The Long Earth
Page 25
Joshua shook hands with Wally, wishing him bon voyage.
He found Sally back in City Hall, surrounded by friendly faces, as ever. She broke away when she saw Joshua. ‘People are starting to notice. Even here.’
‘What?’
‘About the trolls. That more and more of them are stepping off East. Wild bands come passing through, and even the local ones, what you might loosely call domesticated, I suspect some of them want to leave too, but they are being kind of polite. The locals are getting disturbed.’
‘Hmm. Ripples in the tranquil pool of Happy Landings?’
‘Is Lobsang finished playing at Dr Dolittle? It’s time we were airborne and heading West again.’
‘Let’s go see.’
Back on the ship, the observation deck appeared empty save for a pile of trolls, snuggling like puppies. Then the heap moved, and Lobsang poked his head out, beaming.
‘Fur is wonderful against the tactile areas, is it not? I feel like one blessed. And they speak! Extremely high-pitched, minimal vocabulary… Multiple ways of communicating, apparently; it does seem that communicating is what being a troll is all about. But I suspect the real exchange of information takes place in the songs.
‘I believe I now have learned terms for good/bad, approval/refusal, pleasure/pain, night/day, hot/cold, correct/incorrect, and “I wish to suckle now”, although I suspect the last will not be of much use to me. I will learn more when we continue our voyage, which by the way we will be doing with alacrity at first light tomorrow. I intend to take these trolls. I hope my new friends do not mind travelling by air. I believe they like me!’
Sally’s face was a carefully controlled mask. ‘Well, that’s just peachy, Lobsang. But are you doing any actual work in there?’
‘I am coming to tentative conclusions. These are evidently very flexible omnivores. No wonder they’re so widespread, across the Long Earth. They’re ideal nomads. And the product of a couple of million years’ evolution, probably, since the root habiline stock learned to step.’
Joshua asked, ‘Habiline?’
‘Homo habilis. Handy Man. The first toolmakers in the human evolutionary line. You see, I’m speculating that maybe the stepping ability evolved alongside the ability to make tools. One surely needs a similar imaginative capacity: to imagine how a bit of stone might become an axe; to imagine how one world might differ from another, and then to step into it. Or perhaps it is related to the ability to imagine alternative futures depending on one’s choices: to go hunting today, or to go back to that rich hazel clump again… Either way, once such an ability developed the species would split, between increasingly adept steppers who would drift away, and those less adept or unable to step at all, who would stay at home, and perhaps become actively resistant to the steppers, who would have a competitive advantage.’
‘A stay-at-home strand that gave rise to humanity on Datum Earth,’ Joshua guessed.
‘Possibly. My colleague Nelson’s archaeological searches would seem to indicate that. But this is just my guess. It may be the stepping ability evolved even earlier, during the age of the pre-human apes. One must describe these creatures as humanoid rather than hominid, until a proper study is concluded, evolutionary relationships established.’
Sally asked, ‘Have they told you why they are migrating?’
‘I have an idea… My conclusion has to be tentative, even though the alpha female is remarkably good at pantomime. Imagine a pressure in your head. Storms in the mind.’
And Joshua was aware of the gathering storm in his own head, that sense of pressure as they headed West, just as if the Datum itself with its billions of souls was up ahead of him. Yes, he thought. Bad weather for the psyche, coming this way. But what’s driving it?
Lobsang said no more. Amid the mewings of the troll pups, once again he was submerged in his heap of fur. ‘Ah. Tactile surfaces…’
And suddenly there was no more Lobsang. The physical presence of the ambulant unit was still here, but some subtle aspect of the ship had dissipated.
Joshua looked at Sally.
Sally said, ‘You feel that too? Is it something we can’t hear, or see any more? Where’s he gone? He can’t die, can he? Or – break?’
