The Long War

40

IN THE WEEKS since they’d left behind the Low Chinas, the airships Zheng He and Liu Yang had forged steadily East, their stepping pace gradually increasing, though, Roberta learned, still far short of their design maximum. Worlds washed below the twains’ bows in great bands, cold or temperate, moist or arid, this Eastern stepwise geography roughly matching the mapping made by American explorers to the West, punctuated by Jokers of various kinds, like random flashbulbs.

They made periodic stops, and members of the crew went down to the surface, suitably protected, to observe, measure, retrieve samples of the geology, flora, fauna, even exotic atmospheric traces. They followed the Long Earth exploration strategy established by Joshua Valienté a decade earlier, with surface pioneers supervised by controllers on airships above. Roberta, watching from above, made methodical notes.

They passed the milestone of two million steps from the Datum.

And now they approached a particular world where, it was planned, Roberta herself was to descend to the surface, with Lieutenant Wu Yue-Sai.

The Chinese had reached this world before, and it had been studied at least to some extent. This first descent was intended as a learning experience for Roberta, she was told, and she accepted that. She had already spent a lot of time in a kind of training chamber with Lieutenant Wu Yue-Sai, who showed her how to don her jumpsuit, and use her individual Stepper box, and the small monitor sets they would wear on their shoulders: how the Captain would speak to them through unobtrusive earpieces, how to use the med packs and emergency rations and silvery blankets in the event they got stranded – how to use the ceramic-and-bronze handguns they were issued. Roberta took each piece of equipment, each procedure, asked relevant questions, and practised over and over.

Yue-Sai tried to lighten up the process. She cracked jokes in her imperfect English, and tried to invent games and contests to help the practice go by. Roberta would simply wait until these moments had passed, and then would carry on with her own patient exercises.

With time she felt Yue-Sai give up on her, in a sense, and withdraw. Roberta had observed this many times before. It was not that Roberta Golding did not understand people; rather, she understood them too well. Yue-Sai’s attempts at fun had been transparent exercises in motivation, which Roberta saw through immediately. Besides, with her own sense of inner purpose she needed no external motivation. Yet that was not enough of a response for Wu Yue-Sai, and Roberta saw that too.

Aged fifteen, Roberta was a person who saw things. That is, she saw them more clearly than those around her. She certainly saw her own limitations, for instance now, as she prepared to face a remote stepwise world for the first time. She could be killed by her own ignorance, or by sheer mischance, in the blink of an eye. She saw this, and accepted it with a calm that seemed to chill others around her. But what was the purpose of self-delusion?

The career towards which she was heading was entirely a matter of stripping away delusion, she sometimes thought. What was the nature of the universe into which she had been born? Why did it exist at all? If it had a purpose, what was it? These seemed to her the only questions worth exploring. And the only valid technique evolved by humans for exploring such questions was the scientific method, a robust and self-correcting search for the truth. Yet it had become obvious to her since about the age of twelve that science as it had progressed so far – physics, chemistry, biology, all the rest – had only inched towards grappling with the true questions, the fundamentals. Those questions had only been addressed by theologians and philosophers, it seemed to her. Unfortunately, their answers were a mush of doubt, self-delusion and flummery that had probably done more harm than good. And yet that was all there was.

For now she had devoted herself, nominally at least, to theology and philosophy, as well as to explorations of the natural sciences, such as on this expedition. She had even received grants to help support this mission to the stepwise East from the Vatican, the Mormons, from Muslim orders, and various philosophical foundations. Dealing with such bodies, she had quickly learned when not to share her view that organized religion was a kind of mass delusion.

She had to work with what was available. She sometimes imagined she was like the scholars of the European Middle Ages who had worked their way through the ranks of the Church because there was no other organized scholarship around. Or, perhaps, as if she had been dropped even further into the past – as if she were trying to use stone blades and lumps of ochre to build a radio telescope. Still, she persevered, for there was no choice.

