The Inverted World Read online

  3

  Future Denton walked with me once around the periphery of the city, then took me out across the ground towards a small cluster of temporary buildings which had been erected about five hundred yards from the city. Here he introduced me to Track Malchuskin, then returned to the city.

  The Track was a short, hairy man, still half-asleep. He didn’t seem to resent the intrusion, and treated me with some politeness.

  “Apprentice Future, are you?”

  I nodded. “I’ve just come from the city.”

  “First time out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Had any breakfast?”

  “No…the Future got me out of bed, and we’ve come more or less straight here.”

  “Come inside…I’ll make some coffee.”

  The interior of the hut was rough and untidy, in contrast to what I had seen within the city. There cleanliness and tidiness seemed to be of great importance, but Malchuskin’s hut was littered with dirty pieces of clothing, unwashed pots and pans, and half-eaten meals. In one corner was a large pile of metal tools and instruments, and against one wall was a bunk, the covers thrown back in a heap. There was a background smell of old food.

  Malchuskin filled a pan with water, and placed it on a cooking-ring. He found two mugs somewhere, rinsed them in the butt, and shook them to remove the surplus water. He put a measure of synthetic coffee into a jug, and when the water boiled, filled it up.

  There was only one chair in the hut. Malchuskin removed some heavy steel tools from the table, and moved it over to the bunk. He sat down, and indicated that I should pull up the chair. We sat in silence for a while, sipping the coffee. It was made in exactly the same way as it was in the city, and yet it seemed to taste different.

  “Haven’t had too many apprentices lately.”

  “Why’s that?” I said.

  “Can’t say. Not many of them coming up. Who are you?”

  “Helward Mann. My father’s—”

  “Yeah, I know. Good man. We were in the crèche together.”

  I frowned to myself at that. Surely, he and my father were not of the same age? Malchuskin saw my expression.

  “Don’t let it bother you,” he said. “You’ll understand one day. You’ll find out the hard way, just like everything else this goddamn guild system makes you learn. It’s a strange life in the Future guild. It wasn’t for me, but I guess you’ll make out.”

  “Why didn’t you want to be a Future?”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t want it…I meant it wasn’t my lot. My own father was a Tracksman. The guild system again. But you want it hard, they’ve put you in the right hands. Done much manual work?”

  “No…”

  He laughed out loud. “The apprentices never have. You’ll get used to it.” He stood up. “It’s time we started. It’s early, but now you’ve got me out of bed there’s no point being idle. They’re a lazy lot of bastards.”

  He left the hut. I finished the rest of my coffee in a hurry, scalding my tongue, and went after him. He was walking towards the other two buildings. I caught him up.

  With a metal wrench he had taken from the hut he banged loudly on the door of each of the other two buildings, bawling at whoever was inside to get up. I saw from the marks on the doors that he probably always hit them with a piece of metal.

  We heard movement inside.

  Malchuskin went back to his hut and began sorting through some of the tools.

  “Don’t have too much to do with these men,” he warned me. “They’re not from the city. There’s one of them, I’ve put him in charge. Rafael. He speaks a little English, and acts as interpreter. If you want anything, speak to him. Better still, come to me. There’s not likely to be trouble, but if there is…call me. O.K.?”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “They don’t do what you or I tell them. They’re being paid, and they get paid to do what we want. It’s trouble if they don’t. But the only thing wrong with this lot is that they’re too lazy for their own good. That’s why we start early. It gets hot later on, and then we might as well not bother.”

  It was already warm. The sun had risen high while I had been with Malchuskin, and my eyes were beginning to water. They weren’t accustomed to such bright light. I had tried to glance at the sun again, but it was impossible to look directly at it.

  “Take these!” Malchuskin passed me a large armful of steel wrenches, and I staggered under the weight, dropping two or three. He watched in silence as I picked them up, ashamed at my ineptitude.

  “Where to?” I said.

  “The city, of course. Don’t they teach you anything in there?”

  I headed away from the hut towards the city. Malchuskin watched from the door of his hut.

  “South side!” he shouted after me. I stopped, and looked round helplessly. Malchuskin came over to me.

  “There.” He pointed. “The tracks at the south of the city. O.K.?”

  “O.K.” I walked in that direction, dropping only one more wrench on the way.

  After an hour or two I began to see what Malchuskin had meant about the men who worked with us. They stopped at the slightest excuse, and only Malchuskin’s bawling or Rafael’s sullen instructions kept them at it.

  “Who are they?” I asked Malchuskin when we stopped for a fifteen-minute break.

  “Local men.”

  “Couldn’t we hire some more?”

  “They’re all the same round here.”

  I sympathized with them to a certain degree. Out in the open, with no shade at all, the work was vigorous and hard. Although I was determined not to slacken, the physical strain was more than I could bear. Certainly, it was more strenuous than anything I had ever experienced.

