kroth:  the slant

5: northward

In the cheerful light of the morning sun I guided Vic's steps down his path and through his gate. He co-operated like an obedient child. The rucksack I had packed for him, he had shouldered without complaint when he saw me put on mine, though I could not tell how much he understood what we were doing.
    Still holding his left arm, as though I were helping a half-blind old man, I steered him to the left along the pavement. With my other hand I waved to a score of well-wishers who had gathered to see us off, for the word had spread around the village that my uncle and I were off to Savaluk. Although many (such as Mr Swinton) were not present because they had gone off to work, or had duties or illnesses that kept them, those who could had turned up, and it seemed quite a crowd. I didn't feel up to making a speech but with many nods and thank-yous I expressed my appreciation as well as I could.
    They accompanied us up to the corner where Miss Tyler lived, then to the left as far as the crossroads. Traversing, we continued west, the crowd dispersing now, leaving us alone.
    Soon we reached a point where Guthtin Village petered out into the fields and hedgerows of what might (but for the relentless Slope) have been a pleasant English country scene.
    If someone had offered us a lift as far as the Great Royal Road I would have accepted, yet I was just as glad that no one had. I wanted to start the day with some exercise in the sunshine and the open air, especially as I knew that once we had reached the Road and faced north there would be less occasion for walking; for no matter how much time we were allowed it was out of the question to attempt our journey on foot up a continuous fifteen-degree Slope. When we reached that northward road, we would have to hitch.
    The sky was an absolutely cloudless blue, but the land wasn't dry. I could smell moist freshness; the fields glistened as if after a shower. Partly through the weird human ability to get used to just about anything, I found I could get round the awful fact of the tilted world, and just enjoy the walk, most of the time. Our lateral westward road was, of course, banked on its south side; it had to be. And this helped. If I looked ahead rather than to left or right, I could pretend I was hiking a level route across the flank of some slope in the Chilterns or on the Downs.
    But for me the really important strategy, inspired by the wise words of Mr Swinton, was to postpone judgement. In order to keep terror and vertigo from seizing hold I must live without knowing and without understanding.
In other words: let things jolly well BE.
    This decision was so liberating! Reality – let it be! It would certainly continue its merry way whether I understood it or not. Maybe in good time I might figure it out, or I might not; but there was absolutely no sense in wearing myself out over the mystery. For it wasn't as though I were on some utterly alien planet on which a newcomer's first mistake is likely to be his last. Here there was some kindness, some tolerant leeway for the ignorant beginner.
    And so what if this world didn't rotate, so what if the Sun wanted to orbit the world instead, so what if all the astronomy I had ever learned was wrong, and Copernicus had been wasting his time – not my fault! Don't blame me! I'm not the Manager, thank heavens!
    I could have skipped for joy, except that I was holding onto Vic's arm, and his presence reminded me: the idea of this mission to Savaluk was to get help for him. And supposing it was successful, he would wake, properly wake, and then.... Knowing Vic, I had the vague but powerful suspicion that I ought to enjoy my ignorance while I could.

