The Long Cosmos Read online

  They erected a few partitions and assembled their cot beds.

  ‘So,’ Dev said tentatively. ‘You want we should push these beds together?’

  Lee glanced around at the partitions. ‘I can’t see any lenses poking through the walls. But I doubt if our privacy has any real meaning for them. Any more than we’d think about a right to privacy for a hamster in a cage. If they thought it was useful or instructive, would they have any ethical qualms about observing the mating habits of this particular species of chimp? You can get your thrills some other way, assholes.’ She raised her middle finger. ‘Quicktalk that.’

  17

  IN THE MORNING, they breakfasted on eggs benedict and coffee from the replicators. Then Roberta Golding came to summon them to the first of the day’s meetings.

  The session was to be held in one of the bigger roundhouses. Maybe twenty people were already there when they arrived, sitting in rows on the floor or on heaps of cushions: mostly adults, one or two earnest-looking youngsters. They all wore idiosyncratic versions of the naked-with-pockets garments, though crotch and breasts were covered up, and they all carried tablets that looked like they had come fresh from some Low Earth industrial factory.

  Stella Welch was already on her feet before an impressive-looking conference screen, speaking in rapid-fire quicktalk. Roberta led Dev and Lee to seats at the back of the room. One or two of the Next glanced around at them; the rest were incurious.

  Roberta whispered, ‘This is just a preliminary presentation by Stella on what we’ve found in the Invitation so far. Hopefully this group will reach a consensus before presenting conclusions and recommendations to Ronald and Ruby later today.’

  Lee frowned. ‘Who are they?’

  ‘You’ll see. Of course the whole thing will be in quicktalk, but I’ll try to keep you two informed. A literal translation would be impossible, of course; quicktalk contains many concepts which can’t be rendered down into human language. It’s quite possible that by the end of an intense session like this, the language itself will have evolved, with new vocabulary, even new grammatical structures—’

  ‘We get the idea,’ Dev said, feeling weary. ‘Just give us the tabloid-headline summary.’

  The screen lit up, and as Stella waved her hands a complex engineering diagram began to assemble itself, component after component dancing across the display in eye-baffling three-dimensional motions. Every so often Stella, with a grasping gesture, would pull some component out of the general layout to magnify it, rotate it, point out features, and the images swivelled in response. Every part looked alien to Dev; even what looked like structural components were intricately shaped, curved, knotted.

  All this was presented at a bewildering pace.

  Roberta said, ‘We’re already halfway through Stella’s presentation. There’s so much to summarize.’

  Lee asked, ‘This is to do with the Invitation? It looks like an engineering design.’

  ‘None of this was in the message itself,’ Roberta said. ‘The information embedded in it, which we picked up with the Clarke, was indecipherable. Too complex—’

  Lee evidently couldn’t help herself. She grinned in triumph. ‘Even for you? Ha!’

  Roberta was unperturbed. ‘We think, actually, that the apparent data content was a kind of lure, a distraction. The Invitation seems to work on a more primal level. On the mind itself. As if the signal content works indirectly – hypnotically is not the right word . . .’

  As we knew, Dev thought. As observers of the trolls reported from across the Long Earth, for instance – if only these Next had listened. The radio transmission from space was only one element of the signal. The message had washed across all the stepwise worlds, in the form of – what? Dreams, visions, longings? And, accordingto the handlers of the troll workers at GapSpace, those deep-brained denizens of the Long Earth had picked up their own form of the Invitation too. This wasn’t just about humans or even the Next; it was about everybody.

  ‘So it’s a kind of – cosmic telepathy,’ Lee said uncertainly.

  Roberta raised neat eyebrows. ‘We prefer to avoid such imprecise terms. But there is no English word. Think of it as . . . a vision. A vision which can, perhaps, be fulfilled in engineering terms. And that is what our finest minds have attempted to do. The result is what you have seen today. A Next design in response to an alien vision. The surface level of the message was: JOIN US. The level further down is: HERE’s HOW. But it is a target we have to reach ourselves.’

