The Long Earth

48

‘TIS A HISTORIC moment,’ Lobsang babbled. ‘First contact! The dream of a million years fulfilled. And I know what this must be. Shalmirane… Didn’t you read The City and the Stars? It’s some kind of colony organism.’

Sally said archly, ‘Behold the alien! So what now? Are you going to set it mathematical puzzles, like Carl Sagan and those SETI guys?’

Joshua ignored them both. He spoke to First Person Singular. ‘I didn’t tell you my name.’

‘You didn’t need to. You are Joshua. I am First Person Singular.’ The voice in his head sounded like his own.

Inside the translucent skin, the creatures. He recognized fish, birds, and, he realized after a while, a very definite elephant, moving slowly through whatever was in there, half walking, half swimming, eyes closed. And trolls, and elves, and other humanoids.

The tide was coming in. Very carefully, so as not to give offence or cause alarm, Joshua walked backward. ‘What is First Person Singular … for?’

‘First Person Singular is the observer of worlds.’

‘You speak good English.’ It was a dumb thing to say, but what was the right thing to say to a miles-wide slug? Sister Agnes would have known, he thought.

The reply came back immediately. ‘First Person Singular does not know what “Sister Agnes” is. I am still learning. Can you define for me a nun?’

On this bleak shore, Joshua’s jaw dropped.

First Person Singular said, ‘Cross-reference, yes — a nun is a female biped who refrains from procreation to service the needs of others in the species. Comparison with eusocial insects, perhaps? Ants and bees… More. Also rides large vehicles propelled ultimately by the remains of ancient trees. More. Is dedicated to the contemplation of the numinous. This is acknowledged as an interim description pending further investigation of relevant details… I myself would appear to be a nun, by some definitions. I perceive the world of worlds in their entirety. I believe I understand what is meant by breathless with adoration… You should move back on to the shore.’

The incoming water was up to Joshua’s knees. He backed up across the strand.

Sally was watching in amazement. ‘You’re talking to it?’

‘She. Not it. I think so. I hear my own voice asking me questions. She seems to know what I’m thinking — or rather, she knows what I know. I have no idea what she is, but she seems to want to learn.’ He sighed. ‘I’m kind of overloaded with wonder here, Sally.’

From the backpack the voice of Lobsang called, ‘Come back to the airship. Debriefing time, I think.’

As they walked back to the Mark Twain more pterosaurs flew over, their silhouettes gaunt against the sky.

Without the winches, the climb back up the rope to the gondola was pretty gruelling, but there were working lights on all decks now, the water heater was functioning, and there was instant coffee, at least.

Of course Sally wanted to talk things over immediately. But she was overruled by both Joshua and Lobsang, for at least the time it took to make the coffee.

Then Joshua tried to relate what he had sensed of First Person Singular’s own story. ‘She was alone on her world.’

‘A survivor,’ Sally said.

‘No. Not that. She emerged alone. She evolved that way. She was always alone…’

Lobsang cross-examined him, and gradually they pieced together, if not the truth, then a story.

On the Earth of First Person Singular, Lobsang speculated, as on many Earths, the early ages of life were long aeons of struggle for survival by half-formed creatures that had not yet discovered how to use DNA to store genetic information, and whose control over the proteins from which all living things were constructed was as yet poor. There had been billions upon billions of swarming cells in the shallow oceans, but they were not yet sophisticated enough to be able to afford to compete with each other. Instead, they cooperated. Any useful innovation flashed from cell to cell. It was as if everything in this global ocean operated as a single mega-organism.

‘With time,’ Lobsang said, ‘on most worlds, and certainly on Datum Earth, complexity and organization reach a point where individual cells can survive unaided. And then, on most worlds, competition begins. The great kingdoms of life begin to separate, oxygen bleeds into the air as a waste product of creatures that learn how to harness the power of sunlight, and the long slow climb towards multicelled forms begins. The age of global cooperation vanishes, leaving no trace save enigmatic markers in genetic composition.’

