The Long Cosmos

by Terry Pratchett

  ‘You’ve got cheerleader pom-poms and now a troll-call. What the hell?’ But of course, if he didn’t speak through the troll-call, Sancho couldn’t understand a word. ‘Give me that thing.’

  Sancho handed over the troll-call.

  Individual trolls were smarter than chimps, but not so smart as humans; some experts thought they might be about equivalent in intellect to the long-extinct Homo erectus. It was in their collective behaviour that the trolls were so intensely intelligent: in their cooperative hunting, and in the long call, the unending chorus that seemed to encode their race’s deepest memories as well as being a rolling account of the present – what food the scouts had found just over the horizon, which infant was showing signs of tiring on the march.

  But still, individual trolls did have a language, of hoots and pants, of gestures, and, yes, of song – a language more sophisticated than any chimp’s, that was for sure. To communicate with them, all you had to do was translate that language.

  And that was what Lobsang, decades ago, with his pioneering troll-call, had been able to do.

  Joshua turned the instrument over in his hands. That this device looked a lot more sophisticated than Lobsang’s old prototypes wasn’t much of a surprise. What was a surprise was that this eccentric, elderly troll was carrying it around with him. And when Joshua turned the instrument over, he found an inscription on a small plastic plaque:

  PROPERTY OF

  UNIVERSITY OF VALHALLA

  AT DOWNTOWN TWO

  DO NOT REMOVE

  Joshua smacked his head. Valhalla! That was where he’d seen pompoms like those before. His son Rod, then known as Dan, had attended a school in Valhalla, the greatest city of the High Meggers. Dan hadn’t stuck around long enough to go to college there himself, but he and Joshua had taken in a few football games.

  Joshua turned and stared at Sancho. ‘You’ve got something to do with the University of Valhalla?’ Then he raised the troll-call and repeated his question.

  Sancho frowned, listening. Then he took the troll-call back, his leathery face crumpled with concentration. Every linguistic structure from the basics of grammar on down differed between trolls and humans; all the troll-call could do was offer a kind of best-guess translation.

  At last Sancho pointed to his own chest. ‘Faculty.’

  ‘What? You’re on the faculty? Of a college? Oh, I get it. They’ve been studying you, right? Like Lobsang in his troll reserve. Hmm. Or maybe you’re studying them . . .’

  ‘Tenure! Sancho got tenure! Hoo!’ And he dropped the troll-call in the mud, hooted, splashed, and folded his big hands over his head, obviously hugely amused.

  Joshua wondered if he was still in a fever dream.

  As the evening drew in, the rest of the trolls returned. Some brought food – armfuls of root vegetables, small game. The big female Sally carried over her shoulder the carcass of what looked like a young deer, but probably wasn’t.

  They gathered close to the spot where Joshua had been lying for so long, near the bluff. The vegetables and fruit were roughly shared out.

  Now he was more capable, Joshua saw that this was a good site, backed up against a bluff for defence, not far from a watercourse. Not so unlike the site he’d chosen for his own stockade, he remembered. You could hide in the rocks if those armoured elephants charged. There were even overhangs for shelter from those pesky pterodactyls.

  Joshua watched as the adults butchered the deer-like creature. They used stone blades, hastily selected from a scatter on the ground, to slit open the skin. Then, with the skin hauled off and discarded, they dismembered the carcass, slicing off the limbs, hauling out the entrails and organs. It was an efficient piece of butchery, even by human standards, although Joshua supposed humans would have taken more care to set aside the skin and sinews for use later. And humans mostly wouldn’t have stuffed their mouths with raw meat while the butchery was still going on.

  Joshua, meanwhile, sitting quietly with his back against the rocky bluff with Sancho, found himself the centre of attention. Sally and Patrick both came over, and hooted their pleasure at seeing him mobile, awake, smiling. Matt rolled a kind of somersault and would have thrown himself at Joshua to wrestle, if, to Joshua’s relief, Sancho hadn’t blocked his way with a huge forearm.

