The Long Utopia

‘You’re right to pick us up on our tone, though,’ Bowring said to Marina. ‘I apologize. I didn’t mean any disrespect.’

‘And in fact the best way to honour this dying world is to cherish it in its mortal agony.’

Sally pulled a face at Joshua. ‘Strikes me that this Lobsang’s time in the wilderness has burned all the fun out of him, and left behind all the bits I could never stand. All that cosmic destiny stuff. Pompous ass.’

Joshua shrugged. ‘Lobsang is Lobsang.’

They rose now into a layer of murky grey air, so that their view of the fire-scarred green below was obscured. Joshua heard the engines’ tone shift, adjusting.

Bowring said, ‘We’re rising into a layer of volcanic ash. The air’s full of it now.’

Jha said, ‘There’s no need to be concerned about the ship. Since Yellowstone all Navy twain engines have been fitted with ash filters. We could fly in this crap for weeks.’

Bowring said, ‘We calculate that the bulge at the equator is now around fifty miles, which is the thickness of the crust under the continents. So now we’re seeing quakes, volcanoes, on land as well as under the sea.’ He gri

Oliver asked, ‘How far is this all going to go?’

‘Well, we can’t tell. This isn’t some natural phenomenon we’re studying. Everything we observe is a consequence of the purposeful action of these creatures, the beetles. And the end state of this world will be determined, not simply by natural processes we can predict, but by the beetles’ intentions.’

Marina snapped, ‘But what do you think those intentions are? You’re supposed to be the experts. You must have some ideas. Do we just watch as they smash everything up?’

Ken Bowring reached over and touched her arm. ‘We have tried, to do something. At New York. We’re going there; you’ll see. But you might not find it much consolation.’ He spoke more widely. ‘Folks, we’ll take our time on this trip. We’ll be monitoring, surveying as we go, but not setting down unless absolutely necessary. We expect to be over the New York City footprint in twelve hours, no earlier – that is, about this time “tomorrow”, given the truncation of this world’s day.’

Jha gave them a professional smile. ‘Which makes my a

‘Christ,’ Sally snarled. ‘A cocktail reception. What is this, the Love Boat?’

Joshua said, ‘Come on, Sally. Relax for once. Even you can’t step away from mid-air. Have a bath. Drink a cocktail.’

She glared at him. ‘Maybe I’ll make a cocktail of your face, Valienté. Hey, you, Ensign Crusher! You have a gym on this tub? I feel like pumping some iron …’

46

THE SHORT DAY ended quickly.

When the dark came, Joshua skipped the cocktails and tried to nap. But everything felt wrong, out of step.

Before the dawn, still in the dark, he returned to the observation lounge. A group had gathered before the window, George and Lobsang, Agnes, and the two Next, Marvin and Stella Welch. Or perhaps they’d just stayed here.

Stella smiled at Joshua. ‘Restless, your friend Sally, isn’t she?’

‘You got that right. Always been the same. But then she grew up stepping.’

‘Yes. With a remarkable native ability.’

Joshua looked at Stella curiously. Somehow he hadn’t expected the Next to be interested in any of the individual people around them – the non-Next, the ‘dim-bulbs’, as Paul Spencer Wagoner and his buddies had always called them. Next always seemed far more interested in each other. Yet here these two were.

As if reflecting that thought, George said now, ‘It’s good of you to have come here. It was my idea to summon you.’

Joshua had been surprised about that, considering how Lobsang seemed to feel about the Next’s supposed abandonment of him. Maybe he wanted to use this situation to make some kind of contact. But his argument had been strong, as he’d explained it to Joshua. ‘What if these silver beetles do find a way to spread across the Long Earth? The Next, as inhabitants of the Long Earth, are just as vulnerable to the consequences as the rest of us …’ Of course the Next had come.

But Joshua was curious. ‘How did you summon them, umm, George?’

‘I just spread the word. I posted news on Low Earth sites. Sent messages to locations associated with the Next – for example the naval base on Hawaii where several of the Next children were held for studying. Nelson helped with that. Oh, and I also used the prison facility where the ringleader of the rogue group who hijacked the airship Armstrong is still being held – David?’ He turned to Marvin and Stella. ‘I suspected I only had to raise awareness of this issue and you would notice. For, although you claim to have withdrawn to your enclave hidden somewhere in the Long Earth – and I myself was responsible for sealing off Happy Landings to help cover that trail – I never had any doubt that you would keep watch over the human worlds. How could you not?’

Stella said, ‘Of course it is in our interests too to resolve this situation safely. But, as far as I know, this issue of the silver beetles is the first time any human agency has actively asked us to intervene, to help.’

The older Lobsang gri

Stella nodded. ‘I agree, that is fascinating. Your extraordinary story, Lobsang, George – your claims of reincarnation—’

George said, ‘In the end the legal verdict contained some wisdom. If an entity is capable of pleading for the right to exist, then it surely has that right. Humans may be a lot dumber than you – why, they’re a lot dumber than me—’

‘But they are capable of wisdom,’ Stella said. ‘Oh, yes, we know. Many of the Next owe their lives to that very fact.’

Lobsang glanced at George. ‘You must not think that we two are identical. My brother and I. Our experiences are quite different. With First Person Singular I have contemplated the very large, the infinite. Whereas you—’

George sighed. ‘At New Springfield I have explored the viewpoint of a single individual. A human. It’s what I wanted, what I designed myself to be. But I knew that this crisis with the beetles required a superhuman perspective. It demanded the old Lobsang. And so I called for you, fortuitously a survivor of earlier iterations.’

‘It was wise,’ Lobsang said.

Stella said, ‘We have similar philosophical divergences among our thinkers in the Grange. Some – like me – consider the grand scheme, the bigger picture. The destiny of life in the universe. Whereas others focus on the small, the infinitesimal. We have a man who has named himself Celandine—’

Marvin clapped George on the back. ‘There you go. You think the way we do. I heard you saying you were distressed when the Next cleared out of the human worlds without bringing you along. But perhaps you have some of the Next in you after all.’

And George smiled at this praise, almost shyly.

‘Oh, I can’t stand this,’ Agnes muttered, and she stalked away.

George, talking to the Next, didn’t even seem to notice she’d gone.