The Inverted World

1

She waited in the doorway of the church while the discussion continued on the far side of the square. Behind her, in the temporary workshop, the priest and two assistants were working patiently on the job of restoring the plaster image of the Virgin Mary. It was cool in the church, and in spite of the part of the roof that had caved in, it was clean and restful. She knew she shouldn’t be here, but some instinct had sent her inside when the two men had arrived.

She watched them now, talking earnestly to Luiz Carvalho, the self-appointed leader of the village, and a handful of other men. In other times, perhaps the priest would have assumed responsibility for the community, but Father dos Santos was, like herself, a newcomer to the village.

The men had ridden into the village along the dried-up bed of the stream, and now their horses grazed while the discussion continued. She was too far away to hear the actual words, but it seemed that some deal was being struck. The men from the village talked volubly, feigning no interest, but she knew that if their attention had not been caught they would not still be talking.

It was the horsemen who held her interest. That they were not from any of the near-by villages was self-evident. In contrast with the villagers, their appearance was striking: each wore a black cape, well-fitting trousers, and leather boots. Their horses were saddled and apparently groomed, and although each of the horses was bearing large saddle-bags well loaded with equipment they stood without apparent fatigue. None of the horses she had seen locally was in anything like such good condition.

Her curiosity began to override her instinct, and she stepped forward to learn for herself what was going on. As she did so, the negotiations appeared to be completed, for the village men turned away and the other two returned to their horses.

They mounted immediately, and headed back the way they had come. She stood and watched them, debating whether or not to go after them.

When they were out of sight amongst the trees that grew alongside the stream, she hurried out of the square, ran between two of the houses and scrambled up the rise of ground behind. After a few moments she saw the men emerging from the trees. They rode a short distance further, then drew up the reins, and halted.

They conferred for about five minutes, several times looking back in the general direction of the village.

She kept out of sight, standing in the dense scrub that grew all over the hill. Suddenly, one of the men raised his hand to the other, and swung his horse round. He set off at a gallop in the direction of some distant hills; the other man turned his horse in the oppOsite direction and walked it at a leisured pace.

She returned to the village, and found Luiz.

“What did they want?” she said.

“They need men for some work.”

“Did you agree to this?”

He looked evasive. “They’re coming back tomorrow.”

“Are they going to pay?”

“With food. Look.”

He held out a handful of bread, and she took it from him. It was brown and fresh, smelt good.

“Where did they get this?”

Luiz shrugged. “And they have special food.”

“Did they give you any of that?”

“No.”

She frowned, wondering again who the men might be.

“Anything else?”

“Only this.” He showed her a small bag, and she opened it. Inside was a coarse white powder, and she sniffed at it.

“They said it would make fruit grow.”

“They have more of this?”

“As much as we need.”

She put the bag down, and went back to the church workshop. After a word with Father dos Santos she walked quickly to the stables, and saddled up her own horse.

She rode out of the village by way of the dried-up stream, and followed in the direction of the second man.

2

Beyond the village was a wide area of scrubland, dotted with trees. She soon saw the man some distance ahead of her, heading towards a larger patch of woodland. On the far side of this, she already knew, a river flowed. Beyond that were some low hills.

She kept her distance from the man, not wishing to be seen until she found out where he was heading.

When he entered the woods she lost sight of him, and she dismounted. She led the horse by its reins, keeping a wary eye open for any sign of him. Soon she could hear the sound of the river; shallow at this season, its bed littered with pebbles.

She saw his horse first, tethered to a tree. She tied up her own horse, and walked on alone. It was warm and still under the trees, and she felt dusty from the ride. She wondered again what had prompted her to follow this man, when reason warned of any number of potential risks. But the presence of the two men in the village had been unthreatening enough, their motives peaceable if mysterious.

She moved more cautiously as she approached the edge of the wood. Here she halted, looking down the shallow bank towards the water.

The man was there, and she looked at him with interest.

He had discarded his cloak, and it lay with his boots beside a small pile of equipment. He had waded down into the river, and was clearly relishing the cool sensation. Completely oblivious of her presence, he kicked his feet in the water, sending up showers of glittering spray. In a moment, he bent down, scooped up some water in his hands and splashed it over his face and neck.

He turned, waded out of the water and went over to the equipment. From a black leather case he took a small video camera, then suspended the case by its strap over his shoulder, and connected it to the camera with a short, plastic-coated lead. This done, he adjusted a small ferruled knob on the side.

He put down the camera for a moment, and unfurled a long paper roll, wound like a scroll. He laid this on the ground, looked at it thoughtfully for a few seconds, then picked up the camera and returned to the water’s edge.

Deliberately, he pointed the camera upstream for a second or two, then lowered the camera and turned. He pointed it at the opposite bank, then, startling her, he pointed it in her direction. She ducked down out of sight, and by his lack of reaction she guessed he had not seen her. When she next looked, he was pointing the camera downstream.

He returned to the length of paper, and with great care inscribed a few symbols.

Still moving deliberately, he put the camera back in its case, rolled up the paper and stowed it with the rest of the equipment.

He stretched elaborately, then scratched the back of his head. Listlessly, he returned to the water’s edge, sat down, and dangled his feet in the water. In a moment, he sighed and lay back, his eyes closed.

She regarded him closely. He certainly looked harmless enough. He was a big, well-muscled man, and his face and arms were deeply tanned. His hair was long and shaggy: a great mane of light auburn hair. He wore a beard. She estimated his age somewhere in the middle thirties. In spite of the beard he had a clean-cut, youthful face, grinning at the simple animal bliss of cold wet feet on a hot dry day.

Flies hovered around his face, and from time to time he would swipe at them lazily.

After a few more moments of hesitation she started forward, and half-walked, half-skidded down the bank, pushing a minor avalanche of soil before her.

The man’s reaction was immediate. He sat up, looked round sharply, and scrambled to his feet. In so doing he turned awkwardly, and slipped down on his stomach, his feet thrashing in the water.

She started to laugh.

He recovered his foothold, and dived for his equipment. A few seconds later he had a rifle in his hands.

She stopped laughing… but he did not raise the rifle.

Instead, he said something in Spanish so bad that she could not understand it.

She spoke only a little Spanish herself, so instead she said in the language of the villagers: “I didn’t mean to laugh.”

He shook his head, then looked at her carefully. She spread her hands to prove that she carried no kind of weapon, and gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile. He seemed satisfied that she presented no threat to him, and put down the rifle.

Again, he said something in atrocious Spanish, then muttered something in English.

“You speak English?” she said.

“Yes. Do you?”

“Like a native.” She laughed again, and said: “Do you mind if I join you?”

