Inverted World (16 page)

Mentally, he marked off the first one. Thirty-seven to go.

In spite of their slow progress he still saw no reason why he should not be back in the city in time for the birth of his own child. After he had seen the women back to their village he could make good progress on his own, however unpleasant the conditions.

He decided to allow the girls an hour for their rest, and when he estimated that it had passed he went and stood over them.

Caterina opened her eyes, and looked up at him.

“Come on,” he said. “I want to move on.”

“Is too hot.”

“Is too bad,” he said. “We’re moving.”

She stood up, stretching her body elaborately, then spoke to the other two. With similar reluctance they stood up, and Rosario went and looked at the baby. To Helward’s dismay she woke it, and lifted it up … but fortunately the crying did not start again. Without delay, Helward gave back the two holdalls to Caterina and Lucia, and picked up his own two packs.

Away from the shade, the full heat of the sun came down on them, and within a few seconds the benefit of the rest in the shade seemed to vanish.

They had gone only a few yards when Rosario passed the baby to Lucia.

She went back to the rocks and disappeared behind them. Helward opened his mouth to ask where she had gone… but then realized. When she returned, Lucia went, and then Caterina. Helward felt his anger returning. They were deliberately delaying him. He felt a pressure in his own bladder, aggravated-by realizing what the girls had been doing, but his anger and pride would not allow him to relieve himself. He decided to wait until later.

They walked on. The girls had now discarded the jackets that were common apparel inside the city, and wore only the trousers and shirts. The thin material, damp with perspiration, adhered to their bodies and Helward noticed this with a despondent interest, reflecting that under different circumstances he might have found the phenomenon of considerable potential. As things were he registered this new development only so far as to appreciate that each of the girls was of fuller figure than Victoria; Rosario in particular had large, pendulous breasts with protuberant nipples. Later, one of the girls must have noticed his occasional glance, for soon all three of them were walking with their jackets held over their chests. It made no difference to Helward...he just wanted to be rid of them.

“We have water?” said Lucia, crossing over to him.

He rummaged in the pack and gave her the canteen. She drank some, and then moistened the palms of her hands and splashed water over her face and neck. Rosario and Caterina did likewise. The sight and sound of the water was too much for Helward, and his bladder protested anew. He looked around. There was no cover, so he walked some yards away from the girls and relieved himself on to the soil. Behind, he heard them giggling.

When he returned, Caterina held out the canteen to him. He took it and raised it to his lips. Suddenly, Caterina tipped it from below, and the water splashed over his nose and eyes. The girls roared with laughter as he spluttered and choked. The baby started crying again.

They passed two more stay-emplacement marks before evening, and then Helward decided to pitch camp for the night. He selected a site near a clump of trees two or three hundred yards from the scars made by the tracks. A small brook passed nearby, and after testing it for purity—he had no guide other than his own palate—he declared it safe for drinking to conserve the supply in the canteens.

The tent was relatively simple to erect, and although he started the work on his own the girls helped him finish off. As soon as it was up he laid the sleeping-bags inside, and Rosario went in to feed the baby.

When the baby had gone to sleep again, Lucia helped Helward reponstitute the synthetic food. The result this time was an orange-coloured soup and it tasted no better than before. As they were eating, the sun set. Helward had lit a small fire, but soon a wind blew up from the east, chilling them.

Finally, they were forced to go inside the tent and lie down inside their sleeping-bags for warmth.

Helward tried to strike up a conversation with the girls but either they did not answer, or they giggled, or made joking references to each other in Spanish, so he soon abandoned the idea. There were a few small candles in the pack of equipment, and Helward lay in the light of these for an hour or two, wondering what possible benefit the city could derive from this pointless expedition of his.

He fell asleep at last, but was wakened twice in the night by the baby crying. On one occasion he could just make out the shape of Rosario against the dim glow from outside, sitting up in her sleeping-bag and suckling the baby.

