More delays, as the men were given food, but Malchuskin was looking more optimistic than ever.
Finally, we were ready to begin. The men formed themselves into four groups, each headed by a guildsman. We set off for the city, collected the four track bogies, and headed south down the tracks in grand style. To each side of the rails the militiamen continued their guard, and as we crossed the ridge we saw that down in the valley we had recently vacated there was a strong guard around the track buffers.
With four track-teams now at work there was the additional incentive of competition I had noticed before. Perhaps it was too early for the men to respond to this, but that would come later.
Malchuskin stopped the bogie a short distance before the buffer, and explained to the group leader — a middle-aged man named Juan — what had to be done. Juan related this to the men, and they nodded their understanding.
“They haven’t the vaguest idea what they’ve got to do,” Malchuskin said to me, chuckling. “But they’ll pretend to understand.”
The first task was to dismantle the buffer, and move it up the tracks to a position just behind the city. Malchuskin and I had only just started to demonstrate how the buffer was dismantled when the sun went in abruptly and the temperature dropped.
Malchuskin glanced up at the sky. “We’re in for a storm.”
After this remark he paid no more attention to the weather, and we continued with the work. A few minutes later we heard the first distant grumble of thunder, and a short while after that the rain began to fall. The hired men looked up in alarm, but Maichuskin kept them going. Soon the storm was on top of us, the lightning flashing and the thunder cracking in a way that terrified me. We were all soon drenched, but the work continued. I heard the first complaints, but Malchuskin — through Juan — stilled them.
As we were taking the component parts of the buffer back up the track, the storm cleared and the sun came out again. One of the men began to sing, and soon the others joined in. Malchuskin looked happy. The day’s work finished with erecting the buffer a few yards behind the city; the other crews also stopped work when they had built theirs.
The next day we started early. Malchuskin still looked happy but expressed his desire to get on with the work as fast as we could.
As we tried to take up the southernmost part of the track, I saw at first hand the cause of his worry. The tie-bars holding the rails to the sleepers had bent, and had to be wrenched away manually, bending them beyond re-use. Similarly, the action of the pressure of the tie-bars against the sleepers had split the wood in many places — though Malchuskin declared they could be used again — and many of the concrete foundations had cracked. Fortunately, the rails themselves were still in a usable condition; although Maichuskin said they had buckled slightly, he reckoned they could be straightened again without too much difficulty. He held a brief conference with the other Track guildsmen, and it was decided to dispense with the use of the bogies for the moment, and concentrate on digging up the track before any more of it became distorted. As it was still some two miles between where we were working and the city, each journey in the bogie took a long time and this decision made sense.
By the end of that day we had worked our way up the track to a point where the buckling effect was only just beginning to be felt. Malchuskin and the others declared themselves satisfied, we loaded the bogies with as many of the rails and the sleepers as they would hold, and called a halt again.
And so the track-labours continued. By the time my ten-day period came to an end, the track-removal was well advanced, the hired men were working well as teams, and already the new track to the north of the city was being laid. When I left Malchuskin he was as contented as I had ever seen him, and I felt not in the least guilty about taking my two days’ leave.
9
Victoria was waiting for me in her room. By this time the bruises and scratches from the fracas had mostly healed, and I had decided to say nothing of it. Word of the scuffle had evidently not reached her, for she did not ask me about it.
After leaving Malchuskin’s hut in the morning I had walked across to the city, enjoying that early part of the morning before it became too hot, and with this in mind I suggested to Victoria that we could go up to the platform.
“I think it’ll be locked at this time of day,” she said. “I’ll go and see.”
She was gone for a few seconds, then returned to confirm that this was so.
“I suppose it’ll be open some time after midday,” I said, thinking that by this time the sun would have passed from the view of the platform.
“Take your clothes off,” she said. “They need laundering again.”
I started to undress but suddenly Victoria came over to me and put her arms around me. We kissed, spontaneously realizing that we were pleased to see each other.
“You’re putting on weight,” she said, as she slipped the shirt from my shoulders and ran her hand lightly across my chest.
“It’s all the work I’m doing,” I said, and began to unbutton her clothes.
As a consequence of this change in our plans it wasn’t until some time later that Victoria took my clothes away to be laundered, leaving me to enjoy the comforts of a proper bed.
After we had eaten some lunch we discovered that the way to the platform was now open, and so we moved up there. This time we were not alone; two men from the education administration were there before us. They recognized us both from our days in the crèche, and soon we were involved in a bland conversation about what we had been doing since coming of age. From Victoria’s expression I gathered that she was as bored as I was with this, but neither of us liked to make a move to finish it.
In due course the men bade us farewell and returned to the interior of the city.
Victoria winked at me, then giggled.
“God, I’m glad we’re not still in the crèche,” she said.
“So am I. And I thought they were interesting when they were teaching us.”
We sat down together on one of the seats and looked out across the landscape. From this part of the city it was not possible to see what was happening immediately at the side of the city, and even as I knew the track-crews would be carting the rails from the southern side to the north, it was not possible to see them.
“Helward… why does the city move?”
“I don’t know. Not exactly, anyway.”
She said: “I don’t know what the guilds imagine we think about this. No one ever says anything about it, though one has only to come up here to see the city has moved. And yet if you ask anyone about it you’re told it’s not the concern of an administrator. Are we not supposed to ask questions?”
“They tell you nothing?”
“Nothing at all. A couple of days ago I came up here and discovered that the city had moved. A few days before that the platform had been locked for two days on end, and word was passed round to secure loose property. But that was all.”
“O.K.,” I said, “you tell me something. At the time the city was moving, were you aware of it?”
“No… or I think not. Remember, I didn’t realize until afterwards. Thinking back, I don’t recall anything unusual the day it must have been moved, but I’ve never left the city and so I suppose all the time I was growing up I must have got used to occasional moves. Does the city travel along a road?”