The Long Utopia

32

EARTH WEST 389,413.

Joshua’s first impression was that this world, towards the outer Western edge of the Corn Belt, was unimpressive. A little drier than most of its neighbours, maybe, the forest more sparse, the grasslands thinner. No animals in sight; he saw none of the big herd beasts that characterized such worlds.

And yet somebody had come here, to this world, to build a home.

Deep in the heart of a stepwise Kansas, by a sluggish river, a sturdy log cabin stood back from the flood plain. Joshua, watching from cover from a couple of hundred yards away, could see how a nearby forest clump had been cut for timber. Fields had been marked out and roughly fenced. There was a wood store, a hen house, what looked like the beginnings of a forge. There was even a garden, contained by a picket fence, where flowers grew this summer’s day. All of this was surrounded by a neat stockade to keep out predators, and to contain any stock animals. Joshua was impressed. Yet it struck him that one couple could have built all this, given time and determination.

But the hen house was broken open now. Whatever animals had been kept here, goats or pigs or sheep, were gone, slaughtered or driven off. The fields were overgrown, the potatoes needed earthing, even the flowers were growing wild.

The house, though, was not empty. And Joshua, peering through his lightweight binoculars, thought he saw a face staring out of one window, a man’s face, roughly shaven, fearful. The face disappeared, the man ducking back.

Whoever he was, it was obvious why he was afraid, and who he was afraid of. For Sally Linsay was here.

It was the spring of 2058. Since his airship tour of beetle-world with Lobsang it had taken Joshua nearly half a year to track her down.

He found her settled on a bluff to the west, overlooking the farmhouse.

Joshua approached her small camp, whistling softly. The tune was called ‘Harpoon of Love’, a fragment of their shared past that she might recognize. Then he walked into her field of view, with his hands up.

At least she didn’t gun him down immediately. When she recognized him she turned her back and returned to her scrutiny of the farmhouse, squatting easily, her rifle of aluminium and bronze and ceramic in her lap.

‘Took me months to find you,’ he called as he walked up.

She shrugged.

When he got to the top of the bluff he found Sally sitting beside a deep-dug hearth laden with ash, a hearth evidently repeatedly used. Bones were heaped neatly, testifying to the many small animals who had given their lives here to keep her alive. And there was a pail of water, presumably fetched from the stream below. Even clothes, washed, spread over the rock, drying in the dusty sunlight.

He said, ‘You’ve been here a while, right? A regular home from home.’

‘What do you want, Joshua?’

‘What the hell are you doing here, Sally?’

‘Tell me what you want. Or just go, I don’t care.’

‘I’m here because of Lobsang.’

She didn’t take her eyes off the farmhouse below. Her hair was brushed back tightly from her lean face, giving her an intense, predatory look; the wrinkles around her eyes were deep. She was over sixty years old now, he reminded himself.

She said, ‘What about Lobsang?’

‘He needs us. You. He said you’d probably be expecting the call.’

‘Would I? Why so?’

‘Because you took him and Agnes to New Springfield in the first place. You set him up. So he says. Now he says you owe him.’

‘I don’t owe anybody anything. I never did.’

Joshua sighed. ‘Well, he’s giving up playing happy families with Agnes. Now he wants us to do something for him. “I need you to go find me,” he said. He wants himself back. The old Lobsang.’

‘Isn’t that impossible? When he “died”, he burned out all his iterations, so I was told. All his backup stores, in space, stepwise. Even those probes he had out in the far solar system, the Oort cloud.’

‘There’s one copy he couldn’t reach. You know the one I mean. From The Journey.’

‘Ah. Yes, of course. The ambulant unit we left behind to converse with First Person Singular, at the shore of a desolate sea, more than two million worlds out … God, that’s nearly thirty years ago.’

‘Maybe even then he was thinking of it as an ultimate backup. And now he wants it back. One more journey, you and me. Just like the old days.’

She grunted. ‘You and I don’t have “old days”, Valienté. How did you find me?’

‘Come on, Sally. You always did leave a breadcrumb trail. You want to be found, just in case … This time I started at Jansson’s grave, in Madison. The flowers you left there—’

‘I don’t need to hear about your brilliant detective work.’

‘Also there have been rumours, of the setup you’ve got yourself trapped in here. This stake-out. You know how it is. Combers spread gossip like a contagion. And you’ve been here a long time.’

‘The bad guys are trapped, in that farmhouse. I’m not trapped.’

He kicked at the heap of animal bones. ‘Oh, really?’ He squatted down beside her, opened his pack and pulled out a plastic bottle of water and a strip of jerky. Sally refused the water but took a bite of jerky. ‘It’s impressive you’ve managed to pin this place down alone like this, for so long. But you need to hunt, collect water. And sleep. Even Sally Linsay needs to sleep.’

She shrugged. ‘I mix up my hours. No set routine, so they never know where I am.’ She lifted the rifle and without warning cracked off a shot; Joshua, looking down, saw splinters fly up from the porch of the farmhouse. ‘Even when I sleep I set up automatic fire, random timing.’ She slapped the rifle. ‘This is one smart gadget. Sure they could rush me. I’d get some of them, but the rest could reach me. They haven’t the guts. If they had any guts they wouldn’t be here in the first place.’

‘Who are they?’

‘What do names matter, out here? It’s what they’ve done that counts.’

‘How many?’

‘Five. All male. I think they’re related, a father with sons, or maybe cousins. A pack of them.’

‘Why don’t they just step out of there?’

‘Because I went in and smashed their Stepper boxes.’

‘Tell me why you’re here. What these guys did.’

