A Blink of the Screen

by Terry Pratchett

  On the wider issues, the leaders of the world met for several days and issued a fourteen-page document later known as the Sideways Doctrine. This fell into two parts. The first stated that Earth – the original one, the one with the atoms of Caesar, Christ and Mao – was sacrosanct, its boundaries inviolate.

  The second part of the Doctrine could be distilled into two rules.

  You get what you grab.

  You keep what you can.

  ‘What do they call themselves?’ said Linsay.

  ‘Forever France,’ said Valienté.

  ‘But this isn’t legally France. You can’t lay claim to country boundaries into infinity. Even the Jews didn’t do that.’

  ‘What you have to realize about madmen is that they’re mad. And there are some sane people behind them, I think.’

  ‘But what have they got to gain?’

  ‘Power. Money. Stuff like that.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Linsay. ‘A billion worlds …’

  ‘Seventeen.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My thirty seconds. You got as far as seventeen.’ Valienté pointed to the gun.

  Linsay looked at it as though seeing it for the first time.

  ‘Maybe I’ll trust you for a while,’ he said.

  ‘Great. Can I fix myself some food?’

  ‘I’ll do it. I don’t trust you that much.’

  There were fruits, small and sour. There was a stew, finely flavoured and rich with a meat that Valienté didn’t make guesses about …

  Something had certainly disliked this landscape. Valienté recalled the lush countryside around Forward Base, which overlooked a tributary of what was not the Rhône, just an identical river in exactly the same place.

  Here the landscape was yellow and brown, and the river had become a silt-filled valley with a line of scrubby trees that might be marking a trace of moisture. The air hummed with heat. He had been to Africa, but this wasn’t Africa. This was a European summer that hadn’t ended.

  ‘What was the Fist?’ he asked. ‘A comet?’

  Linsay looked at him speculatively.

  ‘Good thinking,’ he said. ‘Wrong, though. Nickel-iron asteroid. A big one. Really big. Bigger than the one that made the Canadian Shield. But it broke up before it hit. There’s only spatter around here, but it screwed up the weather for years. I think there’s a land bridge to Africa.’

  ‘When was all this?’

  ‘Ten, fifteen thousand years ago. I’ve been tracing it through the worlds around here. It gets worse. On this world it only grazed.’

  Valienté whistled. ‘Nasty,’ he said.

  ‘No, not really. Asteroids don’t think. It just happened.’

  ‘I mean—’

  ‘People are the worst thing to happen to a world,’ said Linsay. ‘We were an accident, like the asteroid. A billion to one chance.’

  ‘Oh, come on. They’ve found human artefacts on a lot of worlds around Earth. Flint tools, stuff like that.’

  ‘Barely human. They never had fire. No hearths found, anywhere. That’s the real picture: ten million dark planets, and one circle of firelight.’

  ‘Yeah, but we’re spreading out now.’

  ‘Like a fungus, yes.’

  Linsay was a left-ear person, Valienté realized. He had seen plenty of them: their eyes glazed slightly and they stared fixedly at your left ear, while their mouths spouted the truth about flying saucers, the great world conspiracy, or one-born-every-minute evangelism. Inside everyone was a left-ear person waiting to get out.

  He could see the detail of Linsay’s belt from here. It was bulkier than most, and had a funky, homemade look. But it wasn’t the sort of device a peasant would scratch together, out of parts glommed from old motor cars, following the instructions in a black-market broadsheet that was probably a poor photocopy of a bad photocopy. And quite possibly wrong anyway. Linsay’s belt looked as a production car would look if it had been bought by a hotshot automobile engineer.

  ‘You helped,’ he said softly. ‘You invented the belts.’

  ‘No. Lider did.’

  ‘Okay, but you perfected them. I’ve seen those early belts. It must have been like wearing a barrel. You isolated the principle. Then you just dropped out. Lider invented them, but you gave people the worlds.’

