‘And she’ll want you to call her Roberta, I’m sure.’
‘Perhaps she has informal names. Robbie, Bobbie . . .’
Jacques glanced at Roberta, who was solemnly sipping her orange juice. ‘Roberta,’ he said firmly. ‘What do you mean – what kind of companion?’
‘I am relatively close to her in age. Of course I am the same sex. I have enjoyed a broad education, in philosophy and the humanities as well as science and engineering, just as Ms.—as Roberta has.’
‘Well, Roberta’s basically self-taught.’
‘My primary duty is to ensure her safety, whenever we leave the ship. During ground excursions and so forth. No doubt we will encounter many hazardous incidents.’
‘That’s a thoughtful gesture.’
‘It is my honour. I have been studying English especially. As have many of the crew, including the Captain.’
‘I can tell. Thank you. We’ll make a good team.’
‘I’m sure you will.’ Captain Chen Zhong approached now, bustling across the carpeted floor of the deck. As he passed, his crew subtly straightened up, and their faces became more solemn. Chen shook the hands of Jacques and Roberta. He brandished some kind of control box in his left hand. ‘In a moment we’ll be off! Of course we are already in the air, but soon we will be swimming stepwise too . . .’
His accent was stronger than Wu’s, but more complex, some of his phrasing almost British. Aged around fifty he was short, a little stout for a military man, Jacques thought, but sleek, supremely confident. Jacques would have been prepared to bet he was a survivor of the fallen Communist regime.
‘So glad you could come with us, that all the various formalities were overcome. A tricky process given the newness of our nation. Of course the welfare of Ms. Golding is a top priority.’ Now he faced Roberta. ‘I hope you’ll have time to enjoy the experience. Such a pretty thing! Forgive me for saying it. Yet you are so serious.’
Roberta, taller than he was, just looked back at him.
Chen winked at Jacques. ‘Quiet one, is she? But observant. No doubt you’re drinking in the details of the airships even as they are launched. The unusual mode of propulsion, for instance.’
To Jacques’s relief, Roberta deigned to reply to this. ‘The flexible hull, you mean. Strung with some kind of artificial muscle, contracting when electrical impulses are applied?’
‘Very good, very good. With the electricity provided by solar power. You can see why such a system is appropriate? When we observe the worlds we explore, why not do it with as little noise and other disturbance as possible? We hope to reach Earth East 20,000,000, our nominal target – nearly ten times further than any human has ventured into the Long Earth before! – in a mere few weeks. We estimate we will also need to maintain a velocity, that is a lateral velocity, of over a hundred miles per hour in the process. I’m sure you can see why.’
Roberta shrugged. ‘That’s trivial.’
Jacques exchanged a glance with Yue-Sai. That was one of Roberta’s more annoying verbal tics; the need for a sideways speed might be obvious to her, but wasn’t at all obvious to Jacques, or, it seemed, to Yue-Sai. The point went unexplained.
Chen said, ‘You know your engineering, then. But what of your wider education? Are you aware of the provenance of the names of our pioneering ships?’
‘Liu Yang was the first Chinese woman in space. And Zheng He was the eunuch admiral who—’
‘Yes, yes. I can see we have little to teach you.’ He smiled. ‘Then let us explore together.’ He held up the gadget in his left hand; it was like a television remote, Jacques thought, and on it was a familiar corporate logo: a Black Corporation marque. Chen said, ‘I hope you have all been following your nausea inoculation regimes? Now – are you ready? – every journey must begin with a single step.’ He pressed a button.
Jacques felt a familiar jolt to the gut, but faint, a ghost sensation.
The crowded landscape of Datum Henan was whisked away. Suddenly rain clattered on the windows and bounced off the great hull overhead. The trolls, apparently unperturbed, sang on.
Chen led the party to the big downward-looking windows at the gondola’s prow, so they could see better. At first glance Jacques could see little difference in the landscape below, Henan East 1, compared with the original: more, cruder factories and coal-burning power stations belching smoke, roads like muddy tracks, a smoggy tinge to the air. Yet in the distance there were patches of green, of forest, and that wasn’t like the original.
