The Long Earth

‘So what does that make Joshua?’ she snapped back. ‘The chosen one?’

The two of them looked at Joshua.

‘In a way,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Or at least, she seemed to recognize me. If she hadn’t actually been expecting me.’

Sally scowled, evidently jealous. ‘Why you?’

Lobsang said gently, ‘Perhaps it is because of the circumstances of our hero’s miraculous birth, Sally. Your first instants of life, Joshua, when you were entirely alone on another world. Your cries echoed, evidently, across the Long Earth. Or your loneliness, perhaps. And you and First Person Singular, similarly lonely, make up a kind of dipole.’

This bewildered Joshua. Not for the first time he wished Sister Agnes were here so he could talk it over with her. ‘Is this why you brought me here, Lobsang? I keep finding you anticipated all we’ve experienced… Did you know this would happen?’

‘I knew you were special, Joshua. Unique. Yes, I thought that facet of you would be — useful. But I didn’t know quite how, I admit that.’

Sally stared at Joshua, stone-faced. ‘How does it feel to be so manipulated, Joshua?’

Joshua looked away, hot with anger, at Lobsang, at the universe for singling him out.

Lobsang said now, ‘Evidently we need to learn more about First Person Singular.’

Sally said, ‘True enough. And we need to find a way to stop her panicking the trolls. Not to mention eating the Datum Earth.’

‘Tomorrow we will go and see her again. I suggest we have a decent night’s rest, and prepare for another encounter with the ineffable in the morning. But this time, with Joshua having made initial contact, I will lead.’

‘Huh! The ineffable meets the intolerable! Oh, I’m going to bed.’ Sally stormed off the deck.

‘She’s got a short fuse,’ Joshua said.

‘But you understand why she is angry, Joshua,’ Lobsang said mildly. ‘You were chosen. She was not. She’ll probably never forgive you.’

It was a strange night for Joshua. He kept waking, convinced that someone had spoken his name. Somebody desperately lonely, but he didn’t know how he knew that. Then he would get a bit more sleep, and the cycle would start all over again. It didn’t stop until the morning.

In silence they gathered in the observation deck once more. Sally was bleary-eyed too, and Lobsang, in his soberly dressed and hastily repaired ambulant, was unusually quiet. Joshua wondered how their nights had been.

And the first surprise was that First Person Singular was no longer there. She could be seen about half a mile out to sea, moving so slowly there was hardly even a wake. First Person Singular was clearly not one for hurrying, but on the other hand you had to remind yourself that what was doing the not hurrying was twice the size of Manhattan Island.

There was no discussion about whether to follow her. They all took it as a given that they would have to. But the Mark Twain, still capable of stepping from world to world, no longer had the means to move across this world.

Joshua said, ‘Lobsang, don’t you have another marine unit? I know what you are like when it comes to backups. There’s hardly any wind, and we’ve got more ropes than a circus tent. Our big friend over there is hardly racing. Maybe your marine unit could tow us?’

It did work, but only just. The Mark Twain, aloft, had a great deal of drag to overcome. Sally remarked that it was like the Titanic being towed by a motorboat engine — but an engine devised by Lobsang and built by the Black Corporation, which was why the solution worked at all.

Generally the wheelhouse was Lobsang’s private domain. But today it was open house, and the three of them watched the barely visible wake of First Person Singular. Most of the traveller was underwater now. ‘Only heaven knows what her propulsion system is,’ Lobsang said. ‘And while it’s about it, heaven might like to hazard a guess as to why the seas around her are suddenly teeming with fish.’

It was true, Joshua saw. The water was bright with fins; there were even dolphins somersaulting through the air. First Person Singular was travelling with an honour guard. Joshua was used to seeing rivers vibrantly alive across the worlds; in the absence of humanity the seas everywhere seemed to be as crowded as the old Grand Banks off Newfoundland, where, it was said, a man could once have walked on the water, so heavy was it with cod. People who’d never left Datum Earth didn’t know what they were missing. But probably even the Grand Banks at their zenith couldn’t have been as alive with fish as the waters behind the traveller.

‘Evidently,’ Sally said, ‘she has a way of attracting lesser creatures. Maybe it’s how she lures them close enough to absorb them.’

Lobsang was in an expansive mood. ‘Magnificent, isn’t it? Do you see those dolphins? Better than a Busby Berkeley routine!’

Sally asked, ‘Who on earth is Busby Berkeley?’

Even Joshua knew the answer to that one.

Sally said, ‘If you two are going to start talking old movies again—’

Lobsang cleared his throat. ‘Did anyone experience anything unusual last night?’

Joshua and Sally shared a glance.

Sally said, ‘You raised it, Lobsang. What are you talking about?’

‘In my case there was an attempt at what I experienced as hacking. Which is quite a challenge. For the guys in the Black Corporation, trying to hack me was a sport, and most certainly kept me on my toes. Nevertheless, something made a spirited attempt last night. I believe, however, that this was done in a beneficent way. Nothing has been taken, nothing was changed, but I believe that some memory stores have been accessed, and copied.’

Sally asked, ‘Such as?’

‘Information about the trolls. About stepping. It backs up the story you were given, Joshua. But this is a very partial hypothesis. For me it is like trying to recover a memory.’

Sally said, ‘Was it a vision, or a waking dream?’ They stared at her, and she blushed, and snapped defiantly, ‘What? So I know Keats? Lots of people know Keats, my grandfather often recited Keats. Although he always used to spoil it by saying afterwards that he loved Keats but had never actually seen a keat.’

‘I know Keats,’ Joshua said reassuringly. ‘And so does Sister Georgina. You’ll have to meet her. I had a waking dream too. I sensed loneliness again.’

Sally admitted, ‘Me too. But in my case it was something wonderful. A kind of welcome.’

Lobsang asked, ‘Welcoming enough to make you want to jump into the water and lose your identity? We’re closing, by the way. I think she is waiting for us to catch her up, and I very much want to catch up with her.’

‘Excuse me,’ said Sally, ‘I have no intention of boarding that floating thing and becoming another souvenir in some internal zoo.’

‘Happily, Sally, I intend to be the only one setting foot on First Person Singular. Or at least this ambulant unit will be. I want to communicate with her, much more fully, before she continues her stepping journey, and persuade her to stop.’

Joshua thought that over. ‘And if she won’t turn back… Can she be stopped?’

Lobsang snapped, ‘What are you suggesting, Joshua? How would you fight her? Short of destroying each world she can inhabit — working your way back up the line with nuclear bombers—’ He sounded contemptuous. ‘You think so small, both of you. All you can perceive is threat. Maybe it’s something to do with your own biological fragility. Listen to me. She wants to learn from us. But there’s so much we can learn from her. What does she know, she who can surely perceive on scales of space and time utterly beyond the human?’ His artificial voice was flat, yet oddly full of wonder. ‘Have you heard of the participatory universe, Joshua?’

‘Participatory bullshit.’