Sally said, ‘On most worlds, but not on First Person Singular’s.’

‘No. Actually that world must have been a remarkable Joker. There, the gathering complexity drove a familiar-looking evolutionary story — but the unity of that single global organism was never lost. We really have travelled to a very distant branch of the contingency tree. It—’

‘She, Lobsang,’ Joshua said.

‘She: yes, the feminine is appropriate, she appears to be positively gravid with apparently healthy life forms. She was more like a maturing biosphere than a creature like a human. As complexity increased, knots of control must have formed. To grow further it would have become necessary for the information structure to construct and contain a copy of itself, for the whole to become self-reflective. That is, conscious.’

Sally frowned, trying to take this in. ‘But what would such a creature want?’

‘I can tell you that much,’ Joshua said. ‘Company. She was lonely. Although she didn’t know it until she encountered the trolls.’

‘Ah.’

They would never know how a band of trolls had ended up on that remote world, Joshua realized. They must have come through the Gap; perhaps they were traumatized, some of them injured by exposure to vacuum. ‘But she was fascinated,’ he said, eyes closed, concentrating, trying to remember. ‘By the simple fact that there was more than one of them. The way they looked at each other, worked together — each of them recognized the other. They were not alone, as she was. They had each other. She wanted what they had. The one thing in the world she lacked…

‘A troll came to the water.’ He had a vision, like a waking dream, of the troll crouching, innocently scooping crabs from the shallow water — a mound of water rising, embracing him.

‘Killing him,’ Sally said, when Joshua described this.

‘Yes. She didn’t intend it, but that was the outcome. The trolls fled. Maybe she caught another one, an infant … studied it…’

‘And learned to step,’ Lobsang guessed.

‘Yes. It took her a long time. The thing we encountered isn’t all of her, all she was; once she filled an ocean. The thing in the sea here is — an expression of her. The essence. A form compact enough to step.’

‘So she followed the trolls,’ Sally said. ‘Heading West down the chain of worlds.’

‘Yes,’ said Lobsang. ‘Slowly but surely heading towards the Datum. And surely she is the reason for the stampede of the trolls, and perhaps other life forms. I am incubating the hypothesis that she has the same effect on pre-sapient species such as the trolls as does a large congregation of humans. Imagine the thunder of her thinking…’

‘So, behold the migraine monster,’ Sally said. ‘No wonder the trolls are fleeing.’

‘She doesn’t mean any harm,’ Joshua said. ‘She only wants to know them. To embrace them.’

‘You know, Joshua, you make this thing sound almost human.’

‘That’s how it felt.’

‘But that is only a partial perception,’ Lobsang said. ‘There is more. The entity you have encountered is only … a seed. An emissary of the integrated biosphere from which she originated. Her absorption of local life forms, even of higher mammals like trolls, is only an interim step. Her goal is, must be, to transform each Earth’s biosphere into a copy of her own. The entirety of it, enslaved. With every resource dedicated to a single purpose. That is to say, her own consciousness. This is not a malevolent phenomenon, or in any way wrong. There is no villain here. First Person Singular is simply an expression of another kind of sentience. Another model, if you like. But—’

Sally’s face was ashen. ‘But for the likes of us she represents a termination. She brings the end of individuality, ultimately, to every Earth she touches.’

‘And the end of evolution,’ Lobsang said gravely. ‘The end of the world, in a sense. The end of world after world as she works her way along the chain of the Long Earth.’

Sally said, ‘She is a destroyer of worlds. An eater of souls. If the trolls sensed any of this, no wonder they were terrified.’

Lobsang said, ‘Of course there is the question of why she hasn’t already reached the inhabited worlds. Why she has not already consumed the Earth. Destroyed it, with curiosity and love.’

Joshua frowned. ‘The Gap. It can’t be a coincidence we found her so close to the Gap.’

‘Yes,’ Lobsang said. ‘She can’t cross the Gap. Not yet, at any rate. If not for that she might already have reached the inhabited worlds.’