  With the help of mankind, Dev thought, and the trolls, and others, who had all been made ready in some sense by versions of the message of their own.

  ‘I guess I see that,’ Lee said. ‘A vision of a design. Like Leonardo sketching helicopters centuries ahead of their time; he could see them in his mind’s eye. But a helicopter was for flying. What is this thing for?’

  ‘We may have to complete it to find out for sure,’ Roberta said.

  Lee asked, ‘Do you at least know where this signal is coming from?’

  ‘It’s impossible to be sure, but the origin is somewhere in Sagittarius. We still believe it originates deep in the heart of the Galaxy. In fact, for some time – even before the silver beetle incident, long before the Invitation was detected – we’ve been monitoring anomalous gravitational waves coming from the black hole system at the Galaxy’s very centre.’

  ‘Anomalous?’ Dev asked.

  ‘Containing structure that we can’t analyse.’

  Lee grinned. ‘Satisfying to hear there’s something you can’t do.’

  Dev said, ‘So anyhow you have super-advanced aliens trying to get in touch. We dim-bulbs thought all this through a century ago. An interstellar message? Upside, Contact. A glorious galactic future. Downside, A for Andromeda. Enslavement and extermination.’

  Roberta seemed to consider. ‘These fictions may be useful input.’

  Dev couldn’t tell if she was sincere. ‘Glad to be of service.’

  Now the scale changed, and in the virtual graphic on the screen the individual components melded into a kind of structure – sprawling, flat, intricate. It reminded Dev of a massive solar energy array, maybe, or an antenna farm, hundreds of dishes peering collectively at the sky. Or maybe it was more exotic than that, less orderly, like a rendering of some other-worldly city.

  Roberta said, ‘The components come in two rough classes, though there is a significant overlap. The larger components are simpler, at least in information content, and are mostly structural. But you can see that even they are often complicated. The smaller components are still more intricate – and smarter. More complexity pound for pound than a human brain. Even a Next brain.’

  ‘Gosh,’ Lee deadpanned, and Dev suppressed a smile.

  ‘We believe that – if it is decided to construct this device – our replicator technology here at the Grange will be able to print out many of the smaller, intricate components. But we do not yet have the capability to manufacture the larger elements. Especially given the sheer number of them that seems to be specified.’

  ‘Ah,’ Lee said. ‘So you’d have to contract all that out to us low-brows. The industrial complexes in the Datum and the Low Earths.’

  ‘Yes.’ Roberta listened a moment. ‘Some of the attendees note the practical difficulty of working with humans at all, in an age of dissolving central governments and a weakening corporate culture. And then there is the group known as the Humble, an ideological Next–human collectivist movement that has gained particular traction in the industrialized Low Earths where much of this work would need to be done. Perhaps you have heard of a spokesperson for that group – Marvin Lovelace – a former colleague of mine who now spends most of his time in the human worlds. Marvin is suspicious of the motives of those who sent the message – suspicious of their manipulation of our consciousness.’

  Lee smiled. ‘Like Dev said. A for Andromeda.’

  ‘Actually it is useful to have an expression of opposing points of view. We
Next are far less paranoid than humans.

  ‘But others raise the question of urgency. Time may be short, you see. If large-scale human industrialization collapses altogether, then it may not be possible to progress the Invitation project for some time – not until we Next have developed large-scale manufacturing facilities, presumably robotic, under our own direct control. A window of opportunity is closing. Others in this group are reminding us that because of the urgency, preliminary efforts have already been made to pre-prepare the human populations of the Long Earth for such a project.’

  Dev asked, ‘“Pre-prepare”? What does that mean?’

  Roberta said, ‘Our main tool to date has been viral narratives—’

  ‘Viral what?’ Lee scowled.

  ‘Memes,’ Dev said. ‘I think she’s saying they’re introducing ideas into our culture to control us.’

  ‘That’s outrageous. What gives you the right to meddle with our minds?’