She nodded towards the river, but he continued to stare dumbly at her. She slipped off her shoes, and walked down to the bank. She waded in, hitching up her skirt. The water was freezing cold; it made her toes curl with pain, but the sensation was delightful. In a moment, she sat on the ground, keeping her feet in the water.

He came and sat beside her.

“Sorry about the gun. You startled me.”

“I’m sorry too,” she said. “But you looked so blissful.”

“It’s the best thing to do on a day like this.”

Together they stared down at the water flowing over their feet. Beneath the rippling surface, the white flesh appeared to distort like a flame flickering in a draught.

“What’s your name?” she said.

“Helward.”

“Helward.” She tried the sound of the word. “Is that a surname?”

“No. My full name is Helward Mann. What’s yours?”

“Elizabeth. Elizabeth Khan. I don’t like being called Elizabeth.”

“I’m sorry.”

She glanced at him. He looked very serious.

She was a little confused by his accent. She had realized he was not a native of this region, and he spoke English naturally and without effort, but he had a strange way of pronouncing his vowels.

“Where do you come from?” she said.

“Round here.” He stood up suddenly. “I’d better water the animal.”

He stumbled again as he climbed the bank, but this time Elizabeth did not laugh. He walked straight into the trees, did not pick up his equipment. The rifle was still there. He looked over his shoulder at her once, and she turned away.

When he returned he was leading both horses. She got up, and led her own down to the water.

Standing between the horses, Elizabeth stroked the neck of Helward’s.

“She’s beautiful,” she said. “Is she yours?”

“Not really. I just ride her more often than any of the others.”

“What do you call her?”

“I… haven’t given her a name. Should I?”

“Only if you want to. Mine hasn’t got a name either.”

“I enjoy riding,” Helward said suddenly. “It’s the best part of my work.”

“That and paddling in rivers. What do you do?”

“I’m a… I mean, it hasn’t really got a label. What about you?”

“I’m a nurse. Officially, that is. I do lots of things.”

“We have nurses,” he said. “In the… where I come from.”

She looked at him with new interest. “Where’s that?”

“A city. In the south.”

“What’s it called?”

“Earth. Although most of the time we just call it the city.”

Elizabeth smiled uncertainly, not sure she had heard correctly. “Tell me about it.”

He shook his head. The horses had finished drinking, and were nuzzling each other.

“I think I’d better be on my way,” he said.

He walked quickly towards his equipment, scooped it up, and stuffed it hurriedly in the saddle-bags. Elizabeth watched curiously. When he had finished he took the rein, turned the horse round and led her up the bank. At the fringe of the trees he looked back.

“I’m sorry. You must think me very rude. It’s just… you’re not like the others.”

“The others?”

“The people round here.”

“Is that so bad?”

“No.” He looked around the river-side as if seeking some further excuse to stay with her. Abruptly, he seemed to change his mind about leaving. He tethered the horse to the nearest tree. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“I wonder… do you think I could draw you?”

“Draw me?”

“Yes… just a sketch. I’m not very good, I haven’t been doing it very long. While I’m up here I spend a lot of time drawing what I see.”

“Was that what you were doing when I met you?”

“No. That was just a map. I mean proper drawings.”

“O.K. Do you want me to pose for you?”

He fumbled in his saddle-bag, then brought out a wad of paper of assorted sizes. He flicked through them nervously, and she saw that there were line-drawings on them.

“Just stand there,” he said. “No… by your horse.”

He sat down on the edge of the bank, balancing the papers on his knees. She watched him, still disconcerted by this sudden development, and felt a growing self-consciousness that was generally alien to her personality. He stared over the paper at her.

She stood by the horse, her arm running underneath its neck so that she could pat the other side, and the horse responded by pressing its nose against her.

“You’re standing wrong,” he said. “Turn towards me more.”

The self-consciousness grew, and she realized she was standing in an unnatural, awkward position.

He worked away, slipping through one sheet of paper after the next, and she began to relax more. She decided to pay no attention to him, and petted the horse again. After a while he asked her to sit in the saddle, but she was growing tired.

“Can I see what you’ve done?”

“I never show this to anyone.”

“Please, Helward. I’ve never been drawn before.”

He sifted through the papers, and selected two or three. “I don’t know what you’ll think.”

She took them from him.

“God, am I as skinny as that?” she said, without thinking.

He tried to take them away from her. “Give them back.”

She turned away from him, and flicked through the others. It was possible to see that they were of her, but his sense of proportion was… unusual. Both she and the horse were drawn too tall and thin. The effect was not unpleasing, but rather weird.

“Please… I’d like them back.”

She gave them to him, and he put them at the bottom of the pile. Abruptly he turned his back on her, and walked towards his horse.

“Have I offended you?” she said.

“It’s O.K. I knew I shouldn’t have shown them to you.”

“I think they’re excellent. It’s just… it’s a bit of a shock to see yourself through someone else’s eyes. I told you I had never been drawn.”

“You’re difficult to draw.”

“Could I see some of your others?”

“You wouldn’t be interested.”

“Look, I’m not just trying to smooth your ruffled feathers. I really am interested.”

“O.K.”

He gave her the whole pile, and continued on his way towards his horse. While she sat down again and began to go through the drawings, she was aware of him in the background pretending to adjust the horse’s harness, but in fact trying to anticipate her response.

There were a variety of subjects. There were several of his horse: grazing, standing, throwing its head back. These were amazingly naturalistic; with a few lines he had caught the very essence of the animal, proud yet docile, tamed yet still its own master. Curiously, the proportions were exactly right. There were several drawings of a man… self-portraits, or the man she had seen him with earlier? He was drawn in his cloak, without his cloak, standing by a horse, using the video camera she had seen earlier. Again, the proportions were almost exactly right.

There were a few sketches of scenery: trees, a river, a curious structure being dragged by ropes, a distant range of hills. He wasn’t as adept with views; sometimes his proportions were good, at other times there was a disturbing distortion that she could not quite identify. Something wrong with the perspective? She couldn’t tell, not having a sufficient artistic vocabulary.

At the bottom of the pile she found the drawings he had made of her. The first few were not very good, clearly his first attempts. The three he had shown her were by far the best, but there was still this elongation of her and the horse that puzzled her.

“Well?” he said.

“I—” She couldn’t find the right words. “I think they’re good. Very unusual. You’ve got an excellent eye.”

“You’re a difficult subject.”

“I particularly like this one.” She searched through the pile, found one of the horse with its mane flying wild. “It’s so lifelike.”

He grinned then. “That’s my own favourite.”

She glanced again through the drawings. There was something about them she hadn’t understood… there, in one of the drawings of the man. High in the background, a weird, fourpointed shape. There was one in each of the sketches he had done of her.

