Terry Pratchett - The Long Earth

They reached the looming building. Sally said, ‘Good grief, will you look at that thing? You don’t realize how big it is until you get close!’

And Joshua looked up, and up, at the building’s sheer face. It wasn’t exactly a miracle of architecture — it was unimpressive, in fact, save for its sheer scale. The blocks of black basalt-like rock from which it had been constructed had been roughly worked to fit, but were not of a uniform size. Even from here you could see gaps and imperfections, some of which had here and there been naturally mortared with what looked like bird guano and nests, but even that had evidently been a long time ago.

Sally said, ‘Nice architecture. Somebody ordered «big and heavy and last for ever», and got it. OK, let’s walk around to the entrance and dodge the rolling rock ball—’

‘No,’ said Lobsang sharply, standing stock still. ‘Change of plan. I have detected a rather more insidious danger. The whole structure is radioactive . Short range only, not remotely detectable — I do apologize. I suggest that we ambulate with alacrity back the way we came. No arguments. Please don’t waste breath until we are safe…’

They didn’t exactly run; call it a very determined walk.

Joshua asked, ‘So what is this place? Some kind of waste dump?’

‘Did you notice a multiplicity of signs that would indicate that entering this building unprepared is going to kill you? No, I didn’t either. The technological level appears much too low for this to be some kind of nuclear reactor, or other similar facility. I suspect they didn’t know what they were dealing with. I am speculating that this culture stumbled across a rather useful ore with interesting properties, perhaps a natural nuclear pile…’

‘Like Oklo,’ Joshua said.

‘In Gabon, yes. A natural concentration of uranium. They found something that made holy glass glow, perhaps… That would show the spirits at work, wouldn’t it?’

Sally said, ‘Spirits that ultimately killed their acolytes.’

Lobsang said, ‘We can at least look at some of the more distant caves before we depart. They should be far enough from the temple, or whatever this is, to be safe.’

The first cave they chose to explore was big, wide, cool — and crowded with the dead.

For a moment the three of them stood at the entrance of this house of bones. Joshua felt utterly dismayed at the sight, yet somehow it seemed an appropriate culmination of this lethally disappointing place.

They walked in cautiously, stepping on clear earth where they could find it. The skeletons were fragile, often to the point of crumbling. The bodies must have been dumped in here, Joshua thought, perhaps in a rush, in the final days of the community when there was nobody left to dispose of them properly, however they had managed that disposal. But what were these creatures — or rather, what had they been? At first glance they might have been vaguely human. To Joshua’s inexpert eye they looked bipedal, as he could tell from the leg bones, the slim hips. But there was nothing humanoid about their sculpted, helmet-like skulls.

In the heart of the cave the crew of the Mark Twain stood there rather helplessly. With a whir, Lobsang’s head turned steadily, and for once mechanically, with no human-like artifice, scanning and recording the symbols etched into the walls.

Sally said, ‘Have you noticed? These corpses were not scavenged, not by animals. Nothing has disturbed them since they were dumped here.’

Lobsang murmured as he worked, ‘I launched the usual drone craft, incidentally. There is no evidence of technology, of high intelligence, anywhere else on this version of Earth. Only here. The mystery deepens.’

Sally grunted. ‘Perhaps the poisonous stuff that drew them here inspired them to their greatest cultural peak — before killing them. What an irony. Of course there is another possibility.’

‘What’s that?’ Joshua asked.

‘That the nuclear pile under that temple wasn’t natural at all. Merely very, very old…’

Joshua and Lobsang had no response to that.

‘But still,’ Sally said, ‘a dinosaur civilization? It’s a unique find.’

Joshua asked, ‘Dinosaurs?’

‘Look at those crested skulls.’

‘A civilization built by post-dinosaur evolutionary descendants, perhaps,’ Lobsang said fussily. ‘We must be precise about terms.’

Joshua stared at a bit of bone, what was probably a finger, adorned with a gold ring, massive, set with sapphires. He bent and picked it up. ‘Look at this. It can’t be anything but decoration. They were so like us, dinosaurs or not. They were sapient. They were tool-users. They created buildings — a city, at least this one. And they had art — adornment…’

‘Yes,’ Lobsang said. ‘They were like us in one essential regard, and unlike the trolls, say. These creatures, like us, created an environment of culture around themselves. Our artifacts, our cities, are external stores of the wisdom of past ages. The trolls seem to have nothing like it, though perhaps their songs are a step towards it. These creatures had that faculty, evidently.’

Joshua said, ‘They even look as if they were upright bipeds, like us. Don’t they?’

Lobsang said, ‘Perhaps we are seeing universals here — the upright biped is a useful tool-wielding form given a basic four-limbed body plan; and perhaps intelligent incarnate tool-wielding creatures have a natural tendency to aggregate into something like cities. Perhaps even an attraction for bright shiny ornaments is common. Yet it is all gone. They poisoned themselves, and now they are poisoning us.’

Sally looked at Joshua. ‘I feel like I just found out I had a stillborn twin brother.’

‘There’s little point our spending much more time here,’ said Lobsang. ‘This place clearly requires a properly equipped archaeological expedition — with radiation suits. It will keep, after all; we are far from the Datum, and I doubt if there will be tourists any time soon. Come, children. Let’s go home. There is nothing for us here.’

As they made their way back to the elevator, Joshua said bitterly, ‘It all seems such a waste, doesn’t it? All these worlds. What’s the point, without mind?’

‘It is the way of things,’ Lobsang said. ‘You are looking at this the wrong way. How likely is it that we might find sapient life on other planets? The astronomers have detected several thousand planets of other stars, but nothing as yet has given us any reason to believe that there is anybody out there. Perhaps it is difficult to evolve tool-making intelligences. And perhaps we should be grateful we came so close to meeting these creatures, so close in probability space.’

Sally said, ‘But if these creatures were sentient, why did we find them in only one world? We would have picked up evidence of them in the neighbouring worlds, wouldn’t we? At least in this location. Couldn’t they step, despite their sentience?’

‘Perhaps not,’ Lobsang said. ‘Or perhaps the natural steppers were driven out by those who could not step at all. As seems to be happening on Datum Earth right now. Perhaps this is a glimpse of our own future.’

And Sally and Joshua, two secretive natural steppers, exchanged glances of understanding.

‘ N ATURAL STEPPERS. Such a nice phrase, ain’t it? I mean, we all step. We all learn to do it when we’re weaned off our mammy’s milk. «Oh, look, it’s baby’s first steps.»’ Brian Cowley, who was nothing if not a showman, took mincing baby paces back and forth across the stage, mike in hand, picked out by the spotlights in the cavernous conference room. The simple stunt won him a few whoops.