‘Look at the place,’ she said bitterly. ‘You can figure it out for yourself.’

‘The pioneers. Just one couple?’

‘Yeah. I found a journal that the bad guys threw out the door, with other trash. They grew up on the Datum, survived Yellowstone, ended up in a Low Earth refugee camp – that’s where they met – and spent the next few years watching their parents cough their lungs up from the ash. When they were free of that they came out here, with all their parents’ savings used up on a twain delivery of the tools they needed, a few chickens, a pregnant sow. They hammered together their farmhouse, planted their crops and their flowers, raised their pigs and their chickens. She got pregnant. They always hoped others might follow, that some kind of township would grow up here.’

‘But these characters showed up first.’

‘Joshua, they’d done everything right. They had a stockade, they had a cellar as protection against stepping raids. None of it was any use, not against enough force, not against men like these who will use that force without hesitation. They might have had a chance, a window, if they’d just gunned down these guys as soon as they showed up here. But good people always hesitate. Stupid, stupid.

‘I figured out some of what happened. They killed the husband immediately. When I found the place a few days later the woman was still alive. You can imagine. She was pregnant, Joshua. I tried a raid of my own, hoping to get her out. They killed her pretty quick, hoping to get rid of a witness, I guess. And then—’

‘And then you took your position up here. And, what? You’ve contained them ever since?’

‘It will take them a while to starve. I drove off the animals in the stockade, but there’s plenty of dry store in there, salted meat. The farmsteaders were careful to guard against a bad season. And there’s a water supply, a clay pipe from the river. I haven’t been able to cut that, there’s not enough cover for me to reach it.’

‘You’re hoping that the hunger will drive them out.’

‘No. I’m hoping they’ll starve to death, and save me the trouble.’ She said this levelly, glaring down at the house. ‘Or maybe they’ll kill each other. I hear arguments sometimes. Even a gunshot, once, inside the house. They’ve been calmer since the corn liquor ran out.’

Joshua studied her. ‘You won’t kill them yourself. Right? I mean you could. You could step in there and blaze away. You could torch the house. You’ll let them die this indirect way, but—’

‘I don’t kill, Joshua. I have killed.’

He knew this about her.

She said, unprompted, ‘Sometimes it’s necessary. But it’s not a policy.’

‘Why not?’

She didn’t take her eyes off the farmhouse. ‘Because I don’t trust myself. Because once I start, I may not stop. At times I feel rage …

‘People like this, Joshua, they’re the worst of mankind. Predators. Parasites, preying on the labour of others. Consuming decent lives for the sake of a few hours’ fun. How many times have this band pulled a stunt like this before? Because, believe me, it looks to me like they’re practised at it. And they foul up the Long Earth, the way humans were doing on their own planet long before. You want to know how I found this set-up? From the trolls.’

‘What trolls? … Oh.’ He realized that he hadn’t heard a note of a troll-call, sighted a single one of the otherwise ubiquitous humanoids, since arriving in this world.

‘I go where the trolls aren’t. That’s how I know how to find trouble, humans screwing up the place even more than usual.’ She blinked, shook her head. ‘When I was on Mars I had a long talk about this, with Frank Wood, the astronaut guy – remember him? He accused me of being the conscience of the Long Earth. Not what I want to be called, but it made me think.’

‘After you told him where to shove it, no doubt.’

‘When I find something like this – I can’t stand it, Joshua. I can’t stand by and let this happen.’

‘Yet you’re reluctant to kill. Not in cold blood.’ He thought he understood. ‘And so you’re stuck, aren’t you? You’re caught between conflicting impulses – to destroy these bandits on the one hand, not to kill on the other. Just as you’re contradictory about concealment; you hide yourself away, but leave clues so you can be found. You’re like a computer program stuck in a loop. Lobsang would understand.’

‘So go get him and have him spell me on the stake-out.’

He laughed. ‘I’ve a better idea. You’ve got me to help you now. Suppose I go fetch a twain. A military ship. The US Navy is still running patrols out of their base on Datum Hawaii. The Navy isn’t what it was, but they’d bring home perps like this for justice.’

She snorted.

‘Come on, Sally. This isn’t the Old West. You’ve got a live crime scene here. You’re a witness to much of it, forensics will establish the rest. That’s your way out. You stay here, keep them kettled. I’ll go find a Long Mississippi waystation and send a message. Then I’ll come straight back, and I’ll stay with you until this is resolved. OK?’

She said nothing.

He sighed, stretched out on the rock, sipped more water. ‘Look, take your time deciding. I’m not going anywhere today, I’m bushed anyhow.’

She looked down at him with the thinly veiled contempt that had always, somehow, characterized their relationship, across nearly three decades. She said, ‘Oh, make yourself at home. Well. What shall we talk about? I know. How about you tell me what Nelson Azikiwe found out about your father?’

He squinted up at her. ‘Of course you’d know about that.’

‘You know me, Joshua. I know everything. I was there, remember. I know you went cry-babying to him about Daddy on your fiftieth, after I left you with him. Midlife-crisis cliché or what?’

‘I just wanted to know who my father was. Is that so wrong? Turned out to be a good question. It took years for Nelson to nail it down, mostly because much of it is ancient history, pre-digital. He had to go hunting in person around archives on the Datum, those that survived.’ He glanced at her. ‘He found out a lot about my family. And yours, if you want to know.’ That got her attention. ‘Nelson wouldn’t even let me help pay his expenses and stuff. I think he enjoys the hunt. Solving puzzles …’

‘Just cut to the chase, Joshua. Did you meet dear old Dad, or not?’

He sat up and faced her. ‘Yes.’