“What’s this?” she said, pointing to it.

“The sun.”

She frowned a little, but decided not to pursue it. She felt she had done enough damage to his artistic ego for the moment.

She selected what she thought was the best of the three.

“Could I have this one?”

“I thought you didn’t like it.”

“I do. I think it’s marvellous.”

He looked at her carefully, as if trying to divine whether she was being truthful, then took the pile from her again.

“Would you like this one too?”

He handed her the one of the horse.

“I couldn’t. Not that one.”

“I’d like you to have it,” he said. “You’re the first person to have seen it.”

“I — thank you.”

He placed the papers carefully into the saddle-bag, and buckled the cover.

“Did you say your name was Elizabeth?”

“I prefer to be called Liz.”

He nodded gravely. “Goodbye, Liz.”

“Are you going?”

He didn’t answer, but untethered the horse and swung into the saddle. He rode down the bank, splashed through the shallow water of the river, and spurred his horse on up the opposite bank. In a few seconds he was lost to sight in the trees beyond.

3

Back at the village Elizabeth found she had no appetite for more work. She was still waiting for a consignment of proper medical supplies, and a doctor had been promised for more than a month. She had done what she could to see that the villagers were getting a balanced diet — but food supplies were limited — and she had been able to deal with the more obvious ailments such as sores, rashes, and so forth. Last week she had helped deliver a baby for one of the women, and it wasn’t until this that she had felt she was doing any good at all.

Now, with the strange encounter by the river still fresh in her mind, she decided to return to headquarters early.

She found Luiz before she left.

“If those men come back,” she said, “try to find out what it is they want. I’ll be back in the morning. If they come before I arrive, try to keep them here. Find out where they’re from.”

It was nearly seven miles to the headquarters, and it was evening when she arrived. The place was almost deserted: many of the field operatives stayed out for several nights on end. Tony Chappell was there, though, and he intercepted her as she headed for her room.

“Are you free this evening, Liz? I thought we might—”

“I’m very tired. I thought I’d have an early night.”

When she had first arrived, Elizabeth had felt the first stirrings of attraction towards Chappell, and made the mistake of showing them. There were only a few women at the station, and he had responded with great eagerness. Since then he had hardly left her alone, and although she now found him very dull and self-centred she hadn’t yet discovered a polite way of cooling his unwelcome ardour.

He tried to persuade her to do whatever it was he wanted, but after a few minutes she managed to escape to her room.

She dumped her bag on the bed, undressed, and took a long shower.

Later, she went to find something to eat and, inevitably, Tony joined her.

During the meal, she remembered she’d been meaning to ask him something.

“Do you know any towns around here, called Earth?”

“Earth? Like the planet?”

“That’s what it sounded like. I might have misheard.”

“I don’t know any. Whereabouts?”

“Somewhere round here. Not far.”

He shook his head. “Urf? Or Mirth?” He laughed loudly, and dropped his fork. “Are you sure?”

“No… not really. I think I must have got it wrong.”

In his own inimitable way, Tony continued to make bad puns until once again she found an excuse to get away.

There was a large map of the region in one of the offices, but she couldn’t see anything that might be where Helward said he lived. He had described it as a city lying in the south, but there was no large settlement for nearly sixty miles.

She was genuinely exhausted, and returned to her room.

She undressed, and took the two sketches Helward had given her and taped them to the wall by the bed. The one he had drawn of her was so strange…

She looked at it more closely. The paper it was drawn on was evidently quite old, for its edges were yellowed. Looking at the edges, she realized that the top and bottom were slightly burred where they had been torn, but the line was quite straight.

Experimentally, she ran the tip of her finger along it. The sensation was a quite regular vibration: the paper had been perforated…

Careful not to damage the drawing, she separated the tape from the wall, and took the sketch down.

On the back she discovered that a column of numbers had been printed down one side. One or two of them were asterisked.

Printed in pale blue ink along the side were the words: IBM Multifold ™.

She taped the sketch back on the wall… and stared at it uncomprehendingly for a long time.

4

In the morning Elizabeth put in another teleprinted request for a doctor, then set off for the village.

The daytime heat was flooding the village when she arrived, and already the listless mood of lethargy that had so infuriated her at first had set in. She sought out Luiz, who was sitting in the shadow of the church with two other men.

“Well… have they been back?”

“Not today, Menina Khan.”

“When did they say they’d come again?”

He shrugged idly. “Sometime. Today, tomorrow.”

“Have you tried that — ?”

She stopped, irritated with herself. She had meant to take the purported fertilizer to headquarters to have it analysed, and in her preoccupation had forgotten it.

“Let me know if they come.”

She went to see Maria and her new baby, but her mind was not fully on her work. Later she supervised a meal, which was served to all comers, then talked to Father dos Santos in the workshop. All this time she was aware that she had one ear cocked for any sounds of horses.

No longer trying to make any excuse for herself, she went down to the stable and saddled up the horse. She rode away from the village, towards the river.

She was trying not to dwell on her own thoughts, trying not to examine her own motives, but it was inevitable. The last twenty-four hours had been momentous in their own way. She had come out here to work in the field because of a feeling that her life at home was wasted, only to find a new kind of frustration here. In spite of intents and appearances, all the voluntary workers could offer was a sight of recovery to the impoverished people here. It was too little, too late. A few government handouts of grain, or a few inoculations, or a repaired church were all right, and better than nothing. But the root of the problem remained unsolved in practice: the central economy had failed. There was nothing on this land but what the people themselves could take.

The intrusion of Helward into her life was the first event of interest she had experienced since she arrived. She knew, as she rode the horse across the scrubland towards the trees, that her motives were mixed. Perhaps there was simple curiosity there, but it ran deeper.

The men on the station were obsessed with themselves and what they imagined their roles to be; they spoke in abstracts about group psychology, social readjustment, patterns of behaviour… and in her more cynical moods she found such an outlook simply pathetic. Apart from the unfortunate Tony Chappell, she had formed no kind of interest in any of the men, which was not as she had anticipated at all before she arrived.

Helward was different. She refrained from spelling it out to herself, but she knew why she was riding out to find him.

She found the place on the river-bank, and allowed her horse to drink. Later, she tethered it in the shade, and sat down by the water to wait. Again she tried to blank out the turmoil of mental activity: thoughts, desires, questions. Concentrating hard on the physical environment, she lay back on the bank in the sunshine and closed her eyes. She listened to the sound of the water as it ran across the pebbles of the river-bed, the sound of the gentle wind in the trees, the humming of insects, the smell of dry undergrowth, hot soil, warmth.

A long time passed. Behind her, the horse whisked its tail every few seconds, patiently flicking away the swarm of flies.

