The Long Earth (18 page)

They moved apart and Lobsang grinned. ‘I could kill you with a single blow; if necessary, these arms could serve as pile drivers.’ He carefully stepped away from a tentative attack from Joshua. ‘That’s why I let you hit me first, so that I could calibrate a suitable
response
. I am fighting you at your own strength, but regrettably not with your speed, which I suspect is innately better than mine because of the phenomenon of muscle memory – embodied cognition, the muscles as part of one’s overall intelligence, amazing! I am going to have to reflect that in my own anatomy, a more distributed processing design, in the next upgrade of this body. And, Joshua, you are also pretty good at deceit, even with your limited body language. I salute you for that.’

Which was true, because at that moment Joshua landed a blow in the middle of that enormous chest. Joshua said, ‘I am not certain that it’s Tibetan, but there is an old saying: “If you are fighting, don’t talk, fight!”’

‘Yes, of course you are right. One must fight with the whole mind.’

And suddenly there was a fist right between Joshua’s eyes. It didn’t actually connect; Lobsang had pulled the punch with astonishing precision, and Joshua could feel only a slight pressure on the tiny hairs of his nose.

Lobsang said, ‘There
is
an apt old Tibetan saying: “Don’t stand too close to a Tibetan chopping wood.” You are much too slow in every respect, Joshua. Still, perhaps you can defeat me with guile for a while longer, until I pass your level of competence. I find this exercise therapeutic and invigorating and educational. Shall we continue?’

Joshua got back to work, breathing hard. ‘You’re actually enjoying this, aren’t you? Although with your background I was half expecting you were going to try some kind of kung fu stuff.’

‘You have been watching the wrong kind of movies, my friend. I was a motorcycle repairman, remember, better with all things mechanical and electrical than with my fists or feet. I once wired a magneto on to the door of my work room, so that the gentleman next door who regularly came in to steal from me got quite a large electric shock. A little bit of instant karma, and that was the only time I ever laid anyone low. No kick-boxing required.’

They broke again.

Lobsang said, ‘And now you, my friend, have been instrumental in helping me emulate the original Mark Twain who, if we can believe his autobiographical
Life on the Mississippi
, fought with another pilot on a stern-wheeler in full steam, the man having been bullying a trainee pilot. Every now and again he had to leave the fight and make sure the vessel was still on course – rather as I am guiding our ship through the worlds, even as we spar. Given Twain’s cheerful tendency to put a shine on any anecdote, I am not certain of the truth of this, but I admire the man, which is why I named this ship after him … Actually he would have called his book
Stepping Westward
, but the title, alas, had already been claimed by William Wordsworth. The old sheep of the Lake District: very fine poet, but somehow “exploring on the
Wordsworth
” does not quite have the appropriate ring, does it?’

Joshua said, ‘Wordsworth had his moments, according to Sister Georgina.
It is a beauteous evening, calm and free …
’

‘I know it, of course.
The holy time is quiet as a nun breathless with adoration
. Very apt! Are we sparring with poetry too, Joshua?’

‘Shut up and box, Lobsang.’

23

WHEN THEY WERE
done the sun was setting on all the worlds.

Joshua took a shower, musing on all the meanings and usages of the word ‘strange’. Boxing like a nineteenth-century steamboat captain with an artificial man, while multiple worlds flickered by beneath. Could his life get any odder? Probably, he thought, resigned.

He was coming to like Lobsang, although he was not entirely certain why. Nor was he certain, even now, what exactly Lobsang was. Strange, that was for sure. But then of course plenty of people called
him
strange, and worse.

He dried himself off, got into a new pair of shorts, put on a fresh T-shirt which bore the slogan ‘Don’t worry! On another Earth it already happened’, and headed back to the saloon deck. The empty staterooms he passed bothered him; it made the
Mark Twain
feel like a ghost ship, with himself as the first, and possibly the last, ghost.

He walked into the galley, and there was Lobsang, dressed in a bland coverall, standing patient as a statue. ‘Dinner time, Joshua? According to a preliminary cladistic analysis your salmon is not, strictly speaking, salmon, but salmon enough for the grill. We have all the relevant condiments. We also have tracklements, and I bet you have never heard of
them
before.’

