The Long Cosmos (36 page)

‘That's true,' she said. ‘People ask about it when they come to stay. We keep pamphlets. Sometimes we get medical teams and so on, come to study the ongoing effects. And sometimes people just come to see, to be tourists. Some of them brag that they've been to all three pre-Yellowstone civilian nuclear strike zones, in Japan and here. Like they're collecting the experience.'

‘Odd.'

‘They pay their way, and we make a living.' She glanced at him. ‘But most of our visitors are like you, with family here – or at least they had family here . . .'

‘My wife and I both grew up here in Madison. In the pre-nuke days. We never knew each other back then. After Step Day she made a trek with her family, and they built a town in the Corn Belt.'

‘Where's that? I've never been much further than West 5, for the government offices there and the hospitals.'

‘Oh, about a hundred thousand steps out. This was before the twains, and they walked out there. And then when we married we lived a lot further out, more than a million steps.'

‘Gosh.'

‘But when she died, she wanted to be brought back here. She was cremated.'

‘You brought her ashes back, then.'

Not me, he thought.
He
had gone the other way, off into the High Meggers yet again, escaping from it all. And Rod, their son, had escaped too, disappearing into the Long Earth green with his elusive companions. It was Katie and Harry, Helen's sister and her husband, who had had to bring her home to Forest Hill. They'd hardly spoken to Joshua since.

He said only, ‘Something like that.'

Much of the housing stock here was long abandoned, and thirty years after Yellowstone there were some pretty mature shrubs and trees colonizing front lawns and parks. They passed one big old shopping mall that had been converted into a ‘reclamation centre', according to a big federal government sign. You could bring any of the enduring waste you could still find from the pre-Yellowstone years, near-indestructible foam coffee cups and aluminium cans and bottles of plastic and glass, decades old but some as pristine as when they were manufactured. Here, Repatriation money was being used to process such garbage of the past into useful goods to support the future.

By the time they reached Forest Hill they were just a few miles from downtown. There were posts on the sidewalk giving distances to the perimeter of the inner Red Zone. Joshua began to see damage he thought must be associated with the nuke: roofless wooden-framed buildings just rotting away, concrete structures that were windowless shells. But life sprouted wherever it could, the green of weeds breaking through abandoned driveways, flowers swaying on dirt-covered windowsills in the June light.

After she'd parked up, Phyllida offered to walk him to the grave marker, but he refused. She did check he had a working cell phone, and made him promise to call her if he needed a ride home. He chafed a little at this fussing, but a good heart had always been a characteristic of the Greens. And besides, his pride wasn't what it had been. Not since he'd needed a troll to wipe his backside.

Once he was inside the cemetery, however, and began his hobbling exploration, he regretted turning down her offer of help. He'd logged on ahead and had downloaded a plot number and a rough map, but it hadn't occurred to him that since Yellowstone the cemeteries in Madison, indeed all over the Datum no doubt, had been forced to become a lot bigger than they'd once been. Forest Hill had colonized what had once been a golf course, and also, he figured out, a residential area between its old southern boundary and Monroe Street, an area probably burned out after the nuke. But even in these extensions the plots were squeezed in tight.

It was a gruesome odyssey.

The sun was high in a cloud-speckled sky by the time he found Helen's plot; he was sweating, wheezing a little – maybe there was still some ash in this foul Datum air – and he leaned heavily on his stick as he peered down at the little marker. It was a modest marble slab set in a square of gravel, with the inscription in a neat, apparently machine-worked font. He read the words aloud. ‘To the memory of Helen Green Valienté Doak, wife of Joshua Valienté, wife of Benjamin Doak, mother of Daniel Rodney, 2013–2067. And to the memory of Rodney Green, 2012–2051 . . .'

I kept my promise, he told Helen silently.

There was a hand on his shoulder. ‘You found her.'

Joshua turned. ‘Nelson. Didn't hear you coming. I'm losing my survival skills.'

‘You are if a clumsy ox like me managed to sneak up on you.' Nelson Azikiwe, wearing a sober black overcoat, bent a little stiffly to see the stone.

‘She wanted to come back home in the end.'