  The tracks at the south of the city ran for about half a mile, ending in no particular place. There were four tracks, each consisting of two metal rails supported on timber sleepers which were in turn resting on sunken concrete foundations. Two of the tracks had already been shortened by Malchuskin and his crew, and we were working on the longest one still extant, the one laid as right outer.

  Malchuskin explained that if I assumed the city was to the front of us, the four tracks were identified by left and right, outer and inner in each case.

  There was little thought involved. What had to be done was routine, but heavy.

  In the first place the tie-bars connecting the rail to the sleepers had to be released for the whole length of the section of rail. This was then laid to one side, and the other rail similarly released. Next we tackled the sleepers. These were attached to the concrete foundations by two clamps, each of which had to be slackened and removed manually. When the sleeper came free it was stacked on a bogie which was waiting on the next section of track. The concrete foundation, which I discovered was prefabricated and re-usable, then had to be dug out of its soil emplacement and similarly placed on the bogie. When all this was done, the two steel rails were placed on special racks along the side of the bogie.

  Malchuskin or I would then drive the battery-powered bogie up to the next section of track, and the process would be repeated. When the bogie was fully loaded, the entire track-crew would ride on it up to the rear of the city. Here it would be parked, and the battery recharged from an electrical point fitted to the wall of the city for this purpose.

  It took us most of the morning to load the bogie and take it up to the city. My arms felt as if they had been stretched from their sockets, my back was aching, I was filthy dirty and I was covered with sweat. Malchuskin, who had done no less work than any of the others—probably more than any of the hired labour—grinned at me.

  “Now we unload and start again,” he said.

  I looked over at the labourers. They looked like I felt, although I suspected I too had done more work than they, considering I was new to it and hadn’t yet learnt the art of using my muscles economically. Most of them were lying back in what little shadow was afforded by the bulk of the city.

  “
O.K.,” I said.

  “No…I was joking. You think that lot’d do any more without a bellyful of food?”

  “No.”

  “Right, then…we eat.”

  He spoke to Rafael, then walked back across towards his hut. I went with him, and we shared some of the heated-up synthetic food that was all he could offer.

  The afternoon started with the unloading. The sleepers, foundations, and rails were loaded on to another battery-powered vehicle which travelled on four large balloon tyres. When the transfer was completed, we took the bogie down to the end of the track and began again. The afternoon was hot, and the men worked slowly. Even Malchuskin had eased up, and after the bogie had been refilled with its next load he called a halt.

  “Like to have got another load in today,” he said, and took a long draught from a bottle of water.

  “I’m ready,” I said.

  “Maybe. You want to do it on your own?”

  “But I’m willing,” I said, not wanting to reveal the exhaustion I was feeling.

  “As it is you’ll be useless tomorrow. No, we get this bogie unloaded, run it down to the track-end, and that’s it.”

  That wasn’t quite it, as things turned out. When we returned the bogie to the track-end, Malchuskin started the men filling in the last section of the track with as much loose soil and dirt as we could find. This rubble was laid for twenty yards.

  I asked Malchuskin its purpose.

  He nodded over towards the nearest long track, the left inner. At its end was a massive concrete buttress, stayed firmly into the ground.

  “You’d rather put up one of those instead?” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “A buffer. Suppose the cables all broke at once…the city’d run backwards off the rails. As it is the buffers wouldn’t put up much resistance, but it’s all we can do.”

  “Has the city ever run back?”

  “Once.”

  Malchuskin offered me the choice of returning to my cabin in the city, or remaining with him in his hut. The way he put it didn’t leave me much choice. He obviously had low regard for the people inside the city and told me he rarely went inside.

  “It’s a cosy existence,” he said. “Half the people in the city don’t know what’s going on out here, and I don’t suppose they’d care if they did know.”

  “Why should they have to know? After all, if we can keep working smoothly, it’s not their problem.”

  “I know, I know. But I wouldn’t have to use these damned local men if more city people came out here.”

  In the near-by dormitory huts the hired men were talking noisily; some were singing.

  “Don’t you have anything at all to do with them?”

  “I just use them. They’re the Barter people’s pigeon. If they get too lousy I lay them off and get the Barters to find me some more. Never difficult. Work’s in short supply round here.”

  “Where is this?”

  “Don’t ask me…that’s up to your father and his guild. I just dig up old tracks.”

  I sensed that Malchuskin was less alienated from the city than he made out. I supposed his relatively isolated existence gave him some contempt for those within the city, but as far as I could see he didn’t have to stay out here in the hut. Lazy the workers might be, and just now noisy, but they seemed to act in an orderly manner. Malchuskin made no attempt to supervise them when there was no work to be done, so he could have stayed in the city if he chose.

  “Your first day out, isn’t it?” he said suddenly.

  “That’s right.”

  “You want to watch the sunset?”

  “No…why?”

  “The apprentices usually do.”

  “O.K.”

  Almost as if it were to please him I went out of the hut and looked past the bulk of the city towards the north-east. Malchuskin came up behind me.

