The Long Cosmos (3 page)

‘I did once sit in that chair myself, remember? I'll be out of your hair—'

‘What hair?' Bill tried to push a bit further into the room, taking long strides, tottering on awkwardly placed feet. ‘And by God it smells like a troll's jockstrap in here.' He pulled up a blind and yanked a cord to open the wooden sash window.

Cool air flowed in, laden with a scent of dust, hay and spring flowers: air from a world that was chilly compared to others in this stretch of the Long Earth, cool enough to deliver a frost as late as June, sometimes. Kind of refreshing, Joshua had always found it.

And this was the air of home for Joshua now, as much as anywhere – the place he kept his most significant stash of stuff, anyhow. Hell-Knows-Where wasn't a place Joshua had founded, or helped to found, but a place he'd made his home for decades, with his wife Helen and his son Rod. When he'd come here, in fact, the nascent town's only fixed point had been the smithy. As iron couldn't be stepped between worlds, the smithy was a kind of thumbtack that had pinned the community to this particular Earth, and back then it had served as a meeting point and a gossip focus. Later, it was no coincidence that Joshua and Bill and the others had used the location to build this, Hell-Knows-Where's first town hall. And on its inauguration they had hung an iron horseshoe over the door. An oddity when you thought about it, making horseshoes on a world without horses yet, but people wanted the good luck that came with it.

But Joshua's marriage had broken down. Helen had moved out of here to go back to her Corn Belt home town of Reboot. And then she had died. Now Joshua hardly ever saw his son Rod; he was supposed to show up today, but . . . Well, that was the plan.

Stepping back from the window into the gloom, Bill ran straight into a row of Joshua's lightweight shirts and pants, hanging on a line. ‘Feck! Funnily enough I don't remember a clothesline in here. So where have ye fixed it? Ah, I see, to the bust of the town's founder on top of the bookcase here. Knotted around her
neck
. It's what she would have wanted.'

‘Sorry, man. I had to improvise. You want a coffee? I have a pot running in the kitchen space back here.'

‘You mean, would I like some of my best coffee before it walks out of here in your bladder? Ah, what the hey, give me a shot.'

Joshua, mopping foam from his face, poured the brew into the least disreputable mug he could find in the small cupboard over the sink. ‘Here you go. No milk, no sugar.'

‘Never.' Bill cleared a corner of his desk and sat.

‘Cheers.' They touched their mugs.

‘You know, Bill, there was a time when you'd have asked for – how did you use to put it? – a drop of something a bit fortifying in there. Even at this hour of the morning.'

‘I did have a mature man's tastes—'

‘Started when you were fourteen years old, as I recall, Billy Chambers, whenever you could swing it, and don't deny it.'

‘Ah, well, I've changed since those days. Those
decades
. And I've got Morningtide to thank for that.'

‘You're lucky to have her, and your kids.'

‘My liver generally agrees with that sentiment. Just as you were lucky to have Helen.'

‘So I was.'

There was an awkward silence.

‘Absent friends,' Bill said at last, and they touched their mugs again. Bill gingerly moved a broad-brimmed hat from the seat behind his desk. ‘All these piles of shite, man. Is it all strictly necessary?'

‘You bet.'

‘And all laid out in order.' He glanced around the room. ‘Cold weather gear, I see, so you're planning to be out for a few months. Universal maps . . .' These were maps of features that generally persisted as you travelled across the Long Earth: nothing human like towns and roads, but the underlying mountains, rivers, coastlines, landmarks. ‘Silver-foil emergency blankets – check. Where's your roll-up mattress?'

‘You're out of touch. Look at this.' In his left hand Joshua hefted a pack the size of a baseball. ‘Aerogel – a whole mattress that you can hold in your fist.'

‘Or in your case your Terminator cyber-claw.'

‘Yeah, yeah.'

‘Boots. Camp sandals. Socks! You can never have enough socks. Water tablets. Food, jerky and stuff – emergency rations, I take it?'

‘I'll be living off the land. Hunting and trapping.'

‘You always were a bit rubbish at that, but you could afford to lose a little weight.'

‘Thanks.'