Joshua didn’t know what to say. The ship remained subtly busy, its myriad mechanisms whirring and clicking away as if nothing had happened. But inside this brightly lit complex Joshua could not detect the controlling element, could not detect Lobsang. Something essential was missing. It had been like this when old Sister Regina had died. She had been bed-bound for years, but she liked to see the children, and still, despite everything, had known all their names. They had filed in to see her, nervous of the smell, her papery skin. And then suddenly it had seemed that something that they hadn’t known was there … wasn’t any more.
‘I have been thinking he might be ill,’ he said, uncertain. ‘He hasn’t been himself since he got buried under troll cubs.’
The voice of Lobsang came over the loudspeaker: ‘Do not be unduly worried.’
Sally was startled, and laughed nervously. ‘Should we be duly worried?’
‘Sally, please bear with us. There has been no malfunction. You are being addressed by an emergency subsystem. Right now Lobsang is recompiling: that is, integrating vast volumes of new information. This will take a few hours. However, we subsystems are fully capable of fulfilling all necessary functions during the period stated. Lobsang needs his time offline; sooner or later every sufficiently sapient creature needs time to take stock, as we are sure you will understand. You are quite safe. Lobsang looks forward to the pleasure of your company around dawn.’
Sally snorted. ‘Somehow I was expecting him to add “Have a nice day”, but I suppose you can’t have everything. How much of that was true, do you think?’
Joshua shrugged. ‘He is learning a lot, I guess, and very fast, from the trolls.’
‘And now he’s absorbing their nightmares. So we have a free evening. How about one more trip down to the bar?’
‘Which bar?…’
At the end of a long round of farewell drinks, all of them free, he had to carry her back to the ship. He laid her gently on the bed in her stateroom. She looked younger when she slept. He felt an unreasonable stab of protectiveness, and was glad she wasn’t awake to notice it.
There was no sign of Lobsang, no sound of his voice.
And the trolls, it turned out, had left of their own accord. Joshua thought, troll see elevator button. Troll think about button. Troll press button. Goodbye troll… Lobsang had wanted to get more out of his contact with the trolls. But evidently the trolls had got all they wanted out of him.
Alone, Joshua lay down on his couch on the observation deck, looking at the stars.
At dawn, with all its passengers asleep, the ship rose gently, gaining height until it was above the tops of the highest forest giants, and then stepped, disappearing with a small thunderclap.
40
IN THE MORNING Lobsang was back. Joshua could sense him, sense that a kind of purposefulness had returned to the ship, even before the ambulant unit joined him on the observation deck, as he drank the first coffee of the day. Sally was evidently still asleep.
They were stepping gently, and worlds washed beneath them. As ever the Long Earth was mostly trees and water, silence and monotony. Joshua was glad to be free of the hard-to-pin-down oddness of Happy Landings, but as they headed West once more that gathering pressure in his head had returned. He tried and failed to ignore it.
The two of them sat in silence. There was no mention of Lobsang’s departed friends the trolls, or of his offline episode. Joshua couldn’t read Lobsang’s mood. He wondered vaguely if he was lonely without the trolls, disappointed they had chosen to leave, frustrated that his research was evidently unfinished. It was faintly disturbing that Lobsang seemed to be becoming more unstable, more unpredictable. Overloaded by new experiences, perhaps.
After an hour of this Lobsang said, out of nowhere,
‘Do you ever think about the future, Joshua? I mean the far future?’
‘No. But I bet you do.’
‘The diffusion of humanity across the Long Earth will surely cause more than mere political problems. I can foresee a time where mankind is so dispersed across the multiplicity of worlds that there will be significant genetic differences at either end of the human hegemony. Perhaps there will have to be some kind of enforced cross-migration to make certain that mankind remains sufficiently homogeneous to be united…’
A burning forest below made the ship dance briefly on turbulent thermals.
‘I don’t think we need worry about that just yet, Lobsang.’
‘Oh, but I do worry, Joshua. And the more I see of the Long Earth, the more its scale impresses itself on me, and the more I fret. Mankind will be trying to run a galactic empire, effectively, on one ever-repeating planet…’
The airship shivered to a halt. The world below was shrouded in low cloud.