Despite her unsatisfactory education, Roberta Golding saw the world clearly. And she saw people clearly, more clearly than they could see themselves. Humanity, she once said in an answer in a philosophy exam taken when she was eleven years old, was nothing but the thin residue left when you subtracted the baffled chimp. Responses like that made her a promising scholar, and in Happy Landings, where there were many bright children like her, she had never had any trouble getting picked for the netball team. But here her lack of response, her habit of speaking in brief lectures, her corrections of simple errors, didn’t make the crew warm to her. Not even the forgiving Yue-Sai.

The airships settled over a suitable location, and in a methodical fashion sent up sounding-rockets and weather balloons to gain a broader picture of this world. Then Yue-Sai took Roberta down to the elevator deck, they checked over their equipment one last time, and descended to the surface of Earth East 2,201,749.

They were standing at the fringe of a forest, close to a sprawling river estuary. From the cover of the trees Roberta was able to look out over the open plain of the estuary and the wetlands that fringed it, to a sharp ocean horizon. She was distracted by huge flying creatures that swept low over the ocean water, a flock of them, each with filmy wings outspread – the largest flyers Roberta had ever seen. Something like pterosaurs? Something like bats? Something evolved from a different root altogether? Silhouetted in the sparkling light off the sea they swooped lower, graceful necks dipping, and huge fish, or fish-like creatures, were plucked from the water and gulped down into long beaks.

This was a warm, watery world, a world of high sea levels, of shallow oceans that washed far into the hearts of the continents. A world that could support such fantastic visions. And a world, Roberta understood from her studies, with dangers of its own, unknown on drier Earths like the Datum: not least exotic climatic catastrophes, such as the hypercane already brewing out on the local copy of the Pacific Ocean . . .

Shadows shifted across the forest.

Yue-Sai waved her hand. Roberta made sure the speaker feed from the monitor on her shoulder was off, and stood stock still and silent in the cover of the trees.

Immense forms moved through the forest, heading for the estuary and the fresh water. Roberta glimpsed compact, muscular bodies, on all fours but with massively powerful hind legs – they were something like kangaroos, she thought, but beefed-up – and with their ears flaring into tremendous coloured crests, stiffened with cartilage. There were several of these animals, the adults taller at the shoulder than Roberta, calves running alongside, and one infant being carried in a pouch at its mother’s belly.

Silent as a cat, Yue-Sai slid through the forest, tracking the herd.

Roberta followed as best she could. She wasn’t as quiet as Yue-Sai, but the whirring lenses of the shoulder monitor pack were noisier than her footsteps, and she took some pride in that.

They came to the edge of the forest, by a braid of fresh water. Across the estuary’s damp plain huge flocks of birds, or bird-like creatures, strutted, squabbled and fed. With marsh flowers in abundance it was a mass of colour, under a deep blue sky. Roberta thought she saw the characteristic ridged backs of crocodilians sliding through the deeper water.

And, by the water’s edge, the creatures of the forest came to drink.

The most obvious, the most spectacular, were those big bulky roos with their colourful sail-like ear-crests. The creatures were so huge and heavy, they moved so slowly and patiently, they looked as if they were carved from living rock. And they were so massive that those great hind legs must surely be evolved for kicking, not for jumping like a Datum kangaroo. But their ear-crests were oddly fragile-looking, almost translucent in the light of the sun, evidently just skin and tissue stretched over frames of cartilage. The crests were alight with brightly coloured patterns that shifted and dissolved as Roberta watched.

Yue-Sai murmured, ‘Are you getting this, Captain Chen, Mr. Montecute?’

‘Yes, Lieutenant,’ replied the Captain in their ears. ‘Try to keep these crests in view. Why so complex a display? I’ll have our scholars try passing them through pattern analyser suites . . .’

Yue-Sai touched Roberta’s shoulder and pointed again, further along the river bank.

More beasts drinking. These were like big flightless featherless birds, Roberta thought, walking almost daintily, balanced on two big back limbs but with two small grasping arms in front. Their heads were long, almost snake-like, but with wide duck-like beaks. When they dipped to the water, sucking noisily, long muscular tails waved behind them.

Roberta asked, ‘Birds, or dinosaurs?’

Yue-Sai shrugged. ‘They’re all the same big family. Don’t expect anything, Roberta. Don’t be surprised by anything . . .’

