The Long Cosmos (4 page)

‘It's trippy comber bullshit is what it is. And it's not recognized in Aegis law. When it comes to inheritance of property—'

‘We don't have any property to speak of, Dad. That's kind of the point.'

‘You seem to have made a conscious choice not to have had a kid of your own.'

‘And take part in that disgusting old stepper mass-breeding experiment?'

‘It needn't be like that—'

‘
You yourself
were the product of a planned match, Dad. And look how well
that
turned out. Your mother dead at childbirth, your father a sexual predator and a bum. A centuries-old conspiracy to selectively breed natural steppers! Things like that don't just fade away. And look at what it unleashed on mankind – all the destabilization of Step Day.'

‘We wouldn't be sitting here if not for that, Rod. Look –
I
was never approached. So the Fund didn't seem to be functioning in my generation, did it? And certainly your mother and her family had nothing to do with any of that. Your own uncle was a full-on phobic.'

‘Bullshit. You can be the carrier of a gene without it necessarily expressing in you. Oh, whatever. For better or worse, this line of the Valienté family, at least, ends with me, along with our tainted genome.'

‘Fine,' Joshua snapped. He looked at his son in the mayor's chair, stiff, not remotely at his ease, as if he was about to light out of there at any moment. ‘You damn youngsters think you invented it all.'

Rod stood up. ‘I think we're done here, don't you? Oh, here, I brought you a gift. Sofia's idea.'

He handed over a slim case. Inside were lightweight sunglasses. Joshua glanced through them and squinted. ‘These are prescription.'

‘Yeah.
Your
prescription. Found it in Mom's files.'

‘Don't need no spectacles—'

‘Sure you do. Oh, use them or not. So long, Dad.'

And he walked out. Joshua just stood there, holding the glasses, surrounded by his orderly rows of travel goods, for an unmapped time.

Then there was another knock at the door.

Sister Agnes.

4

A
GNES, PRACTICAL AS
ever, got to work packing Joshua's bag. ‘I remember helping you with this kind of thing when you were a boy. Well, it was a case of you showing me how it was done. Spare trousers at the bottom, soft stuff against your back, knives and guns and other life-saving gear at the top.' She accepted a mug of tea, though she pulled face at the cleanliness, or otherwise, of the mugs. ‘Billy Chambers always was a scruffy boy.'

‘You didn't come all this way out just to see me, did you?'

She snorted. ‘Don't flatter yourself. I've been visiting some of my old friends from New Springfield. Do you remember Nikos Irwin, who found the silver beetles? Got kids of his own now.'

Her skirt, blouse and cardigan were clean and crisply ironed – no habit for Sister Agnes, not since her return from New Springfield, where she'd built a home with an avatar of Lobsang. Her face was authentically Sister Agnes's face, Joshua thought. Even if it was, eerily, so much
younger
than the last time he'd seen the real Agnes, on her deathbed, all of thirty-five years ago.

‘You know, Agnes, I'm sixty-seven now, going on sixty-eight. Suddenly you're younger than
me
.'

‘Hmmph. You're not so old that I can't tell you that you're making a foolish mistake by going off alone into the wilderness at your age. Don't come crying to
me
.'

‘You're the third person this morning to tell me so.'

‘Does that include your conscience?'

‘Ha ha.'

She left off folding socks and touched his hand – the flesh-and-blood right hand, as opposed to the prosthetic left. Her skin was nearly as liver-spotted as his, he saw. ‘You always have a place with us, you know. At the Home. I pop in myself from time to time, just to make sure young Sister John isn't going too far off the rails.'

Young Sister John was close to Joshua's own age, and had been running the Home for decades. ‘I'm sure she appreciates that,' he said dryly.

‘And she's told me all about that young boy they're having so much trouble with, Jan – what's his name?'

‘Jan Roderick, I think. I met him.'

‘Yes. How he's hoovering up all those old books and movies you gave the Home, like a Chicago gangster snorting crack cocaine.'

‘Agnes!'

‘Oh, hush. Now there's another complicated little boy, just as you were. And I'm sure it would be good for him to see more of you. One thing the Home doesn't excel at, for obvious reasons, is providing good male role models.'

