The Long Earth

40

IN THE MORNING Lobsang was back. Joshua could sense him, sense that a kind of purposefulness had returned to the ship, even before the ambulant unit joined him on the observation deck, as he drank the first coffee of the day. Sally was evidently still asleep.

They were stepping gently, and worlds washed beneath them. As ever the Long Earth was mostly trees and water, silence and monotony. Joshua was glad to be free of the hard-to-pin-down oddness of Happy Landings, but as they headed West once more that gathering pressure in his head had returned. He tried and failed to ignore it.

The two of them sat in silence. There was no mention of Lobsang’s departed friends the trolls, or of his offline episode. Joshua couldn’t read Lobsang’s mood. He wondered vaguely if he was lonely without the trolls, disappointed they had chosen to leave, frustrated that his research was evidently unfinished. It was faintly disturbing that Lobsang seemed to be becoming more unstable, more unpredictable. Overloaded by new experiences, perhaps.

After an hour of this Lobsang said, out of nowhere, ‘Do you ever think about the future, Joshua? I mean the far future?’

‘No. But I bet you do.’

‘The diffusion of humanity across the Long Earth will surely cause more than mere political problems. I can foresee a time where mankind is so dispersed across the multiplicity of worlds that there will be significant genetic differences at either end of the human hegemony. Perhaps there will have to be some kind of enforced cross-migration to make certain that mankind remains sufficiently homogeneous to be united…’

A burning forest below made the ship dance briefly on turbulent thermals.

‘I don’t think we need worry about that just yet, Lobsang.’

‘Oh, but I do worry, Joshua. And the more I see of the Long Earth, the more its scale impresses itself on me, and the more I fret. Mankind will be trying to run a galactic empire, effectively, on one ever-repeating planet…’

The airship shivered to a halt. The world below was shrouded in low cloud.

Sally wandered on to the deck, wrapped in a robe, her hair in a towel. ‘Really? Do we have to copy the mistakes of the past? Must there be Roman legions marching into endless new worlds?’

‘Good morning, Sally,’ Lobsang said. ‘I trust you are rested?’

‘The best thing about the beer at Happy Landings is its purity, like the very best German brews. No hangover.’

Joshua said, ‘Although you did your best to test that theory to destruction.’

She ignored him and looked around. ‘Why were we travelling so slowly? And why, in fact, have we stopped?’

Lobsang said, ‘We travelled slowly in order that you might sleep late, Sally. But also I took on board your criticism. It pays to inspect the small details, and so I have slowed the flight of our flying penis, as you so amusingly described it. Small details, such as the relic of an advanced civilization just underneath us. Which is why we have stopped.’

Joshua and Sally, electrified, exchanged a glance.

As the ship lost height they peered down through the haze.

‘My radar scanner is returning images through the cloud,’ Lobsang said, apparently staring into empty space. ‘I see a river valley, evidently long dry. A cultivated flood plain. No recognizable electromagnetic or other high technology. Signs of purposeful construction on the riverside — including a bridge, long ago broken. And rectangles on the ground, my friends, rectangles of brick or stone! But no signs of complex life surviving. I have no idea who the builders were. This may be a diversion from our main goal, but I am sure I speak for all of us when I say that we should make an initial survey of this phenomenon. Am I right?’

Again Joshua and Sally glanced at each other.

Sally asked, ‘What kind of weapons are we carrying?’

‘Weapons?’

‘Better safe than sorry.’

Lobsang said, ‘If you mean portable weapons we have various knives, lightweight but nevertheless very useful handguns, crossbows that fire a variety of darts tailored to the metabolism types we might expect to encounter, ranging in power from “ever so sleepy” to “instantly dead”, colour-coded, with Braille and pictogram options — I am rather proud of that piece of kit. Aboard the airship there are a number of projectile weapons under my command. If necessary, I can fabricate a small but very sneaky tank.’

Sally snorted. ‘We’re not going to need a tank. We’re dealing with an extinct civilization down there. Although extinct civilizations can leave behind nasty surprises.’

Lobsang was silent for a moment. ‘Of course. You are right. One must prepare appropriately. Please hold.’

He stood and went behind his blue door. Joshua and Sally exchanged another glance.

Then, after a couple of minutes, the door opened and the ambulant unit walked back on to the deck, wearing a fedora hat and carrying a holstered revolver and, of course, a bull whip.

Sally stared. ‘Well, Lobsang, you have now passed my personal Turing test!’

