The Inverted World

1

Helward Mann was riding. Standing in the stirrups, with his head down against the side of the neck of the large tan mare, he rejoiced in the sensations of speed: the wind blowing back his hair, the crunch of hooves against the pebbly soil, the rippling of the beast’s muscular loins, the ever-present anticipation of a stumble, a throw. They were riding south, away from the primitive settlement they had just left, down through the foothills and across the plain towards the city. As the city of Earth came into view behind a low rise of ground, Helward slowed the horse to a canter and guided her in a broad turn so that they headed back north. Soon they were walking, and as the day grew hotter Helward dismounted and walked by her side.

He was thinking of Victoria, now many miles pregnant. She was looking healthy and beautiful, and the medical administrator had said the pregnancy was going well. Helward was allowed more time in the city now, and they spent many days together. It was fortunate that the city was once again moving across unbroken ground, because he knew that if another bridge became necessary, or an emergency of any sort arose, his time with her would be curtailed drastically.

He was waiting now for his apprenticeship to end. He had worked hard and long with all the guilds save one: his own, the Futures guild. Barter Collings had told him the end of the apprenticeship was approaching, and later the same day he was to see Future Clausewitz and formally discuss his progress so far. The apprenticeship couldn’t end soon enough for Helward. Though still an adolescent in his emotional outlook, by the ways of the city he was deemed an adult; he had indeed worked and learned for that status. Fully aware of the city’s external priorities, if still not sure of their rationale, he was ready to be accorded his title of full guildsman. In the last few miles his body had grown muscular and lean, and his skin had tanned to a deep healthy golden. He was no longer stiff after a day of labour, and he welcomed the sensation of well-being that followed a difficult task well done. With most of the guildsmen he had worked under he had become respected and liked for his willingness to work hard and without question, and as his domestic life in the city settled down to a steady and loving relationship with Victoria he became well known and accepted as a man with whom the city’s security could soon be entrusted.

With Barter Collings in particular, Helward had established a good and amicable working partnership. When he had served his obligatory three mile periods with each of the other guilds he had been allowed to choose a further period of five miles with any one of the guilds but his own, and he had immediately asked to work with Collings. The Barter work attracted him, for it enabled him to see something of the way of life of the local people.

The area through which the city was currently passing was high and barren, and the soil was poor. Settlements were few, and those that they approached were almost invariably clustered around one or another collection of ramshackle buildings. The squalor was terrible, and disease was widespread. There appeared to be no kind of central administration, for each of the settlements had its own rituals of organization. Sometimes they were greeted with hostility, and at other times the people hardly seemed to care.

The Barter work was one largely of judgement: assessing the particular outlook and needs of a chosen community, and negotiating along those lines. In most cases, negotiations were fruitless; the one thing all settlements seemed to share was an abiding lethargy. When Collings could initiate any kind of interest, the needs became immediately apparent. By and large, the city could fulfil them. With its high degree of organization, and the technology available to it, the city had over the miles accumulated a large stockpile of foodstuffs, medicines, and chemicals, and it had also learnt by experience which of these were most required. So with offers of antibiotics, seeds, fertilizers, water-purifiers — even, in some cases, offers of assistance to repair existing implements — the Barter guildsmen could lay the groundwork for their own demands.

Collings had tried to teach Helward to speak Spanish, but he had little ability with languages. He picked up a handful of phrases, but contributed very little to the often lengthy periods of negotiation.

Terms had been agreed with the settlement they had just left. Twenty men could be raised to work on the city tracks, and another ten were promised from a smaller settlement some distance away. In addition, five women had either volunteered or been coerced — Helward was uncertain which, and he did not question Collings — to move into the city. He and Collings were now returning to the city to obtain the promised supplies, and prepare the various guilds for the new influx of temporary population. Collings had decided that all of the people should be medically examined, and this would place an additional burden on the medical administrators.

Helward liked working to the north of the city. This would soon be his territory, for it was up here, beyond the optimum, that the Future guild did its work. He often saw Future guildsmen riding north, away into the distant territory where one day the city would have to travel. Once or twice he had seen his father, and they had spoken briefly. Helward had hoped that with his experience as an apprentice, the unease which dogged their relationship would vanish, but his father was apparently as uncomfortable as ever in his company. Helward suspected that there was no deep and subtle reason for this, because Collings had once been talking about the Future guild, and had mentioned his father. “A difficult man to talk to,” Collings had said. “Pleasant when you get to know him, but he keeps to himself.”

After half an hour Helward remounted the horse, and walked her back along their previous path. Some time later he came across Collings, who was resting in the shade of a large boulder. Helward joined him, and they shared some of the food. As a gesture of goodwill, the leader of the settlement had given them a large slab of fresh cheese, and they ate some of it, relishing the break from their more normal diet of processed, synthesized food.

“If they eat this,” Helward said, “I can’t see that they would have much use for our slop.”

“Don’t think they eat this all the time. This was the only one they had. It was probably stolen from somewhere else. I saw no cattle.”

“So why did they give it to us?”

“They need us.”

Some time later they continued on their way towards the city. Both men walked, leading the horse. Helward was both looking forward to returning to the city, and regretting that this period of his apprenticeship had ended. Realizing that this was probably the last time he would have with Collings, he felt the stirrings of an old and long buried intention to talk to him about something that still caused him to fret from time to time, and of all the men he had met outside the city Collings was the only one with whom he could discuss it. Even so, he turned over the problem in his mind for some time before finally deciding to raise it.

“You’re unnaturally quiet,” said Collings suddenly.

“I know… sorry. I’m thinking about becoming a guildsman. I’m not sure I’m ready.”

“Why?”

“It’s not easy to say. It’s a vague doubt.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Yes. That is… can I?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Well… some of the guildsmen won’t,” said Helward. “I was very confused when I first came outside the city, and I learnt then not to ask too many questions.”

“It depends what the questions are,” said Collings.

Helward decided to abandon trying to justify himself.

“It’s two things,” he said. “The optimum and the oath. I’m not sure about either of them.”

“That’s not surprising. I’ve worked with dozens of apprentices over the miles, and they all worry about those.”

“Can you tell me what I want to know?”

Collings shook his head. “Not about the optimum. That’s for you to discover for yourself.”

“But all I know about it is that it moves northwards. Is it an arbitrary thing?”

“It’s not arbitrary… but I can’t talk about it. I promise you that you’ll find out what you want to know very soon. But what’s the problem with the oath?”

Helward was silent for a moment.

Then he said: “If you knew I’d broken it — if you knew at this moment — you’d kill me. Is that right?”

“In theory, yes.”

“And in practice?”

“I’d worry about it for days, then probably talk to one of the other guildsmen and see what he advised. But you haven’t broken it, have you?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You’d better tell me about it.”

“All right.”

Helward started to talk about the questions Victoria had asked him at the very beginning, and tried to confine his account to vague generalities. As Collings stayed silent, Helward began to go into more and more detail. Soon he found himself recounting, almost word for word, everything he had told her.

When he had finished, Collings said: “I don’t think you’ve anything to worry about”

Helward experienced a feeling of relief, but the nagging problem could not be dispelled as quickly as that.

“Why not?”

“No harm has come of your saying anything to your wife.”

The city had come into view as they walked, and they could see the customary signs of activity around the tracks.

“But it can’t be as simple as that,” said Helward. “The oath is very firm in the way it is worded, and the penalty is hardly a light one.”

“True… but the guildsmen who are alive today inherited it. The oath was passed to us, and we pass it on. So will you in your turn. This isn’t to say the guilds agree with it, but no one has yet come up with an alternative.”

“So the guilds would like to dispense with it if possible?” said Helward.

Collings grinned at him. “That’s not what I said. The history of the city goes back a long way. The founder was a man named Francis Destaine, and it is generally believed that he introduced the oath. From what we can understand of the records of the time such a regimen of secrecy was probably desirable. But today… well, things are a little more lax.”

“But the oath continues.”

“Yes, and I think it still has a function. There are a large number of people in the city who may never know what goes on out here, and will never need to know. These are the people who are mainly concerned with the running of the city’s services. They come into contact with the people from outside the city — the transferred women, for example — and if they were to speak too freely, perhaps the true nature of the city would become common knowledge with the people outside. We already have trouble with the locals, the tooks as the militia calls them. You see, the city’s existence is a precarious one, and has to be guarded at all costs.”

“Are we in danger?”

“Not at the moment. But if there were any sabotage, the danger would be immediate and great. We’re unpopular as things stand… there’s no profit in allowing that unpopularity to be compounded with a local awareness of our vulnerability.”

“So I can be more open with Victoria?”

“Use your judgement. She’s Lerouex’s daughter, isn’t she? Sensible girl. So long as she keeps to herself whatever you tell her, I can’t see any harm. But don’t go talking to too many people.”

“I won’t,” said Helward.

“And don’t go talking about the optimum moving. It doesn’t.”

Helward looked at him in surprise. “I was told it moved.”

“You were misinformed. The optimum is stationary.”

“Then why does the city never reach it?”

“It does, from time to time,” said Collings. “But it can never stay there for long. The ground moves away southwards from it.”

2

The tracks extended about one mile to the north of the city. As Helward and Collings approached they saw one of the winch-cables being hauled out towards the stay-emplacements. Within a day or two the city would move forward again.

They led the horse over the tracks, and walked down towards the city. Here on the north side was the entrance to the dark tunnel that ran beneath the city, and which gave the only official access to the interior.

Helward walked with Collings as far as the stables.

“Goodbye, Helward.”

Helward took the proffered hand, and they shook warmly.

“You make that sound very final,” said Helward.

Collings shrugged in an off-hand way. “I shan’t be seeing you for some time. Good luck, son.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m not going anywhere. But you are. Just take care, and make of it what you can.”

Before Helward could reply the man had turned away and hurried into the stables. For a moment Helward was tempted to go after him, but an instinct told him that it would serve no purpose. Perhaps Collings had already told him more than he should.

With mixed feelings, Helward continued down the tunnel to the elevator and waited for the car. When it arrived he went straight to the fourth level to look for Victoria. She was not in their room, so he went down to the synthetics plant to find her. She was now more than eighteen miles pregnant, but was planfling to continue working for as long as possible.

When she saw him she left her bench, and they returned to the room together. There were still two hours to spare before Helward was to see Future Clausewitz, and they passed the time with inconsequential conversation. Later, when the door was unlocked, they spent a few minutes together on the outside platform.

At the appointed time Helward went up to the seventh level, and gained access to the guild block. He was now no stranger to this part of the city, but he visited it infrequently enough to feel still slightly in awe of the senior guildsmen and Navigators.

Clausewitz was waiting in the Future guild room, and was alone. When Helward arrived he greeted him cordially, and offered him some wine.

From the Futures’ room it was possible to see through a small window towards the north of the city. Ahead, Helward could see the rising ground he had been working in during the last few days.

“You’ve settled in well, Apprentice Mann.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Do you feel ready to become a Future?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good… from the guild’s point of view there’s no reason why you shouldn’t. You’ve earned yourself some good reports.”

