Inverted World (26 page)

“O.K. Say what you like.”

“No … it’s just that, I wasn’t expecting to see you. You were gone so long! You could have been dead, and no one would tell me anything.”

“Who did you ask?”

“Your boss. Clausewitz. All he’d say was that you’d left the city.”

“But I told you where I was going. I said I had to go south of the city.”

“And you said you’d be back in a few miles’ time.”

“I know,” I said. “I was wrong.”

“What happened?”

“I … was delayed.” I couldn’t even begin to explain.

“That’s all. You were delayed?”

“It was a lot further than I thought.”

Aimlessly, she began shuffling the papers, making them into a semblance of a tidy pile. But she was just working her hands; I’d broken through.

“You never saw David, did you?”

“David? Is that what you called him?”

“He was—” She looked up at me again, and her eyes were brimming with tears. “I had to put him in the crèche, there was so much work to do. I saw him every day, and then the first attack came. I had to be on a fire point, and couldn’t— Later we went down to the—”

I closed my eyes, turned away. She put her face in her hands, started to cry. I leant against the wall, resting my face against my forearm. A few seconds later I started to cry too.

A woman came through the door quickly, saw what was hap’ pening. She closed the door again. This time I leant my weight against it to prevent further interruptions.

Later, Victoria said: “I thought you would never come back. There was a lot of confusion in the city, but I managed to find someone from your guild.

He said that a lot of apprentices had been killed when they were in the south.

I told him how long you had been gone. He wouldn’t commit himself. All I knew was how long you’d been gone and when you said you’d be back. It was nearly two years, Helward.”

“I was warned,” I said. “But I didn’t believe it.”

“Why not?”

“I had to walk a distance of about eighty miles, there and back. I thought I could do it in a few days. No one in the guild told me why I couldn’t.”

“But they knew?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“They could have at least waited until we’d had the child.”

“I had to go when I was told. It was part of the guild training.”

Victoria was now more composed than before; the emotional reaction had completely destroyed the antipathy that was there, and we were able to talk more rationally. She picked up the fallen papers, arranged them into a pile, then put them away into a drawer. There was a chair by the opposite wall, and I sat on it.

“You know the guild system is going to have to change,” she said.

“Not drastically.”

“It’s going to break down completely. It has to. In effect it’s happened already. Anyone can go outside the city now. The Navigators will cling to the old system for as long as they can, because they’re living in the past, but—”

“They’re not as hidebound as you think,” I said.

“They’ll try to bring back the secrecy and the suppression as soon as they can.”

“You’re wrong,” I said flatly. “I know you’re wrong.”

“All right … but certain things will have to change. There’s no one in the city now who doesn’t know the danger we’re in. We’ve been cheating and stealing our way across this land, and it’s that which has created the danger.

It’s time for it to stop.”

“Victoria, you don’t—”

“You only have to look at the damage! There were thirty-nine children killed! God knows how much destruction. Do you think we can survive if the people outside keep on attacking us?”

“It’s quieter now. It’s under control.”

She shook her head. “I don’t care what the current situation looks like.

I’m thinking about the long term. All our troubles are ultimately created by the city being moved. That one condition produces the danger. We move across other people’s land, we bargain for manpower to move the city, we take women into the city to have sex with men they hardly know … and all in order to keep the city moving.”

“The city can never stop,” I said.

“You see … already you are a part of the guild system. Always this flat statement, without looking at it in a wider light. The city must move, the city must move. Don’t accept it as an absolute.”

“It is an absolute. I know what would happen if it stopped.”

“Well?”

“The city would be destroyed, and everyone would be killed.”

“You can’t prove that.”

“No … but I know it would be so.”

“I think you’re wrong,” said Victoria. “And I’m not alone. Even in the last few days I’ve heard it said by others. People can think for themselves.

They’ve been outside, seen what it’s like. There’s no danger apart from the danger we create for ourselves.”

I said: “Look, this isn’t our conflict. I wanted to see you to talk about us.”

“But it’s all the same. What happened to us is implicitly bound up in the ways of the city. If you hadn’t been a guildsman, we might still be living together.”

“Is there any chance … ?”

“Do you want it?”

“I’m not sure,” I said.

“It’s impossible. For me, at least. I couldn’t reconcile what I believe with accepting your way of life. We’ve tried it, and it separated us. Anyway, I’m living with—”

“I know.”

She looked at me, and I felt at second hand the alienation she had experienced.

“Don’t you have any beliefs, Helward?” she said.

“Only that the guild system, for all its imperfections, is sound.”

“And you want us to live together again, living out two separate beliefs. It couldn’t work.”

We had both changed a lot; she was right. It was no good speculating about what might have been in other circumstances. There was no way of making a personal relationship distinct from the overall scheme of the city.

Even so, I tried again, attempting to explain the apparent suddenness of what had happened, attempting to find a formula that could somehow revive the early feelings we had had for each other. To be fair, Victoria responded in kind, but I think we had both arrived at the same conclusion by our separate routes. I felt better for seeing her, and when I left her and went on towards the Futures’ quarters I was aware that we had succeeded in resolving the worst of the remaining issue.

The following day, when I rode north with Blayne to start the future survey, marked the beginning of a long period which produced for the city a state of both regained security and radical change.

I saw this process develop gradually, for my own sense of actual city-time was distorted by my journeys to the north. I learnt by experience that at a distance roughly twenty miles to the north of optimum, a day spent was equivalent to an hour of elapsed time in the city. As far as possible, I kept in touch with what happened in the city by attending as many Navigators’ meetings as I could.

