that he could remember, had ever said the project was a time machine.
But things came together in Joe’s mind, making sense with such speed he couldn’t keep up with his own thoughts. He looked at Per, who stared back at him and said, “Vi gaw?”
Joe pointed at him. “You mean—?”
“Five hundred years ago,” Andrea said.
The peculiar, clinking jacket and the thick, broad speech, often more impenetrable than that of Joe’s granddad. The puzzled air with which the kid handled money. The funny-looking knife. The odd bottle made of leather, and the unfamiliar drink it held. The ignorance of zippers.
Joe felt as if a bright, bright light had turned on inside his head. It must, he thought, be shining out of his eyes and ears. So much made sense if you just accepted that the lad standing beside him was five hundred years old.
“Chyo?” Per said.
Joe shook his head. It was hard to look at that bright young face and think that it was—or should be—or was?—nothing but a skull in a forgotten and unmarked grave.
“Chyo? Vordan staw day?” How stands it? Per was puzzled by the stunned look on Joe’s face as he stared at him.
Joe said, “He’s one of them Sterkarms!”
The old-time Sterkarms were a local legend, forever galloping about at full tilt, up to no good. Always being arrested and locked up in the castle dungeons, and then the rest of the ferocious family would swarm over the walls and rescue them. Joe had often been teased about his surname.
“He’s only a bit of a kid,” Joe said. All the stories gave the idea that the old Sterkarms were about seven feet tall, four feet wide, scarred, armed to the teeth, and had beards you could lose a horse in.
Andrea shrugged.
“Bloody hell,” Joe said. “I mean—bloody hell! He could be me great-great—ever-so-many-greats-great-granddad!”
Andrea laughed. “If he’s not, it’s not for want of trying.”
Per stepped away from Joe and toward her. “Vah?”
Joe said, “Elf-Land?”
“He thinks he’s in Elf-Land. He thinks we’re—he thinks I’m an Elf. He thinks you’re one of his own, lost in Elf-Land, like him. When he says ‘Elf-Gate,’ he means the Time Tube.”
“Bloody hell!” Joe said. “And this home he wants to go back to, this—”
“He means his own time.”
“So. He really could give me land and a house. No kidding.” Not just a bedsit, from which he could be evicted. Not just some low-paid job, where he’d be turned off as soon as it suited his boss. But a house and land, as a gift, a reward, his forever. Freedom.
“Joe!” Andrea said. He never heard her. He grabbed Per by the arm and jerked him backward, never noticing that Per reached for his dagger. “If I take you—to the Elf-Gate—if I go home with you—you’ll give me a house?”
Per relaxed, realizing that Joe meant him no harm. He frowned as he listened, watching Joe’s face, and caught enough of the words to more or less understand. “Ya. Oh lant.”
“You mean it?” Joe asked. “You really mean it?” He didn’t want to go back five hundred years for nothing.
“Joe!” Andrea said. “Think! You don’t want to do this!”
“I do!” Joe said.
“We’re talking about five hundred years ago! And in a very remote, backward part of the country. Think what that means! So he’ll give you a house! It’ll be a drafty hut with the rain coming in and no furniture at all! You’ll sleep on the floor! You’ll be hungry most of the time, and cold, and wet, and there’ll be no medical care, and it’ll be dangerous—”
“You mean just like now?” Joe said. He stared at her, and she hadn’t a thing to say. Joe turned back to Per. “D’you mean it? About the house and land. Can you really do it? Do you mean it?”
Per understood, and his face lit with a smile. Taking Joe’s arm, he tugged at him until they were squarely facing each other. Joe, moving obediently into place, noticed some passersby glancing at them and saw that the kid was at least half a head taller than he was. He’d thought that people in the past were all short. He stood as tall as he could and straightened his own shoulders, to make his heavier build obvious.
Per took both of Joe’s hands, pressed them together as if in prayer, and placed both of his own around them. His left foot he placed on top of Joe’s right foot, bare toes on soggy old sneaker. He looked into Joe’s eyes, his own wide with the seriousness of what he was about to do, and the anxiety to get it right. “Yi, Per Toorkildsson Sterkarm, tar thine hander—”
Joe lost him after that, but Per sang the words out in such fine style that, looking into the boy’s intent face, Joe felt his hair prickle. The clasped hands, the foot on the foot … This was no joke or game. The lad was nervous but serious. Joe had never seen a clergyman perform a wedding or funeral with as much conviction. Without taking his eyes from the boy’s face, he said to the girl, “What’s he say?”
She didn’t answer. Per went on, speaking with emphasis and swing, until he ran out of words and finished with a solemn, wide-eyed nod.
“What’s he say?” Joe demanded.
Andrea didn’t want to answer, but refusing to translate was as hard as ignoring a ringing phone. “He said, ‘I, Per Toorkildsson Sterkarm, take your hands between my hands and place my foot on your foot, and swear to be your lord, to guard you and guard yours until the day I die.’ Happy?”
“Now thu,” Per said, and shook Joe’s hands between his own. “Yi—” He nodded to Joe.
Joe, his hands still between Per’s, and his foot under Per’s foot, said, “I, Joseph Sterkarm, put my hands between your hands—”
My hands are between his, he thought, because I’m giving them and their use to him.
Half guessing, half prompted by Per, he stumbled on, “—and my foot under your foot—”
My foot’s under his foot because he’s top dog, that’s what I’m agreeing to. What the hell am I getting into?
