The Long Earth

49

WITH LOBSANG DISPATCHED to his strange close encounter, the remaining crew of the Mark Twain watched the wake of the traveller until she disappeared from view, long before reaching the horizon. The honour guard of animals, birds and fish flew, dived and undulated away.

The show was over. The carnival had left town. The spell had been broken. And Joshua could feel something had gone from the world.

He stared at Sally, and felt the bewilderment he saw in her face. He said, ‘First Person Singular scared me. And there were times when Lobsang scared me, though for different reasons. The thought of the two of them together, and what they might become…’

She shrugged. ‘We’ve done our best to save the trolls.’

‘And humanity,’ he pointed out gently.

‘So what do we do now?’

‘Have lunch, I’d suggest,’ Joshua said, and he headed for the galley.

A few minutes later Sally was grasping a brimming mug of coffee as if it were a lifeline. ‘And did you notice? The traveller steps underwater. That’s a new one.’

Joshua nodded. He thought, that’s right, start by asking the little questions — sort out the small problems first, rather than get overwhelmed by the cosmic mysteries. Or even by the problem of how they were going to get home, although he was starting to have an idea about that. ‘You know, some of those creatures inside her hull, which must have come from very remote worlds, looked familiar. I mean, one of those floating things looked like a large kangaroo! The cameras have been running. We can check through the footage together. The naturalists will have a field day…’

There was a soft sound in the doorway. Joshua looked down to see Shi-mi. She was indeed a most elegant cat, robotic or not.

And she spoke.

‘Number of mice and mice-like rodents put into the vivarium for redeployment when we reach the ground: ninety-three. Numbers harmed: zero. It is said that with a stout heart a mouse can lift an elephant but not, I am glad to say, on this ship.’ The cat looked expectantly at both of them. Her voice was soft, feminine — human, but somehow suggestive of cat.

‘Oh, good grief.’

Joshua murmured, ‘Be nice, Sally. Shi-mi — thank you.’

The cat waited patiently for further response.

‘I didn’t know you could speak,’ Joshua ventured.

‘There was previously no need. My reports were made to Lobsang through a direct interface. And the rubbish we speak is like froth on the water; actions are drops of gold.’

Sally turned her glance slightly sideways, a warning sign in Joshua’s experience. ‘Where did that proverb come from?’

‘Tibet,’ said Shi-mi.

‘You’re not some avatar of Lobsang, are you? I did hope we’d got rid of him.’

The cat looked up from licking her paw. ‘No. Although I too am a gel-based personality. Adapted for light conversation, proverbs, rodent securement and incidental chit-chat with a thirty-one per cent bias towards cynicism. I am of course a prototype, but will shortly be one of a new line of pets available from the Black Corporation. Tell your friends. And now if you will excuse me, my work is as yet incomplete.’ The cat walked out.

When she was gone, Joshua said, ‘Well, you have to admit it’s better than a mousetrap.’

Sally was irritated. ‘Just when I think this Titanic of yours can’t get any more ridiculous… Are we still over the ocean?’

Joshua glanced out of the nearest port. ‘Yes.’

‘We should turn around. Head back to shore.’

‘We’ve already turned,’ said Joshua. ‘I set the controls after we let down Lobsang. We started back thirty minutes ago.’

‘Are you sure that swimming robot thing has the power to get us back over land?’ asked Sally, obviously nervous.

‘Sally, the Mark Twain was designed by Lobsang. The marine unit has enough power to circumnavigate the Earth. He backs up his backups. You know that. Is there something wrong?’

‘Since you ask, I’m not any great fan of water. Especially water you can’t see to the bottom of. As a rule, let’s keep some trees under the keel, OK?’

‘You were hanging out on the coast when I first met you.’

‘That was the seashore. Shallow water! And this is the Long Earth. You never know what’s going to surface underneath you.’