“Except from the Militia,” Helward said.

“You needn’t concern yourself with that. Military life doesn’t suit everyone.”

Helward felt a small relief; his bad showing in the Militia had made him wonder if word of it had got back to his guild.

“The purpose of this interview,” Clausewitz went on, “is to tell you what is to happen next. You still have a nominal three miles’ apprenticeship to serve with our guild, but as far as I am concerned that will be a mere technicality. Before that, though, you are to leave the city. It’s a part of your training. You will probably be away for some time.”

“May I enquire for how long?” said Helward.

“It’s difficult to say. Several miles, certainly. It might be as few as ten or fifteen, or it might be as long as a hundred miles of time.”

“But Victoria—”

“Yes, I understand she’s expecting a child. When is it due?”

“In about nine miles,” said Helward.

Clausewitz frowned. “I’m afraid you will have to be away at that time. There’s really no alternative.”

“But couldn’t it be left until afterwards?”

“I’m sorry, no. There’s something you have to do. You know by now that from time to time the city is obliged to barter for the use of women from the outside. We keep these women for as short a time as possible, but even so they are rarely here for less than thirty miles. It is part of the bargain we strike that they are given safe conduct back to their settlements… and there are now three women who wish to leave. It is the custom of the city to use the apprentices to conduct them back, particularly as we now see this as an important part of the training process.”

Helward had been forced, by the very nature of his work, to become more sure of himself. “Sir, my wife is expecting her first baby. I must be with her.”

“It’s out of the question.”

“What if I refuse to go?”

“You will be shown a copy of the oath you swore, and you will accept the punishment it prescribes.”

Helward opened his mouth to reply, but hesitated. This was evidently not the time to debate the validity of the oath. Future Clausewitz was clearly restraining himself, for on Helward’s resistance to the instruction his face had turned a deep pink, and he had sat down, resting his hands palm down on the table-top. Instead of saying what was on his mind, Helward said: “Sir, can I appeal to your reason?”

“You can appeal, but I cannot be reasonable. You swore in your oath to place the security of the city above all other matters. Your guild training is a matter of city security, and that’s the end of it.”

“But surely it could be delayed? As soon as the child is born, I could leave.”

“No.” Clausewitz turned round, and pulled forward a large sheet of paper, covered in part with a map, and in part with several lists of figures. “These women must be returned to their settlements. In the nine miles or so of time it will take for your wife to deliver her baby, the settlements will be dangerously distant. They are already more than forty miles to the south of us. The plain fact is that you are the next apprentice on this schedule, and it is you who must go.”

“Is that your last word, sir?”

“Yes.”

Helward put down his untouched glass of wine, and walked towards the door.

“Helward, wait.”

He paused at the door. “If I am to leave, I would like to see my wife.”

“You have a few more days yet. You leave in half a mile’s time.”

Five days. It was almost no time.

“Well?” said Helward, no longer feeling the need to display customary courtesies.

“Sit down, please.” Reluctantly, Helward complied. “Don’t think I’m inhuman, but ironically this expedition will reveal to you why some of the city’s customs might seem to be inhuman. It is our way, and it is forced on us. I understand your concern for… Victoria, but you must go down past. There is no better way for you to understand the situation of the city. What lies there to the south of us is the reason for the oath, for the apparent barbarisms of our ways. You are an educated man, Helward… do you know of any civilized culture in history which has bartered for women for the simple, uncomplicated reason of wanting one gestation from them? And then, when that gestation is completed, to return them?”

“No, sir.” Helward paused. “Except—”

“Except primitive tribes of savages who raped and pillaged. Well, maybe we’re a little better than that, but the principle’s no less savage. Our barter is one-sided, for all that the contrary may seem to be. We propose the bargain, call our own terms, pay the price, and move on our way. What I am telling you must be done; that you abandon your wife at a time when she needs you most is one small inhumanity that stems from a way of life that is itself inhuman.”

Helward said: “Neither one excuses the other.”

“No… I’ll grant you that. But you are bound by your oath. That oath stems from the causes of the major inhumanities, and when you make your personal sacrifice you will understand better.”

“Sir, the city should change its ways.”

“But you will see that’s impossible.”

“By travelling down past?”

“Much will become clear. Not all.” Clausewitz stood up. “Helward, you’ve been a good apprentice so far. I can see that in the miles to come you will continue to work hard and well for the city. You have a good and beautiful wife, a lot to live for. You aren’t under threat of death, I promise you that. The penalty of the oath has never been invoked as far as I know, but I ask that this task that the city calls upon you to do is done, and done now. I have done it in my time, so has your father… and so have all other guildsmen. Even now there are seven of your colleagues — all apprentices — down past. They have had to face similar personal hardships, and not all have faced them willingly.”

Helward shook hands with Clausewitz, and went in search of Victoria.

3

Five days later, Helward was ready to leave. That he would go had never been in serious doubt, but it had not been easy to explain to Victoria. Although at first she had been horrified by the news, her attitude had changed abruptly.

“You have to go, of course. Don’t use me as an excuse.”

“But what about the child?”

“I’ll be all right,” she said. “What could you do if you were here? Stand around and make everyone nervous? The doctors will look after me. This isn’t the first pregnancy they’ve had to deal with.”

“But… don’t you want me to be there with you?” he said.

She had reached out and taken his hand in hers.

“Of course,” she said. “But remember what you said. The oath isn’t as rigid as you thought. I know you’re going, and when you get back there’ll be no mystery any more. I’ve got plenty to do here, and if what Barter Collings told you about the oath was true, you’ll be able to talk to me about what you see.”

Helward had not been sure what she meant by this. For some time he had been in the habit of confiding in her much of what he saw and did outside the city, and Victoria listened with great interest. He no longer saw the harm in talking to her, though it worried him that she should continue to be so interested, particularly when so much of what he said was confined to what he considered to be routine details.

The result was that on his own personal score he no longer had a motive to try to avoid the journey down past, and indeed the idea excited him. He had heard so much of it, mostly by implication and half-reference, and now the time had come for him to venture that way himself. Jase was down past; perhaps they would meet. He wanted to see Jase again. So much had happened since they last saw each other. Would they even recognize each other?

Victoria did not come to see him leave. She was in the room when he left her, still in bed. During the night they had made love tenderly and gently, making half-hearted jokes about making it “last.” She had clung to him when he kissed her goodbye, and as he closed the door and went into the corridor he thought he heard her sobbing. He paused, debating whether to go back to her, but after a moment’s hesitation he went on his way. He saw no benefit in prolonging the situation.

Clausewitz was waiting for him in the Futures’ room. In one corner a modest pile of equipment had been laid, and spread out on the table-top was a large plan. Clausewitz’s manner was different from that of the previous interview. As soon as Helward let himself into the room, Clausewitz led him to the desk and without preamble explained what he was to do.

“This is a composite plan of the land to the south of the city. It’s based on a linear scale. You know what that means?”

Helward nodded.

“Good. One inch on this is roughly equivalent to one mile… but linearly. For reasons you’ll discover, that won’t help you later. Now, the city is here at the moment, and the settlement you have to find is here.” Clausewitz pointed to a cluster of black spots at the other end of the plan. “As of today that’s exactly forty-two miles from here. Once you leave the city you will find that distances are confusing, and so are directions. In which case the best advice I can give you, as we give all our apprentices, is to follow the tracks of the city. When you go south they are the only contact you will have with the city, and the only way you will find your way back. The pits dug for the sleepers and the foundations should still show. Have you got that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You are making this journey for one main reason. You must see that the women we entrust to you arrive safely at their village. When that has been done, you return to the city without delay.”

Helward was occupied with mental calculations. He knew how long it took him to walk a mile… just a few minutes. On a full day’s march in hot weather he could hope to cover at least twelve miles; with the women to slow him up, half that. Six miles a day, and that took seven days for the outward trip, three or four days for the return. At best, he could be back at the city within ten days… or one mile, as the city measured elapsed time. Suddenly he wondered why he had been told that he could not be back in time for the birth of his child. What had Clausewitz said the other day? That he would be gone ten or fifteen miles… perhaps even as long as a hundred? It didn’t make sense.

“You’ll need some way of measuring distance, so that you’ll know when you’re in the region of the settlement. Between the city and the settlement there are thirty-four old sites of our stay-emplacements. They’re marked on this plan as straight lines across the tracks. You shouldn’t have much difficulty in locating them; although the tracks are built over the sites after they’ve been used, they leave quite distinct marks in the ground. Keep to the left outer track. That is, as you walk southwards, the one furthest to the right. It is on this side of the track that the settlement is situated.”

“Surely the women will recognize the area where they used to live?” said Helward.

“That’s correct. Now… the equipment you will need. It’s all here, and I suggest you take it all. Don’t think you can dispense with any of it, because we know what we’re doing. Is that clear?”

Once again Helward confirmed that he understood. With Clausewitz he went through the equipment. One pack contained nothing but dehydrated synthetic food and two large canteens of water. The other pack contained a tent and four sleeping-bags. In addition, there was a length of stout rope, grappling irons, a pair of metal-studded boots… and a folded crossbow.

“Are there any questions, Helward?”

“I don’t think so, sir.”

“You’re quite sure?”

Helward looked again at the pile of equipment. It was going to be a devil of a weight to carry, unless he could share some of it with the women, and the sight of all that dried food had set his stomach lurching…

“Could I not live off the land, sir?” he said. “I find the synthetic food rather tasteless.”

“I would advise you to eat nothing that is not in these packs. You can supplement your water-ration if you have to, but make sure the source is running water. If you eat anything that grows locally once you’re out of sight of the city, it will probably make you ill. If you don’t believe me you can try. I did, when I was down past, and I was sick for two days. This isn’t vague theory I’m giving you, it’s advice based on hard experience.”

“But we eat local foods in the city.”

“And the city is near optimum. You’re going a long way south of optimum.”

“That changes the food, sir?”

“Yes. Is there anything else?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. Then there’s someone who would like to see you before you go.”

He gestured towards an inner door, and Helward walked over to it. Beyond it was a smaller room, and here his father was waiting for him.

Helward’s first reaction was surprise, immediately followed by one of incredulity. He had seen his father last not more than ten days ago as the man was riding north; now, in that short period, it seemed to Helward that his father had aged suddenly and horribly. As he walked in his father stood up, balancing himself with an unsteady hand on the seat of his chair. He turned painfully, and faced Helward. His whole manner was marked with advanced age: he stood hunched, his clothes hung on him badly and the hand that came forward was trembling.

“Helward! How are you, son?”

The manner had changed too. There was no trace of the diffidence to which Helward had grown so accustomed.

“Father… how are you?”

“I’m fine, son. I’ve got to be taking it easy now, the doctor says. I’ve been north once too often.” He sat down again, and instinctively Helward stepped forward and helped him into his seat. “They tell me you’re going down past. Is that right?”

“Yes, father.”

“You be careful, son. There’s a lot down there will give you thought. Not like up future… that’s my place.”

Clausewitz had followed Helward, and was now standing in the doorway.