Chen said, ‘Henan! Long ago the cradle of Han civilization, you know. But in more recent times something of a hellhole, exploited, over-industrialized. A hundred million people crammed into an area the size of the state of Massachusetts.’ That was a Datum Earth reference that meant little to Jacques, but he got the idea. ‘Datum Henan was once a prime source of migrants to cities like Shanghai, who became the cleaners and the clerks and the barkeeps and the prostitutes. You can imagine that on Step Day a rather large proportion of the population of such places as this wandered over into the new worlds with alacrity. It took the authorities some time to restore order. You should not underestimate the impact that stepping had on the Chinese people as a whole in those early days – and not just the economic or other practical effects. I mean rather the psychological, as you will see. Of course you know that the disruptions after Step Day eventually led to the, ah, retirement of the last Communist regime.’ He studied Roberta, evidently curious about her reaction. ‘So we begin our exploration, Ms. Golding. Here we are on Earth East 1, of twenty million. What do you understand the purposes of this expedition to be?’
She thought before answering. ‘To see what’s out there.’
He seemed pleased by the simplicity of the reply. ‘Yes! We will count the worlds, and we will catalogue them, number them. We will establish the longitude of the Long Earth East, so to speak. I have seen your academic record: your intellect is evidently remarkable. You don’t think a mere voyage of exploration, of fact-gathering, is trivial? We are like butterfly collectors, are we not?’
She shrugged. ‘If you want to understand butterflies, you first have to collect butterflies. Or finches.’
Chen seemed to puzzle over that word. ‘Ah! Like Darwin on Galapagos. A neat reference. Well, I can’t promise you finches, but butterflies . . .’ He let that tail off mysteriously.
‘Why did you bring the trolls?’
He glanced at her sharply. ‘Good question. I should have known you would ask it. In the planning, most people dismissed our trolls as – what, as a cabaret, an animal show? Not you! The trolls, in a sense, are the Long Earth, are they not? Their long call stitches it together – and, I believe, appeals to the musical sensibilities of all Chinese people. Now we may be venturing further than even any troll has travelled before. Think of that! And we want whatever we discover in those remote footprints of China to become part of the troll song.’
Jacques said, ‘Of course you know that trolls are an integral part of our lives, in the community we come from.’
‘Ah, yes. So I hear. Although you keep its location secret, don’t you?’
‘We treasure our privacy.’
‘Of course you do.’ Chen pressed his button, and they stepped once again. Jacques noticed a counter on the wall: flickering digits that would count the worlds.
In East 2 the sky was bright, the sun high, and the land was carpeted with green, with forest. The contrast with the Datum, and even East 1 – the sudden flood of colour, the light illuminating the observation deck – was breathtaking.
Chen said, ‘You can see why a sudden access to all this so startled people. Our nation is older than yours, older than Europe. China has been cultivated, built on, fought over, mined, for five thousand years. It was a shock for us to walk into this primordial green. There were immediate cultural responses. An upsurge in support for environmental protection. Songs, poems, paintings, most of them bad. Ha! Well, there was nothing much we could do about East 1, o
r West 1. Quickly ruined by the first flood of travellers, the first helpless and hapless migrants. Each footprint became one big shanty town. But the government organized quickly, and we kept East 2 as a kind of national park, a memorial of Step Day, of our sudden access to our country’s own past – as best we could, anyhow; even here we are harmed by pollution from the heavy industrialization of this Low Earth in such places as the United States footprint, and there are ongoing negotiations in the United Nations about that. We also store some of our treasures here – the heritage of our deep culture. Even a few buildings, temples dismantled and rebuilt. Just as humanity is preserved from extinction by the existence of the Long Earth, should any calamity befall our home world, so now is our cultural past.’
Roberta pressed her forehead against the window, gawping, briefly looking like any curious teenager. ‘I see animals, moving through the forest. Elephants? Heading towards that river over there, to the north.’