‘A med pack, check: anti-diarrhoea pills, antihistamines, painkillers, laxatives, antifungal treatments, disinfectant, bug killers, vitamin tablets . . . What else? Arrowheads. Line for making bows. Snares. Nets. Lightweight bronze axe. More knives than a butcher's back drawer. The usual electronic gadgets: a radio transceiver, a tablet, a location finder.' This would exploit GPS on worlds developed enough to host such systems, but would otherwise deliver a best-guess location based on the position of the sun and moon, the constellations, the length of the day, any fortuitous events like solar or lunar eclipses. All this was technology that encoded the hard-won wisdom of decades of travelling in the Long Earth. ‘A flint firestarter. And matches, good move. A solar oven.' A little inverted open-out umbrella, its inner surface reflective, that could be set up on a stand to catch the sunlight and focus it to boil water. ‘Colostomy bags. Denture glue.'

‘Yeah, yeah.'

‘I'm only barely jokin', Methuselah. Coffee. Spices. Pepper! Trade goods, of course. Ah, and weapons. A couple of bronze revolvers – electromagnetic impulse?'

‘Yeah.' Joshua hefted one of the small handguns. ‘The latest thing. Charges up on solar power, or you can just pump it up by squeezing the grip.' He pointed it downward, fired the thing, and drilled a fine hole through the corner of Bill's desk.

‘Hey, show some respect! This desk's an antique.'

‘No, it's not. We built it.'

‘Well, it never
will
be an antique now. And all this will fit into a single backpack, I take it? Ye've got some lovely widgets, Josh, I'll give you that.'

‘And they say that innovation stalled after Step Day.'

Bill said simply, ‘Shame it is they haven't yet developed an unbreakable heart.'

Joshua looked away.

‘Sorry, man,' Bill said. ‘That was cheesier than a mouse's wet dream. I never would have said such things once, would I? We were lads together, you and me. Feelings were for those fecking nuns to have, not us. Well, I changed. And you changed too. But you've changed – well,
back
.'

Joshua was a little shaken by that. To cover, he selected a shirt from the line and pulled it on. Suddenly Bill, sixty-eight years old, sitting on his own junk-cluttered desk, sipping his coffee in the gloom of the office,
looked
like a mayor to Joshua. Mature. As if mad old Bill the fake Irishman had somehow grown up when Joshua wasn't looking. Had, in fact, overtaken Joshua himself. ‘What do you mean, changed back?'

Bill spread his hands. ‘Well, for instance, when it was all kicking off with those rebel types in Valhalla, and all the trolls in the Long Earth went AWOL, remember? And you and me were handed a twain by that fecker Lobsang and told to go off and find Sally Linsay.'

‘Jeez, Bill, that must be thirty years ago.'

‘Sure. And as far as I remember we just slept on it, and up and left, and pissed off to the ends of the Long Earth. I don't remember you doing all this
packing
. Counting your fecking socks.'

Joshua looked around the room, at all his gear in its neat rows and piles. ‘You have to do it right, Bill. You've got to make sure you have everything, that it's all in working order. Then you have to
pack
it right—'

‘There you go. That's not Joshua the mayor of Hell-Knows-Where talking, Joshua the father, Joshua Valienté the hero of half the fecking Long Earth. That's Josh the boy I used to know at the Home, when we were eleven or twelve or thirteen. When you used to make your crystal radio sets and model kits, just the way you're doing your packing now. You'd lay everything out first, and fix any bits that were damaged—'

‘Paint before assemble.'

‘What?'

‘That's what Agnes used to say to me. “You're the sort of boy who always, but always, paints before assembling.”'

‘Well, she was right.'

‘She usually was. In fact she usually still is . . . And
she's
supposed to come by to see me today, no doubt to be right one more time. Well, Bill, so what?'

‘There's always a balance, man. You've got to hit the right proportion. And, just to raise another point, Mister Chairman, aren't you getting too fecking
old
to run off playing Daniel Boone?'

‘None of your business,' Joshua snarled.

Bill held up his hands. ‘Fair enough. No offence.'

There was a knock at the door.

Bill stood. ‘Maybe that's Sister Mary Stigmata now, right on cue. I'll leave you to it. I mean, I won't get any work done in here until you're out of it anyhow.'

