‘Good thinking,’ murmured the parrot.
Joshua knelt beside the tree. ‘There are little flags, marking the trunk rings.’ He plucked one, and picked out the lettering. ‘University of Krakow. Scientists did this. What’s the point?’
‘For climate records from the tree rings, Joshua. Just like on the Datum. Interestingly, such records suggest the split between neighbouring worlds is usually around fifty years deep. Within the lifetime of your average pine tree. Of course that raises a lot of questions.’
Joshua heard a rumble, a splashing sound, a kind of shrill trumpet. He turned slowly; evidently he wasn’t alone on this world. A short distance inland he glimpsed a scene of predator and prey: a cat-like creature with fangs so heavy it could barely lift its head, it seemed, was tracking a waddling beast with a hide like a tank. These were the first animals he had seen on this world.
Lobsang saw what he saw. ‘The over-armed in pursuit of the over-armoured: the result of an evolutionary arms race. And one that has played out on Datum Earth many times, in various contexts, until both parties succumbed to extinction, all the way back to the dinosaur age and beyond. A universal, it seems. As on the Datum, so on the Long Earth. Joshua, go around the rocky outcrop. You’ll come to the open water.’
Joshua turned and walked easily around the outcrop. The snow was deep, heavy to push through, but it felt good to stretch his legs after so many hours in the gondola.
The expanse of the lake opened up before him. On the lake itself ice lay in a sheet, but there was open water close to the shore, and here there was movement, massive, graceful: elephants, a family of them, furry adults with calves between their towering legs. Some of them were wading out into the shallow water. The adults had extraordinary shovel-shaped tusks that they used to scoop at the lake bed, muddying the water for yards around. In a crystalline sparkle of spray a mother played with a calf. Fresh snow started to fall now, big heavy flakes that settled on the fur of the oblivious elephantids.
‘Gompotheres,’ Lobsang murmured. ‘Or relatives, or descendants. I’d keep away from the water. I suspect there are crocodiles.’
Joshua felt oddly moved by the scene; there was a sense of calm about these massive creatures. ‘This is what you brought us down to see?’
‘No. Although these worlds are full of elephant types. A plethora of pachyderms. I wouldn’t normally have brought them to your attention. But they are a high-order prey species, and it appears that they are being tracked. And, interestingly, so are you.’
Joshua stood quite still. ‘Thank you for sharing.’ He looked around, peering through the thickening snow, but saw nothing else moving. ‘Just tell me when to run, OK? I don’t mind if you say right now…’
‘Joshua, the creatures moving cautiously towards you are holding a conversation about you, though I doubt very much if you can hear it because it is very high pitched. Your fillings might tingle.’
‘I have no fillings. I always brushed my teeth properly.’
‘Of course you did. The communication is also quite complex, and becoming more rapid, as if some kind of conclusion is being reached as to what they’re going to do. It comes and goes because they are constantly stepping. This is almost too fast to see – too fast for you to see. From this behaviour I can deduce that they have a very ingenious method of triangulating the point at which all of their major hunters will surround the victim, which is to say, you—’
‘Hold on. Rewind. You said they are stepping? Stepping animals, stepping predators?’ The world pivoted around Joshua. ‘Well, that’s new.’
‘Indeed.’
‘These creatures are the reason you stopped here, aren’t they?’
‘By the way, I see no need for you to be afraid.’
‘You see no reason for me to be afraid?’
‘Well, they appear to be inquisitive creatures. As opposed to hungry creatures. Possibly more frightened of you than you currently are of them.’
‘How much do you want to bet? My life, for instance?’
‘Let’s see how this plays out. Joshua, wave your hands in the air, please. That’s good. Let them see you. The snow is reducing visibility, obviously. Now shuffle round in a circle. That’s right, just stand there until I say otherwise. Don’t worry. I’m in control of the situation.’
This reassurance meant nothing to Joshua. He kept as still as he could. The snow was coming down hard now. If he panicked he might inadvertently step, and he would step into … what? Given the presence of stepping predatory animals he might land in some even worse situation.