‘Well, I'm not sure I've ever been one of those . . . Look, Agnes, I've been drifting these last three years, since Helen died. I need to make some kind of break. I won't be away that long. The Home will still be there when I return—'

‘I might not be.'

She said this so bluntly that he was shocked. ‘Agnes, your body's artificial, your mind has been downloaded into Black Corporation gel – you could live until the sun goes out—'

‘Who would want to hang around to see that?' She touched the papery skin of her cheek. ‘There has to be a finish, Joshua. I learned that lesson from Shi-mi, who decided that in the end all she wanted to be was a cat. I wanted to be a mother to Ben, and – well, that was
all
I wanted, and then I would be ready to lay down my burden. My adopted son is nineteen already.'

‘Really?'

‘Believe it. Time just pours away, doesn't it? And I'm not sure how much longer I can fake all this ageing convincingly. Also there's a question of good manners. I've been through old age myself, but who am I to live in some kind of mannequin, mimicking all that pain and suffering, for the sake of my own vanity? When I know I could switch it off at any time. When I could even be young again, if I chose. No, I think my time should come sooner rather than later. It's right that way.'

‘Hmm. And Ben?'

‘He knows. He's understood what we are since he was nine years old, myself and “George”. He accepts it.'

‘Does he have a choice?'

‘What choice do any of us have, Joshua?'

Suddenly this was too much for him. He pulled away, stood, and started gathering up more stuff to pack.

‘It's hard on you,' she said now. ‘I know.'

He grunted. ‘Hard on Lobsang too.'

She sighed. ‘Well, I think I discharged my obligation to that man long ago, Joshua. Depending which Lobsang you mean. The one I married, “George”, was lost when the Next closed off New Springfield's world. The older copy that you brought back from that remote Long Earth became the master edition, so to speak. I know that identity with Lobsang is an odd concept. There's never just one of him; his identity can be split up, joined, one copy poured into the other . . .'

Lobsang had come to awareness as an artificial intelligence running on a substrate of Black Corporation gel. From the beginning he had claimed to be human, in a sense – a reincarnation of a Tibetan motorcycle repairman. To date, nobody had been able to prove him a liar. And since his awakening, his existence had been complicated.

Agnes went on, ‘The various copies were synched before “George” was trapped in New Springfield. The new version
remembers
me, our life together. But he was never
my
Lobsang. And anyway he's gone missing.'

It had been years since Joshua had been in touch with any iteration of Lobsang. ‘What, again?'

‘Selena Jones at transEarth says he's retreated into some kind of virtual environment, where he feels “safe”. I've no desire to know where, just now. Of course while his identity – I hesitate to use the word “soul” – has been removed, his outer functions are working just fine. Which is just as well for the fabric of the human world.'

‘This is a pattern, isn't it, Agnes?'

‘It seems to be. He's fine for a while, then there's some kind of build-up of stress, and he retreats into a shell – just like when he played at being a farmer in New Springfield. And then the cycle starts all over again. Well.'

‘Is this goodbye, Agnes?'

‘It doesn't have to be. Oh, it's all so silly, Joshua! You're not Daniel Boone, and you never were. You were just a boy who needed some space—'

‘There's something out there calling me back, Agnes,' he blurted. ‘I don't have a choice.'

She studied him. ‘I remember the words you used as a child.
The Silence
. That's back, is it? You know, I wondered if that might be going on, when I read all those silly news reports about the SETI signal they picked up. If all the oddness might be connected somehow. After all, it usually is.' She sighed. ‘I often wish Monica Jansson was still around. Now there was a woman who could speak to that side of you better than I ever could. And she would have told you that whatever you've lost, you won't find it up there.' She stood. ‘I've said my piece, and I'll take my leave.'

Suddenly he couldn't look at her.

She said softly, ‘Oh, bright eyes.'

And he turned, and she folded him in her arms.

5

J
OSHUA
V
ALIENTÉ, AND
indeed Sister Agnes, were never far from the thoughts of Sister John, superior of the Home on Madison West 5, or her companions.

