The Long War (34 page)

‘The source of the railings quote.’

‘Exactly. Personally my pick is
The Man Who Was Thursday
, still an excellent read and the precursor of many spy romances over the years. A curious man, Chesterton. Embraced Catholicism like a security blanket, don’t you think?’

‘I found him as a kid, when I was digging around in a Joburg library. A stash of ancient books, a relic of the days of the British presence. Probably not been read since apartheid . . .’ Nelson ran out of steam. He supposed the idea of a
bongani
like him sitting in a dusty library absorbing the adventures of Father Brown had been surreal enough, but this situation took the biscuit, as his parishioners might have said. What to ask? Where to begin? He essayed, ‘Are you part of the Lobsang Project?’

‘My dear sir, I
am
the whole of the project.’

Nelson reflected on various searches he’d run. ‘You know, I recall gossip about a supercomputer that endeavoured to get its owners to accept that it was human, a soul having been reincarnated into the machine at the moment it was booted . . . Something like that. The nerdosphere consensus was that it was a red herring.’ Nelson hesitated. ‘It was, wasn’t it?’

Lobsang dismissed the question. ‘By the way, would you like a drink? I understand you’re a beer man.’ He stood and crossed to a walnut drinks cabinet.

Nelson accepted the drink, half a glass of a heavy, flavoursome brew, and persisted with his questions. ‘And are you somehow connected to the
Mark Twain
expedition?’

‘You have me there. That was the second time I found myself close to the glare of public scrutiny, after the circumstances of my miraculous birth, and it was rather harder to escape. I’m afraid poor Joshua Valienté ended up taking more of the resulting attention than he wanted. Or deserved, actually. While I receded to the comfort of the shadows.’

‘And isn’t transEarth some kind of subsidiary of the Black Corporation?’

Lobsang smiled. ‘Yes, transEarth is partly owned by Black.’

‘Tell me why I’m here.’

‘Actually you came to me, remember. You’re here because you solved the puzzle. Followed the clues.’

‘The link between you and the
Mark Twain
?’

‘Quite. But of course you have your own underlying personal connection to Black, since your scholarship days. You won’t be surprised to find that the Black Corporation has been watching you for some time. You’re one of Douglas Black’s longer-term investments, in fact.’

Lobsang leaned over his table, tapped its surface so that a screen flipped up, and Nelson watched disturbingly familiar images of himself, his family, his life slide past one by one, beginning with his own smiling face as a two-year-old.

‘Born in a Johannesburg township, of course. You first came to our attention when your mother put you forward for Black’s “Searching for the Future” programme. Scholarships and various other contracts followed, though you were never directly employed by Black. Then came your rise to modest prominence as a palaeontologist of the Long Earth. Exploring the stepwise past, yes? It was something of a surprise when you took your own sideways step into the Church of England, but Douglas Black believes in allowing those he values to find their own way. He trusts them, you see. And now here you are, well spoken of by Douglas’s good friend the Archbishop of Canterbury – yet seeking new directions.’ He smiled. ‘Did I miss anything significant?’

Nelson felt needled at the idea he was being manipulated. ‘And what are
you
, sir? Are you anything more than another “long-term investment” of a rich and powerful man?’

Lobsang was oddly hesitant. Nelson was reminded, surprisingly, of some of his more theologically doubting parishioners. ‘In a way. In fact, literally,
yes
. Technologically speaking, I am a product of Black technologies, beginning with the gel that supports my consciousness. Legally speaking, I am a business partner, a co-owner of a Black Corporation subsidiary. Yet beyond that Douglas gives me great – well, untrammelled freedom. What
am
I? I
believe
that I am a reincarnated Tibetan motorbike repairman. I have clear if somewhat erratic memories of my former life . . . Some call me a deranged if highly intelligent supercomputer. But I
know
I have a soul. It’s the bit talking to you, correct? And I have dreams – do you believe that?’

‘That’s all rather muddled. Are you in need of counselling?’

Lobsang smiled ruefully. ‘Probably. But more specifically, I need – companions – in my quest.’

‘What quest?’

‘Simply put, I am researching the Long Earth phenomenon and all its implications for mankind, and I have come to understand I cannot do it by myself. I need different perspectives – such as yours, Reverend Azikiwe. Your unusual mix of the rational with the mystic . . . You can’t disguise that you too have always searched for truth. One only has to glance at your online activities to perceive that.’