  ‘There’ve been lots of improvements since then.’

  ‘Improvements on your basic design, yes. But mainly just bells and whistles. Why so guilty?’

  ‘Guilty?’

  ‘Lurking up here like a cross between John Wayne and Captain Nemo, doing legwork for a little research outfit. What is this, a penance for turning evil mankind loose on the unsuspecting dimensions?’

  Linsay laughed, and lit a cigar – Valienté had already noted the little tobacco patch inside the stockade.

  ‘Mankind isn’t really evil. It hasn’t got enough dignity to be evil. I came up here for peace. You say I gave people the worlds. And what did they do with them? Their gimcrack economies cracked under the strain, they squabbled, there were territorial wars – when there was land without limit – there was actual starvation, there was … oh, hell. You know.’

  ‘It’s getting better.’

  ‘Temporarily.’

  Linsay stood up and moved over to the stockade gate, swinging it open. There were indistinct shapes under the distant trees.

  ‘Those are the guys I feel sorry for,’ he said.

  ‘The baboons?’

  ‘They hit a turning point after the Fist hit. They’re evolving fast. But they don’t stand a chance. By the time they’ve invented agriculture – no, probably by the time they’ve acquired fire – they’ll be slaves. Or more likely wiped out, because if there’s one thing you can say about them, it’s that they’re vicious little sods.’

  ‘I know it.’

  ‘I like them.’

  The night was purple velvet, alive with insects and spiky with invisible jiggers that bit and stung every exposed inch of flesh. Linsay normally kept a fire piled high. Its light was distantly mirrored as two tiny red points in the eyes of Big Yin, watching from his thorny treetop.

  The baboon remembered, but dimly, because memory was still a novelty among the tribes. There had been a time-not-now, before the spiky trees with no leaves had been put up around the camp, when a younger Big Yin had crept towards the tent. There had been a shape lying on the ground-higher-than-ground inside, but as the baboon had crept closer it had vanished. And then there had been a sound behind him, and as he turned there was an explosion of sound and light …

  If Big Yin had been a human he might have wondered why the man had aimed the gun to scare, not kill. If he had been an animal he would have hightailed it away and never returned. But he was no longer one and not yet the other, and the brain behind the red-lit eyes entertained a mixture of emotions that he would not be able to name for at least three million years. So he waited.

  The woman opened her eyes. She had in fact been conscious for over an hour, Linsay knew. He admired the self-control.

  She sat up slowly.

  ‘Where’s this?’

  ‘You don’t sound French,’ said Linsay.

  She hesitated. If her head had been transparent, one would have been able to see the gears mesh.

  ‘I see,’ she said.

  She was small, and on the skinny side. That was an advantage for a mover – less weight meant more speed. She didn’t look like a mass murderer, but Linsay recalled that mass murderers never did.

  ‘Like to hear my side?’ she said.

  ‘I know it,’ said Linsay. ‘You were a security guard at Forward Base. You were on duty – why didn’t you get poisoned?’

  ‘It was in the water. He put it in the purification plant. But I only had milk and sandwiches.’

  ‘Okay. And then?’

  ‘He was off duty. That meant he was able to sneak up to the spring and tip the stuff in. A nerve poison, I think. He came down a few hours later. He didn’t expect to see me, but I�
��d got some extra batteries together and I snuck up behind him and I would have got him if he hadn’t turned. And then there was the chase – I expect he’s told you about that.’

  There was a snort from Valienté, who was sitting just inside the tent. Moths did Zimmerman turns around the solitary, low-wattage bulb overhead.

  Linsay sat back.

  ‘You could have jumped him.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Moved down one world, gone to his position and jumped back behind him. Don’t they still call it that these days? It was a favourite with muggers.’

  She grinned, weakly.

  ‘You mean upducked him? The Base is on piles. You can’t rely on getting the levels right.’

