The Inverted World Read online

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is there something wrong with it?”

  “I don’t think so…”

  Victoria was asking me questions I should have asked myself, but hadn’t. In the welter of new experiences, there had been hardly time to register the meaning of anything I’d seen, let alone query it. Confronted with these questions—quite aside from whether or not I should answer them—I found myself demanding the answers. Was there indeed something wrong with the sun that could endanger the city? Should this be kept secret if so? But I had seen the sun, and…

  “There’s nothing wrong with it,” I said. “But it doesn’t look the same shape as I’d thought.”

  “It’s a sphere.”

  “No it’s not. Or at least it doesn’t look like one.”

  “Well?”

  “I shouldn’t tell you. I’m sure.”

  “You can’t leave it like that,” she said.

  “I don’t think it’s important.”

  “I do.”

  “O.K.” I had already said too much, but what could I do? “You can’t see it properly during the day, because it’s so bright. But at sunrise or sunset you can see it for a few minutes. I think it’s disk-shaped. But it’s more than that, and I don’t know the words to describe it. In the centre of the disk, top and bottom, there’s a kind of shaft.”

  “Part of the sun?”

  “Yes. A bit like a spinning-top. But it’s difficult to see clearly because it’s so bright even at those times. The other night, I was outside and the sky was clear. There’s a moon, and that’s the same shape. But I couldn’t see that clearly either, because it was in phase.”

  “Are you sure of this?”

  “It’s what I’ve seen.”

  “But it’s not what we were taught.”

  “I know,” I said. “But that’s how it is.”

  I said no more. Victoria asked more questions but I pushed them aside, pleading that I did not know the answers. She tried to draw me further on the work I was doing, but somehow I managed to keep my silence. Instead, I asked her questions about herself and soon we had moved away from what was for me a dangerous subject. It could not be buried forever, but I needed time to think. Some time later we made love, and shortly afterwards we fell asleep.

  In the morning Victoria made some breakfast, then left me sitting naked in her room while she took my uniform to be laundered. While she was away I washed and shaved, then lay on the bed until she returned.

  I put my uniform on again: it felt crisp and fresh, not at all like the rather stiff and odorous second skin it had become as a result of my labours outside.

  We spent the rest of the day together, and Victoria took me to show me around the interior of the city. It was far more complex than I had ever realized. Most of what I had seen until then was the residential and administrative section, but there was more to it than this. At first I wondered how I should ever find my way around until Victoria pointed out that in several places plans of the lay-out had been attached to the walls.

  I noted that the plans had been altered many times, and one in particular caught my attention. We were in one of the lower levels, and beside a recently drawn revised plan was a much older one, preserved behind a sheet of transparent plastic. I looked at this with great interest, noting that its directions were printed in several languages. Of these I could recognize only the French language in addition to English.

  “What are these others?” I asked her.

  “That’s German, and the others are Russian and Italian. And this—” she pointed to an ornate, ideographic script “—is Chinese.”

  I looked more closely at the plan, comparing it with the recent one next to it. The similarity could be seen, but it was clear that much alteration work had been carried out inside the city between the compiling of the two plans.

  “Why were there so many languages?”

  “We’re descended from a group of mixed nationals. I believe English has been the standard language for many thousands of miles, but that’s not always been the case. My own family is descended from the French.”

  “Oh yes,” I said.

  On this same level, Victoria showed me the synthetics plant. It was here that the protein-substitutes and other organic surrogates were synthesized from timber and vegetable products. The smell in here was very strong, and I noticed that all the people who worked here had to wear masks over their faces. Victoria and I passed through quickly into the next area where research was carried out to improve texture and flavour. It was here, Victoria told me, she would soon be working.

  Later, Victoria expressed more of her frustrations at her life, both present and future. More prepared for this than previously, I was able to reassure her. I told her to look to her own mother for example, as she led a fulfilled and useful life. I promised her—under persuasion—that I would tell her more of my own life, and I said that I would do what I could, when I became a full guildsman, to make the system more open, more liberal. It seemed to quiet her a little, and together we passed a relaxed evening and night.

  7

  Victoria and I agreed that we should marry as soon as possible. She told me that during the next mile she would find out what formalities we had to undergo, and that if it were possible we would marry during my next period of leave, or during the one after. In the meantime, I had to return to my duties outside.

  As soon as I came out from underneath the city it was obvious that much progress had been made. The immediate environment of the city had been cleared of most of the impedimenta of the work. There was none of the temporary buildings in sight, and no battery-operated vehicles stood against the recharging points, all, presumably, in use beyond the ridge. A more fundamental difference was that leading out from the northern edge of the city were five cables, which lay on the ground beside the tracks and disappeared from view over the hump of the ridge. On guard beside the track, pacing up and down, were several militiamen.

  Suspecting that Malchuskin would be busy I walked quickly towards the ridge. When I reached the summit my suspicions were confirmed, for in the distance, where the tracks ended, there was a flurry of activity concentrated around the right inner track. Beyond this, more crews were working on some metal structures, but from this distance it was impossible to determine their function. I hurried on down.

