Christopher Priest - The Inverted World

“Yes… but there’s no debate on this issue. They’re in the wrong, and you know it as well as I do.”

“Just because a man’s wrong doesn’t mean he’s a fool.”

I said: “Gelman, you’ve been down past. You know what happens there. You know the city would be taken there by the movement of the ground. Surely there’s no question about what the city should do.”

“I know. But they have the ear of a large percentage of the people. We should hear them out.”

“They’re enemies of the city’s security.”

“O.K… but to defeat an enemy one should know him. I’m going to the meeting because this is the first time their views are being publicly expressed. I want to know what I’m up against. If we’re going to go across that bridge, it’s going to be people like me who will see us across. If the Terminators have got an alternative, I want to hear it. If not, I want to know it.”

“I’m going up north,” I said.

Jase shook his head. We argued a while longer, and then we went to the meeting.

Some miles before, the work on rebuilding the crèche had been abandoned. The damage had long since been cleared leaving bare the broad metal base of the city, open on three sides to the countryside. At the northern side of this area, against the bulk of the rest of the city, some reconstruction work had been done, and the timber facings afforded the speakers a suitable background and a slightly raised platform from which to address the crowd.

As Jase and I came out of the last building and walked across the space there were already a considerable number of people there. I was surprised that so many were here; the resident population of the city had already been considerably depleted by the men drafted to work on the bridge, but at a rough estimate it seemed to me that there were at least three or four hundred people present. Surely there could be few people who were not here? The workers on the bridge, the Navigators, and a few proud guildsmen?

A speech was already in progress, and the crowd was listening without much response. The main text of the speech — made by a man I recognized as one of the food synthesists — was a description of the physical environment through which the city was currently passing.

“…the soil is rich, and there is a good chance that we could grow our own crops. We have abundant water, both locally and to the north of us.” Laughter. “The climate is agreeable. The local people are not hostile, nor need we make them so—”

After a few minutes, he stood down to a ripple of applause. Without preamble, the next speaker came forward. It was Victoria.

“People of the city, we face another crisis brought upon us by the Council of Navigators. For thousands of miles we have been making our way across this land, indulging ourselves in all that is inhuman to stay alive. Our way of staying alive has been to move forward, towards the north. Behind us—” and she waved her hand to encompass the broad stretch of countryside that lay beyond the southern edge of the platform “—is that period of our existence. Ahead of us they tell us there is a river. One we must cross to further ensure our survival. What is beyond that river they do not tell us, because they do not know.”

Victoria talked for a long time, and I confess I was prejudiced against her from her first words. It sounded to me like cheap rhetoric, but the crowd seemed to appreciate it. Perhaps I was not as indifferent as I supposed, for when she described the building of the bridge and threw in the accusation that many men had died, I started forward to protest. Jase caught my arm.

“Helward… don’t.”

“She’s talking rubbish!” I said, but already a few voices in the crowd shouted that that was rumour. Victoria conceded it neatly, but added that there was probably more going on at the bridge site than was generally known; this was greeted with some approval.

Victoria brought her speech to an unexpected conclusion.

“I say that not only is this bridge unnecessary, but that it is dangerous too. In this I have an expert opinion. As many of you know, my father is Chief Guildsman of the Bridge-Builders. He it is who designed the bridge. I ask you now to listen to what he has to say.”

“God… she couldn’t do that!” I said.

Jase said: “Lerouex is not a Terminator.”

“I know. But he’s lost faith.”

Bridges Lerouex was already on the platform. He stood by the side of his daughter, waiting for the applause to die down. He did not look directly at the crowd, but stared down at the floor. He looked tired, old, and beaten.

“Come on, Jase. I’m not going to watch him be humiliated.”

Jase looked at me uncertainly. Lerouex was preparing to speak.

I pushed forward through the crowd, wanting to be away before he said anything. I had learned to respect Lerouex, and did not wish to be present in his moment of defeat.

A few yards forward, I stopped again.

Standing behind Victoria and her father, I had recognized someone else. For a moment I couldn’t place either the name or the face… then it came. It was Elizabeth Khan.

I was shocked to see her again. It had been many miles since she had left: at least eighteen miles in city-time, many more in my own subjective time. After she had left I had tried to put her from my mind.

Lerouex had started to address the crowd. He spoke softly, and his words did not carry.

I was staring at Elizabeth. I knew why she was there. When Lerouex had finished humiliating himself, she was going to speak. I knew already what she would say.

I started forward again, but suddenly my arm was caught. It was Jase.

“What are you doing?” he said.

“That girl,” I said. “I know her. She’s from outside the city. We mustn’t let her speak.”

People around us were telling us to be quiet. I struggled to release myself from Jase but he held me back.

Suddenly, there was a burst of applause, and I realized that Lerouex had finished.

I said to Jase: “Look… you’ve got to help me. You don’t know who that girl is!”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Blayne coming towards us.

“Helward… have you seen who’s here?”

“Blayne! For God’s sake help me!”

I struggled again, and Jase fought to hold me. Blayne moved over quickly, took my other arm. Together they pulled me backwards, out of the crowd to the very edge of the city’s metal base.

“Listen, Helward,” said Jase. “Stay here and listen to her.”

“I know what she’s going to say!”

“Then allow the others to hear.”

Victoria stepped forward to the edge of the platform.

“People of the city, we have one more person to speak to you. She is not known to many of us, because she is not of our city. But what she has to say is of great importance, and afterwards there will no longer be any doubt in your minds as to what we must do.”

She raised her hand, and Elizabeth stepped forward.

Elizabeth spoke softly, but her voice carried clearly to all present.

“I am a stranger to you here,” she said, “because I was not born as you were within the walls of the city. However, you and I are of one kind: we are human, and we are of a planet called Earth. You have survived in this city for nearly two hundred years, or seven thousand miles by your way of measuring time. About you has been a world in anarchy and ruins. The people are ignorant, uneducated, stricken with poverty. But not all people of this world are in this state. I am from England, a country where we are beginning to reconstruct a kind of civilization. There are other countries too, bigger and more powerful than England. So your stable and organized existence is not unique.”

She paused, testing the reaction of the crowd so far. There was silence.