‘I’m here because of Lobsang.’
She didn’t take her eyes off the farmhouse below. Her hair was brushed back tightly from her lean face, giving her an intense, predatory look; the wrinkles around her eyes were deep. She was over sixty years old now, he reminded himself.
She said, ‘What about Lobsang?’
‘He needs us. You. He said you’d probably be expecting the call.’
‘Would I? Why so?’
‘Because you took him and Agnes to New Springfield in the first place. You set him up. So he says. Now he says you owe him.’
‘I don’t owe anybody anything. I never did.’
Joshua sighed. ‘Well, he’s giving up playing happy families with Agnes. Now he wants us to do something for him. “I need you to go find me,” he said. He wants himself back. The old Lobsang.’
‘Isn’t that impossible? When he “died”, he burned out all his iterations, so I was told. All his backup stores, in space, stepwise. Even those probes he had out in the far solar system, the Oort cloud.’
‘There’s one copy he couldn’t reach. You know the one I mean. From The Journey.’
‘Ah. Yes, of course. The ambulant unit we left behind to converse with First Person Singular, at the shore of a desolate sea, more than two million worlds out … God, that’s nearly thirty years ago.’
‘Maybe even then he was thinking of it as an ultimate backup. And now he wants it back. One more journey, you and me. Just like the old days.’
She grunted. ‘You and I don’t have “old days”, Valienté. How did you find me?’
‘Come on, Sally. You always did leave a breadcrumb trail. You want to be found, just in case … This time I started at Jansson’s grave, in Madison. The flowers you left there—’
‘I don’t need to hear about your brilliant detective work.’
‘Also there have been rumours, of the setup you’ve got yourself trapped in here. This stake-out. You know how it is. Combers spread gossip like a contagion. And you’ve been here a long time.’
‘The bad guys are trapped, in that farmhouse. I’m not trapped.’
He kicked at the heap of animal bones. ‘Oh, really?’ He squatted down beside her, opened his pack and pulled out a plastic bottle of water and a strip of jerky. Sally refused the water but took a bite of jerky. ‘It’s impressive you’ve managed to pin this place down alone like this, for so long. But you need to hunt, collect water. And sleep. Even Sally Linsay needs to sleep.’
She shrugged. ‘I mix up my hours. No set routine, so they never know where I am.’ She lifted the rifle and without warning cracked off a shot; Joshua, looking down, saw splinters fly up from the porch of the farmhouse. ‘Even when I sleep I set up automatic fire, random timing.’ She slapped the rifle. ‘This is one smart gadget. Sure they could rush me. I’d get some of them, but the rest could reach me. They haven’t the guts. If they had any guts they wouldn’t be here in the first place.’
‘Who are they?’
‘What do names matter, out here? It’s what they’ve done that counts.’
‘How many?’
‘Five. All male. I think they’re related, a father with sons, or maybe cousins. A pack of them.’
‘Why don’t they just step out of there?’
‘Because I went in and smashed their Stepper boxes.’
‘Tell me why you’re here. What these guys did.’
‘Look at the place,’ she said bitterly. ‘You can figure it out for yourself.’
‘The pioneers. Just one couple?’
‘Yeah. I found a journal that the bad guys threw out the door, with other trash. They grew up on the Datum, survived Yellowstone, ended up in a Low Earth refugee camp – that’s where they met – and spent the next few years watching their parents cough their lungs up from the ash. When they were free of that they came out here, with all their parents’ savings used up on a twain delivery of the tools they needed, a few chickens, a pregnant sow. They hammered together their farmhouse, planted their crops and their flowers, raised their pigs and their chickens. She got pregnant. They always hoped others might follow, that some kind of township would grow up here.’
‘But these characters showed up first.’
‘Joshua, they’d done everything right. They had a stockade, they had a cellar as protection against stepping raids. None of it was any use, not against enough force, not against men like these who will use that force without hesitation. They might have had a chance, a window, if they’d just gunned down these guys as soon as they showed up here. But good people always hesitate. Stupid, stupid.
‘I figured out some of what happened. They killed the husband immediately. When I found the place a few days later the woman was still alive. You can imagine. She was pregnant, Joshua. I tried a raid of my own, hoping to get her out. They killed her pretty quick, hoping to get rid of a witness, I guess. And then—’