In spite of everything, the city continued to move slowly northwards. Sometimes I would take time off from other matters, and try to view it in my mind’s eye as a tiny speck of matter on an alien world; I would see it as an object of one universe trying to survive in another; as a city full of people, holding on to the side of a forty-five degree slope, pulling its way against a tide of ground on a few thin strands of cable.

With the return to a more stable environment for the city, the task of future surveying became more routine.

For our purposes the ground to the north of the city was divided into a series of segments, radiating from optimum at five degree intervals. Under normal circumstances the city would not seek a route that was more than fifteen degrees away from due north, but the city’s extra capability to deviate did allow considerable flexibility from this for short periods.

Our procedure was simple. Surveyors would ride north from the city — either alone or, if they chose, in pairs — and conduct a comprehensive survey of the segment allotted to them. There was plenty of time available to us.

On many occasions I would find myself seduced by the feeling of freedom in the north, and it was one which Blayne once told me was common to most Futures. Where was the urgency to return if a day spent lazily on the bank of a river wasted only a few minutes of the city’s time?

There was a price to pay for the time spent in the north, and it was one that did not seem real to me until I saw its effects for myself. A day spent idling in the north was a day in my life. In fifty days I aged the equivalent of five miles in the city, but the city people had aged only four days. It did not matter at first: our return visits to the city were so comparatively frequent that I saw and felt no difference. But in time, the people I had known — Victoria, Jase, Malchuskin — seemed not to have aged at all, and catching a sight of myself in a mirror one day I saw the effect of the differential.

I did not want to settle down permanently with another girl; Victoria’s notion that the ways of the city would disrupt any relationship took greater meaning every time I considered it.

The first of the transferred women were coming to the city, and as an unmarried man I was told that I was eligible to mate with one of them temporarily. At first I resisted the idea because, to be frank, the idea repelled me. It seemed to me that even a purely physical affair should have some complement in shared emotional feelings, but the manner in which the selection of the partners was arranged was as subtle as it could be under the circumstances. Whenever I was in the city I and other eligible men were encouraged to mix socially with the girls in a recreation-room set aside for this purpose. It was embarrassing and humiliating at first, but I grew used to these occasions and eventually my inhibitions waned.

In time, I formed a mutual liking with a girl named Dorita, and soon she and I were allocated a cabin we could share. We did not have much in common, but her attempts to speak English were delightful, and she seemed to enjoy my company. Soon she was pregnant, and between my surveying missions I watched her pregnancy proceed.

Slowly, so unbelievably slowly.

I began to grow increasingly frustrated with the apparently sluggish progress of the city. By my own subjective time scale, a hundred and fifty, perhaps two hundred miles had elapsed since I had become a Future guildsman, and yet the city was still in sight of those hills we had been passing through at the time of the attacks.

I applied to transfer temporarily to another guild; much as I enjoyed the leisured life in the future I felt that time was passing me by.

For a few miles I worked with the Traction guild, and it was during this period that Dorita gave birth. She produced twins: a boy and a girl. Much celebration… but I found that the city life discontented me in another way. I had been working with Jase, someone who had once been several miles older than me. Now he was clearly younger than me, and we had little in common.

Shortly after she had given birth, Dorita left the city and I returned to my own guild.

Like the Future guildsmen I had seen as an apprentice, I was becoming a misfit in the city. I enjoyed my own company, relished those stolen hours in the north, was uncomfortable when in the city. I had developed an interest in drawing, but told almost no one about it. I did my guild work as quickly and efficiently as possible, then rode off alone through the future countryside, sketching what I saw, trying to find in line drawings some expression of a terrain where time could almost stand still.

I watched the city from a distance, seeing it as alien as it was; not of this world, no longer even of me. Mile by mile it hauled itself forward, never finding, nor even seeking, a final resting place.

PART FOUR

1

She waited in the doorway of the church while the discussion continued on the far side of the square. Behind her, in the temporary workshop, the priest and two assistants were working patiently on the job of restoring the plaster image of the Virgin Mary. It was cool in the church, and in spite of the part of the roof that had caved in, it was clean and restful. She knew she shouldn’t be here, but some instinct had sent her inside when the two men had arrived.

She watched them now, talking earnestly to Luiz Carvalho, the self-appointed leader of the village, and a handful of other men. In other times, perhaps the priest would have assumed responsibility for the community, but Father dos Santos was, like herself, a newcomer to the village.

The men had ridden into the village along the dried-up bed of the stream, and now their horses grazed while the discussion continued. She was too far away to hear the actual words, but it seemed that some deal was being struck. The men from the village talked volubly, feigning no interest, but she knew that if their attention had not been caught they would not still be talking.

It was the horsemen who held her interest. That they were not from any of the near-by villages was self-evident. In contrast with the villagers, their appearance was striking: each wore a black cape, well-fitting trousers, and leather boots. Their horses were saddled and apparently groomed, and although each of the horses was bearing large saddle-bags well loaded with equipment they stood without apparent fatigue. None of the horses she had seen locally was in anything like such good condition.

Her curiosity began to override her instinct, and she stepped forward to learn for herself what was going on. As she did so, the negotiations appeared to be completed, for the village men turned away and the other two returned to their horses.

They mounted immediately, and headed back the way they had come. She stood and watched them, debating whether or not to go after them.

When they were out of sight amongst the trees that grew alongside the stream, she hurried out of the square, ran between two of the houses and scrambled up the rise of ground behind. After a few moments she saw the men emerging from the trees. They rode a short distance further, then drew up the reins, and halted.

They conferred for about five minutes, several times looking back in the general direction of the village.

She kept out of sight, standing in the dense scrub that grew all over the hill. Suddenly, one of the men raised his hand to the other, and swung his horse round. He set off at a gallop in the direction of some distant hills; the other man turned his horse in the oppOsite direction and walked it at a leisured pace.