Chen smiled. ‘Elephants, which roam as far north as Beijing in some worlds. And camels, bears, lions, tigers, black swans, even river dolphins. Tapirs! Deer! Pangolins! On Step Day, our children choked in the smog-free air, were frightened by the brightness of the sun, and goggled at the animals.’
The Captain pressed his control button again.
In East 3 the forest had been cleared, and the river dammed to flood the ground. In the resulting paddy fields, people laboured, bent over, not looking up as the shadows of the airships passed. It was the same in East 4, 5, 6 and beyond, though the methods of farming differed. In some worlds there was industrialization, with smoke rising from distant power stations and foundries, and crude-looking machines rolling across vast fields; in others, just the people and their animals.
‘Very organized,’ Jacques said.
‘Oh, yes,’ Yue-Sai said brightly. ‘We Chinese were able to move out into the stepwise worlds in a disciplined and industrious way, matched, I would suggest, nowhere else in the world. Under the Communists we were a one-party state equipped with the tools of late capitalism – capable of very large-scale feats. In recent decades we had already had experience of massive projects on the Datum: infrastructure like dams and bridges and rail lines, even a space programme. Now the Long Earth offered a blank canvas. Since the regime change, despite a revision of ideology, we have lost none of those skills. That’s China for you!’
Roberta said, ‘Could we pause here?’
‘Of course.’ Chen pressed his buttons.
Jacques looked down. The airship was hovering over a waterlogged field, where a peasant stood patiently, holding a piece of rope tied around the neck of what looked like a buffalo. ‘That’s a scene that could be two thousand years old,’ he said.
Roberta said, ‘Captain Chen, in some of these agricultural worlds there are factories. Producing artificial nutrients?’
‘Also genetically engineered crops. Modern farming machinery—’
‘Yet here, you are evidently manuring the soil. It seems a contradiction.’
Yue-Sai said, ‘We use both ways. This is an expression of an old tension in Chinese philosophy.’
‘The Dao versus Confucianism,’ Roberta said.
Chen looked impressed.
Yue-Sai nodded. ‘Essentially correct. The Dao is the way – to follow the way means a harmonization with nature. The Confucians by contrast argue that man must master nature, for the betterment of nature as well as the benefit of mankind. Wars have been fought over these ideas. The Confucians won in the second century BC. But now we have room to spread out, to explore other ways.’
‘Dao zai shiniao,’ Roberta said.
Chen laughed out loud. ‘The way is in the piss and the shit! Very good, very good.’
Roberta seemed neither pleased nor offended by his praise.
The airship moved on. Around East 20, a belt of more industrialized worlds began. Jacques looked down on factories, power stations, mine heads, industrial parks cut into the green. Lines of workers moved between workshops and shabby-looking dormitory, refectory and shower blocks. Cargo airships hovered, or were tethered to masts. On many of these worlds, smoke and soot and smog hung thick in the air.
Chen was observing their reactions. ‘Few westerners have seen this. Save for those who have put money into these Third Front developments. Douglas Black for one.’
Jacques asked, ‘Why “Third Front”?’
‘Ah, that’s a reference to Mao,’ Chen said, and winked again. ‘In response to aggression from the Soviets in the 1960s Mao scattered industrial production facilities across China – into the remote west, for example. So that it became more difficult to cripple us with nuclear bombs, you see. He encouraged workers to go out there. “The Further from Father and Mother, the Nearer to Chairman Mao’s Heart” – that was the slogan. As then, so now. One can despise Mao’s crimes while admiring his ambition.’
Jacques wondered if you could have one without the other. He said, ‘You can’t seriously be suggesting there’s a risk of some kind of shooting war with the west.’
‘There are other threats. Stepping itself has destabilized nations – including China of course. And climate collapse on the Datum, with all that would follow, could yet be a serious issue.’
They came to a world – East 38, according to the wall counter – where a thunderstorm was raging. The two airships drifted in a sky populated by huge, lumpy, rushing grey clouds, and rain lashed down on the forest below. Jacques observed what looked like the scars of lightning strikes, blackened craters in the forest cover.
Chen watched them expectantly.