                                                  *

We came upon the Great Royal Road quite suddenly, for it ran, where we were, along a cutting that concealed it from ground level until close approach. Our own side-road continued over it via a bridge. We went as far as the middle of this bridge, from which I gazed along the upward sweep of a thoroughfare that seemed to be about the width of a dual carriageway on Earth. At the present moment, as my eyes followed its slightly wavering course up to the northern limit of vision, I could not hear or see any traffic, though I had been told that the GRR was the main north-south artery of the Krothan economy.
    In the silence we turned back and descended a grassy embankment to sit on one of many benches by the roadside and wait for a lift. The existence of these benches, half a dozen of them, suggested hitch-hiking was a popular idea, since I couldn't see any other reason why people would want to sit at this precise spot, though so far this morning we were the only ones here. Similar empty benches stood on the other side of the road. I had noticed that vehicles drove on the right, so I knew we were waiting on the correct side for northbound traffic.
    So as to be able to spot a likely lift in good time as it came towards us, I had to keep watch on the road South, and this I did not like. Carefully shading my eyes with my hand, so as to shield them from that sagging blue infinity fifteen degrees below where the horizon ought to be, I limited my sight to the road-surface itself.  
    Minutes passed; still no traffic. Out of curiosity I also sometimes turned to look the other way but I found that there was a disadvantage in staring North, too. It wasn't quite as disturbing as the sag South; nevertheless the bulking continuousness of the upward Slope was oppressive if you allowed the thought of it to catch hold.
    Then came the first test of my “don't-ask, let-be” attitude.
    A dot appeared under the next bridge northwards, about two miles off. I watched it grow and gradually resolve itself into a car. No, two cars, one very close behind the other. I heard no sound of engines – of course, come to think of it, they could just roll down the Slope under gravity, saving their petrol for the return journey! I waved as they rolled past me. The lead driver, an ordinary-looking man who might have been an accountant on his way to work, waved back. Then a couple of minutes later came more cars, but this time they came up from the South, and of course their motors were running (doubtless in low gear!). Again it was two cars in close formation. They were both full of passengers so I was not surprised that they did not stop. But after this had happened several more times, I began to wonder: why always in pairs? I could not help but think it odd that I had not so far seen a single solitary car.
    Back in the village it had been different; there I had seen some lone vehicles, but out here on the great north-south avenue – never alone, always in pairs. Often one of the cars was towed.
    It was one of these tow-pairs, finally, who stopped for us. The driver, a smallish man in a grey suit and tie, had no passengers. I nudged Vic into the back seat and got into the front beside the driver.
    “And where are you headed?”
    He spoke with a Welsh accent.  I thought: so Welshness exists in this world; and why not?
    “To Savaluk, to the Royal Fountain Hospital.”
    “Quite a distance! Is it your father that is unwell?”
    “My uncle. He has a case of fugue....”
    “Ah! That is special! Worth the journey, then.”
    I could not quite get the tone of this. Not only courtesy, respect and genuine concern but also a kind of admiration for Vic's type of illness. I had also noted this attitude in those who had bidden us goodbye a short while before.
    “So I hope. The doctor, he referred me....”
    The man nodded, “You will see, in Savaluk, they will cure him. I hope you were not waiting long?” I assured him we had not been waiting long. “That is a good sign,” he continued. “Indeed the traffic is getting back to normal, after The Night Before Last. The disruption was worse in bigger towns and worst of all in the City. Where I live, in Cylchcoch, things stayed mostly quiet, but there were three cases of fugue, quite a lot for a small village.” Again, something in the tone I didn't understand: a touch of pride.
