Stephen Baxter - Xeelee - Endurance

In the hours that followed, she walked the length and breadth of the city. She didn’t find Momo. But she did learn that he wasn’t the only missing person; two others had vanished, both servants. Though a few people were troubled, most seemed sure it was just a case of getting lost in a strange city. And as for the uncertain layout, she saw doubt in a few eyes. But the Philosophers, far better educated than she was, had no room in their heads for such strange and confusing notions as an indeterminate geography.

When Tomm went sailing over the city in his balloon, a junior pilot at his side, she dutifully wore the red cap so he could see her, down here on the ground. Time-accelerated, he waved like a jerky puppet. But still she couldn’t find Momo, or dispel her feeling of disquiet.

That evening, to her astonishment, her father let it be known that he was hosting a dinner – and Sila, the ragged city woman, was to be guest of honour.

Enna couldn’t remember her father showing such crass misjudgement before, and she wondered if he had somehow been seduced by this exotic city of the Lowland, or, worse, by the woman, Sila, of whom Enna knew nothing at all. But still Bayle’s entourage would not let Enna near her father; he was much too busy for mere family.

Enna made the best of it. She put on the finest dress in her luggage, and decorated her hair with her best jewellery, including the pretty piece her mother had given her when they bade their tearful goodbyes. But as she brushed her hair by the light of her spindling-fat lamp, the blank walls of the city building she was using seemed to close in around her.

She met Tomm outside the building. He was still in his travelling clothes; he had not been invited to the dinner.

‘You look wonderful,’ he said.

She knew he meant it, and her heart softened. ‘Thank you.’ She let him kiss her.

‘Do you suppose I’m allowed to walk you over?’

‘I’d like that. But, Tomm—’ She glanced back at the building, the gaping unglazed windows like eye sockets. ‘Put my luggage back in one of our wagons. I don’t care which one. I’m not spending another night in one of these boxes.’

‘Ah. Not even with me?’

‘Not even with you. I’m sorry, Tomm.’

‘Don’t be. As long as you let me share your wagon.’

When they got to her father’s building she was stunned by the sight. Inside, three long trestle-tables had been set up and laid with cloths and the best cutlery and china. Candles glowed on the tables, and finely dressed guests had already taken their seats. At the head table sat Bayle himself, with his closest confidantes – and his guest of honour, Sila, dressed now in a fine flowing black robe, sat beside him. From a smaller building co-opted as a kitchen, a steamy smell of vegetables emanated, while five fat runner-chicks slowly roasted on spits. Enna had grown up in a world shaped by her father’s organisational skills, of which the Expedition was perhaps the crowning glory. But even she was impressed by the speed and skill with which this event had been assembled. After all, the party had only reached this mysterious Lowland city a day before.

When he saw Enna, Bayle stood up and waved her forward. Led by Nool, Bayle’s sleek manservant, Enna took her place at her father’s right-hand side. Sila sat on his left.

Enna leaned close to her father. ‘I’ve got to talk to you. I’ve been trying all day.’

‘I know you have. Priorities, my dear.’

That was a word she had heard all her life. But she insisted, ‘Something isn’t right here. People are missing. The geography—’

He cut her off with a wave of his hand. ‘I know you’re no fool, my daughter, and I will hear you out. But not now. We’ll make time at the end of the dinner.’

She wasn’t going to get any more from him. But as her father sat back, she caught the eye of the city woman, Sila. She imagined there was a calculation in Sila’s deep gaze as it met her own. She wondered what Sila truly wanted – and what it would cost them all if she achieved it.

The food was good, of course; her father would have allowed nothing less, and the wine flowed voluminously, though Enna refused to touch a drop. She longed for the meal to be over, so she could talk to Bayle before another night fell. At last the final dish was cleared away, the glasses refilled for the final time.

And, to Enna’s intense frustration, Bayle got to his feet and began to make a speech.

He had spent the night and much of the day in conversation with Sila, he said, and a remarkable experience it had been.

Everybody had expected to find people down here on the Lowland. For generations the judges of Foro had used ‘time pits’ as a punishment measure. The logic was simple. The deeper you fell, the slower time passed for you, so by being hurled into the time pits you were banished to the future. Only a handful had ever climbed back up, bewilderingly displaced in time. But as time had gone by, rumours wafted up to the Shelf that some, at least, of the criminals of the past had survived, down there in their redshifted prison.

‘The time pits have long been stopped up,’ Bayle said now, ‘and we look back on such methods with shame. Now we long to discover what had become of our exiled citizens, and their offspring – and we long to reach out to them a hand of reason and hope. Our consciences would permit nothing less.

‘And now we have found those lost souls, in the person of Sila. She is the daughter of an exile, whose crime was political. Sila grew up almost in isolation with her mother, her only society a drifting, transient collection of refugees from many ages. And yet she is educated and articulate, with a sound moral compass; it would take very little grooming indeed for her to pass as a citizen of Foro.

‘There may be no society as we know it here, no government, no community. But the inhabitants of the Lowland are not animals but people, as we are. In her person Sila demonstrates the fundamental goodness of human nature, whatever its environment – and I for one applaud her for that.’

This was greeted by murmured appreciation and bangs of the tables. Sila looked out at the Philosophers, a small smile barely dissipating the coldness of her expression.

Now Bayle came to the emotional climax of his speech. ‘We all knew when we embarked from Foro that this would not just be an Expedition to the Lowland, but into time. We are all of us lost in the future, and with every day that passes here, the further that awful distance from home grows.’ He glanced at Enna, and she knew he was thinking of her mother, his wife, who had been too ill to travel with them on this journey – and who, as a consequence, Enna would never see again. ‘All of you made a sacrifice for knowledge, a sacrifice without precedent in the history of our civilisation.

‘But,’ Bayle said, ‘if this is a journey of no return, it need not be a journey without an end.

‘Look around you! We do not yet know who built this place, and why – I have no doubt we will discover all this in the future. But we do know that it is empty . The sparse population of the Lowland has never found the collective will to inhabit this place. But we can turn this shell into a true city – and with our industry and communal spirit, we will serve as a beacon for those who wander across the Lowland’s plains. All this I have discussed at length with Sila.

‘Our long journey ends here. Oh, we will send emissaries back to our home on the Shelf – or the daughter civilisations of those we remember. But this city, bequeathed to us by an unimaginable past, will host our future.’ He raised his hands; Enna had never seen him look more evangelical. ‘We have come home!’

He won a storm of applause. Sila surveyed the crowded room, that cold assessment dominating her expression – and again Enna was sure she could smell the cold iron stench of raw meat.