Victoria talked for a long time, and I confess I was prejudiced against her from her first words. It sounded to me like cheap rhetoric, but the crowd seemed to appreciate it. Perhaps I was not as indifferent as I supposed, for when she described the building of the bridge and threw in the accusation that many men had died, I started forward to protest. Jase caught my arm.
“Helward… don’t.”
“She’s talking rubbish!” I said, but already a few voices in the crowd shouted that that was rumour. Victoria conceded it neatly, but added that there was probably more going on at the bridge site than was generally known; this was greeted with some approval.
Victoria brought her speech to an unexpected conclusion.
“I say that not only is this bridge unnecessary, but that it is dangerous too. In this I have an expert opinion. As many of you know, my father is Chief Guildsman of the Bridge-Builders. He it is who designed the bridge. I ask you now to listen to what he has to say.”
“God… she couldn’t do that!” I said.
Jase said: “Lerouex is not a Terminator.”
“I know. But he’s lost faith.”
Bridges Lerouex was already on the platform. He stood by the side of his daughter, waiting for the applause to die down. He did not look directly at the crowd, but stared down at the floor. He looked tired, old, and beaten.
“Come on, Jase. I’m not going to watch him be humiliated.”
Jase looked at me uncertainly. Lerouex was preparing to speak.
I pushed forward through the crowd, wanting to be away before he said anything. I had learned to respect Lerouex, and did not wish to be present in his moment of defeat.
A few yards forward, I stopped again.
Standing behind Victoria and her father, I had recognized someone else. For a moment I couldn’t place either the name or the face… then it came. It was Elizabeth Khan.
I was shocked to see her again. It had been many miles since she had left: at least eighteen miles in city-time, many more in my own subjective time. After she had left I had tried to put her from my mind.
Lerouex had started to address the crowd. He spoke softly, and his words did not carry.
I was staring at Elizabeth. I knew why she was there. When Lerouex had finished humiliating himself, she was going to speak. I knew already what she would say.
I started forward again, but suddenly my arm was caught. It was Jase.
“What are you doing?” he said.
“That girl,” I said. “I know her. She’s from outside the city. We mustn’t let her speak.”
People around us were telling us to be quiet. I struggled to release myself from Jase but he held me back.
Suddenly, there was a burst of applause, and I realized that Lerouex had finished.
I said to Jase: “Look… you’ve got to help me. You don’t know who that girl is!”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Blayne coming towards us.
“Helward… have you seen who’s here?”
“Blayne! For God’s sake help me!”
I struggled again, and Jase fought to hold me. Blayne moved over quickly, took my other arm. Together they pulled me backwards, out of the crowd to the very edge of the city’s metal base.
“Listen, Helward,” said Jase. “Stay here and listen to her.”
“I know what she’s going to say!”
“Then allow the others to hear.”
Victoria stepped forward to the edge of the platform.
“People of the city, we have one more person to speak to you. She is not known to many of us, because she is not of our city. But what she has to say is of great importance, and afterwards there will no longer be any doubt in your minds as to what we must do.”
She raised her hand, and Elizabeth stepped forward.
Elizabeth spoke softly, but her voice carried clearly to all present.
“I am a stranger to you here,” she said, “because I was not born as you were within the walls of the city. However, you and I are of one kind: we are human, and we are of a planet called Earth. You have survived in this city for nearly two hundred years, or seven thousand miles by your way of measuring time. About you has been a world in anarchy and ruins. The people are ignorant, uneducated, stricken with poverty. But not all people of this world are in this state. I am from England, a country where we are beginning to reconstruct a kind of civilization. There are other countries too, bigger and more powerful than England. So your stable and organized existence is not unique.”
She paused, testing the reaction of the crowd so far. There was silence.
“I came across your city by accident, and lived here for a while within your transference section.” There was some surprised reaction to this. “I have talked with some of you, I know how you live. Then I left the city, and returned to England. I’ve spent nearly six months there, trying to understand your city and its history. I know much more now than I did on my first visit.”
She paused again. Somewhere in the crowd a man shouted: “England is on Earth!”
Elizabeth did not respond. Instead she said: “I have a question. Is there anyone here responsible for the city’s engines?”
There was a short silence, then Jase said: “I am a Traction guildsman.”
Heads turned in our direction.
“Then you can tell us what powers the engines.”
“A nuclear reactor.”
“Describe how the fuel is inserted.”
Jase released me and moved to one side. I felt Blayne’s hold on me loosen, and I could have escaped him. But like everyone else listening, my attention had been caught by the curious questions.
Jase said: “I don’t know. I have never seen it done.”
“Then before you can stop your city, you must find out.”
Elizabeth moved back, and spoke quietly to Victoria. A moment later she came forward again.
“Your reactor is no such thing. Unwittingly, the men you call your Traction guildsmen have been misleading you. The reactor is not functioning, and has not done so for thousands of miles.”
Blayne said to Jase: “Well?”
“She’s talking nonsense.”
“Do you know what fuels it?”
“No,” said Jase quietly, although many of the people around us were listening. “Our guild believes that it will run indefinitely without attention.”
“Your reactor is no such thing,” Elizabeth said again.
I said: “Don’t listen to her. The fact that we have electrical power means the reactor is working. Where else do we get the power?”
From the platform, Elizabeth said: “Listen to me.”
Elizabeth said she was going to tell us about Destaine. I listened with the others.
Francis Destaine was a particle physicist who lived and worked in Britain, on Earth planet. He lived at a time when Earth was running critically short of electrical energy. Elizabeth recited the reasons, which were essentially that fossil fuels were burnt to provide heat, which was converted into energy. When the fuel deposits ran out there would be no more energy.
Destaine, Elizabeth said, claimed to have devised a process whereby apparently unlimited amounts of energy could be produced without any kind of fuel. His work had been discredited by most scientists. In due course the energy that was derived from fossil fuels had run out, and there followed on Earth planet a long period now known as the Crash. It had brought to an end the advanced technological civilization that had dominated Earth.
She said that the people on Earth were now beginning to rebuild, and Destaine’s work was instrumental in this. His process as originally outlined was crude and dangerous, but a more sophisticated development was manageable and successful.
“What has this to do with halting the city?” someone shouted.
Elizabeth said: “Listen.”