‘Properly?’
‘A genuine global survey. Teams of scientists with seismometers and magnetometers and whatever. Geologists and climatologists to predict what’s going to come next. Super-clocks, atomic or some such, to measure the spin-up of the world more accurately than dear Agnes with her pendulums.’
Lobsang grunted. ‘And the President of the United States, to make a formal first contact and hand over a flag and a plaque? You’re correct in principle, Joshua. It might not be so easy to assemble resources like that, not like it used to be. But we should try—’
A blinding light filled the cabin, a glare that shifted like a swinging searchlight beam. They both ducked, instinctively. It was as if some tremendous craft was flying over the airship.
Joshua dumped the food he was handling and ran forward to the window. He saw a fireball, burning and spitting, scrape its way across the pale equatorial sky, leaving behind a contrail of feathery white vapour. It was heading dead east, out towards the mouth of the Amazon and the ocean.
And now the sound hit them, a tremendous cracking boom that made the gondola shudder.
‘My God.’
Lobsang was smiling grimly. ‘I told you we couldn’t miss it, when it came. How long have we been here? Six hours? There must be several passes like that per day.’
‘What the hell was that?’
‘At a first guess, I’d say it was probably a mass of moon rock, wrapped in some kind of electrically conductive shell. We’ve glimpsed operations on the moon before, remember. That rock must be one of a stream, pouring past the Earth, skimming the atmosphere. As they must have been for years now. This is how they’re spinning up the Earth, Joshua. The beetles. With these latitude bands, and the hurtling space rocks. They turned this whole planet into a huge electrical motor. And they’ve only just begun.’
Joshua looked down at the green carpet of life below, the river, the blue morning sky: rich, ancient, stunningly beautiful. And unique, as was each of the worlds of the Long Earth. ‘To what end?’
‘To serve their own purposes. Will that food take long? We’ve learned all we need to learn, for now. Let’s eat, and go home. We’ve got work to do. And, Joshua.’
‘Yeah?’
‘You might be right. Sally Linsay may have got us all involved in this in the first place. I think we might need her help to make an end of it.’
Joshua felt a peculiar, deep reluctance to respond. ‘You know, Lobsang, it’s twenty-seven years since the three of us first met, in the High Meggers, when you and I went sailing out on the Mark Twain. I feel like I keep being dragged back to reunions at a school I hated. You think we’ll ever be rid of each other?’
‘Not this side of the grave,’ Lobsang said gloomily. ‘You see, Joshua, there’s something specific I need to ask of the two of you.’
Joshua touched his controls. The Shillelagh turned gracefully in the air and headed for home.
‘What’s that, Lobsang?’
‘We need to get the band back together, Elwood. I need you to go find me.’
31
STAN AND ROCKY weren’t told where the home of the Next was.
When they got there, after passages through a lot of soft places, and while their travelling companions exchanged bursts of quicktalk, Rocky and Stan stood and looked around. Despite all the mystery, the Grange seemed nondescript to Rocky. They had emerged on the outskirts of a small township by a river: a few dozen houses built of wood and mud brick and what looked like prefabricated ceramic panels. Smoke rose up from chimney stacks. Just houses, Rocky thought at first glance, perhaps a few small workshops, even barns, though he saw no domesticated animals. Beyond the town a grassy plain stretched off to the horizon, where trees crowded, a misty green mass. There were more such townships, three, four, five, some blending into each other, off across the plain. The sky was blue, the day warm – very warm, given they were at the latitude of Valhalla, of Datum Chicago, so they were told.
Surely it was just another world, in the great stepwise necklace of worlds that was the Long Earth.
‘This could be anywhere,’ Rocky said.
‘No church,’ Stan murmured.
Rocky looked again; he was right. ‘What about it?’
‘Every other place you go. Every human place. There’s a church, or a mosque, or a synagogue, or a temple. And no town hall either. Humans always build town halls. Americans anyhow.’
Rocky shrugged. ‘Maybe the Next just don’t like town halls.’