The ceremony, for what it was, was over. The men offered the horses to the women to ride. Two of the girls climbed on to one horse, and five more took a horse each. Elizabeth and the two others elected to walk, and soon the small party left the village, walking the horses up the dried-up river bed to the wide scrubland beyond.

6

Throughout the journey Elizabeth maintained the same silence as the other girls. As far as possible she was trying to remain anonymous.

The three men spoke to each other in English, assuming that none of the girls would be able to understand them. At first, Elizabeth was listening intently, hoping to learn something of interest, but to her disappointment discovered that most of what the men said was concerned with complaints about the heat, the lack of shade, and how long the journey would take.

Their concern for the women seemed genuine enough, and they made repeated enquiries about their condition. Speaking occasionally to the other girls in their own language, Elizabeth discovered their preoccupations were much the same: they were hot, thirsty, tired, anxious that the journey be completed.

Every hour or so they took a brief rest, and took it in turns to ride on the horses. None of the men rode for any of the way, and in time Elizabeth began to sympathize with their complaints. If their destination was, as Helward had said, twentyfive miles away, it was a long walk on a hot day.

Later in the day, perhaps inhibitions had become relaxed by tiredness, or the general lack of reaction from any of their companions had re-affirmed their lack of understanding of the language, but the men somehow turned the topic of conversation to less immediate concerns. It started with grumbles about the unrelenting heat, but shifted to another topic almost at once.

“Do you think all this is still necessary?”

“The barters?”

“Yes… I mean, it’s caused trouble in the past.”

“There’s no other way.”

“It’s too damned hot.”

“What would you do instead?”

“I don’t know. Not my decision. If I had my way I wouldn’t be out here now.”

“It still makes sense to me. The last lot haven’t moved out yet, and there’s no sign of them doing so. Maybe we won’t have to barter any more.”

“We will.”

“You sound as if you don’t approve.”

“Frankly, I don’t. Sometimes I think the whole system’s crazy.”

“You’ve been listening to the Terminators.”

“Maybe I have. If you listen to them they make a bit of sense. Not completely, but they’re not as bad as the Navigators make out.”

“You’re out of your mind.”

“O.K. Who wouldn’t be in this heat?”

“You’d better not repeat that in the city.”

“Why not? Enough people are saying it already.”

“Not guildsmen. You’ve been down past. You know what’s what.”

“I’m just being realistic. You’ve got to listen to people’s opinions. There are more people in the city who want to stop than there are guildsmen. That’s all.”

“Shut up, Norris,” said the man who had so far not spoken, the one who had addressed the crowd.

They continued on their way.

The city had been in sight for some time before Elizabeth recognized it for what it was. As they came nearer she looked at it with great interest, not comprehending the system of tracks and cables that stretched away from it. Her first assumption was that it was some kind of marshalling yard, but there was no sign of any rolling-stock and anyway the length of track was too short for any practical use.

Later she noticed several men apparently patrolling the tracks, each of whom carried a rifle or what appeared to be a crossbow. More than this she could not absorb, since most of her attention was on the structure itself.

She had heard the men refer to it as a city, and Helward too, but to her eyes it was not much more than a large and misshapen office block. It did not look too safe, constructed mainly of timber. It had the ugliness of functionalism, and yet there was a simplicity to its design which was not altogether unattractive. She was reminded of pictures she had seen of pre-Crash buildings, and although most of those had been steel and reinforced concrete they shared the squareness, the plainness, and lack of exterior decoration. Those old buildings had been tall, though, and this strange structure •was nowhere more than seven storeys high. The timber showed varying stages of weathering; most of what she could see had been well bleached by the elements, but there were newer parts visible.

The men took them right up to the base of the building, and then into a dark passageway. Here they dismounted, and several young men came forward to lead away the horses.

The men took them to a door in the passageway, up a staircase, and through another doorway. They emerged into a brightly lit corridor.

At the end of this there was another door, and here they parted company with the men. There was a printed sign on the door, which said: TRANSFERENCE QUARTERS.

Inside they were greeted by two women, who spoke to them in the badly accented language of the people.

Once Elizabeth had adopted her pose, there was no way of abandoning it.

In the next few days she was subjected to a series of examinations and treatments which, had she not suspected the reason, she would have found humiliating. She was bathed, and her hair was washed. She was medically examined, her eyes were tested, her teeth were checked. Her hair and scalp were inspected for infestation, and she was given a test which she could only imagine was to determine whether or not she had VD.

Without surprise, the woman supervising the examination passed her with a clean bill of health — of the ten girls, Elizabeth was the only one who was so passed — and she was then given over to two more women who began to instruct her in the rudiments of speaking English. This caused her some considerable private amusement, and in spite of her best efforts to delay the learning process she was soon considered fit and educated enough to be released from this initial period of habilitation.

The first few nights she had slept in a communal dormitory in the transference centre, but now she was given a tiny room of her own. This was scrupulously clean and furnished minimally. It contained a narrow bed, a space to hang her clothes — she had been given two identical sets of clothes to wear — a chair, and about four square feet of floor space.

Eight days had passed since coming to the city, and Elizabeth was beginning to wonder what she had hoped to achieve. Now she had been cleared by the transference section she was assigned to the kitchens, where the work she was given was straightforward drudgery. The evenings were free, but she was told that she was expected to spend at least an hour or two in a certain reception-room where, she was told, she was supposed to mix socially with the people she met there.

This room was situated next to the transference section. It had a small bar at one end with, Elizabeth noted, a distinct shortage of choice, and next to this an ancient video set. When she switched it on a tape device attached to it showed a comedy programme that she frankly couldn’t understand at all, although an invisible audience laughed all the way through. The comic allusions were evidently contemporary, and thus meaningless to her. She watched the programme through, and from a copyright notice at the end learnt that it had been taped in 1985. More than two hundred years old!

There were usually only a few people in this room when she was there. A woman from the transference section worked behind the bar, maintaining a fixed grin, but Elizabeth could not work up much interest in the other people there. A few men came in occasionally — dressed, as Helward had been, in the dark uniform — and there were two or three local girls.