    Now for my little experimental manoeuvre:
    “I have not come through undamaged myself,” I admitted. “I lack my Krothan identity. I remember only Earth.”
    I said it in a casual tone but I had carefully thought out the pros and cons of it and had decided that by and large it would be easiest if I got into the habit of confessing my ignorance, so that people knew where I stood. That way they would not expect of me things which I could not know or do.
    “Is that so? You remember only Earth! That means, you remember it properly? Like it was real?”
    “That's it.”
    “So! I have heard on the town-hall news, that there are people who can do that. Not many. It is a wonderful gift, though I can see it must lead to problems.”
    “The big problem,” I said just a trifle dryly, “is that I don't have the right mind for where I actually am.”
    “Then you are doing the right thing in going to Savaluk,” the driver said, reinforcing the notion that Savaluk was where things got sorted out. I could have questioned him further on this point, but the trouble with asking questions is you sometimes get answers, and then you have to absorb and perhaps act upon the answers. I didn't want to push things.
    After a minute or two of thoughtful silence he mused softly: “Earth is the world that is real for you – fancy that.... I remember a valley in Pembrokeshire.... And what county was yours?”
    “Hertfordshire.”
    He shook his head in wonder. “For me, my Earth home is only a vague dream, like an imagined colour. Not like your recollections, seemingly.”
    “Mine are sharp, all right,” I agreed, though for the first time I began to wonder how long they would remain so. And how would I feel if and when my Earth memories went blurry, and Kroth became my familiar world? Overall would I lose, or gain? I'd gain a lot of ease and convenience and knowledge, but I'd lose the sense of adventure that comes from being in a new world of complete surprise. I'd lose a past that seemed to be an essential component of my identity, but I'd also lose the sense of loss itself, which might well turn out to be a relief.... not that I yet suffered much from nostalgia; the adventure I was in was all too new and absorbed my whole attention; but when I considered the case of the driver of this car and his no doubt beautiful Pembrokeshire valley, vanished now in the limbo of the never-was, I reckoned he was probably better off not having memories that were too clear.
    Enough of this. I was supposed to be “letting-be”. As the car droned up the Slope I sat back in silence for a while, with my head on the headrest, staring north at the line where sky met land, and seeking to trick myself into viewing it as a normal horizon.
    The driver's voice recaptured my attention.
    “By the way, I shall have to drop you off at the turning to Sisk. That is as far as I go on the Royal Road. You will soon find another northward car. And you will be about fifty miles closer to your goal.”
    But as it turned out we had to stop sooner than that.
    The motor suddenly coughed, burped, stuttered for half a minute while the driver brought the car and its towed twin onto the grass verge, and then conked out.
    Instead of fishing out a mobile phone and contacting a breakdown service, the driver sighed: “Here we go. Time to change round.” He got out and so did I, ready to lend a hand as I realized what he intended to do.
    It was simply a matter of switching cars. I didn't ask what was supposed to happen if the other car conked out as well. My current grand theory of everything said: in any society, stuff happens, and other stuff evolves to deal with it. Call that Wemyss' First Law. From it is derived Wemyss' Second Law, which states that Duncan Wemyss doesn't need to bother his head about stuff that's way above it.
    So I just helped to push the back car to the front position and then the driver re-fixed the towline and I got Vic into what was now the front car (I preferred not to leave him in the back one), and we set off again.
    About ten minutes later the driver let us off at the Sisk junction.

