The Long Earth

22

‘HOW DO YOU KNOW all this, Lobsang?’

‘About Private Percy? Mostly from that chronicle of the unexplained, the Fortean Times. The December 1970 issue recounted the story of an elderly man wearing antiquated British battledress being admitted to a French hospital some years before. He appeared to be trying to communicate by whistling. According to the British Army pay-book still in his blouse he was Private Percy Blakeney of a Kent regiment, recorded as missing in action after the battle of Vimy Ridge. Nevertheless, he appeared well nourished and in good, if somewhat puzzled spirits — although severely injured, having been run over by the tractor driven by the farmer who brought him into the hospital. The farmer protested to the police that the man had just stood there in the middle of the field, as if he’d never seen such a vehicle before, and the farmer had been unable to stop in time.

‘Despite the efforts of the hospital staff, Percy died of wounds from the collision. An ironic end! But not before one of the nurses who spoke English heard him say something like, “In the end I told the Russians that I wanted to go back, to see how the war was getting on. They were good lads, found me a way home. Good lads, loved singing. Very kind…” And so forth.

‘The fact that the man was wearing the remains of a British Army uniform and mentioned the word “Russians” raised sufficient security concerns to cause the gendarmerie to be called to investigate. Well, according to the British Legion, there was indeed a Percy Blakeney involved in the fighting on Vimy Ridge, who was reported missing after the opening bombardment. There appears to have been no attempt at an official explanation as to why his pay-book should show up decades later in the hands of a mysterious itinerant now buried in a graveyard in central France.’

‘But you have an explanation, I take it.’

‘I’m sure you can see it, Joshua.’

‘He stepped there? Into the forest with his Russians?’

‘Possibly,’ said Lobsang, ‘or perhaps one of the trolls found itself in the trenches by accident, and helped him away.’

‘ “Trolls”?’

‘That seems the mythological term that best describes these creatures, extrapolating from legends that must derive from even older sightings: creatures glimpsed in our world only to vanish again, entirely misunderstood, the seeds of legend … a term that already has become current in some parts of the Long Earth, Joshua. Percy’s wasn’t the only sighting.’

‘So you anticipated finding these — stepping humanoids, did you?’

‘From logical extrapolation. And I anticipated the singing from Percy’s own account. Consider: humans can step; chimps can’t — there have been experiments to establish that. But perhaps our hominid relatives of the past, or rather their modern descendants, were, or are, able to step. Why not? To have encountered such beings so early in our journey is of course the achievement of a major goal. And we must expect, we must hope at least, to meet many more such groups as we continue. What an intellectual thrill this is, Joshua!’

‘So they kept Percy alive, all those years?’

‘It seems so. These “Russians” found Percy wandering in a France which had no Frenchmen living in it, and they were kind to him, for decades. Over several of their generations, perhaps. Remarkable. As far as I know, he never understood the truth about his friends. But Percy probably had never seen anybody from another country before being shipped to France, and, of course, being English and unlettered, was probably half prepared to believe that a foreigner could look like just about anything. Why shouldn’t a Russian look like a big hairy ape?

‘For much of the rest of his life Private Percy travelled with his “Russians” across a calm, well-wooded, well-watered world where they kept him fed with meat and vegetables, and were in all respects considerate in their treatment of him, right up until the day when he made it clear — and I must say that I don’t know how he communicated this to them — that he wanted to go back to the place where he had come from.’

‘Songs can be very expressive, Lobsang. You can sing your homesickness.’

‘Perhaps. And, as we’ve experienced ourselves, they learned those songs well, and remember them. They must have been passed between generations of trolls, perhaps even from group to group… Intriguing. We must learn something of the social lives of these creatures. Well — in the end the trolls took him home, as good fairies should, back to France, but fortunately not in an era when man was disassembling man with high explosives.’

Now the ambulant unit strolled through the blue door at the rear of the deck, and seamlessly, and rather eerily, took up the conversation from its disembodied counterpart. ‘You have further questions, Joshua?’

‘I’ve read about that war. It didn’t last all that long. Why didn’t he go back earlier?’

The ambulant unit put a cold hand on Joshua’s shoulder. ‘Would you have done? It was a terrible, inhuman conflict, a war that had become a machine for killing young men as efficiently, if as horribly, as possible. How keen would he be to walk back into that? And don’t forget he didn’t really know he was a stepper. He thought that he had been blown into another part of France. Besides, his “Russians” were happy to know him. I suspect it was the songs that clinched it. He says they loved hearing him sing. He taught them all the songs that he knew — and you, Joshua Valienté, heard one of them today.

‘So — our first field trip. Perhaps we need an operational debrief. You thought I’d put you in harm’s way, didn’t you? Please believe me, I would not do that. It would not be in my own interest, would it?’

