Inverted World Read Online Free PDF

inside.
    “It’s a cosy existence,” he said. “Half the people in the city don’t know what’s going on out here, and I don’t suppose they’d care if they did know.”
    “Why should they have to know? After all, if we can keep working smoothly, it’s not their problem.”
    “I know, I know. But I wouldn’t have to use these damned local men if more city people came out here.”
    In the near-by dormitory huts the hired men were talking noisily; some were singing.
    “Don’t you have anything at all to do with them?”
    “I just use them. They’re the Barter people’s pigeon. If they get too lousy I lay them off and get the Barters to find me some more. Never difficult. Work’s in short supply round here.”
    “Where is this?”
    “Don’t ask me … that’s up to your father and his guild. I just dig up old tracks.”
    I sensed that Malchuskin was less alienated from the city than he made out. I supposed his relatively isolated existence gave him some contempt for those within the city, but as far as I could see he didn’t have to stay out here in the hut. Lazy the workers might be, and just now noisy, but they seemed to act in an orderly manner. Maichuskin made no attempt to supervise them when there was no work to be done, so he could have stayed in the city if he chose.
    “Your first day out, isn’t it?” he said suddenly.
    “That’s right.”
    “You want to watch the sunset?”
    “No … why?”
    “The apprentices usually do.”
    “O.K.”
    Almost as if it were to please him I went out of the hut and looked past the bulk of the city towards the north-east. Malchuskin came up behind me.
    The sun was near the horizon and already I could feel the wind cold on my back. The clouds of the previous night had not returned, and the sky was clear and blue. I watched the sun, able to look at it without hurting my eyes now that its rays were diffused by the thickness of the atmosphere. It had the shape of a broad orange disk, slightly tilted down towards us. Above and below, tall spires of light rose from the centre of the disk. As we watched it sank slowly beneath the horizon, the upper point of light being the last to vanish.
    “You sleep in the city, you don’t get to see that,” Malchuskin said.
    “It’s very beautiful,” I said.
    “You see the sunrise this morning?”
    “Yes.”
    Malchuskin nodded. “That’s what they do. Once a kid’s made it to a guild, they throw him in at the deep end. No explanation, right? Out in the dark, until up comes the sun.”
    “Why do they do that?”
    “Guild system. They believe it’s the quickest way to get an apprentice to understand that the sun isn’t the same as he’s been taught.”
    “Isn’t it?” I said.
    “What were you taught?”
    “That the sun is spherical.”
    “So they still teach that. Well, now you’ve seen that the sun isn’t.
    Make anything of it?”
    “No.”
    “Think about it. Let’s go and eat.”
    We returned to the hut and Malchuskin directed me to start heating up some food while he bolted another bunk-frame on top of the vertical supports around his own. He found some bedding in a cupboard, and dumped it on the bunk.
    “You sleep here,” he said, indicating the upper bunk. “You restless at night?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “We’ll try it for one night. If you keep moving around, we’ll change over. I don’t like being disturbed.”
    I thought there was little chance I would disturb him. I could have slept on the side of a cliff that night, I was so tired. We ate the tasteless food together, and afterwards Malchuskin talked about his work on the tracks.
    I paid him scant attention, and a few minutes later I lay on my bunk, pretending to listen to him. I fell asleep almost at once.

 
     
4

    I was woken the next morning by Maichuskin moving about the hut, clattering the dishes from the previous evening’s meal. I made to get out of the bunk as soon as I was fully conscious, but at once I was paralysed