The Long Cosmos (18 page)

‘Ah! I see. Like a secret identity. The wandering minstrel, perhaps.'

Chet Wilson sucked his teeth and said, ‘Let me give it some thought.'

After an interval Wilson said, ‘Johnny Shakespeare.'

‘But my name's not John. I'm afraid I don't see—'

‘Like Johnny Appleseed. With him, apples. With you—'

‘Shakespeare! Yes! Wilson, you're a genius. One world at a time, like Appleseed wandering across the Old West, I will plant the seed of Shakespeare to flourish on each new Earth. And thus will the great tree of our civilization grow, as far as man has travelled – or at least, as far as I myself can step. I must announce this straight away. And I will order a box of books from a Datum publisher and make a start—'

‘Gonna need a big box.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Well now, there's said to be people scattered over the worlds out to Earth West 1,000,000 and beyond. If just one tenth of one per cent of those worlds is settled, you're gonna need a thousand books. How far you reckon you could carry a thousand books?'

‘Well . . .' Mr Driscoll had never been a particularly practical man. Now he saw his scheme collapsing before it had started. He sat down, helpless. ‘What am I to do, Wilson?'

Chet Wilson sucked his teeth and said, ‘Let me give it some thought.'

The next day Wilson called Mr Driscoll back to his workshop.

‘Now this here is only a prototype. It's gonna need some tinkering. But I reckon it'll do the job . . .'

The thing on Wilson's workbench struck Mr Driscoll at first as a kind of grotesque crab. It was a book, a complete edition of Shakespeare, but it stood on a set of spindly legs, just a few inches off the bench, and Mr Driscoll glimpsed miniature manipulators of some kind dangling from the underside.

‘Wilson – what is this?'

‘You ever heard of
matter printers
, Driscoll?'

Wilson's solution to Mr Driscoll's dilemma was simple in principle and, given a reasonably mature matter-printer industry, straightforward in practice.
This
was a complete edition of Shakespeare that was capable of reproducing itself.

‘So you come to some new world. You set this little guy down on the floor of the forest, and let him go to work, while you light up your pipe and sit back.'

‘Well, I don't smoke, Wilson.'

‘Smoking's optional. Here's the thing.' Wilson mimed scuttling legs with his fingers. ‘He rushes over to some tree – a fallen trunk will do, even a sapling. And he starts to chew up the wood into pulp to make paper, and then he finds gall and such to make ink. And then, page by page—'

Mr Driscoll saw it. ‘Out pops Shakespeare.'

‘The same. It'll take him a day or so to spit out his copy.'

Wilson struck Mr Driscoll as the kind of man who, working in a high school, had probably had to train himself to use phrases like ‘spit out', as opposed to less salubrious alternatives.

‘All nicely bound and everything. There's a master copy on his back here, he has a crawling laser reader to scan the text, to check there's no error creeping in.'

‘And there I am, a day later, with a brand-new Shakespeare to hand over to a hungry young civilization. Marvellous, Wilson. Marvellous!'

Wilson droned on some more, about how the printer was capable of limited self-repair and maintenance, again using components derived from wood. ‘With a little nanotech you can make almost anything from carbon. Even diamond to fix the laser scanner, or build itself a new one.' And he went on about how as long as the printer didn't drift from its programming, there would be no problem . . .

Mr Driscoll was no longer listening. He was already dreaming of the speech he would make to announce his new venture to the world.

As soon as he had assembled his travelling kit, Mr Driscoll went back to the Datum and made his way to Brokenstraw Creek, south of Warren, Pennsylvania, where the original Johnny Appleseed – whose real name had been John Chapman, born the best part of three centuries earlier – had planted his first nursery. There Mr Driscoll set up a tablet on a wall to record the moment for posterity, as, alone, with his matter-printer Shakespeare at his side, he declaimed his intention to carry the Bard to the new worlds:

‘To older generations this technology would have seemed strange indeed. But today, in a marriage of the supreme achievement of the arts and sciences of the Datum Earth, it will inspire young minds and nurture civilization across the new Earths. It is just as in Shakespeare's time. The Bard's London was a world city, at the heart of an emerging global culture, and through his plays Shakespeare brought that new world to his audiences. And now in this newly emerging panorama of many Earths, I – oh, excuse me . . .'