  The sun was near the horizon and already I could feel the wind cold on my back. The clouds of the previous night had not returned, and the sky was clear and blue. I watched the sun, able to look at it without hurting my eyes now that its rays were diffused by the thickness of the atmosphere. It had the shape of a broad orange disk, slightly tilted down towards us. Above and below, tall spires of light rose from the centre of the disk. As we watched, it sank slowly beneath the horizon, the upper point of light being the last to vanish.

  “You sleep in the city, you don’t get to see that,” Malchuskin said.

  “It’s very beautiful,” I said.

  “You see the sunrise this morning?”

  “Yes.”

  Malchuskin nodded. “That’s what they do. Once a kid’s made it to a guild, they throw him in at the deep end. No explanation, right? Out in the dark, until up comes the sun.”

  “Why do they do that?”

  “Guild system. They believe it’s the quickest way to get an apprentice to understand that the sun isn’t the same as he’s been taught.”

  “Isn’t it?” I said.

  “What were you taught?”

  “That the sun is spherical.”

  “So they still teach that. Well, now you’ve seen that the sun isn’t. Make anything of it?”

  “No.”

  “Think about it. Let’s go and eat.”

  We returned to the hut and Malchuskin directed me to start heating up some food while he bolted another bunk-frame on top of the vertical supports around his own. He found some bedding in a cupboard, and dumped it on the bunk.

  “You sleep here,” he said, indicating the upper bunk. “You restless at night?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “We’ll try it for one night. If you keep moving around, we’ll change over. I don’t like being disturbed.”

  I thought there was little chance I would disturb him. I could have slept on the side of a cliff that night, I was so tired. We ate the tasteless food together, and afterwards Malchuskin talked about his work on the tracks. I paid him scant attention, and a few minutes later I lay on my bunk, pretending to listen to him. I fell asleep almost at once.

  4

  I was woken the next morning by Malchuskin moving about the hut, clattering the dishes from the previous evening’s meal. I made to get out of the bunk as soon as I was fully conscious, but at once I was paralysed by a stab of pain in my back. I gasped.

  Malchuskin looked up at me, grinning.

  “Stiff?” he said.

  I rolled over on to my side, and tried to draw my legs up. These too were stiff and painful, but with an effort I managed to get myself into a sitting position. I sat still for a moment, hoping that the pain was a cramp and that it would pass.

  “Always the same with you kids from the city,” Malchuskin said, but without malice. “You come out here, keen I’ll grant you. A day’s work and you’re so stiff you become useless. Don’t you get any exercise in the city?”

  “Only in the gymnasium.”

  “O.K…get down here and have some breakfast. After that, you’d better go back to the city. Have a hot bath, and see if you can find someone to give you a massage. Then report back here.”

  I nodded gratefully and clambered down from the bunk. This was no easier and no less painful than anything else I’d attempted so far. I discovered that my arms, neck, and shoulders were as stiff as the rest of me.

  I left the hut thirty minutes later, just as Malchuskin was bawling at the men to get started. I headed back towards the city, limping slowly.

  It was the first time I had been left to my own devices away from the city. When in the company of others, one never sees as much as when alone. The city was five hundred yards from Malchuskin’s hut, and that was an adequate distance to be able to get some impression of its overall size and appearance. Yet during the whole of the previous day I had been able to afford it only the barest of glances. It was simply a large, gray bulk, dominating the landscape.

  Now, hobbling alone across the ground towards it, I would inspect it in more detail.

&nb
sp; From the limited experience I had had of the interior of the city, I had never given much thought to what it might look like from outside. I had always conceived of it as being large, but the reality was that the city was rather smaller than I had imagined. At its highest point, on the northern side, it was approximately two hundred feet high, but the rest of it was a jumble of rectangles and cubes, fitted into what seemed to be a patternless arrangement of varying elevations. It was a dull brown and gray colour, made as far as I could tell from many different kinds of timber. There seemed to be very little use of concrete or metals, and nothing was painted. This external appearance contrasted sharply with the interior—or at least, those few areas I had seen—which were clean and brightly decorated. As Malchuskin’s hut was directly to the west of the city, it was impossible for me to estimate the width as I walked towards it, though I estimated its length to be about one thousand five hundred feet. I was surprised how ugly it was, and how old it appeared to be. There was much activity about, particularly to the north.

  As I came near to the city it occurred to me that I had no idea how I could enter it. Yesterday, Future Denton had taken me around the exterior of the city, but my mind had been so swamped with new impressions that I had absorbed very few of the details pointed out to me. It had looked so different then.

  My only clear memory was that there was a door behind the platform from which we had observed the sunrise, and I determined to head for that. This was not as easy as I imagined.

  I went to the south of the city, stepping over the tracks which I had been working on the previous day, and moved round to the east side, where I felt sure Denton and I had descended by way of a series of metal ladders. After a long search I found such an access, and began to climb. I went wrong several times, and only after a long period of clambering painfully along catwalks and climbing gingerly up ladders did I locate the platform. I found that the door was still locked.