She opened her eyes as soon as she heard the sound of the other horse, and sat up.

Helward was there on the opposite bank. He raised his hand in greeting, and she waved back.

He dismounted immediately, and walked quickly along the bank until he was opposite her. She smiled to herself: he was evidently in high spirits because he was fooling around, trying to amuse her. When he stood opposite her, he leaned forward for some reason and tried to stand on his hands. After two attempts he made it, then toppled right over and landed with a shout and a splash in the river.

Elizabeth jumped up, and ran through the shallow water towards him.

“Are you all right?” she said.

He grinned at her. “I could do that when I was a kid.”

“So could I.”

He stood up, looking down ruefully at his soaked clothes.

“They’ll soon dry,” she said.

“I’ll get my horse.”

They splashed back through the river to the other side, and Helward stood his horse next to Elizabeth’s. She sat down on the bank again, and Helward sat close beside her, stretching out his legs in the sun so that his clothes might dry.

Behind them the horses stood nose to tail, whisking away the flies from each other’s face.

Questions, questions… but she suppressed them all. She enjoyed the intrigue, didn’t want to destroy it with understanding. The rational account was that he was an operative from a station similar to hers, and that he was enjoying an elaborate and somewhat pointless joke at her expense. If that was so, she didn’t care; his presence was enough, and she was herself sufficiently emotionally suppressed to relish the break with routine he was unwittingly bringing her.

The only common bond she knew of was his sketches, and she asked to see them again. For a while they talked about the drawings, and he expressed his various enthusiasms; she was interested to see that all the sketches were on the back of old computer print-out paper.

Eventually, he said: “I thought you were a took.”

He pronounced it with a long vowel, like shoot.

“What’s that?”

“One of the people who live round here. But they don’t speak English.”

“A few do. Not very well. Only when we teach them.”

“Who is ‘we’?”

“The people I work for.”

“You’re not from the city?” he said suddenly, then looked away.

Elizabeth felt a glimmer of alarm; he had looked and acted like this the day before, and then he had suddenly left. She didn’t want that, not now.

“Do you mean your city?”

“No… of course you’re not. Who are you?”

“You know my name,” she said.

“Yes, but where are you from?”

“England. I came here about two months ago.”

“England… that’s on Earth isn’t it?” He was staring at her intently, the drawings forgotten now.

She laughed, a nervous reaction to the strangeness of the question.

“It was the last time I was there,” she said, trying to make a joke of it.

“My God! Then—”

“What?”

He stood up abruptly, and turned away from her. He took a few steps, then turned again and stood over her, staring down.

“You’ve come from Earth?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you from Earth… the planet?”

“Of course… I don’t understand.”

“You’re looking for us,” he said.

“No! I mean… I’m not sure.”

“You’ve found us!”

She stood up, backed away from him.

She waited by the horses. The aura of strangeness had become one of madness, and she knew she should leave. The next move must come from him.

“Elizabeth… don’t go.”

“Liz,” she said.

“Liz… do you know who I am? I’m from the city of Earth. You must know what that means!”

“No, I don’t.”

“You haven’t heard about us?”

“No.”

“We’ve been here for thousands of miles… many years. Nearly two hundred.”

“Where is the city?”

He waved his arm in the direction of the north-east. “Down there. About twenty-five miles to the south.”

She didn’t react to the contradiction of direction, assumed he had made a mistake.

“Can I see the city?” she said.

“Of course!” He took her hand excitedly, and placed it on the rein of her horse. “We’ll go now!”

“Wait… How do you spell the name of your city?”

He spelt it for her.

“Why is it called that?”

“I don’t know. Because we are from the planet Earth, I suppose.”

“Why do you differentiate between the two?”

“Because… isn’t it obvious?”

“No.”

She realized she was humouring him as if he were a maniac, but it was only excitement that shone in his eyes, not mania. Her instinct, though, on which she had been so dependent recently, warned her to be careful. She could not be sure of anything now.

“But this is not Earth!”

She said: “Helward… meet me here tomorrow. By the stream.”

“I thought you wanted to see our city.”

“Yes… but not today. If it is twenty-five miles away, I would have to get a fresh horse, tell my superiors.” She was making excuses.

He looked at her uncertainly.

“You think I’m making it up,” he said.

“No.”

“Then what’s wrong? I tell you, as long as I can remember, and for many years before I was born, the city has survived in the hope that help would come from Earth. Now you are here and you think I am mad!”

“You are on Earth.”

He opened his mouth, closed it again.

“Why do you say that?” he said.

“Why should I say otherwise?”

He took her arm again, and whirled her round. He pointed upwards.

“What do you see?”

She shielded her eyes against the glare. “The sun.”

“The sun! The sun! What about the sun?”

“Nothing. Let go of my arm… you’re hurting me!”

He released her, and scrambled over to the discarded drawings. He took the top one, held it out for her to see.

“That is the sun!” he shouted, pointing at the weird shape that was drawn at the top right of the picture, a few inches away from the spindly figure that he said was her. “There is the sun!”

Heart beating furiously, she tore the rein away from the tree around which it was tied, climbed up into the saddle, and kicked in her heels. The horse wheeled round, and she galloped it away from the river.

Behind her, Helward stood, still holding out his drawing.

5

It was evening by the time Elizabeth reached the village, and she judged it already too late to set out for headquarters. She had no will to return there anyway, and there was somewhere she could sleep in the village.

The main street was empty of people; unusual, for this time of day was a popular one with the people for sitting in the dust outside their houses and talking idly while they drank the strong, resinous wine that was all they could ferment round here.

There was a noise coming from the church, and she headed that way. Inside, most of the men of the village were gathered, and a few of the women. One or two of these were crying.

“What’s going on?” Elizabeth said to Father dos Santos.

“Those men came back,” he said. “They’ve offered a deal.”

He was standing well to one side, obviously incapable of influencing the people in any way.

Elizabeth tried to catch the gist of the discussion, but there was much shouting, and even Luiz, who stood prominently near the wrecked altar, could not make himself heard over the hubbub. Elizabeth caught his eye, and at once he came over.

“Well?”

“The men came today, Menina Khan. We are agreeing to their terms.”

“It doesn’t sound like there’s much agreement. What are their terms?”

“Fair.”

He started to head back towards the altar, but Elizabeth caught his arm.

“What did they want?” she said.

“They will give us many medicines, and a lot of food. There is more of the fertilizer, and they say they will help repair the church, though that is not wished by us.”

He was looking at her evasively, his gaze flickering up to her eyes, then away, then back again.

“And in return?”

“Only a little.”

“Come on, Luiz. What did they want?”

“Ten of our women. Is nothing.”

