Christopher Priest - The Inverted World

They worked slowly and painstakingly, each checking the other’s reading at every step. After an hour, Blayne packed some of the equipment on his horse, then mounted and rode along the coast in a northerly direction. Helward stood and watched him go, his posture revealing a deep and overwhelming despair.

Elizabeth interpreted it as a tiny weakness in the barrier of logic that lay between them. Clutching the blanket around her, she walked down across the dunes toward him.

She said: “Do you know where you are?”

He didn’t turn.

“No,” he said. “We never will.”

“Portugal. This country is called Portugal. It’s in Europe.”

She moved round so that she could see his face. For a moment his gaze rested on her, but his expression was blank. He just shook his head, and walked past her towards his horse. The barrier was absolute.

Elizabeth went over to her own horse, and mounted it. She walked it along the beach and soon moved inland, heading back in the general direction of the headquarters. In a few minutes the troubled blue of the Atlantic was out of sight.

The storm raged all night and none of us got much sleep. Our camp was half a mile from the bridge, and as the waves came crashing in the sound reached us as a dull, muted roar, almost obliterated by the howling gale. In our imaginations, at least, we heard the splintering of timber in every temporary lull.

Towards dawn the wind abated, and we were able to sleep. Not for long, for soon after sunrise the kitchen was manned and we were given our food. No one talked as we ate; there would be only one topic of conversation, and none wished to speak of that.

We set off towards the bridge. We had gone only fifty yards when someone pointed to a piece of broken timber lying washed up on the river-bank. It was a grim foreboding and, as it turned out, an accurate one. There was nothing left of the bridge beyond the four main piles that were planted in the solid ground nearest to the water’s edge.

I glanced at Lerouex who, for this shift, was in charge of all operations.

“We need more timber,” he said. “Barter Norris… take thirty men, and start felling trees.”

I waited for Norris’s reaction; of all the guildsmen on the site he had been the most reluctant to work, and had complained loud and long during the early stages of the work. Now he showed no rebellion; we were all past that. He simply nodded to Lerouex, picked a body of men and headed back towards the camp to collect the tree-felling saws.

“So we start again,” I said to Lerouex.

“Of course.”

“Will this one be strong enough?”

“If we build it properly.”

He turned away, and started to organize the clearing up of the site. In the background the waves, still huge in the aftermath of the storm, crashed against the river-bank.

We worked all day, and by evening the site had been cleared and Norris and his men had hauled fourteen tree-trunks over to the site. The next morning we could start work yet again.

Before then, during the evening, I sought out Lerouex. He was sitting alone in his tent, apparently checking through his designs of the bridge, but in fact I realized his stare was vacant.

He did not seem pleased to see me, but he and I were the two senior men on the site and he knew I would not come without purpose. We were now of roughly equal age: by the nature of my work in the north I had passed many subjective years. It was a matter of some discomfort between us that he was the father of my former wife, and yet we were now contemporaries. Neither of us had ever referred directly to it. Victoria herself was still only comparatively few miles older than she had been when we were married, and the gulf between us was now so wide that everything we knew of each other was totally irretrievable.

“I know what you’ve come to say,” he said. “You’re going to tell me that we can never build a bridge.”

“It’s going to be difficult,” I said.

“No… impossible is what you mean.”

“What do you think?”

“I’m a Bridge-Builder, Helward. I’m not supposed to think.”

“That’s as much crap as you know it is.”

“All right… but a bridge is needed, I build it. No questions.”

I said: “You’ve always had an opposite bank.”

“That makes no difference. We can build a pontoon.”

“And when we’re mid-river, where do we get the timber? Where do we plant the cable-stays?” I sat down unbidden, opposite him. “You were wrong, incidentally. I didn’t come to see you about this.”

“Well?”

“The opposite bank,” I said. “Where is it?”

“Out there somewhere.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

“How do you know there is one?”

“There must be.”

“Then why can’t we see it?” I said. “We’re striking away from this bank a few degrees from perpendicular, but even so we should be able to see the bank. The curvature—”

“Is concave. I know. Don’t you think I haven’t thought about that? In theory we can see forever. What about atmospheric haze? Twenty or thirty miles is all we can see, even on a clear day.”

“You’re going to build a bridge thirty miles long?”

“I don’t think we’ll have to,” he said. “I think we’re going to be O.K. Why else do you think I persevere?”

I shook my head. “I’ve no idea.”

He said: “Did you know they’re going to make me a Navigator?” Again, I shook my head. “They are. Last time I was in the city we had a long conference. The general feeling is that the river might not be as wide as it appears. Remember, north of optimum dimensions are distorted linearly. That is, to north and south. It’s obvious that this is a major river, but reason demands that there’s an opposite bank. The Navigators think that when the movement of the ground takes the river as far as optimum we should be able to see the opposite bank. Granted, it might then still be too wide to cross safely, but all we need to do is keep waiting. The further south the ground takes us, the narrower the river will become. Then a bridge would be feasible.”

“That’s a hell of a risk,” I said. “The centrifugal force would—”

“I know.”

“And what if the opposite bank doesn’t appear then?”

“Helward, it has to.”

“You know there’s an alternative?” I said.

“I’ve heard what the men have been saying. We abandon the city, and build a ship. I could never approve that.”

“Guild pride?”

“No!” His face reddened in spite of the denial. “Practicalities. We couldn’t build one large enough or safe enough.”

“We’re having the same difficulty with the bridge.”

“I know… but we understand bridges. Who in the city would know how to design a ship? Anyway, we’re learning by our mistakes. We just have to keep building until the bridge is strong enough.”

“And time’s running out.”

“How far north of optimum are we?”

“Less than twelve miles.”

“City-time, that’s a hundred and twenty days,” he said. “How long do we have up here?”

“Subjectively, about twice that.”

“That’s plenty.”

I stood up, headed for the flap. I was unconvinced.

“By the way,” I said. “Congratulations on the Navigatorship.”

“Thanks. They’ve put your name forward too.”

A few days later Lerouex and I were relieved by the new shift, and we set off for the city. The repaired bridge was well under way, and under the circumstances the mood at the site was optimistic. We now had ten yards of platform ready for the track-layers.

The horses were in use with the tree-felling crews, and so we had to walk. Once away from the river-bank the wind dropped, and the temperature rose. It had been so easy to forget how hot the land was.