They were awake early, and set off as soon as they could. Helward wasn’t sure what had happened, but the mood of the girls today was obviously different. As they walked Caterina and Lucia sang a little, and at their first stop for a drink they tried again to spill the water on him. He moved back to avoid them, but in doing so stumbled on the uneven ground… and spluttered and choked once more for their amusement. Only Rosario maintained a distance, pointedly ignoring him as Lucia and Caterina played up to him. He didn’t enjoy being teased—for he could think of no way of replying—but he preferred it to the bad feeling of the day before.

As the morning progressed and the temperature rose, their mood became more careless. None of the three girls wore her jacket, and at the next stop Lucia undid the top two buttons of her shirt and Caterina opened hers all the way down the front, holding it in place with a large knot and so baring her midriff.

By now Helward could not mistake the effect they were having on him. As familiarity grew, so the atmosphere eased further. Even Rosario did not turn her back on him the next time she suckled her baby.

Relief from the heat came with another patch of woodland, one which Helward could remember helping to clear for the track-layers some miles before. They sat down in the shadows, waiting for the worst of the heat to pass.

They had now passed a total of five cable-stay marks: thirty-three to go. Helward’s mood of frustration at the slowness of their journey was easing; he saw that to travel faster was hardly possible, even if he had been alone.

The ground was too hard, the sun too hot.

He decided to wait for two hours in the shadow of the trees. Rosario had moved some way away from him, and was playing with her baby. Caterina and Lucia sat together under a tree. They had taken off their shoes and were talking quietly together. Helward closed his eyes for a few minutes, but soon became restless. He walked out of the trees on his own, and went down to the scars left by the four lines of track. He looked left and right, north and south: the line ran straight and true, undulating slightly with the rise and fall of the ground, but always maintaining its direction.

Enjoying the comparative solitude he stood there for some time, wishing the weather would change and the sky would cloud over, if only temporarily. He debated with himself for a while, trying to decide whether it might be better to rest during the days and travel at night … but considered on balance it would be too risky.

He was about to turn back to the trees when he suddenly saw a movement about a mile to the south of him. At once he was on his guard, and dropped to the ground, lying behind a treestump. He waited.

In a moment he saw it again: someone was walking up the track towards him.

Helward remembered his crossbow, folded inside the pack … but already it was too late to go back for it. There was a bush just a yard or two to the side of the stump, and he wriggled over until he was behind it. Now better covered he hoped he might not be seen.

The figure was still coming towards him, and in a few minutes Helward saw to his surprise that the man was wearing the uniform of a guild apprentice. His first impulse was to come out of hiding, but he fought this back and stayed put.

When the man was less than fifty yards away, Helward recognized him. It was Torrold Pelham, a boy several miles older than him who had left the crèche a considerable time before.

Helward broke cover and stood up.

“Torrold!”

At once, Pelham was on his guard. He raised his crossbow and aimed it at Helward … then slowly lowered it.

“Torrold … it’s me. Helward Mann.”

“God, what are you doing here?”

They laughed together, realizing that they were both here for the same reason.

“You’ve grown up,” said Pelham. “You were just a kid the last time I saw you.”

“Have you been down past?” said Helward.

“Yes.” Pelharn stared past him, northwards up the track.

“Well?”

“It’s not what I thought.”

“What’s there?” said Helward.

“You’re down past now. Can’t you feel it?”

“Feel what?”

Pelham looked at him for a moment. “It’s not so bad here. But you can feel it. Perhaps you can’t recognize it yet. It builds up quickly further south.”

“What does? You’re talking in riddles.”

“No … it’s just impossible to explain.” Pelham glanced towards the north again. “Is the city near here?”

“A few miles. Not far.”

“What happened to it? Have they found some way to make it move faster?

I’ve only been gone a short time, and the city’s moved much further than I thought it would.”

“It’s gone no faster than normal.”

“There’s a creek back there where a bridge had been built. When was that done?”

