The Long Utopia Read online

  Joshua said, ‘Not so little . . . Well, you know me. I’ve a split soul, Agnes. Half of me always drawn away, out into the Long Earth.’

  ‘Still, you’re home now. Come and join the party . . .’

  Sitting side by side on the usual overstuffed armchairs – some of them originals, retrieved from the old Datum Home – were Nelson Azikiwe and Lobsang.

  Lobsang, or at least this ambulant avatar, with shaven head and bare feet, was dressed in what had become his trademark garb of orange robe. Sally was briskly introduced to Nelson. South African born, a former clergyman now in his fifties, he was dressed comparatively soberly, in a suit and tie. This ill-matched pair were balancing china teacups on their knees, and plates bearing slices of cake. A younger Sister whom Joshua didn’t recognize was fussing around, serving.

  And Shi-mi the cat was here. She came to Joshua, favouring him with a brush against his legs, and she glared at Sally with LED-green eyes.

  As Joshua and Sally sat down, Agnes joined the circle, and Sister John and her young companion served up more tea and cake. Agnes said, ‘Well, this was my idea, Joshua. In this moment of comparative calm – now that the latest global panic, when we all thought we were going to be driven to extinction by super-brain children, has somewhat subsided – my plan was to bring Lobsang here, and to gather his friends together for once.’

  Sally scowled. ‘“Friends”? Is that how you think of us, Lobsang? We’re gaming tokens to you, more like. Dimes to feed the slot machine of fate.’

  Nelson grinned. ‘Quite so, Ms Linsay. But here we all are, even so.’

  ‘Friends,’ Agnes said firmly. ‘What else is there in this life but friends and family?’

  Lobsang, calm, rather blank-faced, said, ‘Your own family is making waves just now, Sally. Your father at least, with his ideas of a new kind of space development.’

  ‘Ah, yes, dear old Papa, dreaming of using his Martian beanstalks to open up access to space. A straight-line path to massive industrialization.’

  ‘Willis Linsay is wise, in his way. We should build up again, from this low base we’ve been reduced to by Yellowstone. As fast and as cleanly as we can, and space elevators will make that possible. After all we may some day need to compete with the Next.’

  Nelson asked, ‘What do you know about the Next, Lobsang? I know they made some kind of contact with you. Is there any more than you’ve said publicly?’

  ‘Only that they’ve gone. All those brilliant children, emerging all over the Datum, all over the Long Earth – the next step in human evolution – that our government rounded up and put in a pen on Hawaii. Gone to a place they call the Grange, out in the Long Earth somewhere. I couldn’t even speculate where.’

  Sally laughed. ‘They didn’t tell you? They just left you to clear up their mess at Happy Landings, didn’t they? This is twisting you up, isn’t it, Lobsang? The omnipresent, omniscient god of the Long Earth, reduced to a messenger boy, by children.’

  Joshua made to hush her.

  But Lobsang said, ‘No, let her speak. She’s right. This has been a difficult time for me. You know that as well as anybody, Joshua. And in fact that’s the reason I allowed Agnes to call you all together.’

  Agnes stiffened. ‘Oh, you allowed it, did you? And there was me thinking this was all my idea.’

  Lobsang looked at them in turn, at Sally, Nelson, Joshua, Agnes, Sister John. ‘You are my family. That’s how I think of you all. Yet you have family ties of your own. You mustn’t neglect them.’ He turned to Nelson. ‘You, too, are not as alone as you thought you were, my friend.’

  Nelson looked intrigued rather than offended at this opacity. ‘Textbook enigmatic. Typical Lobsang!’

  ‘I don’t mean to be obscure. If you just think back to when we went to New Zealand—’

  Evidently frustrated at this hijacking of her party, Agnes interrupted sharply. ‘Lobsang, if you’ve something to say you’d better get to the point.’

  Lobsang sat forward, shoulders hunched. Suddenly he looked, to Joshua, unaccountably old. Old and tired. ‘Yellowstone, and the collapse of the Datum, were hard for me. I suffuse the Long Earth, I have iterations scattered across the solar system, but my centre of gravity was always Datum Earth. Now the Datum itself is grievously wounded. And so, as a consequence, am I.’ He pressed his thumbs into his temples. ‘Sometimes I feel incomplete. As if I am losing memories, and then losing the memory of the loss itself . . . Yellowstone to me was like a lobotomy.