“Helward, you ought to know that your father has been given an injection.”

Helward turned away from his father.

“What do you mean?” he said.

“He came back to the city last night, complaining of chest pains. It’s been diagnosed as angina, and he’s been given a painkiller. He ought to be in bed.”

“O.K. I shan’t be long.”

Helward knelt on the floor beside the chair.

“Do you feel all right now, father?” he said.

“I told you… I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. How’s Victoria?”

“She’s getting on fine.”

“Good girl, Victoria.”

“I’ll tell her to visit you,” said Helward. It was a terrible thing to see his father in this condition. He had no idea that his father was growing so old… but he had not looked like this a few days ago. What had happened to him in the meantime? They talked for a few more minutes, but soon his father’s attention began to wander. Eventually, he closed his eyes and Helward stood up.

“I’ll get one of the medics,” said Clausewitz, and hurried out of the room. When he returned a few minutes later there were two of the medical administrators with him. Gently, they picked the old man up and carried him out to the corridor, where a wheeled trolley draped in white was waiting.

“Will he be all right?” said Helward.

“He’s being looked after, that’s all I can say.”

“He looks so old,” said Helward, unthinkingly. Clausewitz himself was in advanced years, though in demonstrably better health than his father.

“An occupational hazard,” said Clausewitz.

Helward glanced at him sharply, but there was no further information forthcoming. Clausewitz picked up the metal-studded boots, and pushed them towards Helward.

“Here… try these on,” he said.

“My father… will you ask Victoria to visit him?”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll deal with it.”

4

Helward rode in the elevator to the second level, the packs and equipment loaded in beside him. When the car stopped he keyed the door-hold button, and went along to the room to which Clausewitz had directed him. Here, four women and a man were waiting for him. As soon as he entered the room, Helward realized that only the man and one of the women were city administrators.

He was introduced to the other three, but they glanced at him briefly and looked away. Their expressions revealed a suppressed hostility, deadened by an indifference that until that moment Helward himself had felt. Until entering the room he had given no thought as to who the women might be, nor even had he speculated about their appearance. In fact, he recognized none of them, but hearing Clausewitz speak of them Helward had associated them in his mind with the women he had seen in the settlements while riding north with Barter Collings. Those women had been in general thin and pallid, their eyes deep-sunk over prominent cheekbones, their arms scrawny, and their chests flat. Dressed more often than not in ragged, filthy clothes, flies crawling over their faces, the women of the villages outside were pitiful wretches.

These three had none of these characteristics. They wore neat, well-fitting city clothes, their hair was clean and well cut, their flesh was round and full, and their eyes were clear. To his barely concealed surprise Helward saw that they were very young indeed: scarcely older than himself. The people of the city spoke of the women who were bartered from outside as if they were mature… but these were nothing more than girls.

He knew he was staring at them, but they paid him no attention. What struck him hardest was the growing suspicion that these three had once been similar to the wretches he had seen in the villages, and that by being brought to the city they had been restored temporarily to an approximation of the health and beauty that might have been theirs had they not been born into poverty.

The woman administrator gave him a brief description of their background. Their names were Rosario, Caterina, and Lucia. They spoke a little English. Each had been in the city for more than forty miles, and each had given birth to a baby. There were two boys and a girl. Lucia — who had given birth to one of the boys-did not wish to keep the child, and it was to stay in the city and be brought up in the crèche. Rosario had chosen to keep her baby boy, and it would be going with her back to the settlement. In Caterina’s case there had been no choice… but in any event she had expressed indifference about losing her baby daughter.

The administrator explained that Rosario was to be given as much of the powdered milk as she asked for, because she was still suckling the baby. The other two would have the same food as himself.

Helward tried a friendly smile on the three girls, but they took no notice of him. When he tried to look at Rosario’s baby, she turned her back on him and clutched it to her possessively.

There was nothing more to be told. They walked along the corridor towards the elevator, the three girls carrying their few belongings. They crowded into the car and Helward keyed the button to take them to the lowest level.

The girls continued to ignore him, and spoke to each other in their own language. When the car opened on to the dark passageway beneath the city, Helward struggled to remove the equipment. None of the girls helped him, but watched with amused expressions. With difficulty Helward picked up the various packs and staggered towards the southern exit.

Outside, the sun was dazzlingly bright. He put down the packs and glanced round.

The city had been winched since he was last outside, and now track-crews were taking up the rails. The girls shaded their eyes, and looked about them. It was probably their first sight of the outside since coming to the city.

The baby in Rosario’s arms began to cry.

“Will you help me with this?” Helward said, meaning the stack of food and equipment. The girls stared at him uncomprehendingly. “We ought to share the load.”

They made no reply so he squatted down on the ground, and opened the pack containing the food. He decided it would not be right to expect Rosario to carry any extra weight, so he divided the food into three packets, giving one each to the other two and returning the rest to his pack. Lucia and Caterina reluctantly found room for the food packets in their holdalls. The length of rope was the most unwieldy part of the load and so Helward contrived to wind it into a tighter roll, and stuffed it into the pack. The grapple and pitons he managed to get into the pack containing the tent and the sleeping-bags. Now his load was more manageable but not much lighter, and in spite of what Clausewitz had said Helward felt tempted to abandon most of it.

The baby was still crying, and Rosario appeared unconcerned.

“Come on,” he said, feeling irritated with them. He set off, walking southwards parallel to the tracks, and in a moment they followed him. They stayed together, keeping a distance of a few yards between them and him.

Helward tried to set a good pace, but after an hour he realized that his calculations about how long the expedition would take had been over-optimistic. The three girls moved slowly, complaining loudly about the heat and the surface of the ground. It was true that the shoes they had been given were unsuited for walking over this rough terrain, but he was afflicted no less by the heat. In fact, in his uniform and weighed down by the bulk of the equipment, he was most unpleasantly warm.

They were still in sight of the city, the sun was still only approaching its midday heat, and the baby had not stopped crying. His only relief so far had been a few moments speaking to Malchuskin. The trackman had been delighted to see him — still full of complaints about his hired labourers — and had wished Helward well in his expedition.

True to form, the girls had not waited for Helward, and he had spoken to Malchuskin for only a minute or two before he hurried after them.

Now he decided to call a rest.

“Can’t you stop him crying?” he said to Rosario.

The girl glared at him, and sat down on the ground.

“O.K.,” she said. “I feed.”

She stared at him defiantly, and the other two girls waited at her side. Taking the point, Helward moved some distance away, keeping his back turned discreetly while she fed the baby.

Later, he opened one of the water-canteens and passed it round. The day was impossibly hot, and his temper was no better than that of the girls. He took off the jacket of his uniform, and laid it over the top of one of the packs, and although this meant he felt the bite of the straps more deeply, it helped him keep a little cooler.

He was impatient to move on. The baby had fallen asleep, and two of the girls made a makeshift cot out of one of the sleeping-bags, carrying it slung between them. Helward had to relieve them of their holdalls, and although he was now overburdened with things to carry he gladly exchanged the extra discomfort for the welcome silence.

They walked for another half an hour, and then he called another halt. By now he was drenched with sweat, and it gave him little comfort to realize that the girls were no cooler.

He glanced up at the sun. It seemed to be almost directly overhead. Near where they were standing was an outcrop of rock, and he went over and sat down in the shade. The girls joined him, still complaining to each other in their own language. Helward regretted he had not taken more trouble to learn the language; he could pick out one or two phrases, but only enough to discover that he was the butt of most of their complaints.

He opened a packet of the dehydrated food, and moistened it with water from the canteen. The resultant gray soup looked and tasted like sour porridge. Perversely, he derived pleasure from the girls’ renewed complaints… here was one occasion they were justified, and he wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of letting them see he agreed.

The baby was still asleep, but fretting in the heat. Helward guessed that if they moved again it would wake up, so when the girls stretched out on the ground for a nap he made no effort to dissuade them.

While they were relaxing Helward stared back at the city, still clearly visible a couple of miles away. He realized that he had not been taking note of the marks left by the stayemplacements. They would have passed only one so far, and now he thought about it he saw what Clausewitz had meant by saying they left clearly distinguishable scars in the earth. He recalled that they had passed one a few minutes before they had halted. The marks left by the sleepers were shallow depressions some five feet in length by twelve inches across, but where the cable-stays had been buried were deep pits, surrounded by upturned soil.

Mentally, he marked off the first one. Thirty-seven to go.

In spite of their slow progress he still saw no reason why he should not be back in the city in time for the birth of his own child. After he had seen the women back to their village he could make good progress on his own, however unpleasant the conditions.

He decided to allow the girls an hour for their rest, and when he estimated that it had passed he went and stood over them.

Caterina opened her eyes, and looked up at him.

“Come on,” he said. “I want to move on.”

“Is too hot.”

“Is too bad,” he said. “We’re moving.”

She stood up, stretching her body elaborately, then spoke to the other two. With similar reluctance they stood up, and Rosario went and looked at the baby. To Helward’s dismay she woke it, and lifted it up… but fortunately the crying did not start again. Without delay, Helward gave back the two holdalls to Caterina and Lucia, and picked up his own two packs.

Away from the shade, the full heat of the sun came down on them, and within a few seconds the benefit of the rest in the shade seemed to vanish. They had gone only a few yards when Rosario passed the baby to Lucia.

She went back to the rocks and disappeared behind them. Helward opened his mouth to ask where she had gone… but then realized. When she returned, Lucia went, and then Caterina. Helward felt his anger returning. They were deliberately delaying him. He felt a pressure in his own bladder, aggravated-by realizing what the girls had been doing, but his anger and pride would not allow him to relieve himself. He decided to wait until later.

They walked on. The girls had now discarded the jackets that were common apparel inside the city, and wore only the trousers and shirts. The thin material, damp with perspiration, adhered to their bodies and Helward noticed this with a despondent interest, reflecting that under different circumstances he might have found the phenomenon of considerable potential. As things were he registered this new development only so far as to appreciate that each of the girls was of fuller figure than Victoria; Rosario in particular had large, pendulous breasts with protuberant nipples. Later, one of the girls must have noticed his occasional glance, for soon all three of them were walking with their jackets held over their chests. It made no difference to Helward… he just wanted to be rid of them.

“We have water?” said Lucia, crossing over to him.

He rummaged in the pack and gave her the canteen. She drank some, and then moistened the palms of her hands and splashed water over her face and neck. Rosario and Caterina did likewise. The sight and sound of the water was too much for Helward, and his bladder protested anew. He looked around. There was no cover, so he walked some yards away from the girls and relieved himself on to the soil. Behind, he heard them giggling.

When he returned, Caterina held out the canteen to him. He took it and raised it to his lips. Suddenly, Caterina tipped it from below, and the water splashed over his nose and eyes. The girls roared with laughter as he spluttered and choked. The baby started crying again.

5

They passed two more stay-emplacement marks before evening, and then Helward decided to pitch camp for the night. He selected a site near a clump of trees two or three hundred yards from the scars made by the tracks. A small brook passed nearby, and after testing it for purity — he had no guide other than his own palate — he declared it safe for drinking to conserve the supply in the canteens.

