Xeelee: Endurance (46 page)

She thought she remembered the building Momo had chosen as his shelter. She headed that way now.

But something was wrong. As she followed the unpaved alleys, the layout of the buildings didn’t quite match her memory of the night before. Of course, she had only had a quick glimpse of the city, and the light of morning, playing over these crisp creamy walls, was quite different. But even so, she wouldn’t have expected to get as lost as this.

And when she came to the place where she thought Momo’s building should have been, there was only a blank space. She walked back and forth over the bare ground, disoriented, dread gathering in her soul.

‘You must be mistaken,’ Tomm insisted.

‘I’m good at direction-finding, Tomm. You know that.’

Playfully he said, ‘You found your way to my bed well enough—’

‘Oh, shut up. This is serious. This is where Momo’s shelter was, I’m sure of it. Something has changed. I can feel it.’

Tomm said defensively, ‘That doesn’t sound very scientific.’

‘Then help me, o great cartographer. Did any of you make a map last night?’

‘Of course not. The light was poor. We knew there would be time enough today.’

She glared at him. But she was being unfair; it was a perfectly reasonable assumption that a city like this wouldn’t change overnight.

But the fact of the matter was, Momo was still missing.

Growing increasingly disturbed, she went to her father’s room. That at least was just where it had been last night. But her father wouldn’t see her; a busybody junior Philosopher barred her from even entering the door. Bayle was still deep in discussion with Sila, the ragged city woman, and he had left strict instructions to be disturbed by nobody – not even Enna, his daughter.

Tomm, apologetically, said he had to get on with his flight, Momo or no Momo. Distracted, Enna kissed him goodbye, and continued her search.

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.

At the end of the dinner, despite her anxiety and determination, Enna still couldn’t get to talk to her father. Bayle apologised, but with silent admonishments, warned her about spoiling the mood he had so carefully built; she knew that as Expedition leader he believed that morale, ever fragile, was the most precious resource of all. It will keep until the morning, his expression told her.

Frustrated, deeply uneasy, she left the building, walked out of the city to her wagon, and threw herself into Tomm’s arms. He seemed surprised by her passion.

Wait until the morning
, Bayle had said
.

But when the morning came the city was in chaos.

They were woken by babbling voices. They hastily pulled on their clothes, and hurried out of the wagon.

Servants and Philosophers alike milled about, some only half-dressed. Enna found Nool, her father’s manservant; dishevelled, unshaven, he was nothing like the sleek major-domo of the dinner last night. ‘I’m not going back in there again,’ he said. ‘You can pay me what you like.’

Enna grabbed his shoulders. ‘Nool! Calm down, man. Is it my father? Is something wrong?’

‘The sooner we get loaded up and out of here the better, I say . . .’

Enna abandoned him and turned to Tomm. ‘We’ll have to find him, Tomm! My father—’

But Tomm was staring up at the sky. ‘By all that’s created,’ he said. ‘Look at that.’

At first she thought the shape drifting in the sky was the Expedition’s balloon. But this angular, sharp-edged, white-walled object was no balloon.
It was a building
, a parallelepiped, like a slanted cube. With no sign of doors or windows, it had come loose from the ground, and drifted away on the wind like a soap bubble.

‘I don’t believe it,’ Tomm murmured.

Enna said grimly, ‘Believe it or not, we have to find my father even so. Come
on
.’ She grabbed his hand and dragged him into the city.

The unmade streets were crowded today, and people swarmed; it was difficult to find a way through. Again she had that strange, dreamlike feeling that the layout of the city was different. ‘Tell me you see it too, cartographer,’ she demanded of Tomm. ‘It has changed, again.’

‘Yes, it has changed.’

She was relieved to see her father’s building was still where it had been. But Philosophers were wandering outside, helpless, wringing their hands.

The doors and windows, all of them, had sealed up. There was no way into the building, or out.

She shoved her way through the crowd, grabbing Philosophers. ‘Where is he? Is he in there?’ But none of them had an answer. She reached the building itself. She ran her hands over the wall where the doorway had been last night, but it was seamless, as if the doorway had never existed. She slammed on the wall. ‘Father? Bayle! Can you hear me? It’s Enna!’ But there was no reply.

And then the wall lurched before her. Tomm snatched her back. The whole building was shifting, she saw, as if restless to leave the ground. Still she called, ‘Father! Father!’

‘He can’t hear you.’ The woman, Sila, stood in the fine robes Bayle had given her. She seemed aloof, untouched.

Enna grabbed Sila by the shoulders and pushed her against the wall of the building. ‘What have you done?’

‘Me? I haven’t done anything.’ Sila was unperturbed by Enna’s violence, though she was breathing hard. ‘But you know that, don’t you?’ Her voice was deep, exotic – ancient as Lowland dust.

Desperate as Enna was to find her father, the pieces of the puzzle were sliding around in her head. ‘
This is all about the buildings
, isn’t it?’

‘You’re a clever girl. Your father will be proud – or would have been. He’s probably already dead. Don’t fret; he won’t have suffered, much.’

Tomm stood before them, uncertain. ‘I don’t understand any of this. Has this woman harmed Bayle?’

‘No,’ Enna hissed. ‘You just lured him here – didn’t you, you witch? It’s the building, Tomm. That’s what’s important here, not this woman.’

‘The building?’

‘The buildings take meat,’ Sila said.

Tomm looked bewildered. ‘Meat?’

‘Somehow they use it to maintain their fabric. Don’t ask me how.’

‘And light,’ Enna said. ‘That’s why they stack up into this strange reef, isn’t it? It isn’t a human architecture at all, is it? They
are
more like a forest.
The buildings are competing for the light.
’

Sila smiled. ‘You see, I said you were clever.’