‘I imagine you didn’t stay long on the one water world Lobsang and I passed through. There was a beast in that ocean that—’

‘When I got to that world I stepped from a hillside, fell six feet into seawater, swam to a place I knew I could get back from, and stepped out, all just before a set of jaws closed around me. I never saw what they were attached to. The way I see it, my ancestors put a lot of effort into getting out of the goddamn ocean and I don’t think I should throw all of that hard work back in their faces.’

He grinned as he worked on the food.

‘Look, Joshua — I’m all for heading back to Happy Landings. What do you say? Suddenly I feel in the mood for other people… Oh. But we have to take the Mark Twain, don’t we? With all that’s left of Lobsang. Not to mention the cat. We can find a way to move the Mark Twain laterally, if we have to drag it by hand. But how’s it going to step without Lobsang?’

‘I’ve got an idea about that,’ Joshua said. ‘It will keep. More coffee?’

They treated the rest of that day as though it was a Sunday, that is to say what you should expect of a Sunday. You need time for big and complicated new concepts to shake themselves down in your brain slowly, without damaging what is already there. In the end that had even applied to Lobsang, Joshua realized.

Then, the next afternoon, Joshua let Sally guide them to what she sensed as a soft place, a short cut that would take them back to Happy Landings, only a little way in from the shore. They descended to the ground. The Mark Twain hovered over the beach where the marine unit had delivered it. The ship was connected to Joshua and Sally by long ropes held in their hands.

And there was a shimmer on the water’s edge that even Joshua could see: the soft place Sally had found.

‘I feel like a kid with a party balloon,’ said Sally, holding her rope.

‘I’m certain this will work,’ said Joshua.

‘What will?’

‘Look — when you step you can take over whatever you can carry. Yes? In a way, when he was aboard, Lobsang was the airship, so he could step over. Here we are holding the Mark Twain, which, though it has a lot of mass, technically doesn’t weigh anything at all. Right? So, if we step right now, we’ll be carrying it, won’t we?’

She stared at him. ‘And this is your theory?’

‘It’s the best I can do.’

‘If the universe doesn’t get your joke, we might get our arms pulled off.’

‘Only one way to find out. Are you ready?’

Sally hesitated. ‘Would you mind if we step hand in hand? We could get in a mess if we got separated during this stunt.’

‘True enough.’ He took her hand. ‘OK, Sally. Do your stuff.’

She seemed to defocus, as if she was no longer aware of him. She sniffed the air and eyed the light, and made moves oddly like tai chi, graceful, testing, questing — or maybe as if she were dowsing for water.

And they stepped. The stepping itself was sharper than usual, and there was a brief sensation of plummeting as if down a water slide, and it left Joshua colder, as if the process somehow absorbed energy. They emerged on another beach, another world — wintry, bleak. The soft places didn’t get you all the way at once, then. And they weren’t in the same place, geographically; Joshua could see that immediately. Stranger and stranger. Again Sally turned this way and that, questing.

It took four steps in all. But at last there was Happy Landings, with the Mark Twain overhead.

People were pleased to see them back, if surprised. Everyone was friendly. Genuinely friendly. Because this was Happy Landings, wasn’t it? Of course they were friendly. The tracks were still clean, spotlessly swept. The drying salmon still hung from rows of neat racks. Men, women, children and trolls mixed happily.

And Joshua felt oddly uncomfortable, once more. A slight feeling you get when everything is so right that it might have gone all the way around the universe and come back metamorphosed into wrong. He’d forgotten, in fact, how persistent this feeling was from his last visit. And that was without mentioning the ubiquitous stink of troll.

As a matter of course, the pair of them were offered lodgings in one of the cottages at the heart of the township. But after a shared glance they decided to bunk down on the Mark Twain. Inevitably a few troll pups followed them up the cables. Joshua made supper up there, with delicious fresh food; as before, people had been amazingly generous with gifts of food and drink.

Afterwards, poisoning herself with instant coffee once again — all that was available now on the injured Mark Twain— and with trolls lounging around the observation deck, Sally said, ‘Come on, out with it, Joshua. I watch people too. I see the look on your face. What’s on your mind?’

‘The same as on yours, I suspect. That there’s something wrong here.’

