The Long War

60

THEY STAYED ABOARD Second Person Singular for some days.

It was a pleasurable enough interval, but Nelson did find it hard to relax into a lotus-eating lifestyle – maybe Lobsang was right that he had the soul of a Puritan – and the innocence of the beast’s human passengers brought out something of the teacher, or the shepherd, in him.

The islanders were short on raw materials; they had a few handfuls of flint shards, bits of obsidian, metals, evidently garnered from the pockets of shipwrecked ancestors. They treated these as toys, tokens, ornaments. So, with scraps from the twain, Nelson taught them a certain amount of Metalwork 101. How to draw wire, among other things, allowing them to augment their meagre stock of treasured fish-hooks. He even left them instructions in the basics of crystal-set radios. Maybe some day they could use that technology to reconnect with the rest of mankind, whatever fraction of it passed through this world.

The islanders smiled and nodded, applauded when he assembled some intricate component, and used his bits of wire to adorn their hair.

Nelson spent some time too strolling in what he called the jungle, the scrap of forest on the carapace. It flourished pretty well, despite periodic dunkings in the sea, but was an eclectic mix of species that reminded him more of a botanic garden collection than anything natural: from ferns to eucalyptus, and many species Nelson failed to recognize. As for the animals, Lobsang was right about there being a rough selection operating for size, in terms of body mass. The elephant types seemed to be a kind of mammoth, with curling tusks and ragged orange-brown fur. But they were dwarfed, no taller than a pony in St. John on the Water, and very shy.

Another question that occurred to Nelson was how old this beast was. How long had it been sailing these stepwise seas? If he dug around in the forest, or in the dark spaces within its carapace, would he find the bones of antique beasts – the skeleton of a stegosaur?

Even Lobsang had no answer to such questions.

It was in the jungle, on the fourth day, with Nelson deep in thought, that Cassie trapped him. She was the woman who habitually wore a red flower in her hair, who had asked for tobacco when he’d landed.

He knew by now what she wanted. He tried to avoid eye contact with her, but, with the susurration of the sea all around them, he was cornered in her stare.

‘Mister Lobsang say you are tight and sad and needing loving . . .’

The statement hung there, and Nelson could practically hear two value systems colliding in his head with a scream of stripped cogs. All right, he was a Puritan type; any male child brought up by Nelson’s mother on the one hand and her version of God on the other would have turned out that way. He had had relationships, including a long-term girlfriend with whom he’d had an ‘understanding’, a very old-fashioned term, but . . .

But then there were the islanders. He’d seen evidence of long-term relationships, like marriages, but among the young especially things were pretty relaxed. After all, everybody here knew everybody else – it was just like St. John on the Water in that regard – and there was a kind of protective communal tolerance.

Besides, as Lobsang had told him, it was good for the islanders to have their gene pool replenished by passing travellers. Nelson almost had a duty to accept this invitation.

‘Only a little wiggle, Mister Nelson!’ She smiled, and laughed, and walked up to him.

And suddenly he was immersed in the moment, the analytical part of his mind seemed to dissolve and his forty-eight years fell away. The world was alive with light and colour, the blue and the green, he could smell the sea and the vegetation and the animals of this place, he could smell the seawater-salt on the flesh of this woman as she approached him, and when she touched his lips with a fingertip he could taste her . . .

Nobody saw them. Well, save for Lobsang, probably.

Afterwards he stayed away from the jungle, and was never alone with Cassie, ever again.

On the fifth day, for a shower and a change of clothes, they returned to the twain, which shadowed the wake of Second Person Singular.

They sat together in the gondola, in formal western clothing that now felt stiff and confining. The living island drifted beneath them, complex, beautiful, fecund. It might almost have been designed to be viewed from the air.

‘We haven’t yet spoken of why you summoned me to your company in the first place, Lobsang.’

‘Summoned?’

‘You said we’d play no more games – that breadcrumb trail I followed was effectively a summons. Now you show me this Traverser . . .’

‘An example of the remarkable fecundity, or inventiveness, of life in the Long Earth.’

‘Why? Why bring me here, why show me this?’

‘Because I believe you have a mind of a quality to appreciate a theory I have been nurturing since the opening up of the Long Earth.’

