The Long Mars (6 page)

Still, he’d progressed. Once he’d been a NASA candidate astronaut, a career development after active service in the Air Force; he’d got that close. Then came Step Day, when an infinity of worlds had opened up within walking distance of an unequipped human, and spaceships had become instant museum pieces. And so had Frank Wood, it felt like, at thirty-one years old. He had become restless, nostalgic, and without a close family, having sacrificed relationships for a dream of a career. Suddenly he found that
he’d
become the uncle with the connections to the space programme and a trunk full of science fiction novels.

Burdened by a sense of opportunities lost, he’d spent some years hanging around what remained of Cape Canaveral, doing whatever work he could find. But Canaveral, aside from a continuing programme of launches of small unmanned satellites, was little more than a decaying museum of dreams.

And
then
had come the discovery of the Gap, a place where a conjunction of cosmic accidents had left a hole in the chain of worlds that was the Long Earth, and a new kind of access to space. A few years after that Frank, by then in his fifties, had gone out there to find a bunch of kids and young-at-heart types busily building an entirely new kind of space programme, based on an entirely new principle. Frank had thrown himself into the project with enthusiasm, and liked to think he injected a modicum of wisdom and experience into what had felt, in those early days, like some kind of ongoing science fiction convention, and
these
days more like the Gold Rush.

When Yellowstone had blown up back on the Datum, Frank, with many others – including a new friend called Monica Jansson, whom he’d met when Sally Linsay had come here to rescue abused trolls, as she’d seen it – had put aside his own projects and had travelled home to help. Well, Monica was long dead now, and the Datum was kind of settling down to a new equilibrium – or at least people had stopped dying in such numbers as they had been – and Frank felt entitled to go back to his own set-aside dreams. Back to the Gap.

And now here was Sally Linsay in his life again, and her father, with a startling proposition for him.

Would Frank Wood take a ride to Mars? Hell, yes.

They got to work.

4

O
UTSIDE
M
ADISON
W
EST
5, at an unprepossessing workshop belonging to a wholly owned subsidiary of the Black Corporation, Lobsang – or rather an ambulant unit, one incarnation of Lobsang – worked on a service of Sister Agnes’s Harley. He was convincing at it too as he tinkered, his sleeves rolled up, oil smeared on his hands and forehead and grubby old overalls, even as he lectured Agnes on the state of the worlds in a rather rambling way.

Agnes, bundled up against the biting chill of a Wisconsin winter, was content to tune out his words, content to sit by and watch – and, otherwise, to think. This was January of 2045, over four years after the eruption of Yellowstone, and the worlds of mankind were stabilizing, if not healing, and Agnes, and others, had time to rest. And such moments as this gave her time to get used to herself. To
being
herself again, seven years after her own peculiar reincarnation. She hardly even recalled her given name, these days. She had been ‘Sister Agnes’ for as long as she could remember, and right now was certain that she still
was
Sister Agnes.

Not that theological doubts often troubled her. Sister Agnes could hardly complain about her new incarnation wrought by Lobsang, to be quick once more in this miraculous artificial body, into which her memories had been downloaded. Of course, to have undergone any kind of reincarnation was somewhat upsetting to a decent Catholic girl, for there was no room for that in the orthodox theology. However, she’d always concentrated on the old maxim that the best course was to do the good that was in front of her, and to put such doubts aside. Maybe God had a new mission for her, in this new form made possible by the advance of technology. Why should He not use such tools? And after all, being alive and apparently healthy was surely much better than being dead.

Meanwhile, what were you to make of Lobsang? In this temporal world he was something like any sensible vision of God, a God of technology, reproducing himself into more and more complex iterations, a being whose consciousness could fly anywhere and everywhere in the electronic world, who could even split himself so that he could be in multiple places at the same time. A being who was
aware
, as no simple human ever could be. Agnes liked the word ‘apprehend’. It was a good word that meant, to her, to understand completely. And it seemed to her that Lobsang was trying to apprehend the whole world, the whole universe, and trying to understand the role of the human race in that universe.

