The Long Earth

20

THE SHIP HAD descended near a clump of heaped-up rock, into which Lobsang had thrown out an anchor. It was early in the day, the sky a deep blue littered with scattered cloud. But this was a typical Ice Belt world, and snowfields dazzled, though a little way away was a scrap of open water.

Joshua refused to even look out of the window until he had used the coffee spigot.

‘Welcome to West 33157, Joshua. We’ve been stationary since before dawn. I’ve been waiting for you to wake up.’

‘I take it you found something interesting.’

‘Look down.’

On the outcrop to which they were anchored, black rock protruding through the snow, stood a natural monument: a lonesome pine, big, elderly and isolated. But the tree had been neatly cut down close to the root, the tangled branches and the upper trunk lying discarded on the ground, and a pale disc of core wood exposed to the air. An axe had evidently been used.

‘I thought you might be drawn to that sign of humanity. And, Joshua, the second reason: it’s time to try out my backup ambulatory unit.’

Joshua glanced around the gondola. ‘Which is?’

‘You.’

A trunk held the gear. On his chest he was to wear a lightweight pack which contained a facemask and an emergency oxygen supply, a first-aid kit, a flashlight, a gun of some non-ferric metal, a length of very fine rope, other items. On his back would go a canvas pack containing an enigmatic module in a hard, robust, sealed case. He would wear an old-fashioned-looking bluetooth-type earpiece to talk to Lobsang, but he suspected the gear contained other speakers and microphones.

He went back to his stateroom, returned in his bulky Pillsbury gear, and hauled on the backpack. ‘This damn thing’s heavy.’

‘You’ll wear it at all times outside the ship.’

‘And inside the sealed module in the backpack is?’

‘Me,’ Lobsang said shortly. ‘Or a remote unit. Call it a backup. As long as the airship survives, the pack will stay synched with the main processors aboard. If the airship is lost the pack will host my memory until you can get home.’

Joshua laughed. ‘You’ve wasted your money, Lobsang. In what circumstances do you imagine this will be useful? Far enough out, if the airship is lost, neither of us is going home.’

‘It never hurts to plan for all conceivable contingencies. You are my ultimate failsafe, Joshua. That’s why you’re here. Anyhow your kit isn’t complete yet.’

Joshua looked into the trunk again, and pulled out another gadget. It was a framework bristling with lenses, microphones, other sensors, sitting atop a shoulder unit. ‘You have got to be kidding me.’

‘It’s lighter than it looks. The sensor bus should strap securely on your shoulder, and there’s a data feed that plugs into the backpack—’

‘You’re expecting me to explore Earth Million with this parrot on my shoulder?’

Lobsang sounded offended. ‘Parrot it is, if you must… I didn’t expect vanity from you, Joshua. Who’s going to see you? Besides, it’s very practical. I’ll see what you see, hear what you hear; we’ll be in constant touch. And if you have trouble—’

‘What will it do, lay an egg?’

‘Just wear it, please, Joshua.’

It fitted snugly on Joshua’s right shoulder, and was as lightweight as Lobsang had promised. But Joshua knew he was never going to be able to forget the thing was there, that Lobsang was literally at his shoulder with every breath. The hell with it. He hadn’t expected this trip to be a joyride anyhow, and the parrot hardly made it any worse. Besides, the thing would probably break down soon enough.

Without further conversation Joshua went down to an access deck, pulled the door open against the cabin’s slight overpressure — the air pressure was kept high to ensure no external atmosphere could enter the ship until Lobsang had tested it for safety — and stepped into a small elevator cage. A winch lowered him smoothly to the ground, beside the rocky outcrop.

Once on the ground, knee deep in snow, he took a deep breath of the air of this cold Earth, and turned slowly around. The sky had clouded over now, and there was a translucent quality to the air: snow threatening. ‘I take it you’re seeing this. Standard-issue snowfield.’

Lobsang whispered in his ear. ‘I see it. You know, the parrot has nose filters which would enable me to smell—’

‘Forget it.’ Joshua took a few paces, turned and surveyed the airship. ‘Can you see this? Just giving you a chance to check for wear and tear.’

‘Good thinking,’ murmured the parrot.

Joshua knelt beside the tree. ‘There are little flags, marking the trunk rings.’ He plucked one, and picked out the lettering. ‘University of Krakow. Scientists did this. What’s the point?’

‘For climate records from the tree rings, Joshua. Just like on the Datum. Interestingly, such records suggest the split between neighbouring worlds is usually around fifty years deep. Within the lifetime of your average pine tree. Of course that raises a lot of questions.’

