The Long War

57

THE AIRSHIPS ZHENG He and Liu Yang steadily forged towards their target of twenty million worlds East of the Datum.

They passed more unprecedented milestones: ten million, twelve, fifteen million steps. Now they were crossing an extraordinary span of the Long Earth, of this great probability tree whose twigs and leaves were whole clusters of worlds; now they were reaching branches of that tree with a very deep divergence from those that led to an Earth anything like the Datum. It became impossible for the crews of the airships Zheng He and Liu Yang even to rely on breathable atmospheres in the worlds they visited. The oxygen levels fluctuated significantly, from, rarely, concentrations so high that spontaneous combustion, even of wet vegetation, must have been a hazard to unwary visitors, to, more often, worlds where the oxygen level was no more than a trace, and the land on the backs of the dancing continents was much less green. A more subtle danger, Roberta learned, was too high a concentration of carbon dioxide, ultimately lethal for humans.

And life had less of a grip on many of these Earths. They found whole bands of worlds where the land was bare altogether, where its colonization by plants from the sea had apparently never happened, let alone its later ‘conquest’ by wheezing lungfish. All but featureless, all but identical, these drab worlds passed, day after day, unchanging even at the airships’ tremendous stepwise speed.

Drab or not, Roberta for one was fascinated by the evolving panoramas of land, sea and sky she glimpsed through the windows of the observation deck, and intrigued by the closer-up glimpses of the worlds they stopped at to sample in more detail – not that she was allowed down to the surface on these hazardous worlds. Yet something in her, something weak and to be despised, recoiled from the bombardment of strangeness. After all, from here, even the whole of the Ice Belt, the band of periodically glaciated worlds of which the Datum seemed to be a reasonably typical member, seemed very small, very narrow, and very far away, spanning much less than one per cent of the monumental distance they had already travelled.

She spent more time alone in her cabin, trying to integrate the sheer flood of data hitting her. Or she would sit with the trolls on the observation deck, listening to their crooning, even though this kept the rest of the crew away from her – even Lieutenant Wu Yue-Sai, though not the loyal Jacques Montecute.

For his part, Jacques watched Roberta uncomfortably. He even felt a stab of guilt; this expedition might be too much for her after all. The horror of the Long Earth, in the end: Roberta was just fifteen years old, and the very scale of it might overwhelm one so young, no matter how smart.

On July 6, 2040, the Chinese ships reached their nominal target of Earth East 20,000,000 – a world which turned out to be unprepossessing, barren, ordinary. They planted a stone cairn with a plaque, took a few photographs, and prepared to turn back.

Captain Chen assembled his senior crew and guests on the observation deck of the Zheng He, for a party to celebrate the moment. The trolls sang a new song, playfully taught them by Jacques – ‘China Girl’. Chen even broke out the alcohol, for once. But Jacques advised Roberta not to make this the day she first tried champagne. Without regret, she stuck to her orange juice.

Lieutenant Wu Yue-Sai, in full dress uniform, neat and pretty, linked arms with Roberta. ‘I am so happy to have achieved so much, with you, my partner in discovery.’

Captain Chen strutted over. ‘Indeed. And no doubt we will learn even more during our long return journey to the Datum. So many worlds to revisit and sample. Twenty million of them!’

Roberta considered that carefully. ‘I feel my time would be better spent integrating the data I have already accumulated.’

‘“Integrating the accumulated data”! Is that all you wish to do?’ Captain Chen walked up to Roberta, looked up into her face.

He was an impulsive, somewhat childish man, Jacques judged, and evidently he was angered by Roberta’s humourlessness, her failure to laugh at his jokes, perceiving that his moment of triumph had been spoiled.

‘Clever child, clever child. But what a pompous creature you are. Clever, yes. But do you believe you are better than us mere mortals? Homo superior – is that what you understand yourself to be? Must we make way for you?’

She did not reply.

Chen reached up and wiped a thumb over her cheek; it came away moist. ‘And if it is so, why are you crying?’

Roberta fled.

She didn’t come down to the observation deck the whole of the next day.

A little before midnight, as he was preparing for sleep himself, Jacques went to her cabin door and knocked. ‘Roberta?’

No reply. He listened for a while, and heard the sound of sobbing. Captain Chen had discreetly given Jacques a pass key in case of emergency. Now he swiped the card and opened the door.

The room itself was as orderly as ever, the single lamp burning over her workstation, her little heap of tablets and a few precious printed books, her notes. Charts on the wall, showing their progress across the Long Earth. No photographs, paintings, toys, no souvenirs save for science samples – none of that for Roberta Golding.

Barefoot, wearing T-shirt and sports slacks, Roberta was curled up on her bed, face away from the door.

‘Roberta?’ Jacques went over. She was surrounded by scrunched-up tissues; she had been weeping for a while, evidently. And she had bruises on her temple. He’d seen this in her before; she would hit herself, as if trying to drive out the part of her that wept at night. He’d thought she’d grown out of it, however. ‘What’s wrong? Is it what Captain Chen said to you?’

‘That fool? No.’

‘Then what? What are you thinking about?’

‘The crest-roos.’

‘The what?’

‘The reptilian-mammalian assemblage we found on East two million, two hundred thousand—’

‘I remember.’

‘All doomed to be eradicated by a hypercane. An accident of weather. Probably gone already. Scrubbed away like a stain.’

He imagined that dreadful perception building up in her head, all these long days. He sat on the bed and touched her shoulder. At least she didn’t flinch away. ‘Remember Bob Johansen’s English class?’

She sniffled, but at least she stopped crying. ‘I know what quote you mean.’

‘Go on, then.’

‘Oh God, I could be bounded in a nutshell—’

He continued, ‘And count myself a king of infinite space—’

‘Were it not that I have bad dreams,’ she whispered.

He knew how she felt. It was the way he felt himself, sometimes, if he woke in the small hours, at three a.m., a time when the world seemed empty and stripped of comforting illusion. A time when you knew you were a mote, transient and fragile in a vast universe, a candle flame in an empty hall. Luckily the sun always came up, people stirred, and you got on with stuff that distracted you from the reality.

The problem for Roberta Golding was that she was too smart to be distracted. For her, it was three a.m. all the time.

‘Do you want to watch your Buster Keaton movies?’

‘No.’

‘How about the trolls? Nobody can be unhappy around a troll. Shall we go see them?’

There was no reply.

‘Come on,’ he said. He got her up, draped a blanket over her shoulders, and led her to the observation deck.

There was a single crewman on watch here, reading a book; she nodded to Jacques and looked away. The trolls were slumbering in a big heap near the prow. The infants were asleep, and most of the adults. Three or four were murmuring their way through a song about not wearing red tonight, because red was the colour that my baby wore . . . Silly, but with easy, pretty multi-part harmonies. The Chinese crew tended to keep their distance from the beasts. Or, perhaps, the trolls kept them away, subtly. But they welcomed Jacques and Roberta.

So Jacques sat on the carpeted floor with Roberta, and they snuggled up to the warmth of the big creatures’ furry bellies. Immersed in the trolls’ strong musk, they might have been at home in Happy Landings, if not for the strange skyscapes that swept past the windows.

‘This is no consolation,’ Roberta murmured, hiding her face. ‘Just mindless animal warmth.’

‘I know,’ Jacques said. ‘But it’s all we have. Try to sleep now.’