‘You know a hell of a lot about what we’re encountering, even before we’ve encountered it. You might have warned me what was coming.’

‘Yes. I accept that. We must work on our communication. Look — we have barely begun our epic journey; we barely know each other. What would you say to some quality time together?’

Sometimes, the only thing you can do is stare blankly. Quality time, said the artificial man! Joshua knew the term, of course, if only because Sister Agnes went into a rage every time she heard it. As rages went they were not volcanic: few bad words were said — apart from ‘Republican’, which was an extremely bad word to Sister Agnes — and certainly nothing was ever thrown, at least not very hard, and never anything that could hurt. But terms like ‘me time’ and ‘quality time’ lit her fuse. ‘Terms cut out of fog! Watering down the currency of expression, causing anything to mean whatever you want it to mean, until nothing is meant and nothing is precise!’ He remembered the day when someone on the television used the fatal term, ‘Think outside the box.’ Some of the kids went and hid in advance of the explosion.

Quality time, with Lobsang.

Joshua looked at the ambulant’s simulated face. He looked oddly weary, or stressed, in as much as his expression could be reliably read at all. ‘Do you ever sleep, Lobsang?’

Now that face assumed an affronted expression. ‘All my components have a downtime cycle, with secondary systems taking the load as required. I assume this could be considered sleeping. I see you frowning. Is the answer not sufficient?’

Joshua was aware of all the subtle sounds of the ship, its organic creaking and groaning, its subsystems’ humming — Lobsang, constantly at work. How must that level of continual consciousness feel? As if Joshua had to control each individual breath he took, or regulate every heartbeat. Lobsang certainly had to control the stepping, an artifact of consciousness. ‘Is there anything specific bothering you, Lobsang?’

The visage broke into a smile. ‘Of course there is. Everything bothers me, especially the things I don’t know, and can’t control. To know is after all my job, my task, my reason for existing. My mental health is optimal, however. I think this needs to be said. I don’t know where I could even find a bicycle made for two, although I am certain that I could fabricate a reasonably speedy tandem within a couple of hours… You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you? Tonight we will try out the cinema option, and 2001 will be the lead feature. We must complete your education, Joshua.’

‘Accepting for the moment that you are in fact human, with human weaknesses, is it possible you get stressed out? If so it would do you some good to get out of yourself every so often. Sure, let’s spend some “quality time” together. Just don’t tell Sister Agnes I said so.’ A bizarre thought occurred to him. ‘Can you fight?’

‘Joshua, I could lay waste to whole landscapes.’

‘No, no. I meant hand to hand.’

‘Explain.’

‘A bit of sparring every now and again tones you up. Back home some of us lads would spar just to keep our hand in, you know, on the street. Even having a workout with a punch-bag seems to pull you back together. Might be fun, too. What do you say? It’s a very human thing. And it would be a chance for you to explore the responses of this body of yours.’

There was no immediate reply.

‘Come on, how about it?’

Lobsang smiled. ‘Sorry. I was watching the Rumble in the Jungle.’

‘You were what?’

‘Yes, between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali. I always do my research, Joshua. I see Ali won with the use of guile, being the older and more experienced fighter. Excellent!’

‘Are you telling me that you have every single televised boxing match in some portable memory?’

‘Yes, of course. Why not? Anticipating and extrapolating, I have now begun the fabrication of two pairs of sparring gloves, the associated hand wraps, two pairs of shorts, two gum shields for the look of the thing, and one plastic protective for your genitals.’

Joshua could hear accelerated activity on the fabrication decks, and, with the protection of his genitals very much at the forefront of his mind, he said, ‘The Rumble in the Jungle wasn’t a sparring match, you understand, Lobsang. It was more like a small war. I’ve seen it a couple of times. Sister Simplicity watches the great bouts occasionally. We all think she has a thing about big sweaty men—’

‘I have studied the rules of sparring for an adequate time,’ said Lobsang, standing up. ‘Two millionths of a second, to be precise. Sorry, did that sound smug?’

Joshua sighed. ‘Actually, it sounded like exaggeration for humorous effect.’

‘Good!’ said Lobsang. ‘That’s exactly what I intended.’

‘That sounds smug.’

‘Well, it must be said that I have a lot to be smug about, don’t you think? And if you’ll excuse me…’

Lobsang walked away. When Joshua had first seen the ambulant unit move it was rather jerky, obviously artificial, and he couldn’t help noticing that now it moved like an athlete. Lobsang clearly believed in self-improvement. He reappeared after a few minutes, dressed in a heavy white robe, and handed Joshua a kit. Joshua turned his back and began to get changed.