‘No,’ Sally said. ‘Not wrong. There’s something off, for sure… I’ve been here many times, but I’m more aware of it with you sulking around the place. Of course what we perceive as wrong might be an expression of the significance of the place. But—’

‘Go on. There’s something you want to tell me, right?’

‘Have you seen any blind people here, Joshua?’

‘Blind?’

‘There are people here with spectacles, old folk with reading glasses. But nobody blind. Once I looked at the rolls in City Hall. You see records of people missing a toe or a finger, and you find out that it was the result of a bit of carelessness with a wood-chopping axe. But nobody with any major disability seems to be led to Happy Landings in the first place.’

He thought that over. ‘They aren’t perfect here. I’ve seen them get drunk in the bars, for example.’

‘Oh yes, they know how to party, certainly. But the interesting thing is that every single one of them knows when to stop partying, and, believe you me, that talent is somewhat rare. And there’s nothing like a police force here, have you noticed? According to the City Hall records, there has never been a sexually motivated attack on a woman, man or child. Never. Never a dispute over land that hasn’t been calmly resolved by negotiation. Have you watched the kids? All the adults act as if all the kids are their own, and all the kids act as if all the adults are their parents. The whole place is so decent, level-headed and likeable it can make you scream, and then curse yourself for screaming.’ Sally stroked a troll pup, whose purring would have put any cat to shame: pure liquid contentment.

That prompted Joshua to blurt out, ‘It’s the trolls. It’s got to be. We’ve discussed this before. Humans and trolls living side by side. Here, and nowhere else we know of. So it’s like no other human community, anywhere.’

She eyed him. ‘Well, now we know that minds shape minds, don’t we? We’ve learned that much. Too many humans, and trolls will flee. But if there are just the right amount of people the trolls will stick around. And for humans, maybe you can’t get enough trolls. Happy Landings is a warm bath of comfortable, happy feelings.’

‘But nobody disabled. Nobody mixed-up enough to commit a violent crime. Nobody who doesn’t fit.’

‘Maybe they’re kept out, perhaps not even consciously.’ She regarded him. ‘Sieved. That’s a rather sinister thought, isn’t it?’

Joshua thought it was. ‘But how? Nobody’s standing around with clubs to exclude the unworthy.’

‘No.’ Sally leaned back and closed her eyes, thinking. ‘I don’t think it’s a case of people being consciously excluded, not by the locals. So how does it happen? I’ve never seen any signs of anybody behind Happy Landings. No designer, no controller. Does Happy Landings itself somehow choose who comes here? But how can that happen?’

‘And to what end?’

‘You can only have an end if you have a mind, Joshua.’

‘There’s no mind involved in evolution,’ Joshua said, remembering Sister Georgina’s brisk homework classes at the Home. ‘No end, no intention, no destination. And yet that’s a process that shapes living creatures.’

‘So is Happy Landings some analogy of an evolutionary process?’

He studied her. ‘You tell me. You’ve been coming here a long time—’

‘Since I was a kid, with my parents. It’s just that since I met you two, the questions I have always had about it, I guess, have sharpened up. I ought to wear a bracelet. “What would Lobsang think?”’

Joshua barked laughter.

‘You know, this place always seemed a regular garden of Eden — but without the serpent, and I wondered where the serpent was. My family got on well with the people here. But I never wanted to stay. I never had the sense I fitted in. I would never dare to call it home, just in case I was somehow the serpent.’

Joshua tried to read the expression on Sally’s face. ‘I’m sorry.’

That seemed to be the wrong thing to say. She looked away. ‘I do think this place is important, Joshua. For all of us. All humanity, I mean. It’s unique, after all. But what happens when the colonists start getting here? I mean the regular sort, the wavefront, with their spades and picks and bronze guns, and their wife-beaters and fraudsters? How can this place survive? How many trolls will be shot, slaughtered and enslaved?’

‘Maybe whoever, whatever is running the experiment will start fighting back.’

She shuddered. ‘We are starting to think like Lobsang. Joshua, let’s get out of here and go somewhere normal. I need a holiday…’