Christopher Priest - The Inverted World

“I came across your city by accident, and lived here for a while within your transference section.” There was some surprised reaction to this. “I have talked with some of you, I know how you live. Then I left the city, and returned to England. I’ve spent nearly six months there, trying to understand your city and its history. I know much more now than I did on my first visit.”

She paused again. Somewhere in the crowd a man shouted: “England is on Earth!”

Elizabeth did not respond. Instead she said: “I have a question. Is there anyone here responsible for the city’s engines?”

There was a short silence, then Jase said: “I am a Traction guildsman.”

Heads turned in our direction.

“Then you can tell us what powers the engines.”

“A nuclear reactor.”

“Describe how the fuel is inserted.”

Jase released me and moved to one side. I felt Blayne’s hold on me loosen, and I could have escaped him. But like everyone else listening, my attention had been caught by the curious questions.

Jase said: “I don’t know. I have never seen it done.”

“Then before you can stop your city, you must find out.”

Elizabeth moved back, and spoke quietly to Victoria. A moment later she came forward again.

“Your reactor is no such thing. Unwittingly, the men you call your Traction guildsmen have been misleading you. The reactor is not functioning, and has not done so for thousands of miles.”

Blayne said to Jase: “Well?”

“She’s talking nonsense.”

“ Do you know what fuels it?”

“No,” said Jase quietly, although many of the people around us were listening. “Our guild believes that it will run indefinitely without attention.”

“Your reactor is no such thing,” Elizabeth said again.

I said: “Don’t listen to her. The fact that we have electrical power means the reactor is working. Where else do we get the power?”

From the platform, Elizabeth said: “Listen to me.”

Elizabeth said she was going to tell us about Destaine. I listened with the others.

Francis Destaine was a particle physicist who lived and worked in Britain, on Earth planet. He lived at a time when Earth was running critically short of electrical energy. Elizabeth recited the reasons, which were essentially that fossil fuels were burnt to provide heat, which was converted into energy. When the fuel deposits ran out there would be no more energy.

Destaine, Elizabeth said, claimed to have devised a process whereby apparently unlimited amounts of energy could be produced without any kind of fuel. His work had been discredited by most scientists. In due course the energy that was derived from fossil fuels had run out, and there followed on Earth planet a long period now known as the Crash. It had brought to an end the advanced technological civilization that had dominated Earth.

She said that the people on Earth were now beginning to rebuild, and Destaine’s work was instrumental in this. His process as originally outlined was crude and dangerous, but a more sophisticated development was manageable and successful.

“What has this to do with halting the city?” someone shouted.

Elizabeth said: “Listen.”

Destaine had discovered a generator which created an artificial field of energy which, when existing in close proximity to another similar field, caused a flow of electricity. His discreditors based their criticisms on the fact that this had no practical use as the two generators consumed more electricity than they produced.

Destaine was unable to obtain either financial or intellectual support for his work. Even when he claimed to have discovered a natural field — a translateration window, as he called it — and could thus produce his effect without the need of a second generator, he was still ignored.

He claimed that this natural window of potential energy was moving slowly across the surface of the Earth, following a line which Elizabeth described as the great circle.

Destaine eventually managed to raise money from private sponsors, had a mobile research station built, and with a large team of hired assistants set off for the Kuantung province of southern China where, he claimed, the natural translateration window existed.

Elizabeth said: “Destaine was never heard from again.”

Elizabeth said that we were on Earth planet, that we had never left Earth.

She said that the world on which we existed was Earth planet, that our perception of it was distorted by the translateration generator which, self-powering as long as it was running, continued to produce the field about us.

She said that Destaine had ignored the side-effects that other scientists had warned him of: that it could permanently affect perception, that it could have genetic and hereditary effects.

She said that the translateration window still existed on Earth, that many others had been found.

She said that the window Destaine had discovered in China was the one our own generator was still tapping.

That following the great circle it had travelled through Asia, through Europe.

That we were now at the edge of Europe and that before us lay an ocean several thousand miles wide.

She said… and the people listened…

Elizabeth finished speaking. Jase walked slowly through the crowd towards her.

I headed back towards the entrance to the rest of the city. I passed within a few feet of the platform, and Elizabeth noticed me.

She called out: “Helward!”

I took no notice, pushed on through the crowd and into the interior of the city. I went down a flight of steps, walked through the passageway beneath the city and out again into the daylight.

I headed north, moving between the tracks and cables.

Half an hour later I heard the sound of a horse, and I turned. Elizabeth caught up with me.

“Where are you going?” she said.

“Back to the bridge.”

“Don’t. There’s no need. The Traction guild have disconnected the generator.”

I pointed up at the sun. “And that is now a sphere.”

“Yes.”

I walked on.

Elizabeth repeated what she had said before. She pleaded with me to see reason. She said again and again that it was only my perception of the world that was distorted.

I kept my silence.

She had not been down past. She had never been farther away from the city than a few miles north or south. She hadn’t been with me when I saw the realities of this world.

Was it perception that changed the physical dimensions of Lucia, Rosario, and Caterina? Our bodies had been locked in sexual embrace: I knew the real effects of that perception. Was it the baby’s perception that had made it reject Rosario’s milk? Was it only my perception that caused the girls’ city-made clothes to tear as their bodies distorted inside them?

“Why didn’t you tell me what you’ve just said when you were in the city before?” I said.

“Because I didn’t know then. I had to go back to England. And you know something? No one cared in England. I tried to find someone, anyone, who could be made to find some concern for you and your city… but no one was interested. There’s a lot going on in this world, big and exciting changes are taking place. No one cares about the city and its people.”

“You came back,” I said.

“I had seen your city myself. I knew what you and the others were planning to do. I had to find out about Destaine… someone had to explain translateration to me. It’s a dull, everyday technology now, but I didn’t know how it worked.”

“That’s self-evident,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“If the generator’s off, as you say, then there’s no further problem. I just have to keep looking at the sun and telling myself that it’s a sphere, whatever else it might look like.”