The Long Earth (37 page)

And Joshua found it increasingly difficult to endure the stepping.

Sally patted his arm. ‘Getting close to that teenage party, are we, Joshua?’

He always resented people seeing any weakness in him. ‘Something like that. Don’t you feel anything?’

‘No. I wish I did. I told you, I’m jealous, Joshua. You have some kind of real talent there.’

That evening, as they relaxed as best they could while the ship stepped cautiously on, Lobsang startled Joshua by talking about access to space.

‘I’ve been thinking. What an opportunity the Gap represents!’

Since the galley was mostly inoperative, Joshua was hammering a grill out of a defunct piece of equipment. ‘An opportunity for what?’

‘Space travel! You could just put on a pressure suit and step off, into space. None of that messy business of climbing out of Earth’s gravity well on rockets. You’d presumably be in solar orbit, just as Earth is. Once you had some kind of infrastructure in place in the Gap itself, you could simply sail off. It would be a great deal more energy-efficient to get to Mars, say …

‘You know, I was always a space buff. Even back in Tibet. I personally have invested some money in the Kennedy Space Center, where they’re not even taking care of the museum-piece rockets any more. Our pathetic handful of microgravity orbital factories gives the illusion that we are still a space-going species, but the dream has gone – gone even before the Long Earth was opened up. As far as we know there is nowhere else in the universe where a human being can exist un protected. And now, with millions of Earths available to us, who wants to go up into the cold, scorching emptiness in a spacesuit smelling faintly of urine? We could have been
out there
, applying to join the galactic federation, not slashing and burning our way across endless copies of the same old planet.’

Sally said, ‘But you’re leading the slashing and the burning, Lobsang.’

‘Well, I don’t see why I can’t have both. And, don’t you see, if we can develop the Gap, maybe we can find a way to do all that after all. From the Gap the solar system is your oyster Kilpatrick. Don’t forget this conversation, Joshua. When you get back to the Datum, stake a claim to the Earths on either side of the Gap before the rush starts, and mankind finds that there
is
such a thing as a free launch. Think what might be out there! Not just the other worlds of our solar system – though surely a universe that has manufactured the Long Earth has manufactured the Long Mars as well? Think about
that
.’

Joshua tried. It made his head spin. He concentrated on finishing his grill. The galley ovens were out, but he planned to barbecue most of what, had it been on Earth, might have been called a deer, the result of some brisk hunting by Sally.

The ship stopped stepping, without warning.

And Joshua
heard
…

It wasn’t a voice. Something wormed inside his brain, a sensation clear and sharp, and offering no hint of anything other than its existence.

Only that it was calling to him.

He managed to say, ‘Lobsang, can you hear anything? On the radio frequencies, I mean?’

‘Of course I can. Why do you think I halted the stepping? We’re being pinged, with coherent signals at a range of frequencies. It appears to be an attempt at the language of the trolls. I will concentrate on the decoding, if you will excuse me.’

Sally looked from one to the other. ‘What’s happening? Am I the only one who isn’t hearing anything? Is it coming from that thing underneath us?’

‘What thing?’ Joshua looked out of a galley window at the ocean below.

‘
That
thing.’

‘Lobsang,’ Joshua asked, ‘is your port camera working?’

46

JOSHUA AND SALLY
abseiled down the panic rope, the only way to the ground now the winches were jammed.

Once down, Joshua clambered on top of a bluff for a look around. Under a sunless, clouded-over sky, a dense green ocean lapped reluctantly at a muddy beach. Inland, a bare landscape stretched away to folded hills, far in the distance. But, just to the south of here, there was a tremendous crater, like Meteor Crater in Arizona. Without warning a huge pterosaur-like creature swept out of the crater, utterly silent, heading over Joshua’s head and out into this world’s version of the Pacific. Silhouetted against a darkening sky, it was like a nuclear bomber heading for Moscow.

And something moved in this remote version of the Pacific. Something vast, like a living island. Joshua’s headache had gone. Cleared utterly. But the sensation he had always called the Silence had never been more profound.

