The Long Mars

by Pratchett, Terry; Baxter, Stephen

  ‘Not only that, there may be a nascent organization behind it all.’

  ‘An organization? Doing what?’

  ‘My colleague Nelson Azikiwe has an account of an English child – his family are refugees in Italy now – another disturbingly bright child, but this one terrorized by fearful locals. There had even been mutterings of witchcraft. His parents, it seems, were approached by another, a teenager. They were offered a scholarship at some kind of residential college, such was the teenager’s story, aimed at exceptionally bright children. The parents’ account was vague, but they were struck by the eerie calmness of the youngster, the effortless way he seemed to dispose of their objections to his plan.’

  ‘Did they let their son go?’

  ‘With some teenager? Of course not. Although, Nelson says, he almost convinced them. Nelson predicts the next approach will be through a front, a more reassuringly elderly adult . . .’

  ‘If this is all so, what do you want to do about it, Lobsang?’

  ‘If this nebulous entity exists, if some new kind of human being is emerging in our world, I want to meet it. Talk to it. I see myself as something of a guardian of mankind, Joshua. This new entity may be reaching the end of its own long childhood. As it rises up to adulthood, I want to make sure it means us no harm.’

  ‘And that, I imagine, is where you want my help. Finding these new people.’

  ‘You and a number of others. Ah . . . It is time.’

  ‘For what?’

  All the display screens cleared down. ‘Look out of the windows.’

  For some time the ground had been steadily rising, but it was a fractured ground, ash-blanketed, strewn with immense rocks. It was as if, Joshua thought, they were following debris rays towards a great lunar crater.

  Quite abruptly the ground fell away, as if they had sailed over a cliff. Joshua looked down to see a landscape like some gloomy artist’s palette: swirls of reddish rock, lava pools that bubbled languidly, sulphur-yellow scum beneath wraiths of steam. His view was obscured by heat shimmer, and he heard switches being thrown in the gondola’s air conditioning unit, as suddenly, after hours of fighting off arctic chill, now it strove to exclude the sudden warmth.

  And when he looked ahead, beyond the curdled plain below, he saw a kind of cliff face, very far off, blued by the mist of distance, shimmering in heat haze.

  Lobsang said, ‘This is the caldera, Joshua. The crater. So big you can’t really see that it’s circular from here. The ground, below, is half a mile down – we’re above the collapsed magma chamber. And the caldera’s far wall is over forty miles away. We were unlucky actually.’

  ‘Unlucky?’

  ‘The supervolcano erupts every half million years or so. Some eruptions are worse than others – in some, more magma is released, more damage is done. This was the worst for two million years. The geologists were able to tell us that much, even though they didn’t see it coming. And the result lies around you.’

  Joshua had no words.

  ‘Impressive, isn’t it? Even to God, it must be quite a sight. Even to me . . .’ His voice wavered oddly.

  Joshua felt a flicker of concern. ‘Lobsang? Are you all right?’

  Lobsang didn’t answer. But he said, more uncertainly, ‘I don’t ask this of you lightly, Joshua. To travel again, I mean. I have become more aware of the risks I ask you to take when stepping into the Long Earth. Any of us.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Have you considered what would happen were you to die out there? I’m referring to the fate of your immortal soul. Can a discarnate soul cross stepwise between the worlds? If you were alone – in a world in which there were no other humans to host your spirit – you might not be able to reincarnate as a human at all.’

  Joshua had come across this kind of idea before, mostly from the sort of earnest swivel-eyed zealot who waited to harangue you at twain terminals. It was mildly shocking to hear Lobsang saying this. For all Lobsang’s claims about his origin, that he was the soul of a Tibetan motorcycle repairman reincarnated into a gel-substrate supercomputer, they had never delved too deeply into the mystical side of that proposition. But Joshua thought of the small Buddhist shrine tucked into a corner of the airship. Perhaps Lobsang was changing, reaching for his own deeper roots.