  Then Patrick offered Joshua a slab of raw meat. Joshua took it, nodding gratefully. ‘Thanks, but it’s a little rare for me; I think I’ll just run it through the microwave . . .’

  It was the work of a couple of minutes, even stuck on the ground as he was, to assemble a hearth from some flat stones, a few handfuls of dried wood and windblown brush that had gathered in crevices in the bluff. With his flint fire-starter and a few scraps of paper for kindling, he soon had a blaze going. The trolls were entranced. Soon children and adults started hauling over larger chunks of wood to feed the flames.

  Joshua got Patrick’s gift of meat on an improvised skewer, and held it out over the flames. Fat sizzled, and soon the smell of barbecued meat caused the trolls to start patting their bellies.

  ‘You . . . popular.’ That was Sancho with the troll-call.

  Joshua grinned, and took back the call. ‘Well, I’d better be, I’m likely to be around here for a while. I ought to start earning my keep. And, look, Sancho—’

  ‘Ha?’

  He shook his head. ‘I thought I knew trolls. I’ve been meeting trolls for forty years. My best buddy was the world expert on trolls for a while . . . Evidently not any more. And I never met a troll like you before.’

  Sancho considered this – whatever the hell he made of it. Then he took the call back and hooted. ‘Smarter than the average troll.’

  ‘Hm. I wonder who taught you that line.’

  ‘Librarian.’ He poked his chest. ‘Sancho Librarian.’

  The word was clear and unmistakeable. ‘What? . . . I wish Lobsang was here. He’d love this.’

  ‘You stay. Join us.’ Something about that remark seemed to amuse the old troll, and he started to laugh. ‘Join us. Join us!’

  The others gathered closer, and laughed along with Sancho as they ate, mock-wrestled, cuddled. And they started to sing, an exquisitely beautiful multipart song that rose like the smoke into the air.

  As Joshua sat by his fire, it took him a while to recognize the tune. ‘ “Surf’s Up”! Sancho, remind me to tell you about Sister Barbara some time – she loved this song. She was a Californian, y’know. The Surfin’ Sister, we called her . . .’

  ‘Hoo?’

  And Joshua wondered what a troll Librarian was for.

  26

  AS FAR AS Sister Coleen was concerned, Jan Roderick should have been grounded for running off to Madison West 3 the way he did. Not encouraged, by being taken on some open-ended jaunt into the higher worlds. Not rewarded.

  And why was Sister Coleen the one who had to take him?

  Sister John smiled. ‘Coleen, you’re only going to West 31. It’s hardly the High Meggers.’

  ‘But he’s already been over to 3 by himself. He says if he doesn’t find – whatever it is he wants to find – on 31, he’s got a whole string of more worlds in mind to visit.’

  ‘So he does. Ask him to show you the numbers. 3, 31, 314 . . . He’s got it all worked out, a regular little strategy.’

  ‘But as far as I can tell he doesn’t even know what it is!’

  ‘If he did know, there’d be no point looking for it, would there?’

  ‘So am I supposed to just go on and on, as long as he wants?’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll use your common sense, Sister.’

  ‘But why me? I’m a city girl.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘You know I am. Born and raised in Madison.’

  ‘In Madison West 5, you mean. Believe me, Sister Coleen, I know West 5 is our nation’s capital now, but compared to the big Datum towns before Yellowstone, West 5 is Dodge City.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  ‘What about his
numbers? I don’t do math, Sister. I can’t even read a recipe.’

  ‘Well, that’s true.’

  ‘Why not send Assumpta or Joan—’

  ‘Because he likes you, Sister Coleen.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Compared to most of us around here, yes.’

  ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘A lifetime’s experience. Look, Sister, no more arguments. It will be a growth opportunity for you, and a chance for him to prove himself. Pack your luggage – backpacks only, Coleen!’

  ‘Impossible,’ breathed Sister Coleen, who never travelled light.

  Sister John smiled, and handed her a battered paperback book: the Stepper’s Guide to the Long Earth. ‘Go on, off you pop. Existential mysteries don’t solve themselves, you know.’

  ‘Is that what Jan calls this?’