  ‘Well, that is a moral dilemma. In fact the debate about our relationship with the human world has been intense since the teachings of Stan Berg. As far as dealing with the signal is concerned, should we proceed with such a project without a full consultation with you? After all, the consequences are likely to impact humanity as well as the Next.’

  ‘Damn right,’ Lee said sternly. ‘You mean you’ve seriously considered not consulting us at all?’

  Roberta glanced at her. ‘In the course of your early mechanized wars, millions of horses were slain in the combat arenas. Before the conflict, did you give such animals a veto on participation?’

  ‘I’m no damn horse.’

  Dev was distracted by the latest image in the screen, which expanded as the virtual camera pulled back; now individual components were lost in a sea of complexity. The viewpoint tipped up to a horizon crowded with technology – and Dev saw, to his amazement, that that horizon was curved.

  ‘Roberta, how big is this thing going to be?’

  She shrugged. ‘We don’t have all the specifications; we’re still not sure. When it’s fully assembled we suspect it will be larger in area than most states. Smaller than the continental USA.’

  Lee stared at her. ‘Larger than a state?’

  The group was stirring. The conversation was breaking up into small huddles, while Stella closed down her display. A couple of members hurried out, looking earnest.

  Roberta said, ‘I think we have a consensus.’

  ‘We do?’ Dev felt bewildered. ‘It would take a bunch of human scientists or engineers days, weeks, to come to a conclusion about this. If they ever did at all.’

  Roberta said gently, ‘It is easier for us to talk things through. We are able to discard personality – pride, personal clashes, territoriality – more readily than you can. And our logic allows us to resolve many preliminary questions; we can all see the obvious answers immediately. We tend to find it easy to agree on tactics, you see. It is only at the strategic level where we have significant disagreements. In this case, of course, the debate is over whether to accept this Invitation – to fulfil the vision – or not. Which is where Ronald and Ruby come in.’

  Lee tapped Dev’s shoulder. ‘Take a look.’

  Dev turned to face the door.

  He saw that a kind of wooden litter was being carried into the room, on the shoulders of half a dozen Next. On the litter, sitting side by side on upright chairs with loose harnesses, were two more Next. They wore versions of the usual shorts and vests with pockets, and their bodies looked normal – human adult, maybe rather skinny, Dev saw, if not wasted. An attendant was supervising a drip that fed into the arm of the one on the left. Ronald or Ruby? He couldn’t actually tell which was male and which female.

  But all this was in the background. For it was the heads of these creatures that he couldn’t help but stare at: skulls swollen like balloons, with scattered patches of dark hair on what looked like painfully stretched skin, and more or less normal human faces diminished in proportion.

  As this bizarre procession made its way through the hall, Dev noticed a young Next, a normally proportioned woman, staying very close to the litter, though she played no part in carrying it. Her face was closed in, expressionless.

  With great care, Ronald and Ruby were set down before the big screen, facing the rest of the group. One, perhaps Ruby, the woman, took hold of the accompanying girl’s hand.

  Roberta whispered, sounding almost starstruck, ‘The girl with them is Indra Newton. She’s a cousin of Stan Berg himself, and comes top of every scale we measure ourselves against. Thought to be the brightest of the new generation, perhaps the brightest since Stan himself, and a crucial interpreter for the lollipops.’

  Dev couldn’t take his eyes off them. Lollipops?

  ‘My God,’ Lee murmured. ‘What is this?’

  ‘One of our experiments,’ Roberta said. ‘One attempt to circumvent the legacy of our human nature and its restrictions. In this case the size of the skull, which restricts the growth and development of the brain. With this new kind, the foetuses are capable of stepping out of the womb, bypassing the birth canal altogether.’

  Dev said, ‘I heard of this. In the wild. It’s in Joshua Valienté’s account of his first expedition into the High Meggers. A kind of elf developed that trick, somewhere out in the Corn Belt.’