‘Tracklements are those things which complement the main ingredient of a meal and, traditionally, at least, may be found in the vicinity of the said ingredient – for example, horseradish root in good beef country. I am impressed, Lobsang.’

Lobsang looked pleasantly shocked. ‘Well, if it comes to that, so am I, given that I am a certifiable genius with access to every dictionary ever published. May I ask how you came across such an archaic word?’

‘Sister Serendipity is a world expert on cookery through the ages. In particular she has a book by somebody called Dorothy Hartley, called
Food in England
. Serendipity knows all that stuff; she can make a good meal out of anything. You should see her roadkill hot pot, always a favourite. She taught me a lot about living off the land.’

‘It is remarkable for a woman with such skills to devote her time to unfortunate young people. Such dedication.’

Joshua nodded. ‘Well, yes. And maybe also because she is wanted by the FBI, which is why she doesn’t go out much and sleeps in the basement. Sister Agnes said that it was all a big misunderstanding, and in any case the bullet missed the senator by a mile. They don’t talk about it much.’

Lobsang began walking backwards and forwards along the deck, turning smartly when he reached a bulkhead and striding back again, like a sentry.

Joshua set about dressing the salmon, but the endless striding and the creaking of the floorboards began to get on his nerves. When Lobsang came past for the twelfth time he said, ‘You know Captain Ahab used to do that? And look what happened to him, right? What’s on your mind now, Lobsang?’

‘On
my
mind! Practically everything. Although I have to say that gentle physical exercise, such as our sparring, does indeed do wonders for the cognitive processes. A very human observation, don’t you think?’ The pacing continued.

Finally the quasi-salmon was cooking, although Joshua had to keep an eye on it.

Lobsang stopped pacing at last. ‘You are good at concentrating, aren’t you, Joshua? You can ignore distractions, a very useful skill, and it makes for a certain tranquillity.’

Joshua didn’t respond. Through the window, light flared: a distant volcano blossoming against the endless Eurasian green, to be snatched out of existence in a heartbeat, as they stepped on, and on.

Lobsang said, ‘Listen, Joshua. Let’s talk about natural steppers. Like you.’

‘And Private Percy?’

‘You asked me about my researches. Since Step Day I have endeavoured to explore all aspects of this remarkable new phenomenon. As one example I sent researchers off around the world, to study cave systems used by early man. They were tasked to inspect similar caves in the adjoining worlds, to investigate parallel habitations, if any. It was an expensive endeavour but it yielded fruit, because my researchers quickly found in a cave near Chauvet in a stepwise France, among other things, a painting. More accurately it was the badge of a certain Kent regiment at the time of the First World War, and rendered with great accuracy.’

‘Private Percy?’

‘Quite. Well, I already knew about him and his stepping exploits. But then, in a stepwise version of the caves at Cheddar Gorge in Somerset, England, my indefatigable investigators found the complete skeleton of a middle-aged man, in possession of a corked flagon of cider, a few coins, and one gold watch of mid-eighteenth-century manufacture with only the gold and brass remaining of the metal parts. This was a wet cave, but his boots had survived, slightly glistening like the poor man himself, thanks to a sheen of calcium carbonate deposited by drips from the roof. Interestingly, the hobnails and the aglets on his laces were not there.’

‘Aglets?’

‘The small steel caps once fitted to the end of a lace … I’m painting a picture for you here, Joshua.’

‘It’s kind of a dull picture, Lobsang.’

‘Patience. The intriguing thing about this particular find is that the corpse was discovered only because he was lying with the
fingers
of one hand jammed into a very small space at the bottom of the cave. My operatives found the gentleman in fact as they were exploring a lower cave. They saw the bones protruding through the roof, as if the man had been trying fruitlessly to widen the little gap. All very Edgar Allan Poe, don’t you think? Of course they broke their way through from the cave below, and you can work out the rest. The man was a notorious thief and ne’er-do-well known locally as Passover.’