She stared at him in amazement. “What did you — ?”

“They will be well looked after. They will make them healthy, and when they return to us they will bring more food.”

“And what do the women say to that?”

He glanced over his shoulder. “They are not happy.”

“I’ll bet they’re not.” She looked over at the six women who were present. They stood in a small group, and the men nearest to them were already looking sheepish. “What do they want them for?”

“We do not ask.”

“Because you think you know.” She turned to dos Santos. “What’s going to happen?”

“They’ve already made up their minds,” he said.

“But why? Surely they can’t seriously consider trading their wives and daughters for a few sacks of grain?”

Luiz said: “We need what they offer.”

“But we have already promised you food. There is a doctor on his way now.”

“Yes… and so you have promised. Two months you have been here and very little food, no doctor. These men are honourable, because we can tell.”

He turned his back on her, and returned to the front of the crowd. In a moment he called for a vote by show of hands. The deal was confirmed, and none of the women voted.

Elizabeth passed a restless night, although by the time she rose in the morning she knew what she was going to do.

The day had produced a volume of unexpected developments. Ironically, the one development of which she had felt instinctively confident had not materialized. Now that the encounter with Helward had taken on a new perspective, she could put words to what she had expected: the stirring inside her had been a physical restlessness, and she had ridden down to the river in full expectation of being seduced by him. It could still have happened until that moment the fanatical expression had taken his eyes; even now she still experienced stirrings of that sensation — not fear, not amazement, somewhere between — whenever she recalled the shouted conversation under the trees.

“What about the sun?” still echoed.

Undoubtedly there was more to the scene than had appeared. Helward’s behaviour the day before had been different; she had tapped then a hidden sensitivity, and he had responded the way any man would. There was no sign of the presumed mania then. And not until she talked to him about his life, or her life, had he reacted that way.

And there was the mystery about the computer paper. There was only one computer within a thousand miles of here, and she knew where it was and what it was used for. It didn’t use paper print-outs, and it certainly wasn’t an IBM. She knew of IBMs; anyone who was trained in the basics of computers had heard of them, but no machine had been made by them since the Crash. Certainly the only ones intact, if not working, were in museums.

Finally, the deal proposed by the men who had visited the village had been wholly unanticipated, at least by her, although when she remembered Luiz’s expression after he had first spoken to the men she felt sure that he had had at least an inkling of what had been expected by way of payment.

Somehow, all must be connected. She knew the men who had come to the village were from the same place as Helward, and that his behaviour was linked in some way with this deal.

There remained the question of her own involvement in this.

Technically, the village and its people were the responsibility of her and dos Santos. There had been a visit from one of the supervisors from headquarters in the early days, but much of the attention of the hierarchy was directed towards overseeing the repair of a big harbour on the coast. In theory, she was in the charge of dos Santos, but he was a local man who had been one of the several hundred students who had been crammed through the government theological college in an effort to take religion back to the outlying regions. Religion was the traditional opiate here, and the missionary work was given a high priority. But the facts of the situation spoke for themselves: dos Santos’s work would take years, and for most of the first few years he would be working uphill towards re-establishing the church as the social and spiritual leadership of the community. The villagers tolerated him, but it was of Luiz they took notice, and, to a certain extent, herself.

It would be equally useless to look to headquarters for guidance. Although the establishment was run by good and sincere men, their work was still so new that they had not yet taken their heads out of the clouds of theory; a plain, human problem like women bartered for food would not be in their scope.

If any action were to be taken, it would have to be on her own initiative.

The decision did not come quickly; throughout that long, warm night she did what she could to separate the pros and cons, the risks and the benefits, and however she looked at it her chosen course of action seemed to be the only one.

She rose early, and went down to Maria’s house. She had to be quick: the men had said they would be coming soon after sunrise.

Maria was awake, her baby was crying. She knew of the decision taken the night before, and she questioned Elizabeth about it as soon as she arrived.

“No time for that,” Elizabeth said brusquely. “I want some clothes.”

“But yours are so beautiful.”

“I want something of yours… anything will do.”

Grumbling speculatively, Maria found a selection of rough garments, and laid them out for Elizabeth’s inspection. They were all well-used, and probably none had ever seen soap and water. For Elizabeth’s purpose they were ideal. She selected a ragged, loose-fitting skirt and an off-white shirt that had presumably once belonged to one of the men.

She slipped off her own clothes, including her underwear, and pulled on Maria’s. She folded her own clothes into a neat pile, and gave them to Maria to look after for her until she returned.

“But you look no better than a village girl!”

“Right.”

She looked at the baby to make sure it was not ill, then went through with Maria the daily routines she should follow. Maria, as ever, pretended to listen, although Elizabeth knew she would forget everything as soon as she was not there to watch her. Had she not reared three children already?

Walking barefoot up the dusty street, Elizabeth wondered if she would pass for one of the village women. Her hair was long and brown, and her body had become tanned in the weeks here, but she knew her skin lacked the lustrous quality of the local women. She ran her fingers through her hair, changing the parting, and hoping it would become more straggly.

There was already a small group of people in the square in front of the church, and more were arriving every minute. Luiz was at the centre of everything, trying to persuade the women who were watching out of curiosity to return to their homes.

Beside him was a small group of girls; the youngest and the most attractive in the village, Elizabeth realized with a feeling of appalled horror. Soon, all ten were standing beside Luiz, and she pushed foward through the crowd.

Luiz recognized her at once.

“Menina Khan—”

“Luiz, who is the youngest of these?”

Before he could answer she had picked out the girl for herself: Lea, who was no more than about fourteen. She went over to her.

“Lea, go back to your mother. I will go instead.”

Unsurprised and uncomplaining, the girl walked mutely away. Luiz stared at Elizabeth for a moment, then shrugged.

They did not have long to wait, In a few minutes three men appeared, each riding a horse and each leading another. All six horses were laden with packages, and without ceremony the three riders dismounted and unloaded the materials they had brought.

Luiz watched keenly. Elizabeth heard one of the men say to him: “We’ll be back in two days with the rest. Do you want the work done on the church?

“No… we do not need that.”

“As you wish. Do you want to change any of the terms of the barter?”

“No. We are satisfied.”

“Good.” The man turned and faced the rest of the people who were watching the transaction. He spoke to them as he had spoken to Luiz, in their own language, but with a heavy accent. “We have tried to be men of good will and good word. Some of you may not be in favour of the terms we have proposed, but we ask your understanding. The women you have loaned to us will be cared for and will not be treated badly in any way. Their health and happiness is in our interests as much as yours. We shall see that they return to you as soon as possible. Thank you.”

