The Long War by Terry Pratchett, Stephen Baxter Page B
Authors: Terry Pratchett, Stephen Baxter
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didn’t have the moxie to do the job asked of it. ‘Godzillabytes’, on the other hand, shouted to the world that it was dealing with something very, very big . . . and possibly dangerous.)
Nelson had seen this particular clip, or variants of it from other camera angles, many times before, and he wondered why his search engines had thrown it up now. Watching, he saw that this bit of hasty amateur footage showed a scene where Valienté, in a radiation-exposure processing camp in West 1, seemed to be carrying a cat under one arm. Some bystander off-screen burst out laughing and called, ‘What’s that, the ship’s cat?’ And somebody else, almost certainly Valienté’s unknown companion though she was out of shot, called back, ‘Yeah, wiseass, and it can speak Tibetan.’
You had to listen very carefully to make out this piece of nonsense. But that word was evidently what the search had picked on: ‘Tibetan’, a subsidiary search tag from ‘Lobsang’, had brought this fragment of the complicated saga of the Mark Twain drifting to the surface for his attention.
What had the woman meant? Why use such a word, ‘Tibetan’, if it wasn’t somehow relevant? He had no idea yet where this was leading. But now he had a link between one of Black’s more high-profile projects, the Twain and its journey, and one of the most low-profile, Lobsang, embodied in that single word.
Of course the complete absence of any other link was itself suspicious.
For now the search was going no further; he was covering what he already knew. Nelson yawned, blinked and shut down the screens. There was a mystery here, he was sure, and he felt a tingle of anticipation at the prospect of following this trail further. And this was precisely why he was shedding his parochial duties: to have the time, while he had the resources and the strength, to follow such trails wherever they led him.
But of course the overarching mystery that obsessed him in a background kind of way was the conundrum of stepping itself: of the sudden discovery of the Long Earth, into which Joshua Valienté and his airship and his loudmouthed partner and, apparently, his Tibetan-speaking cat had wandered so famously – of the utter realignment of the cosmos, in Nelson’s own lifetime. How could he not be intrigued? What could it all mean for mankind, the future – indeed, for God? How could he not pursue such questions?
Well, the best strategy was usually to tackle smaller mysteries first. And right now, in that spirit, before getting ready for bed, he put on an apron, grabbed one of his toolboxes and walked to the stone-floored toilet. This throne was a massive edifice that even included straining bars, and would have been a wonderful asset if anybody over the years could have made it work properly, whereas now it worked in various forms of im properly. He had vowed to get the thing functioning before his tenure was over, taking especial care to find out why it always backed up during an east wind.
On the whole, he thought, as he knelt before the cracked china sculpture, as if before a pagan idol, it was amazing what the English put up with.
8
S O THE V ALIENTÉ family travelled to the High Meggers city of Valhalla, to catch a long-haul twain to Datum Earth. The twain journey, across less than three thousand Earths, took only a few hours.
At Valhalla, Thomas Kyangu was waiting to greet them with a big handwritten sign: VALIENTÉ. Another old buddy of Joshua’s, Thomas was around fifty, with long black hair pinned back in a ponytail, and a wide grin splitting a dark, reasonably handsome face. His accent was thick Australian. ‘Greetings, clan Valienté! Welcome to Earth West One Million, Four Hundred Thousand. Well, officially it’s one point four million plus thirteen, since our founding fathers were stoned when they first got here and lost count, but we like to round it down for the TV ads . . . Good to see you again, Joshua.’
Joshua grinned and shook
Nelson had seen this particular clip, or variants of it from other camera angles, many times before, and he wondered why his search engines had thrown it up now. Watching, he saw that this bit of hasty amateur footage showed a scene where Valienté, in a radiation-exposure processing camp in West 1, seemed to be carrying a cat under one arm. Some bystander off-screen burst out laughing and called, ‘What’s that, the ship’s cat?’ And somebody else, almost certainly Valienté’s unknown companion though she was out of shot, called back, ‘Yeah, wiseass, and it can speak Tibetan.’
You had to listen very carefully to make out this piece of nonsense. But that word was evidently what the search had picked on: ‘Tibetan’, a subsidiary search tag from ‘Lobsang’, had brought this fragment of the complicated saga of the Mark Twain drifting to the surface for his attention.
What had the woman meant? Why use such a word, ‘Tibetan’, if it wasn’t somehow relevant? He had no idea yet where this was leading. But now he had a link between one of Black’s more high-profile projects, the Twain and its journey, and one of the most low-profile, Lobsang, embodied in that single word.
Of course the complete absence of any other link was itself suspicious.
For now the search was going no further; he was covering what he already knew. Nelson yawned, blinked and shut down the screens. There was a mystery here, he was sure, and he felt a tingle of anticipation at the prospect of following this trail further. And this was precisely why he was shedding his parochial duties: to have the time, while he had the resources and the strength, to follow such trails wherever they led him.
But of course the overarching mystery that obsessed him in a background kind of way was the conundrum of stepping itself: of the sudden discovery of the Long Earth, into which Joshua Valienté and his airship and his loudmouthed partner and, apparently, his Tibetan-speaking cat had wandered so famously – of the utter realignment of the cosmos, in Nelson’s own lifetime. How could he not be intrigued? What could it all mean for mankind, the future – indeed, for God? How could he not pursue such questions?
Well, the best strategy was usually to tackle smaller mysteries first. And right now, in that spirit, before getting ready for bed, he put on an apron, grabbed one of his toolboxes and walked to the stone-floored toilet. This throne was a massive edifice that even included straining bars, and would have been a wonderful asset if anybody over the years could have made it work properly, whereas now it worked in various forms of im properly. He had vowed to get the thing functioning before his tenure was over, taking especial care to find out why it always backed up during an east wind.
On the whole, he thought, as he knelt before the cracked china sculpture, as if before a pagan idol, it was amazing what the English put up with.
8
S O THE V ALIENTÉ family travelled to the High Meggers city of Valhalla, to catch a long-haul twain to Datum Earth. The twain journey, across less than three thousand Earths, took only a few hours.
At Valhalla, Thomas Kyangu was waiting to greet them with a big handwritten sign: VALIENTÉ. Another old buddy of Joshua’s, Thomas was around fifty, with long black hair pinned back in a ponytail, and a wide grin splitting a dark, reasonably handsome face. His accent was thick Australian. ‘Greetings, clan Valienté! Welcome to Earth West One Million, Four Hundred Thousand. Well, officially it’s one point four million plus thirteen, since our founding fathers were stoned when they first got here and lost count, but we like to round it down for the TV ads . . . Good to see you again, Joshua.’
Joshua grinned and shook
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