The Long Utopia

The ground lurched, and Sally, lying there, felt herself being lifted up. As if she was a child in a stepwise footprint of Wyoming, and her father had scooped her up in his arms. The rise went on for seconds, pi

‘Up you get.’ Lobsang stood over her, hand outstretched.

Feeling very elderly, Sally accepted the help. But then she pushed her feet into her boots, grabbed her pack, her multi-pocketed jacket and her hat, and was ready for action once more.

Stan was already on his feet, gri

‘I think so,’ Lobsang said.

‘I don’t suppose there’s any point asking what’s for breakfast?’

Sally smiled. ‘It’s your show, Stan. Where do you want to be?’

He pointed upwards. ‘Top of Ma

‘Good,’ said Lobsang. ‘I’ll lead the way, I know the trail. But watch out for fissures. And if there’s another tremor like that big one, throw yourself flat …’

The view from the top of the hill was obscured by drifting smoke. Overhead, clouds streamed like a speeded-up movie effect. From up here Sally could see that the remaining buildings of New Springfield were shattered now, heaps of splintered timber, and along the line of Soulsby Creek a deep fissure had opened, revealing the glow of lava. The spilled water hissed and boiled.

Lobsang said, ‘Look at that. Our place was destroyed early, by the winds at the top of this hill. Now the rest of the town has gone.’

‘Shaken to pieces,’ Sally said. ‘I’m sorry, Lobsang – George.’

He shrugged.

‘Fire,’ said Stan. He pointed. ‘There, there, there …’

Whole swathes of the continent-spa

She pointed this out to Lobsang. ‘But there’s nowhere for them to flee.’

‘No. The fire’s spreading. Joining up. When it surrounds this hilltop we’ll be trapped—’

‘I suspect that will be academic, Lobsang.’

There was a tremendous groan from deep within the hillside, as if the rock itself was stressed beyond endurance. Again the ground lurched, dropping this time, and Sally stumbled, almost fell. Even when the drop was over the ground continued to shudder.

‘Down,’ Stan shouted. ‘Let’s sit down. That way at least we can’t be thrown over.’

They hurried to comply, sitting in their tight witches’ circle, on the shaking ground, holding hands firmly. Sally watched the clouds washing past the sun. She was convinced she could see the sun itself shift across the sky, visibly, so fast was the world’s rotation now.

‘One hour,’ Lobsang called.

‘What?’

‘When the day is reduced to a single hour. That’s when the rocks at the equator will be moving so fast they’ll effectively be in orbit, and the air will start leaking away – the final break-up will begin.’

‘But we won’t get to see that,’ Sally said. She squeezed Stan’s hand. ‘Not long now.’

‘Good,’ he said fiercely.

‘You have no regrets?’

‘I’m dying young,’ he said, his face screwed up against the dustladen wind. ‘I didn’t get the chance to say all I needed to say. I hope that my words will do no harm, in the future. I needed more time.’ He shook his head. ‘But I also needed to be here …’

Lobsang was staring. ‘Chak pa!’

Sally looked over his shoulder. She saw that as the tremors worsened, swathes of landscape at the bottom of the hill were breaking up, almost liquefying, and the surviving forest was sinking, square-mile chunks of it vanishing from sight in clouds of dust, as if it was falling through wet cardboard. The noise was all around them now, the howling wind, the roar of the fires, the rush of huge masses on the move. She remembered the little furball living in the fig, and she hoped it had had time to enjoy its last meal, had got back to its young before the end.

Stan looked at Sally. He had to shout to make himself heard. ‘What did Lobsang say?’

She gri

Lobsang was sitting stock still, as if hypnotized.

Sally grabbed his chin, pulled his head to face her. His eyes, an old man’s rheumy eyes nested in wrinkles, were blank, vague, as if he had succumbed at last to Long Earth Syndrome. ‘Go,’ she yelled. ‘Go! Before you lose yourself. Now!’ She slapped his face as hard as she could.

‘Ow!’ He raised his hand to his cheek. Then he gri

His eyes rolled back, and he tumbled stiffly over, a puppet with its strings cut.

And the ground dropped from beneath her.

Not by a few feet this time. It dropped out of reach, gone. For a heartbeat she still had hold of Stan’s hand. But he was torn from her grip, and they were whirled apart.

Then she was falling in mid-air, in the smoke and the ash, as if she were a moth over a campfire. The ground below was gone altogether. Her world was three-dimensional now, with only fire under her, and gushes of steam and white-hot sprays of what must be liquid rock, and around her trees and chunks of cooler rock falling as she was, and above her clouds that boiled. She was tiny, a mote in this immensity. But she had her hat jammed on her head, her pack on her back. And she saw, in the last instant, a human figure: Stan, it must be, flying as she was, and he was waving his arms and legs, starfishing in the air.

She thought back on her life, all that had happened to her, all she had seen, all she had done. She was Sally Linsay, pioneer of the Long Earth and the Long Mars, and she’d never pla

Flame licked. The moth was consumed.

55

ON ANOTHER WORLD, under a different sky – in another universe, whose distance from the Datum, the Earth of mankind, was nevertheless counted in the mundanity of human steps – Joshua Valienté lay beside his own fire.

And he gasped, suddenly feeling hollow, as if he’d been punched in the stomach.

56

WHEN LOBSANG HAD first met Joshua, he had downloaded a node of his consciousness into a soft drinks machine. It had been a playful gesture, a practical joke. Why not pull such stunts, if you could? But Lobsang had been young then. Comparatively.

The experience of having his mind housed in this small automated spacecraft was not unlike being stuck inside that vending machine.

The satellite, launched from the long-gone Brian Cowley, was no larger than a basketball, with very limited manoeuvring and self-repair capabilities. Lobsang felt tiny, diminished, crippled. But the craft was studded with sensors, its hull glistened with lenses, and small, wispy ante

And through these lenses and sensors, Lobsang was able to witness the death throes of a world.

This probe had been in synchronous orbit, more than twenty thousand miles high, and from out here Lobsang could see it all: a whole hemisphere at a glance, the planet like a dish held at arm’s length. The blanket of air was stained by smoke and steam. Immense auroral displays cupped the world at north and south poles, and Lobsang speculated about a tremendous distortion of the planetary magnetic field as it collapsed. Storms swirled, giant weather systems white and purple and sparking with lightning, lashing the turbulent oceans and pouring on to the land. Still Lobsang could make out the forms of the continents, just – he saw the Americas, North and South, sweep across the face of the globe as the world turned through its final, desperately accelerated rotations. But increasingly there was little difference between land and sea, for rivers of molten rock ran brightly along the spreading fractures of the ocean floors, and filled the tremendous crevices that were opening up on the continents. Briefly Lobsang was reminded of spacecraft views of Io, i