“Come on… we’ll go to your room.”

“No.”

“Yes.” I was pulling on my uniform.

“Don’t put that on,” she said. “It smells.”

“Does it?”

“Abominably.”

She sat up and as she did so I stared at her, admiring the neatness of her naked body. She pulled the coat around her shoulders, then got out of the bed.

“O.K.,” she said. “But let’s be quick.”

We left my cabin and let ourselves out of the crèche. We hurried along the corridors. As Victoria had said, this late at night there was no one about, and the corridor lights were dimmed. In a few minutes we had reached her room. I closed the door, and bolted it. Victoria sat down on the bed, holding her coat around her.

I took off my uniform and climbed into the bed.

“Come on, Victoria.”

“I don’t feel like it now.”

“Oh, Christ… why not?”

“We should have stayed where we were,” she said.

“Do you want to go back?”

“Of course not.”

“Get in with me,” I said. “Don’t sit there.”

“O.K.”

She undid her coat and dropped it on the floor, then climbed in beside me. We put our arms around each other, and kissed for a moment, but I knew what she meant. The desire had left me as rapidly as it had come. After a while we just lay there in silence. The sensation of being in bed with her was pleasant, but although I was aware of the sensuality of it nothing happened.

Eventually, I said: “Why did you come to see me?”

“I told you.”

“Was that all… that you were sorry?”

“I think so.”

“I nearly came to see you,” I said. “I’ve done something I shouldn’t. I’m frightened.”

“What was it?”

“I told you… I told you I had been made to swear something. You were right, the guilds impose secrecy on their members. When I became an apprentice I had to take an oath, and part of it was that I had to swear I would not reveal the existence of the oath. I broke it by telling you.”

“Does it matter?”

“The penalty is death.”

“But why should they ever find out?”

“If…”

Victoria said: “If I say anything, you mean. Why should I?”

“I’m not sure. But the way you were talking today, the resentment at not being allowed to lead your own life… I felt sure you would use it against me.”

“Until just now it meant nothing to me. I wouldn’t use it. Anyway, why should a wife betray her husband?”

“You still want to marry me?”

“Yes.”

“Even though it was arranged for us?”

“It’s a good arrangement,” she said, and held me tighter for a few moments. “Don’t you feel the same?”

“Yes.”

A few minutes later, Victoria said: “Will you tell me what goes on outside the city?”

“I can’t.”

“Because of the oath?”

“Yes.”

“But you’re already in breach of it. What could matter now?”

“There’s nothing to tell anyway,” I said. “I’ve spent ten days doing a lot of physical work, and I’m not sure why.”

“What kind of physical work?”

“Victoria… don’t question me about it.”

“Well tell me about the sun. Why is no one in the city allowed to see it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is there something wrong with it?”

“I don’t think so…”

Victoria was asking me questions I should have asked myself, but hadn’t. In the welter of new experiences, there had been hardly time to register the meaning of anything I’d seen, let alone query it. Confronted with these questions — quite aside from whether or not I should answer them — I found myself demanding the answers. Was there indeed something wrong with the sun that could endanger the city? Should this be kept secret if so? But I had seen the sun, and…

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” I said. “But it doesn’t look the same shape as I’d thought.”

“It’s a sphere.”

“No it’s not. Or at least it doesn’t look like one.”

“Well?”

“I shouldn’t tell you, I’m sure.”

“You can’t leave it like that,” she said.

“I don’t think it’s important.”

“I do.”

“O.K.” I had already said too much, but what could I do? “You can’t see it properly during the day, because it’s so bright. But at sunrise or sunset you can see it for a few minutes. I think it’s disk-shaped. But it’s more than that, and I don’t know the words to describe it. In the centre of the disk, top and bottom, there’s a kind of shaft.”

“Part of the sun?”

“Yes. A bit like a spinning-top. But it’s difficult to see clearly because it’s so bright even at those times. The other night, I was outside and the sky was clear. There’s a moon, and that’s the same shape. But I couldn’t see that clearly either, because it was in phase.”

“Are you sure of this?”

“It’s what I’ve seen.”

“But it’s not what we we were taught.”

“I know,” I said. “But that’s how it is.”

I said no more. Victoria asked more questions but I pushed them aside, pleading that I did not know the answers. She tried to draw me further on the work I was doing, but somehow I managed to keep my silence. Instead, I asked her questions about herself and soon we had moved away from what was for me a dangerous subject. It could not be buried forever, but I needed time to think. Some time later we made love, and shortly afterwards we fell asleep.

In the morning Victoria made some breakfast, then left me sitting naked in her room while she took my uniform to be laundered. While she was away I washed and shaved, then lay on the bed until she returned.

I put my uniform on again: it felt crisp and fresh, not at all like the rather stiff and odorous second skin it had become as a result of my labours outside.

We spent the rest of the day together, and Victoria took me to show me around the interior of the city. It was far more complex than I had ever realized. Most of what I had seen until then was the residential and administrative section, but there was more to it than this. At first I wondered how I should ever find my way around until Victoria pointed out that in several places plans of the lay-out had been attached to the walls.

I noted that the plans had been altered many times, and one in particular caught my attention. We were in one of the lower levels, and beside a recently drawn revised plan was a much older one, preserved behind a sheet of transparent plastic. I looked at this with great interest, noting that its directions were printed in several languages. Of these I could recognize only the French language in addition to English.

“What are these others?” I asked her.

“That’s German, and the others are Russian and Italian. And this—” she pointed to an ornate, ideographic script “—is Chinese.”

I looked more closely at the plan, comparing it with the recent one next to it. The similarity could be seen, but it was clear that much alteration work had been carried out inside the city between the compiling of the two plans.

“Why were there so many languages?”

“We’re descended from a group of mixed nationals. I believe English has been the standard language for many thousands of miles, but that’s not always been the case. My own family is descended from the French.”

“Oh yes,” I said.

On this same level, Victoria showed me the synthetics plant. It was here that the protein-substitutes and other organic surrogates were synthesized from timber and vegetable products. The smell in here was very strong, and I noticed that all the people who worked here had to wear masks over their faces. Victoria and I passed through quickly into the next area where research was carried out to improve texture and flavour. It was here, Victoria told me, she would soon be working.

Later, Victoria expressed more of her frustrations at her life, both present and future. More prepared for this than previously I was able to reassure her. I told her to look to her own mother for example, as she led a fulfilled and useful life. I promised her — under persuasion — that I would tell her more of my own life, and I said that I would do what I could, when I became a full guildsman, to make the system more open, more liberal. It seemed to quiet her a little, and together we passed a relaxed evening and night.