After an hour or two I began to see what Malchuskin had meant about the men who worked with us. They stopped at the slightest excuse, and only Malchuskin’s bawling or Rafael’s sullen instructions kept them at it.

“Who are they?” I asked Malchuskin when we stopped for a fifteen-minute break.

“Local men.”

“Couldn’t we hire some more?”

“They’re all the same round here.”

I sympathized with them to a certain degree. Out in the open, with no shade at all, the work was vigorous and hard. Although I was determined not to slacken, the physical strain was more than I could bear. Certainly, it was more strenuous than anything I had ever experienced.

The tracks at the south of the city ran for about half a mile, ending in no particular place. There were four tracks, each consisting of two metal rails supported on timber sleepers which were in turn resting on sunken concrete foundations. Two of the tracks had already been considerably shortened by Malchuskin and his crew, and we were working on the longest one still extant, the one laid as right outer.

Malchuskin explained that if I assumed the city was to the front of us, the four tracks were identified by left and right, outer and inner in each case.

There was little thought involved. What had to be done was routine, but heavy.

In the first place the tie-bars connecting the rail to the sleepers had to be released for the whole length of the section of rail. This was then laid to one side, and the other rail similarly released. Next we tackled the sleepers. These were attached to the concrete foundations by two clamps, each of which had to be slackened and removed manually. When the sleeper came free it was stacked on a bogie which was waiting on the next section of track. The concrete foundation, which I discovered was prefabricated and re-usable, then had to be dug out of its soil emplacement and similarly placed on the bogie. When all this was done, the two steel rails were placed on special racks along the side of the bogie.

Malchuskin or I would then drive the battery-powered bogie up to the next section of track, and the process would be repeated. When the bogie was fully loaded, the entire track-crew would ride on it up to the rear of the city. Here it would be parked, and the battery recharged from an electrical point fitted to the wall of the city for this purpose.

It took us most of the morning to load the bogie and take it up to the city. My arms felt as if they had been stretched from their sockets, my back was aching, I was filthy dirty and I was covered with sweat. Malchuskin, who had done no less work than any of the others — probably more than any of the hired labour — grinned at me.

“Now we unload and start again,” he said.

I looked over at the labourers. They looked like I felt, although I suspected I too had done more work than they, considering I was new to it and hadn’t yet learnt the art of using my muscles economically. Most of them were lying back in what little shadow was afforded by the bulk of the city.

“O.K.,” I said.

“No… I was joking. You think that lot’d do any more without a bellyful of food?”

“No.”

“Right, then… we eat.”

He spoke to Rafael, then walked back across towards his hut. I went with him, and we shared some of the heated-up synthetic food that was all he could offer.

The afternoon started with the unloading. The sleepers, foundations, and rails were loaded on to another battery-powered vehicle which travelled on four large balloon tyres. When the transfer was completed, we took the bogie down to the end of the track and began again. The afternoon was hot, and the men worked slowly. Even Malchuskin had eased up, and after the bogie had been refilled with its next load he called a halt.

“Like to have got another load in today,” he said, and took a long draught from a bottle of water.

“I’m ready,” I said.

“Maybe. You want to do it on your own?”

“But I’m willing,” I said, not wanting to reveal the exhaustion I was feeling.

“As it is you’ll be useless tomorrow. No, we get this bogie unloaded, run it down to the track-end, and that’s it.”

That wasn’t quite it, as things turned out. When we returned the bogie to the track-end, Malchuskin started the men filling in the last section of the track with as much loose soil and dirt as we could find. This rubble was laid for twenty yards.

I asked Malchuskin its purpose.

He nodded over towards the nearest long track, the left inner. At its end was a massive concrete buttress, stayed firmly into the ground.

“You’d rather put up one of those instead?” he said.

“What is it?”

“A buffer. Suppose the cables all broke at once… the city’d run backwards off the rails. As it is the buffers wouldn’t put up much resistance, but it’s all we can do.”

“Has the city ever run back?”

“Once.”

Malchuskin offered me the choice of returning to my cabin in the city, or remaining with him in his hut. The way he put it didn’t leave me much choice. He obviously had low regard for the people inside the city and told me he rarely Went 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.”