The tent was relatively simple to erect, and although he started the work on his own the girls helped him finish off. As soon as it was up he laid the sleeping-bags inside, and Rosario went in to feed the baby.

When the baby had gone to sleep again, Lucia helped Helward reponstitute the synthetic food. The result this time was an orange-coloured soup and it tasted no better than before. As they were eating, the sun set. Helward had lit a small fire, but soon a wind blew up from the east, chilling them. Finally, they were forced to go inside the tent and lie down inside their sleeping-bags for warmth.

Helward tried to strike up a conversation with the girls but either they did not answer, or they giggled, or made joking references to each other in Spanish, so he soon abandoned the idea. There were a few small candles in the pack of equipment, and Helward lay in the light of these for an hour or two, wondering what possible benefit the city could derive from this pointless expedition of his.

He fell asleep at last, but was wakened twice in the night by the baby crying. On one occasion he could just make out the shape of Rosario against the dim glow from outside, sitting up in her sleeping-bag and suckling the baby.

They were awake early, and set off as soon as they could. Helward wasn’t sure what had happened, but the mood of the girls today was obviously different. As they walked Caterina and Lucia sang a little, and at their first stop for a drink they tried again to spill the water on him. He moved back to avoid them, but in doing so stumbled on the uneven ground… and spluttered and choked once more for their amusement. Only Rosario maintained a distance, pointedly ignoring him as Lucia and Caterina played up to him. He didn’t enjoy being teased — for he could think of no way of replying — but he preferred it to the bad feeling of the day before.

As the morning progressed and the temperature rose, their mood became more careless. None of the three girls wore her jacket, and at the next stop Lucia undid the top two buttons of her shirt and Caterina opened hers all the way down the front, holding it in place with a large knot and so baring her midriff.

By now Helward could not mistake the effect they were having on him. As familiarity grew, so the atmosphere eased further. Even Rosario did not turn her back on him the next time she suckled her baby.

Relief from the heat came with another patch of woodland, one which Helward could remember helping to clear for the track-layers some miles before. They sat down in the shadows, waiting for the worst of the heat to pass.

They had now passed a total of five cable-stay marks: thirty-three to go. Helward’s mood of frustration at the slowness of their journey was easing; he saw that to travel faster was hardly possible, even if he had been alone. The ground was too hard, the sun too hot.

He decided to wait for two hours in the shadow of the trees. Rosario had moved some way away from him, and was playing with her baby. Caterina and Lucia sat together under a tree. They had taken off their shoes and were talking quietly together. Helward closed his eyes for a few minutes, but soon became restless. He walked out of the trees on his own, and went down to the scars left by the four lines of track. He looked left and right, north and south: the line ran straight and true, undulating slightly with the rise and fall of the ground, but always maintaining its direction.

Enjoying the comparative solitude he stood there for some time, wishing the weather would change and the sky would cloud over, if only temporarily. He debated with himself for a while, trying to decide whether it might be better to rest during the days and travel at night… but considered on balance it would be too risky.

He was about to turn back to the trees when he suddenly saw a movement about a mile to the south of him. At once he was on his guard, and dropped to the ground, lying behind a treestump. He waited.

In a moment he saw it again: someone was walking up the track towards him.

Helward remembered his crossbow, folded inside the pack… but already it was too late to go back for it. There was a bush just a yard or two to the side of the stump, and he wriggled over until he was behind it. Now better covered he hoped he might not be seen.

The figure was still coming towards him, and in a few minutes Helward saw to his surprise that the man was wearing the uniform of a guild apprentice. His first impulse was to come out of hiding, but he fought this back and stayed put.

When the man was less than fifty yards away, Helward recognized him. It was Torrold Pelham, a boy several miles older than him who had left the crèche a considerable time before.

Helward broke cover and stood up.

“Torrold!”

At once, Pelham was on his guard. He raised his crossbow and aimed it at Helward… then slowly lowered it.

“Torrold… it’s me. Helward Mann.”

“God, what are you doing here?”

They laughed together, realizing that they were both here for the same reason.

“You’ve grown up,” said Pelham. “You were just a kid the last time I saw you.”

“Have you been down past?” said Helward.

“Yes.” Pelharn stared past him, northwards up the track.

“Well?”

“It’s not what I thought.”

“What’s there?” said Helward.

“You’re down past now. Can’t you feel it?”

“Feel what?”

Pelham looked at him for a moment. “It’s not so bad here. But you can feel it. Perhaps you can’t recognize it yet. It builds up quickly further south.”

“What does? You’re talking in riddles.”

“No… it’s just impossible to explain.” Pelham glanced towards the north again. “Is the city near here?”

“A few miles. Not far.”

“What happened to it? Have they found some way to make it move faster? I’ve only been gone a short time, and the city’s moved much further than I thought it would.”

“It’s gone no faster than normal.”

“There’s a creek back there where a bridge had been built. When was that done?”

“About nine miles ago.”

Pelham shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“You’ve lost your sense of time, that’s all.”

Pelham suddenly grinned. “I expect that’s it. Listen, are you on your own?”

“No,” said Helward. “I’ve got three girls with me.”

“What are they like?”

“They’re O.K. It was a bit difficult at first, but we’re getting to know each other now.”

“Good lookers are they?”

“Not bad. Come and see.”

Helward led the way back through the trees until the girls came into view.

Pelham whistled. “Hey… they’re all right. Have you… you know?”

“No.”

They walked back towards the track.

Pelham said: “Are you going to?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Take a tip, Helward… if you’re going to, do it soon. Otherwise it’ll be too late.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll see.”

Pelham gave him a cheery grin, then continued on his way northwards.

Thoughts and intentions in the direction to which Pelham had been alluding were put out of Helward’s mind almost at once. Rosario fed her baby before they set off, and they had been walking only a few minutes when the child was violently sick.

Rosario hugged it to her, crooning quietly, but there was little anyone could do. Lucia stood by her, speaking sympathetically to her. Helward was worried, because if the child were seriously ill there was not much else they could do but return to the city. Soon, though, the baby stopped retching, and after a lusty crying session it quietened down.

“Do you want to go on?” Helward said to Rosario.

She shrugged helplessly. “Sí.”

They walked on more slowly. The heat had not abated much, and several times Helward asked the girls if they wanted to stop. Each time they said no, but Helward detected that a subtle change had come over all four of them. It was if the minor tragedy had drawn them together.

“We’ll camp tonight,” said Helward. “And rest all day tomorrow.”

There was agreement to this and when Rosario fed the baby again a little later, this time it kept the milk down.

Just before nightfall they passed through countryside which was more hilly and rocky than that they had seen so far, and suddenly they came to the chasm that had caused so much trouble to the Bridge-Builders. There was not much sign now of where the bridge had been, although the foundations of the suspension towers had left two large scars in the ground on this side.

Helward remembered a patch of level ground on the northern bank of the stream at the bottom of the chasm, and he led the way down.

Rosario and Lucia fussed over the baby, while Caterina helped Helward erect the tent. Suddenly, while they were laying out the four sleeping-bags inside, Caterina put a hand on his neck and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

He grinned at her. “What’s that for?”

“You O.K. with Rosario.”

Helward stayed put, thinking that the kiss might be repeated, but Caterina crawled backwards from the tent and called the others.

The baby looked better, and fell asleep when it was put into its makeshift cot inside the tent. Rosario said nothing about the child, but Helward could tell she felt less worried. Perhaps it had been wind.

The evening was much warmer than the night before, and after they had eaten they stayed outside the tent for some time. Lucia was concerned with her feet, rubbing them continually, and the other girls seemed to be making much of this. She showed her feet to Helward, and he saw that large calluses had appeared on the outer sides of her toes. Feet were compared at great length, the other girls saying that theirs were sore too.

“Tomorrow,” said Lucia, “no shoes.”

That seemed to be an end to it.

Helward waited outside the tent as the girls crawled inside. The previous night it had been so cold that all of them had slept with their clothes on inside the sleeping-bags, but as it was now warm and humid that was clearly out of the question. A certain coyness in Helward made him resolve that he would keep his own clothes on, and sleep on top of the bag, but a fastdeveloping interest in the girls led his thoughts to wilder fantasies about what they might do. After a few minutes, he crawled into the tent. The candles were alight.

Each of the three girls was inside her own bag, although Helward saw from the pile of clothes that they had undressed. He said nothing to them, but blew out the candles and undressed in the dark, stumbling and falling clumsily in the process. He lay down, only too aware of Caterina’s body lying close beside him in the next sleeping-bag. He stayed awake for a long time, trying to rid himself of a fierce manifestation of his arousal. Victoria seemed to be a long way away.

6

It was daylight when he awoke and, after a futile attempt to get dressed while still in his sleeping-bag, Helward scrambled out of the tent naked and dressed hurriedly outside. He lit the camp-fire, and began to heat some water to make synthetic tea.

Here at the bottom of the chasm it was already warm, and Helward wondered again whether they should move on, or rest for a day as he had promised.

The water boiled, and he sipped his tea. Inside the tent he heard movement. In a moment Caterina came out, and walked past him towards the stream.

Helward stared after her: she was wearing only her shirt, which was unbuttoned all down the front and swinging open, and a pair of pants. When she reached the water, she turned and waved back at him.

“Come!” she called.

Helward needed no further bidding. He went down to her, feeling clumsy in his uniform and metal-studded boots.

“We swim?” she said, and without waiting for an answer slipped her shirt off, stepped out of her pants and waded down into the water. Helward glanced back at the tent: nothing moved.

In a few seconds he had taken his clothes off, and was splashing through the shallows towards her. She turned and faced him, grinning when she saw the response in him she had caused. She splashed water at him, and turned away. Helward leaped at her, getting his arms around her… and together they fell sideways full-length into the water.

Caterina wriggled away from him, and stood up. She skipped away from him through the shallows, throwing up a huge spray. Helward followed, and caught her at the bank. Her face was serious. She raised her arms around his neck, and pulled his face down to hers. They kissed for a few moments, then clambered up out of the water and into the long grass growing on the bank. They lay down together and started to kiss again, more deeply.

By the time they had disentangled, got dressed, and returned to the tent, Rosario and Lucia were eating a pile of yellow gruel. Neither of them said anything, but Helward saw Lucia smile at Caterina.

Half an hour later the baby was sick again… and as Rosario was holding it concernedly, she suddenly thrust the baby into Lucia’s arms and rushed away. A few seconds later, she could be heard retching beside the stream.

Helward said to Caterina: “Do you feel O.K.?”

“Yes.”

Helward sniffed the food they had been eating. It smelt normal… unappetizing, but not tainted. A few minutes later, Lucia complained of intense stomach pains, and she went very pale.

Caterina wandered away.

Helward was desperate. The only course open to them now seemed to be to return to the city. If their food had become foul, how would they survive the rest of the journey?

After a while, Rosario returned to the camp-site. She looked weak and pale, and she sat down on the ground in the shade. Lucia gave her some water from the canteen. Lucia herself looked white and was holding her stomach, and the baby continued to scream. Helward was not prepared to cope with a situation like this, and hadn’t the least idea of what to suggest.