                                                   *

Traffic was heavier by this time, but we still had a wait of about half an hour before the next lift. I dare say it would have helped if Vic had looked more obviously ill, instead of just sleepy. And if I had thought to bring a placard with “FUGUE CASE” written on it, then we might have got really quick results.
    It must have been the boring, frustrating side of hitch-hiking that triggered in me a spell of total disbelief in the entire scene. I caught myself thinking, “I'll need warm clothes if we get much higher up this mountain” – as though it were a mountain and not a tilt of the world itself. Likewise I caught myself assuming that somewhere far to the south the slope must level out into a plain, much too far down for me to see, but still firmly there somewhere beyond the blueness. But I had the sense to knock these thoughts away. Dalliance with delusion would only set me up for a stressful awakening later on. You're doing all right. You've made a good start. You know what to do. Accept the great change. No point in fooling yourself. There's no going back.
    The chug-chug of a labouring motor alerted me that something bigger than usual was ascending from the South. It was a convoy of three long lorry-sized vans. On their sides, in dramatically oblique lettering were the words:

                         SAITTA – BELLINI  DROGHE NATURALI
 
   I had plenty of time to note this as the convoy was decelerating. As they slowed to a stop I mis-read the situation: I assumed this was a breakdown.  The lead van, I thought, would now have to be towed, so I expected that one of the others would chug round to the front to do the towing. But this did not happen. Instead, to my great surprise, a youngster of about twenty poked his head out of the window and said, “Vuoi passaggio? Want a lift?” This great convoy had stopped for us!
    “Grazie!” I nodded vigorously, making use of one of the few Italian words I knew. A long-distance outfit – which the size of it must surely indicate – was just what I needed. “Siamo per Savaluk! Royal Fountain Hospital! Mio zio – fugue!”
    The man turned his head and spoke to someone in Italian. I made out the words, “Si, si, ma non direttamente,” and then this young fellow turned back to me and said, “We are going to Savaluk but not directly. We shall probably take two days. You might find someone else who gets you there in one day, but maybe not. It is for you to decide.”
    I decided that a sure thing was better than more waiting. “I will go with you, thanks again, grazie molto.”
    A hum – a door slid open in the mid-section of the great vehicle. I nudged Vic and we approached this opening. A typically fine-looking Italian who looked to be in his forties appeared in it and said, “Ciao. Make yourselves comfortable. I am Fabrizio Saitta. You said 'fugue'.”
    “Yes, signore.”
    “I guessed it.” He paused, as if weighing the options. “Well,” he said, “it is important, but I cannot go any faster. However I can assure you this furgone is reliable. It has four engines, any one of which can pull the entire convoy at need. And the same is true of the others.” He spoke with quiet pride. “I hope what I do for your uncle is good enough.”
    I assured him it was.
    The middle bulge of the vehicle turned out to be wider than I had thought. Judging by the spacious interior it must have spread almost all the way across one half of the road. A corridor ran down one side and the other side had compartments like those of a sleeper train, as well as storage for cargo. Vic and I were settled in the most forward of these living-compartments, which were provided not only with couches and tables but also with cupboards well stocked with food and drink.
    The hours passed, the day wore on and I greatly enjoyed the ride, which became especially interesting when the convoy left the main road to make deliveries of herbs and tinctures amongst the villages and small towns that lay scattered to either side. Vic and I were treated to the hospitality of the Italians, who seemed pleased to feed us well; nothing was too good for un malato speciale like Vic, and when they learned of my memory lack they included me to some extent in that category of “special ill person”.
    During our breaks, Fabrizio was keen to hear me talk of Earth. I would have preferred not to – but I couldn't very well refuse. After all, Vic and I were being looked after so well that I could just sit back and regard the whole journey as “in the bag”. So I obliged my host's curiosity and rambled on about my Earthly home, my school, my holidays.... holidays. That was a mistake. All of a sudden he asked whether I had been to Italy.
    “Uh, yes,” I said, rattled.
    “Il bel paese,” he remarked with a dreamy smile.
    “Uno stato d'anima,” his son's voice called out, in a tone of impatient rebuke, from another compartment.
    “Ah, yes, a state of mind, as Ugo reminds me,” Fabrizio mused with a tinge of wry regret.
    Nervously I studied the face of my questioner while my mind raced in a whirl of awkward questions.
    As with the Welshman, so with this Italian, I couldn't see how his country, with its well-defined coastline, could ever have existed in this sloping world, where no sea could exist, and which obviously was not a mere alternate or parallel Earth. In fact I doubted that it was even a planet in the normal sense. This being the case, what was I to make of the presence of Earth nationalities in such a physically alien dimension? If Englishness had been the only one, I could have dismissed it as some kind of egocentric illusion, a sort of mentally convenient translation, like the way everyone in the Galaxy speaks English in episodes of Dr Who; but my recent encounters ruled out that explanation. Mad though it seemed, Earth nationalities quite obviously did exist on Kroth. Again I faced that immense underlying problem: the mixture of the familiar with the strange. The standard SF explanation – that over the centuries people from various countries must have blundered into Kroth via trans-dimensional gateways or thin spots in the continuum – simply didn't fit, for only just a couple of days ago, prior to The Night Before Last, we were all in the “dream of Earth”....
    All this darted through my mind in a lot less time than it takes to express in words. I didn't dwell on it. There's nothing more stressful than a lurking fact that does not fit, nothing more fearsome than a truth on the prowl. So I shelved the problem, as usual.  By acceptance, by remembering Mr Swinton's point that it would be unreasonable to expect me to understand what's what at this early stage, I postponed the reckoning. But I didn't like talking about Italy to Fabrizio.
    During our delivery stops I took Vic out to stretch his legs, and because I too wanted a walk; and when I did so the bystanders would congregate to show a curious and respectful regard for my silent uncle. Sometimes one of them would touch his sleeve and say, “We have a person like this, too,” or “We sent so-and-so to Savaluk,” but “not as good as he, though”. I was starting to wonder if some kind of superstition was at work.
    Occasionally, scarier moments occurred. These happened when some neglected aspect of the scene, some visual fact which had capered for hours in front of my eyes yelling in vain for my attention, belatedly clicked.
    I experienced this kind of shock in one small town while I was looking at the people in the street, where some of the faces were African. Such had also been the case in the previous two or three towns, but here, suddenly, I twigged that the Africans of Kroth were not black! Neither were they white, and neither were the “whites” white! It crashed upon my consciousness that everyone whom I had seen so far in this world was the same uniform grey of skin, myself included. Race existed – but without variation in colour.
    An inconsequential fact in itself, yet frightening because of the way I had ignored it for so many hours. What else might be about to spring into obviousness?
    Evening was drawing on when I suffered the next jolt.
    This time my stupidity, or rather my emergence from it, really made me shiver. I knew by now that we must have travelled a sizeable proportion of our journey north. We came to the outskirts of a sizeable town, where a sign stood that proclaimed:

                                          SWURK – 80° NORTH

    It was a quiet, pleasant enough place, nothing special, with dignified stone and brick buildings one to three storeys high. We parked in a commercial district of everyday dinginess, in the banked-up levelled ground of a bus station. It was getting late but business wasn't over; we had a fairly heavy delivery to make in Swurk.
    I helped Fabrizio and Ugo and men from the other vans with their unloading. Then while they spoke to their customers I strolled off, alone, out of the levelled area and back onto the through road. Something was nagging at my mind and I wanted to face it without anyone seeing the effect it had on me.
    Then – it hit me: The Slope was not what it was. Gradually over the hours it had been getting more gentle, and now that my awareness had suddenly caught up with what was going on, I experienced that unbalancing let-down you get when you miss a step and tread on empty air, except that here the shock was world-sized: for it wasn't just what I knew, it was the reason I knew. The Slope had decreased from 15 degrees to 10 degrees exactly. How did I know this? 80 degrees North, the sign had said. Therefore we were 10 degrees south of the Pole. That, you idiot (I sneered at myself) is why the slope is 10 degrees. And at the Pole itself the Slope will be no more.
    Because I would then be on top of the world.
    So that was it. You are living in a universe with an absolute up and down. This ought to have been obvious from your first hour on Kroth.
    I held onto a lamp post and drew ragged breath.
    I was a mite on the surface of an enormous ball. North was up, South was down, not only on maps, but for real. On my journey, as I crept higher up the ball, with every mile the land would get more level, more like what I craved as normal land.  And in another.... let me see.... in another six or seven hundred miles it would be quite flat.
    Certainly, flatness was something to look forward to, but all the comfort in this idea was obliterated by my grim understanding of what must happen in the other direction.
    Worse than an eternal Slope, southward must run an increasing Slope.
    Steeper and steeper until....
    Frightful pictures took form to besiege my imagination; I must hack at the images, hurl them off their scaling ladders, hew and smite in defence of my sanity, yet at the same time I must take care to smooth my face so as not to look too sick when I presented myself back at the van.  Must look cool and collected while simultaneously I must also get used to standing on an Earth which one might fall off!  One saving thought enabled me to snatch a victory against panic:
    I shall find Kroth to be flat at the Pole.  Yes, blessed flatness awaits me there, and the polar region moreover must surely be big enough to provide the comforting illusion that the world is flat everywhere. In a circle maybe a couple of hundred miles across, is my guess, the gradient must be unnoticeable.  So throughout that area it will be possible to pretend on a gut level that I am somewhere on Earth.  A haven, provided that I can reach it safely. Maybe I’ll be allowed to settle, make a life in Savaluk…
    At any rate the notion was enough to calm my vertigo.
    One thing's for sure, I thought as I trudged back to the van.  There can't be any worse shocks still to come. As far as gut-churning revelations are concerned, I must have had my lot.