  ‘If he had the vocabulary, he would . . .’

  So, after a day’s preparation, with Sister Coleen in practical jumpsuit and wimple, with each of them carrying a lightweight backpack and Stepper boxes on their belts, off the two of them went.

  They left the Home at West 5 in the morning. A steam-powered tram took them into a downtown district dominated by the big wooden barn of a Capitol building that now housed the US Congress, itself a copy of the destroyed original on the Datum.

  There they got out and stepped, heading for Madison West 31. Neither of them were great steppers, however, and Sister Coleen insisted they take it slowly, leaving ten or fifteen minutes between each step, even though the nausea pills they’d taken were pretty effective. So it took several hours to step across a patchwork of Madison footprints, each more or less built up, though none so much as West 5.

  They broke for lunch at a snack bar in West 20.

  It was about four in the afternoon by the time they reached West 31. This was September, but the day in this world was warm and bright. The geography of this footprint of Madison was virtually the same as West 5, of course. Here was the Capitol mound, and a short walk away, no doubt, they would find the lake. But there was no sophisticated development here, just tracks cutting through the prairie towards the lake shore. It seemed odd that such a nearby world should be so empty. But even after the great exodus of people that had followed the Yellowstone eruption and the evacuation of the Datum, just the first dozen or so worlds to East or West had soaked up almost all the fleeing population. Each world, after all, was a whole Earth the size of the original, each stepwise America a continental wilderness to match the homeland.

  There was, however, a travellers’ rest on top of the Capitol mound here in West 31, under a flag that fluttered bravely on a pole, a holographic US-Aegis Stars and Stripes. Sister Coleen had looked this place up, and had arranged a reservation. Now she plodded up the mound, with Jan trailing. They both had muddy boots by the time they reached the porch.

  You might call this huddle of single-storey apartments a motel, Sister Coleen thought dismally, if motor cars ever came this way – and if you didn’t know it had been converted from a temporary barracks hastily thrown up by the US Army in the days of chaos and flight after Yellowstone, when the stepwise Madisons had become refugee camps. Still, the check-in was friendly, and their adjoining rooms were clean.

  Once in his room, Jan barely bothered to unpack before he spread out his tablet and his hard-copy notes across his bed, and set up his little home-built radio kit on the room’s small table. He snapped a switch, and immediately screens started to glow. With a sigh, Sister Coleen left him to it. She’d seen him like this before.

  In her own room she boiled a kettle of water on the small gas stove. It was self-catering here, evidently, and without electricity; heating and lighting came from bottled biofuel gas. When she wanted to wash, she’d have to boil another kettle. And she hoped Jan’s batteries wouldn’t run down too quickly.

  She took mugs of coffee through the connecting door into Jan’s room. Intent on his radio, he still had his outdoor coat on. She set a mug down hard on the table beside him.

  He winced. ‘Don’t spill it on my stuff.’

  ‘I won’t. Now, you listen to me, Jan. You’re going to drink this coffee, and you’ll take off that coat, and then I’ll prepare you something good to eat, and you’re going to eat it.’

  He looked at her and smiled. He was a thin-faced, undernourished-looking boy, but, she always thought, when he smiled he lit up the room. ‘“Good to eat”?’

  ‘Cheeky. Just remember I’m in charge.’

  ‘Course you are, Coleen.’

  She pursed her lips. ‘Sister Coleen to you.’ She was not much more than twice his age, and she’d learned she had to be authoritative around the Home’s older children. Friendliness backed up by a steel core was the way. She glanced around at the cabin: bare walls, scuffed floor. ‘What a place. It looks like the soldiers who built it only just moved out . . . I wish you’d dragged me to West 3, where you went first. They have real motels on West 3. With electricity. And showers.’ She sighed. ‘And if we don’t find whatever it is you’re looking for on this world, we’re going to have to move on, aren’t we? Where next?’

  ‘West 314, maybe.’

  ‘314? That seems a long way.’ She glanced around at his tablet, his papers; he had a ring binder full of computer downloads and clippings from grainy Low Earth newspapers. ‘Well, here we are, following this trail of yours. Maybe you’d better help me understand. Where are these numbers coming from, Jan?’

