Christopher Priest - The Inverted World

“Who did you ask?”

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

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

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

“I know,” I said. “I was wrong.”

“What happened?”

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

“That’s all. You were delayed?”

“It was a lot further than I thought.”

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

“You never saw David, did you?”

“David? Is that what you called him?”

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

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

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

Later, Victoria said: “I thought you would never come back. There was a lot of confusion in the city, but I managed to find someone from your guild. He said that a lot of apprentices had been killed when they were in the south. I told him how long you had been gone. He wouldn’t commit himself. All I knew was how long you’d been gone and when you said you’d be back. It was nearly two years, Helward.”

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

“Why not?”

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

“But they knew?”

“Undoubtedly.”

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

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

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

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

“Not drastically.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Victoria, you don’t—”

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

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

She shook her head. “I don’t care what the current situation looks like. I’m thinking about the long term. All our troubles are ultimately created by the city being moved. That one condition produces the danger. We move across other people’s land, we bargain for manpower to move the city, we take women into the city to have sex with men they hardly know… and all in order to keep the city moving.”

“The city can never stop,” I said.

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

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

“Well?”

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

“You can’t prove that.”

“No… but I know it would be so.”

“I think you’re wrong,” said Victoria. “And I’m not alone. Even in the last few days I’ve heard it said by others. People can think for themselves. They’ve been outside, seen what it’s like. There’s no danger apart from the danger we create for ourselves.”

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

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

“Is there any chance… ?”

“Do you want it?”

“I’m not sure,” I said.

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

“I know.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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