Sally wandered on to the deck, wrapped in a robe, her hair in a towel. ‘Really? Do we have to copy the mistakes of the past? Must there be Roman legions marching into endless new worlds?’
‘Good morning, Sally,’ Lobsang said. ‘I trust you are rested?’
‘The best thing about the beer at Happy Landings is its purity, like the very best German brews. No hangover.’
Joshua said, ‘Although you did your best to test that theory to destruction.’
She ignored him and looked around. ‘Why were we travelling so slowly? And why, in fact, have we stopped?’
Lobsang said, ‘We travelled slowly in order that you might sleep late, Sally. But also I took on board your criticism. It pays to inspect the small details, and so I have slowed the flight of our flying penis, as you so amusingly described it. Small details, such as the relic of an advanced civilization just underneath us. Which is why we have stopped.’
Joshua and Sally, electrified, exchanged a glance.
As the ship lost height they peered down through the haze.
‘My radar scanner is returning images through the cloud,’ Lobsang said, apparently staring into empty space. ‘I see a river valley, evidently long dry. A cultivated flood plain. No recognizable electromagnetic or other high technology. Signs of purposeful construction on the riverside – including a bridge, long ago broken. And rectangles on the ground, my friends, rectangles of brick or stone! But no signs of complex life surviving. I have no idea who the builders were. This may be a diversion from our main goal, but I am sure I speak for all of us when I say that we should make an initial survey of this phenomenon. Am I right?’
Again Joshua and Sally glanced at each other.
Sally asked, ‘What kind of weapons are we carrying?’
‘Weapons?’
‘Better safe than sorry.’
Lobsang said, ‘If you mean portable weapons we have various knives, lightweight but nevertheless very useful handguns, crossbows that fire a variety of darts tailored to the metabolism types we might expect to encounter, ranging in power from “ever so sleepy” to “instantly dead”, colour-coded, with Braille and pictogram options – I am rather proud of that piece of kit. Aboard the airship there are a number of projectile weapons under my command. If necessary, I can fabricate a small but very sneaky tank.’
Sally snorted. ‘We’re not going to need a tank. We’re dealing with an extinct civilization down there. Although extinct civilizations can leave behind nasty surprises.’
Lobsang was silent for a moment. ‘Of course. You are right. One must prepare appropriately. Please hold.’
He stood and went behind his blue door. Joshua and Sally exchanged another glance.
Then, after a couple of minutes, the door opened and the ambulant unit walked back on to the deck, wearing a fedora hat and carrying a holstered revolver and, of course, a bull whip.
Sally stared. ‘Well, Lobsang, you have now passed my personal Turing test!’
‘Thank you, Sally, I shall cherish that.’
Joshua was astonished. ‘You fabricated a bull whip in minutes? Braiding leather takes time. How did you do it?’
‘Much as I would like to give you the impression that I am omnipotent, I have to say that there was already a whip in the manifest. A simple and versatile device, requiring little maintenance. Well – shall we go exploring?’
They climbed down into a near desert. Joshua found himself in a broad valley, with a few ragged trees struggling for life on the floor, cliffs on either side honeycombed with caves. There was no sign of animal life, he observed, not so much as a desert mouse. He spotted the remnants of that broken bridge, and the rectangular scrapings on the ground.
But he instantly forgot about all that, because down the valley was a building: one sodding great big rectangle, not much from the air maybe, but from down here it looked like the headquarters of some international conglomerate with an aversion for windows.
They set off towards it, led by Lobsang in his hat.
