The Long War

Maggie said, “You know what the issue is, Mac. Do you trust the Black Corporation?…”

“What’s to trust?”

“I think someone is up to something.”

Mac grinned. “Well, everybody is up to something. And the military have been in bed with Black for years. Which is why he was on the podium with Cowley when our mission was launched.”

“Yeah, but does that give Black the right to monitor us routinely? This is a military expedition, Mac. I get the impression that everybody from the Pentagon on down is turning a blind eye.”

Mac shrugged. “So Black has a lot of power. So have military contractors had all the way back to World War Two. That’s the reality of life, I guess. I mean, there’s no evidence of malice on the part of Black, is there? Or a lack of patriotism.”

“No, but… Now it’s personal, Mac. This is my ship, my mission. Me. It’s just a feeling—but it’s like I have a searchlight on me. Do you think I’m losing my way?”

“No. I think you’re following your instinct, and it’s never failed you in the past.”

“What, even about keeping the cat?”

“Except for that,” said Mac.

57

The airships Zheng He and Liu Yang steadily forged towards their target of twenty million worlds East of the Datum.

They passed more unprecedented milestones: ten million, twelve, fifteen million steps. Now they were crossing an extraordinary span of the Long Earth, of this great probability tree whose twigs and leaves were whole clusters of worlds; now they were reaching branches of that tree with a very deep divergence from those that led to an Earth anything like the Datum. It became impossible for the crews of the airships Zheng He and Liu Yang even to rely on breathable atmospheres in the worlds they visited. The oxygen levels fluctuated significantly, from, rarely, concentrations so high that spontaneous combustion, even of wet vegetation, must have been a hazard to unwary visitors, to, more often, worlds where the oxygen level was no more than a trace, and the land on the backs of the dancing continents was much less green. A more subtle danger, Roberta learned, was too high a concentration of carbon dioxide, ultimately lethal for humans.

And life had less of a grip on many of these Earths. They found whole bands of worlds where the land was bare altogether, where its colonization by plants from the sea had apparently never happened, let alone its later “conquest” by wheezing lungfish. All but featureless, all but identical, these drab worlds passed, day after day, unchanging even at the airships’ tremendous stepwise speed.

Drab or not, Roberta for one was fascinated by the evolving panoramas of land, sea and sky she glimpsed through the windows of the observation deck, and intrigued by the closer-up glimpses of the worlds they stopped at to sample in more detail—not that she was allowed down to the surface on these hazardous worlds. Yet something in her, something weak and to be despised, recoiled from the bombardment of strangeness. After all, from here, even the whole of the Ice Belt, the band of periodically glaciated worlds of which the Datum seemed to be a reasonably typical member, seemed very small, very narrow, and very far away, spanning much less than one per cent of the monumental distance they had already travelled.

She spent more time alone in her cabin, trying to integrate the sheer flood of data hitting her. Or she would sit with the trolls on the observation deck, listening to their crooning, even though this kept the rest of the crew away from her—even Lieutenant Wu Yue-Sai, though not the loyal Jacques Montecute.

For his part, Jacques watched Roberta uncomfortably. He even felt a stab of guilt; this expedition might be too much for her after all. The horror of the Long Earth, in the end: Roberta was just fifteen years old, and the very scale of it might overwhelm one so young, no matter how smart.

On July 6, 2040, the Chinese ships reached their nominal target of Earth East 20,000,000—a world which turned out to be unprepossessing, barren, ordinary. They planted a stone cairn with a plaque, took a few photographs, and prepared to turn back.

Captain Chen assembled his senior crew and guests on the observation deck of the Zheng He, for a party to celebrate the moment. The trolls sang a new song, playfully taught them by Jacques—“China Girl’. Chen even broke out the alcohol, for once. But Jacques advised Roberta not to make this the day she first tried champagne. Without regret, she stuck to her orange juice.

Lieutenant Wu Yue-Sai, in full dress uniform, neat and pretty, linked arms with Roberta. “I am so happy to have achieved so much, with you, my partner in discovery.”

Captain Chen strutted over. “Indeed. And no doubt we will learn even more during our long return journey to the Datum. So many worlds to revisit and sample. Twenty million of them!”

Roberta considered that carefully. “I feel my time would be better spent integrating the data I have already accumulated.”