The voice of Lobsang chattered crisply from a small speaker in Joshua’s backpack. ‘We are back on the Washington State coast of this planet … My aerial drones are no longer functional; my view is limited. The object appears to be twenty-three miles long and approximately five miles wide. It’s a creature, Joshua. Without a clear analogue on the Datum. I have noticed several appendages along its flank that are changing size and shape – you might think it is a technology park; I see what appear to be antennas, telescopes, but the instruments are morphing one into the other, extraordinary – and a certain amount of movement along the
carcass
as a whole. I can’t estimate threat. I can’t imagine that something like this could make a sudden movement, but for all I know right now it might develop wings and fly …’

There was a steady rippling along the thing’s upper surface. It was slightly white, slightly transparent. Its movements affected Joshua somehow, viscerally, a sensation seeming to arrive in his consciousness by no discernible pathway.

‘Sally, have you ever seen anything like this before?’

She snorted. ‘What do you think?’

Lobsang said, ‘I have just shaken hands with it.’

Sally snapped, ‘What the hell are you talking about now?’

‘Communications protocols, Sally. We are in contact … It is evidently a remarkable intellect; I can tell that immediately from the sheer information-theoretic complexity of its communications. So far I’ve learned one thing from it. Its name—’

‘It has a
name
?’

‘Its name is First Person Singular, and before you shout at me about that, Sally, I know that because it has now told me as much in twenty-six different languages of Earth. Including, I’m proud to say, Tibetan. I have been beaming information at it, and it’s learning fast; it has already downloaded much of the ship’s data store. I believe that it’s harmless.’

‘What?’ Sally growled. ‘Something alive and the size of a small reservoir de facto can’t possibly be harmless. What’s it for? Above all, what does it eat?’

Joshua slipped his packs off his shoulders and dropped them on the beach. There was no noise here, he realized. No animal cries, not even the distant honking of the pterosaur fliers. Only the soft, oily spilling of small waves on the shore.
Nothing but the Silence
. What he had been hearing all his life, in the gaps between people. Huge thoughts, like the echoes from some tremendous brass gong. Now here it was, before him.

More than two million worlds from Earth, he felt oddly as if he had come home.

He walked towards the ocean.

Sally called, ‘Joshua. Take it easy. You don’t know what you’re dealing with …’

He kicked off his boots and pulled off his socks. Barefoot, he walked into the water until his ankles were covered. He could smell salt, and the sweetly rotten stink of seaweed. The water was warm, and thick, dense, almost syrupy. And it swarmed with life, tiny creatures, white and blue and green and mobile. Some were like tiny jellyfish, with pulsing sacs and trailing tentacles. But there were things like fish in there too, with huge, strange eyes, and things like crabs with clever-looking claws.

And, a little further out, the thing. Joshua waded out, towards its tremendous edge. The voice of Lobsang chattered in his ear, but he ignored it. The flanks of First Person Singular were translucent, like inferior glass, and if he squinted he could just about see what was inside. And what was inside was … everything. Fish. Animals. A
troll
? It was embedded in glutinous fluid, swathed in some kind of frond, like seaweed, eyes closed. It looked asleep rather than dead. At peace.

Walking right up to that misty hull, he touched it with the tip of a finger. There was a slight sensation, nothing painful.

A voice in his head said, ‘Hello, Joshua.’

And information poured into his mind, like a sudden awakening.

47

ONCE, LONG AGO
, on a world as close as a shadow:

A very different version of North America cradled a huge, landlocked, saline sea. This sea teemed with microbial life. All this life served a single tremendous organism.

And on this world, under a cloudy sky, the entirety of the turbid sea crackled with a single thought.

I …

This thought was followed by another.

To what purpose?

48

‘THIS IS A
Historic moment,’ Lobsang babbled. ‘First contact! The dream of a million years fulfilled. And I know what this must be. Shalmirane … Didn’t you read
The City and the Stars
? It’s some kind of colony organism.’

Sally said archly, ‘Behold the alien! So what now? Are you going to set it mathematical puzzles, like Carl Sagan and those SETI guys?’

Joshua ignored them both. He spoke to First Person Singular. ‘I didn’t tell you my name.’

‘You didn’t need to. You are Joshua. I am First Person Singular.’ The voice in his head sounded like his own.