‘I can understand that. Personally, I have a plot marked out in my old parish of St John on the Water. Well, as a former incumbent my name is already on a plaque in the church, in gold leaf.'

‘Very tasteful. Helen's family is all over the place. Her father's buried at Valhalla. Katie, her sister, and her family will be staying at Reboot.'

‘What about you, Joshua? Where will your final resting place be?'

Joshua shrugged. ‘Wherever I fall over, I guess. I'd rather not provide a snack for some ugly High Meggers predator, however. And
especially
not a croc.'

Nelson squinted at the marker. ‘So brother Rodney is here with her.'

‘That was one reason she wanted to come home, I think. For Rod's sake. He didn't see any of the family before he died, in prison. She had his ashes brought here. I think she always felt guilty about Rod.'

‘I remember the story.'

‘Here in Madison the perps of the nuke attack remain notorious, as you can imagine. So we tried to keep the existence of this plot a secret. I said we shouldn't even have Rod's name on the stone, but Helen always insisted on that. If the stone was ever desecrated—'

‘She will lie safe,' came a new voice. ‘You can rely on me for that, Joshua.'

Startled, they both turned.

The newcomer appeared to be another elderly man, dressed in jeans and a loose jacket, almost as sober as Nelson in his overcoat. He was entirely bald, clean-shaven, his features rather nondescript. The lines around his eyes and mouth and on his forehead gave an impression of age, certainly, but that was indeterminate too.

‘You've got a new face,' Joshua said by way of greeting.

Nelson looked the newcomer up and down. ‘A whole new ambulant unit, in fact. Impressive-looking. But rather heavy-set?'

Joshua said, ‘And you got your arm back.'

‘The damaged copy you brought back from the world of the Traversers, Joshua, had served its purpose. It is now in a transEarth vault, where the various improvisations that were forced on me to survive years of isolation are being studied for potential future value.'

Nelson smiled. ‘No sandals and robe?'

‘These days I prefer to remain anonymous.'

‘Except when you choose not to be,' Joshua said wryly. ‘You say you're protecting Helen's grave . . .'

‘You know me, Joshua. I see the world turn – all the worlds – I see thistledown fall on a gravestone.' He sighed. ‘But I can make other eyes turn away – electronic eyes, at least. The stone isn't even marked on most plots of the cemetery. I made sure you downloaded a version which had the correct entry.'

Joshua frowned. ‘So you saw me coming.'

Nelson touched his arm. ‘He watches over us with the best of intentions.'

‘So he always says, Nelson.' He faced the ambulant unit. ‘So what do we call you this time? George Abrahams?'

The ambulant unit smiled at last, and its rather stiff face was transformed. ‘“Lobsang” will do.'

‘It's good to see you again,' Joshua said grudgingly.

The unit considered this. ‘In spite of everything?'

‘Consider that a standard caveat.'

‘Indeed. I have missed you too. Well, here we are reunited. Look at the three of us, relics of an age gone by. Do you recall the movie
Space Cowboys
? In which Clint Eastwood and other veterans—'

Joshua held his hands up. ‘Know it by heart.'

‘Well, rather like the Cowboys, we have one last mission, gentlemen.'

Joshua said, ‘So I hear. We're going to find Nelson's grandson, and bring him home. One last hurrah. Though I've no idea how to go about it. Whereas you, Lobsang—'

‘I have a plan, of course.'

Nelson seemed eager, energized. ‘You do?'

‘And I know precisely where we will begin. We will follow a trail of breadcrumbs laid by a much abler agency than even I ever was.'

‘You mean the Next,' Joshua guessed.

‘And we'll begin just where it all started for you, Joshua. With a boy, in a children's home that once stood on Allied Drive, since relocated to Madison West 5. Back to the beginning, you see.

‘Well, that's the plan. We can go back to West 5 whenever we are ready. But I wondered if you might wish to see central Madison first.'

Joshua grunted. ‘I haven't been back there since Yellowstone.'

‘It's only a few miles from here, and an easy walk. But I have a cart.' He glanced at the two of them, Nelson corset-stiff and Joshua leaning heavily on his cane. ‘I thought that might be wise.'

‘Perceptive as ever, Lobsang,' Joshua said. He took a breath, stood straight, and turned away from Helen's marker.

