Inverted World Read Online Free

was my only hold on the familiar. I had never before been so isolated from what I knew, never before been confronted with such an impact of things unknown. My whole body was tense, as if bracing itself against some sudden detonation or physical shock, but none came. All about me was cold and dark and overwhelmingly silent bar the sound of the wind in my ears.
    As the minutes passed, and my eyes became better able to adjust, I discovered I could make out vague shapes about me. I could see Future Denton beside me, a tall black figure in his cloak, outlined against the lesser darkness of what was above him. Beneath the platform on which we stood I could detect a huge, irregularly shaped structure, black and black on black.
    Around all this was impenetrable darkness. I had no point of reference, nothing against which I could make distinctions of form or outline. It was frightening, but in a way which struck emotionally, not in such a way that I felt at all threatened physically. Sometimes I had dreamed of such a place, and then I had awakened still experiencing the after-images of an impression such as this. This was no dream; the bitter cold could not be imagined, nor could the startling clarity of the new sensations of space and dimension. I knew only that this was my first venture outside the city—for this was all it could be—and that it was nothing like I had ever anticipated.
    Fully appreciating this, the effect of the cold and dark on my orientation became of subsidiary importance. I was outside … this  was what I had been waiting for!
    There was no further need for Denton’s admonition to silence; I could say nothing, and had I tried the words would have died in my throat or been lost on the wind. It was all I could do to look, and in looking I saw nothing but the deep, mysterious cape of a land under the clouded night.
    A new sensation affected me: I could smell the soil! It was unlike anything I had ever smelled in the city, and my mind conjured a spurious image of many square miles of rich brown soil, moist in the night. I had no way of telling what it was I could actually smell—it was probably not soil at all—but this image of rich, fertile ground had been one that endured for me from one of the books I had read in the crèche. It was enough to imagine it and once more my excitement lifted, sensing the cleansing effect of the wild, unexplored land beyond the city. There was so much to see and do… and even yet, standing on the platform, it was still for those few precious moments the exclusive domain of the imagination. I needed to see nothing; the simple impact of this fundamental step beyond the city’s confines was enough to spark my underdeveloped imagination into realms which until that moment had been fed only by the writings of the authors I had read.
    Slowly, the blackness became less dense, until the sky above me was a dark gray. In the far distance I could see where the clouds met the horizon, and even as I watched I saw a line of the faintest red begin to etch the shape of one small cloud. As if the impact of the light was propelling it, this cloud and all the others were moving slowly above us, borne on the wind away from the direction of the glow. The redness spread, touching the clouds for a few moments as they moved away, leaving behind a large area of clear sky which was itself coloured a deep orange. My whole attention was rivetted on this sight, for it was quite simply the most beautiful thing I had experienced in my whole life. Almost imperceptibly, the orange colour was spreading and lightening; still the clouds which moved away were singed with red, but at the very point at which the horizon met the sky there was an intensity of light which grew brighter by the minute.
    The orange was dying. Far more quickly than I would ever have guessed, it thinned away as the source of light brightened. The sky now was a blue so pale and brilliant that it was almost white. In the centre of it, as if