‘He was a stepper, wasn’t he?’ said Joshua, flatly. ‘And I just bet that there was no other entrance to the cave.’ For a moment he imagined the drip of icy water oozing over bleeding fingers in the darkness, a man trying to scrabble his way out of a cave like a coffin … ‘So maybe he’d had a few drinks. Sister Serendipity once told me that Somerset cider was made of lead, apples and handsaws. He lost his bearings,
stepped
, ended up in his small cave without even knowing that he’d stepped at all, which would of course make him even more disorientated. He tried to feel his way out, banged his head, knocked himself out. How am I doing?’

‘Superbly. And the skull itself was, indeed, slightly damaged,’ said Lobsang. ‘Not a good death, and I wonder how many other individuals get themselves trapped in some corner before they know what is happening to them.

‘
Natural steppers
, Joshua. The history of Datum Earth is full of them, if you know how to interrogate the record. Mysterious disappearances. Mysterious arrivals! Locked-room mysteries of all kinds. Thomas the Rhymer is a favourite example of mine, the Scots prophet who, it is said, kissed the queen of the elves and left this world … In more modern times there are plenty of cases documented in the black scientific and intelligence literature, of course.’

‘Of course.’

‘You are unusual, you see, Joshua, but not unique.’

‘Why are you telling me all this now?’

‘Because I don’t want there to be secrets between us. And
because
now I am going to tread on dangerous ground. And tell you about your mother.’

The
Mark Twain
stepped Westward, with little sound other than the pop of the air getting out of the way.

Carefully, Joshua turned down the heat on the cooking fish. He said, as casually as he could, ‘What about my mother? Sister Agnes told me everything there is to know.’

‘I don’t think so, because
she
didn’t know all of it. I do. And let me say that the whole truth is, on the whole, a good truth, and a truth that explains many things. I think it would be good for you to know. But I will put it out of my mind if you tell me to. That is, I will actually delete the subject from my memory for good. The choice is yours.’

Calmly, Joshua kept his attention on the fish. ‘In what world can I say anything other than “Tell me about her”?’

‘Very well. You know, surely, or at least you must have worked out, that Sister Agnes took over the Home in the first place as a result of the affair. I mean the scandalous business that surrounded your birth. It was a coup that made the throwing of the moneylenders out of the Temple look like a bachelor party. I’ve seen the files, believe me; I doubt whether a convocation of cardinals would try to take Agnes’s office away from her now. She knows all the dirt. Moreover, she knows what’s
under
the dirt …

‘Your mother was young when she became pregnant with you, far too young. The Home failed her in that, clearly. And your father, by the way, is unknown, even to me.’

‘I know that. Maria would say nothing about him.’

‘Under the old regime, her world was one of daily penance. Relevant affidavits to demonstrate how this penance was administered exist in Sister Agnes’s personal safe, as well, of course, as in my own files, awaiting the right time to be revealed. The regime was utterly inappropriate in the modern age – and would have been in any age, though it might once have been tolerated.’

Joshua faced Lobsang and said in a flat voice, ‘I know that somebody took her monkey bracelet off her. It was a silly thing, but it was given to her by her own mother. It was sort of all she had. Sister Agnes told me. I suppose it was considered superstitious or something.’

‘They did think that way, yes. Although there was a strong streak of petty cruelty in the mix. Maria was in the late stages of pregnancy at the time. Yes, it seems a trivial incident, but it tipped her over the edge, at the worst of times. And so that evening, when the labour pains first started, Maria tried to flee the home, and panicked, and
stepped
. At which point you entered the situation.

‘She actually stepped
twice
. She gave birth to you, and stepped back to the Datum, emerging near the road outside the Home where Sister Agnes caught up with her. Agnes tried to calm her down; Maria was clearly in a dreadful state. But she realized what she had done, and stepped yet again. And when she returned she brought you back with her, wrapped in her pink angora sweater, and handed you over to an astonished Sister Agnes, who understood nothing of what had happened. It was not until Step Day, when stepping became common, that she began to grasp the truth.

‘And Maria died, Joshua, of post-partum haemorrhaging. I’m very sorry. Sister Agnes, quick to react though she was, could not help her.

‘All of which leaves you, my friend, as most unique, being, at the moment of birth, if only for a matter of a minute or two, the only person, almost certainly,
in a universe
. Totally solitary, utterly alone! I wonder what that must have done to your infant consciousness?’