Take the case of Jan Roderick, who both Agnes and Joshua had met. Ten years old, Jan was a conundrum to the Sisters and staff, even a source of frustration at times, so complicated was the knotted-up personality contained within that small body. Sister John could do nothing but advise patience: what use were nuns and counsellors and teachers if they couldn't show patience at least?

Sister John herself had never found it terribly hard to stay calm around Jan. She didn't pride herself on any special qualities of character, however. It was just that Jan, a slim, dark boy, reminded her in so many ways of Joshua.

The thing with Joshua was that he had always seemed so mundane. His hobbies as a boy in the Home, before Step Day, had been solitary trekking, and exploring the reconstructed prairie in Madison's Arboretum, and back at the Home making ham radio gear and assembling models – in fact,
repairing
incomplete or broken models, and that gave you a clue as to the kind of personality Joshua had harboured under that dark mop of hair.

Then, after Step Day, Joshua had become something of a local celebrity for his calm competence that first bewildering night, when the doors of the stepwise worlds had suddenly swung open, and everybody else had freaked, including most adults.

Sister John had never forgotten what Joshua had done for her that night. She had had utterly no idea what had happened to her:
I never stepped into no wardrobe . . .
Sarah Ann Coates, as she was known then, had already survived nightmares, which was why she had ended up in the Home on Allied Drive in the first place. And there, blundering around in a darkened stepwise forest, she had felt as if all those nightmares had come back for her once more. Hands reaching for her in the night . . . She'd lost it.

Joshua had brought her home. He had saved her.

Step Day had changed his life, but it hadn't changed the essence of Joshua, it seemed to Sister John. He had gone on more solo treks. It was just that now he had jaunted off stepwise, to the High Meggers. He was still methodical and patient to a fault, but now he made and repaired Stepper boxes rather than assembly kits and jigsaw puzzles. There was a spooky side to Joshua – he had been the very first widely known natural stepper, after all, as if Joshua belonged more to the Long Earth than the good old Datum. But he was a man who was in essence
simple
, Sister John thought: not meaning dumb, but simple of construction within, with a short cut between his own deep moral core and the way he behaved.

She'd tried to make it clear to Joshua that there would always be an open door for him here, whenever he needed it. It had been her idea to set up a memorial stone for Helen Valienté in the rebuilt Home's little cemetery plot. It seemed the very least she could do.

So if Sister Agnes and the rest had been able to help Joshua Valienté, if
he
had eventually grown up so straight and true, surely Sister John in turn could help Jan Roderick.

But Jan was such a puzzle.

One morning Sister Coleen, not far into her twenties herself, came to Sister John in a fluster.

‘That boy will do the oddest things.'

‘Such as?'

‘He
listens
.'

‘What's so odd about that? Listens to what?'

‘Not what.
Who.
To whoever comes in the door. Officials. Visitors.'

‘I thought he didn't get visitors,' Sister John said.

‘He doesn't. I mean visitors for the other kids, or even the Sisters. If he gets the chance, he just sits there and listens. And he asks if they've heard any good stories.'

‘Stories?'

‘Travellers' tales. Urban myths. That kind of thing.'

‘Tabloid gossip? Virals?' Sister John asked, feeling it was appropriate to try to sound stern.

‘Well, maybe. But he seems to like best the stuff he hears direct from people. And he writes it down on that battered old tablet of his. He even adds times and dates and places. It creeps people out if they notice.'

‘Well—'

‘And then there's the questions. He will ask the
oddest
things. He's been watching one of Joshua's old movies again.'

‘Ah.' Jan's dogged interest in antique pre-Step Day science fiction had prompted the Sisters to curate the Home's collection, left behind mainly by Joshua, with a lot more care. Putting battered paperback books in order was one thing, but it had taken a lot of technical expertise before various hundred-year-old movies had been successfully converted from tape or disc or creaky old file formats to be playable on modern tablets and screens. And after all that effort, the boy returned again and again to a mere handful of favourites. ‘Let me guess which one he's watching.
The First Men in the Moon.
'