Despite all that, Lobsang appeared to be sane, ferociously so in fact – a sanity that burned! As for his character, Lobsang had done some very good work – especially given, of course, that he had the capacity to do a large amount of harm, should he choose. And as far as
she
could see, whatever a theologian might say, he had a soul, or at least a near perfect facsimile. If he was like a god, then he was a benign god.

But Agnes had to admit that Lobsang shared something at least with Jehovah: they were both male and proud. Lobsang loved an audience. He was clever, no doubt about it, extremely clever, but he wanted the cleverness to be
seen
. So he sought sidekicks, people like Joshua Valienté, like Agnes; he needed to let his light shine on their wondering faces.

And yet this new age, after the volcano, was difficult for Lobsang too. Not physically, as it was for the rest of a hungry and displaced mankind, but in some other, more subtle way. Spiritually, perhaps.

Agnes wasn’t sure of the cause. Perhaps it was because he had been unable to do anything to avert the Yellowstone disaster. Even Lobsang could only see Yellowstone through the eyes of the geologists, and they had been distracted by the odd phenomenon of disturbances at the stepwise copies of Yellowstone across a swathe of Low Earths – none of which had amounted to much, compared with the eventual Datum eruption. That probably didn’t assuage the guilt of one who thought of himself as a kind of shepherd of mankind, however, an agent ‘who does the bits God left out’, as he once said to her.

Or perhaps it was that the catastrophe that had afflicted Datum Earth, and particularly Datum America, had inevitably knocked a hole in the infrastructure of gel-based stores and optical fibre networks and satellite links that sustained Lobsang himself.

Or, again, perhaps Lobsang himself was actually ageing, in his own way. After all, nobody knew what would happen to an artificial intelligence as it grew older, as its substrate turned into a thing of layers of increasingly elderly technologies, both hardware and software – ‘accreting like a coral reef’, as Lobsang had once put it – and as its own inner complexity grew ever more tangled. It was an experiment nobody had ever run before.

No wonder then that Lobsang sometimes rambled, almost like a confused and disappointed old man. Well, Agnes was used to confused and disappointed old men; there were plenty of
them
in the hierarchy of the Church.

Maybe this was why she herself was here. Lobsang had brought her back from the grave to be a kind of adversary, a balance to his ambition. Yes, once upon a time she
would
undoubtedly have called herself his adversary, even if her role had always been basically constructive. Now, though, she was – well, what? A friend? Yes, of course, but also his confidante and moral compass – the latter being difficult because her
own
compass had a tendency to spin like a weathercock in a twister.

How was she supposed to have any kind of relationship with such a being? Well, she didn’t know, but she seemed to be finding a way. She had a great deal of confidence in herself. She was resilient. She would cope. She always had.

‘Consider this,’ he was saying now. ‘Humanity got to the moon, and you can’t say
that
wasn’t a remarkable thing. After all, what other creature has got off the planet? And then, what did
Homo sapiens
do? Came home again! Bringing a few boxes of rocks, and a smug feeling of being master of the universe . . .’

‘Yes, dear,’ she said automatically.

‘You could argue that such a species
deserves
to be supplanted by a better breed.’

‘If you say so.’

‘Nearly done. I’ve got some tea in the flasks. Earl Grey or Lady Grey? . . . What are you laughing at?’

Agnes tried to look solemn. ‘At
you
. For segueing from arguing that humanity deserves extinction to politely asking me whether I would like something so cheerful and normal as a cup of tea! Look – I understand everything you have been saying. Humanity is pretty shallow. It took a trip to the moon for most people even to understand what the
Earth
really was: round, finite, precious and endangered. We can’t organize ourselves for toffee. But isn’t humanity showing more
common sense
, even at this late hour? Look how well we’re coping with the Yellowstone disaster – well, so it seems to me.’

‘Hmm. Maybe. Though I’ve seen some hints that we
may have had some help
. . .’