The recording had to be abandoned because the matter printer was nibbling at his chair leg, seeking wood to pulp.

And then, with a twist of the control of his Stepper box, Mr Driscoll set off.

At first all went well.

Mr Driscoll soon shook off his inexperience and became a seasoned Long Earth traveller, his breath deepening, his legs strengthening, his feet hardening, even his stomach becoming used to the stepping nausea. He didn't stop at every world. He decided to go as far into the Long Earth as he could manage, scattering his literary seed here and there, and relying on time and Shakespeare himself to take care of a wider diffusion.

When he did stop, it would be for a few days. He would send his matter-printer master edition off to the forest to spawn, and wait for the new copy of the works to be produced. Sometimes he would camp out. Other times he would introduce himself locally, and perhaps stop to deliver a talk, a reading of the Bard, teach a class or two. Then, with the gleaming new complete Shakespeare delivered, he'd be sent on his way, generally with gratitude and a pack full of food and a bottle of fresh-squeezed lemonade.

Word began to spread ahead of his arrival. In some worlds he would be greeted by farmers or their children, and offered a ride to the nearest township.

In three years he covered hundreds of worlds in this way. He felt a vast and deepening satisfaction at the success of his project.

Then he came to Earth West 31,415, in the far Ice Belt.

He released his master printer, and after his usual refreshing night's sleep in a forest glade, went to retrieve this world's brand-new copy of the Bard. He soon found the master copy, dormant as usual, in a pose that Mr Driscoll, no engineer, always interpreted as resting after a hard night's work. And beside it was – not another reading copy, with pages still moist, the gall-based ink printing bright –
another master copy
, another crab-like gadget, a copy of the book on a series of spindly legs. Puzzled, he reached for the new copy – but it scuttled off out of his reach and out of sight.

Mr Driscoll was more irritated than alarmed. He was not a practical man, and was used to machinery of all kinds letting him down. He set the true master copy off on its way to another part of the forest – perhaps there was something peculiar about the trees just here, he wondered, not very scientifically – and waited another night. The next morning there was a fresh reading copy of Shakespeare, sitting there on a pile of leaves, just as specified.

Mr Driscoll picked it up, took it into the nearest town, and spent a pleasant day talking to some vaguely interested farmers' children in their quaint little school. To Mr Driscoll's taste this was a particularly pleasing community who, Amish-like, had decided to eschew modern technology as much as possible when shaping their new world.

And the next morning Mr Driscoll stepped on, thinking no more of Earth West 31,415.

Until, ten days later, an agitated farmer pursued him stepwise and demanded that he come back.

When he returned to 31,415, he was taken to the forest glade where he had released the master Shakespeare – only to find the glade had vanished. It was as if a whole bunch of trees had uprooted themselves. ‘Hmm,' said Mr Driscoll, baffled. ‘“Fear not, till Birnam wood do come to Dunsinane . . .”'

‘What? What? Look at this, man. Look what you've done!'

The farmer dragged Mr Driscoll deeper into the forest – and now Mr Driscoll saw that the patch of cleared ground was not empty, but filled with crablike creations that crawled and rustled and clambered up the trunks of the surrounding trees, pages on their backs stirring like ladybird wings. They were Shakespeares: not readers' copies like the ones he was leaving behind on the worlds he passed through, but more masters, matter printers making replicas of themselves. And those copies were making copies in turn, spreading out through the forest . . .

‘What are you going to do about this?' cried the farmer.

‘Me? What can I do?'

‘We've already lost about a ton of lumber, we reckon. In ten days! And it's spreading faster all the time.' He grabbed Mr Driscoll by the lapels. ‘You know what you've done, don't you? We came all this way to escape this modern technology bullshit. Now you come here with your stupid books, and you've unleashed a nanotech disaster on us. A grey goo! Well, it's all your fault, peckerwood. What are you going to do about it, eh?'

There was only one thing he could do. ‘I will get back to the Low Earths as fast as a twain will take me.'

‘And then?'

‘And then I'll ask Wilson.'

‘A ton of lumber in ten days, eh?' Chet Wilson sucked his teeth and said, ‘Let me give it some thought.'