Lobsang murmured in his ear, apparently aware of his tension, trying to calm him. ‘Joshua, just remember that I built the Mark Twain. And it, which is to say of course I, watches over you at all times. Anything that I perceive is attempting to do harm to you will be dead before it knows it. I am of course a pacifist, but the Mark Twain carries weapons of many types, from the invisibly small to the invisibly large. I will not mention the word nuclear, of course.’
‘No. Really don’t mention nuclear.’
‘Then we are of one accord. This being so, would you now please sing a song?’
‘A song? What song?’
‘Any song! Choose a song and sing. Something jaunty … just sing the song!’
Lobsang’s command, while wholly insane, had the authority of Sister Agnes’s voice at the extreme limit of her patience, when even the cockroaches knew to get out of town. So Joshua launched into the first song that came to mind: ‘Hail to the Chief, he’s the chief and we must hail him. Hail to the Chief, he is the one we have to hail…’
When he finished, there was silence on the snowfield.
Lobsang said, ‘Interesting choice. Another legacy of those nuns of yours, no doubt. Spirited when it comes to political debate, are they? Well, that should do it. Now we wait. Please do not move.’
Joshua waited. And just as he opened his mouth to declare that enough was enough, there were dark figures all around him. They were jet black, holes in the snow, with wide chests, big heads and enormous paws, or rather hands, which thankfully did not seem to have claws; they were hands that looked more like boxing gloves, or maybe catcher’s mitts.
And they were singing, with big pink mouths opening and shutting with every sign of enjoyment. But this wasn’t the political silliness that Joshua had sung, and nor was it some animal howl. It was human, and he could understand all the words as they were repeated again and again, with the singers chiming in with different harmonies and repetitions, multi-part chords hanging in the air like Christmas decorations. It went on for minutes, the avenues and trajectories of this wild music, until it gradually converged into one great warm silence.
And the main refrain had gone like this: ‘Wotcher!’ all the neighbours cried, ‘Oo yer gonna meet, Bill? ’Ave yer bought the street, Bill?’ Laugh? – I fort I should’ve died. Knocked ’em in the Old Kent Road…
Astonished, Joshua could barely breathe. ‘Lobsang—’
‘Interesting song choice. Written by one Albert Chevalier, a native of Notting Hill, London. Curiously enough it was later recorded by Shirley Temple.’
‘Shirley Temple… Lobsang, I’m guessing there’s a good reason why these Mighty Joes in the blizzard are singing old comedy songs from England.’
‘Oh, certainly.’
‘And I’m also guessing you know what that good reason is.’
‘I’ve a fair idea, Joshua. All in good time.’
Now one of the creatures walked right up to him, with tennis-racket-sized hands cupped as if cradling something. Its mouth was open, and it was still panting with the energy of the singing; there were a lot of teeth in there, but the general expression was a smile.
‘Fascinating,’ Lobsang breathed. ‘A primate, certainly, surely some species of ape. As convincingly upright as any hominid, but that doesn’t necessarily imply a correlation with human evolution—’
‘It’s not the time for a lecture, Lobsang,’ Joshua murmured.
‘Of course you’re right. We must play out the moment. Take the gift.’
Joshua cautiously took a step forward and held out his own hands. The creature seemed excited, like a child who’d been given an important job to do and wanted to make certain that it was done exactly right. It dropped something moderately heavy into Joshua’s hands. Joshua looked down. He was holding what looked like a large salmon, beautiful and iridescent.
He heard the voice of Lobsang. ‘Excellent! I can’t say that this is what I expected, but it is most certainly what I had hoped for. By the way it would be appropriate if you gave them something of yours.’
The previous keeper of the magnificent fish was beaming encouragingly at Joshua.
‘Well, I’ve got my glass knife, but somehow I don’t think this guy ever needs a knife.’ He hesitated, feeling awkward. ‘And it is my knife, I knapped it myself from a bit of imported obsidian.’ A gift from somebody whose life he had saved. ‘Been with me a long time.’
