The Long Utopia

38

NEW SPRINGFIELD COMMUNITY meetings were generally well attended. In a place where you had to make your own entertainment, people turned up, even if just in hope of seeing some fireworks. People would come drifting in from their stepwise lodges, the population slowly gathering. But this particular meeting was going to be fractious. Agnes knew it.

It was taking place outside the Irwins’ principal home, a sprawl of tepees and tents, just over the Soulsby Creek ford from Manning Hill. Everybody was here, sitting on the grass or on chairs hauled over. Oliver Irwin was standing there like he was chairing the meeting – well, in a way, so he was – with Marina sitting at his feet, and Lydia curled up against her, and Nikos with the elderly Rio a huge sleepy lump at his side. There were Angie and Nell Clayton, and the elegant, elderly Bells with the grandchildren they cared for, and the cheerful Bambers, who always looked like they’d just crawled out of the swamp they made their living from. Lobsang and Agnes and seven-year-old Ben sat quietly to one side on a log, keeping a low profile, and Agnes hoped fervently they would continue to do so.

All around them the blustery wind blew, and there was the usual stink of sulphur in the air, commonplace now, and somewhere sheep bleated miserably. Even the trees of the endless native forest were dying back. It wasn’t a happy day, it didn’t feel right. But then, Agnes reflected sadly, it hadn’t felt right here for months, if not years.

And over all their heads hovered the massive bulk of a twain: a military airship, the USS Brian Cowley.

The ship hung silent, its turbines idle, the great hull held in place by mooring ropes anchored to the ground. You couldn’t help but be intimidated by the huge ceramic armour plates of its underbelly with their weapons pods and spy-hole observation ports, or by the row of spruce military officers on the ground, who had come down from the ship to tell the folks of New Springfield that they were going to have to leave their home.

Agnes’s fears were fulfilled. From the beginning the meeting didn’t go well.

At Oliver’s invitation the ship’s captain, called Nathan Boss, a stiff-looking forty-something, stood up to make his pitch. ‘If you’ll just let me go through the logic of what we’re trying to do here—’

Somebody yelled, ‘Don’t go through anything. Just go away!’

Catcalls and laughter. That was fair enough, Agnes thought. These people had come out to this world precisely to get away from having smart men in uniforms tell them what to do.

‘We’re here to help you,’ Captain Boss tried now. ‘We came here with a team of scientists to study what’s going on here, in this world. And I brought with me a letter passed on from my own command chain – in fact there is a note for you from President Starling himself—’

‘That crook!’

‘I didn’t vote for him.’

‘The President says that the whole of the extended stepwise nation is with you at this difficult time. We only want to help you—’

‘Then shift that ship and quit blocking the light on my beets!’

More laughter.

Lobsang leaned over to Agnes. ‘Ironically, it’s obvious why they’re so crabby.’

‘Of course it is. Nobody’s getting any decent sleep.’

And they hadn’t for a long time. In the months since Lobsang’s airship jaunt to the south with Joshua, things had worsened dramatically. The length of a day was now down, incredibly, to just twenty hours. Not only that, according to Lobsang who was now measuring such things for himself, the spin-up of the world seemed to be accelerating further.

The nights went by too fast, and it was as if they were all permanently sleep-deprived, or jet-lagged. Of course you could just step away to the neighbouring worlds if you sought a normal day-night sequence – worlds where, bizarrely, sunrise and sunset were drifting out of synch with the home world. But, Agnes had seen it for herself, the more the day here shrank in length, the more people came back to their homes, night after night, as if defying reality, and their own weakness.

‘Stubbornness,’ Agnes said now. ‘Sheer, dogged, Yankee stubbornness. Ain’t no clattering sci-fi monster of a silver beetle going to drive me out of my home.’ For it seemed obvious to everybody that the strange creatures who shared this world must somehow be responsible for the other odd phenomena; you didn’t need to see Lobsang’s global system of metal viaducts to understand that. ‘And the more jet-lagged we get the more stubborn we become.’

‘True, perhaps. And this world is the one the founders chose – this is where they have the bulk of their iron tools, for one thing, even if they were drawn here to an ore seam the beetles’ actions may have created. Why should they give all that up? But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t listen to the advice of the Captain here and his crew. I mean, they did bring a properly equipped science team.’

‘But the Navy wouldn’t even be here if you hadn’t called them in, Lobsang.’

‘Somebody had to. I’m concerned, Agnes. Not just for us, not just for this town …’

Agnes glanced down at Ben, who was trying to work a handmade wooden yoyo. He wore a beetle-silver bangle on his wrist, as did most of the kids in this town. And he looked tired, snappy, irritable, just like the rest. She grabbed Lobsang’s hand, synthetic flesh on synthetic flesh, but it felt like a human contact, warm, strong. ‘Look, Lobsang, Oliver Irwin is the mayor of this dump, in all but name. You played your part; you brought in the Navy. Now let Oliver do the talking. Let these others sort it out. Don’t be Lobsang. Be George. Be ordinary. Be Ben’s dad. That’s why we came here, remember. It’s best if everybody figures this out for themselves – makes their own decision about their lives, rather than have you make it for them.’

He took a deep breath, ‘I’ll try, Agnes. I will try.’

Captain Boss, visibly frustrated by his reception, yielded the floor to one of his officers, a woman, late forties, slim, dark, crisp-looking.