  ‘Since then I have had – doubts. I told you of this, Joshua. I have had the odd sensation that I remembered my previous incarnations. But that is not the accepted norm, under the Tibetan tradition; if my reincarnation has been fully successful I should shed all memory of my previous lives. Perhaps this reincarnation is imperfect, then. Or,’ he glanced at Agnes, ‘perhaps there is some more mundane explanation. I am after all nothing but a creature of electrical sparks in distributed stores of Black Corporation gel. Perhaps I have been hacked.

  ‘And then came the Next, and their verdict on me. Before all this, I imagined I would become – yes, Sally! – omnipresent, omniscient. Why not? All of mankind’s computer systems, all communications, would ultimately be integrated into one entity – into me. And I would cradle all of you in safety and warmth, for evermore.’

  Sally snorted. ‘An evermore of subordination? No thanks.’

  He looked at her sadly. ‘But what of me? Without my dream I am nothing.’

  Carefully he put down his teacup.

  Agnes was clearly alarmed by this small gesture. ‘What do you mean, Lobsang? What are you going to do?’

  He smiled at her. ‘Dear Agnes. This will not hurt, you know. It is just that I—’

  He froze. Just stopped, mid-motion, mid-sentence.

  Agnes cried, ‘Lobsang? Lobsang!’

  Joshua rushed to his side, with Agnes. As Joshua held Lobsang’s shoulders, Agnes rubbed his hands, his face: synthetic hands on synthetic cheeks, Joshua thought, and yet the emotion could not have been more real.

  Lobsang’s head turned – just his head, like a ventriloquist’s dummy – to Joshua, first. ‘I have always been your friend, Joshua.’

  ‘I know . . .’

  Now Lobsang looked up at Agnes. ‘Don’t be afraid, Agnes,’ he whispered. ‘It is not dying. It is not dying—’

  His face turned slack.

  For a moment there was stillness.

  Then Joshua became aware of a change in the background, the soft, routine sounds of the Home: a ceasing of noise, of the humming of invisible machines, of fans and pumps. A closing down. Glancing out of the window, he saw lights flicker and die in the building opposite. Whole blocks growing dark further out. Somewhere an alarm bell sounded.

  Agnes grabbed Lobsang’s shoulders and shook him. ‘Lobsang! Lobsang! What have you done? Where have you gone? Lobsang, you bastard!’

  Sally laughed, stood up, and stepped away.

  Of course even Lobsang had never known it all. Some of the mysteries of Joshua’s own peculiar nature were hidden, it would turn out, not in the stepwise reaches of the Long Earth but deep in time. Mysteries that had begun to tangle up as early as March 1848, in London, Datum Earth:

  The applause was thunderous, and the Great Elusivo could hear it as he went down the steps to the stage door of the Victoria theatre. His ears still ringing from the din of the threepenny gallery, now he was battered by the sights and sounds of the New Cut: the shop windows, the stalls, the jostling traffic, the street entertainers, the beggar boys tumbling for pennies. And of course there were people waiting for Luis outside, in the dark of a Lambeth evening; there always were. Even young ladies. Hopeful young ladies perhaps.

  But this time a quiet voice, a male voice, called from an alley. ‘You move very fast, don’t you, mister? One might say, remarkably fast. Shall I call you Luis? I believe that is your rightful name. Or one of them. I have a proposition for you. Which is that I shall take you out to dinner at the Drunken Clam �
� Lambeth’s finest oyster-house, if you didn’t know it already. Because I do know you’re very fond of your oysters.’

  The figure was indistinct in the shadows. ‘You have me at a disadvantage, sir.’

  ‘Yes, I do, don’t I? And the reason I am speaking so rapidly to you, not to say forcefully, is that I know that at any moment you wish, you may simply vanish. It is a faculty that serves you very well, as I see. Yet you do not know how you do it. And nor do I. To cut a long story short, sir—’

  There was a slight breeze as the man disappeared.

  And then appeared again. He gasped and clutched his stomach, as if he’d been punched. But he stood straight and said, ‘I can do it as well. My name is Oswald Hackett. Luis Ramon Valienté – shall we talk?’

