The Inverted World

by Christopher Priest

  “They said it would make fruit grow.”

  “They have more of this?”

  “As much as we need.”

  She put the bag down, and went back to the church workshop. After a word with Father dos Santos she walked quickly to the stables, and saddled up her own horse.

  She rode out of the village by way of the dried-up stream, and followed in the direction of the second man.

  2

  Beyond the village was a wide area of scrubland, dotted with trees. She soon saw the man some distance ahead of her, heading towards a larger patch of woodland. On the far side of this, she already knew, a river flowed. Beyond that were some low hills.

  She kept her distance from the man, not wishing to be seen until she found out where he was heading.

  When he entered the woods she lost sight of him, and she dismounted. She led the horse by its reins, keeping a wary eye open for any sign of him. Soon she could hear the sound of the river; shallow at this season, its bed littered with pebbles.

  She saw his horse first, tethered to a tree. She tied up her own horse, and walked on alone. It was warm and still under the trees, and she felt dusty from the ride. She wondered again what had prompted her to follow this man, when reason warned of any number of potential risks. But the presence of the two men in the village had been unthreatening enough, their motives peaceable if mysterious.

  She moved more cautiously as she approached the edge of the wood. Here she halted, looking down the shallow bank towards the water.

  The man was there, and she looked at him with interest.

  He had discarded his cloak, and it lay with his boots beside a small pile of equipment. He had waded down into the river, and was clearly relishing the cool sensation. Completely oblivious of her presence, he kicked his feet in the water, sending up showers of glittering spray. In a moment, he bent down, scooped up some water in his hands, and splashed it over his face and neck.

  He turned, waded out of the water, and went over to the equipment. From a black leather case he took a small video camera, then suspended the case by its strap over his shoulder, and connected it to the camera with a short, plastic-coated lead. This done, he adjusted a small ferruled knob on the side.

  He put down the camera for a moment, and unfurled a long paper roll, wound like a scroll. He laid this on the ground, looked at it thoughtfully for a few seconds, then picked up the camera and returned to the water’s edge.

  Deliberately, he pointed the camera upstream for a second or two, then lowered the camera and turned. He pointed it at the opposite bank, then, startling her, he pointed it in her direction. She ducked down out of sight, and by his lack of reaction she guessed he had not seen her. When she next looked, he was pointing the camera downstream.

  He returned to the length of paper, and with great care inscribed a few symbols.

  Still moving deliberately, he put the camera back in its case, rolled up the paper, and stowed it with the rest of the equipment.

  He stretched elaborately, then scratched the back of his head. Listlessly, he returned to the water’s edge, sat down, and dangled his feet in the water. In a moment, he sighed and lay back, his eyes closed.

  She regarded him closely. He certainly looked harmless enough. He was a big, well-muscled man, and his face and arms were deeply tanned. His hair was long and shaggy: a great mane of light auburn hair. He wore a beard. She estimated his age somewhere in the middle thirties. In spite of the beard he had a clean-cut, youthful face, grinning at the simple animal bliss of cold wet feet on a hot dry day.

  Flies hovered around his face, and from time to time he would swipe at them lazily.

  After a few moments of hesitation she started forward, and half-walked, half-skidded down the bank, pushing a minor avalanche of soil before her.

  The man’s reaction was immediate. He sat up, looked round sharply, and scrambled to his feet. In so doing he turned awkwardly, and slipped down on his stomach, his feet thrashing in the water.

  She started to laugh.

  He recovered his foothold, and dived for his equipment. A few seconds later he had a rifle in his hands.

  She stopped laughing…but he did not raise the rifle.

  Instead, he said something in Spanish so bad that she could not understand it.

  She spoke only a little Spanish herself, so instead she said in the language of the villagers: “I didn’t mean to laugh…”

  He shook his head, then looked at her carefully. She spread her hands to prove that she carried no kind of weapon, and gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile. He seemed satisfied that she presented no threat to him, and put down the rifle.

  Again, he said something in atrocious Spanish, then muttered something in English.

  “You speak English?” she said.

  “Yes. Do you?”

  “Like a native.” She laughed again, and said: “Do you mind if I join you?”

  She nodded towards the river, but he continued to stare dumbly at her. She slipped off her shoes, and walked down to the bank. She waded in, hitching up her skirt. The water was freezing cold; it made her toes curl with pain, but the sensation was delightful. In a moment, she sat on the ground, keeping her feet in the water.

  He came and sat beside her.

  “Sorry about the gun. You startled me.”

  “I’m sorry too,” she said. “But you looked so blissful.”

  “It’s the best thing to do on a day like this.”

  Together they stared down at the water flowing over their feet. Beneath the rippling surface, the white flesh appeared to distort like a flame flickering in a draught.

  “What’s your name?” she said.

  “Helward.”

  “Helward.” She tried the sound of the word. “Is that a surname?”

  “No. My full name is Helward Mann. What’s yours?”

  “Elizabeth. Elizabeth Khan. I don’t like being called Elizabeth.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She glanced at him. He looked very serious.