She dismissed that. ‘Oh, don’t be enigmatic, Lobsang, it’s an irritating habit. And don’t assume that we can’t change – change and grow. Believe me, I’ve seen some fine adults grow out of difficult children; there’s potential in everybody. And, frankly, for all the nonsense you spout about how we’re doomed to be supplanted, I don’t see the new model around anywhere. What happens when they do show up? Should we listen for the sound of jackboots?’

‘Dear Agnes, I know that you exaggerate for effect, a ploy which rarely helps matters. No, not jackboots. Something more – helpful. Well, as I hinted so enigmatically. Imagine something subtler – slow and careful and insidious but not necessarily sinister, and yes, better organized than
Homo sapiens
could ever be . . .’

But his voice tailed off, and his expression changed, as if he was responding to some distant call.

You had to get used to that happening. He’d told her all about parallel processing, a concept she hadn’t heard of before her reincarnation. This meant running more than one task at once, or breaking down one big job into smaller jobs to be handled simultaneously. Not that she was particularly impressed. After all,
she
had been doing that all her life, thinking about making dinner while also blowing noses and teaching disturbed children how to hold a conversation
and
composing yet another angry letter to the bishop, with the occasional prayer thrown in the mix. Who didn’t have to work that way, every day of a busy life?

It did enable her to understand his absences, however. After all, he was steering, as he sometimes said, the narrative of the world.

At length Lobsang snapped back. He didn’t refer to whatever had distracted him, and Agnes did not enquire.

He stood up, stretching his back, wiping his hands. ‘Done – provisionally. You know, I
could
make this bike the safest in the world. Never skid, never put you in harm’s way . . . What do you say?’

Agnes thought that over before she answered. ‘I’m sure you could, Lobsang. And I’m very impressed, I really am. And touched. But, you see, a motorbike like my Harley doesn’t
want
to be completely safe. A machine like this develops what can only be called a soul, don’t you think? And you have to let that soul express itself, not hobble it. Let the metal be hot, the engine hungry . . .’

He stood, and shrugged. ‘Well, here’s your machine, complete with its hungry engine. Please drive safely – but that, Agnes, in your case, is a wish, not an expectation.’

So she carefully wheeled the Harley out of the little workshop, and guided the bike through the still-sparse rush-hour traffic of this stepwise world, until she reached open country where she could let the machine play. The wind was strong, but once you got away from the creeping industrialization of this young city – modern-day satanic mills, mostly covered by hoardings and advertisements – you were in a
better
world, the air cleaner, thoughts less melancholy. Over the roaring of the Harley she sang Joni Mitchell numbers, following roads like black stripes through the snow banks all the way around the frozen lakes of Madison West 5.

When she got back, Lobsang told her that Joshua Valienté had come home. ‘I need to see him,’ Lobsang said urgently.

Agnes sighed. ‘But, Lobsang, Joshua might not be so keen to see you . . .’

5

O
N THE DAY OF
the launch of the expedition of the
Armstrong
and
Cernan
, Capitol Square, Madison West 5, was like a movie set, thought Captain Maggie Kauffman, not without pride.

Here she was with her crew (make that
crews
) at her side, drawn up in parade order before the steps of the Capitol building, under a clear blue Low-Earth January sky. The air was cold but blessedly free of the Datum’s smog and volcano ash. A presidential podium had been set up before the building’s wooden façade, a very mid-twenty-first-century image with hovering cameras and a fluttering flag, the holographic Stars and Stripes of America and its stepwise Aegis.

On the stage a few guests waited for the President himself, as he made his latest public appearance at his new capital. There was Admiral Hiram Davidson, commander of USLONGCOM, the Long Earth military command, and Maggie’s own overall superior. Beside him was Douglas Black, short, gaunt, bald as a coot and in heavy sunglasses. Black was a ‘close friend’ of the President as well as a ‘trusted adviser’, the gossip sites said. Translation: moneybags. He always seemed to show up at events like this. But that was the way of the world, as it had been long before Yellowstone, or Step Day.