‘We can cross the Gap,’ Sally said. ‘The trolls can. Surely she’ll learn. And then there are the soft places. If she could use them — my God. It’s like a plague, consuming the Long Earth world by world.’

‘No,’ Lobsang said firmly. ‘This is no plague, no malignant virus or bacterium. This is a conscious entity. And there, I believe, lies hope. Joshua, how did she speak to you in the first place? You heard your own voice in your head, yes? That doesn’t sound like telepathy — a species of communication for which I have yet to find one single reliable piece of evidence. This sounds like something new. It asked you what a nun was! If I may hazard a guess, it accessed the information then currently at the top of your thoughts. Thinking of Sister Agnes, were you? As an engineer I find it all hard to believe. But as a Buddhist, I accept there are more ways to think about the universe than one can imagine.’

‘I sincerely hope we are not going to start talking religion,’ said Sally sharply.

‘Open your mind, Sally. It’s only another framework for understanding the universe, just another tool.’

‘So what does that make Joshua?’ she snapped back. ‘The chosen one?’

The two of them looked at Joshua.

‘In a way,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Or at least, she seemed to recognize me. If she hadn’t actually been expecting me.’

Sally scowled, evidently jealous. ‘Why you?’

Lobsang said gently, ‘Perhaps it is because of the circumstances of our hero’s miraculous birth, Sally. Your first instants of life, Joshua, when you were entirely alone on another world. Your cries echoed, evidently, across the Long Earth. Or your loneliness, perhaps. And you and First Person Singular, similarly lonely, make up a kind of dipole.’

This bewildered Joshua. Not for the first time he wished Sister Agnes were here so he could talk it over with her. ‘Is this why you brought me here, Lobsang? I keep finding you anticipated all we’ve experienced… Did you know this would happen?’

‘I knew you were special, Joshua. Unique. Yes, I thought that facet of you would be — useful. But I didn’t know quite how, I admit that.’

Sally stared at Joshua, stone-faced. ‘How does it feel to be so manipulated, Joshua?’

Joshua looked away, hot with anger, at Lobsang, at the universe for singling him out.

Lobsang said now, ‘Evidently we need to learn more about First Person Singular.’

Sally said, ‘True enough. And we need to find a way to stop her panicking the trolls. Not to mention eating the Datum Earth.’

‘Tomorrow we will go and see her again. I suggest we have a decent night’s rest, and prepare for another encounter with the ineffable in the morning. But this time, with Joshua having made initial contact, I will lead.’

‘Huh! The ineffable meets the intolerable! Oh, I’m going to bed.’ Sally stormed off the deck.

‘She’s got a short fuse,’ Joshua said.

‘But you understand why she is angry, Joshua,’ Lobsang said mildly. ‘You were chosen. She was not. She’ll probably never forgive you.’

It was a strange night for Joshua. He kept waking, convinced that someone had spoken his name. Somebody desperately lonely, but he didn’t know how he knew that. Then he would get a bit more sleep, and the cycle would start all over again. It didn’t stop until the morning.

In silence they gathered in the observation deck once more. Sally was bleary-eyed too, and Lobsang, in his soberly dressed and hastily repaired ambulant, was unusually quiet. Joshua wondered how their nights had been.

And the first surprise was that First Person Singular was no longer there. She could be seen about half a mile out to sea, moving so slowly there was hardly even a wake. First Person Singular was clearly not one for hurrying, but on the other hand you had to remind yourself that what was doing the not hurrying was twice the size of Manhattan Island.

There was no discussion about whether to follow her. They all took it as a given that they would have to. But the Mark Twain, still capable of stepping from world to world, no longer had the means to move across this world.

Joshua said, ‘Lobsang, don’t you have another marine unit? I know what you are like when it comes to backups. There’s hardly any wind, and we’ve got more ropes than a circus tent. Our big friend over there is hardly racing. Maybe your marine unit could tow us?’

