The Sterkarm Handshake (22 page)

Andrea said, “Per, if tha'd come with me, we could be through Elf-Gate by now.”

“Quiet, woman,” he said, sounding just like his father. From his pouch he took the leather bottle and pulled at the stopper. His fingers didn't have their usual strength, and he couldn't get a grip on it.

Joe reached across and took the bottle from him. Holding it, he turned it, puzzled by what the material might be. He'd never seen a bottle made from leather before. He pulled the stopper free.

“Tahk,”
Per said.

“You're welcome.” Joe swirled the contents of the bottle, and sniffed at its neck. There was the unmistakable whiff of alcohol. He passed the bottle back to the kid.

“Per,” Andrea said, “trust me! There be nobody looking for us. If we gan—”

Per raised the bottle, said, “Sterkarm!” and took a sip from it, wetting his mouth, leaving most of what little was left for Joe, though his belly squeaked for it. He held out the bottle.

Joe took it. “Sterkarm!” He put the bottle to his mouth and drank. Whatever was in it was … more like cider than anything else, though it wasn't cider. Quite sweet. Alcoholic, but weak. “Good stuff,” he said, handing it back. He wasn't really keen on it, but the kid seemed pleased that he liked it.

“Good?” Per said, as he put the bottle back in his pouch. His eye fell on a zipper in the sleeve of Joe's waterproof jacket. He touched it with his fingertip.

“What's up?” Joe twisted his head around to see what had taken the kid's interest.

Per caught hold of the zipper's tab and gave it a pull. He made a small sound of surprise when the zipper's teeth began to part.

Andrea, seeing another source of trouble, said, “Per, we really, really—”

“Quiet!” he said. He was studying the zipper as Joe pulled it open and shut. As soon as he released it, Per took the tab and pulled it open again. Joe could see by the kid's face that he was truly astonished. “Haven't you never seen a zipper before?” The kid looked at him questioningly. “A zipper. Zipper.”

“Sssip.” The kid got awkwardly to his knees, pulling a slight face, as if it were painful, and pulled up his shirt, revealing that his jeans were fastened only at the top, by the button, and that he wasn't wearing anything underneath. After a bit of trouble in finding the zipper's tab, he slowly pulled up the zipper, and looked at Joe with a big, bright smile.

Joe grinned back, nodding. “Well done,” he said. “Congratulations.” He looked up at the girl who was standing by and said, “Where's he escaped from?”

“What?” she said crossly.

“Where
is
he from?” Joe asked.

Startled, Andrea tried to control her face while she thought of an answer. It would be suspicious not to answer readily, and just as suspicious to say she didn't know, or to be rude and tell him to mind his own business. “Denmark!” she said, feeling that she'd left too long a pause. Per's distant ancestors had certainly come from Denmark.

“Oh, right,” Joe said. “I'd have thought they'd have had zippers in Denmark.” Where on the face of the planet, he thought, could you find someone else who'd never seen a zipper? In the rain forests, in the Australian desert, in the wastes of Siberia, people wore clothes with zippers.

Per started to get up, but as his weight came onto his hurt leg, the part-healed muscles gave a strong twang and, in moving suddenly to ease it, he fell back to the tiles.

Joe said, “You okay? Want a hand?” He got up and offered a hand. Per reached for it, and Joe took him by the hand and elbow, bringing him to his feet with one strong pull. “Something wrong with your leg?”

Per kept hold of Joe's hand and put his other hand on Joe's shoulder.
“Naw vi gaw hyemma.”

Joe laughed. The meaning of the words came straight to him, as if there'd been some magic in the ciderish drink. “Now we go home, do we?” He shook his head. “Sorry.” Tempted though he was to annoy the glowering young woman, he just couldn't be bothered to go all the way out to Dilsmead Hall for nothing. “Go with her. Her wants to take you.”

“Nigh, Chyo, nigh. Thu maun kommer. Thu skal!”

“I don't think so,” Joe said. “Not even for a house and land.”

“Yi sverer, Chyo, pa min fars hodda, yi skal giffer thu ayn hus oh lant.”

Joe hissed through his teeth and shook his head. Loopy lad! He really believed that he had houses and land to give away. “You're two or three short of a six-pack, you are, son.”

Per frowned at him, not understanding, and wondering desperately what else he could do to get Joe's help. If he wouldn't help one of his own from fellowship … If the promise of land when they reached home couldn't move him … Per thought of drawing his dagger on Joe again, but alone as he was, he would rather have a friend than an enemy and anyway, Joe was a big, heavy man. Per wasn't sure, in his present state, that Joe wouldn't take the dagger off him and use it against him.

He had only one thing that he was willing to give away and that Joe, having been so long in Elf-Land, might think of value. He moved out of Joe's reach and, from his pouch, took the small leather case Elf-Windsor had given him. Unbuttoning it, he pulled the paper money halfway out, so that Joe could see it. Watching Joe's face, he could tell he'd done the right thing. Joe wanted the Elf-Money.

“Oh—no!” Andrea said. “Per, no. Joe, no!”

Per glanced at her, more certain than ever that he was going to get his own way, and more certain that he'd been right not to trust her.

Joe stared at the money. Tenners. Making a quick count up, he guessed the wallet held at least fifty pounds.

“Kommer til Dilsmaid Hole oh yi giffer thu deyn.”

Fifty quid. I could open a bank account with that, Joe thought. Nowhere near a week's rent, not even for a tiny little bedsit, but it's a start.

“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.”