  And in February 2052, in the remote Long Earth:

  Overhead Joshua Valienté’s own personal stars shone for his benefit alone. It was after all reasonable to assume that his was the only soul in the whole of this particular Creation.

  He still had that headache.

  And not only that, the stump of his left arm itched.

  As something squealed and died in the dark, the spirit of Valienté moved on the face of the darkness. And it was sore afraid to the soles of his feet. ‘I’m getting too old for this,’ Joshua muttered aloud.

  He started to pack up his stuff. He was going home.

  2

  THE FUNERAL HAD been held on a bleak day in December 2045, in Madison, Wisconsin, Earth West 5.

  At first Sister Agnes had wondered how you could have a funeral service for a man who had not been a man, not by any usual definition, and whose body had not been the usual mass of fragile flesh – indeed, she had never been sure how many bodies he had, or even if the question had any meaning. And yet he, man or not, had evidently died, in any sense of the word that meant anything in the hearts of his friends. And so a funeral service he would have, she had decreed.

  They gathered around the grave dug into the small plot outside this relocated children’s home, where ‘he’ had been laid to rest – ‘he’ at least being the ambulant unit he had inhabited at the moment of his ‘death’. It didn’t help the sense of unreality, Agnes thought, that four of his spare ambulant units stood over the grave as a kind of honour guard, their faces blank, dressed in their regular uniform of orange robes and sandals despite the bitter cold.

  Compared with that, the prayers and readings murmured jointly by Father Gavin, of the local Catholic parish, and Padmasambhava, abbot of a monastery in Ladakh and, supposedly, Lobsang’s old friend in a previous life, seemed almost routine. But perhaps that was a reflection of the oddest aspect of Lobsang, Agnes thought: that he had come to awareness as a piece of software in an elaborate computer system, fully sentient, and yet claiming to be the reincarnation of a Tibetan motorcycle repairman, and demanding full human rights as a consequence. The case had tied up court time for years.

  Now, in his gentle Irish accent, Father Gavin read, ‘“I know not how I seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with while the vast ocean of undiscovered truth lies before me . . .”’

  Agnes slipped to the back of the group and stood next to an elderly man, tall, white-haired, dressed in an anonymous black overcoat and hat. ‘Nice lines,’ Agnes said quietly.

  ‘From Newton. Always been one of my favourite quotes. My own choice: a touch immodest perhaps, but you only get one funeral.’

  ‘Well, in your case, that’s to be seen. So, “George”.’

  ‘Yes, my “wife”?’

  ‘Good turn-out, even if you don’t count yourself. There’s Commander Kauffman, looking splendid in her dress uniform. Nelson Azikiwe, as solemn and observant as ever. Always a good friend, wasn’t he, L— umm, “George”? Who’s that woman over there? Attractive, forty-something – the one who’s been crying all morning.’

  ‘She’s called Selena Jones. Worked with me years ago. In theory she’s still my legal guardian.’

  ‘Hmm. You do come with baggage, don’t you? Even Cho-je has turned up, I see, and why he hasn’t been put out for scrap I don’t know. And Joshua Valienté and Sally Linsay.’

  ‘King and Queen of the Long Earth,’ said ‘George’.

  ‘Yes. Side by side, looking as always as if they belong together and yet wishing they were worlds apart, and that’s never made any sense, has it?’

  ‘You’ve known Joshua since he was a child. You tell me. But speaking of children—’

  ‘The paperwork’s all been submitted. It may take some time before the right child shows up. Years, even. Why, he or she may not have been born yet. But when the adoption clearance comes through we’ll be ready. And have we chosen the new world where we’ll raise our “son” or “daughter”?’

  ‘As I told you, I’ve asked Sally Linsay for help with that, when we need it. Who else knows the Long Earth as she does?’

  Agnes looked over at Sally. ‘She’s the only one who knows about you?’

  ‘Yes. Save for you, the only one. In fact she said she’d never really believed my end was final; she kind of knew anyhow, before I approached her. But she’s discreet. I’ll swear she keeps secrets from herself.’

  ‘Hmm. I’m not entirely sure I trust her. Not about her discretion, I accept that.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Sally has . . . an odd sense of humour. She’s a trickster. And you are sure you want to do this, aren’t you? To put everything aside, and just—’

  He looked at her. ‘Just be human? Do you?’