Joshua heard a rumble, a splashing sound, a kind of shrill trumpet. He turned slowly; evidently he wasn’t alone on this world. A short distance inland he glimpsed a scene of predator and prey: a cat-like creature with fangs so heavy it could barely lift its head, it seemed, was tracking a waddling beast with a hide like a tank. These were the first animals he had seen on this world.

Lobsang saw what he saw. ‘The over-armed in pursuit of the over-armoured: the result of an evolutionary arms race. And one that has played out on Datum Earth many times, in various contexts, until both parties succumbed to extinction, all the way back to the dinosaur age and beyond. A universal, it seems. As on the Datum, so on the Long Earth. Joshua, go around the rocky outcrop. You’ll come to the open water.’

Joshua turned and walked easily around the outcrop. The snow was deep, heavy to push through, but it felt good to stretch his legs after so many hours in the gondola.

The expanse of the lake opened up before him. On the lake itself ice lay in a sheet, but there was open water close to the shore, and here there was movement, massive, graceful: elephants, a family of them, furry adults with calves between their towering legs. Some of them were wading out into the shallow water. The adults had extraordinary shovel-shaped tusks that they used to scoop at the lake bed, muddying the water for yards around. In a crystalline sparkle of spray a mother played with a calf. Fresh snow started to fall now, big heavy flakes that settled on the fur of the oblivious elephantids.

‘Gompotheres,’ Lobsang murmured. ‘Or relatives, or descendants. I’d keep away from the water. I suspect there are crocodiles.’

Joshua felt oddly moved by the scene; there was a sense of calm about these massive creatures. ‘This is what you brought us down to see?’

‘No. Although these worlds are full of elephant types. A plethora of pachyderms. I wouldn’t normally have brought them to your attention. But they are a high-order prey species, and it appears that they are being tracked. And, interestingly, so are you.’

Joshua stood quite still. ‘Thank you for sharing.’ He looked around, peering through the thickening snow, but saw nothing else moving. ‘Just tell me when to run, OK? I don’t mind if you say right now…’

‘Joshua, the creatures moving cautiously towards you are holding a conversation about you, though I doubt very much if you can hear it because it is very high pitched. Your fillings might tingle.’

‘I have no fillings. I always brushed my teeth properly.’

‘Of course you did. The communication is also quite complex, and becoming more rapid, as if some kind of conclusion is being reached as to what they’re going to do. It comes and goes because they are constantly stepping. This is almost too fast to see — too fast for you to see. From this behaviour I can deduce that they have a very ingenious method of triangulating the point at which all of their major hunters will surround the victim, which is to say, you—’

‘Hold on. Rewind. You said they are stepping? Stepping animals, stepping predators?’ The world pivoted around Joshua. ‘Well, that’s new.’

‘Indeed.’

‘These creatures are the reason you stopped here, aren’t they?’

‘By the way, I see no need for you to be afraid.’

‘You see no reason for me to be afraid?’

‘Well, they appear to be inquisitive creatures. As opposed to hungry creatures. Possibly more frightened of you than you currently are of them.’

‘How much do you want to bet? My life, for instance?’

‘Let’s see how this plays out. Joshua, wave your hands in the air, please. That’s good. Let them see you. The snow is reducing visibility, obviously. Now shuffle round in a circle. That’s right, just stand there until I say otherwise. Don’t worry. I’m in control of the situation.’

This reassurance meant nothing to Joshua. He kept as still as he could. The snow was coming down hard now. If he panicked he might inadvertently step, and he would step into … what? Given the presence of stepping predatory animals he might land in some even worse situation.

Lobsang murmured in his ear, apparently aware of his tension, trying to calm him. ‘Joshua, just remember that I built the Mark Twain. And it, which is to say of course I, watches over you at all times. Anything that I perceive is attempting to do harm to you will be dead before it knows it. I am of course a pacifist, but the Mark Twain carries weapons of many types, from the invisibly small to the invisibly large. I will not mention the word nuclear, of course.’

‘No. Really don’t mention nuclear.’

‘Then we are of one accord. This being so, would you now please sing a song?’

‘A song? What song?’

‘Any song! Choose a song and sing. Something jaunty … just sing the song!’

Lobsang’s command, while wholly insane, had the authority of Sister Agnes’s voice at the extreme limit of her patience, when even the cockroaches knew to get out of town. So Joshua launched into the first song that came to mind: ‘Hail to the Chief, he’s the chief and we must hail him. Hail to the Chief, he is the one we have to hail…’

When he finished, there was silence on the snowfield.

Lobsang said, ‘Interesting choice. Another legacy of those nuns of yours, no doubt. Spirited when it comes to political debate, are they? Well, that should do it. Now we wait. Please do not move.’