‘Thank you, Sally, I shall cherish that.’

Joshua was astonished. ‘You fabricated a bull whip in minutes? Braiding leather takes time. How did you do it?’

‘Much as I would like to give you the impression that I am omnipotent, I have to say that there was already a whip in the manifest. A simple and versatile device, requiring little maintenance. Well — shall we go exploring?’

They climbed down into a near desert. Joshua found himself in a broad valley, with a few ragged trees struggling for life on the floor, cliffs on either side honeycombed with caves. There was no sign of animal life, he observed, not so much as a desert mouse. He spotted the remnants of that broken bridge, and the rectangular scrapings on the ground.

But he instantly forgot about all that, because down the valley was a building: one sodding great big rectangle, not much from the air maybe, but from down here it looked like the headquarters of some international conglomerate with an aversion for windows.

They set off towards it, led by Lobsang in his hat.

‘Generally speaking,’ Lobsang pronounced, ‘reality having little sense of narrative, ancient sites are not heavy with swinging blades that decapitate, or rock panels that fold back to fire darts. It’s rather a shame, isn’t it? However, I have detected a textbook collection of enigmatic symbols. The valley cliffs appear to be of pale grey limestone, and have been extensively worked by creatures unknown. The symbology seems to have no relation to any known human script. Meanwhile the large building ahead is constructed of black blocks, basalt perhaps, not well dressed as masonry goes. No obvious entrances as seen from this side, but I believe that while we were still airborne I saw on the far side of the building something like a sloping face, a shadow — perhaps a way in.’ He added, deadpan, ‘Isn’t this fun? Any comments?’

Sally said, ‘Only that we are almost a mile from the thing and don’t have your eyesight, Lobsang. Pity us poor mortals, will you? Why did you land us so far away?’

‘I beg your pardon, both of you. I thought it might be sensible to approach cautiously.’

‘It is his standard routine, Sally,’ Joshua said.

They walked on, with the ship drifting behind them. There were slopes of scree at the base of the canyon walls, and here and there between the sparse trees patches of lichen, moss and scrubby grass had managed to find a footing. But still no animal life; there wasn’t even anything like a buzzard in the sky. This was an inhospitable place, a place where nothing had happened for a very long time, and went on not happening now. And it was hot; the sunlight, breaking through the clouds, reflected from the walls, and the arid canyon already felt like a solar furnace. This didn’t faze Lobsang, who was striding along as if training for the Olympics. Joshua, though, was hot, dusty, increasingly ill at ease.

They reached the looming building. Sally said, ‘Good grief, will you look at that thing? You don’t realize how big it is until you get close!’

And Joshua looked up, and up, at the building’s sheer face. It wasn’t exactly a miracle of architecture — it was unimpressive, in fact, save for its sheer scale. The blocks of black basalt-like rock from which it had been constructed had been roughly worked to fit, but were not of a uniform size. Even from here you could see gaps and imperfections, some of which had here and there been naturally mortared with what looked like bird guano and nests, but even that had evidently been a long time ago.

Sally said, ‘Nice architecture. Somebody ordered “big and heavy and last for ever”, and got it. OK, let’s walk around to the entrance and dodge the rolling rock ball—’

‘No,’ said Lobsang sharply, standing stock still. ‘Change of plan. I have detected a rather more insidious danger. The whole structure is radioactive. Short range only, not remotely detectable — I do apologize. I suggest that we ambulate with alacrity back the way we came. No arguments. Please don’t waste breath until we are safe…’

They didn’t exactly run; call it a very determined walk.

Joshua asked, ‘So what is this place? Some kind of waste dump?’

‘Did you notice a multiplicity of signs that would indicate that entering this building unprepared is going to kill you? No, I didn’t either. The technological level appears much too low for this to be some kind of nuclear reactor, or other similar facility. I suspect they didn’t know what they were dealing with. I am speculating that this culture stumbled across a rather useful ore with interesting properties, perhaps a natural nuclear pile…’

‘Like Oklo,’ Joshua said.

‘In Gabon, yes. A natural concentration of uranium. They found something that made holy glass glow, perhaps… That would show the spirits at work, wouldn’t it?’

Sally said, ‘Spirits that ultimately killed their acolytes.’

Lobsang said, ‘We can at least look at some of the more distant caves before we depart. They should be far enough from the temple, or whatever this is, to be safe.’