  Linsay nodded. If the levels weren’t right the minimal safeties in the belt wouldn’t allow you to come out, for example, knee deep in concrete. Even a basic belt would only allow you to move if there was nothing at your destination. Air didn’t count – air got out of the way quick enough.

  ‘Well, now,’ he said. ‘Neat, isn’t it?’

  ‘You don’t believe all that?’ shouted Valienté. ‘I’ve been—’

  Linsay ignored him. He looked at the security card.

  ‘Says here your name is Anna Shea. How long have you been in this business?’

  ‘A year.’

  ‘Not long.’

  Shea nodded. But that was how it was. Anyone with any expertise in anything was rushed into service. Mankind was eating worlds faster than he could digest them. What he normally wanted was matches and machetes, but security guards were hot property in a civilization where nothing was secure.

  ‘Tell me about Forever France,’ said Linsay.

  She glanced from him to Valienté.

  ‘What do you think you already know?’ she demanded.

  ‘They’re fanatics. They won’t suffer anyone else to colonize a sideways France.’

  ‘He tell you that?’

  ‘Yes. But it fits. I recall five, ten years ago, there was all kinds of weird nationalism.’

  ‘Well, not now.’ She stood up, noting how Linsay’s barely perceptible movement revealed the pistol by the chair. Her pistol. She’d been told about him. He must be a madman – he could have been richer than Croesus. But he’d left it all, and hidden up here in the high meggas.

  ‘It was true in the old days,’ she said. ‘Life’s tougher now. There’s still some jockeying among politicians, though. That’s what lies behind Forever France. They’re just mercenaries. A political lever. Everyone can deplore them, but at bottom they’re useful to have around. You know what I mean? The politicians can have them say “Of course we would not dream of using violence, but unfortunately public feeling is running so high that—”, and so on.’

  Valienté laughed bitterly. ‘Yeah, sure. You’re probably right.’

  ‘Ask him about Qom 23,’ said Shea.

  ‘I don’t know anything about Qom 23 … except what I heard,’ Valienté ended, slightly lamely.

  ‘He led it,’ she went on relentlessly. ‘Twenty of them upducked a bunch of peaceful colonists. I can’t even remember why it was supposed to be important, but what they did was, they put them all in—’

  ‘Qom 23 was a massacre?’ said Linsay.

  ‘And the sea’s a puddle.’ She spoke as if reading a script inside her eyeball. ‘I can’t even recall who financed it, the Middle Easts were a mess anyway, but what they did at Qom 23 was supposed to be a warning. Because all they left was—’

  ‘Why are you listening to this?’ Valienté demanded.

  ‘I don’t know what he told you his name was, but his real name – at least, as far as we know – is Martin Venhaus. He’s got a scar right down his back, starting at the left armpit. He’s skilled with most hand weapons, and nearly as ruthless without them. He—’

  Valienté looked up. Linsay’s gaze was as penetrating as an auger.

  Both men moved. But Linsay’s hand was first. It didn’t have so far to go. The gun came up smoothly and Valienté waited for the shot. He knew there would be impact, and numbness. No pain yet. Perhaps no pain ever.

  It didn’t come.

  But the pistol stayed up.

  Curled up round his gun in the tent that night, Linsay dreamt of falling. Then he woke up, and it was true. But there was grass a few feet below him, and he landed hard but unhurt.

  Overhead the cold stars sleeted their light through air untainted with the merest hint of pollution. Creatures of the night chattered and roared in the trees down by the dry river. It was as cold as a tropical night can be, just before sunrise.

  Linsay was up and running, moving swiftly to the nearest white painted marker post which would place him more or less in the centre of the compound.

  Time was when he’d thought this was all he needed. Just rig a simple beam inside the tent each night so that anything moving would trigger the belt unit, sending him back one world where a network of crude markers would allow him to position himself aright so that he could flip back and jump the intruder.