  The walk took me longer than I had anticipated as the longest section of track was now more than a mile and a half in length. Already the sun was high, and by the time I found Malchuskin and his crew I was hot from the walk.

  Malchuskin barely acknowledged me, and I took off the jacket of my uniform and joined in with the work.

  The crews were labouring to get this section of track extended to a length equal to the others, but the complication was that a patch of ground with a rock-hard subsoil had been encountered. Although this meant that the concrete foundations were not necessary, the pits for the sleepers could only be dug with the greatest difficulty.

  I found a pickaxe on a near-by truck, and started work. Soon, the more sophisticated problems I had encountered inside the city seemed very remote indeed.

  In the periods of rest I gathered from Malchuskin that apart from this section of track all was nearly ready for the winching operation. The cables had been extended, and the stays were dug. He took me out to the stay-emplacements and showed me how the steel girders were buried deep into the ground to provide a sufficiently strong anchor for the cables. Three of the stays were completed and the cables were connected. One more stay was in the process of completion, and the fifth was being erected now.

  There was a general air of anxiety amongst the guildsmen working on the site, and I asked Malchuskin the cause of this.

  “It’s time,” he said. “It’s taken us twenty-three days since the last winching to lay the tracks this far. On present estimates we’ll be able to winch the city tomorrow if nothing else goes wrong. That’s twenty-four days. Right? The most we can winch the city this t
ime is just under two miles…but in the time we’ve taken to do that the optimum has moved forward two and a half miles. So even when we’ve done this we’ll still be half a mile further behind optimum than we were at the last winching.”

  “Can we make that up?”

  “On the next winching, perhaps. I was talking to some of the Traction men last night…they reckon we can do a short winch next time, and then two long ones. They’re worried about those hills.” He waved vaguely in a northern direction.

  “Can’t we go round them?” I said, seeing that a long way to the north-east the hills appeared to be slightly lower.

  “We could…but the shortest route towards optimum is due north. Any angular deflection away from that just adds a greater distance to be covered.”

  I didn’t fully understand everything he told me, but the sense of urgency came across clearly.

  “There’s one good thing,” Malchuskin went on. “We’re dropping this crowd of tooks after this. The Future guild has found a bigger settlement somewhere up north, and they’re desperate for work. That’s how I like them. The hungrier they are, the harder they’ll work…for a time, at least.”

  The work continued. That evening we didn’t finish until after sunset, Malchuskin and the other Track guildsmen driving on the labourers with bigger and better curses. I had no time to react one way or another, for the guildsmen themselves, and I, worked no less hard. By the time we returned to the hut for the night I was exhausted.

  In the morning, Malchuskin left the hut early, instructing me to bring Rafael and the labourers across to the site as soon as possible. When I arrived he and three other Track guildsmen were in argument with the guildsmen preparing the cables. I set Rafael and the men to work on the track, but I was curious about the dispute. When Malchuskin eventually came over to us he said nothing about it but threw himself into the work, shouting angrily at Rafael.

  Some time later, when we took a short break, I asked him about the argument.

  “It’s the Traction men,” he said. “They want to start winching now, before the track’s finished.”

  “Can they do that?”

  “Yes…they say that it’ll take some time to get the city up to the ridge, and we could finish off here while that’s going on. We won’t allow it.”

  “Why not? It sounds reasonable.”

  “Because it’d mean working under the cables. There’s a lot of strain on the cables, particularly when the city’s being winched up a slope, like the one before the ridge. You’ve never seen a cable break, have you?” It was a rhetorical question; I didn’t know before this that cables were even used. “You’d be cut in half before you heard the bang,” Malchuskin finished sourly.

  “So what was agreed?”

  “We’ve got an hour to finish, then they start winching anyway.”

  There were still three sections of rail to lay. We gave the men a few more minutes’ rest and then the work started again. As there were now four guildsmen and their teams concentrated in one area, we moved quickly, but even so it took most of the hour to complete the track.

  With some satisfaction, Malchuskin signalled to the Traction men that we were ready. We collected our tools, and carried them to one side.

  “What now?” I said to Malchuskin.

  “We wait. I’m going back to the city for a rest. Tomorrow we start again.”

  “What shall I do?”

  “I’d watch if I were you. You’ll find it interesting. Anyway, we ought to pay off these men. I’ll send a Barter guildsman out to you later today. Keep them here until he arrives. I’ll be back in the morning.”

  “O.K.,” I said. “Anything else?”

  “Not really. While the winching is taking place the Traction men are in charge out here, so if they tell you to jump, jump. They might need something done to the tracks, so you’d better be alert. But I think the tracks are O.K. They’ve been checked already.”

  He walked away from me towards his hut. He looked very tired. The hired men went back to their own huts, and soon I was left to my own devices. Malchuskin’s remark about the danger of a breaking cable had alarmed me, so I sat down on the ground at what I considered was a safe distance from the site.