The first cave they chose to explore was big, wide, cool — and crowded with the dead.

For a moment the three of them stood at the entrance of this house of bones. Joshua felt utterly dismayed at the sight, yet somehow it seemed an appropriate culmination of this lethally disappointing place.

They walked in cautiously, stepping on clear earth where they could find it. The skeletons were fragile, often to the point of crumbling. The bodies must have been dumped in here, Joshua thought, perhaps in a rush, in the final days of the community when there was nobody left to dispose of them properly, however they had managed that disposal. But what were these creatures — or rather, what had they been? At first glance they might have been vaguely human. To Joshua’s inexpert eye they looked bipedal, as he could tell from the leg bones, the slim hips. But there was nothing humanoid about their sculpted, helmet-like skulls.

In the heart of the cave the crew of the Mark Twain stood there rather helplessly. With a whir, Lobsang’s head turned steadily, and for once mechanically, with no human-like artifice, scanning and recording the symbols etched into the walls.

Sally said, ‘Have you noticed? These corpses were not scavenged, not by animals. Nothing has disturbed them since they were dumped here.’

Lobsang murmured as he worked, ‘I launched the usual drone craft, incidentally. There is no evidence of technology, of high intelligence, anywhere else on this version of Earth. Only here. The mystery deepens.’

Sally grunted. ‘Perhaps the poisonous stuff that drew them here inspired them to their greatest cultural peak — before killing them. What an irony. Of course there is another possibility.’

‘What’s that?’ Joshua asked.

‘That the nuclear pile under that temple wasn’t natural at all. Merely very, very old…’

Joshua and Lobsang had no response to that.

‘But still,’ Sally said, ‘a dinosaur civilization? It’s a unique find.’

Joshua asked, ‘Dinosaurs?’

‘Look at those crested skulls.’

‘A civilization built by post-dinosaur evolutionary descendants, perhaps,’ Lobsang said fussily. ‘We must be precise about terms.’

Joshua stared at a bit of bone, what was probably a finger, adorned with a gold ring, massive, set with sapphires. He bent and picked it up. ‘Look at this. It can’t be anything but decoration. They were so like us, dinosaurs or not. They were sapient. They were tool-users. They created buildings — a city, at least this one. And they had art — adornment…’

‘Yes,’ Lobsang said. ‘They were like us in one essential regard, and unlike the trolls, say. These creatures, like us, created an environment of culture around themselves. Our artifacts, our cities, are external stores of the wisdom of past ages. The trolls seem to have nothing like it, though perhaps their songs are a step towards it. These creatures had that faculty, evidently.’

Joshua said, ‘They even look as if they were upright bipeds, like us. Don’t they?’

Lobsang said, ‘Perhaps we are seeing universals here — the upright biped is a useful tool-wielding form given a basic four-limbed body plan; and perhaps intelligent incarnate tool-wielding creatures have a natural tendency to aggregate into something like cities. Perhaps even an attraction for bright shiny ornaments is common. Yet it is all gone. They poisoned themselves, and now they are poisoning us.’

Sally looked at Joshua. ‘I feel like I just found out I had a stillborn twin brother.’

‘There’s little point our spending much more time here,’ said Lobsang. ‘This place clearly requires a properly equipped archaeological expedition — with radiation suits. It will keep, after all; we are far from the Datum, and I doubt if there will be tourists any time soon. Come, children. Let’s go home. There is nothing for us here.’

As they made their way back to the elevator, Joshua said bitterly, ‘It all seems such a waste, doesn’t it? All these worlds. What’s the point, without mind?’

‘It is the way of things,’ Lobsang said. ‘You are looking at this the wrong way. How likely is it that we might find sapient life on other planets? The astronomers have detected several thousand planets of other stars, but nothing as yet has given us any reason to believe that there is anybody out there. Perhaps it is difficult to evolve tool-making intelligences. And perhaps we should be grateful we came so close to meeting these creatures, so close in probability space.’

Sally said, ‘But if these creatures were sentient, why did we find them in only one world? We would have picked up evidence of them in the neighbouring worlds, wouldn’t we? At least in this location. Couldn’t they step, despite their sentience?’

‘Perhaps not,’ Lobsang said. ‘Or perhaps the natural steppers were driven out by those who could not step at all. As seems to be happening on Datum Earth right now. Perhaps this is a glimpse of our own future.’

And Sally and Joshua, two secretive natural steppers, exchanged glances of understanding.