‘Bill, I appreciate it—'

‘Just remember one thing. Put a bloody marker somewhere high up where a twain can see it, an emergency blanket on top of a rock, so they can find you when you do yourself in.'

‘Roger.'

The rap on the door was harder this time.

‘All right, all right.'

The opened door revealed, not Agnes, but Joshua's son. Bill Chambers cleared off fast.

3

D
ANIEL
R
ODNEY
V
ALIENTÉ
was thirty-eight years old. Framed in the doorway, taller than his father, he was as pale of complexion as his mother had been, but his hair was as dark as Joshua's. He wore a practical-looking hooded coverall, and carried a small leather bag on a strap slung over one shoulder. Joshua suspected that this would be all the possessions he had with him – all the permanent possessions he owned at all, maybe.

Now he stalked into the mayor's office, looked around with faint disgust at the heaps of gear, vacated Bill's chair of junk, and sat down. All this without a word.

Joshua suppressed a sigh. He felt moved to button up his shirt, however, in his son's stern presence. Then he collected Bill's half-empty mug from the desk and moved to the kitchen area. ‘So,' he said.

‘So.'

‘You want a coffee? There's some in the pot.'

Rod, as he now insisted on being called, shook his head. ‘I managed to lose my caffeine addiction years ago. One less craving you have to fulfil out in the High Meggers.'

‘Water, then? The town supply's been clean again since—'

‘I'm fine.'

Joshua nodded, dumped the mugs, and sat on a stool from which he had to clear a set of climbing grips. ‘I'm glad you came.'

‘Why?'

Joshua sighed. ‘Obviously, because since your mother died we're all we've got, you and I.'

Rod was stone-faced. ‘You haven't “got” me, Dad. Nor have I “got” you.'

‘Rod—'

‘And why, once again, are you disappearing into the wilds of the Long Earth? Just as you did throughout my childhood, periodically. Just as you did when your marriage to my mother broke down. An outernet note to say, “Hi, I'm off again” doesn't really cut it, Dad. Besides, aren't you too damn old for these stunts now?'

‘You know, Rod –
Daniel
– I feel like I've had a lifetime of your judgements. Maybe everybody blames their parents—'

Rod cut him off. ‘I only came here to talk about your will.'

‘OK. Look, it's all duly witnessed and notarized, both here in Hell-Knows-Where and in an Aegis office back in Madison West 5.'

‘Dad, I don't care about the legal stuff. And I don't want anything from you. I just want to be sure I understand it before you disappear and break your damn neck in the wilderness, and I never see you again.'

‘Fine. Well, you know the basic provision. Aside from a few gifts, such as to the Home in Madison, I left it all to your aunt Katie back in Reboot, or her surviving descendants. Simple as that . . .'

Katie was Helen's older sister. Along with their parents, just a decade or so after Step Day, the Green sisters had trekked on foot off into the Long Earth, and had taken part in the founding of a new community, Reboot, on the edge of the band of fecund worlds that had become known as the Corn Belt. Helen had left Reboot when she met Joshua, but Katie had stayed, married, raised a couple of healthy daughters – and, eventually, granddaughters.

But there was a dark underside to the story. The Green girls had had a brother, Rodney, who was a phobic, as the jargon had emerged: constitutionally incapable of stepping. As the family trekked away, Rodney was left behind with an aunt. And in the end Rodney had taken part in the destruction of Madison, Wisconsin, with a backpack nuke, and had spent the rest of his life in jail. When he had learned the full family story, Joshua's son Daniel Rodney had abandoned his childhood name, ‘Dan', and adopted the name of his broken uncle. It was just one element of the tension between father and son.

Now Joshua said, ‘It's not as if there's anybody I
could
give it to on your side, is there?'

Rod sighed. ‘It's called an extended marriage, Dad. I'm one of fifteen husbands now. There are eighteen wives and twenty-four kids at the last count. It's kind of vague – we're spread over many worlds, and we keep moving. Look, I'm in a steady relationship with Sofia, for now. Sofia Piper – you never met her, and never will. And kind of foster-uncle to her nephews. Step-uncle, whatever, the old labels don't really apply. It's flexible but stable, and it suits Long Earth migrants like me just fine. It's already two decades since the first pairing that began it all.'