He went in search of Caterina, who had seemed to be unaffected.

About a hundred yards down the chasm he came across her. She was walking back towards the camp-site with an armful of apples which, she said, she had found growing wild. They looked red and ripe, and Helward tasted one. It was sweet and juicy… but then he remembered Clausewitz’s warning. His reason told him Clausewitz was wrong, but reluctantly he gave it to Caterina and she ate the rest.

They baked one of the apples in the embers of the fire, and then pulped it. In tiny mouthfuls, they fed it to the baby. This time it kept the food down and made happy noises. Rosario was still too weak to attend to it, so Caterina laid it down in its cot and within minutes it was asleep.

Lucia was not sick, although her stomach continued to give her pain for most of the morning. Rosario recovered more quickly, and ate one of the apples.

Helward ate the rest of the yellow synthetic food… and it did not make him ill.

Later in the day, Helward climbed up to the top of the creek and walked along its northern side. Here, a few miles back in time, lives had been lost in the cause of getting the city to cross this chasm. The scene was still familiar to him, and although most of the equipment used by the city had been collected, those long days and nights spent racing to complete the bridge were still very vivid in his memory. He looked across to the southern side, at the very place where the bridge had been built.

The gap did not look as wide as it had done then, nor did the chasm look so deep. Perhaps his excitement at the time had exaggerated his impression of the obstacle the chasm presented.

But no… surely the chasm had been wider?

He remembered that when the city had been crossing the bridge the rail-way itself had been at least sixty yards long. Now it seemed that at the point the bridge had been built the chasm was only about ten yards wide.

Helward stood and stared at the opposite edge for a long time, not understanding how this apparent contradiction could occur. Then an idea came to him.

The bridge had been built to quite exact engineering specifications; he had worked for many days on the building of the suspension towers, and he knew that the two towers on each side of the chasm had been built an exact distance apart to allow the city to pass between them.

That distance was about one hundred and thirty feet, or forty paces.

He went to the place where one of the northern towers had been built, and walked over towards its twin. He counted fiftyeight paces.

He went back, trying again: this time it was sixty paces.

He tried again, taking larger steps: fifty-five paces.

Standing on the edge of the chasm he stared down at the stream below. He could remember with great clarity the depth of the creek when the bridge was being built. Standing here, the bottom of the chasm had seemed to be a terrifying depth below; now it was an easy climb down to where they had camped.

Another thought struck him and he walked northwards to where the ramp had brought the city down into contact with the soil again. The traces of the four tracks still showed clearly, from this point running parallel northwards.

If the two towers were now apparently further apart, what of the tracks themselves?

From long hours working with Malchuskin, Helward knew intimately every detail of the tracks and their sleepers. The gauge of the tracks was three and a half feet, resting on sleepers five feet long. Looking now at the scars left in the ground by the sleepers, he saw that they were much bigger than this. He made a rough measurement, and estimated that they were now at least seven feet long, and shallower than they ought to be. But he knew that could not be so: the city used standard length sleepers, and the pits dug for them were always roughly the same size.

To make sure he checked several more, and found they were all apparently two feet longer than they should be.

And too close together. The sleepers were laid by the trackcrews at four feet intervals… not about eighteen inches apart, as these were.

Helward spent a few more minutes making similar measurements, then scrambled down the chasm, waded through the stream (which now seemed to him to be narrower and shallower than it had been before), and climbed up to the southern edge.

Here too the measurements he made of the remains of the city’s passage were in stark conflict with what he knew should be so.

Puzzled, and more than a little worried, he returned to the camp.

The girls were all looking healthier, but the baby had been sick yet again. The girls told him that they had been eating the apples Caterina had found. He cut one in half, and inspected it closely. He could see no difference between it and any other apple he had ever eaten. Once again, he was tempted to eat it, but instead he passed it to Lucia.

An idea had suddenly occurred to him.

Clausewitz had warned him of eating local foods; presumably this was because he was of the city. Clausewitz had said it was all right to eat local foods when the city was near optimum, but here, some miles to the south, it was not so. If he ate the city food, he would not be ill.

But the girls… they were not of the city. Perhaps it was his food which was making them ill. They could eat city food when they were near the optimum, but not now.

It made a kind of sense, but for one thing: the baby. With the exception of the few tiny mouthfuls of apple, it had had nothing but its mother’s milk. Surely that could not harm it?

He went with Rosario to see the baby. It lay in its cot, its face red and tear-stained. It was not crying now, but it fretted weakly. Helward felt sorry for the tiny creature, and wondered what he could do to help.

Outside the tent, Lucia and Caterina were in good spirits. They spoke to Helward as he emerged, but he walked on past them and went to sit beside the stream. He was still thinking about his new idea.

The only food had been its mother’s milk… Suppose the mother was different now, because they were away from the optimum? She was not of the city, but the baby was. Could that make a difference? It did not make much sense — for surely the baby was of the mother’s body? — but it was a possibility.

He went back to the camp and made up some synthetic food and dried milk, being careful to use only water he had brought from the city. He gave it to Rosario, and told her to try feeding the baby with it.

She resisted the idea at first, but then relented. The baby took the food, and two hours later it was sleeping peacefully once more.

The day passed slowly. Down in the creek the air was still and warm, and Helward’s feeling of frustration returned. He saw now that if his supposition was correct he could no longer offer the girls any of the food. But with thirty or more miles to walk, they couldn’t survive on apples alone.

Later, he told them what was on his mind, and suggested that for the moment they should eat very small amounts of his food, and supplement this with whatever they could find locally. They seemed puzzled, but agreed to this.

The sweltering afternoon continued… and Helward’s restlessness was transmitted to the girls. They became light-hearted and frisky, and teased him about his bulky uniform. Caterina said she was going for another swim, and Lucia said she would go too. They stripped off their clothes in front of him, and then turned on him playfully and made him undress. They splashed about naked in the water for a long time,joined later by Rosario whose attitude towards him no longer seemed to be one of suspicion.

For the rest of the day they lay on the ground beside the tent, sunbathing.

That night, Lucia took Helward’s hand just as he was about to go inside the tent, and led him away from the camp-site. She made love to him passionately, holding him tight against her as if he were the only force of reality in her world.

In the morning, Helward sensed a growing jealousy between Lucia and Caterina, and so he broke camp as early as possible.

He led them across the stream and up to the higher land to the south. Following the left outer track they continued their journey. The surrounding countryside was now familiar to Helward, as this was the region through which the city had been passing when he first worked outside. Up ahead, some two miles to the south, he could see the ridge of high ground that the city had had to climb during the first winching he had witnessed.

They stopped for a rest half-way through the morning, and then Helward remembered that only two miles to the west of where they were was a small local settlement. It occurred to him that if food could be obtained there, the problem of what the girls could eat would be solved. He suggested this to them.

The problem arose of who was to go. He felt he should go himself because of his responsibility, but would need one of the girls because she could speak the language. He did not wish to leave just one of the girls alone with the baby, and he felt that if he went with either Caterina or Lucia, the one left behind would show more obviously what he had guessed was their shared jealousy over him. In the end, he suggested that Rosario should go with him, and by the reception with which this was greeted Helward felt it was the right choice.

They set off in the approximate direction Helward remembered the village to be, and found it without difficulty. After a long conversation between Rosario and three of the men in the village, they were given some dried meat and some green, raw vegetables. Everything went remarkably smoothly — Helward wondered what kind of persuasions she had used — and soon they were returning to the others.

Walking along a few yards behind Rosario, Helward noticed something about the girl he had not seen before.

She was built rather more heavily than the other two girls, and her arms and face were round and well-fleshed. The girl did have a slight tendency to plumpness, but it suddenly seemed to Helward that this was much more noticeable than before. With casual interest at first, and greater attention later, he saw that the fabric of her shirt was stretched tightly across her back. But her clothes had not been as tight as that before… they had been given to her in the city, and had fitted her well. Then Helward noticed the trousers she was wearing: they were tight across the seat, but the legs scuffed against the ground as she walked. True, she was without shoes, but even so he did not remember them being as long as this before.

He caught up with her, and walked at her side.

The shirt was tight across her chest, compressing her breasts… and the sleeves were too long. Also, the girl seemed to be far shorter than he remembered her from even the day before…

When they joined the others, Helward noticed that their clothes too were now fitting them badly. Caterina had her shirt knotted across her stomach as before, but Lucia’s was buttoned and the tightness of the fit caused the fabric to part between the buttons.

He tried to put the phenomenon out of his mind, but as they continued southwards it seemed to become more and more obvious… and with comic results. Bending down to attend to the baby, Rosario split the seat of her trousers. One of Lucia’s buttons popped off as she raised the canteen of water to her lips, and Caterina tore the fabric of her shirt down both seams below her armpits.

A mile or so further down the track, and Lucia lost two more buttons. Her shirt was now open down most of its front, and she knotted it as Caterina had done. All three girls had turned up the hems of their trousers, and it was clear they were suffering considerable discomfort.

Helward called a halt in the lee of the ridge, and they set up camp. Once they had eaten the girls took off their tattered clothes and went into the tent. They teased Helward about his own clothes: were they not going to be torn up too? He sat outside the tent on his own, not yet sleepy and not wishing to sit inside the tent with the girls.

The baby started to cry, and Rosario came out of the tent to get it some food. Helward spoke to her, but she did not reply. He watched her as she added water to the dried milk, looked at her naked body in a wholly unsexual way. He had seen her naked only the day before, and he was certain she had not looked like this. She had been almost as tall as he was, yet now she seemed to be more squat, more plump.

“Rosario, is Caterina still awake?”

She nodded wordlessly, and went back into the tent. A few moments later Caterina came out, and Helward stood up.

They faced each other in the light from the camp-fire. Caterina said nothing, and Helward did not know what to say. She too had changed… A moment later Lucia joined them, and she stood at Caterina’s side.

Now he was certain. Some time during the day the girls’ physical appearance had changed.

He looked at them both. Yesterday, naked beside the stream, their bodies had been long and lithe, their breasts round and full.

Now their arms and legs were shorter, and more thickly built. Their shoulders and hips were broader, their breasts less round and more widely spaced. Their faces were rounder, their necks were shorter.

They came across to him, and stood before him. Lucia took the clasp of his trousers in her hands. Her lips were moist. From the entrance to the tent, Rosario watched.

7

In the morning Helward saw that the girls had changed even further during the course of the night. He estimated now that none of them stood more than five feet high, they talked more quickly than before, and the pitch of their voices was higher.

None of them could get into the clothes. Lucia tried, but could not get her legs into the trousers, and split the sleeves of her shirt. When they left the camp, the girls’ clothes were left too, and they continued on their way naked.

Helward could not take his eyes off them. Every hour that passed seemed to reveal a more obvious change in them. Their legs were now so short that they could only take small steps, and he was forced to dawdle so that he would not leave them behind. In addition, he noticed that as they walked their posture was bedoming more and more at an angle, so that they appeared to be leaning backwards.