Lobsang said impatiently, ‘Consider the following. A little while ago you were expecting to be viciously attacked, yes? And now we have the obvious point that it was his fish and he gave it to you. I suspect the act of giving is more important than the gift here. Should you feel naked without a weapon, please do help yourself later to one of the laminated knives in the armoury, OK? But right now, give him the knife.’
Angry, mostly at himself, Joshua said, ‘I didn’t even know we had an armoury!’
‘We live and we learn, my friend, and be grateful that you still have the chance to do both. A gift has a worth that has little to do with any currency. Hand it over with a cheerful smile for the cameras, Joshua, because you are making history: first contact with an alien species, albeit one which has had the decency to have evolved on Earth.’
Joshua presented his beloved knife to the creature. The knife was taken with extravagant care, held up to the light, admired, had its blade gingerly tested. Then there was a cacophony in his headset that sounded like bowling balls in a cement mixer.
After a few seconds this mercifully stopped, to be replaced by Lobsang’s cheerful voice. ‘Interesting! They sing to you using the frequencies that we think of as normal, while among themselves they appear to communicate in ultrasonics. What you heard was my attempt to translate the ultrasound conversation down to a range that a human could perceive, if not understand.’
And then, in an instant, they were gone. There was nothing to show that the creatures had been there, apart from very large footprints in the snow, already being filled in by the blizzard. And, of course, the salmon.
Back on the ship Joshua dutifully put the huge fish in the galley’s refrigerator. Then, cradling a coffee, he sat in the lounge outside the galley, and said to the air: ‘I want to speak to you, Lobsang. Not to a voice in the air. A face I can punch.’
‘I can see you are annoyed. But I can assure you that you were never in any danger. And as you must have guessed you are not the first person to have met these creatures. I have a strong hypothesis that the first person who did meet them thought they were Russians…’
And Lobsang told Joshua the story of Private Percy Blakeney, as reconstructed from notes found in his diary, and comments he made to a very surprised nurse in the hospital in Datum France where he was taken after appearing there suddenly in the 1960s.
21
FOR PRIVATE PERCY, faced by his row of impassive singing strangers in the green of his unsmashed forest, the penny had quickly dropped.
Of course! They had to be Russians! The Russians were in the war now, weren’t they? And hadn’t there been a copy of Punch magazine passed around in the trenches which showed Russians looking, yes, just like bears?
His granddad, who had been a Percy too, had once been taken prisoner in the Crimea, and he was always ready to talk about the Russians to an attentive boy. ‘Stank, they did, lad, dirty sods to a man, savages to my mind, and some of them from God knows where in the wilds, well, I’ve never seen the like! So much fur, and beards a man could keep a goat in, except I would warrant the goat would leap out straight away being particular about the company it kept. But they could sing, lad, stinking though they was, they could sing, better than the Welsh, oh yes, they could sing! But if you hadn’t been told, you would have thought they were animals.’
Now Percy looked at the row of hairy, emotionless, but not particularly hostile faces, and said boldly, ‘Me English Tommy, yes? On your side! Long live the Czar!’
This won some polite attention, with the hairy men looking at one another.
Maybe they wanted another song. After all, hadn’t his mother told him that music was the universal language? And at least they weren’t imprisoning him, or shooting him, or suchlike. So he gave them a resounding chorus of ‘Tipperary’, and finished by saluting and crying, ‘God save the King!’
Whereupon the Russians surprised him by waving their heavy great hands in the air and booming ‘God save the King!’ with considerable enthusiasm, their voices sounding like men shouting into a tunnel. Then they put their shaggy heads together as if reaching a conclusion, and once again broke into ‘Pack Up Your Troubles’.
Only this wasn’t the same kit bag and nor were they the same troubles. Private Percy tried hard to understand what he was listening to. Oh, yes, the song was there, but they sang it like a Sunday choir. Somehow the singers took his song apart so that it gained a strange life of its own, harmonies that broke and twisted into one another like mating eels and then came apart again in another bubble-rush of sound, and yet it was still good old ‘Pack Up Your Troubles’. No, it was a better ‘Pack Up Your Troubles’, it was more, well, there, more real. Private Percy had never heard music like it, and clapped his hands, and so did the Russians with a sound like heavy artillery. They clapped as enthusiastically as they sang, possibly more so.