  Two leopards and one visit from Big Yin had discouraged him. Stockades were less taxing. The baboon had gibbered, when Linsay had levelled the gun a foot from it and fired, but it hadn’t run far: it had stopped and looked back hard …

  Tonight’s intruder must have come from inside the stockade. Linsay wondered which of them it was. Then he skidded, trod on a stone that skittered away, went down heavily, awkwardly, felt a snap, screamed, punched the belt.

  Back at the stockade, dawn was yellow-green and bright, with a fresh breeze blowing off the brackish reedbeds that were the Mediterranean. It stirred the papers on Linsay’s rough desk. They were black with tiny handwriting. Making paper was a time-consuming and messy job. A loner in the high meggas conserved paper like a medieval scholar, covering both sides thickly.

  There was also a Mellanier map of the local Earths, its finely printed concentric circles almost hidden by the red dots and shading with which Linsay had plotted the progress of the Fist.

  Shea peered at it, noting how the asteroid – no, the asteroids, because many Fists had pummelled the soft earth – had done more and more damage in each dimension. She had been too busy hunting and being hunted to notice it in the past dozen worlds, but even so it must have made the planet ring like a gong when it hit.

  Linsay watched her, the gun clutched at his side, his mind a grey fog through which the pain of his ankle pierced like tiny lightning flashes. There were only a limited number of Detril painkillers in his kit. He had already used a third of them.

  She looked up. ‘You ought to let me look at that,’ she said. ‘Paranoia is all very well. Gangrene is worse.’

  ‘It’s not that bad.’

  ‘Sue your face for slander, then.’

  Linsay shifted, and the white spear of agony shot through his leg. It must have shown.

  ‘Look,’ said Shea. ‘Even I can see the blood pooling. What have you got to lose? I’ve had training, I could—’

  ‘No!’

  ‘You know why I came to your tent last night?’

  ‘He said you’d got a knife.’

  ‘He would, wouldn’t he? I came to persuade you – by any means necessary. You won’t listen to the voice of reason. I wondered if you would listen to … older voices.’

  He made the mistake of laughing. Even laughing hurt.

  And it wasn’t well received.

  ‘If you’re so sure,’ she snapped, standing up. ‘I could kill you now, couldn’t I?’ She pointed to Valienté, dozing curled up beside the tent.

  ‘He couldn’t stop me and maybe you wouldn’t be able to,’ she snarled. ‘You’re running out of time, keeping us here. You’ve got the gun now, but how long will you be able to aim properly? You’ll have to trust someone then – and maybe I won’t be listening.’

  And then Valienté was up and running, running into the tent and then out the other side, running strongly, one of the belts now in his hand, out through the open gateway into the
waist-high grass.

  Linsay struggled up, leant against the table, raised the rifle in a shaky movement, took instant aim and fired. The distant man jerked and fell.

  Linsay half fell back into the chair, his face grey with pain.

  ‘I would have said it was you,’ he said. ‘He seemed too … simple. I’d really made up my mind it was you. If the damn fool had got the belt round him he could have moved out instead of running. I wonder why he didn’t?’

  ‘You scare people,’ she said. ‘That’s why. Living out here drains something from people. You’re too far away from everyone else, I guess. Still, you made the right choice of who to trust. Give me the gun.’

  He didn’t slacken his grip. She moved closer.

  ‘I’ve got to go and see,’ she said, a new note in her voice. ‘I don’t give a damn if he’s dead, but if you only winged him he might be back. Give me the gun.’

  A realization seemed to cross her mind as she looked at his hand still tight on the gun, the aim unwavering.

  ‘Oh shit,’ she said, and kicked his ankle.

  He made one movement, even as the gun went flying from his hand. He hit the belt.

  He rose into consciousness again maybe a few minutes later, lying in the grass. Straining down he could see the display on the belt buckle – plus 3 – three worlds further up.

  He’d taken the batteries out of the other belts, and done some minimal stripping down. It might take her a few more minutes to work out what he’d done and put it all together and come after him.