“—and swear to be your man, to guard you and to guard yours, until the day I die.”
The words seemed to take on such vivid meaning, they were like solid, heavy objects, taking up space and pressing in on him.
Swear to be your man. Like a belonging, a useful tool.
To guard you and guard yours. But now more like a dog. He felt the hackles rising on the back of his neck and his teeth baring, like faithful Gelert standing over the fallen cradle of the little prince.
Until the day I die. God, that had a long, distant and doomy ring!
Andrea said, “He believes every word of it, Joe. How about you?”
Joe could see the belief in Per’s face. He thought: But he swore to guard me and mine too—if I ever have anything to call mine. And he means every word of that as well.
Per took his foot from Joe’s foot, dropped his hands and, stepping closer, put his arms around Joe’s shoulders and hugged him.
Joe’s muscles stiffened and, without actually rebuffing the hug, he tried to hold himself away from it. More people were walking through the underpass—the office workers were returning to work—and they looked at the kid hugging him and hurriedly looked away, some of them smirking. To hell with them! Joe thought. This ceremony was more important than what some crowd of house livers thought. He even half raised his arms, meaning to hug the kid in return, but wasn’t sure that he was supposed to. He stood there, awkward, his arms held up.
Per kissed Joe, first on one cheek, then on the other. He did it bashfully. It was the first time he’d taken a man into service, and though he knew it was his place, as the master, to offer the kiss, he felt shy at presuming to kiss a man as old as his father.
Joe felt the shyness and thought it funny that his new lord and master was shy of him. As Per drew back from him, he put his hands on the lad’s shoulders.
“Lant,” Per said. “Oh ayn hus. Yi giffer thu min urd.”
Joe had worked for other masters, schoolmasters, who’d promised that if he worked hard and got qualifications, he’d get a good job. He’d known they were lying at the time. He’d left school, been unemployed, and joined the Army. He’d done a couple of years, left and got a job in the building trade. Work two weeks, off for six.
He’d worked for another master, a building contractor, and he’d been known as a good worker. In return he’d been laid off at the first sign of a slump in trade. Good workers came expensive.
He’d paid taxes to his masters in the government, paid tax on everything he’d bought. In return he’d got to sleep in all the cardboard boxes he could beg, and a police force to move him on at three in the morning.
None of those masters had held his hands, looked into his eyes, and solemnly sworn to guard him and guard his until the day they died. Joe squeezed Per’s shoulders between his hands, then whacked him on one shoulder and pulled his baseball cap down over his eyes. “I’ll take you to Dilsmead Hall. And if there’s any such thing as an Elf-Gate there, we’ll find it!” He started off along the underpass and when Per, coming after him, took his hand again, he didn’t pull away.
Andrea ran after them. She said, “All right, all right, you win. Why don’t we take a taxi? I’ll pay.”
Joe stopped and looked from her to Per. “Okay. Sure. Why not?” It had been a long time since he’d ridden in a taxi. All in all, this was turning out to be an interesting day.
11
21st Side: Per Gaw Hyemma
The taxi pulled up at the gate of Dilsmead Hall, and the green-uniformed security guard came out of his hut. Andrea wound down her window to show her pass. “I’ve got two guests with me. We’re all expected.”
The guard nodded and, taking her pass, went back into his hut to phone reception.
“This might be your last chance, Joe,” Andrea said.
“I’m sticking,” Joe said. He wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do. He suspected that he was makin
g a bloody fool of himself, but between curiosity and the hope of gain, he was stuck. Besides, Per, though leaning over the driver’s shoulder and examining the steering wheel and gear stick with interest, was keeping a grip on Joe’s hand that was likely to leave bruises. Joe doubted if Per would allow him to leave.
The barrier across the drive lifted, and the security guard stepped out of his hut, returning Andrea’s pass with a smile and a touch to his peaked cap. The taxi moved forward into the long driveway. “Here we go!” Andrea said, and crossed her fingers.
It hadn’t been too difficult for her to convince Joe that they stood a better chance of reaching the Time Tube with her assistance, especially when she’d shown him her pass. Joe understood how security worked. It had been harder to persuade Per, and to her vexation, Joe’s words had counted more with him than hers. If Joe thought they should go with her, he eventually conceded, then so be it, but Joe was to lead the way, not Andrea. Per feared an ambush.
“You know the office for that taxi company that’s just along here?” Andrea had said to Joe. “Just take us there.” Going around the ring road would mean they avoided the city center, keeping Per away from the old buildings that he might recognize. She couldn’t see that it would be helpful, at that moment, to puzzle and confuse him any more than he was already.
Joe had led the way around the ring road, and Per had gone happily with him, holding his hand. The noise and rush of Elf-Carts so close beside them was still fearful, but Per took courage from Joe, who’d been in Elf-Land longer, and had obviously learned what should and shouldn’t be feared. Joe didn’t seem bothered by the Elf-Carts at all, so Per ignored them as much as he could. His hopes of reaching home rose, and still holding Joe’s hand, he turned and offered his other hand to Andrea. She’d taken it, smiling.
At the taxi office, the woman controller had invited them all inside, to sit on a broken sofa, among piles of old magazines. She’d offered them cigarettes and either didn’t notice that Per was barefoot, and holding hands with Joe, or didn’t care. When Andrea asked if she could use the phone, the woman waved her hand, puffed on her cigarette and said, “Knock yourself out!”
