The Long Cosmos (43 page)

Indra replied from above, ‘We are moving across a tangle of Long worlds. There is no reason why distances across this tangle, in terms of steps jumped, should correspond to spatial distances, to galactic geography. It is the relations between the elements of the tangle that determine distance. In fact there are some relational theories of physics that describe all our perceptual reality, even such qualities as distance and time, as emergent properties of relations between more fundamental objects—'

‘I get it,' Maggie said quickly. ‘It's complicated. Let's go see what else is out there. Dev, Indra, Lee, you ready to do your stuff?'

‘After the next stop,' Joshua murmured, ‘I need to take a bathroom break.'

‘You and me too, kiddo,' said Maggie. ‘Billion-year-old aliens or not—'

Bright light flooded the cabin,

There was a sickening sensation of falling,

And a tremendous splash.

There was darkness outside the windows, and the
Uncle
dipped and spun. Joshua clung to his couch, wishing he'd taken that bathroom break earlier.

Maggie yelled, ‘Report, Lobsang!'

‘We're underwater!' Lobsang called back. ‘Or to be more precise, immersed in liquid of some kind—'

‘It
is
water,' Dev called down. ‘I'm copying the readings here. Salty, not too acidic. Like ocean water on Earth.'

Maggie ordered, ‘Keep us upright, Mr Bilaniuk.'

‘In hand, Captain. We have air bags in the nose to stabilize us, and a flotation collar around the base. Also the pressure's not too high. We're built to withstand far worse than this . . . Actually the pressure's already dropping.'

‘We're rising,' Lobsang said.

‘I know,' Joshua called. ‘I can feel it in my bladder.'

Suddenly they broke through into the air. Joshua glimpsed bright-blue sky through the water that streamed off his window.

‘On the surface!' Dev called.

Lee said, ‘But in that case, why are we still rising?'

Maggie leaned forward and stared out of the window. ‘Because we're on some kind of island. And
that
's rising.'

‘Cool,' said Jan Roderick.

‘Hoo!' said the troll.

Joshua and Lobsang stared at each other wildly.

Lobsang said, ‘A rising island?'

And Joshua said, ‘Are you thinking what I'm thinking?'

60

T
HE
U
NCLE
A
RTHUR
, on its four legs, stood at a slight angle on the sloping beach where it had been deposited by the tide. The sea, receding, lapped gently at the shore. The light outside was eerie, a purplish twilight. The sun of this world wasn't yet up, according to Lobsang.
This
sky was like a bad special effect, cluttered with brilliant stars and lurid clouds through which even more stars shone, gauzy, as if seen through a veil, Joshua thought. Joshua had no idea where he was. This was not the sky of the centre of the Galaxy. But on the other hand it wasn't the mundane sky of home, either. Aside from the light show up there, however, this world was remarkably Earth-like. Even the gravity felt about right . . .

And far out to sea, the back of the Traverser that had raised the pod up from the depths was like a low island, silhouetted, its stately movement only visible to Joshua if he watched it carefully for a few minutes, peering through his small window.

Joshua said, ‘So
this
is where the Traversers went. But why?'

‘Because they were invited, I suspect,' Lobsang said. ‘Even if we were probably no more aware of their form of the Invitation than they were of ours.' He sounded unpleasantly triumphant, to Joshua. ‘I always did suspect there had been some kind of intervention in the evolution of these creatures, Joshua. They were turned, by some agency, into collectors. Samplers. Curators, if you like. Waiting for a call from the sky. And when it came, here they travelled, by some super-stepping ability of their own. With their cargo of life, gathered from the Long worlds they came from.'

‘Worlds, Lobsang?'

‘Sure. Why shouldn't the same strategy have been used on other worlds? Maybe this ocean is shared by Traversers from other temperate, watery planets like ours. And maybe there are stranger oceans out there, where you'll find curators from the ammonia-laced oceans of worlds like Europa, or even the acid clouds of worlds like Venus . . .

‘This is the fullest expression of stepping, I think, Joshua. We find ourselves in a cross-connected tangle of Long worlds of different kinds, with many different kinds of sapient inhabitants.'

