The Long Cosmos Read online

  That ‘boy’, Nelson reflected wistfully, was now sixty-eight years old.

  Agnes said, ‘I did try to find the father, you know, when Joshua was growing up. I know he was wary of us Sisters. Well, now he’s died, taking his story with him. From what Joshua told me, I think Freddie managed to be proud of his son, in the end. So he did leave a legacy, of sorts, despite the awful circumstances of Joshua’s birth.’ She eyed him. ‘Just as you will, it seems, Nelson, you rogue.’

  Nelson felt as if his face was glowing hot. ‘Now, Agnes, this isn’t the kind of thing to tease me about.’

  ‘No. I’m sorry. I’m sure that answering-machine message from Lobsang was a heck of a shock.’

  ‘So it was.’

  ‘And when you contacted me, asking if I knew anything about this mysterious grandson of yours, I got a shock of my own. Lobsang never just vanishes, you see. That’s not his style. He leaves me little gifts around the place, in the systems in my home, even in my tablet. Files that pop open given a particular trigger – such as an association of your name with the word “grandson”. I’ll have a few seconds or minutes with some avatar of the man, sometimes long enough for a conversation. Joshua calls them “Easter eggs” for some reason.’

  ‘An old computer-game term.’

  She frowned disapprovingly. ‘Well, it’s no game to me to get such news.’

  Nelson leaned forward, intent. ‘All I know is that I have a grandson. And, while my life has hardly been blameless, I can only think of one occasion where I might have . . . Did Lobsang mention Earth West 700,000, or thereabouts?’

  Now she smiled. ‘Actually, he did. Then you know where to find them.’

  ‘Them?’

  ‘Your grandson, and your son.’

  That took him aback. ‘Shallow fool that I am, I focused on the grandson. I didn’t think of a daughter or a son.’

  She leaned over and rested her hand on his; her ambulant unit’s artificial flesh was comfortingly warm. ‘There are no rules with this kind of thing, Nelson. You just have to find your way through.’

  ‘For all I eschew long stepwise jaunts, I must go to them.’

  ‘Of course you must. And you must come back and tell me all about it, if I’m still here. Oh – sorry.’ She squeezed his hand again. ‘Didn’t mean to be as blunt as that.’

  He sat back. ‘I did hear about your plans, from mutual friends. Your plans to die.’

  ‘From Joshua?’

  ‘Sister John at the Home, actually. We keep in touch.’ He wondered what to say. In his years as a clergyman he had of course had many conversations on this topic – but never with an entity like Sister Agnes. ‘This is something you need to do?’

  ‘What’s the alternative?’ She smiled at him, quite brightly. ‘Don’t be sad, Nelson. It’s already over a hundred years since I was born. I’ve had a far richer life, or lives, than I could ever have imagined. Or deserved, probably.’

  He snorted. ‘I won’t accept that.’

  ‘Now I just want it all to have a tidy ending.’ She thought that over and nodded. ‘Yes, that’s it. Tidy. And you could help me with that, dear Nelson.’

  ‘Of course. How?’

  ‘Help them. Anybody who misses me, anybody who cares.’

  ‘Such as Joshua.’

  She smiled. ‘I can’t think of anybody better to ask.’

  ‘It’s this invisible dog collar around my neck, isn’t it?’

  ‘Once donned, you’re stuck with it, I’m afraid.’

  ‘And what about Lobsang?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve already said goodbye to him. Or at least, to his Easter eggs . . .’

  Now, below, the glaciations were taking hold, with the landscape alternating as they stepped between tundra and an open polar desert where winds blew ice crystals across frozen ground.

  ‘Like in the song,’ Agnes murmured. ‘Winters without end.’

  ‘Sister?’

  ‘I think I might go have a nap. Old lady’s privilege.’

  ‘Shall I wake you for lunch?’

  She smiled as she stood. ‘Certainly. I couldn’t miss the lions and hippos you promised me . . . Oh, one more thing. Troy. Troy is his name, your grandson. Remember me to him.’

  ‘I will, Agnes. Thank you.’

  15

  LEE MALONE AND Dev Bilaniuk waited with Stella Welch and Roberta Golding outside the fence of the GapSpace facility, under the thinly clouded sky of a June day, in this remote copy of north-west England. Their luggage was heaped up in the dirt.