  There was not much activity in the region of the stay-emplacements. All five of the cables had been connected up, and now ran slackly from the stays across the ground parallel to the tracks. Two Traction guildsmen were by the emplacements, carrying out what I presumed was a final check on the connections.

  From the region of the ridge a group of men appeared, and walked in two orderly files towards us. From this distance it was not possible to see who they were, but I noticed that one of their number left the files at approximately one hundred yard intervals, and took up a position at the side of the track. As the men approached I saw that they were militiamen, each equipped with a crossbow. By the time the group reached the stay-emplacements only eight of them were left, and these took up a defensive formation around them. After a few minutes one of the militiamen walked over to me.

  “Who are you?” he said.

  “Apprentice Helward Mann.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’ve been told to watch the winching.”

  “All right. Keep your distance. How many tooks are there here?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “About sixty, I think.”

  “They been working on the track?”

  “Yes.”

  He grinned. “Too bloody tired to do any harm. That’s O.K. Let me know if they cause any trouble.”

  He wandered away and joined the other militiamen. What kind of trouble the labourers would cause wasn’t clear to me, but the attitude of the Militia towards them seemed to be curious. I could only presume that at some time in the past the tooks had caused some kind of damage to the tracks or the cables, but I couldn’t see any of the men with whom we’d been working presenting a threat to us.

  The militiamen on guard beside the tracks seemed to me to be dangerously near the cables, but they showed no sign of any awareness of this. Patiently, they marched to and fro, pacing their allotted sections of the track.

  I noticed that the two Traction men at the emplacements had taken up a position behind metal shields, just beyond the stays. One of them had a large red flag, and was looking through binoculars towards the ridge. There, beside the five wheel-pulleys, I could just make out another man. As all attention seemed to be on this man I watched him curiously. He had his back towards us as far as I could make out at this distance.

  Suddenly, he turned and swung his flag to attract the attention of the two men at the stays. He waved it in a wide semi-circle below his waist, to and fro. Immediately, the man at the stays with the flag came out from behind his shield and confirmed the signal by repeating the movement with his own flag.

  A few moments later I noticed that the cables were sliding slowly across the ground towards the city. On the ridge I could see the wheel-pulleys turning as the slack was taken up. One by one, the cables stopped moving although the major part of their length still ran across the ground. I presumed this was the weight of the cables themselves, for in the region of the stays and the pulleys the cables were well clear of the ground.

  “Give them the clear!” shouted one of the men at the stays, and at once his colleague waved his flag over his head. The man on the ridge repeated the signal, then moved quickly to one side and was lost to view.

  I waited, curious to see what was next…although from all I could see nothing was happening. The militiamen paced to and fro, the cables stayed taut. I decided to walk over to the Traction men to find out what was going on.

  No sooner was I on my feet and walking in their direction than the man who had been signalling waved his arms at me frantically.

  “Keep clear!” he shouted.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The cables are under maximum strain!”

  I moved back.

  The minutes passed, and there
was no evident progress. Then I realized that the cables had been slowly tightening, until they were clear of the ground for most of their length.

  I stared southwards at the dip in the ridge: the city had come into sight. From where I was sitting, I could just see the top corner of one of the forward towers, bulking up over the soil and rocks of the ridge. Even as I watched, more of the city came into view.

  I moved in a broad arc, still maintaining a healthy distance from the cables, and stood behind the stays looking along the tracks towards the city. With painful slowness it winched itself up the further slope until it was only a few feet away from the five wheel-pulleys which carried the cables over the crest of the ridge. Here it stopped and the Traction men began their signalling once more.

  There followed a long and complicated operation in which each of the cables was slackened off in turn while the wheel-pulley was dismantled. I watched the first pulley removed in this way, then grew bored. I realized I was hungry, and suspecting that I was unlikely to miss anything of interest, I went back to the hut and heated up a meal for myself.

  There was no sign of Malchuskin, although nearly all his possessions were still in the hut.

  I took my time over the meal, knowing that there were at least another two hours before the winching could be resumed. I enjoyed the solitude and the change from the strenuous work of the past day.

  When I left the hut I remembered the militiamen’s warning about potential trouble from the men, and walked over to their dormitory. Most of them were outside sitting on the ground, watching the work on the pulleys. A few were talking, arguing loudly and gesticulating, but I decided the Militia saw threats where none existed. I walked back towards the track.

  I glanced at the sun: it was not long to nightfall. I reasoned that the rest of the winching should not take long once the pulleys were out of the way, for it was clear that the rest of the tracks led along a downhill gradient.

  In due course the final pulley was removed, and all five cables were once again taut. There was a short wait until, at a signal from the Traction man at the stays, the slow progress of the city continued…down the slope towards us. Contrary to what I had imagined, the city did not run smoothly of its own accord on the advantageous gradient. By the evidence of what I saw the cables were still taut; the city was still having to pull itself. As it came closer I detected a slackening of tension in the manner of the two Traction men, but their vigilance didn’t alter. Throughout the operation they concentrated their whole attention on the oncoming city.