As with much of what Lobsang said, even from the beginning of their relationship, this went mostly over Joshua's head. He tried to picture it. ‘Like a subway map? All those lines, cross-connecting . . .'

‘Something like that,' Lobsang said, not unkindly. ‘But
this
world is a step beyond, in a sense. A place where many world lines cross, a multiple junction – which is how the Traversers have been able to congregate, coming from so many worlds. This is a Grand Central Station of the Galaxy, Joshua. The air is breathable, by the way.'

They threw open the hatch of the
Uncle Arthur
and clambered out.

Almost without prior discussion they piled gear out of the pod: a couple of tents, sleeping bags and blankets, bottles of water and packets of food, lanterns, mosquito nets. They needed to stay a few hours anyhow to allow the air supply to replenish itself, and beyond that, by common consent, it seemed to Joshua, they were going to spend some time here, have a meal, maybe stay the night. It wouldn't have felt right to have gone scurrying home without exploring a bit.

‘But then we
are
going straight back,' Maggie Kauffman said sternly. ‘We made three of those super-steps, and we survived them all. We bought enough risk. We've done our job, we've proved this new way of travelling is feasible, and our responsibility now is to get back to Earth, tell everybody what we found, have our picture taken with President Damasio. We can leave the rest to future expeditions.'

‘Actually to future generations,' said Indra Newton gravely. ‘This network of Long worlds we have discovered may be infinite. It will not be an exploration but a migration. An endless one.'

‘A migration into the Skein,' Lobsang murmured, peering into the strange sky. ‘A tangle of Long worlds around the centre of the Galaxy.
The Skein
– is that an appropriate word?'

‘It'll do,' Maggie said.

Jan Roderick stared up at Lobsang, who was staring at the sky. It struck Joshua that this was the first time the boy had been close up to Lobsang. ‘Mister, you look funny.'

Lobsang looked down. ‘Well, so do you.'

‘Are you a robot?'

‘Long story.'

Jan reached out and poked Lobsang's leg. ‘I bet you're not even alive.'

‘Am so.'

‘Prove it.'

Lobsang leaned down, resting his hands on his knees. ‘Well, that's a little tricky. You could break me down molecule by molecule and find not a single particle of life or mind. On the other hand, I could do the same to you.'

Jan thought that over. ‘Good comeback.' Then he ran off down the beach.

Lobsang eyed Joshua. ‘Some kid.'

‘The Sisters have him in hand. I think . . .'

Joshua saw that Sancho was wandering away now, one slow step after another, looking around at the sky, the land, the ocean. The troll stretched his mighty arms, as if glad to be free of the confinement of the pod, and then slumped his shoulders. ‘Hoo!'

Joshua grabbed the troll-call and hobbled over. ‘So, buddy, how are you feeling?'

Sancho bared his teeth and raised two thumbs.

‘Good, huh? But – I'm shy of asking a Librarian this – do you know where you are?'

‘Home,' said the troll.

Home.
Joshua thought he saw what the troll meant. Home: not the place you were born into, but the place that gathered you in. That was what this ‘Skein' of Lobsang's was. Like the Home on Allied Drive. And
that
was a richly satisfying thought.

‘Well, they always said it – the Invitation wasn't just for humans . . .'

‘Bring Sancho.'

‘It was a pleasure, big guy.'

And Sancho went on his way down the beach, singing softly. Joshua was no expert, but he thought the tune was ‘Pack Up Your Troubles In Your Old Kit Bag'.

After a brief conversation, the ‘adults' – Maggie, Lobsang and Joshua – decided to take a hike into a range of eroded hills, just inland. The ‘youngsters' – Lee, Dev and Jan – evidently wanted to blow off some steam, and they kicked off their shoes and began a soccer game on the beach. Only Indra defied the rough age categorization; the serious young Next said her priority was to explore this new environment.

Maggie lectured the soccer players. ‘OK. We'll be back in a couple of hours. The slightest thing feels wrong and you get back in that pod and close the hatch and flush the air. And you
will
submit to the tox tests later, in case there's something subtle we missed. Understood?'

‘Ma'am.'

‘I can't hear you—'

‘Captain, yes, Captain!'

