The Long Cosmos (12 page)

‘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

L
EE
M
ALONE 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 grabbed 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

T
HE
G
RANGE 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 and 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.'