Nelson grunted. ‘I suppose there’s no point in discussing my right to privacy.’

‘I have a mission for you. A quest, a journey across the Long Earth – and indeed across this one. We will be travelling to New Zealand, on Earth West number – well, the numbers scarcely matter, do they?’

‘
New Zealand?
And what will we be travelling to see?’

‘You saw the records of the
Mark Twain
expedition, I believe. Those that were made public at least.’

‘Yes . . .’

‘Did you come across references to the entity known as First Person Singular?’

Nelson stayed silent. But his curiosity was like a fish-hook in his flesh.

Lobsang shifted in his chair. ‘What do you say?’

‘It’s all a bit sudden, isn’t it? I need to think about it.’

‘The twain will be here tomorrow.’

‘Fine.’ He stood. ‘I’ll sleep in my vehicle overnight. That will give me time to consider.’

Lobsang stood too, smiling. ‘Take all the time you need.’

That night there was a thunderstorm, a real humdinger coming in from the west, and rain that made the Winnebago sound as if it were a target on a firing range.

Nelson lay in his bed listening to the barrage, and considering the world in general and his current situation in particular – including a sidebar on the nature of souls. It was strange how many people he’d met who had no use for orthodox Christianity yet nevertheless unthinkingly believed that they had a soul.

It was stranger still to think that perhaps you could
create
a soul. Or at least, create a body that could store a soul . . . Suddenly he was eager to begin this journey with Lobsang – if only to get to know Lobsang himself.

And yet there was residual suspicion. He remembered what Lobsang had said, somewhat enigmatically:
Actually you came to me, remember. You’re here because you solved the puzzle. Followed the clues
. . . True, but who had planted those clues in the first place?

The next morning he called to arrange pickup for the rental Winnebago.

At noon, the promised twain dropped soundlessly out of the sky. Nelson had travelled on twains many times before, but this one seemed rather spartan, a two-hundred-foot envelope over a compact, streamlined gondola.

The twain lowered a safety harness and pulled him up into the air. He was deposited in an area near the stern.

Once out of the harness he made his way through a cramped interior to a lounge cum galley that evidently doubled as an observation deck. He felt rather than heard motors start up.

And suddenly, through big picture windows, he saw he was in storm clouds, with rain battering the windows – and then hot sunshine that caused the hull to steam. Stepping already, then. He had taken anti-nausea pills, recommended by Lobsang, and despite his usual aversion to stepping felt little discomfort.

A short staircase led him to a door to a wheelhouse above the lounge – a door which appeared to be locked. As he tried the door handle a screen on the wall lit up, showing a smiling, shaven-headed visage. ‘Glad to have you aboard, Nelson!’

‘Glad to be here, Lobsang.’

‘I am, as you may guess, the pilot of this craft—’

‘
Which
Lobsang am I talking to?’

‘I invite you to understand that Lobsang is not simply a single presence. To call me ubiquitous doesn’t do the trick. Remember the movie
Spartacus
? Well, all of me are Spartacus. It does require regular downtime to synch us all,
me
all . . . You’re alone on the ship, but should you require a physical presence, for instance for medical reasons, I can activate an ambulant unit. We will make for New Zealand, stepping more or less continuously to find the most auspicious winds, world by world. Believe it or not, on a twain I like to do it the gentle way.’

‘I’ll try to relax and enjoy the ride, then.’

‘Do that. Relaxing was one thing Joshua Valienté never managed . . .’

‘Valienté certainly didn’t look very relaxed on the clip I found of him returning to Madison. A clip that led me to this point, in fact, to you. A clip you probably sent me yourself, right?’ He’d committed himself to this peculiar quest, but his resentment at the idea that he had been controlled, drawn into this situation, started to morph to anger. ‘How far back does your influence extend? I don’t suppose you had anything to do with establishing a chat group called the Quizmasters? . . . Were you, in fact, behind the entire trail of breadcrumbs that led me to you?’

Lobsang smiled. ‘From now on, no more tricks.’

‘I hope not. Nobody likes being manipulated, Lobsang.’