The placidity of the city’s existence that I had experienced when I first left to work outside returned more quickly than most people had expected.

There were no more attacks by the tooks, although one of the militiamen, engaged in an intelligence mission, was captured and killed. Soon after this, the leaders of the Militia announced that the tooks were dispersing, and heading for their settlements in the south.

Although military vigilance was maintained for a long time— and never in fact wholly abandoned—gradually men from the Militia were freed to work on other projects.

As I had learnt at that first Navigators’ meeting, the method of hauling the city was changed. After several initial difficulties, the city was successfully launched into a system of continuous traction, using a complicated arrangement of alternating cables and phased track-laying. One tenth of a mile in a twenty-four hour period was not, after all, a considerable distance to move, and within a short time the city had reached optimum.

It was discovered that this actually gave the city greater freedom of movement. It was possible, for instance, to take quite considerable detours from a bearing of true north if a sufficiently large obstacle were to appear.

In fact the terrain was good. As our surveys showed, the overall elevation of the terrain was falling, and there were more gradients in our favour than were against us.

There were more rivers in this region than the Navigators would have liked, and the Bridge-Builders were kept busy. But with the city at optimum, and with its greater capacity for speed relative to the movement of the ground, there was more time available for decision-making, and more time in which to build a safe bridge.

With some hesitation at first, the barter system was reintroduced.

There was the benefit of hindsight in the city’s favour, and barter negotiations were conducted more scrupulously than before. The city paid more generously for manpower—which was still needed—and tried for a long time to avoid the necessity of bartering for transferred women.

Through a long series of Navigators’ meetings I followed the debate on this subject. We still had the seventeen transferred women inside the city who had been with us since before the first attack, and they had expressed no desire to return. But the predominance of male births continued, and there was a strong lobby for the return of the transfer system. No one knew why there should be such an imbalance in the distribution of the sexes, but it was undoubtedly so. Further, three of the transferred women had given birth within the last few miles, and each of these babies had been male. It was suggested that the longer women from outside remained in the city, the more chance there was that they too would produce male children. Again, no one understood why this should be so.

At the last count, there were now a total of seventy-six male and fourteen female children below the age of one hundred and fifty miles.

As the percentage continued to mount the lobby strengthened, and soon the Barter guild was authorized to commence negotiations.

It was actually this decision which emphasized the changes in the society of the city which were taking place.

The “open city” system had remained, and non-guildsmen were allowed to attend Navigators’ meetings as spectators. Within a few hours of the announcement about the barter for women being renewed, everyone in the city knew, and there were many voices raised in protest. Nevertheless, the decision was implemented.

Although hired labour was again being used, it was to a far lesser extent than before, and there was always a considerable number of people from the city working on the tracks and cables. There was not much that wasn’t known about the city’s operations.

But general education about the real nature of the world on which we lived was poor.

During one debate, I heard the word “Terminator” used for the first time. It was explained that the Terminators were a group of people who actively opposed the continued movement of the city, and were committed to halting it. As far as was known, the Terminators were not militant and would take no direct action, but they were gaining a considerable amount of support within the city.

It was decided that a programme of re-education should begin, to dramatize the necessity of moving the city northwards.

At the next meeting there was a violent disruption.

A group of people burst into the chamber during the session, and tried to take the chair.

I was not surprised to see that Victoria was among them.

After a noisy argument, the Navigators summoned the assistance of the Militia and the meeting was closed.

This disruption, perversely, had the effect desired by the Terminator movement. The Navigators’ meetings were once again closed to general session.

The dichotomy in the opinions of the ordinary people of the city widened. The Terminators had a considerable amount of support, but no real authority.

A few incidents followed. A cable was found cut in mysterious circumstances, and one of the Terminators tried one day to speak to the hired labour in an attempt to get them to return to their villages … but by and large the Terminator movement was no more than a thorn in the side of the Navigators.

Re-education went well. A series of lectures was mounted, attempting to explain the peculiar dangers of this world, and they were well attended. The design of the hyperbola was adopted as the city’s motif, and it was worn as an ornament on the guildsmen’s cloaks, stitched inside the circle on their breasts.

I don’t know how much of this was understood by the ordinary people of the city; I overheard some discussion of it, but the influence of the Terminators perhaps weakened its credibility. For too long the people of the city had been allowed by omission to assume that the city existed on a world like Earth planet, if not Earth planet itself. Perhaps the real situation was one too outrageous to be given credence: they would listen to what they were told, and perhaps understand it, but I think the Terminators held a greater emotional appeal.

In spite of everything, the city continued to move slowly northwards.

Sometimes I would take time off from other matters, and try to view it in my mind’s eye as a tiny speck of matter on an alien world; I would see it as an object of one universe trying to survive in another; as a city full of people, holding on to the side of a forty-five degree slope, pulling its way against a tide of ground on a few thin strands of cable.

With the return to a more stable environment for the city, the task of future surveying became more routine.

For our purposes the ground to the north of the city was divided into a series of segments, radiating from optimum at five degree intervals. Under normal circumstances the city would not seek a route that was more than fifteen degrees away from due north, but the city’s extra capability to deviate did allow considerable flexibility from this for short periods.

Our procedure was simple. Surveyors would ride north from the city—either alone or, if they chose, in pairs—and conduct a comprehensive survey of the segment allotted to them. There was plenty of time available to us.

On many occasions I would find myself seduced by the feeling of freedom in the north, and it was one which Blayne once told me was common to most Futures. Where was the urgency to return if a day spent lazily on the bank of a river wasted only a few minutes of the city’s time?