‘My name’s Margarita Jha. Commander, USN. I’m the chief science officer on this vessel, the Cowley. As the Captain indicated we have on board a slew of specialists, civilian and military, come to study the strange phenomena that are afflicting your world here. Their team leader is Dr Ken Bowring of the US Geological Survey, whose speciality is seismology. We also have meteorologists, oceanographers, you name it. We even have an anthropologist with an attachment to the SETI Institute, that’s the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, come to study your, ah, unwelcome neighbours …’

Jha spoke well and fluently, and was listened to politely in return. She had an air of command her captain rather lacked, Agnes thought.

‘But,’ Jha said, ‘my own specialty is biology. That’s where I started. And as a biologist I have to tell you that, unfortunately for you, and your kids, your animals, your crops – indeed, for all the living things native to this particular stepwise Earth – now that the spin-up has reached a period of twenty hours or so, we’ve passed a fundamental limit.

‘You can’t adapt to a day of that length, or shorter, and nor can other living things. Experiments connected to the space programme have shown this; twenty or twenty-one hours is the minimum length of day we can withstand.’ She counted the points off on her fingers. ‘I’m talking about your chickens not laying properly. The critters you call furballs, who come hunting at dawn – you must have seen them staggering around as if they’re drunk or high, at all the wrong times of the day, and then the poor little beasts get snapped up by the big birds and other predators, as long as they are awake and functioning. The flowering plants can’t track the sun. Even the trees are suffering, in the long run. Your world has an intricate ecology, just as we find everywhere on the Long Earth, and a beautiful one – but that ecology is dependent on a twenty-four-hour daily cycle. I’m afraid we’re predicting a significant die-back, and soon. And that’s even before you start to talk about the effects of the volcanism that’s breaking out, the fires, the ash clouds suppressing the temperatures, the toxic gases you can smell – we all remember Yellowstone, don’t we? Ken Bowring will tell you about that.

‘Folks, it’s not just your lives that have been disrupted. We’re talking about a peculiar kind of extinction event on this world. And it’s your great misfortune that your township has been caught up in it.’

Captain Boss stepped forward. ‘Thank you, Commander. Admirably clear. Any questions?’

Oliver Irwin was still standing. He glanced around at his neighbours. ‘I’m sure I can speak for all of us. What are we going to do about this, Captain?’ He looked up at the military airship. ‘What are you going to do about it?’

‘Well,’ Boss said, ‘in the long term we intend to continue to study this phenomenon, or this group of related phenomena, as best we can. But in the short term we’re going to have to lift you off this rock, and take you, your children, and all your goods, somewhere safe. I know you have stepwise lodges, but I understand this particular world was the centre, for you. We’ll take you wherever you want to go.’ He added with a forced smile, ‘Look, we won’t leave anyone behind. Your pets – even your farm animals will be saved. The twain is a big ship.’

Oliver stiffened, and the townsfolk muttered.

Agnes groaned. ‘That young man just does not get it.’

Oliver Irwin said, ‘Sir – Captain Boss – let me tell you this. This isn’t a “rock”. Or a “centre”. This is our home. And when I ask you what you’re going to do about it, I don’t want to hear you say we need to run and hide.’ A rumble of approval from his neighbours. ‘We’re not quitters. We’re Americans. We’re pioneers. That’s why we’re here. That’s why we’re going to stay here. And if you can’t help us,’ to yells of approval, ‘then please do what Al Todd asked you to do, and get that big ship of yours out of the light of his beets.’

‘Darn right!’

‘Well said, Oliver.’

Boss looked helplessly at Jha.

The science officer stepped forward again. ‘We do sympathize, sir. Really. The US Navy isn’t fond of quitting either. But we don’t even know what we’re dealing with here—’

‘It’s those darn silver beetles,’ said Angie Clayton. ‘That’s obvious enough.’

Boss said, ‘But we hardly know anything about them. You know that we’ve taken the Cowley on a tour. We spanned much of the continent, this footprint of North America. The creatures you call the beetles are building – something. Like immense road systems. What we don’t know is why they’re doing all this. What the purpose of their network is. And unless we can figure out at least that much—’

Lobsang sighed.

Agnes plucked his sleeve. ‘Lobsang. No.’

‘—then we can’t even predict what comes next—’

‘I must speak up,’ Lobsang murmured.

‘George wouldn’t. Sit still.’

‘—we don’t have any kind of handle on any of this—’

‘But I do,’ Lobsang announced. He rose to his feet, grave.

Agnes covered her face with her hands. Oliver stared. Ben looked bewildered.

Captain Boss glanced over. ‘I’m sorry, Mr – Abrahams, was it?’

‘George Abrahams. I do know what the beetles are constructing. It’s a Dyson motor.’

‘A what?’

‘Maybe you’d better let me speak to your science people.’ And Lobsang walked past Oliver Irwin, towards the crew, as if taking over. Just as Agnes had dreaded.

Al Todd got to his feet and pointed. ‘Yeah, you do that, Abrahams, you big shot! I always thought there was something not right about you. All our troubles started the day you showed up here. Maybe you should hitch a ride on this Navy tub right back out of here!’

The meeting started to break up, the mood frustrated and angry.

Ben stared up at Agnes, wide-eyed. ‘Agnes? Does Mr Todd mean it?’

‘No, Ben. He’s just upset, is all. He doesn’t mean anything. Now you come with me while George is busy, those chickens won’t feed themselves …’