Roberta understood the principle. The histories of the parallel worlds of the Long Earth had been shaped by similar processes, but differed in the detail. You had to imagine you were travelling across a kind of probability tree, where you found worlds on which some long-past event had turned out differently, thus reshaping life’s subsequent history and providing novel raw material for natural selection to mold . . .

‘For example,’ Yue-Sai said, ‘those duckbills look bird-like, or dinosaurid. But those big crested beasts are mammals. Some kind of marsupial, it seems. And there’s something you’d never have seen back in the Cretaceous.’ She pointed.

Elves.

Stepping humanoids. There was a pack of them, maybe twenty, including children and nursing infants. They had found a spot away from the big herbivores, and far enough back from the deep water to be safe from the crocodiles and any other threats. They were scooping up water with their hands, and digging into the mud for roots and worms and molluscs. A few of the younger males were bickering; with irritable pant-hoots they flickered between the worlds, so that to watch them was like trying to follow a badly edited movie.

‘There are other sorts here too,’ Yue-Sai said softly. ‘I spotted them in the deeper forest—’

The conversation was cut short by a sound of thunder.

Yue-Sai and Roberta shrank back into deeper cover. Some of the duckbills kept drinking, but the big adults looked up suspiciously. The crest-roos dipped their great heads and backed into a rough circle.

There was a crash, the splintering of wood, a groan as a young tree was felled, and the forest parted like a flimsy stage set as a tremendous animal burst into the open. Its body must have been fifteen yards long, balanced exquisitely on two striding legs. Its arms were small, comparatively, but longer and more muscular than Roberta’s own legs, and the right arm had some kind of creeper wrapped around it. Its skin was covered with feathers, brilliantly coloured, like the costume of an Aztec priest. The head was a gaping nightmare of teeth and blood, and when it opened its mouth to roar Roberta imagined she could smell raw meat.

It strode forward, huge, purposeful. It seemed more mechanical than animal, a killer robot, an automaton, and yet it breathed and pawed the earth. The herbivores were already fleeing, following the water’s edge, galloping and bellowing.

But the elves did not run, not immediately. They scattered into a loose arc, facing the creature, the adults to the fore with stone blades in their hands, the young behind them, but even the young were snarling defiance. It was like another movie scene, Roberta thought. Stone-tool-wielding man-apes against the dinosaur.

Yue-Sai was staring, as if unwilling to miss a second of the spectacle. ‘A dinosaur, all right. Or its sixty-five-million-years-later descendant. Tyrannosaur-like, or something else evolved to fit the same niche.’

‘Of course China had its own magnificent dinosaur lineages,’ Captain Chen reminded them sternly. ‘There are other comparisons to be used, Lieutenant.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Yue-Sai said absently. ‘It could even be a flightless bird. If it is like a tyrannosaur, the odds are this is a female. They had ranges a few miles across; the males were sparser, one every few tens of miles. But what’s that on its arm? . . .’

The predator’s roars and the humanoids’ responding snarls and gestures were reaching a climax. Abruptly the predator charged, right into the middle of the elf group.

The young with their parents scattered. The adult elves started flickering in and out of existence, faster than the predator could catch them, though she ducked her head, snapped her huge teeth, and swept empty space with her arms and tail. One elf materialized in mid-jump right beside the predator’s head, and took a swipe at her right eye with his blade before stepping away again, without ever touching the ground. The precision was remarkable, and the predator’s eye was saved only by a chance duck of the head.

Bloodied, enraged, the predator stood at the centre of the band of humanoids, unable to land a killing blow on any of them. She roared again, sweeping her huge tail, snapping her teeth.

But the humanoids had had enough. They stepped away now, mothers carrying their children, as far as Roberta could see leaving nobody behind.

‘You have to hand it to those little guys,’ Jacques said in their ears. ‘They stood up to their Grendel.’

Yue-Sai shrugged. ‘Eventually the beast will learn not to tangle with humanoids, especially steppers. And anyhow they were never her main target. Look.’

Now the predator was heading down the beach after the big crest-roos. They had a head start; the roos, alarmed, tons of flesh and bone on the move, were like a retreating tank division. But one mother hung back to shepherd her calf.