52

T
O
J
OSHUA
'
S UNTUTORED
eye, the open-top electric cart looked identical to Phyllida Green's – a wheeled box of some smooth white plastic. He did wonder how it kept its energy topped up. From supply points in the street?

For the first few minutes Lobsang drove respectfully slowly, and the cart moved almost silently along the roughly restored asphalt of Monroe Street. By now they were well within Phyllida's Red Zone, as Joshua could tell from a plethora of signposts with glaring scarlet warning discs, radiation-hazard symbols, and free-call emergency telephones. Yellowstone ash was heaped up by the side of the road, and filled up the interiors of the roofless houses, as if it had been poured in.

The cart jolted over a bump in the road, making the two old men in the back groan. Looking over his shoulder, Joshua saw that the asphalt had been melted here, and had then solidified in a frozen wave.

They were reaching downtown now, the central zone of the nuclear devastation, and Lobsang slowed further. Here, many buildings had been flattened to their foundations, though others, some of the more solidly built office blocks and public buildings, had withstood the blast to varying extents. Of course nothing had been rebuilt; only gaudily coloured monitoring stations and emergency medical centres had been erected amid the ruins. But the green was sprouting everywhere it could, pushing through layers of cracked concrete and asphalt, despite the radiation, despite the climate collapse. Life going on.

The mound on which the Capitol building had once stood had been blown apart. They slowed to a halt in the rubble. Flowers swayed between concrete blocks.

‘I suppose I owe you both an apology,' Nelson said. ‘It's my fault you are both here. Drawn away from places you'd much sooner be, I'm sure.'

‘Not in my case,' Joshua said promptly. ‘I'd got myself thoroughly lost, for once, out in the High Meggers.'

‘I'm glad you've been preserved, of course, Joshua,' Lobsang said now. ‘If only to hear of your encounter with a new form of troll – new to me, anyhow.'

‘Ha! Even you don't know it all, do you, Lobsang?'

‘Not yet.'

‘And I'm sorry too that I had to bring you back from Tibet, Lobsang,' Nelson said.

The ambulant unit shrugged, a rather mechanical gesture. ‘I had to return eventually. To disappear into such virtual environments, into one's own head, is an endless temptation for one such as me. And yet I seem to need such refuges from time to time.' He glanced over the shattered Capitol. ‘I remember how you shunned my company for years, Joshua, after the nuclear detonation here. You wondered how I, a being like a god, could have failed to stop such an obvious wrong as the attack on the city. Yet there are times when I cannot even save myself. Here we are in this museum of destruction, where, you know, the young, the Long Earth generations, come to try to understand. And in fact it's the enthusiasm and the curiosity of the young that I hope will lead us to your lost grandson, Nelson. I'm speaking of the Invitation from the sky, and the Thinker engineering project that the Next have developed in response.'

Nelson frowned. ‘What has that got to do with Troy and the vanishing Traversers?'

‘
Join us
,' Joshua said, understanding now. ‘That's the link. The Invitation from the sky. The Next heard it through their radio telescopes. And it seeped into the consciousness of the trolls. Even I heard it, I guess,' he added ruefully. ‘
Join us
. Like a nagging at the back of my head . . . I suppose the Traversers must have heard it too – somehow.'

‘The Long Earth has always been a matter of the mind as well as the body,' Lobsang said. ‘You see, Nelson? I have no idea where the Traversers took your grandson, or how to follow them. But the Next are building a giant engine in response to the same Invitation that seems to have lured the Traversers. I believe our best bet of finding Troy and the Traversers—'

‘Is to work with the Next, and follow them,' Nelson breathed. ‘I see. And how do we do that?'

So Lobsang told them about Jan Roderick, a boy under the care of the Sisters at the Home, and his matter-printing.

‘Enthusiasm and curiosity – that's what the Next have exploited to get their engine built. A million kids like Jan, turning out their baffling components, adding to the vast flow of material and labour into their construction site of a world. And now Jan is out there himself. What I intend us to do is to follow the trail leading from the Home on Allied Drive to that construction site. Its location itself is no secret, but through Jan I hope to find a way to contact the project's superiors. And through them, perhaps . . .