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The Long Cosmos

Page 35

by Terry Pratchett


  And the baby was alone.

  Alone, except for the universe. Which poured in, and spoke to her with an infinity of voices. And behind it all, a vast Silence.

  Her crying settled to a gurgle. The Silence was comforting.

  There was a kind of sigh, a breathing-out. Joshua was back in the green, under the blue sky.

  On the move, ‘down’ was always the direction of Datum Earth. Down to the bustling worlds. Down to the millions of people. ‘Up’ was the direction of the silent worlds and the clean air of the High Meggers.

  But to Joshua Valienté, in the end, down was home.

  Leaning on a stick, one prosthetic hand stiff, Joshua scooped up the baby, wrapped her up in a ragged old silver survival blanket that smelled of troll, and cradled her in his arms. Her little face was oddly calm. ‘Helen,’ he said. ‘Your name is Helen Sofia Valienté.’

  A soft pop, and they were gone.

  On the plain, nothing remained but the grass, and the sky.

  Acknowledgements

  I’m grateful once again to our good friends Dr Christopher Pagel, owner of the Companion Animal Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin, and his wife Juliet Pagel, for, among other things, a discussion on a happily serendipitous observation that Ellie Arroway of Contact appears to have been their neighbour, and an insightful reading of the text. And I’m grateful too to Professor Ian Stewart for his stimulating speculations on the peculiar forests of Earth West 230,000,000, as well as another very helpful reading. All errors and inaccuracies are of course my sole responsibility.

  S.B.

  December 2015, Datum Earth

  About the Authors

  SIR TERRY PRATCHETT, OBE, was the author of more than seventy books, including the internationally bestselling Discworld series of novels. In January 2009 Pratchett was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in recognition of his services to literature. Sir Terry, who lived in England, died in 2015 at the age of sixty-six.

  www.terrypratchettbooks.com

  STEPHEN BAXTER is an acclaimed, multiple-award-winning author whose many books include the Xeelee Sequence series, the Time Odyssey trilogy (written with Arthur C. Clarke), and The Time Ships, a sequel to H. G. Wells’s classic The Time Machine. He lives in England.

  www.stephen-baxter.com

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  Books by Terry Pratchett

  The Dark Side of the Sun

  Strata

  The Unadulterated Cat

  (illustrated by Gray Jolliffe)

  Good Omens (with Neil Gaiman)

  The Discworld® Series

  The Color of Magic

  The Light Fantastic

  Equal Rites

  Mort

  Sourcery

  Wyrd Sisters

  Pyramids

  Guards! Guards!

  Eric (illustrated by Josh Kirby)

  Moving Pictures

  Reaper Man

  Witches Abroad

  Small Gods

  Lords and Ladies

  Men at Arms

  Soul Music

  Interesting Times

  Maskerade

  Feet of Clay

  Hogfather

  Jingo

  The Last Continent

  Carpe Jugulum

  The Fifth Elephant

  The Truth

  Thief of Time

  The Last Hero

  (illustrated by Paul Kidby)

  Night Watch

  Monstrous Regiment

  Going Postal

  Thud!

  Making Money

  Unseen Academicals

  Snuff

  Raising Steam

  Books About Discworld

  The Art of Discworld

  (with Paul Kidby)

  The Streets of Ankh-Morpork

  (with Stephen Briggs)

  The Discworld Companion

  (with Stephen Briggs)

  The Discworld Mapp

  (with Stephen Briggs)

  The Wit and Wisdom of Discworld

  (with Stephen Briggs)

  Turtle Recall: The Discworld Companion . . . So Far

  (with Stephen Briggs)

  The Discworld Graphic Novels

  The Color of Magic

  The Light Fantastic

  DISCWORLD FOR YOUNG ADULTS

  The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

  The Wee Free Men

  A Hat Full of Sky

  Wintersmith

  I Shall Wear Midnight

  The Illustrated Wee Free Men

  (illustrated by Stephen Player)

  Where’s My Cow?

  (illustrated by Melvyn Grant)

  FOR YOUNG ADULTS

  The Carpet People

  Nation

  The Bromeliad Trilogy

  Truckers

  Diggers

  Wings

  The Johnny Maxwell Trilogy

  Only You Can Save Mankind

  Johnny and the Dead

  Johnny and the Bomb

  BOOKS BY STEPHEN BAXTER

  PROXIMA

  Proxima

  Ultima

  NORTHLAND

  Stone Spring

  Bronze Summer

  Iron Winter

  FLOOD

  Flood

  Ark

  TIME’S TAPESTRY

  Emperor

  Conqueror

  Navigator

  Weaver

  DESTINY’S CHILDREN

  Coalescent

  Exultant

  Transcendent

  Resplendent

  A TIME ODYSSEY (WITH ARTHUR C. CLARKE)

  Time’s Eye

  Sunstorm

  Firstborn

  MANIFOLD

  Manifold 1: Time

  Manifold 2: Space

  Manifold 3: Origin

  Phase Space

  MAMMOTH

  Silverhair

  Longtusk

  Icebones

  Behemoth

  THE NASA TRILOGY

  Voyage

  Titan

  Moonseed

  THE XEELEE SEQUENCE

  Raft

  Timelike Infinity

  Flux

  Ring

  Xeelee: An Omnibus

  Vacuum Diagrams

  Xeelee: Endurance

  THE WEB

  The Web: Gulliverzone

  The Web: Webcrash

  NON-SERIES

  Anti-Ice

  The Time Ships

  Traces

  The Light of Other Days

  (with Arthur C. Clarke)

  Evolution

  The H-Bomb Girl

  Dr. Who: The Wheel of Ice

  Last and First Contacts

  Universes

  The Medusa Chronicles

  (with Alistair Reynolds)

  NON FICTION

  Deep Future

  Omegatropic

  Revolutions in the Earth: James Hutton and the True Age of the World

  The Science of Avatar

  BY TERRY PRATCHETT AND STEPHEN BAXTER

  The Long Earth

  The Long War

  The Long Mars

  The Long Utopia

  Credits

  Cover design by R. Shailer/TW

  Cover photographs: space background and planet Earth

  image © NASA, landscape and figures © Shutterstock

  Specifications of the USN space vessel Uncle Arthur illustrated by Richard Shailer

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  THE LONG COSMOS. Copyright © 2016 by Terry and Lyn Pratchett and Stephen Baxter. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to acce
ss and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Published simultaneously in Great Britain by Doubleday, an imprint of Transworld Publishers, a division of Random House Group, Ltd.

  FIRST U.S. EDITION

  ISBN: 978-0-06-229737-2

  EPub Edition JUNE 2016 ISBN 9780062297396

  16 17 18 19 20 OFF/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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