They too were watching him, and when they stopped for water there was an uncanny silence as the strange group passed the canteen from one to the other.

Around them there were outward signs of an inexplicable change in the scenery. The remains of the left outer track, which they still followed, were now indistinct. The last clear impression Helward had seen of one of the sleeper-pits had been more than forty feet in length, and less than an inch in depth. The next set of tracks, the left inner, could not be seen; gradually the strip between the two had widened until it was over to the east by half a mile or more.

The incidence of stay-emplacements had increased. Already that morning they had passed twelve, and by Helward’s calculations there were only nine more to go.

But how would he recognize the girls’ settlement? The natural scenery of the area was flat and uniform. Where they were resting was like the hardened residue of a lava flow: there was no shade or shelter to be seen. He looked more closely at the ground. If he moved his fingers through it firmly he could still make shallow indentations in the soil, but although it was loose and sandy soil it felt thick and viscous to the touch.

The girls were now no more than three feet tall, and their bodies had distorted even further. Their feet were flat and wide, their legs broad and short, their torsos round and compressed. In this perception of them they became grotesquely ugly, and he found that in spite of his fascination with the physical changes coming over them the sound of their twittering voices was irritating him.

Only the baby had not changed. It was still, as far as Helward could see, much as it had always been. But in relation to its mother it was now disproportionately large, and the squat figure that was Rosario was regarding it with a kind of unspoken horror.

The baby was of the city.

Just as Helward himself had been born of a woman from outside, so was Rosario’s baby a child of the city. Whatever transformation was coming over the three girls and the coun tryside from which they came, neither he nor the baby were affected by it.

Helward had no conception of what he should do, nor what he should make of what he saw.

He felt a growing a fright, for this was beyond any comprehension he had ever had of the natural order of things. The evidence was manifest; the rationale was without terms of reference.

He looked towards the south, and saw that not too far away was a line of hills. From their shape and overall height he assumed they must be the foothills of some larger range… but then he noticed with a surge of alarm that the tops of the hills were white with snow. The sun was as hot as ever, and the air was warm; logic demanded that any snow that could exist in this climate must be on the tops of very high mountains. And yet they were near enough — no more than a mile or two, he thought — for him to judge that at most they were only above five hundred feet in elevation.

He stood up, and suddenly fell.

As he hit the ground he found he was rolling, as if on a steep slope, towards the south. He managed to stop himself and stood up unsteadily, bracing himself against a force that was pulling him towards the south. It was not a new force; he had been feeling its pressure all morning, but the fall had taken him by surprise and the force seemed now far stronger than before. Why had it not affected him until this moment? He thought back. That morning, with the other distractions, he realized he had indeed been aware of it, and he’d felt in the back of his mind that they’d been walking downhill. But that was clearly nonsensical: the land was level as far as the eye could see. He stood by the group of girls, sampling the sensation.

It was not like the pressure of air, nor even like the pull of gravity on a slope. It was somewhere between the two: on level ground, without noticeable air movements, he felt as though he were being pushed or dragged towards the south.

He took a few steps towards the north, and realized he was bracing his legs as if ascending a hill; he turned towards the south, and in conflict with the evidence of his eyes he felt as though he were on a steep slope.

The girls were watching him curiously, and he went back to them.

He saw that in those last few minutes their bodies had distorted still further.

8

Shortly before they moved on, Rosario tried to speak to him. He had difficulty understanding her. Her accent was strong in any case, and now her voice was pitched high and she spoke too quickly.

After many attempts, he got the gist of what she was saying.

She and the other girls were afraid to return to their village. They were of the city now, and would be rejected by their own kind.

Helward said they must go on, as had been their choice, but Rosario said they would not move. She was married to a man in her village, and although at first she had wanted to return to him, she thought now he would kill her. Lucia too was married, and she shared the fear. The people of the villages hated the city, and for their involvement with it the girls would be punished.

Helward gave up trying to answer her. He was having as much difficulty making her understand as he was in comprehending her. He thought she had left it too late for this; after all they had entered the city willingly in the first place as part of the barter. He tried to say this, but she could not understand.

Even while they had been talking the process of change had continued. She was now a little more than twelve inches high, and her body — as the other girls’ — was nearly five feet broad. It was impossible to recognize them as having once been human, even though he knew this to be so.

He said: “Wait here!”

He stood up, and fell again, rolling across the ground. The force on his body was now much greater, and he stopped himself with great difficulty. He crawled back against the force to his pack, and pulled it on. He found the rope, and slung it over his shoulder.

Bracing himself against the pressure, he walked southwards.

It was no longer possible to make out any natural features other than the line of rising ground ahead. The surface on which he walked was now an indistinct blur, and although he stopped to examine it from time to time he could distinguish nothing on it that might once have been grass, or rocks, or soil.

The natural features of the world were distorting: they were spreading laterally to east and west, diminishing in height and depth.

A boulder here might be a strip of dark gray, one hundredth of an inch wide and two hundred yards long. The low, snowcapped ridge ahead might be mountains; the long strip of green a tree.

That narrow strip of off-white, a naked woman.

He reached the higher ground more quickly than he had anticipated. The pull towards the south was intensifying, and when Helward was less than fifty yards from the nearest hill he stumbled… and was rolling with an ever-increasing speed towards it.

The northern face was almost vertical, like the leeward side of a wind-blown dune, and he collided with it hard. Almost at once the southwards pressure was pulling him up the face, defying the pull of gravity. In desperation, for he knew if he reached the top the pressure on him could never be resisted, he scrambled for a hold somewhere on the rock-hard face. It came in the form of an outjutting spur. Helward grabbed it with both hands, desperately holding himself back against the relentless pressure. His body swung round, so that he was lying vertically against the wall, feet above his head, knowing that if he slipped now he would be taken backwards up the slope and on down towards the south.

He reached behind into his pack, and found the grapple. He lodged it firmly under the spur, attached the rope to it, and wound the other end around his wrist.

The southwards pressure was now so great upon him that the normal downwards pull of gravity was virtually negated.

The substance of the mountain was changing beneath him. The hard, almost vertical wall was slowly widening to east and west, slowly flattening, so that behind him the summit of the ridge appeared to be creeping down towards him. He saw a cleft in the rock beside him which was slowly closing, so he removed the grapple from under the spur and thrust it into the cleft. Moments later, the grapple was securely held.

The summit of the ridge had now distended and was beneath his body. The southward pressure took him, and he was swept over the ridge. The rope held and he was suspended horizontally.

What had been the mountain became a hard protuberance beneath his chest, his stomach lay in what had been the valley beyond, his feet scrambled for a hold against the diminishing ridge of what had once been another mountain.

He was flat along the surface of the world, a giant recumbent across an erstwhile mountain region.

He raised his body, trying to ease his position. Lifting his head he suddenly found he was short of breath. A hard, icy wind blew from the north, but it was thin and short of oxygen. He lowered his head again, resting his chin on the ground. At this level his nose could take air that would sustain him.

It was bitterly cold.

There were clouds, and borne on the wind they skimmed a few inches above the ground like a white unbroken sheet. They surged around his face, flowing around his nose like foam at the bow of a ship.

His mouth was below them, his eyes were above.

Helward looked ahead of him through the thin, rarefied atmosphere above the clouds. He looked towards the north.

He was at the edge of the world; its major bulk lay before him.

He could see the whole world.

North of him the ground was level; flat as the top of a table. But at the centre, due north of him, the ground rose from that flatness in a perfectly symmetrical, rising and curving concave spire. It narrowed and narrowed, reaching up, growing ever more slender, rising so high that it was impossible to see where it ended.

He saw it in a multitude of colours. There were broad areas of brown and yellow, patched with green. Further north, there was a blueness: a pure, sapphire blue, bright on the eyes. Over it all, the white of clouds in long, tenuous whorls, in brilliant swarms, in flaky patterns.

The sun was setting. Red to the north-east, it glowed against the impossible horizon.

The shape of it was the same. A broad flat disk that might be an equator; at its centre and to north and south, its poles existed as rising, concave spires.

Helward had seen the sun so often that he no longer questioned its appearance. But now he knew: the world too was that shape.

9

The sun set, and the world became dark.

The southwards pressure was now so great that his body hardly touched what had once been the mountains beneath him. He was hanging on the rope in the darkness, as if vertically against the wall of a cliff; reason told him that he was still horizontal, but reason was in conflict with sensation.

He could no longer trust the strength of the rope. Helward reached forward, curled his fingertips around two small extrusions (had they once been mountains?), and hauled himself forward.

The surface beyond was smoother, and Helward could hardly find a firm hold. With trouble he discovered he could dig his fingers into the ground sufficiently far to obtain a temporary purchase. He dragged himself forward again: a matter of inches… but in another sense a matter of miles. The southwards pressure did not perceptibly diminish.

He abandoned his rope and crawled forward by hand. Another few inches and his feet came into contact with the low ridge that had been the mountain. He pressed hard, moved forward again.

Gradually, the pressure on him began to decrease until it was no longer a matter of desperation to hold on. Helward relaxed for a moment, trying to catch his breath. Even as he did so he felt sure that the pressure was increasing again, so he moved forward. Soon, he had gone so far that he could rest on his hands and knees.

He had not looked south. What had been behind him?

He crawled a long way, then felt able to stand. He did so, leaning northwards to counteract the force. He walked forward, feeling the inexplicable drag steadily diminish. He soon felt he was sufficiently far from the worst zone of pressure to sit on the ground, and take a proper rest.

He looked towards the south. All was darkness. Overhead, the clouds which had broken around his face were now some height above him. They occluded the moon, which Helward, in his untutored way, had never questioned. It too was that strange shape; he had seen it many times, always accepted it.

He continued walking northwards, feeling the immense drag weakening still further. The landscape around him was dark and featureless, and he paid no attention to it. Only one thought dominated his mind: that he must move sufficiently far forward before he rested so that he would not be dragged back again to that zone of pressure. He knew now a basic truth of this world, that the ground was indeed moving as Collings had said. Up north, where the city existed, the ground moved with an almost imperceptible slowness: about one mile in a period of ten days. But further south it moved faster, and its acceleration was exponential. He had seen it in the way the bodies of the girls had changed: in the space of one night the ground had moved sufficiently far for their bodies to be affected by the lateral distortions to which they — and not he — were subjected.

The city could not rest. It was destined to move forever, because if it halted it would start the long slow movement down here — down past — where it would come eventually to the zone where mountains became ridges a few inches high, where an irresistible pressure would sweep it to its destruction.

At that moment, as Helward walked slowly northwards across the strange, dark terrain, he could give no rationale to what he had experienced. Everything conflicted with logic: ground was stable, it could not move. Mountains did not distort as one sprawled across their face. Human beings did not become twelve inches high; chasms did not narrow; babies did not choke on their mothers’ milk.

Though the night was well advanced, Helward felt no tiredness beyond the residue of the physical strain he had endured on the side of the mountain. It occurred to him that the day had passed quickly; faster than he could have credited.