‘I don’t think of it as manipulation. I think of it as the setting out of an opportunity. It’s up to you whether you take that opportunity or not.’

‘Yesterday you called me an investment.’

‘That’s Douglas Black’s language, not mine. And remember, Nelson, as I pointed out,
you
came to
me
, in the end. Look, whether we end up working together or not, welcome aboard, and enjoy the ride. If nothing else, think of it as a vacation, if you like.’

‘Or an audition.’

‘If you will.’

Nelson smiled back. ‘But, Lobsang, who is auditioning whom?’

T
HE BEAGLE AND
the kobold approached, walking out of the dusty distance.

In their rough camp, Jansson and Sally stood, wary. As the creatures drew near, Jansson was very aware of an emptiness at her belt where her cop-issue Stepper box ought to be. The beagle, the dog-man, had confiscated it on the day they’d arrived. And so she, at least, without Sally’s aid, had been stuck here ever since, on this peculiar world with its strange inhabitants.

It was the first time they’d been visited in the week or so that they’d been here, since they’d been met in the Rectangles world and brought to this Earth a couple of dozen steps further West – to a world full of trolls, as Sally said she could feel, hear, as soon as they arrived. The beagles were waiting, they were told, for the return of some kind of ruler from . . . someplace else. It would be this ruler who would deal with the humans.

Jansson supposed it gave them time to get their bearings, for her to recover somewhat from the journey so far. Even that first jaunt, from Rectangles to here, had been a grotesque experience, because the beagle who had met them couldn’t step; it had had to be carried on the back of the squat, ugly humanoid Sally had called a ‘kobold’.

It had all been a rush of strangeness for them both. Even Sally, Jansson had learned, the great explorer of the Long Earth, had known nothing of this place before being brought here, lured by the gossip of the kobolds. To Sally this world had been just another Joker, just another desert world in a band of such worlds which, apparently, had lost much of their water through some calamity during the turbulent epoch of planetary formation. On such a world geological activity was going to be reduced, life restricted . . . That was the theory. In fact, as Jansson was learning, on many Jokers there were habitable refuges.

On this world there was an island of green, of moisture – from what the kobold had said, Sally had guessed it could be the size of Europe. Unnoticed by dismissive previous explorers, including Joshua and Sally, who had come rushing through this world too hastily. Unnoticed by the teams of researchers who had followed that first expedition to Rectangles: they had been Datum-raised workers with Datum-trained expectations, who thought in terms of one world thick, and never looked stepwise.

Well, here they were, in a world that hosted these dogs, these strange sapients – and, evidently, the trolls, in great concentrations.

For a long interval there was silence. The dog beasts seemed to like to stare, to study, to think before speaking; the grammar of their interactions was not like the human. Jansson and Sally just stood there, waiting. The kobold had a wounded arm, Jansson noticed now, roughly bandaged with a soiled rag. He cackled, evidently enjoying the moment.

The trolls who’d travelled with them didn’t seem bothered in the slightest. Mary sat on a knoll, humming a tune that was naggingly familiar to Jansson, while Ham happily raked the ground with his strong fingers, periodically popping grubs into his mouth. As if, Jansson thought, being approached by a bipedal dog wearing a ray gun happened every day.

The beagle stood before the women, eyes unblinking, that mobile wet nose quivering as, evidently, he
smelled
them. He must have been nearly seven feet tall, and he towered over both Jansson and Sally. But that, and the ray gun, weren’t the only reasons he was so intimidating, Jansson realized. There was something fluidly
animal
about him, a sense of honed perfection, right down to the way his fine fur coated his flesh in smooth streamlined layers. And there was intelligence in his eyes, a bright hard directed intelligence.

His teeth, eyes, ears, muzzle, nose were all very dog-like, even though, Jansson saw, the overall shape of his skull, with a bulging brow, might have been humanoid. His face sometimes looked human, sometimes wolf-like, like a shifting hologram. His ears were too sharp, his eyes too far apart, his grin too wide, his nose too flat with that blackened tip . . . And his eyes, yes, it was like looking into the eyes of a wolf. He made Jansson feel shabby, incomplete. But there was also something unreal about him, as if he were a movie CGI special effect. He just didn’t fit into Jansson’s cosy, parochial, Datum-nurtured consciousness.