It did work, but only just. The Mark Twain, aloft, had a great deal of drag to overcome. Sally remarked that it was like the Titanic being towed by a motorboat engine — but an engine devised by Lobsang and built by the Black Corporation, which was why the solution worked at all.

Generally the wheelhouse was Lobsang’s private domain. But today it was open house, and the three of them watched the barely visible wake of First Person Singular. Most of the traveller was underwater now. ‘Only heaven knows what her propulsion system is,’ Lobsang said. ‘And while it’s about it, heaven might like to hazard a guess as to why the seas around her are suddenly teeming with fish.’

It was true, Joshua saw. The water was bright with fins; there were even dolphins somersaulting through the air. First Person Singular was travelling with an honour guard. Joshua was used to seeing rivers vibrantly alive across the worlds; in the absence of humanity the seas everywhere seemed to be as crowded as the old Grand Banks off Newfoundland, where, it was said, a man could once have walked on the water, so heavy was it with cod. People who’d never left Datum Earth didn’t know what they were missing. But probably even the Grand Banks at their zenith couldn’t have been as alive with fish as the waters behind the traveller.

‘Evidently,’ Sally said, ‘she has a way of attracting lesser creatures. Maybe it’s how she lures them close enough to absorb them.’

Lobsang was in an expansive mood. ‘Magnificent, isn’t it? Do you see those dolphins? Better than a Busby Berkeley routine!’

Sally asked, ‘Who on earth is Busby Berkeley?’

Even Joshua knew the answer to that one.

Sally said, ‘If you two are going to start talking old movies again—’

Lobsang cleared his throat. ‘Did anyone experience anything unusual last night?’

Joshua and Sally shared a glance.

Sally said, ‘You raised it, Lobsang. What are you talking about?’

‘In my case there was an attempt at what I experienced as hacking. Which is quite a challenge. For the guys in the Black Corporation, trying to hack me was a sport, and most certainly kept me on my toes. Nevertheless, something made a spirited attempt last night. I believe, however, that this was done in a beneficent way. Nothing has been taken, nothing was changed, but I believe that some memory stores have been accessed, and copied.’

Sally asked, ‘Such as?’

‘Information about the trolls. About stepping. It backs up the story you were given, Joshua. But this is a very partial hypothesis. For me it is like trying to recover a memory.’

Sally said, ‘Was it a vision, or a waking dream?’ They stared at her, and she blushed, and snapped defiantly, ‘What? So I know Keats? Lots of people know Keats, my grandfather often recited Keats. Although he always used to spoil it by saying afterwards that he loved Keats but had never actually seen a keat.’

‘I know Keats,’ Joshua said reassuringly. ‘And so does Sister Georgina. You’ll have to meet her. I had a waking dream too. I sensed loneliness again.’

Sally admitted, ‘Me too. But in my case it was something wonderful. A kind of welcome.’

Lobsang asked, ‘Welcoming enough to make you want to jump into the water and lose your identity? We’re closing, by the way. I think she is waiting for us to catch her up, and I very much want to catch up with her.’

‘Excuse me,’ said Sally, ‘I have no intention of boarding that floating thing and becoming another souvenir in some internal zoo.’

‘Happily, Sally, I intend to be the only one setting foot on First Person Singular. Or at least this ambulant unit will be. I want to communicate with her, much more fully, before she continues her stepping journey, and persuade her to stop.’

Joshua thought that over. ‘And if she won’t turn back… Can she be stopped?’

Lobsang snapped, ‘What are you suggesting, Joshua? How would you fight her? Short of destroying each world she can inhabit — working your way back up the line with nuclear bombers—’ He sounded contemptuous. ‘You think so small, both of you. All you can perceive is threat. Maybe it’s something to do with your own biological fragility. Listen to me. She wants to learn from us. But there’s so much we can learn from her. What does she know, she who can surely perceive on scales of space and time utterly beyond the human?’ His artificial voice was flat, yet oddly full of wonder. ‘Have you heard of the participatory universe, Joshua?’