  And that was the question that stirred her own emotions, deep in the lump of Black Corporation gel she used as a heart.

  Father Gavin read another line, and ‘George’ frowned. ‘Did I hear that correctly? Something about being like a sinner at heaven’s gate, and crawling back to me . . .’

  She linked her arm in his. ‘You have Newton, I have Steinman. Come on. Let’s get out of here before anybody gets suspicious.’

  3

  IF NOT FOR his dog Rio chasing some imaginary furball around the back of the old Poulson place, Nikos Irwin would most likely never have found the big cellar at all. It was a kind of unlikely accident – or maybe not, not if you knew Rio, and the qualities of stubbornness and curiosity she had inherited from her Bernese mountain dog ancestors. But if not for Nikos and his stubborn pet, the whole subsequent history of mankind might have been different – for better or worse.

  It was April of 2052. Nikos was ten years old.

  It wasn’t as if Nikos particularly liked the old Poulson house, or the abandoned township it was part of. It was just that the Poulson place was used as the local swap house, and he’d been sent here by his mother in search of baby shoes, for her friend Angie Clayton was carrying.

  So, with Rio loping at his side, he walked out of the shade of the trees, out of the dense green where somewhere a band of forest trolls hooted a gentle song, and into the harsh unfiltered sunlight.

  He looked around at the big houses that loomed silently over this open space. Nikos had grown up in the forest, and instinctively he didn’t like clearings, for they left you without cover. And this abandoned community was an odd place besides. His parents always told him that the Long Earth was too new to mankind to have much history yet, but if there was history anywhere in Nikos’s own world, it was here. Some of these old houses were being swallowed by the green, but the rest still stood out in the light, hard and square and alien, with their peeling whitewash and cracked windows. The place even smelled odd to Nikos, not just of general decay after years of abandonment, but of cut wood and dried-out, dusty, lifeless ground.

  All this was basically the work of the very first colonists to come here, the founders. They had opened up the forest to build their little town. You could still see the neatly cut and burned-out stumps where great old trees had been removed, and the fields they’d planted, and the trac
ks they’d marked out with white-painted stones, and of course the houses they’d hammered together in a few short years, with their picket fences and screen doors and bead curtains. Some of the houses had stained glass windows. There was even a little chapel, half-finished, with a truncated steeple open to the elements.

  And in one big old house there was even, incredibly, a piano, a wooden box which somebody must have built from the local wood, and fitted out with pedals and an inner frame and strung with wire, all carried from the Low Earths: a remarkable feat of almost pointless craftsmanship.

  Nikos’s parents said the founders had been keen and eager and energetic, and when they’d come travelling out to these remote worlds – more than a million steps from the Datum, the first world of mankind – they’d had a kind of fever dream of their past, when their own ancestors had spread out into the original America and had built towns like this, towns with farms and gardens and schools and churches. They had even named their town: New Springfield.

  But the trouble was, this wasn’t colonial America.

  And this Earth wasn’t the Datum. Nikos’s father said that this world, and a whole bunch of similar Earths in a band around it, was choked with trees from pole to equator to the other pole, and he meant that literally: here, there were forests flourishing even in the Arctic night. Certainly this footprint of Maine was thick with trees that looked like sequoias and laurels but probably weren’t, and an undergrowth of things like tea plants and fruit bushes and ferns and horsetails. The warm, moist, dark air fizzed with insects, and the trees and the loamy ground swarmed with furballs, as everybody called them, jumpy little mammals that spent their lives scurrying after said insects.

  And in such a world, the founders’ children had soon started to explore other ways of living, in defiance of their parents, the pioneers.

  Why go to all the hard work of farming when you were surrounded by whole empty worlds full of ever-generous fruit trees? And rivers full of fish, and forests full of furballs so numerous they were easily trapped? Oh, maybe farming made sense on the more open worlds of the Corn Belt, but here . . . The drifters who came through here periodically, calling themselves combers or okies or hoboes, vivid examples of other ways of living, had helped inspire the breakaway. Nikos’s parents’ friends still spoke of one particularly persuasive and evidently intelligent young woman who had stayed here for a few weeks, preaching the virtues of a looser lifestyle.