He was well beyond the zone of maximum pressure now, but he was still too aware of it to halt. It was not a pleasant thought to sleep while the ground moved beneath him, bearing him ineluctably southwards.

He was a microcosm of the city: he could no more rest than it.

Tiredness came at last and he sprawled on the hard ground, and slept.

He was awakened by the sunrise, and his first thought was of the southwards pressure. Alarmed, he sprang to his feet and tested his balance: the pressure was there, but not measurably worse than it had been at his last recollection.

He looked towards the south.

There, incredibly, the mountains stood.

It could not be so. He had seen them, felt them reduce to a ridge of hard ground, no more than an inch or two in height. Yet they were clearly there: steep, irregularly shaped, capped with snow.

Helward found his pack, and checked its contents. He had lost the rope and grapple, and much of his equipment had been with the girls when he left them, but he still had one canteen of water, a sleeping-bag, and several packets of the dehydrated food. It would be enough to keep him going for a while.

He ate a little of the food, then strapped his pack in place.

He glanced up at the sun, determined this time to keep his bearings.

He walked south towards the mountains.

The pressure grew about him slowly, dragging him forward. As he watched the mountains they appeared to reduce in height. The substance of the soil on which he walked became thicker, and the terrain once more took on its appearance of fused lateral streaks.

Overhead, the sun moved faster than it had any right to do.

Fighting against the pressure, Helward stopped when he saw that the mountains were once again not much more than an undulating line of low hills.

He was not equipped to go further. He turned, and moved north. Night fell an hour later,

He walked on through the darkness until he felt the pressure was acceptably low, then rested.

When daylight came again, the mountains were clearly in view… and as mountains.

He made no attempt to move, but waited in his place. As the day advanced the pressure grew. He was being borne southwards by the motion of the ground towards the mountains… and as he watched and waited he saw them slowly spread laterally.

He moved camp, went northwards before night fell. He had seen enough; it was time to return to the city.

Unaccountably, the thought of this worried him. Would he have to make some kind of report on what had happened?

There was much he felt incapable of even absorbing into his own experience, let alone coalescing what he had seen and felt into a coherent order that he could describe to someone else.

At the centre of it all was the stupefying sight of the world spread before him. Had any man ever been privy to such an experience? How could the mind encompass a concept of which the eye had been incapable of seeing even the entire extent? To left and right — and, for all he knew, to the south of him — the surface of the world had extended seemingly without bound. Only in the north, due north, was there a definition of form: that curving, rising pinnacle of land which stretched to no visible end.

Likewise the sun, likewise the moon. And, for all he knew, likewise every body in the visible universe.

The three girls: how could he report on their safe conduct to their village when they had passed into a state in which he could not communicate with them, nor even see them? They had passed on into their own world, utterly alien to him.

The baby: what had happened to that? Manifestly of the city, for like him it had not been affected by the distortions that were otherwise all about them, presumably it had been abandoned by Rosario… and was now presumably dead. Even if it still lived, the motion of the ground would bear it southwards to that zone of pressure where it could not survive.

Lost in such thoughts, Helward walked on, taking little account of his surroundings. Only when he stopped to take a drink of water did he look about, and it was with a start of surprise that he realized that he recognized the terrain.

This was the rocky land to the north of the chasm where the bridge had been built.

He took a few mouthfuls of the water, then retraced his steps. If he was to find his way back to the city he must relocate the tracks, and the site of the bridge would be a better landmark than most.

He encountered a stream which, in his preoccupied state, he must have crossed without noticing. He followed its course, wondering if this could possibly be the same stream, for it appeared to be a tiny rivulet. In due time the banks of the stream became steeper and rougher, but there was no sign of the chasm.

Helward scrambled up the bank, and walked back against the direction of the water-flow. Though naggingly familiar, the appearance of the stream was distended and distorted, and it could be another stream entirely.

Then he noticed a long black oval near the edge of the water. He went down and examined it. There was a faint smell of burning… and on closer inspection he realized this was the scar of a fire. His camp-fire.

The stream next to it was no more than a yard wide, and yet when he had been here with the girls it had been at least twelve feet across. He went back to the top of the bank. After a long search he found some marks on the ground which could have been the traces of one of the suspension towers.

From the top of one bank to the next, the distance could have been no more than five or six yards. The drop to the water was a matter of feet.

At this point the city had crossed.

He walked northwards, and in a short while found the trace of a sleeper. It was about seventeen feet long. The one next to it was three inches away.

By the following night the scale of the landscape had assumed proportions that were more familiar to him. Trees looked like trees, not sprawling bushes. Pebbles were round, grass grew in clumps, not spread like a smear of green. The tracks by which he walked were still too widely spread to have any resemblance to the gauge used by the city, but Helward thought that his journey should not be much longer.

He had lost track of the number of days that had passed, but the terrain was becoming increasingly familiar to him, and he knew that so far his time away from the city was still considerably less than that predicted by Clausewitz. Even taking into account the two or three days that had seemed to pass so quickly while he was in the zone of pressure, the city could not have moved more than a mile or two further to the north while he was away.

This thought encouraged him, for his supplies of food and water were dwindling.

He walked on, and the days passed. There was still no sign of the city, and the tracks by which he walked showed no signs of narrowing to their more normal gauge. By now he was so accustomed to the notion of the lateral distortion of this world in the south, that he took the evidence of it much in his stride.

One morning, he was disturbed by a new thought: for several days the gauge of the tracks had not appeared to change, and could it be that he had encountered a region where the motion of the ground was directly equal to the speed of his own walking? That is, that he was like a mouse on a treadmill, never making any forward progress?

For an hour or two he hastened his walk, but soon reason prevailed. He had, after all, successfully moved away from the zone of pressure where the southward motion was greater. But more days passed, and the city seemed to be no nearer. Soon he was down to his last two packets of food, and twice he had had to supplement his water-supplies from local sources.

The day he reached the end of his food, he was suddenly taken by a surge of excitement. Potential starvation was no longer a problem… he had recognized where he was! This was the region he had been riding through with Barter Collings: at that time, two or three miles north of optimum!

By his estimate of time he had been gone for three miles at the most… so the city should be in sight.

Up ahead, the line of track-scars continued until a low ridge… and no sign of the city. The sleeper-pits were still distorted, and the next row of scars — the left inner — was some distance away.

All it could mean, Helward reasoned, was that while he was away the city had somehow moved much faster. Perhaps it had even overtaken the optimum, and was in a region where the ground moved more slowly. Already he was beginning to understand why the city moved on: perhaps ahead of optimum there was a zone where the ground did not move at all.

In which case the city could stop… the grand treadmill would end.

10

Helward passed a hungry night, and slept badly. In the morning he took a few mouthfuls of water and was soon on his way. The city must be in sight soon. .

In the hottest part of the day, Helward was forced to rest. The countryside was barren and open, with little shade. He sat down beside the track.

Staring bleakly ahead, he saw something which gave him fresh hope: three people were walking slowly down the track towards him. They must be from the city, sent out to find him. He waited weakly for them to reach him.

As they approached he tried to stand, but stumbled. He lay still.

“Are you from the city?”

Helward opened his eyes and looked up at the speaker. It was a young man, dressed in a guild-apprentice uniform. He nodded, his jaw slack.

“You’re ill… what’s the matter?”

“I’m O.K. Have you any food?”

“Drink this.”

A canteen of water was offered, and Helward took a mouthful. The water tasted different: it was stale and flat, city water.

“Can you stand?”

With assistance, Helward got to his feet and they walked together away from the track to where a few scrawny bushes grew. Helward sat down on the ground, and the young man opened his pack. With a start of recognition, Helward realized the pack was identical to his own.

“Do I know you?” he said.

“Apprentice Kellen Li-Chen.”

Li-Chen! He remembered him from the crèche. “I’m He!ward Mann.”

Kellen Li-Chen opened a packet of dehydrated food and insinuated some water. Soon a familiar portion of gray porridge was before him, and Helward began to eat it with as near a mood of enthusiasm as he could ever recall.

In the background, some yards away, two girls stood and waited.

“You’re going down past,” he said between mouthfuls.

“Yes.”

“I’ve just been.”

“What’s there?”

Suddenly, Helward remembered meeting Torrold Pelham under almost identical circumstances.

“You’re down past now,” he said. “Can’t you feel it?”

Kellen shook his head.

“What do you mean?” he said.

Helward meant the southwards pressure, the subtle pull of which he could still feel as he walked. But he understood now that Kellen had probably not yet noticed it. Until it had been experienced in its extremeness, it would not be recognized as a discrete sensation.

“It’s impossible to talk about it,” Helward said. “Go down past and you’ll see for yourself.”

Helward glanced over at the girls. They were sitting on the ground, their backs turned quite deliberately on the men. He couldn’t help smiling to himself.

“Kellen… how far is the city from here?”

“A few miles back. About five.”

Five miles! Then by now it must have easily overtaken the optimum.

“Can you give me some food? Just a little… enough to get me back to the city.”

“Of course.”

Kellen took four packets, and handed them over. Helward looked at them for a moment, then handed three of them back.

“One will be enough. You’ll need the rest.”

“I haven’t got far to go,” said Kellen.

“I know… but you’ll still need them.” He looked again at the other apprentice. “How long have you been out of the crèche, Kellen?”

“About fifteen miles.”

But Kellen was much younger than him. He remembered distinctly: Kellen had been two grades below him in the crèche. They must be recruiting apprentices much earlier now. But Kellen looked mature and well filled. His body was not that of an adolescent.

“How old are you?” he said.

“Six hundred and sixty-five.”

That couldn’t be so… he was at least fifty miles younger than Helward, who was by his own reckoning six hundred and seventy.

“Have you been working on the tracks?”

“Yes: Bloody hard work.”

“I know. How has the city been able to move so fast?”

“Fast? It’s been a bad period. We had a river to cross, and at the moment the city is held up by hilly country. We’ve lost a lot of ground. When I left, it was six miles behind optimum.”

“Six miles! Then the optimum’s moved faster?”

“Not as far as I know.” Kellen was looking over his shoulder at the girls. “I think I’d better be moving on now. Are you O.K.?”

“Yes. How are you getting on with them?”

Kellen grinned.

“Not bad,” he said. “Language barriers, but I think I can find a bit of common vocabulary.”

Helward laughed, and again remembered Pelham.

“Make it soon,” he said. “It gets difficult later.”

Kellen Li-Chen stared at him for a moment, then stood up.

“The sooner the better, I think,” he said. He went back to the girls, who complained loudly when they realized their break had been only a short one. As they walked past him, Helward saw that one of the girls had unbuttoned her shirt all down the front, and had tied it with a knot.

With the food Kellen had given him, Helward felt certain of reaching the city without any further problems. After the distance he had travelled, another five miles was as nothing, and he anticipated reaching the city by nightfall. The countryside around him was now entirely new to him: in spite of what Kellen had said it certainly seemed that the city had made good progress during his absence.

Evening approached, and still there was no sign of the city.

The only hopeful indication was that now the scars left by the sleepers were of more normal dimensions; the next time Helward stopped for water he measured the nearest pit and estimated that it was about six feet long.