‘Participatory bullshit.’

‘Listen. Consciousness shapes reality. That’s the central message of quantum physics. We participated in the creation of the Datum, our solitary strand, our Joker world. We’ve met other minds now, the elves and the trolls, and First Person Singular. Somehow, it seems, they participated in the weaving of the Long Earth, a subtle and marvellous ensemble, a multiverse created by a community of minds, which we only now are beginning to join. This is the lesson you must take back to the Datum, Joshua. Never mind variations of geology and geography and collections of exotic animals. This is fundamental to our understanding of reality — fundamental to what we are. And if I can communicate with First Person Singular, who surely has an apprehension of the universe beyond anything we are capable of… Well, this is what I intend to discuss with our fat friend. That, and to make her aware of the threat she poses, all unconsciously.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Joshua said, thinking it through. ‘You’re going down there. You’re actually going into that thing.’

‘Since the creatures embedded in the structure appear to be entirely healthy and mobile, I don’t see this as a risk. Bearing in mind that I, and I alone, of the three of us, am dispensable, at least in the form of my ambulant unit. But I will be fully downloaded. I, Lobsang, will be fully committed to the joining.’

‘You don’t intend to come back, do you?’

‘No, Joshua. I suspect my joining with the being must be long term, if not one-way, irrevocable. Yet still I must do this.’

Joshua bristled. ‘I know you had all kinds of hidden motives for signing me up for this trip. Fine. But I signed up to achieve one objective: to bring you home safely. I was your ultimate fall-back, you said.’

‘I respect your integrity, Joshua. I release you from your contract. I will lodge an addendum in the ship’s files.’

‘That’s not good enough—’

‘It is done.’

‘Oh, don’t let’s have some kind of macho honour fest,’ Sally said cynically. ‘You have backups all over the place, Lobsang. So you’re not really at risk at all, are you?’

‘I don’t propose to tell you all my little secrets. But should I be incapacitated or lost you will find iterations of my memory in various stores, updated every millisecond. The ultimate “black box”, you might say, is in the belly of the ship, armoured in an alloy that I confidently believe makes adamantium look like putty and will, I am sure, remain totally unscathed even in the event of a meteor strike of mass-extinction proportions.’

Sally laughed. ‘What would be the point of surviving a collision that scythes all life from a planet? I mean, who would there be to plug you in?’

‘There is every likelihood that in the fullness of time sapient life might once again populate the planet, and evolve to the point where it could restore me. I can wait. I’ve plenty to read.’

It seemed to Joshua that Sally was at her loveliest, if you could use such a term about Sally, when she was blowing her top. And for the very first time, Joshua suspected Lobsang was teasing Sally deliberately. Another Turing test passed, he supposed.

‘So,’ he said, ‘supposing you’re successful, and you get her to stop eating worlds. What then, Lobsang?’

‘Then, together, we will continue the search for the truth behind the universe.’

‘That sounds so inhuman,’ said Sally.

‘On the contrary, Sally, it is extremely human.’

First Person Singular was looming now. Scoop-shaped objects like fleshy antennas sprouted along her length, and small crabs were hitching a ride — as were a number of seabirds, possibly after the crabs.

‘Well,’ said Lobsang. ‘The rest is up to you. Obviously I need you to get the airship back to Datum. Get in touch with Selena Jones at transEarth. She’ll know what to do about the data stores on board, to synch the copy of myself back on the Datum — you see, Joshua, you will be taking me home, after a fashion. Give Selena my regards. I always fancied she saw me as something of a father figure, you know. Even though she is legally my guardian. Well, I am not yet twenty-one years old.’

Sally said, ‘Wait — without you the Mark Twain has no sentience. How can it take us anywhere?’

‘Details, Sally! I’ll leave that as an exercise for you. And now, if you will excuse me, I have a mysterious floating collective organism to catch. Oh, one last thing — do please take care of Shi-mi…’

And with that he retreated through his blue door, for the last time.