Inverted World Read Online Free Page B

understand one day. You’ll find out the hard way, just like everything else this goddamn guild system makes you learn. It’s a strange life in the Future guild. It wasn’t for me, but I guess you’ll make out.”
    “Why didn’t you want to be a Future?”
    “I didn’t say I didn’t want it … I meant it wasn’t my lot. My own father was a Tracksman. The guild system again. But you want it hard, they’ve put you in the right hands. Done much manual work?”
    “No …”
    He laughed out loud. “The apprentices never have. You’ll get used to it.” He stood up. “It’s time we started. It’s early, but now you’ve got me out of bed there’s no point being idle. They’re a lazy lot of bastards.”
    He left the hut. I finished the rest of my coffee in a hurry, scalding my tongue, and went after him. He was walking towards the other two buildings.
    I caught him up.
    With a metal wrench he had taken from the hut he banged loudly on the door of each of the other two buildings, bawling at whoever was inside to get up. I saw from the marks on the doors that he probably always hit them with a piece of metal.
    We heard movement inside.
    Malchuskin went back to his hut and began sorting through some of the tools.
    “Don’t have too much to do with these men,” he warned me. “They’re not from the city. There’s one of them, I’ve put him in charge. Rafael. He speaks a little English, and acts as interpreter. If you want anything, speak to him.
    Better still, come to me. There’s not likely to be trouble, but if there is ...call me. O.K.?”
    “What kind of trouble?”
    “They don’t do what you or I tell them. They’re being paid, and they get paid to do what we want. It’s trouble if they don’t. But the only thing wrong with this lot is that they’re too lazy for their own good. That’s why we start early. It gets hot later on, and then we might as well not bother.”
    It was already warm. The sun had risen high while I had been with Malchuskin, and my eyes were beginning to water. They weren’t accustomed to such bright light. I had tried to glance at the sun again, but it was impossible to look directly at it.
    “Take these!” Malchuskin passed me a large armful of steel wrenches, and I staggered under the weight, dropping two or three. He watched in silence as I picked them up, ashamed at my ineptitude.
    “Where to?” I said.
    “The city, of course. Don’t they teach you anything in there?”
    I headed away from the hut towards the city. Malchuskin watched from the door of his hut.
    “South side!” he shouted after me. I stopped, and looked round helplessly. Malchuskin came over to me.
    “There.” He pointed. “The tracks at the south of the city. O.K.?”
    “O.K.” I walked in that direction, dropping only one more wrench on the way.
    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