Inverted World (29 page)

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.

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.