‘Also, you do
not
drink the water. The ocean's salty anyhow, but you don't touch any fresh water either. You do not
eat
anything local. Life seems sparse here, but the bugs Lobsang tested do not consist of the amino acids you use, they do not use the protein suite you do—'

‘Captain, they're just
slime.
We're not about to eat that.'

‘No, and it's not about to eat you, and if you did chomp it down chances are it would pass straight through. But we're not going to take that chance, are we?'

‘No, ma'am.'

‘We're going to stick to the rations we brought. Aren't we?'

‘Ma'am.'

‘I can't hear you—'

‘Captain, yes, Captain!'

As the youngsters ran off after Sancho, Maggie joined Joshua. ‘I can't believe they brought a soccer ball into interstellar space.'

Joshua said, ‘
I
can't believe they're putting a troll in goal.'

‘But then I guess we missed a whole ten-year-old boy down in that cargo bay.'

‘Eleven—'

‘By comparison, smuggling aboard a soccer ball is small beer.'

Lobsang joined them. The crew all carried small backpacks, but Lobsang's was a complex affair, glistening with sensor lenses.

As they fixed their packs, Joshua, leaning on his cane, scuffed the alien sand with the toe of his good leg. ‘So, through the Star Gate, huh, Lobsang?'

‘Indeed.'

‘Where the hell are we? I'm guessing you have a pretty good idea.'

Lobsang glanced up at the lurid sky, the dazzling stars blurred by the colourful clouds, that single brilliant shadow-casting pinpoint. ‘I believe we're halfway home. Back from the Galaxy centre, that is. I'm judging that from the sky above, and from the composition of those stars we see – which, according to our spectroscopes, have a higher content of heavy elements than the stars close to the sun. At a guess I'd say we're around fourteen thousand light years out from the core. About twelve thousand light years in from the solar system.'

Indra pointed out, ‘That's always assuming we're moving along the same radius. In and out, to and from the centre.'

‘True enough. The Galaxy does have a circular symmetry . . .'

‘And yet,' Joshua said, ‘here we are standing on a beach, with sand in our toes, the waves lapping.'

‘Universal formations, Joshua.'

‘I guess.' He looked along the beach, at the soccer game. The shouts of the young folk and the hoots of the troll came drifting in silence broken otherwise only by the lapping of the ocean waves. ‘That pod looks remarkably out of place.'

‘Whereas those kids,' Maggie said, ‘look like they belong here. And the damn troll.'

‘Indeed they do. Like the Traversers in their ocean. So. Shall we walk?'

61

I
T WAS A
very mundane hike, despite that bizarre psychedelic flag of a sky up above.

They walked up from the beach and through a bank of dunes. Maggie led the way, striding boldly. Lobsang followed, the lenses and other sensors on his pack whirring and swivelling.

Joshua was happy to play rear gunner and stay at the back of the group, pivoting on the damn cane, not wanting to hold anybody up. Indra Newton, however, walked beside him, and Joshua was aware that she was keeping an eye on him. It irritated him that
anybody
should think he needed watching over. But on the other hand he was kind of touched; he wouldn't have expected that kind of thoughtfulness of a super-brain Next like Indra. Well, people always surprised you.

The hike across the sand was hard work, though. He kept thinking of that desperate scramble across another beach, on the world of the Yggdrasil trees.

The going got a little easier for him once they'd climbed out of the soft dry sand at the top of the beach, and the ground became firmer. Joshua saw that the sand here was bound by a kind of moss that looked vaguely green, although Joshua didn't trust his colour sense under this peculiar sky.

And then he nearly stumbled when his cane broke through a kind of crust and sank into the earth. Indra grabbed his arm to steady him.

He found himself looking down into a broken-open nest, littered with clumps of moss, from which an animal and its young all stared back up at him. He was reminded of the rabbit-mole nests he'd learned to crack with Sancho – but this animal was nothing like a rabbit-mole. The beast might have been a couple of feet across, and it had six stubby, almost triangular limbs folding out from a central core; it was something like a big starfish covered in electric-blue fur. But in that central section was a mouth, and three very human-looking eyes peered up at him. Around it were three, four, five smaller copies, wriggling starfish the size of coins. He caught all this in a glance.