The ceremony, for what it was, was over. The men offered the horses to the women to ride. Two of the girls climbed on to one horse, and five more took a horse each. Elizabeth and the two others elected to walk, and soon the small party left the village, walking the horses up the dried-up river bed to the wide scrubland beyond.

6

Throughout the journey Elizabeth maintained the same silence as the other girls. As far as possible she was trying to remain anonymous.

The three men spoke to each other in English, assuming that none of the girls would be able to understand them. At first, Elizabeth was listening intently, hoping to learn something of interest, but to her disappointment discovered that most of what the men said was concerned with complaints about the heat, the lack of shade, and how long the journey would take.

Their concern for the women seemed genuine enough, and they made repeated enquiries about their condition. Speaking occasionally to the other girls in their own language, Elizabeth discovered their preoccupations were much the same: they were hot, thirsty, tired, anxious that the journey be completed.

Every hour or so they took a brief rest, and took it in turns to ride on the horses. None of the men rode for any of the way, and in time Elizabeth began to sympathize with their complaints. If their destination was, as Helward had said, twentyfive miles away, it was a long walk on a hot day.

Later in the day, perhaps inhibitions had become relaxed by tiredness, or the general lack of reaction from any of their companions had re-affirmed their lack of understanding of the language, but the men somehow turned the topic of conversation to less immediate concerns. It started with grumbles about the unrelenting heat, but shifted to another topic almost at once.

“Do you think all this is still necessary?”

“The barters?”

“Yes… I mean, it’s caused trouble in the past.”

“There’s no other way.”

“It’s too damned hot.”

“What would you do instead?”

“I don’t know. Not my decision. If I had my way I wouldn’t be out here now.”

“It still makes sense to me. The last lot haven’t moved out yet, and there’s no sign of them doing so. Maybe we won’t have to barter any more.”

“We will.”

“You sound as if you don’t approve.”

“Frankly, I don’t. Sometimes I think the whole system’s crazy.”

“You’ve been listening to the Terminators.”

“Maybe I have. If you listen to them they make a bit of sense. Not completely, but they’re not as bad as the Navigators make out.”

“You’re out of your mind.”

“O.K. Who wouldn’t be in this heat?”

“You’d better not repeat that in the city.”

“Why not? Enough people are saying it already.”

“Not guildsmen. You’ve been down past. You know what’s what.”

“I’m just being realistic. You’ve got to listen to people’s opinions. There are more people in the city who want to stop than there are guildsmen. That’s all.”

“Shut up, Norris,” said the man who had so far not spoken, the one who had addressed the crowd.

They continued on their way.

The city had been in sight for some time before Elizabeth recognized it for what it was. As they came nearer she looked at it with great interest, not comprehending the system of tracks and cables that stretched away from it. Her first assumption was that it was some kind of marshalling yard, but there was no sign of any rolling-stock and anyway the length of track was too short for any practical use.

Later she noticed several men apparently patrolling the tracks, each of whom carried a rifle or what appeared to be a crossbow. More than this she could not absorb, since most of her attention was on the structure itself.

She had heard the men refer to it as a city, and Helward too, but to her eyes it was not much more than a large and misshapen office block. It did not look too safe, constructed mainly of timber. It had the ugliness of functionalism, and yet there was a simplicity to its design which was not altogether unattractive. She was reminded of pictures she had seen of pre-Crash buildings, and although most of those had been steel and reinforced concrete they shared the squareness, the plainness, and lack of exterior decoration. Those old buildings had been tall, though, and this strange structure •was nowhere more than seven storeys high. The timber showed varying stages of weathering; most of what she could see had been well bleached by the elements, but there were newer parts visible.

The men took them right up to the base of the building, and then into a dark passageway. Here they dismounted, and several young men came forward to lead away the horses.

The men took them to a door in the passageway, up a staircase, and through another doorway. They emerged into a brightly lit corridor.

At the end of this there was another door, and here they parted company with the men. There was a printed sign on the door, which said: TRANSFERENCE QUARTERS.

Inside they were greeted by two women, who spoke to them in the badly accented language of the people.

Once Elizabeth had adopted her pose, there was no way of abandoning it.

In the next few days she was subjected to a series of examinations and treatments which, had she not suspected the reason, she would have found humiliating. She was bathed, and her hair was washed. She was medically examined, her eyes were tested, her teeth were checked. Her hair and scalp were inspected for infestation, and she was given a test which she could only imagine was to determine whether or not she had VD.

Without surprise, the woman supervising the examination passed her with a clean bill of health — of the ten girls, Elizabeth was the only one who was so passed — and she was then given over to two more women who began to instruct her in the rudiments of speaking English. This caused her some considerable private amusement, and in spite of her best efforts to delay the learning process she was soon considered fit and educated enough to be released from this initial period of habilitation.

The first few nights she had slept in a communal dormitory in the transference centre, but now she was given a tiny room of her own. This was scrupulously clean and furnished minimally. It contained a narrow bed, a space to hang her clothes — she had been given two identical sets of clothes to wear — a chair, and about four square feet of floor space.

Eight days had passed since coming to the city, and Elizabeth was beginning to wonder what she had hoped to achieve. Now she had been cleared by the transference section she was assigned to the kitchens, where the work she was given was straightforward drudgery. The evenings were free, but she was told that she was expected to spend at least an hour or two in a certain reception-room where, she was told, she was supposed to mix socially with the people she met there.

This room was situated next to the transference section. It had a small bar at one end with, Elizabeth noted, a distinct shortage of choice, and next to this an ancient video set. When she switched it on a tape device attached to it showed a comedy programme that she frankly couldn’t understand at all, although an invisible audience laughed all the way through. The comic allusions were evidently contemporary, and thus meaningless to her. She watched the programme through, and from a copyright notice at the end learnt that it had been taped in 1985. More than two hundred years old!

There were usually only a few people in this room when she was there. A woman from the transference section worked behind the bar, maintaining a fixed grin, but Elizabeth could not work up much interest in the other people there. A few men came in occasionally — dressed, as Helward had been, in the dark uniform — and there were two or three local girls.

One day, working in the kitchen, she accidentally solved a problem that had continued to nag at her.

She was stacking away some of the clean crockery in a metal cupboard used for this purpose, when something about it caught her attention. It had been changed almost out of recognition — its components had been removed, and it had been fitted with wooden shelves — but the IBM motif on one of the doors still showed through the covering layer of paint.

When she could, Elizabeth walked around the rest of the city, curious about almost everything she saw. Before entering the city she had expected to find herself a virtual prisoner, but beyond the bounds of the duties she had to perform she was free to go wherever she liked, do whatever she wished. She talked to people, she saw, she registered, and she thought.