‘A theory about what?’

‘About the universe – mankind – the purpose of the Long Earth . . . This is all very tentative, yet crucially important. Would you like to hear it?’

‘Is it conceivable that I won’t? Or that I could stop you?’

‘Reverend Azikiwe, I am impervious to sarcasm. Call it a feature of my self-programming . . .

‘Consider this. The Long Earth will save mankind. Now that we’re spread across the stepwise worlds, even the destruction of a whole planet, the creation of a new Gap, would not destroy us all. And indeed the Long Earth opened up just in time, some would argue. Otherwise we might have finished ourselves off. Soon we would surely have been scrabbling like chimpanzees in the ruins of our civilization, fighting over the last of the resources. Instead, we undeserving apes suddenly have the key to multiple worlds, and we are gobbling them up as fast as we can.’

‘Not all of us. Your islanders on the Traverser are pretty relaxed, and don’t seem to be doing anybody any harm. And out in the Long Earth there seem to be plenty of drifters, “combers” they call them, who don’t trouble anybody.’

‘But look at this current situation with the trolls – pleasant, helpful and trusting creatures – of course we must dominate them, enslave them, kill them. Look at the tension over Valhalla and its quiet rebellion. I can’t leave you to get on with your life, even a million steps away. I must tax you, control you!’

Nelson said carefully, ‘Well, Lobsang, do you intend to do something about this? Of all the entities I know of in the human worlds, surely you alone have the power—’

Lobsang snapped, ‘Indeed. In fact you may have some difficulty in understanding what you might call the range of my talents. My soul is the soul of a man, but I’m hugely enhanced beyond that, and distributed – not to put too fine a point on it, practically ubiquitous. By now one of my iterations should be heading out into the comets on the edge of the solar system. Nelson, I’m in with the Oort cloud!’

‘Oh, good grief.’

‘It made Agnes laugh . . . Maybe you had to be there. Look, Nelson, I am everywhere. But I’m not God, and I don’t interfere. I don’t believe in your God; I rather suspect that you don’t either. But I also suspect you need to feel that there is some plan in the universe – something that makes sense, and gives meaning.’

‘What kind of plan?’

‘I may be no god but perhaps I have a god-like perspective. The Long Earth has made mankind immune to terrestrial catastrophes. But it has not made mankind immune to time. I consider long timescales, Nelson. I consider future ages, when our sun – all the suns of the Long Earth – have died, and beyond that the dark energy expansion, the Big Rip when the very atom will be torn apart, creating a new Ginnungagap . . .’

‘Ah. The primeval void before creation. There was not sand nor sea nor cool waves / Earth did not exist, nor heaven above—’

‘Ginnungagap existed, but no grass at all . . .’ Lobsang nodded. ‘Völuspá: well remembered.’

‘Norse mythology and Tibetan metaphysics – a heady brew!’

Lobsang ignored that. ‘Humanity must progress. This is the logic of our finite cosmos; ultimately we must rise up to meet its challenges if we are not to expire with it. You can see that. But, despite the Long Earth, we aren’t progressing; in this comfortable cradle we’re just becoming more numerous. Mainly because we have no real idea what to do with all this room. Maybe others will come who will know what to do.’

‘“Others”?’

‘Others. Consider. We call ourselves the wise ones, but what would a true Homo sapiens be like? What would it do? Surely it would first of all treasure its world, or worlds. It would look to the skies for other sapient life forms. And it would look to the universe as a whole, and consider its cultivation.’

Nelson thought that over. ‘So you believe that the logic of the universe is that we must evolve beyond our present state, in order to be capable of such great programmes. Seriously? Do you really believe a brave new species can be expected sometime soon?’

‘Well, isn’t it at least possible? At least logical? Nelson, there is much to learn – much to discover, much to do. We’ve discussed all this. You have left your parish. You are looking for a new direction, a new focus. I know you are seeking the same answers as me. What better than to work with me? I do need support, Nelson. I can see the whole world turning. But I can’t look into a human soul.

‘How do you feel? Have you seen enough here?’

Nelson smiled. ‘Let’s wait a little while longer. You should always leave enough time to say goodbye.’