  A twain was approaching, a dot on the horizon, quickly growing in Dev’s vision. It looked small, its grey envelope unmarked save for splashes of solar-cell panelling, its gondola plain and cramped-looking. Such craft had been plying the Long Earth for forty years; it was a mundane sight. And yet this ordinary craft represented something extraordinary. For the twain was going to take Dev and Lee to the Grange, the home of the Next, where they were to consult on a project inspired by a message from the sky.

  ‘You know,’ Dev murmured to Lee, ‘before I ever crossed to the Gap I was able to imagine how it would be there. A hole in the Long Earth – a step into space. Exotic but comprehensible. Whereas now, with this “Grange”, I’ve literally no idea what we’re walking into. But I suppose if we could imagine what the Next get up to, there’d be no point to them.’

  ‘I wonder why the twain’s flying in,’ Lee murmured, sounding practical.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘I mean, why not step into the air right above us?’

  ‘No doubt there’s a good reason,’ Dev said. ‘Which we’re too dumb to understand.’ He glanced over at Stella and Roberta, who stood waiting patiently in their modest coveralls. ‘It is frustrating being members of a sub-race, isn’t it?’

  Lee grinned. ‘I don’t know. It’s fun trying to second-guess them.’

  The twain descended with a hum of smooth-running turbines, and a stair let itself down from the side of the gondola.

  A man clambered down briskly. Tall, thin, aged maybe forty, he wore a peculiar garment that was basically khaki shorts with wide braces; the shorts were quilted with pockets, and tools of various kinds dangled from fabric loops. Otherwise his chest and arms were bare, as were his skinny legs, and Dev was gratified to see him shiver in the coastal breeze, brisk even though this was June.

  Lee was still grinning. ‘Also, the Next have truly awful dress sense.’

  ‘I heard that,’ said Stella, who looked as if she was suppressing a smile herself. ‘Unlike you vain creatures, we choose practicality over looks. This man is called Jules van Herp. He lives at the Grange, but we asked for his help today because—’

  ‘I’m one of you,’ Jules said immediately, his own grin wide and nervous. He shook hands with each of them. ‘Not a Next, I mean. What does that make me? A Before? Ha ha. Come on, grab your luggage and climb aboard the twain. Let’s get out of this wind and be on our way . . .’

  Jules led them up the stair and into the gondola, and the twain closed up behind them. The turbines hummed, and Dev felt a surge as the ship immediately began to move through the air.

  While Stella and Roberta went on elsewhere, Jules led Lee and Dev along a smooth-walled corridor into a small, windowless cabin. Jules shut the door behind the three of them and fussed around, pressing panels to make seats fold out, and opening a cupboard containing drinks and snack food. ‘Take a seat, help yourself . . .’

  As they put down their luggage, Dev and Lee exchanged wary glances. Dev ran his hand over the smooth, featureless grey wall. ‘No windows. What’s this material? Some kind of ceramic? And if I tried this door—’

  ‘I wouldn’t advise it. Look, try to make yourselves comfortable. The trip’s going to be short, but—’

  There was a sensation like a plummeting fall, almost as if they’d crossed over into the gravity-free realm of the Gap, and a sense of deep, shuddering cold.

  Jules grinned. ‘There’s going to be a lot of that.’

  Dev gr
abbed the back of a seat, reflexively. He saw that Lee was shivering.

  She said, ‘That was like no step I ever took.’

  ‘It might have been a soft place. I’ve heard of them. Like Long Earth wormholes, fixed tunnels from one world to another. It’s like they sap the energy out of you, so I hear. In which case we could already be anywhere, geographically and stepwise.’

  Lee glanced around at the blank walls. ‘Stella and Roberta are in some kind of observation lounge, I bet. While we can’t see a damn thing—’

  There was another gulping, swooping fall. Dev felt deeply nauseous, but tried not to show it.

  ‘Shit,’ Lee said. ‘That hurts. Like a punch in the gut.’

  And another shuddering transition.

  Jules said, ‘You’d better sit down.’

  Lee and Dev fumbled for seats.