One day she came across a small room set aside for use by the ordinary people of the city in their leisure hours. Lying on a table she found a few sheets of printed paper, neatly stapled together. She glanced at them without much interest, saw the title on the first page: Destaine’s Directive.

Later, as she walked through the city she saw many more of these printed sheets, and in due time, with her curiosity piqued, she read one set through. Having seen its contents, she immediately concealed a copy in the bedclothes of her bunk, meaning to take it with her when she left the city.

She was beginning to understand… She returned again to Destaine, read his words so often they became almost photographically recorded. And she thought about Helward, and his apparently wild behaviour and words, and she tried to remember what he had said.

In time, a kind of logical pattern appeared… but there was one ineradicable flaw in everything.

The hypothesis by which the city and its people existed was that the world on which they lived was somehow inverted. Not only the world, but all the physical objects in the universe in which that world was supposed to exist. The shape that Destame drew — a solid world, curved north and south in the shape of hyperbolas — was the approximation they used, and it correlated indeed with the strange shape that Helward had drawn to depict the sun.

One day Elizabeth saw the flaw, as she walked through one of the parts of the city presently being re-built.

She glanced up at the sun, shielding her eyes with her hand. The sun was as she had ever known it: a brilliant white ball of light high in the sky.

7

Elizabeth planned to leave the city the following morning, taking one of the horses and riding across country to the village. From there she could get back to headquarters and take some leave. She was due for some leave in a few weeks’ time, and she knew she could have it brought forward without much difficulty. With the four weeks then available, she would have plenty of time to get back to England and try to find some authority somewhere who could be made interested in what she had discovered.

She did not wish to draw attention to herself once she had formed this plan, and so spent the day working in the kitchens as normal. In the evening she went to the reception room.

When she walked through the door, the first man she saw was Helward. He was standing with his back to her, talking to one of the transferred girls.

She went and stood behind him.

“Hello, Helward,” she said quietly.

He turned round to acknowledge her, then looked at her in amazement.

“You!” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“Ssh! I’m not supposed to be able to speak English very well. I’m one of your transferred women.”

She walked over to a deserted part of the room. The woman at the bar nodded her head in patronizing approval as Helward followed.

“Look,” Elizabeth said at once, “I’m sorry about the last time we met. I understand better now.”

“And I’m sorry if I frightened you.”

“Have you said anything to any of the others?”

“About you being from Earth? No.”

“Good. Don’t say anything.”

He said: “Are you really from Earth planet?”

“Yes, but I wish you wouldn’t refer to it as that. I’m from Earth, and so are you. There’s a misunderstanding.”

“God, you can say that again.” He looked down at her from the nine inches advantage he had in height. “You look different here… but what are you doing as a transfer?”

“It was the only way of getting into the city I could think of.”

“I would have taken you.” He glanced around the room. “Have you paired up with any of the men yet?”

“No.”

“Don’t.” As he talked, he kept looking over his shoulder. “Have you got a room to yourself? We could talk better.”

“Yes. Shall we go?”

She closed the door when they were inside the room; the walls were thin, but at least it had the appearance of privacy. She wondered why he needed to be guarded in speaking to her.

She sat on the chair, and Helward sat on the edge of the bed.

“I’ve read Destaine,” she said. “It was fascinating. I’ve heard of him somehow. Who was he?”

“The founder of the city.”

“Yes, I’d gathered that. But he was known for something else.”

Helward looked blank. “Did what he write make any sense to you?”

“A little. He was a very lost man. But he was wrong.”

“Wrong about what?”

“The city, and the danger it was in. He writes as if he and the others had somehow been transported to another world.”

“That’s so.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “You’ve never left Earth, Helward. As I sit here and talk to you now, we’re both on Earth.”

He shook his head in despair. “You’re wrong, I know you’re wrong. Whatever you say, Destaine knew the true situation. We are on another world.”

Elizabeth said: “The other day… you drew me with the sun behind me. You drew it like a hyperbola. Is that how you see it? You drew me too tall. Is that how you see me?”

“That’s not how I see the sun, that’s how it is. And it is how the world is. You I drew tall, because… that’s how I saw you then. We were a long way north of the city. Now… It’s too difficult to explain.”

“Try it.”

“No.”

“O.K. Do you know how I see the sun? It’s normal… round, spherical, whatever the correct description is. Can’t you see that it’s a question of what we ourselves perceive? Your perceptions inform you incorrectly… I don’t know why, but Destame’s perception was wrong too.”

“Liz, it’s more than perception. I’ve seen, felt, lived in this world. Whatever you say, it’s real to me. I’m not alone. Most of the people in the city carry the same knowledge. It started with Destaine because he was there at the beginning. We’ve survived here a long time, simply because of that knowledge. It’s been the root of everything, and it’s kept us alive because without it we would not keep the city moving.”

Elizabeth started to say something, but he carried on. “Liz, after I saw you the other day I needed time to think. I rode north, a long way north. I saw something there that is going to test the city’s capacity for survival like it has never been tested before. Meeting you was… I don’t know. More than I had expected. But it led indirectly to a much bigger thing.”

“What is it?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t tell anyone, except the Navigators. They’ve declared it restricted for the moment. It would be a bad time for the news to get out.”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you heard of the Terminators?”

“Yes… but I don’t know who they are.”

“They’re a… political group in the city. They’ve been trying to get the city to stop. If this news leaked out at the moment, there’d be a lot of trouble. We’ve just survived a major crisis, and the Navigators don’t want another.”

Elizabeth stared at him without saying anything. She had suddenly seen herself in a new light.

She was at an interface of two realities: one was hers, one was his. However close they came together there would never be any contact between them. Like the graph line Destaine had drawn to approximate the reality he perceived, the nearer she came to him in one sense the further she moved away in another. Somehow, she had drawn herself into this drama, where one logic failed in the face of another, and she knew she was incapable of dealing with it.

Persuaded as she was by Helward’s sincerity, and the manifest existence of the city and its people, and further by the apparently strange concepts around which they had planned their survival, she could not eradicate from her mind the basic contradiction. The city and its people existed on Earth, the Earth she knew, and whatever she saw, whatever Helward said, there was no way around this. Evidence to the contrary made no sense.

But when the interface was challenged, there was an impasse.

Elizabeth said: “I’m going to leave the city tomorrow.”

“Come with me. I’m going north again.”

“No… I’ve got to get back to the village.”

“Is that the one where they bartered for the women?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going that way. We’ll ride together.”

Another impasse: the village lay to the south-west of the city.

“Why did you come to the city, Liz? You aren’t one of the local women.”

“I wanted to see you.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. You frightened me, but I was seeing the other men who were like you, trading with the village people. I wanted to find out what was going on. Now I wish I hadn’t, because you still frighten me.”

