‘Folks, it’s not just your lives that have been disrupted. We’re talking about a peculiar kind of extinction event on this world. And it’s your great misfortune that your township has been caught up in it.’
Captain Boss stepped forward. ‘Thank you, Commander. Admirably clear. Any questions?’
Oliver Irwin was still standing. He glanced around at his neighbours. ‘I’m sure I can speak for all of us. What are we going to do about this, Captain?’ He looked up at the military airship. ‘What are you going to do about it?’
‘Well,’ Boss said, ‘in the long term we intend to continue to study this phenomenon, or this group of related phenomena, as best we can. But in the short term we’re going to have to lift you off this rock, and take you, your children, and all your goods, somewhere safe. I know you have stepwise lodges, but I understand this particular world was the centre, for you. We’ll take you wherever you want to go.’ He added with a forced smile, ‘Look, we won’t leave anyone behind. Your pets – even your farm animals will be saved. The twain is a big ship.’
Oliver stiffened, and the townsfolk muttered.
Agnes groaned. ‘That young man just does not get it.’
Oliver Irwin said, ‘Sir – Captain Boss – let me tell you this. This isn’t a “rock”. Or a “centre”. This is our home. And when I ask you what you’re going to do about it, I don’t want to hear you say we need to run and hide.’ A rumble of approval from his neighbours. ‘We’re not quitters. We’re Americans. We’re pioneers. That’s why we’re here. That’s why we’re going to stay here. And if you can’t help us,’ to yells of approval, ‘then please do what Al Todd asked you to do, and get that big ship of yours out of the light of his beets.’
‘Darn right!’
‘Well said, Oliver.’
Boss looked helplessly at Jha.
The science officer stepped forward again. ‘We do sympathize, sir. Really. The US Navy isn’t fond of quitting either. But we don’t even know what we’re dealing with here—’
‘It’s those darn silver beetles,’ said Angie Clayton. ‘That’s obvious enough.’
Boss said, ‘But we hardly know anything about them. You know that we’ve taken the Cowley on a tour. We spanned much of the continent, this footprint of North America. The creatures you call the beetles are building – something. Like immense road systems. What we don’t know is why they’re doing all this. What the purpose of their network is. And unless we can figure out at least that much—’
Lobsang sighed.
Agnes plucked his sleeve. ‘Lobsang. No.’
‘—then we can’t even predict what comes next—’
‘I must speak up,’ Lobsang murmured.
‘George wouldn’t. Sit still.’
‘—we don’t have any kind of handle on any of this—’
‘But I do,’ Lobsang announced. He rose to his feet, grave.
Agnes covered her face with her hands. Oliver stared. Ben looked bewildered.
Captain Boss glanced over. ‘I’m sorry, Mr – Abrahams, was it?’
‘George Abrahams. I do know what the beetles are constructing. It’s a Dyson motor.’
‘A what?’
‘Maybe you’d better let me speak to your science people.’ And Lobsang walked past Oliver Irwin, towards the crew, as if taking over. Just as Agnes had dreaded.
Al Todd got to his feet and pointed. ‘Yeah, you do that, Abrahams, you big shot! I always thought there was something not right about you. All our troubles started the day you showed up here. Maybe you should hitch a ride on this Navy tub right back out of here!’
The meeting started to break up, the mood frustrated and angry.
Ben stared up at Agnes, wide-eyed. ‘Agnes? Does Mr Todd mean it?’
‘No, Ben. He’s just upset, is all. He doesn’t mean anything. Now you come with me while George is busy, those chickens won’t feed themselves …’
39
‘DYSON? YOU MEAN Freeman Dyson?’ The man was asking the question even as he shook Lobsang’s hand.
‘Manners, Dr Bowring,’ Jha murmured. ‘Introductions first. Mr Abrahams—’
‘Actually I’m a doctor also.’
‘I apologize. Dr George Abrahams, meet Ken Bowring, US Geological Survey. As I said back there Dr Bowring is the team leader of our civilian science cadre.’
‘Freeman Dyson, though. That’s who you meant, isn’t it? Come, walk with me, sir, please. I’d like to show you the data we’re assembling, the interpretations we’re making.’
Margarita Jha didn’t know what to make of this man Abrahams. He was tall, slim, a little elderly for an early generation of such a new community, perhaps. But there was something about him that didn’t quite fit. His accent was basically east coast American, she thought, but not quite pitched right, as if he was forcing it. His handsome but rather unremarkable face seemed expressionless – or rather, it was as if the expressions followed the emotional trigger by a perceptible interval, as if they required some conscious impulse. Maybe this guy Abrahams was just an eccentric. Mankind, splintered across the Long Earth, had begun to diverge, culturally, religiously, even ethnically, and in all that room it seemed to her that what she would once have called ‘eccentrics’ were becoming the norm. But even so, Abrahams puzzled her.
‘So,’ said Bowring, ‘you’re a doctor of—’
‘Engineering. My doctoral research was in communication with trolls. I was sponsored by Douglas Black.’
‘Fascinating, fascinating,’ Bowring said, distracted. ‘With the collapse of the old Datum academic institutions, we must rely increasingly on the generosity of figures like Black to fund our research. Still, the work gets done. You know Black himself?’
‘I’ve met him. Before he became a recluse. Or so it’s said …’
Jha, and others of the crew, had been involved in another twain mission that had taken Black, in secret and at his own request, to a refuge much further away than either Bowring or Abrahams imagined, probably. She kept her counsel.
They came to the rough work station Bowring and his team had set up, in the shadow of the twain hovering above. Trestle tables were laden with tablets and heaps of paper, meteorological charts, maps; there were samples too of the local flora and fauna. All this was a pale imitation of the more extensive science suite up on the twain itself.
Bowring said now, ‘It’s certainly a pleasure to find you here, Dr Abrahams. Coming in cold to a situation like this, there’s only so much progress we can make in a fixed time. No offence to the people here; your neighbours seem a smart, decent, very fine bunch of people. But to have had a scientifically educated man on the spot for some years—’
‘I understand.’
‘Tell me about a “Dyson motor”.’
‘Do you have a map of the world? Or any kind of global view …’
The Navy crew had toured the continent in the twain, and had sent up sounding-rockets for a higher-altitude view. There was even a clutch of simple orbiting satellites, though they had yet to complete a full planetary survey. There were various ways of viewing the result; they had maps on paper, electronic images, photographic surveys. Jha’s favourite was a globe you could handle: a basketball borrowed from the crew on to which a projected photographic mosaic had been glued. It looked pretty much like a globe of any stepwise Earth, save for a peculiar local readjustment of the continents: that gap between South and North America, the global seaway that ran from the Atlantic coast through the Mediterranean and out through Arabia to the south. That and the ubiquitous green of forests that stretched all the way to the polar regions, north and south.