Inverted World Read Online Free PDF Page B

by a stab of pain in my back. I gasped.
    Malchuskin looked up at me, grinning.
    “Stiff?” he said.
    I rolled over on to my side, and tried to draw my legs up. These too were stiff and painful, but with a considerable effort I managed to get myself into a sitting position. I sat still for a moment, hoping that the pain was cramp and that it would pass.
    “Always the same with you kids from the city,” Malchuskin said, but without malice. “You come out here, keen I’ll grant you. A day’s work and you’re so stiff you become useless. Don’t you get any exercise in the city?”
    “Only in the gymnasium.”
    “O.K… . get down here and have some breakfast. After that, you’d better go back to the city. Have a hot bath, and see if you can find someone to give you a massage. Then report back here.”
    I nodded gratefully and clambered down from the bunk. This was no easier and no less painful than anything else I’d attempted so far. I discovered that my arms, neck, and shoulders were as stiff as the rest of me.
    I left the hut thirty minutes later, just as Malchuskin was bawling at the men to get started. I headed back towards the city, limping slowly.
    It was the first time I had been left to my own devices away from the city. When in the company of others, one never sees as much as when alone. The city was five hundred yards from Malchuskin’s hut, and that was an adequate distance to be able to get some impression of its overall size and appearance.
    Yet during the whole of the previous day I had been able to afford it only the barest of glances. It was simply a large, gray bulk, dominating the landscape.
    Now, hobbling alone across the ground towards it I could inspect it in more detail.
    From the limited experience I had had of the interior of the city, I had never given much thought to what it might look like from outside. I had always conceived of it as being large, but the reality was that the city was rather smaller than I had imagined. At its highest point, on the northern side, it was approximately two hundred feet high, but the rest of it was a jumble of rectangles and cubes, fitted into what seemed to be a patternless arrangement of varying elevations. It was a dull brown and gray colour, made as far as I could tell from many different kinds of timber. There seemed to be very little use of concrete or metals, and nothing was painted. This external appearance contrasted sharply with the interior—or at least, those few areas I had seen—which were clean and brightly decorated. As Malchuskin’s hut was directly to the west of the city, it was impossible for me to estimate the width as I walked towards it, though I estimated its length to be about one thousand five hundred feet. I was surprised how ugly it was, and how old it appeared to be. There was much activity about, particularly to the north.
    As I came near to the city it occurred to me that I had no idea how I could enter it. Yesterday, Future Denton had taken me around the exterior of the city, but my mind had been so swamped with new impressions that I had absorbed very few of the details pointed out to me. It had looked so different then.
    My only clear memory was that there was a door behind the platform from which we had observed the sunrise, and I determined to head for that. This was not as easy as I imagined.
    I went to the south of the city, stepping over the tracks which I had been working on the previous day, and moved round to the east side, where I felt sure Denton and I had descended by way of a series of metal ladders.
    After a long search I found such an access, and began to climb. I went wrong several times, and only after a long period of clambering painfully along catwalks and climbing gingerly up ladders did I locate the platform. I found that the door was still locked.
    I had no alternative but to ask. I climbed down to the ground, and went once more to the south of the city where Malchuskin and the gang of men had started