‘I don’t understand,’ Jacques said. ‘What is it we are meant to see here?’
‘You could only perceive it properly from orbit, perhaps,’ Chen said. ‘Here, soldier-engineers are using atomic weapons to blast paths and tunnels through the Himalayas, thus removing an accident of geology that disrupted the flow of air and moisture across Eurasia. In this world, the interior of Asia will be green.’
Jacques was astonished. ‘You’re reshaping a whole mountain range?’
‘Why not? And in another neighbouring world, we are diverting all the rivers arising in the Himalayas, save for the Yangtze, again to bring moisture to the heart of the continent.’
Roberta said, ‘More dreams of the Maoists.’
‘Yes! You know your history. Schemes that were too expensive, or too risky, to be tried out when the Datum was all we had. Now we can experiment with no harm done. What dreams we have, what ambition! Aren’t we Chinese great?’
Maybe. But Jacques wondered what the experience of these new worlds, these diverse environments, was doing to the souls of the colonists here. In the West worlds, different Americas were evolving, sharing their parent’s values maybe but subtly diverging. Here too that must be true, with new kinds of China developing, still rooted in the same deep history – surely the Chinese would always stay Chinese – but each acquiring a whole new character. And he wondered how soon it would be before those new Chinas became restless in search of freedom from their gigantic parent, like the Valhallan Belt Americas.
As the lightning cracked in the sky, the trolls were growing anxious, their song fragmented.
Chen lifted his remote control, apparently with regret. ‘I would love to show you our new mountains. But we cannot linger; it is unsafe here.’
Jacques asked, ‘Why, the lightning?’
‘No, no. The fallout from the atomic mining. On we go . . . Now we will speed up. You understand these ships are an experimental sort, developed by our own engineering companies in conjunction with the Black Corporation. One purpose of this exploration is to test the new technologies.’
The passing of the worlds accelerated until, as Jacques could tell from his own pulse, the realities were washing past at the rate of roughly one a second, blink, blink, blink, then faster still. Most of the worlds were unremarkable, blankets of green under sunshine or cloud. But in some glaciated worlds the sunlight glared from ice sheets, safely far ben
eath the prows of the twains.
They were shown to a kind of lounge area. A steward circulated with food, soft drinks, China tea, and they sat, chatting while whole worlds flapped by, unremarked. Jacques suspected Roberta would rather have been alone, studying, reading, making her own observations. But she sat politely enough, if mostly silently.
After an hour or so the airship paused, the light subtly different. When Jacques looked up he saw butterflies, a tremendous swarm of them, all around the ship, battering silently at the windows of the observation deck. Most were small, plain, but some were more colourful, and some had wings the size of saucers. The sunlight shone bright through their pale substance.
Chen laughed at their reaction. ‘Butterfly world. What the westerners call a Joker. Of course an ecology needs more components than just butterflies. Nevertheless, here in this part of China, butterflies are all that come to greet us. We have no idea how this has come about, what is different here. Yet here we are. You see, Roberta Golding, I told you we would be counting butterflies! What do you think?’
At length Lieutenant Wu Yue-Sai said, ‘It would certainly be hard to demonstrate chaos theory here.’
They were all silent as they worked that out. Then Jacques was the first to laugh.
Roberta, however, merely looked puzzled.
18
THE CREW OF the Benjamin Franklin did take seriously their mandate to project the authority of the US Datum government across the Long Earth. It wasn’t all about saving kittens stuck up trees, as Maggie told her crew.
Which was why the twain made an unannounced stop at a town called Reboot, Earth West 101,754, in a stepwise New York State.
A small group led by Executive Officer Nathan Boss – a rare jaunt for him away from his desk – were landed from the twain in a kind of clearing of trampled-down mud, beside a spidery trail that ran up from the coast of the local copy of the Atlantic. Nathan had seen the layout for himself clearly from the air, aboard the Franklin. The town itself was out of sight but a short walk away, cut into the green of the crowding forest: neat little fields and houses with smoke rising up, all connected by wide dirt tracks.
The Long War Page 10