Free On by Adam Roberts Page A

has to work like anybody else. Labouring up there on top ledge.’ Nobody knew why it was called top ledge; it was not the highest ledge in the village. But old Musshe had the ledge to herself, so perhaps it reflected her status in the village. ‘He owed her some goathair from the beast you lost, I heard, and some candles indirectly. So now he’s singlehandedly digging her a new room. Must be back-breaking. It’s itinerant work, too, so I don’t suppose it’s paying off the whole of the debt.’
    Tighe had not heard that his pahe was involved in anything so demeaning. It was a shock. Part of him wanted to hear more detail, but the stronger impulse was to deny that his pahe was in any trouble at all. He decided to change the subject.
    ‘What’s happened in the village, then?’ he asked. ‘Why has it come down like this? It was fine only weeks ago.’
    Akathe didn’t answer this straight away. He was staring out at the sky, tracing the paths of birds circling on the last of the warm upwinds. Black dots like pieces of the night sky torn off and blown about in the fresh sunlight. Eventually he said, ‘Who knows how it works? A village is like a large clockwork machine. A hundred parts need to work all together for it to function. Who knows why it goes wrong? Everything seems to be like last year, only there are more people begging work on the market shelf, only there are fewer people buying the traders’ goods. Suddenly everybody is hungry and nobody can afford anything.’ He spat.
    After a while Akathe said, ‘My pahe says the world is running down. Maybe this is just the front of it. Maybe things will only get worse indeed.’
    Tighe felt his stomach shrinking; there was a sensation in his sinuses, almost as if he were smelling something burning, some sharp potent odour. But he knew he wasn’t smelling anything. It was a sort of intensity, focused in the middle of his head. Everything was running down. The end was coming.
    ‘Let me tell you,’ said Akathe. ‘I work with clocks. Clocks divide the day into ten hours. But sometimes I have seen old clockfaces, and they divide the day into twelve sections. Do you know why?’
    Tighe said, ‘No.’
    ‘The world is changing. I think so. I think the day once had enough space for twelve hours; I think it was a golden age. Now there is space only for ten. Days were longer in the great old days. There used to be twelve tithes in a year too, not the ten we have these days.’ He spat again, shook his left leg, then his right.
    ‘They used to have twelve of everything,’ said Tighe, remembering his schooling. ‘Twelve months, twelve fingers, twelve toes. Twelve tribes, twelve degrees of separation.’
    ‘So?’
    ‘We have twenty months. That’s longer, though.’
    ‘They came from a different world,’ said Akathe. ‘They were a different people.’
    ‘Maybe they did come from a different world before they found the wall,’ agreed Tighe. ‘But we have followed on from them.’
    But Akathe was bored with this conversation. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘back to work.’
    Tighe left him feeling weirdly elated. The world was running down, like an antique clockwork. He started marching smartly along the traders’ ledge until, he didn’t know why, he was running, sprinting all the way along. Then clambering down the dog-leg and dashing over the main-street shelf. His heart was filled with a desperate sort of joy. He was running as hard as he could, really pounding the ledge with his feet and digging his elbows into the air, past the astonished looks of the people on the shelf, running as if he could burn himself up with the speed. And then, abruptly he was at the end of the shelf and he pulled himself up in a few jarring strides. There was no space to run any further.
    Back home Grandhe was paying a second house call: unheard of previously. He was sitting in the chair in the main space, with pashe standing near. Tighe came in with a fresh expression, a little sweaty