The Long War

Roberta had endured the boredom of the preparation for this latest jaunt, the training, the suiting-up, and had written off the dull, relatively data-poor hours of exploration that lay ahead. She knew it was important to apprehend these worlds physically. The first space engineers, whose biographies she had studied closely when seeking role models for her own career, had spoken of the need for “ground truth’, a sampling of conditions down on the ground of some planet or moon, to confirm or refute hypotheses drawn up from orbital inspection, or through telescopic observations. Ground truth, yes. She saw the need for it. And this was a very remote world, an exotic world, despite the brevity of the journey here. They had crossed the six million worlds since the planet of the crest-roos in no more than a week, with the airships’ powerful drives propelling them forward in bursts of acceleration.

Even so she longed to be in her room on the ship, with her books and slates. Safe inside her head. But she was not there, not for now. She was here. She focused on the real, physical world around her.

They climbed a bluff, beyond which, they knew from a hasty aerial survey, was a dry valley, and the spectacle they had come to witness. The shallow climb, the effort of lifting her feet safely over the lumpy ground, soon made Roberta pant.

Jacques, monitoring her progress from the Zheng He, noticed. “I hope you haven’t been skimping your exercise routines.”

Roberta took a deep lungful of air. “I suspect the oxygen content is low.” She could hear the trolls singing in the background, a murmur in her earpiece.

Jacques said, “The ship has atmospheric scientists who monitor the air quality before they crack the hatch. Turns out they’ve been watching the oxygen content fluctuate increasingly, the further out we’ve travelled. But here it’s well within breathable limits.”

Wu Yue-Sai said sternly, “But it did not occur to them to factor in the effects of physical exercise. That’s unfortunately typical: overspecialization of departments and insufficient communication.”

“I believe the Captain is having words,” Jacques said dryly. “If you’d rather come back in—”

“No, we’re nearly there,” Yue-Sai said. She glanced back at Roberta, who nodded.

And as she approached the summit of the rising ground, Roberta could hear a kind of orchestra of disparate sounds: a bass rumbling as of heavy traffic, even like tanks, mixed in with a chorus of mournful bellows, and a percussion section of impacts, of clanks and clunks. Excitement built in Roberta, and she grinned at Yue-Sai. They both ran up the remaining slope and threw themselves flat on the mossy ground, so they could see down into the valley.

Where the tortoises walked.

This was what they had landed to see. A two-way flow of the animals was packed into the valley, all lumbering along, those to the right heading north, those to the left heading south. The biggest of them were huge, like tanks indeed, or even bigger, with shells the size of small houses that were battered, scarred—some had birds’ nests built into folds and cracks on the shells, and Roberta wondered if those passengers had some kind of symbiotic relationship with their hosts. But she could immediately see that the tortoises came in a spectrum of all sizes scaling down from the big monsters, to “giants” that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the Galapagos Islands, to miniature sorts like the pets Roberta had seen people keep, even dwarf kinds she could have held in her hand. The smaller ones ran around the tree-trunk legs of the big lumbering monsters. The noise was cacophonous, from the squeaks of the smallest to great blasts from the titans, like the fog horns of supertankers.

Yue-Sai pointed out the little ones, and laughed. “The babies are so cute.”

Roberta shook her head. “They may not be infants at all. There are probably many species mixed up in there.”

“I suppose you are right. And I suppose we will never know what is what.” She sighed. “So many worlds. So few scholars to study them. If only we had laboratories to produce self-replicating scientists, to explore all the worlds. Ah, but we do! They’re called university campuses.”

Roberta smiled uncertainly.

Yue-Sai said, “You don’t get the joke? I suppose it was a little laborious. But is my English so bad?”

“It’s not that. It’s just that, Jacques and other teachers tell me, I am too smart for most jokes.”

“Really,” Yue-Sai said, straight-faced.

“There is an element of deception in many jokes, and then a reveal, of a truth which is surprising. I spot the deception too early. Which is why the comedy I prefer is—”

“Slapstick. Anarchic humour. Those Buster Keaton films you watch. I understand now. Anyhow, all these worlds—”

“And all these tortoises…!”