“About nine miles ago.”

Pelham shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“You’ve lost your sense of time, that’s all.”

Pelham suddenly grinned. “I expect that’s it. Listen, are you on your own?”

“No,” said Helward. “I’ve got three girls with me.”

“What are they like?”

“They’re O.K. It was a bit difficult at first, but we’re getting to know each other now.”

“Good lookers are they?”

“Not bad. Come and see.”

Helward led the way back through the trees until the girls came into view.

Pelham whistled. “Hey… they’re all right. Have you… you know?”

“No.”

They walked back towards the track.

Pelham said: “Are you going to?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Take a tip, Helward … if you’re going to, do it soon. Otherwise it’ll be too late.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll see.”

Pelham gave him a cheery grin, then continued on his way northwards.

Thoughts and intentions in the direction to which Pelham had been alluding were put out of Helward’s mind almost at once. Rosario fed her baby before they set off, and they had been walking only a few minutes when the child was violently sick.

Rosario hugged it to her, crooning quietly, but there was little anyone could do. Lucia stood by her, speaking sympathetically to her. Helward was worried, because if the child were seriously ill there was not much else they could do but return to the city. Soon, though, the baby stopped retching, and after a lusty crying session it quietened down.

“Do you want to go on?” Helward said to Rosario.

She shrugged helplessly. “
Sí.
”

They walked on more slowly. The heat had not abated much, and several times Helward asked the girls if they wanted to stop. Each time they said no, but Helward detected that a subtle change had come over all four of them. It was if the minor tragedy had drawn them together.

“We’ll camp tonight,” said Helward. “And rest all day tomorrow.”

There was agreement to this and when Rosario fed the baby again a little later, this time it kept the milk down.

Just before nightfall they passed through countryside which was more hilly and rocky than that they had seen so far, and suddenly they came to the chasm that had caused so much trouble to the Bridge-Builders. There was not much sign now of where the bridge had been, although the foundations of the suspension towers had left two large scars in the ground on this side.

Helward remembered a patch of level ground on the northern bank of the stream at the bottom of the chasm, and he led the way down.

Rosario and Lucia fussed over the baby, while Caterina helped Helward erect the tent. Suddenly, while they were laying out the four sleeping-bags inside, Caterina put a hand on his neck and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

He grinned at her. “What’s that for?”

“You O.K. with Rosario.”

Helward stayed put, thinking that the kiss might be repeated, but Caterina crawled backwards from the tent and called the others.

The baby looked better, and fell asleep when it was put into its makeshift cot inside the tent. Rosario said nothing about the child, but Helward could tell she felt less worried. Perhaps it had been wind.

The evening was much warmer than the night before, and after they had eaten they stayed outside the tent for some time. Lucia was concerned with her feet, rubbing them continually, and the other girls seemed to be making much of this. She showed her feet to Helward, and he saw that large calluses had appeared on the outer sides of her toes. Feet were compared at great length, the other girls saying that theirs were sore too.

“Tomorrow,” said Lucia, “no shoes.”

That seemed to be an end to it.

Helward waited outside the tent as the girls crawled inside. The previous night it had been so cold that all of them had slept with their clothes on inside the sleeping-bags, but as it was now warm and humid that was clearly out of the question. A certain coyness in Helward made him resolve that he would keep his own clothes on, and sleep on top of the bag, but a fastdeveloping interest in the girls led his thoughts to wilder fantasies about what they might do. After a few minutes, he crawled into the tent. The candles were alight.

Each of the three girls was inside her own bag, although Helward saw from the pile of clothes that they had undressed. He said nothing to them, but blew out the candles and undressed in the dark, stumbling and falling clumsily in the process. He lay down, only too aware of Caterina’s body lying close beside him in the next sleeping-bag. He stayed awake for a long time, trying to rid himself of a fierce manifestation of his arousal. Victoria seemed to be a long way away.