  She was a little confused by his accent. She had realized he was not a native of this region, and he spoke English naturally and without effort, but he had a strange way of pronouncing his vowels.

  “Where do you come from?” she said.

  “Round here.” He stood up suddenly. “I’d better water the animal.”

  He stumbled again as he climbed the bank, but this time Elizabeth did not laugh. He walked straight into the trees, did not pick up his equipment. The rifle was still there. He looked over his shoulder at her once, and she turned away.

  When he returned he was leading both horses. She got up, and led her own down to the water.

  Standing between the horses, Elizabeth stroked the neck of Helward’s.

  “She’s beautiful,” she said. “Is she yours?”

  “Not really. I just ride her more often than any of the others.”

  “What do you call her?”

  “I…haven’t given her a name. Should I?”

  “Only if you want to. Mine hasn’t got a name either.”

  “I enjoy riding,” Helward said suddenly. “It’s the best part of my work.”

  “That and paddling in rivers. What do you do?”

  “I’m a…I mean, it hasn’t really got a label. What about you?”

  “I’m a nurse. Officially, that is. I do lots of things.”

  “We have nurses,” he said. “In the…where I come from.”

  She looked at him with new interest. “Where’s that?”

  “A city. In the south.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “Earth. Although most of the time we just call it the city.”

  Elizabeth smiled uncertainly, not sure she had heard correctly. “Tell me about it.”

  He shook his head. The horses had finished drinking, and were nuzzling each other.

  “I think I’d better be on my way,” he said.

  He walked quickly towards his equipment, scoop
ed it up, and stuffed it hurriedly in the saddle-bags. Elizabeth watched curiously. When he had finished he took the rein, turned the horse round and led her up the bank. At the fringe of the trees he looked back.

  “I’m sorry. You must think me very rude. It’s just…you’re not like the others.”

  “The others?”

  “The people round here.”

  “Is that so bad?”

  “No.” He looked around the river-side as if seeking some further excuse to stay with her. Abruptly, he seemed to change his mind about leaving. He tethered the horse to the nearest tree. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course.”

  “I wonder…do you think I could draw you?”

  “Draw me?”

  “Yes…just a sketch. I’m not very good, I haven’t been doing it very long. While I’m up here I spend a lot of time drawing what I see.”

  “Was that what you were doing when I met you?”

  “No. That was just a map. I mean proper drawings.”

  “O.K. Do you want me to pose for you?”

  He fumbled in his saddle-bag, then brought out a wad of paper of assorted sizes. He flicked through them nervously, and she saw that there were line-drawings on them.

  “Just stand there,” he said. “No…by your horse.”

  He sat down on the edge of the bank, balancing the papers on his knees. She watched him, still disconcerted by this sudden development, and felt a growing self-consciousness that was generally alien to her personality. He stared over the paper at her.

  She stood by the horse, her arm running underneath its neck so that she could pat the other side, and the horse responded by pressing its nose against her.

  “You’re standing wrong,” he said. “Turn towards me more.”

  The self-consciousness grew, and she realized she was standing in an unnatural, awkward position.

  He worked away, slipping through one sheet of paper after the next, and she began to relax more. She decided to pay no attention to him, and petted the horse again. After a while he asked her to sit in the saddle, but she was growing tired.

  “Can I see what you’ve done?”

  “I never show this to anyone.”

  “Please, Helward. I’ve never been drawn before.”

  He sifted through the papers, and selected two or three. “I don’t know what you’ll think.”

  She took them from him.

  “God, am I as skinny as that?” she said, without thinking. He tried to take them away from her. “Give them back.” She turned away from him, and flicked through the others. It was possible to see that they were of her, but his sense of proportion was…unusual. Both she and the horse were drawn too tall and thin. The effect was not unpleasing, but rather weird.

  “Please…I’d like them back.”

  She gave them to him, and he put them at the bottom of the pile. Abruptly he turned his back on her, and walked towards his horse.

  “Have I offended you?” she said.

  “It’s O.K. I knew I shouldn’t have shown them to you.”

  “I think they’re excellent. It’s just…it’s a bit of a shock to see yourself through someone else’s eyes. I told you I had never been drawn.”

  “You’re difficult to draw.”

  “Could I see some of your others?”

  “You wouldn’t be interested.”

  “Look, I’m not just trying to smooth your ruffled feathers. I really am interested.”

  “O.K.”

  He gave her the whole pile, and continued on his way towards his horse. While she sat down again and began to go through the drawings, she was aware of him in the background pretending to adjust the horse’s harness, but in fact trying to anticipate her response.

  There were a variety of subjects. There were several of his horse: grazing, standing, throwing its head back. These were amazingly naturalistic; with a few lines he had caught the very essence of the animal, proud yet docile, tamed yet still its own master. Curiously, the proportions were exactly right. There were several drawings of a man…self-portraits, or the man she had seen him with earlier? He was drawn in his cloak, without his cloak, standing by a horse, using the video camera she had seen earlier. Again, the proportions were almost exactly right.