  ‘That was where we got the idea,’ Roberta said. ‘According to Valienté it was Sally Linsay who called them “lollipops”. We found them, extracted the relevant gene complex. Those creatures did nothing useful with their larger frontal lobes. Perhaps with time, we, however . . . Ronald and Ruby are already significantly more intelligent by most measures than our finest scholars. They are not yet twenty years old. They have become a kind of arbiter of disputes – as in the present instance. To that extent the experiment worked . . . And now it is Ronald and Ruby who have been central in interpreting the alien vision in design terms. I think they are ready to speak.’

  ‘Already?’

  ‘They were briefed on the issue of the Invitation before this morning. It will not have taken long for Stella to summarize the conclusion of the earlier session for them—’

  ‘Welcome.’

  With a start, Dev realized that the two lollipops were watching himself and Lee. The one on the left had spoken. The single word had been uttered by a frail, papery voice, the voice of the very old – not of a teenager. But it had been in English. And was there a smile on that distorted face?

  ‘We welcome our guests,’ the lollipop said. ‘Dev Bilaniuk, Lee Malone. You should hear what is decided, for it will affect you and your families. My name is Ruby. This is Ronald. As you can probably tell, this isn’t our full-time job. Personally I make a living as a professional ballerina, while Ronald here is a football quarterback.’

  Dev stared, disbelieving. A joke? Lee laughed, nervously.

  ‘Now, as to the issue at hand, you should know that Next science has already diverged sharply from the human—’

  ‘Too true,’ said Ronald, his voice just as weak, yet subtly deeper. ‘Roughly speaking, we went back to Leibniz, who argued with Newton, and started again from that point. I mean, talk about schoolboy errors!’

  Stella Welch coughed.

  Ruby smiled. ‘I apologize. Our own science is a work in progress, and we would be well advised to be humble – as indeed Stan Berg cautioned us.

  ‘In our science, indeed our philosophy, we Next have learned to take our lead from Berg’s Rules of the Three Thumbs. He advised us to be humble in the face of the universe. So we will be in this instance. We should accept this vision from the Galaxy with gratitude; while proceeding with caution, we will not be so arrogant as to assume it is necessary for such a superior race to seek our destruction. “Join us,” they said. We have no reason to believe this Invitation is a deception.

  ‘Apprehend, Berg said. We should embrace the universe in its totality – and if the perception of this Thinker, this machine from the sky, is a better window to the universe than
our own senses and devices, then again we must accept the gift.

  ‘And Berg said, Do good. We will need your help with this endeavour. But we will ensure that such help is obtained with your full consent, that you will be used ethically, and your safety will be paramount. Indeed, the safety of all of us, of all the worlds. We, personally, will take necessary steps to ensure this is so.’

  And Dev wondered what those ‘necessary steps’ might be.

  Ronald stirred, and raised a stick-thin hand. ‘I understand the decision is not yours alone; nobody speaks for all mankind. Nevertheless we would appreciate your feedback. Do you concur with our conclusions?’

  Lee and Dev exchanged a look. Dev was aware of Indra Newton staring at them, blank-eyed, almost as if puzzled by their presence.

  Lee pulled a face. ‘This is all just words. In the end, they can do whatever the hell they like.’

  Dev forced a grin. ‘Maybe. But I always was a contact optimist. That’s why I went to work at the Gap in the first place, I guess. Let’s build this thing. When do we start?’

  ‘Just tell me this,’ Lee said to Roberta and Stella as the meeting started to break up. ‘You said that humanity was being pre-prepared. What “viral narratives”?’

  Roberta said, ‘Stories. Passed on by word of mouth. How else is one supposed to transmit a message to humanity, now that it is scattered across the Long Earth? Stories: bits of narrative, like viruses attaching themselves to your childlike imaginations.’

  Lee pressed, ‘Stories such as?’

  Roberta smiled. ‘Such as a story of Earth West 314,159 . . .’

  18

  AS IT HAPPENED, like the encounter with the lollipops, this was another incident from The Journey: Joshua Valienté’s first exploration of the deep Long Earth, in the company of Lobsang, all of four decades before. An incident never fully reported, a tall tale now resurrected, spun, and whispered into ears across the Long Earth, all to further the Next’s purpose . . .