‘Generally speaking,’ Lobsang pronounced, ‘reality having little sense of narrative, ancient sites are not heavy with swinging blades that decapitate, or rock panels that fold back to fire darts. It’s rather a shame, isn’t it? However, I have detected a textbook collection of enigmatic symbols. The valley cliffs appear to be of pale grey limestone, and have been extensively worked by creatures unknown. The symbology seems to have no relation to any known human script. Meanwhile the large building ahead is constructed of black blocks, basalt perhaps, not well dressed as masonry goes. No obvious entrances as seen from this side, but I believe that while we were still airborne I saw on the far side of the building something like a sloping face, a shadow – perhaps a way in.’ He added, deadpan, ‘Isn’t this fun? Any comments?’
Sally said, ‘Only that we are almost a mile from the thing and don’t have your eyesight, Lobsang. Pity us poor mortals, will you? Why did you land us so far away?’
‘I beg your pardon, both of you. I thought it might be sensible to approach cautiously.’
‘It is his standard routine, Sally,’ Joshua said.
They walked on, with the ship drifting behind them. There were slopes of scree at the base of the canyon walls, and here and there between the sparse trees patches of lichen, moss and scrubby grass had managed to find a footing. But still no animal life; there wasn’t even anything like a buzzard in the sky. This was an inhospitable place, a place where nothing had happened for a very long time, and went on not happening now. And it was hot; the sunlight, breaking through the clouds, reflected from the walls, and the arid canyon already felt like a solar furnace. This didn’t faze Lobsang, who was striding along as if training for the Olympics. Joshua, though, was hot, dusty, increasingly ill at ease.
They reached the looming building. Sally said, ‘Good grief, will you look at that thing? You don’t realize how big it is until you get close!’
And Joshua looked up, and up, at the building’s sheer face. It wasn’t exactly a miracle of architecture – it was unimpressive, in fact, save for its sheer scale. The blocks of black basalt-like rock from which it had been constructed had been roughly worked to fit, but were not of a uniform size. Even from here you could see gaps and imperfections, some of which had here and there been naturally mortared with what looked like bird guano and nests, but even that had evidently been a long time ago.
Sally said, ‘Nice architecture. Somebody ordered “big and heavy and last for ever”, and got it. OK, let’s walk around to the entrance and dodge the rolling rock ball—’
‘No,’ said Lobsang sharply, standing stock still. ‘Change of plan. I have detected a rather more insidious danger. The whole structure is radioactive. Short range only, not remotely detectable – I do apologize. I suggest that we ambulate with alacrity back the way we came. No arguments. Please don’t waste breath until we are safe…’
They didn’t exactly run; call it a very determined walk.
Joshua asked, ‘So what is this place? Some kind of wa
ste dump?’
‘Did you notice a multiplicity of signs that would indicate that entering this building unprepared is going to kill you? No, I didn’t either. The technological level appears much too low for this to be some kind of nuclear reactor, or other similar facility. I suspect they didn’t know what they were dealing with. I am speculating that this culture stumbled across a rather useful ore with interesting properties, perhaps a natural nuclear pile…’
‘Like Oklo,’ Joshua said.
‘In Gabon, yes. A natural concentration of uranium. They found something that made holy glass glow, perhaps… That would show the spirits at work, wouldn’t it?’
Sally said, ‘Spirits that ultimately killed their acolytes.’
Lobsang said, ‘We can at least look at some of the more distant caves before we depart. They should be far enough from the temple, or whatever this is, to be safe.’
The first cave they chose to explore was big, wide, cool – and crowded with the dead.
For a moment the three of them stood at the entrance of this house of bones. Joshua felt utterly dismayed at the sight, yet somehow it seemed an appropriate culmination of this lethally disappointing place.
They walked in cautiously, stepping on clear earth where they could find it. The skeletons were fragile, often to the point of crumbling. The bodies must have been dumped in here, Joshua thought, perhaps in a rush, in the final days of the community when there was nobody left to dispose of them properly, however they had managed that disposal. But what were these creatures – or rather, what had they been? At first glance they might have been vaguely human. To Joshua’s inexpert eye they looked bipedal, as he could tell from the leg bones, the slim hips. But there was nothing humanoid about their sculpted, helmet-like skulls.