                                                   *

Relaxed, I watched the log fire that crackled and flickered in the grate in the common room of the Traveller's Rest.
    It was tempting to ignore where we actually were, a few miles north of Swurk, on Kroth.  The night that had fallen outside also lurked indoors, in alcoves and recesses and in shadows thrown by the armchairs drawn up around the fire. Hammer beams along the ceiling loomed like the thick branches of oak that they once were; I could imagine myself in Old England, so long as I shut my ears to my companions, the Italians in the convoy who had seized the opportunity to take their evening meal in this inn, away from their furgoni.  
    My silent uncle sat in the leftmost armchair of the rough semicircle around the fire.  I sat next to him and about a dozen others completed the gathering.  Some were in other chairs, others perched on stools further back, all of them focused on what I had been saying: for they had got me to talk yet again about Earth.
    “Clouds,” I had said; “huge white shapes, the size of mountains, floating like ships in the sky; remember?”
    They searched back in their memory of the dream, and I heard sighs.
    “Ships!” called a feminine voice. “Hey, Duncan, tell me about ships and the sea!”
    This request came from an extremely attractive girl who sat close to the other end of the semi-circle. I had seen Ugo greet her with an embrace and clip a glittering bracelet around her slender arm; with perfect poise she had accepted the gift, and her smile of gracious delight would have done credit to a princess. Evidently, here the innkeeper's bonny daughter was equivalent to a princess although the admirers paying court to her regal presence were allowed to address her as “Flo”.  Obedient to Flo's command I talked about ships and the sea.  I described waves and beaches, and she listened with enthusiasm to my every word.  She kept prompting me to say more, and although most of the rest of the audience were happy enough with this, I became concerned about Ugo, not liking the look on his face as I monopolised his girl's attention.  I finally excused myself and wandered over to the bar.
    In this culture there seemed to be no rules about what age you had to be to get served beer: hereabouts if you behaved like an adult you were treated as one.  I took advantage of this, but I also took my time about returning to the group with my refill.
    Under cover of a general buzz of conversation I circulated till I was placed to speak confidentially to Ugo. “I could do with your advice,” I said to him.
    He looked sullen but his manners were impeccable. “Please, go ahead and ask.”
    “You have been here before?”
    “Many times.”
    “You know that young lady?”
    “I know her, yes.” His face was thunderous now.
    “I have a girl friend,” I said, stretching the truth somewhat, “and I want her to react to my memories in a good way, like Flo does. I need to train this girl of mine. What, in your view, is the secret?”
    His teeth flashed in a sudden grin; I had defused his jealousy.
    “You wanna know how to treat girls?” He tapped his brow with his finger. “I give you a clue. Danger.”
    I waited. “Is that it?”
    “It is the thing. They like – I mean, Flo likes it that I have been South to Gonoss, to get the herbs for my father's business. But I don't suggest you go that far.”
    “No?” I had achieved my aim in this conversation and now I wished to end it but I wasn't sure how. So I asked for knowledge I did not want. “What do I do, then, to give Elaine the, er, danger?”
    “Take her to Gonoss theme park,” he suggested with another grin. “It is all fake, but it will do. The smell of fake danger will be enough in your case, to win respect.”
    “Gonoss theme park?”
    “I hear you come from Guthtin, no? The Theme Park is not far. It is a good replica, in some ways, of the real Gonoss. The forest is real, and every now and then, Bzzzzt! they shoot the swaash. Of course they cannot do the gradient. Or the avalanches. Or the Gonomong Fingers.” He made gestures, a clutching and tearing, and then a tipping with his palms, and his expression became gleeful as he saw the change in mine.
    Then he looked a bit sorry at his words. He added, “No, Duncan, forget all I say. I don't say I am better than you. I say you are different. Write to your Elaine to join you in Savaluk, and stay there.”

>>  6: Savaluk