‘Good,’ Agnes said firmly. ‘But what’s all this junk on my kitchen table?’
‘Samples,’ Lobsang said, and he put his arms around the fragments, as if shielding them from her. ‘We’re trying to be scientific, if belatedly. These are beetle artefacts – given as gifts to the children – and a few scraps we collected from the Gallery, what appear to be detached limbs, even this shard of broken carapace. I was telling Joshua that I’ve put these through the mass spectrometer in the gondola.’
Joshua grinned. ‘A backwoods pioneer with a mass spectrometer. You are a cheat, Lobsang.’
‘But the only scientific equipment I have is what we brought to help service our android bodies – in my Frankenstein laboratory, as Agnes puts it. I had to adapt, improvise … The point is, from their isotopic composition I can tell that these things were made locally, from local substances. The silver was mined a few miles from here. The carapace shard is a kind of ceramic based on river-bed clay from Soulsby Creek. And so on.’
Agnes frowned. ‘I thought you believed these creatures are alien. Not of Earth – of any Earth.’
‘So I do. In form and function they just don’t fit, in any version of the terrestrial tree of life. And, Agnes, I took Joshua through to the Planetarium. Whatever’s going on there, that’s surely a strong hint that these silver beetles have an extraterrestrial origin. But now that they’re here they appear to be making more copies of themselves – breeding, you might call it – using local materials. Stuff from Earth, this Earth.’
Agnes said, ‘What a cheek. This is our world, not theirs.’
‘Quite.’
‘So what does this all mean, Lobsang? What are these creatures up to? And how does it fit in with the days getting shorter?’
‘That’s what we mean to find out.’
‘Well, something’s wrong, that’s for sure; this old planet’s broken down and groaning …’
Joshua, who had known Agnes and her tastes all his life, grinned at that. Lobsang looked confused.
Ben’s soft voice called from outside. ‘George?’
Lobsang pushed back his chair and stood. ‘I’ll go see to him.’
Agnes said, ‘Lunch will be ready soon.’
Joshua stood too. ‘You need a hand, Agnes?’
She waved vaguely. ‘If you like. I’m making chicken soup. Find what you can and improvise.’
He smiled, and began looking out ingredients and implements: vegetables, a chunk of goat’s cheese, seasoning, a sharp knife and a chopping board.
‘You always were a good cook,’ Agnes said. ‘Even when you were no older than Ben is now.’ She looked sideways at him. ‘And you are taking Lobsang’s non-death well, I must say. I know you said you weren’t too surprised, but …’
Joshua grunted. ‘He’s pulled a lot of stunts before. And I was half expecting a call.’
She glanced at him. ‘Why? … Oh. You’re talking about your headaches. The Silence, or the lack of it.’
Joshua had his own peculiar sensitivities to the condition of the Long Earth, it seemed, and had done since he was a boy. When the Sisters had seen him come home from his solo teenage jaunts in distress, they’d tried to tease out of him what he was sensing, feeling: trying to get the ineffable out of the most taciturn boy Agnes had ever met. He would speak of a Silence that wasn’t a Silence, or of a sound that wasn’t there, like an echo from distant mountains … He couldn’t articulate what was evidently an uneasy sense of disturbance that sometimes translated into headaches, storm warnings in his own young head.
‘Do you feel anything now? I mean, here?’
‘Not specifically. It doesn’t work like that, Agnes. This one’s been coming for years, though. Noticed it before my fiftieth birthday, I remember.’ He half-grinned. ‘But when I sensed the thunder clouds gathering, I just knew Lobsang wouldn’t let something as trivial as his own death get in the way of dealing with it.’
‘He did need to recover, Joshua. He was reluctant, in fact, to face up to this business of the silver beetles. It’s a distraction from his – humanity project.’
‘But who else was capable of handling this situation?’
‘Who else, indeed.’
‘And it’s a funny coincidence that, of all the possible locations in the Long Earth, he happens to be right on the spot where he’s most needed. Don’t you think?’
They were here because of Sally Linsay, of course. And Agnes thought back now to Sally’s barely concealed amusement when she had brought them to this place. Had Sally known? … Just as Agnes had always suspected, had Sally been playing some kind of game of her own all the time?
Suddenly angry, she turned away. ‘Whatever you say.’
‘Agnes, you have any garlic?’
‘There’s some dried in the store. We’ve seeded it to grow wild but it hasn’t taken yet …’