Joshua waited. And just as he opened his mouth to declare that enough was enough, there were dark figures all around him. They were jet black, holes in the snow, with wide chests, big heads and enormous paws, or rather hands, which thankfully did not seem to have claws; they were hands that looked more like boxing gloves, or maybe catcher’s mitts.

And they were singing, with big pink mouths opening and shutting with every sign of enjoyment. But this wasn’t the political silliness that Joshua had sung, and nor was it some animal howl. It was human, and he could understand all the words as they were repeated again and again, with the singers chiming in with different harmonies and repetitions, multi-part chords hanging in the air like Christmas decorations. It went on for minutes, the avenues and trajectories of this wild music, until it gradually converged into one great warm silence.

And the main refrain had gone like this: ‘Wotcher!’ all the neighbours cried, ‘Oo yer gonna meet, Bill? ’Ave yer bought the street, Bill?’ Laugh? — I fort I should’ve died. Knocked ’em in the Old Kent Road…

Astonished, Joshua could barely breathe. ‘Lobsang—’

‘Interesting song choice. Written by one Albert Chevalier, a native of Notting Hill, London. Curiously enough it was later recorded by Shirley Temple.’

‘Shirley Temple… Lobsang, I’m guessing there’s a good reason why these Mighty Joes in the blizzard are singing old comedy songs from England.’

‘Oh, certainly.’

‘And I’m also guessing you know what that good reason is.’

‘I’ve a fair idea, Joshua. All in good time.’

Now one of the creatures walked right up to him, with tennis-racket-sized hands cupped as if cradling something. Its mouth was open, and it was still panting with the energy of the singing; there were a lot of teeth in there, but the general expression was a smile.

‘Fascinating,’ Lobsang breathed. ‘A primate, certainly, surely some species of ape. As convincingly upright as any hominid, but that doesn’t necessarily imply a correlation with human evolution—’

‘It’s not the time for a lecture, Lobsang,’ Joshua murmured.

‘Of course you’re right. We must play out the moment. Take the gift.’

Joshua cautiously took a step forward and held out his own hands. The creature seemed excited, like a child who’d been given an important job to do and wanted to make certain that it was done exactly right. It dropped something moderately heavy into Joshua’s hands. Joshua looked down. He was holding what looked like a large salmon, beautiful and iridescent.

He heard the voice of Lobsang. ‘Excellent! I can’t say that this is what I expected, but it is most certainly what I had hoped for. By the way it would be appropriate if you gave them something of yours.’

The previous keeper of the magnificent fish was beaming encouragingly at Joshua.

‘Well, I’ve got my glass knife, but somehow I don’t think this guy ever needs a knife.’ He hesitated, feeling awkward. ‘And it is my knife, I knapped it myself from a bit of imported obsidian.’ A gift from somebody whose life he had saved. ‘Been with me a long time.’

Lobsang said impatiently, ‘Consider the following. A little while ago you were expecting to be viciously attacked, yes? And now we have the obvious point that it was his fish and he gave it to you. I suspect the act of giving is more important than the gift here. Should you feel naked without a weapon, please do help yourself later to one of the laminated knives in the armoury, OK? But right now, give him the knife.’

Angry, mostly at himself, Joshua said, ‘I didn’t even know we had an armoury!’

‘We live and we learn, my friend, and be grateful that you still have the chance to do both. A gift has a worth that has little to do with any currency. Hand it over with a cheerful smile for the cameras, Joshua, because you are making history: first contact with an alien species, albeit one which has had the decency to have evolved on Earth.’

Joshua presented his beloved knife to the creature. The knife was taken with extravagant care, held up to the light, admired, had its blade gingerly tested. Then there was a cacophony in his headset that sounded like bowling balls in a cement mixer.

After a few seconds this mercifully stopped, to be replaced by Lobsang’s cheerful voice. ‘Interesting! They sing to you using the frequencies that we think of as normal, while among themselves they appear to communicate in ultrasonics. What you heard was my attempt to translate the ultrasound conversation down to a range that a human could perceive, if not understand.’

And then, in an instant, they were gone. There was nothing to show that the creatures had been there, apart from very large footprints in the snow, already being filled in by the blizzard. And, of course, the salmon.

Back on the ship Joshua dutifully put the huge fish in the galley’s refrigerator. Then, cradling a coffee, he sat in the lounge outside the galley, and said to the air: ‘I want to speak to you, Lobsang. Not to a voice in the air. A face I can punch.’

‘I can see you are annoyed. But I can assure you that you were never in any danger. And as you must have guessed you are not the first person to have met these creatures. I have a strong hypothesis that the first person who did meet them thought they were Russians…’

And Lobsang told Joshua the story of Private Percy Blakeney, as reconstructed from notes found in his diary, and comments he made to a very surprised nurse in the hospital in Datum France where he was taken after appearing there suddenly in the 1960s.