  ‘I take it you’ve been studying this reincarnation business?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you? And I’ve had a lot of encouragement from Agnes in such matters. Buddhism, you know, is essentially a way of working with the mind. By developing the basic potential of the mind you can achieve inner peace, compassion and wisdom. All of us can do this. But I am nothing but mind, Joshua. How could I fail to be drawn to such ideas, even without my cultural background? As for ideas of reincarnation, I’ve gone into them deeply. I am familiar with over four thousand texts on the subject, besides my own experience.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Also I have been counselled by Padmasambhava, an old friend in my previous life, now the abbot of a monastery in Ladakh. Which is in India, just beyond the Tibetan border, and a place where the old wisdom has been preserved despite the Chinese occupation. Although Padmasambhava is himself a shareholder in a Chinese logging consortium . . . I am not losing my mind, you know,’ said Lobsang severely.

  ‘I didn’t say you were. But it’s odd to hear you express self-doubt, Lobsang—’

  ‘I think I remember my death.’

  That stopped Joshua in his tracks. ‘What death? You mean—’

  ‘In Lhasa. My last human death. And my reincarnation.’

  Joshua thought that over. ‘So was it like when Doctor Who regenerates?’

  ‘No, Joshua,’ Lobsang said with strained patience. ‘It was not like when Doctor Who regenerates. I remember it, Joshua. I think. The lamentations of the women, in the kitchen, when the chikhai bardo came, the moment of my death. The Tibetans believe that the soul lingers in the dead body. So for forty-nine days the Book of the Dead is read over the corpse, to guide the soul through the bardos, the phases of existence that bridge life and death.

  ‘I remember the reading by my friend Padmasambhava. Even the Book itself, I looked down on it from outside my body – the sheets printed from hand-carved blocks, held between wooden covers. I was dead, I was told. Everybody who came before me had died. That I had to recognize my own true nature, the radiant, pure light of continuing consciousness inside the heavy physical body; and with that recognition, liberation would be instantaneous.

  ‘But after twenty-one days of chanting, if liberation hasn’t come, you enter the sidpa bardo, the bardo of rebirth. You become like a body without substance. You can roam the whole world, tirelessly, seeing all, hearing all, knowing no rest. Yet you are haunted by images from your former life.

  ‘Now think about that, and look at me, Joshua: I am spread across all the worlds of the Long Earth; I see all, I hear all. What does that sound like but the bardo of rebirth? But to pass on you have to abandon all you have known in this life. How can I do that?

  ‘Sometimes I fear I am trapped in the sidpa bardo, Joshua. That I am trapped between death and rebirth – that I have never, in fact, been reincarnated, reborn, at all.’ He looked at Joshua with eyes that were dark in the light of a volcano sky. ‘Perhaps even you are a mere projection of my own ego.’

  ‘Knowing your ego, I wouldn’t be at all surprised.’

  ‘And it gets worse. What of the future? What if I can’t die? If I have to wait for the sun to fade before I am released, who then will be left to read the Book of the Dead over me?’

  ‘Look, Lobsang – this doesn’t sound like you. You never did metaphysical doubt. What if this is a false memory? Suppose somebody, some enemy, has uploaded a virus that’s whispering into your gel-based head . . . Maybe it’s just that kid who Agnes hired to test you. Isn’t that more likely?’

  But Lobsang wasn’t listening. He seemed unable to listen.

  The twain shuddered in the turbulent air, a mote above the lunar immensit
y of the Yellowstone caldera.

  10

  THERE WAS NO GREAT space-programme-type fuss before Sally Linsay’s journey to Mars: no bone-crunching physical training or survival exercises, no hours in simulators, no photographs on the cover of Time magazine. It did take a couple of weeks for Willis, Frank Wood and Sally to get their act together, however. There were briefings, which Sally mostly skipped, almost on principle . . .

  And then, at last, astonishingly, Sally found herself in what Raup called a white room: a suiting-up room, for astronauts.

  With the assistance of a couple of female attendants in jumpsuits bearing Boeing logos, Sally had to strip off, was given a rub-down with alcohol, and then put on soft white underclothes. Throughout the flight she would have to wear a belt of some kind of medical telemetry equipment around her chest: the corporate rules of GapSpace, Inc. Then came the spacesuit itself, a kind of heavy coverall of some tough orange fabric, with a rubbery, airtight inner layer. You climbed into this backwards through a gap in the stomach, then zipped it all up at the front. Sally groused her way through this, and through a pressure test when she had to screw on her helmet and the suit was pumped so full of air it made her ears pop.