Inside the translucent skin, the creatures. He recognized fish, birds, and, he realized after a while, a very definite
elephant
, moving slowly through whatever was in there, half walking, half swimming, eyes closed. And trolls, and elves, and other humanoids.

The tide was coming in. Very carefully, so as not to give offence or cause alarm, Joshua walked backward. ‘What is First Person Singular … for?’

‘First Person Singular is the observer of worlds.’

‘You speak good English.’ It was a dumb thing to say, but what
was
the right thing to say to a miles-wide slug? Sister Agnes would have known, he thought.

The reply came back immediately. ‘First Person Singular does not know what “Sister Agnes” is. I am still learning. Can you define for me a nun?’

On this bleak shore, Joshua’s jaw dropped.

First Person Singular said, ‘Cross-reference, yes – a nun is a female biped who refrains from procreation to service the needs of others in the species. Comparison with eusocial insects, perhaps? Ants and bees … More. Also rides large vehicles propelled ultimately by the remains of ancient trees. More. Is dedicated to the contemplation of the numinous. This is acknowledged as an interim description pending further investigation of relevant details … I myself would appear to be a nun, by some definitions. I perceive the world of worlds in their entirety. I believe I understand what is meant by
breathless with adoration
… You should move back on to the shore.’

The incoming water was up to Joshua’s knees. He backed up across the strand.

Sally was watching in amazement. ‘You’re
talking
to it?’

‘She. Not it. I think so. I hear my own voice asking me questions. She seems to know what I’m thinking – or rather, she knows what I know. I have no idea what she is, but she seems to want to learn.’ He sighed. ‘I’m kind of overloaded with wonder here, Sally.’

From the backpack the voice of Lobsang called, ‘Come back to the airship. Debriefing time, I think.’

As they walked back to the
Mark Twain
more pterosaurs flew over, their silhouettes gaunt against the sky.

Without the winches, the climb back up the rope to the gondola was pretty gruelling, but there were working lights on all decks now, the water heater was functioning, and there was instant coffee, at least.

Of course Sally wanted to talk things over immediately. But she was overruled by both Joshua and Lobsang, for at least the time it took to make the coffee.

Then Joshua tried to relate what he had sensed of First Person Singular’s own story. ‘She was alone on her world.’

‘A survivor,’ Sally said.

‘No. Not that. She
emerged
alone. She evolved that way. She was always alone …’

Lobsang cross-examined him, and gradually they pieced together, if not the truth, then a story.

On the Earth of First Person Singular, Lobsang speculated, as on many Earths, the early ages of life were long aeons of struggle for survival by half-formed creatures that had not yet discovered how to use DNA to store genetic information, and whose control over the proteins from which all living things were constructed was as yet poor. There had been billions upon billions of swarming cells in the shallow oceans, but they were not yet sophisticated enough to be able to
afford
to compete with each other. Instead, they co-operated. Any useful innovation flashed from cell to cell. It was as if everything in this global ocean operated as a single mega-organism.

‘With time,’ Lobsang said, ‘on most worlds, and certainly on Datum Earth, complexity and organization reach a point where individual cells can survive unaided. And then, on most worlds, competition begins. The great kingdoms of life begin to separate, oxygen bleeds into the air as a waste product of creatures that learn how to harness the power of sunlight, and the long slow climb towards multicelled forms begins. The age of global cooperation vanishes, leaving no trace save enigmatic markers in genetic composition.’

Sally said, ‘On most worlds, but not on First Person Singular’s.’

‘No. Actually that world must have been a remarkable Joker. There, the gathering complexity drove a familiar-looking evolutionary story – but the unity of that single global organism
was never lost
. We really have travelled to a very distant branch of the contingency tree. It—’

‘She, Lobsang,’ Joshua said.

‘
She
: yes, the feminine is appropriate,
she
appears to be positively gravid with apparently healthy life forms. She was more like a
maturing
biosphere than a creature like a human. As complexity increased, knots of control must have formed. To grow further it would have become necessary for the information structure to construct and contain a copy of itself, for the whole to become self-reflective. That is, conscious.’