Lobsang recited, ‘Sparring: a healthy way of getting exercise while at the same time honing those parts of the brain responsible for observation, deduction and anticipation, and, not least, developing the spirit of fair play. I suggest that we use the rules devised for a training session rather than an all-out fight, as laid down in 1891 by Brigadier General Houseman. Who, I notice, was shortly afterwards accidentally shot in the head by one of his own men in the Sudan, an incident from which no level of sparring expertise could have saved him. Ironic! Subsequent to this I have since picked up several thousand other allusions to the sport. Really, Joshua, I commend your modesty in turning your back on me when pulling on your shorts, although it is not really required.’

Joshua turned — and saw a new Lobsang. When he slipped off the robe, under boxing vest and shorts was a body that would scare Arnold Schwarzenegger.

‘You do take things seriously, don’t you, Lobsang?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Never mind. OK,’ he said. ‘The idea is to touch gloves, step back, and we’ll go for it…’ He glanced out of the window at worlds scrolling past. ‘But shouldn’t you also be keeping an eye on the Mark Twain? I’m not sure I like the idea of the two of us exchanging blows while the ship steps on blindly.’

‘Don’t worry about that. I have autonomous sub-units that will take care of the ship for a while. And, by the way, Mark Twain himself would find this situation remarkably fitting! I will tell you about that after I have won. Shall we dance, Joshua?’

Joshua was not surprised to find that he could still spar pretty well. After all, out in the Long Earth, you either kept up good reflexes and stamina, or you died. So now he seemed to be laying more glove on Lobsang than Lobsang was laying on him. He said, as he blocked the next blow, ‘Are you sure you are giving it all you’ve got, Lobsang?’

They moved apart and Lobsang grinned. ‘I could kill you with a single blow; if necessary, these arms could serve as pile drivers.’ He carefully stepped away from a tentative attack from Joshua. ‘That’s why I let you hit me first, so that I could calibrate a suitable response. I am fighting you at your own strength, but regrettably not with your speed, which I suspect is innately better than mine because of the phenomenon of muscle memory — embodied cognition, the muscles as part of one’s overall intelligence, amazing! I am going to have to reflect that in my own anatomy, a more distributed processing design, in the next upgrade of this body. And, Joshua, you are also pretty good at deceit, even with your limited body language. I salute you for that.’

Which was true, because at that moment Joshua landed a blow in the middle of that enormous chest. Joshua said, ‘I am not certain that it’s Tibetan, but there is an old saying: “If you are fighting, don’t talk, fight!”’

‘Yes, of course you are right. One must fight with the whole mind.’

And suddenly there was a fist right between Joshua’s eyes. It didn’t actually connect; Lobsang had pulled the punch with astonishing precision, and Joshua could feel only a slight pressure on the tiny hairs of his nose.

Lobsang said, ‘There is an apt old Tibetan saying: “Don’t stand too close to a Tibetan chopping wood.” You are much too slow in every respect, Joshua. Still, perhaps you can defeat me with guile for a while longer, until I pass your level of competence. I find this exercise therapeutic and invigorating and educational. Shall we continue?’

Joshua got back to work, breathing hard. ‘You’re actually enjoying this, aren’t you? Although with your background I was half expecting you were going to try some kind of kung fu stuff.’

‘You have been watching the wrong kind of movies, my friend. I was a motorcycle repairman, remember, better with all things mechanical and electrical than with my fists or feet. I once wired a magneto on to the door of my work room, so that the gentleman next door who regularly came in to steal from me got quite a large electric shock. A little bit of instant karma, and that was the only time I ever laid anyone low. No kick-boxing required.’

They broke again.

Lobsang said, ‘And now you, my friend, have been instrumental in helping me emulate the original Mark Twain who, if we can believe his autobiographical Life on the Mississippi, fought with another pilot on a stern-wheeler in full steam, the man having been bullying a trainee pilot. Every now and again he had to leave the fight and make sure the vessel was still on course — rather as I am guiding our ship through the worlds, even as we spar. Given Twain’s cheerful tendency to put a shine on any anecdote, I am not certain of the truth of this, but I admire the man, which is why I named this ship after him… Actually he would have called his book Stepping Westward, but the title, alas, had already been claimed by William Wordsworth. The old sheep of the Lake District: very fine poet, but somehow “exploring on the Wordsworth” does not quite have the appropriate ring, does it?’

Joshua said, ‘Wordsworth had his moments, according to Sister Georgina. It is a beauteous evening, calm and free…’

‘I know it, of course. The holy time is quiet as a nun breathless with adoration. Very apt! Are we sparring with poetry too, Joshua?’

‘Shut up and box, Lobsang.’