  But one of the technicians, a humorous-looking older woman, told her to cherish her suit. ‘You’re going to be walking on Mars in this, honey,’ she said. ‘And it’s more than likely that it will save your life en route. You’re going to come to love her. Based on good Russian technology, by the way – decades of experience have gone into the design of that garment. Look, if you like, we can even sew a little name tag on the chest for you—’

  ‘Don’t bother.’

  As she was led out of the white room, the techs made her sign her name on the back of a door already covered with hundreds of signatures. ‘Just a tradition,’ the tech said.

  Outside she joined her father, Frank Wood and Al Raup, all suited as she was. Then, with help from the techs, they all bundled into a compact ‘stepper shuttle’, a cone-shaped spacecraft not unlike an Apollo command module. Raup was to pilot this craft, delivering the Mars crew to the Gap. They were in four seats jammed in side by side, with Raup in the left-hand commander’s seat, Willis and Frank in the middle, Sally to the right. The craft had a surprisingly complex-looking instrument panel, most of it in front of Raup, but with basic duplication in front of the others. They wore their spacesuits and helmets but with the visors open. There was a hum of fans, a smell of just-cleaned carpet; it was like being inside a freshly valeted car, Sally thought. Small windows revealed blue English sky.

  And a toy spaceman dangled from a chain over Willis’s head.

  Sally flicked the toy with a gloved finger. ‘What’s this, Raup? Another dumb astronaut tradition?’

  ‘No. An essential indicator. You’ll see. Well, we’re good to go. You guys strapped in? Three, two, one—’

  There was no more ceremony than that. He didn’t even touch any controls.

  But Sally felt the subtle lurch of a step.

  Suddenly the sky outside the windows was black. That spaceman started to float upwards, his chain slack.

  And the shuttle’s rocket booster lit up, shoving them hard in the back. They were all strapped tightly into their couches, but even so Sally was startled by the sensation. Maybe she should have paid more attention to the briefings.

  The rocket burst lasted twenty seconds, perhaps less. Then it died. Once again the spaceman hung loose on his chain.

  And then the weightlessness really cut in. To Sally it felt as if she were falling, as if her internal organs were rising inside her. She swallowed hard.

  Willis, sitting silently, showed no reaction. Frank Wood whooped.

  There were knocks and bangs, and the craft swivelled with tight jerks.

  Al Raup produced a flask, squirted out water that hung in the air, a shimmering globe, and then closed his mouth around it. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘The noise you hear is the firing of our attitude rockets, and the manoeuvring system. The shuttle is taking itself in for its docking with the Brick Moon.’

  The Brick Moon, an artificial satellite station-keeping in the position of the vanished Earth in its orbit, was the Houston of the Gap, a constant comms presence for space travellers, a place where some basic research was going on, and a link to home. They were to stay there for only a few hours, before boarding their Mars ship, the Galileo.

  ‘Everything’s automated,’ Raup said. ‘But because I know some of you paid no attention whatsoever to the briefings, I draw your attention to this big fat red button here.’ He pointed.

  ‘You understand we’re dealing with the rotation of the Earth here. I mean, the Earth you just stepped off of. When you thought you were standing still on Earth you were already moving through space, being dragged around with the surface of the world – at a speed of hundreds of miles an hour at the latitude of GapSpace. When you step between worlds you keep that momentum, and without compensating you’d be flung away through space. The first time you stepped into the Gap, incidentally, Sally, aboard that airship, it’s lucky you stepped back as quickly as you did before getting thrown around too far. Here we have to shed that velocity, so the stepper shuttle burns its rockets, and brings us to a halt relative to the Brick Moon.

  ‘But if we ever want to go back we need to accelerate again, to match the Earth’s spin. OK? Otherwise you’d be like a leaf in a thousand-miles-per-hour gale. So if all else fails, if I’m in capacitated and you’re out of touch with the Brick Moon, press that button and the systems will take you home. Comprende?’

