“You said yourself—”
“Helward… I’m not the man to build that bridge. It needs young blood. A new approach. Perhaps a ship is the answer.”
Lerouex and I both understood what that admission meant to him. The Bridge-Builders guild was the proudest in the city. No bridge had ever failed.
We walked on.
Almost as soon as I arrived in the city I was fretting to return to the north. I did not like the present atmosphere; it was now as if the people had replaced the old system of guild suppression with a self-inflicted blindness to reality. Terminator slogans were everywhere, and crudely printed leaflets littered the corridors. People talked of the bridge, and they talked fearfully. Men returning from a work shift told of the failures, spoke of building a bridge towards a further bank that could not be seen. Rumours, presumably originated by the Terminators, told of dozens of men being killed, more took attacks.
In the Futures’ room I was approached by Clausewitz, who was himself now a Navigator. He presented me with a formal letter from the Council of Navigators, naming a proposer (Clausewitz) and a seconder (McMahon) who requested me to join tLem.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t accept this.”
“We need you, Helward. You’re one of our most experienced men.”
“Maybe. I’m needed on the bridge.”
“You could do better work here.”
“I don’t think so.”
Clausewitz took me aside, and spoke confidentially. “The Council is setting up a working party to deal with the Terminators,” he said. “We want you on that.”
“How can you deal with them? Suppress their voices?”
“No… we’re going to have to compromise with them. They want to abandon the city for good. We’re going to meet them half-way, abandon the bridge.”
I stared at him incredulously.
“I can’t be a party to that,” I said.
“Instead we build a ship. Not a big one, not nearly as complex as the city. Just large enough to get us to the opposite bank, when we’ll rebuild the city.”
I handed back the letter and turned away.
“No,” I said. “That’s my final word.”
3
I prepared to leave the city forthwith, determined to return to the north and carry out yet another survey of the river. Our survey reports had confirmed that the river was indeed such, that the banks were not circular and that it was not a lake. Lakes can be circled, rivers have to be crossed. I remembered Lerouex’s one optimistic remark, that the opposite bank might come into view as the river neared optimum. It was a desperate hope, but if I could locate that opposite bank there could be no further argument against the bridge.
I walked down through the city realizing that by my words and intents I had made certain my actions. I had committed myself to the bridge, even though I had alienated myself from the instrument of its construction: the Council. In a sense I was on my own, in spirit and in fact. If a compromise was planned with the Terminators, I would have to subscribe to it eventually, but for the moment the bridge was the only tangible reality, however improbable.
I remembered something Blayne had once said. He described the city as a fanatical society, and I questioned this. He said that one definition of a fanatic was a man who continued to struggle against the odds when all hope was lost. The city had been struggling against the odds since Destaine’s day, and there were seven thousand miles of recorded history, none of which had been easily won. It was impossible for mankind to survive in this environment, Blayne had said, and yet the city continued to do so.
Perhaps I had inherited that fanaticism, for now I felt that only I maintained the city’s sense of survival. For me it was given substance in the building of the bridge, however hopeless that task might. seem.
In one of the corridors I met Gelman Jase. He was now many subjective miles younger than me, because he had been north only infrequently.
“Where are you going?” he said.
“Up north. There’s nothing for me in the city at the moment.”
“Aren’t you going to the meeting?”
“Which meeting?”
“The Terminators’.”
“Are you going?” I said.
My voice had obviously reflected the disapproval I felt, for he said defensively: “Yes. Why not? It’s the first time they’ve come into the open.”
“Are you with them?” I said.
“No… but I want to hear what they say.”
“And what if they persuade you?”
“That’s not likely,” said Jase.
“Then why go?”
Jase said: “Is your mind totally closed, Helward?”
I opened my mouth to deny it… but said nothing. The fact was that my mind was closed.
“Don’t you believe in another point of view?” he said.
“Yes… but there’s no debate on this issue. They’re in the wrong, and you know it as well as I do.”
“Just because a man’s wrong doesn’t mean he’s a fool.”
I said: “Gelman, you’ve been down past. You know what happens there. You know the city would be taken there by the movement of the ground. Surely there’s no question about what the city should do.”
“I know. But they have the ear of a large percentage of the people. We should hear them out.”
“They’re enemies of the city’s security.”
“O.K… but to defeat an enemy one should know him. I’m going to the meeting because this is the first time their views are being publicly expressed. I want to know what I’m up against. If we’re going to go across that bridge, it’s going to be people like me who will see us across. If the Terminators have got an alternative, I want to hear it. If not, I want to know it.”
“I’m going up north,” I said.
Jase shook his head. We argued a while longer, and then we went to the meeting.
Some miles before, the work on rebuilding the crèche had been abandoned. The damage had long since been cleared leaving bare the broad metal base of the city, open on three sides to the countryside. At the northern side of this area, against the bulk of the rest of the city, some reconstruction work had been done, and the timber facings afforded the speakers a suitable background and a slightly raised platform from which to address the crowd.
As Jase and I came out of the last building and walked across the space there were already a considerable number of people there. I was surprised that so many were here; the resident population of the city had already been considerably depleted by the men drafted to work on the bridge, but at a rough estimate it seemed to me that there were at least three or four hundred people present. Surely there could be few people who were not here? The workers on the bridge, the Navigators, and a few proud guildsmen?
A speech was already in progress, and the crowd was listening without much response. The main text of the speech — made by a man I recognized as one of the food synthesists — was a description of the physical environment through which the city was currently passing.
“…the soil is rich, and there is a good chance that we could grow our own crops. We have abundant water, both locally and to the north of us.” Laughter. “The climate is agreeable. The local people are not hostile, nor need we make them so—”
After a few minutes, he stood down to a ripple of applause. Without preamble, the next speaker came forward. It was Victoria.
“People of the city, we face another crisis brought upon us by the Council of Navigators. For thousands of miles we have been making our way across this land, indulging ourselves in all that is inhuman to stay alive. Our way of staying alive has been to move forward, towards the north. Behind us—” and she waved her hand to encompass the broad stretch of countryside that lay beyond the southern edge of the platform “—is that period of our existence. Ahead of us they tell us there is a river. One we must cross to further ensure our survival. What is beyond that river they do not tell us, because they do not know.”