Victoria was now more composed than before; the emotional reaction had completely destroyed the antipathy that was there, and we were able to talk more rationally. She picked up the fallen papers, arranged them into a pile, then put them away into a drawer. There was a chair by the opposite wall, and I sat on it.
“You know the guild system is going to have to change,” she said.
“Not drastically.”
“It’s going to break down completely. It has to. In effect it’s happened already. Anyone can go outside the city now. The Navigators will cling to the old system for as long as they can, because they’re living in the past, but—”
“They’re not as hidebound as you think,” I said.
“They’ll try to bring back the secrecy and the suppression as soon as they can.”
“You’re wrong,” I said flatly. “I know you’re wrong.”
“All right… but certain things will have to change. There’s no one in the city now who doesn’t know the danger we’re in. We’ve been cheating and stealing our way across this land, and it’s that which has created the danger. It’s time for it to stop.”
“Victoria, you don’t—”
“You only have to look at the damage! There were thirty-nine children killed! God knows how much destruction. Do you think we can survive if the people outside keep on attacking us?”
“It’s quieter now. It’s under control.”
She shook her head. “I don’t care what the current situation looks like. I’m thinking about the long term. All our troubles are ultimately created by the city being moved. That one condition produces the danger. We move across other people’s land, we bargain for manpower to move the city, we take women into the city to have sex with men they hardly know… and all in order to keep the city moving.”
“The city can never stop,” I said.
“You see… already you are a part of the guild system. Always this flat statement, without looking at it in a wider light. The city must move, the city must move. Don’t accept it as an absolute.”
“It is an absolute. I know what would happen if it stopped.”
“Well?”
“The city would be destroyed, and everyone would be killed.”
“You can’t prove that.”
“No… but I know it would be so.”
“I think you’re wrong,” said Victoria. “And I’m not alone. Even in the last few days I’ve heard it said by others. People can think for themselves. They’ve been outside, seen what it’s like. There’s no danger apart from the danger we create for ourselves.”
I said: “Look, this isn’t our conflict. I wanted to see you to talk about us.”
“But it’s all the same. What happened to us is implicitly bound up in the ways of the city. If you hadn’t been a guildsman, we might still be living together.”
“Is there any chance… ?”
“Do you want it?”
“I’m not sure,” I said.
“It’s impossible. For me, at least. I couldn’t reconcile what I believe with accepting your way of life. We’ve tried it, and it separated us. Anyway, I’m living with—”
“I know.”
She looked at me, and I felt at second hand the alienation she had experienced.
“Don’t you have any beliefs, Helward?” she said.
“Only that the guild system, for all its imperfections, is sound.”
“And you want us to live together again, living out two separate beliefs. It couldn’t work.”
We had both changed a lot; she was right. It was no good speculating about what might have been in other circumstances. There was no way of making a personal relationship distinct from the overall scheme of the city.
Even so, I tried again, attempting to explain the apparent suddenness of what had happened, attempting to find a formula that could somehow revive the early feelings we had had for each other. To be fair, Victoria responded in kind, but I think we had both arrived at the same conclusion by our separate routes. I felt better for seeing her, and when I left her and went on towards the Futures’ quarters I was aware that we had succeeded in resolving the worst of the remaining issue.
9
The following day, when I rode north with Blayne to start the future survey, marked the beginning of a long period which produced for the city a state of both regained security and radical change.
I saw this process develop gradually, for my own sense of actual city-time was distorted by my journeys to the north. I learnt by experience that at a distance roughly twenty miles to the north of optimum, a day spent was equivalent to an hour of elapsed time in the city. As far as possible, I kept in touch with what happened in the city by attending as many Navigators’ meetings as I could.
The placidity of the city’s existence that I had experienced when I first left to work outside returned more quickly than most people had expected.
There were no more attacks by the tooks, although one of the militiamen, engaged in an intelligence mission, was captured and killed. Soon after this, the leaders of the Militia announced that the tooks were dispersing, and heading for their settlements in the south.
Although military vigilance was maintained for a long time — and never in fact wholly abandoned — gradually men from the Militia were freed to work on other projects.
As I had learnt at that first Navigators’ meeting, the method of hauling the city was changed. After several initial difficulties, the city was successfully launched into a system of continuous traction, using a complicated arrangement of alternating cables and phased track-laying. One tenth of a mile in a twenty-four hour period was not, after all, a considerable distance to move, and within a short time the city had reached optimum.
It was discovered that this actually gave the city greater freedom of movement. It was possible, for instance, to take quite considerable detours from a bearing of true north if a sufficiently large obstacle were to appear.
In fact the terrain was good. As our surveys showed, the overall elevation of the terrain was falling, and there were more gradients in our favour than were against us.
There were more rivers in this region than the Navigators would have liked, and the Bridge-Builders were kept busy. But with the city at optimum, and with its greater capacity for speed relative to the movement of the ground, there was more time available for decision-making, and more time in which to build a safe bridge.
With some hesitation at first, the barter system was reintroduced.
There was the benefit of hindsight in the city’s favour, and barter negotiations were conducted more scrupulously than before. The city paid more generously for manpower — which was still needed — and tried for a long time to avoid the necessity of bartering for transferred women.
Through a long series of Navigators’ meetings I followed the debate on this subject. We still had the seventeen transferred women inside the city who had been with us since before the first attack, and they had expressed no desire to return. But the predominance of male births continued, and there was a strong lobby for the return of the transfer system. No one knew why there should be such an imbalance in the distribution of the sexes, but it was undoubtedly so. Further, three of the transferred women had given birth within the last few miles, and each of these babies had been male. It was suggested that the longer women from outside remained in the city, the more chance there was that they too would produce male children. Again, no one understood why this should be so.
At the last count, there were now a total of seventy-six male and fourteen female children below the age of one hundred and fifty miles.
As the percentage continued to mount the lobby strengthened, and soon the Barter guild was authorized to commence negotiations.
It was actually this decision which emphasized the changes in the society of the city which were taking place.