‘They’ve got too much of a start,’ Jacques said.

‘Are you sure?’ Captain Chen murmured. ‘Look at what she is doing with her arm.’

Roberta could see that the predator was using one agile hand to unwrap the vine from her arm. The vine was maybe six feet long, and was weighted at either end by something like a coconut. And now, even as she ran, her legs pounding the beach and her spine and tail almost horizontal, the predator whirled the vine and released it. It flew across the intervening space and wrapped itself around the big back legs of the lagging mother crest-roo. The vine snapped immediately, but it was enough for the mother to be brought crashing to the ground. Her calf slowed beside her, lowing mournfully, clearly afraid.

And it had a right to be, for the predator was on the mother immediately. It ran by and ducked its head to rip a huge chunk out of the crest-roo’s rear right leg, then almost casually swiped its head against one magnificent flaring ear, crushing the cartilage so the crest folded like a fallen kite. The mother bellowed in pain.

But she was able to stand, though blood dripped from the gaping wound. She even nudged her infant to move on, as they shambled up the beach after the rest of the herd, which had already cut into the forest.

The predator stood and watched them go, by the water’s edge, breathing hard. The crest-roo’s blood stained her mouth. Then she ducked to the water, took a mighty drink, shook her head, and trotted after the mother and calf. It was a pursuit that could have only one outcome.

‘That predator used a bolas,’ said Roberta.

Yue-Sai said, ‘Yes . . . It looked as though it could have been a natural object. A vine-like growth with fruit. But there was nothing “natural” in the way she used it.’ Yue-Sai looked delighted, in her quiet way, to have made this staggering discovery. ‘I told you, Roberta. We’re far away from home now. Have no preconceptions.’

‘I’ll second that,’ Captain Chen said. ‘And I should tell you that our signal-processing experts here inform me that there was data content in the patterns that flared across the crests of those roo-like beasts. They were talking, through the visual means of their crests! Sentience! Our onboard scholars must make all this clear when they joint-author their paper: “A mammal–reptile assemblage of tool-making intelligences beyond Earth East two million”. How marvellous! What a great discovery for China!’

They began to walk back to the pick-up point.

Chen, evidently enthused, went on, ‘We Chinese, you know, Roberta, have a utopian legend of our own. There is a story that dates back to the fifth century after your Christ, of how a fisherman found his way through a narrow cave to the Land of Peach Blossom, where descendants of soldiers lost from the age of the Qin dynasty lived in a land sheltered by mountains, in peace with each other, in peace with nature. But when the fisherman tried to reach it a second time, he could not find the way. So it is with all utopias, whose legends proliferate around the world. Even in North America, where the natives’ dream of the Happy Hunting Ground was displaced by the European settlers’ fables of the Big Rock Candy Mountain. Do you think if we travel far enough we will find such a land, Roberta? Are such legends a relic of some early perception of the Long Earth itself?’

‘There is no sensible content in this discussion,’ Roberta murmured in reply. ‘And as to the papers you’re planning – none of this matters.’

Yue-Sai turned to her.

‘How’s that?’ Jacques asked.

Roberta gestured at the landscape around her. ‘The coming hypercane will destroy all this. I’ve been studying the climatic theory of these worlds, with their high sea levels. They are prone to tremendous hurricanes, extracting heat from the shallow oceans. Storms that can span continents, with thousand-miles-per-hour winds; water vapour is thrown up into the stratosphere, and the ozone layer is wrecked . . . I’ve also been studying the records of the weather balloons you launched from the twains. There’s such a storm forming right now. Ask your meteorologists. It’s unmistakable. It will take a few more weeks to reach full strength, but when it does this complicated little community will be right in its path. It’s been an interesting experiment, a stepwise mixing of different species. But it will soon be terminated.’

There was silence.

‘“Terminated”,’ said Captain Chen at last.

Roberta was used to this kind of reaction to her choice of words, and found it irritating. As if a child were covering its ears to avoid hearing bad news. ‘All life is terminated, ultimately. I’m only telling the truth. It’s trivially obvious.’

Again, nobody spoke.

Yue-Sai looked away. ‘Captain, I think it’s time we returned.’

‘Agreed.’