Christopher Priest - The Inverted World

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At the next meeting there was a violent disruption.

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

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

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

This disruption, perversely, had the effect desired by the Terminator movement. The Navigators’ meetings were once again closed to general session. The dichotomy in the opinions of the ordinary people of the city widened. The Terminators had a considerable amount of support, but no real authority.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was a price to pay for the time spent in the north, and it was one that did not seem real to me until I saw its effects for myself. A day spent idling in the north was a day in my life. In fifty days I aged the equivalent of five miles in the city, but the city people had aged only four days. It did not matter at first: our return visits to the city were so comparatively frequent that I saw and felt no difference. But in time, the people I had known — Victoria, Jase, Malchuskin — seemed not to have aged at all, and catching a sight of myself in a mirror one day I saw the effect of the differential.

I did not want to settle down permanently with another girl; Victoria’s notion that the ways of the city would disrupt any relationship took greater meaning every time I considered it.

The first of the transferred women were coming to the city, and as an unmarried man I was told that I was eligible to mate with one of them temporarily. At first I resisted the idea because, to be frank, the idea repelled me. It seemed to me that even a purely physical affair should have some complement in shared emotional feelings, but the manner in which the selection of the partners was arranged was as subtle as it could be under the circumstances. Whenever I was in the city I and other eligible men were encouraged to mix socially with the girls in a recreation-room set aside for this purpose. It was embarrassing and humiliating at first, but I grew used to these occasions and eventually my inhibitions waned.