And now it occurred to Percy that last night’s crayfish had been more of a snack than a meal. Well, if these Russians were his friends, then maybe they had some Russian rations to share? They looked bulky enough under those furry greatcoats. It had to be worth a try, so Percy rubbed his stomach, poked his finger suggestively in his mouth and looked hopeful.
After their singing, again they huddled amongst themselves, and the only sounds he could make out were whispers as faint as a gnat, that tiny annoying whine that keeps you awake at night. However, once they had reached some sort of accord, they burst into song again. This time it was whistles and trills, very much like impressions of birds, and good impressions at that, a touch of nightingale, a hint of starling, birdsong that flowed like the best dawn chorus he had ever heard. Still, somehow he got the impression that they were talking, or rather singing, about him.
Then one of them walked closer to him, watched carefully by the others, and sang, in the voice of Percy, ‘Tipperary’ perfectly all the way through, and it was his own voice, he was certain, his mother would have known it.
After that a couple of Russians disappeared into the woods, leaving the rest sitting around Percy placidly.
When Percy sat on the ground with the Russians, waves of tiredness suddenly washed over him. He’d had years of war and not even a day of this peaceful green, and maybe he deserved a little nap. So he drank a few scoops of water from the river and, despite the presence of the hairy Russians all around him, lay down on the grass and closed his eyes.
He surfaced only slowly from his nap.
Private Percy was a practical and methodical young man. And therefore, still lying in the grass, he decided, in this waking dream, not to worry about these Russians, as long as the Russians weren’t trying to kill him. Save your worrying for your boots, boys, the veterans always said.
Boots! So his sleepy brain reminded him. They were the thing! Look after your boots and your boots would look after you! He had always spent a lot of time thinking about his boots.
At this point it occurred to Private Percy, waking slowly, still somewhat battered by his war and adrift in time and s
pace, to wonder if he still had any legs on which to hang those boots. You could lose your legs and not know until the shock wore off, or so he had been told. It was like poor old Mac who never knew his feet had gone until he tried to stand up. He remembered walking around this forest, of course he did, but maybe that was all a dream as like as not, and maybe he was back in the mud and the blood after all.
And so he tried gingerly to pull himself upright, and was cheered by the realization that at least he appeared to have both hands. Shifting gently he moved his aching body until he could rise enough to see, yes, boots! Blessed boots! Apparently on legs that were probably his and, as a bonus, apparently still attached to him.
They could be treacherous, could boots, just like legs. Like the time when a forty-pounder hit a box of ammunition and he was part of the detail that had to go and sort things out. The sergeant had been a bit quiet, and uncharacteristically soothing when Percy was in distress because, even though he found a boot, lying in the churned-up mud, he couldn’t find a man’s leg to go with said boot. And the sergeant had said, patting Percy on the shoulder, ‘Well lad, seeing as he has no head either, I reckon he won’t notice, don’t you? Just stick to doing what I told you, lad: pay-books, watches, letters, anything that can identify the poor sods. And then stick ’em looking up over the top of the trench. Yes, lad, stick those dead bodies up there! They might take a bullet but, as sure as salvation, they won’t feel anything where they’ve gone, and there will be one bullet less for you or me. Good lad. Fancy a tot of rum? It’s the medicine for what ails you.’
So the discovery of feet, his own feet, still attached as per, exhilarated Private Percy, known to his chums as Pimple because when your name is really and truly Percy Blakeney, pronounced ‘Black-knee’, and you still have bad acne in your twenties, you accept Pimple as a nickname and are grateful that it wasn’t anything worse. He lay back again and must’ve dozed off for a while.
The next time he opened his eyes, it was still full daylight, and he was thirsty. He sat up. The Russians were still here, patiently watching. Looking at him almost kindly, through those furry faces, he thought.
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