After an interval Wilson said, ‘What you got, you see, is a mutation.'

‘A mutation?'

‘The master Shakespeare was always capable of doing more than just churn out the pages of the book. Well, I told you as much. It could create spare parts for itself, even for the replicating mechanism. Designed to recover from drastic damage. That backup process has just gone a little too far, that's all.'

‘A little too far? Are you mad, Wilson?'

‘Now it's not just fixing itself, it's making a whole new copy. Don't blame me. Probably the way you operated it.'

‘Me?!'

‘You should have just turned it off and on again. That usually works. The original master evidently reset itself and recovered. But the little rogue baby it produced—' He chuckled indulgently. ‘What a rascal!'

‘But – but – I refuse to accept any responsibility for this mess. And even so, I don't see how a two-pound book could have churned up a ton of lumber in just ten days.'

‘Ah, well, that's exponential growth for you. Breeding like rabbits once they get started, see? In the first day one becomes two. In the second, two become four. In the third, four become eight . . .'

‘Yes, yes.'

‘After ten days, you've got a thousand copies, plus change. And a thousand copies of a two-pound book is a ton, my friend.
That's
where your lumber went.'

‘Well, it isn't my lumber.' Mr Driscoll's non-mathematical mind tried to grasp these concepts. ‘But if I understand you right – on the
eleventh
day, one ton will become two. And then two will become four. And then—'

‘That's the idea.'

‘Where will it end, Wilson? Where will it end? And what should I do?'

‘ “Exit, pursued by a bear,”' said Wilson.

The following few weeks were a sensation, at least for the inhabitants of Earth West 31,415, and for the Datum federal government agencies called in to help.

The colonists were hastily, resentfully evacuated, as after twenty days a thousand-ton lumber forest had been demolished.

After thirty days, a million tons of trees had been chewed up, leaving a scar visible from space.

And after forty days a billion tons had gone, and the continents' surviving animals were fleeing the rising Shakespearean sea.

Just fifty days after Mr Driscoll had released his original master copy, almost every tree on Earth West 31,415, indeed the bulk of the planet's continental biomass, had been converted. The books of the Bard roamed the devastated plains, hungry for more.

Mr Driscoll called Wilson from the penitentiary where he was awaiting trial.

‘It's terrible, Wilson! They say the books are mutating
again
. Eating other kinds of vegetable matter: grasses, shrubs. At the ocean shore some are venturing into the water, devouring the seaweed. In the interior some of them are turning on each other. Bard eat Bard! And they blame me! “Blow, blow, thou winter wind, thou art not so unkind as man's ingratitude.” Well, the government has declared a quarantine, and is thinking of sending in some kind of clean-up operation . . .'

‘Good idea. Gonna need a code word for that.' Chet Wilson sucked his teeth and said, ‘Let me give it some thought.'

After an interval Wilson said, ‘How about “The Taming of the Goo”? Whaddya think of that, Driscoll? Driscoll? . . .'

Discovering such stories only made Jan Roderick determined to root out more. And Sister Coleen grew increasingly anxious about him.

24

J
OSHUA'S TIME WITH
the fever was like being underwater, he thought later. Like he wasn't truly asleep but immersed in a shallow lake, and looking up through a rippling meniscus at the world of air above, a surface over which he saw day and night flap by, and the big faces of trolls peering down at him, like moons.

Sometimes they moved him. He would be picked up by Patrick, the big younger male, a hairy arm around his back, a hand under his armpit. His bad leg would send fresh pain shooting through his system, and he would struggle and protest feebly. Later, to his shame, he remembered some of the language; it would have made Bill Chambers blush.

Other times, as he rose out of his reddish murk of sleep towards the daylight, they tried to feed him. He wasn't hungry but he was always hellish thirsty; he would spit out the food and demand water. Sometimes they let him get away without eating, but other times they forced him. The male would prop him up and let his head dangle back, mouth open, and the female, Sally, would drop in stuff, roots and leaves and the sour juice of some fruit or other, and he would choke and shake his head and try to spit it out. But Patrick clamped his mouth closed, and Sally would stroke his throat, and he would swallow; he had no choice.