  Lee looked at Jules. ‘Why do the Next keep the location of this Grange of theirs secret in the first place?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you? There has been at least one military project, semi-officially endorsed and almost carried through, to exterminate them. You do understand why you’re being brought in?’

  Lee, white-faced, shrugged. ‘They want to discuss how to respond to the Invitation.’

  Of which much more detail had already been received via the Clarke telescope, the huge sea-urchin design being rushed through its construction in the Gap, using the Next’s almost magical molecular-level replication and assembly technology.

  Lee went on, ‘And since we two have been involved at the Gap end of the project from the beginning—’

  ‘Your point of view will be useful,’ Jules said. ‘The Next like to consult well-informed dim-bulbs, on projects that are likely to affect them. Which is clearly the case here.’ He eyed them. ‘You’d better get used to that phrase, by the way. Dim-bulbs. At the Grange, they use it without thinking. They don’t mean any harm.’

  Dev and Lee just stared back at him.

  ‘They’ll listen to you,’ Jules went on. ‘They won’t necessarily do anything you recommend, directly, but they will take what you say into account as they formulate a wider judgement about what’s best. If you want my opinion, being there physically is the main thing, actually, even if they don’t listen to a word you say. So that you become lodged in their thinking as they consider other factors. Just by standing there, you’re a reminder that humans exist.

  ‘Listen. You’re going to see a lot, hear a lot, that will probably shock you. Baffle you, even.’ He glanced down at himself. ‘Believe me, the way they dress isn’t the half of it. Just let it wash over you. As for me, think of me as a native guide. Or an interpreter.’

  Dev stared at him. ‘You’re a normal human – right? Living among the Next. You haven’t said a word about yourself. Have you a career, a family? . . . Why do you live this way?’ With every day a constant humiliation, he thought, but he didn’t express that out loud.

  Jules’s eyes shone. ‘You’ll see – or you will if you’ve got the imagination, and can put aside your own petty pride.’

  ‘You’re dazzled,’ Lee said neutrally. ‘I heard that people can get that way around the Next.’

  ‘But they are dazzling.’ Jules plucked at his Next-style clothing, and grinned nervously, looking around the room, as if, Dev thought, he suspected he was being watched by masters he was desperate to please.

  Dev looked at Lee, and saw something like pity on her face, pity for Jules. Dev felt only revulsion. He wasn’t going to lose himself in awe of the Next, whatever he saw at this Grange. He was positive about that.

  Another sickening, lurching, chilling fall.

  Lee asked plaintively, ‘Are we there yet?’

  16

  THE GRANGE TURNED out to be a series of clearings cut into a lush forest, linked by wide, straight paths.

  Roberta and Stella led them away from the landed twain along one such path, walled by tall tree trunks, with Jules following behind. Jules said their luggage could be collected later. The day was mild and fresh, the sky blue, the forest scents strong. Dev swung his arms, trying to get over the nauseous after-effects of the journey.

  ‘We could be anywhere,’ Lee said. ‘Geographically, I mean.’

  ‘This looks like temperate forest,’ Dev said. ‘Are those trees some relation to oaks? The leaves are full, like it’s summer. So we could still be in the northern hemisphere. But, depending on the local climate, on a particular Earth you can get temperate forest bands anywhere from the equator to the poles.’

  ‘And of course,’ Jules added, ‘this may not be the native flora at all. Perhaps it has all been transplanted; perhaps you are in some vast fool-the-eye arboretum.’

  Looking faintly annoyed, Lee said, ‘We work in space. We know the stars, the planets. We could figure out the latitude from the length of the day, even make a guess at longitude if we saw something like a lunar eclipse—’

  ‘But what good would it do you? Even if you knew the geographical location you would have no idea where you were stepwise.’

  ‘We’re not natural steppers,’ Dev said. Neither of them had been allowed to bring a Linsay Stepper box. ‘What if we were – or what if we had our boxes, and tried to step away? What then?’

  Jules shrugged. ‘To either side the stepwise worlds are much less hospitable than this. In a thick band. Even a twain couldn’t get through. The only way in or out of here is by soft places, believe me.’

  Lee said, ‘Then you’re imprisoned, just as we are.’

  ‘So what? I trust the Next. They know what’s best, for mankind, and for me.’

  Lee recoiled from him visibly.