  He stared at her. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’

  ‘I always hated math, and I hate puzzles even more. Just pretend I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.’

  He took his ring binder and flipped through it until he found a page covered with rows of numbers. ‘Look at this.’

  She leaned down to read. The digits began:

  3.14159 26535 89793 23846 . . .

  She shrugged. ‘So? Lottery numbers? Astrology?’

  ‘Sister, these are the first three thousand digits of pi.’

  ‘What pie? Oh, pi. Something to do with circles?’

  ‘That’s it. What you get if you divide the circumference by the diameter. The digits go on for ever.’

  ‘Unlike my attention span. Let me look at that again. Three point one four one five . . . Oh. I get it. So we’re searching for worlds that follow the digits of pi.’

  He looked pained. Well, duh.

  ‘You started at Madison West 3. Now you’ve come to West 31. And next, 314.’ She felt pleased with herself for puzzling out the pattern, even if he’d had to hold it in front of her face. But there was a further consequence. ‘But that means, if we don’t find what you want here or 314, it will be 3,141 . . .’ The number sounded huge to her. ‘Where’s that? Is it even still in the Ice Belt?’

  ‘Of course it is, Sister.’ He dug out a chart of what looked like a rock column, colour-coded. He’d marked some of the layers with big red asterisks. ‘Look, I have this Mellanier chart of the Long Earth. You can see the Belts – here’s the Ice Belt and the Mine Belt and the Corn Belt – and I marked the worlds in the coded messages.’

  ‘I see . . .’ She was thinking ahead to practicalities. Even a few hundred worlds would be a long way to step on foot. Sister John had told her to take as much time as she needed, and assured her that her credit, backed up by the Home’s accounts, was good. Probably local twains went that far, crossing the stepwise Madisons. But to go thousands of worlds – would they have to go cross-country to one of the big Long Mississippi hubs? Just how far would Sister John want her to take this? . . .

  Jan was watching her steadily.

  ‘So these – pi worlds – have got something to do with the stories you’ve been collecting, have they?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said with a kind of stretched patience. ‘The stories show up in the news, or the online feeds. People gossip about them, and they kind of go viral. And then you start getting stories about the stories. And then you start to see the patterns.’

  He showed her cl
ippings in his ring binder, and archived pages downloaded on to his tablet. Here was a strange story of a woman who couldn’t step, but she could see into the stepwise worlds. She had been called Bettany Diamond, mother of two. Sister Coleen remembered seeing some version of this story on a trashy strange-but-true documentary; Diamond had died in the year 2030, in the middle of a post-nuke riot in Madison. And, it turned out, the woman had spent much of her later life here, in a small community in West 31.

  And then there was the legend of ‘Johnny Shakespeare’. That particular story, a strange-but-maybe-true fable of the Long Earth, had been written up in a book for children. And he, supposedly, had let his self-replicating Shakespeare volumes loose on Earth West 31,415.

  ‘You see?’ Jan stabbed the page with a grubby finger. ‘That was the one that gave me the real clue. The first five digits! It was staring me in the face . . .’

  Coleen thought she heard a woman’s voice, very faint, as if far off. This was a very quiet world.

  Distracted, she turned back to Jan. ‘So you believe that all these stories—’

  ‘I think they’re a message. I think they’ve been planted, in the news, on the internet, the outernet. All you’ve got to do is put together the clues, see the pattern. And then it’s obvious.’

  ‘What’s obvious?’

  He shook his head, impatient at her slowness. ‘That something important is happening on one of these worlds.’

  ‘The pi worlds?’

  ‘Yes! People are doing something. And they want help.’

  ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘Because they’re asking for it. What else can all this mean?’

  Again she heard that faint voice. ‘And now you’re here, and you’ve got your radio transmitter, and you’re broadcasting – what?’

  ‘My name, where we are, and the pi digits. I’m telling them I know they’re calling, that I understand.’ He tapped his set. ‘This is a short-wave radio. It will be picked up anywhere on this Earth.’