“I’m not raving at you again, am I?” he said.

She laughed… and she realized that it was for the first time since she came to the city.

“No, of course not,” she said. “It’s more… I can’t say. Everything I take for granted is different here in the city. Not everyday things, but the bigger things, like the reason for being. There’s a great concentration of determination here, as if the city itself is the only focus of all human existence. I know that’s not so. There are a million other things to do in the world, and survival is undoubtedly a drive, but not the primary one. Here the emphasis is on your concept of survival, at any cost. I’ve been outside the city, Helward, a long way outside the city. Whatever else you may think, this place is not the centre of the universe.”

“It is,” he said. “Because if we ever stopped believing that, we would all die.”

8

Leaving the city presented Elizabeth with no problems. She went down to the stables with Helward and another man, whom he introduced as Future Blayne, collected three horses, and rode in a direction which Helward declared was northwards. Again, she questioned his sense of direction as by her reckoning of the position of the sun the true direction was towards the south-west, but she made nothing of it. By this time she was so accustomed to the straightforward affronts to what she considered logic that she saw no point in remarking on them to him. She was content to accept the ways of the city, if not to understand them.

As they rode out from under the city, Helward pointed out the great wheels on which the city was mounted, and explained that the motion forwards was so slow as to be almost undetectable. However, he assured her, the city moved about one mile every ten days. Northwards, or towards the south-west, whichever way she cared to think of it.

The journey took two days. The men talked a lot, both to each other and to her, although not much of it made sense to her.

She felt that she had suffered an overload of new information, and could absorb no more.

On the evening of the first day they passed within a mile or so of her village, and she told Helward she was going there.

“No… come with us. You can go back later.”

She said: “I want to go back to England. I think I can help you.”

“You ought to see this.”

“What is it?”

“We’re not sure,” said Blayne. “Helward thinks you might be able to tell us.”

She resisted for a few more minutes, but in the end went on with them.

It was curious how she succumbed so readily to the various involvements of these people. Perhaps it was because she could identify with some of them, and perhaps it was because the society within the city was a curiously civilized existence — for all its strange ways — in a countryside that had been wasted by anarchy for generations. Even in the few weeks she had been in the village the peasant outlook, the unquestioning lethargy, the inability to cope with even the most minor of problems had sapped her will to meet the challenge of her work. But the people of Helward’s city were of a different order. Evidently they were some offshoot community that had somehow managed to preserve themselves during the Crash, and now lived on past that time. Even so, the makings of a regulated society were there: the evident discipline, the sense of purpose, and a real and vital understanding of their own identity, however much of a dichotomy existed between inner similarities and outer differences.

So when Helward requested her to go with them, and Blayne supported him, she could put up no opposition. She had by her own actions involved herself in the affairs of their community. The consequences of her abandoning the village would have to be faced later — she could justify her absence by saying she wanted to know where the women were being taken — but she felt now that she must follow this through. Ultimately, there would be some official body who would have to rehabilitate the people of the city, but until then she was personally involved.

They spent the night under canvas. There were only two tents, and the men gallantly offered her one of them for her own use… but before that they spent a long time talking.

Helward had evidently told Blayne about her, and how she was different, as he saw her, from both the people of the city and the people of the villages.

Blayne now spoke directly to her, and Helward stayed in the background. He spoke only rarely, and then to confirm things that Blayne said. She liked the other man, and found him direct in his manner: he tried not to evade any of her questions.

By and large he affirmed what she had learned. He spoke of Destaine and his Directive, he spoke of the city and its need to move forward, and he talked of the shape of the world. She had learnt not to argue with the city outlook, and she listened to what they said.

When she eventually crawled into her sleeping-bag she was exhausted from the long ride through the day, but sleep came slowly. The interface had hardened.

Though the confidence in her own logic had not been shaken, her understanding of the city people’s had been deepened. They lived, they said, on a world where the laws of nature were not the same. She was prepared to believe that… or rather, prepared to believe that they were sincere, but mistaken.

It was not the exterior world that was different, but their perception of it. By what manner could she change that?

Emerging from woodland they encountered a region of coarse scrubland, where tall grasses and scrawny bushes grew wildly. There were no tracks here and progress was slow. There was a cool, steady wind blowing now, and an exhilarating freshness sharpened their senses.

Gradually, the vegetation gave way to a hard, tough grass, growing in sandy soil. Neither of the men said anything; Helward in particular stared ahead of him as he rode, letting his horse find its own route.

Elizabeth saw that ahead of them the vegetation gave way altogether, and as they breasted a ridge of loose sand and gravel, only a few yards of low sand-dunes lay between them and the beach. Her horse, who had already sensed the salt in the air, responded readily to the kick of her heels and they cantered down across the sand. For a few heady minutes she gave the horse its head, and exulted in the freedom and joy of galloping along a beach, its surface unuttered, unbroken, untouched by anything but waves for decades.

Helward and Blayne had ridden down to the beach behind her, and now stood close together by their horses, looking out across the water.

She trotted her horse over to them, and dismounted.

“Does it extend east and west?” said Blayne.

“As far as I explored. There’s no way round I could see.”

Blayne took a video camera from one of his packs, connected it to the case, and panned it slowly across the view.

“We’ll have to survey east and west,” he said. “It would be impossible to cross.”

“There’s no sign of an opposite bank.”

Blayne frowned at the beach. “I don’t like the soil. We’ll have to get a Bridge-Builder up here. I don’t think this would take the weight of the city.”

“There must be some way.”

The two men entirely ignored her. Helward erected a small instrument, a tripodal device with a concentric chart suspended by three catches below the fulcrum. He hung a plumbline over the chart, and took some kind of reading from it.

“We’re a long way from optimum,” he said eventually. “We’ve got plenty of time. Thirty miles… almost a year city-time. Do you think it could be done?”

“A bridge? It’d take some doing. We’d need more men than we’ve got at the moment. What did the Navigators say?”

“Check what I reported. Do you check?”

“Yes. I can’t see that I can add anything.”

Helward stared for a few seconds longer at the expanse of water, then seemed to remember Elizabeth. He turned to her.

“What do you say?”

“About this? What do you expect me to say?”

“Tell us about our perceptions,” said Helward. “Tell us there’s no river here.”

She said: “It’s not a river.”

Helward glanced at Blayne.

“You heard her,” he said. “We’re imagining it.”

Elizabeth closed her eyes, turned away. She could no longer confront the interface.

The breeze was chilling her, so she took a blanket from her horse and moved hack to the sandy ridge. When she faced them again they were paying no more attention to her. Helward had erected another instrument, and was taking several readings from it. He called them out to Blayne, his voice whipped thin by the wind.

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.