  They came at last to a larger clearing dominated by a series of big conical buildings, with trampled, dusty ground between. Roberta and Stella, looking out of place in the sober jackets and slacks they’d worn for the journey, wordlessly led them across the open ground towards the largest of the houses.

  Each building seemed to be thatch plaited over a frame of long, straight tree trunks, with heaped-up stone as a low perimeter wall, Dev saw as they passed. There was a central hearth, and smoke seeped out of the thatch of some of the houses. Dev was surprised how basic it looked, how primitive. It might have been a scene from Iron Age Europe. Yet here and there were glimpses of higher tech, metal glinting in the fabric of the houses.

  A few adults gathered in knots, talking, all dressed much as Jules was – Dev was starting to think of it as ‘naked with pockets’ – and children ran around, some of them more or less bare, others dressed in cut-down versions of the adult garments. As they passed, Dev caught snatches of speech: not English, though he recognized a few English terms embedded in there. This was quicktalk, a rattling, high-speed gabble quite beyond his comprehension. The most baffling thing for Dev was the way three or four would gather and all talk at once, evidently capable of listening to one stream of words while uttering another. He could almost see the information being poured from one mind to another in parallel high-speed channels.

  A few people nodded to Roberta and Stella as they passed, but none even glanced at Dev and Lee – or indeed Jules, Dev observed. He murmured to Lee, ‘They aren’t noticing us any more than you’d acknowledge a dog on a lead.’

  ‘Down, Fido.’

  The house they were led to was empty of people. The space inside was open; there were no interior walls, though what looked like partition panels were stacked up in a heap opposite the door. Shady corners were lit by freestanding cylindrical lamps, apparently electrical. There was some furniture, low bunks, couches, what looked like a galley area equipped with shining boxes of metal and ceramic. A doorway led to a bathroom.

  Jules went bustling off to the galley. Roberta and Stella sat on a couch, took a breath, and gabbled quicktalk for half a minute. Then they turned to Dev and Lee, who stood uncomfortably in the doorway.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Roberta. ‘Come in, sit down. We try to avoid quicktalk when we’re in the human worlds. It’s such a relief to get back a
nd to be able to express oneself properly . . . This building has other purposes, but it’s the nearest we have to a guest house.’ She pointed. ‘You can fix up individual cabins with those partitions. You’ll probably need privacy.’

  Lee frowned. ‘The implication being that you don’t need privacy.’

  Jules called over, ‘They’re more civilized than we are, Lee, remember. They don’t need to avoid each other as much as we do.’

  Roberta went on, ‘We’ll have your luggage brought in . . . What else? Jules can show you how to use the galley. We generally eat fresh produce from the forest, but you may find it easier to use the food printer units.’

  Dev frowned. ‘Food printer?’

  Stella said, ‘Like your own matter printers, but rather more sophisticated. And based to some extent on silver-beetle technology – you know something about that. It’s voice activated; you can ask for a wide variety of foodstuffs.’

  ‘Replicators,’ Dev said. ‘They’ve got replicators.’ He stepped forward to inspect the nondescript ceramic boxes. He could see no power connection; maybe there was some kind of energy-beam technology, invisible transmission.

  Roberta said, ‘With such devices we have made a major step towards a true post-scarcity society. Hunger banished without labour, for ever.’

  Dev couldn’t resist it. ‘Can it give me Earl Grey tea?’

  Lee grinned. ‘Hot!’

  The two of them stayed in their guest house that evening.

  That was basically on Jules’s advice. They should keep themselves to themselves, and keep away from Next children in particular, he said. Even now, a quarter-century after the establishment of the Grange, many of the adults here had grown up in the human worlds and knew how to deal with regular people, respectfully or otherwise. But the kids born in the Grange were different. To them, humans were just exotic animals.

  Jules had grinned nervously. ‘They aren’t always – kind. Actually, some Next believe it’s good for their children to be raised among humans. Because you exert a selection pressure. The truly smart, having discovered they are cleverer than the people around them, soon learn that the smartest thing of all for them to do is to prevent said people from ever finding this out. Roberta said she had a teacher who told her that she should have “Nobody Likes a Smart Alec” tattooed to her forehead in reverse, so she could be reminded of it every morning in the bathroom mirror . . .’