  There were a few sketches of scenery: trees, a river, a curious structure being dragged by ropes, a distant range of hills. He wasn’t as adept with views; sometimes his proportions were good, at other times there was a disturbing distortion that she could not quite identify. Something wrong with the perspective? She couldn’t tell, not having a sufficient artistic vocabulary.

  At the bottom of the pile she found the drawings he had made of her. The first few were not very good, clearly his first attempts. The three he had shown her were by far the best, but there was still this elongation of her and the horse that puzzled her.

  “Well?” he said.

  “I—” She couldn’t find the right words. “I think they’re good. Very unusual. You’ve got an excellent eye.”

  “You’re a difficult subject.”

  “I particularly like this one.” She searched through the pile, found one of the horse with its mane flying wild. “It’s so lifelike.”

  He grinned then. “That’s my own favourite.”

  She glanced again through the drawings. There was something about them she hadn’t understood…there, in one of the drawings of the man. High in the background, a weird, four-pointed shape. There was one in each of the sketches he had done of her.

  “What’s this?” she said, pointing to it.

  “The sun.”

  She frowned a little, but decided not to pursue it. She felt she had done enough damage to his artistic ego for the moment.

  She selected what she thought was the best of the three.

  “Could I have this one?”

  “I thought you didn’t like it.”

  “I do. I think it’s marvellous.”

  He looked at her carefully, as if trying to divine whether she was being truthful, then took the pile from her again.

  “Would you like this one too?”

  He handed her the one of the horse.

  “I couldn’t. Not that one.”

  “I’d like you to have it,” he said. “You’re the first person to have seen it.”

  “I—thank you.”

  He placed the papers carefully into the saddle-bag, and buckled the cover.

  “Did you say your name was Elizabeth?”

  “I prefer to be called Liz.”

  He nodded gravely. “Goodbye, Liz.”

  “Are you going?”

  He didn’t answer, but untethered the horse and swung into the saddle. He rode down the bank, splashed through the shallow water of the river, and spurred his horse on up the opposite bank. In a few seconds he was lost to sight in the trees beyond.

  3

  Back at the village Elizabeth found she had no appetite for more work. She was still waiting for a consignment of proper medical supplies, and a doctor had been promised for more than a month. She had done what she could to see that the villagers were getting a balanced diet—but food supplies were limited—and she had been able to deal with the more obvious ailments such as sores, rashes, and so forth. Last week she had helped deliver a baby for one of the women, and it wasn’t until this that she had felt she was doing any good at all.

  Now, with the strange encounter by the river still fresh in her mind, she decided to return to headquarters early.

  She found Luiz before she left.

  “If those men come back,” she said, “try to find out what it is they want. I’ll be back in the morning. If they come before I arrive, try to keep them here. Find out where they’re from.”

  It was nearly seven miles to the headquarters, and it was evening when she arrived. The place was almost deserted: many of the field operatives stayed out for several nights on end. Tony Chappell was there, though, and he intercepted her as she headed for her room.
r />   “Are you free this evening, Liz? I thought we might—”

  “I’m very tired. I thought I’d have an early night.”

  When she had first arrived, Elizabeth had felt the first stirrings of attraction towards Chappell, and made the mistake of showing them. There were only a few women at the station, and he had responded with great eagerness. Since then he had hardly left her alone, and although she now found him very dull and self-centred she hadn’t yet discovered a polite way of cooling his unwelcome ardour.

  He tried to persuade her to do whatever it was he wanted, but after a few minutes she managed to escape to her room.

  She dumped her bag on the bed, undressed, and took a long shower.

  Later, she went to find something to eat and, inevitably, Tony joined her.

  During the meal, she remembered she’d been meaning to ask him something.

  “Do you know any towns around here, called Earth?”

  “Earth? Like the planet?”

  “That’s what it sounded like. I might have misheard.”

  “I don’t know any. Whereabouts?”

  “Somewhere round here. Not far.”

  He shook his head. “Urf? Or Mirth?” He laughed loudly, and dropped his fork. “Are you sure?”

  “No…not really. I think I must have got it wrong.”

  In his own inimitable way, Tony continued to make bad puns until once again she found an excuse to get away.

  There was a large map of the region in one of the offices, but she couldn’t see anything that might be where Helward said he lived. He had described it as a city lying in the south, but there was no large settlement for nearly sixty miles.

  She was genuinely exhausted, and returned to her room.

  She undressed, and took the two sketches Helward had given her and taped them to the wall by the bed. The one he had drawn of her was so strange…

  She looked at it more closely. The paper it was drawn on was evidently quite old, for its edges were yellowed. Looking at the edges, she realized that the top and bottom were slightly burred where they had been torn, but the line was quite straight.

  Experimentally, she ran the tip of her finger along it. The sensation was a quite regular vibration: the paper had been perforated…

  Careful not to damage the drawing she separated the tape from the wall, and took the sketch down.