  ‘Clear enough,’ Willis said.

  ‘The other likely contingencies which we may hit in the shuttle are a drop in air pressure – just close up your suits. There are sick bags in front of you, airline style. Or you may need to use the bathroom. We do have a john in here, which folds out of the wall.’ He grinned evilly. ‘But your suits do have diapers. My advice is, if you can’t hold it in, let it out—’

  ‘Just get on with it,’ Sally said coldly.

  ‘Everything’s tooty. Just relax and enjoy the ride . . .’

  With a speed that was surprising, given Sally’s memories of TV images of stately dockings at the International Space Station, the stepper shuttle closed in for a rendezvous with the Brick Moon. The station was a cluster of spheres, the whole about two hundred feet across, each component sphere brightly lettered A to K. The station-keeping satellite had been hastily assembled from prefabricated sections in brick and concrete, doped to withstand the vacuum and filled with airtight pods. Sally had been amazed to learn, during the briefings, that troll labour had been used to manufacture the concrete.

  In zero gravity, they scrambled out of the shuttle and through hatches. To Sally the open hatches, surfaces that had been exposed to space, smelled oddly of hot metal.

  And on the other side of the entrance hovered a worker, looking strangely like a clone of Al Raup, who handed them bread and a salt dip as they drifted through. ‘Old cosmonaut traditions,’ Raup said. ‘The Russians always got more into this stuff than we ever did.’

  Inside the Brick Moon, the big chambers were cluttered with stuff: various kinds of equipment, bundles of bedding and clothing, bags of garbage, bales of what looked like unopened supplies. Every wall surface seemed to be covered in Velcro; more equipment clung there, roughly shoved out of the way.

  Sally bounced around, shoving off the walls, getting used to movement in these conditions. Without gravity all these curved-wall compartments felt roomy, despite the clutter. She had a feeling adjusting back to gravity would be a lot tougher.

  There was a constant clatter of fans and pumps. Sally saw loose bits of paper drifting in the air currents towards grimy-looking grilles. After five minutes in the dusty air, she started sneezing violently. Dust, hanging in the air, failing to settle out without gravity.

  She glimpsed only a few other people in this station during their short visit. Most people just passed through this place, exchanging one specialized c
raft for another, but there was some dedicated work going on here which Raup showed them perfunctorily. New kinds of materials were being tested, many of them ceramic composites; panels of the stuff were pushed out of airlocks to be tested in the conditions of space. There was a programme of medical testing, of studies of the effects of zero gravity on the human body – repeating studies that dated back to the mid twentieth century and the first spaceflights, but with much more sophisticated gear.

  And there were some more intriguing, less obvious projects: on the growth of crystals in the vacuum, on the development of plant and animal life in zero gravity. Sally surprised herself by being utterly charmed by a bank of bonsai trees she found growing in reflected sunlight, vivid colours against the bleak concrete walls.

  And from the windows of the Brick Moon, the Galileo could be seen to hang in empty space.

  Their Mars ship was unprepossessing, just two tin cans separated by a long metallic strut, with a single flaring rocket nozzle at the base of one cylinder, a snub-nosed lander aircraft piggybacking on the side of the other, and sprawling solar-cell wings. The spinal strut was adorned with spherical fuel tanks swathed in thick silvered insulation foam; they looked like huge pearls. There was fuel enough, Sally learned, to push the Galileo to Mars and back again. The trip each way would take nine or ten weeks.

  The lander was called the MEM, officially the Mars Excursion Module. The upper cylinder to which it clung was the hab module, where the three of them would live for the ride out to Mars, and back. The cladding on the hull would protect them from radiation and meteorites. Light gleamed from windows cut through the cladding, bright and cosy and warm.

  They spent twelve hours in the Brick Moon. They stripped out of their pressure suits, which were checked over; they were put through brisk medical tests by an onboard doctor; they had a meal, of paste from tubes and pots, and coffee squirted from bulbs. They all used the bathroom while they were out of their suits.