Ahead of him was rising ground, and he could see a ridge over which the track-remains ran. He felt sure the city must be lying in the hollow beyond and so he pressed on, hoping for a sight of it before nightfall.

The sun was touching the horizon as he reached the ridge, and looked down into the valley.

A broad river flowed across the floor of the valley. The tracks reached the southern bank… and continued on the further side. As far as he could see they continued up across the valley until lost to sight amongst some woodland. There was no sign of the city.

Angry and confused, Helward stared at the valley until darkness fell, then made his camp for the night.

In the morning he started out soon after daybreak, and within a few minutes was by the bank of the river. On this side there were many signs of human activity: the ground by the side of the water had been churned into a muddy waste, and there was a great deal of discarded timber and broken sleeper-foundations. In the water itself were several timber piles, presumably all that now remained of the bridge the city had had to build.

Helward waded down into the water, holding on to the nearest pile for support. As the water deepened he started to swim, but the current took him and he was swept a long way downstream before he could haul himself on to the northern bank.

Soaked through, he walked back upstream until he reached the track remains. His pack and clothes weighed heavily on him, so he undressed and laid his clothes in the sun, then spread the sleeping-bag and canvas pack. An hour later his clothes were dry, so he pulled them on again and prepared to move off. The sleeping-bag was still not completely dry, but he planned to air it at his next stop.

Just as he was strapping his pack into place, there was a rattling noise and something plucked at his shoulder. Helward turned his head in time to see a crossbow quarrel fall on the ground.

He dived for cover into one of the sleeper-foundations.

“Stay right there!”

He looked in the direction of the voice; he couldn’t see the speaker, but there was a clump of bushes some fifty yards away.

Helward examined his shoulder: the quarrel had torn away a section of his sleeve, but it had not drawn blood. He was defenceless, having lost his crossbow with the remainder of his possessions.

“I’m coming out… don’t move.”

A moment later, a man wearing the guild-apprentice uniform stepped out from behind the bush, leveling his crossbow at Helward.

Helward shouted: “Don’t shoot! I’m an apprentice from the city.”

The man said nothing, but continued to advance. He halted about five yards away.

“O.K… stand up.”

Helward did so, seeking the recognition he anticipated.

“Who are you?”

“I’m from the city,” said Helward.

“Which guild?”

“The Futures.”

“What’s the last line of the oath?”

Helward shook his head in surprise. “Listen, what the — ?”

“Come on… the oath.”

“’All this is sworn in the full knowledge that a betrayal of any one — ‘”

The man lowered his bow.

“O.K.,” he said. “I had to be sure. What’s your name?”

“Helward Mann.”

The other looked at him closely. “God, I never recognized you! You’ve grown a beard!”

“Jase!”

The two young men stared at each other for a few seconds more, then greeted each other affably. Helward realized that they both must have changed out of recognition in the time since they had last met. Then they had both been beardless boys, agonizing about the frustrations of life inside the crèche; now they had changed in outlook as well as appearance. In the crèche, Gelman Jase had affected a worldliness and disdain for the order by which they had to exist, and he had mannered himself as a careless and irresponsible leader of the boys who “matured” less quickly. None of this was apparent to Helward as they stood there beside the river renewing their earlier friendship. His experiences outside the city had weathered Jase, just as they had weathered his appearance. Neither man resembled the pale, undeveloped, and naïve boys who had grown up together: suntanned, bearded, muscular, and hardened, they had both matured quickly.

“What was all that about, shooting at me?” said Helward.

“I thought you were a took.”

“But didn’t you see my uniform?”

“Doesn’t mean anything any more.”

“But—”

“Listen, Helward, things are changing. How many apprentices have you seen down past?”

“Two. Three, including you.”

“Right. Did you know the city sends an apprentice down past every mile or so? There should be many more down here… and as we all take the same route we ought to be meeting each other almost every day. But the tooks are catching on. They’re killing the apprentices, and taking their uniforms. Were you attacked?”

“No,” said Helward.

“I was.”

“You could have tried to identify me before you shot at me.”

“I aimed to miss you.”

Helward indicated his torn sleeve. “Then you’re just a lousy shot.”

Jase moved away, and went over to where his quarrel had fallen, he picked it up, examined it for damage, then replaced it in its pouch.

“We ought to be trying to reach the city,” he said when he returned.

“Do you know where it is?”

Jase looked worried.

“I can’t work it out,” he said. “I’ve been walking for miles. Has the city suddenly accelerated?”

“Not as far as I know. I saw another apprentice yesterday. He said the city had actually been delayed.”

“Then where the hell is it?” said Jase.

“Somewhere up there.” Helward indicated the track-remains leading north.

“Then we go on.”

By the end of the day they still had not sighted the city — though the tracks were now apparently the normal dimensions — and they made a camp in a patch of woodland through which a stream of clean water flowed.

Jase was far better equipped than Helward. In addition to his crossbow, he had a spare sleeping-bag (Helward’s wet one had started to smell, and he’d thrown it away), a tent, and plenty of food.

“What do you make of it?” said Jase.

“Down past?”

“Yes.”

“I’m still trying to understand it,” said Helward. “What about you?”

“I don’t know. The same, I suppose. I can’t make logic of what I’ve seen and yet I know I’ve seen and experienced it, and so it must be so.”

“How can ground possibly move?”

“You noticed it too?” said Jase.

“I think so. That’s what happened wasn’t it?”

Later, each told his own account of what had happened after he left the crèche. Jase’s experiences had been remarkably different from Helward’s.

He had left the crèche a few miles before Helward, and undergone many of the same experiences working outside the city. An essential difference, though, was that he had not married, and had been invited to meet some of the transferred women. As a result of this, he already knew the two women he was assigned to when he began the journey down past.

He had learned many of the stories told by the local inhabitants about the people of the city. How the city was populated by giants, how they plundered and killed, and raped the women.

As his journey southwards proceeded, Jase had realized that the girls were growing more frightened, and when he asked them why they said that they felt certain they would be killed by their own kind when they returned. They wanted to go back to the city. At this point Jase had been noticing the first effects of the lateral distortions, and was growing curious. He turned the girls back, and told them to make their own way back to the city. He intended to spend one more day on his own, then he too would return northwards.

He traveled south, but did not see much that interested him, then attempted to find the girls. He discovered them three days later. Their throats had been cut, and they were hanging upside down from a tree. Still recoiling from the shock, Jase himself was attacked by a crowd of local men, some of whom were wearing apprentices’ uniforms. He had managed to escape, but the men had given chase. There followed three days of nightmare. While making his escape he had fallen and badly twisted his foot, and in his lamed state could do little more than hide. During the chase, he had gone a long way from the tracks, and had moved south by several miles. The hunt had been called off, and Jase was alone. He stayed in hiding… but gradually felt a slow build-up of southwards pressure. He realized that he was in a region he could not recognize. He described to Helward the flat, featureless terrain, the tremendous pressure, the way in which physical distortions took place.

He had tried to move back in the direction of the tracks, but his weakened leg made progress difficult. Finally, he had been forced to anchor himself to the ground with the grapple and rope until he could walk again. The build-up of pressure had continued, and fearing the rope would hold no longer he had been forced to crawl northwards. After a long and difficult period he had managed to escape from the zone of worst pressure, and had headed back towards the city.

He had wandered for a long time without finding the tracks. As a consequence his knowledge of the terrain away from the immediate neighbourhood of the tracks was considerably greater than Helward’s.

“Did you know there’s another city over there?” he said, indicating the land to the west of the tracks.

“Another city?” said Helward incredulously.

“Nothing like Earth. This one is built on the ground.”

“But how… ?”

“It’s immense. Ten times, twenty times as big as Earth. I didn’t recognize it for what it was at first… I thought it was just another settlement, but one much larger. Helward, listen, it’s a city like the cities we learnt about in the crèche… the ones on Earth planet. Hundreds, thousands of buildings… all built on the ground.”

“Are there any people there?”

“A few… not many. There was a lot of damage. I don’t know what happened there, but most of it seemed to be abandoned now. I didn’t stay long because I didn’t want to be seen. But it’s a beautiful sight… all those buildings.”

“Can we go there?”

“No… keep away. Too many tooks. There’s something going on out there, the situation is changing. They’re organizing themselves better, there are lines of communication. In the past, when the city went to a village we were often the first people from outside that the inhabitants had seen for a long time. But from things the girls said to me, I got the impression that that’s not likely to be the case any more. Word is spreading about the city… and the tooks don’t like us. They never have, but in small groups they were weak. Now I think they want to destroy the city.”

“And so they dress as apprentices,” said Helward, still not grasping the seriousness of Jase’s tone.

“That’s a small part of it. They take the clothes of the apprentices they kill to make further killings easier. But if they decide to attack the city, it’ll be when they’re well organized and determined.”

“I can’t believe that they could ever threaten us.”

“Maybe not… but you were lucky.”

In the morning they set out early, and travelled hard. They walked all day, not stopping for more than a few minutes at a time. By their side, the scars left by the tracks had returned to normal dimensions and both were spurred on by the thought that the city could not be more than a few hours’ walk ahead.

As the afternoon drew on, the track led in a winding route around the side of a hill, and as they reached the crest of the hill they saw the city ahead of them, stationary in a broad valley.

They stopped, stared down at it.

The city had changed.

Something about it made Helward run forward, hurrying down the side of the hill towards it.

From this elevation they could see the signs of normal activity about the city: behind it four track-crews tearing up the rails, ahead of it a larger team sinking piles into the river that presently barred the city’s way. But the shape of the city had changed. The rear section was misshapen, blackened…

The lines of Militia had been strengthened, and soon Jase and Helward were halted, and their identities checked. Both men fumed at the delay, for it was clear that a major disaster had struck the city. Waiting for clearance from inside the city, Jase learned from the militiaman in charge that there had been two attacks by the tooks. The second one had been more serious than the first. Twenty-three militiamen had been killed; they were still counting bodies inside the city.

The excitement of their return was instantly sobered by what they saw. When the clearance came through, Helward and Jase walked on in silence.

The crèche had been razed: it was the children who had died. Inside the city there was more that had changed. The impact of these changes was severe, but Helward had no time to register any reaction. He could only mark them, then try to push them aside until external pressures eased. There was no time to dwell on his thoughts.

He learnt that his father had died. Only a few hours after Helward had left the city, the angina had stopped his heart. It was Clausewitz who broke the news to him, and Clausewitz who told him that his apprenticeship was now over.

More: Victoria had given birth to a baby — a boy — but it had been one of those that had died in the attack.

More: Victoria had signed a form that pronounced the marriage over. She was living with another man, and was pregnant again.

And more, implicitly tied up with all of these events, yet no more conceivable: Helward learnt from the central calendar that while he had been away the city had moved a total of seventy-three miles, and was even so eight miles behind optimum. In his own subjective time-scale, Helward had been gone for less than three miles.

He accepted all these as facts. The reaction of shock would come later; meanwhile another attack was imminent.