Terry Pratchett - The Long Utopia

Rod stood there awkwardly, by a table laden with food, back in a room into which he evidently didn’t feel he fitted any more. ‘Mom, you shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble.’

Helen smiled. ‘You knew I would, though, didn’t you? Look, I know you two are going to be keen to get away—’

Jack growled, ‘Not even stopping by to say hi to Aunt Katie and her girls, and the grandkids? You know how they look up to you, the great twain driver.’

‘I’m not a twain driver any more, Granddad.’

‘But even so—’

‘I’m only here for Dad.’

‘Fool stunt!’

‘If Dad wants to cross a hundred thousand worlds, all the way back to the Datum, on his birthday, a single day, fine by me. We’ll fly most of it. I want to do nine hundred miles to the Wisconsin footprint by dawn, and after that another six hours’ flying and more stepping over Madison.’

‘If you don’t break down on the way. Damn fool stunt if you ask me.’

‘Nobody is asking, Jack,’ Joshua said, gently enough. ‘And after Rod drops me off I’ll walk the rest of the way.’

Helen rolled her eyes at her son. ‘With Sally Linsay! Some birthday treat that will be. Two antisocial old curmudgeons stomping across the Long Earth complaining about how fine it used to be when there were no people to mess it up – none but them .’

Rod shrugged gracefully. ‘It’s Dad’s choice, Mom. You’re only fifty once.’

‘Damn fool stunt,’ Jack said again.

Helen insisted, ‘Well, if you won’t see your family, and if you won’t let me fuss over you for even one night, then at least you can let me refuel you. You’ve a long journey ahead. So here, there are homemade cookies with plenty of sugar, and sandwiches – the pork’s frozen but it’s good – and iced tea, and hot coffee, and lemonade. I know it’s midnight but who cares? Sit. Eat.’

Joshua and Rod shared a glance, shrugged as they used to when Rod was a kid named Dan and they’d both known not to argue, and sat at the table. Even Jack awkwardly lowered his bulk into a chair. They filled their plates with food, and helped themselves to drink.

‘Too damn late for all this,’ Jack grumbled, as he bit into a cookie the size of a small plate, wincing as he tried to lift his hand to his mouth.

Joshua knew that Jack, unfortunately for him, was typical of his generation, the first Long Earth pioneers. The labour he’d put in during those early years building Reboot, after a months-long trek out here with the young Helen and the rest of the family, had bequeathed Jack crippling arthritis in old age. But he had stubbornly refused expensive Low Earth drugs, and turned away even basic help. Even agreeing to come live with Helen had been the end result of a war of attrition mounted by Helen, when she’d come back home from Hell-Knows-Where, and her older sister Katie who had always stayed in Reboot with her own family. Jack still wrote, or tried to, on rough local-made paper, with gnarled old hands holding crude local-made quill pens. Helen had told Joshua he was working on a memoir of the heroic days of Valhalla’s Gentle Revolution, when the peoples of the Long Earth had stood up for their independence from the Datum: a brief drama barely remembered now, Joshua suspected, by Rod and his comber friends, as they faded steadily into the endless stepwise green.

Anyhow Joshua knew Jack was right about the lateness of the hour. Even though many of the younger generation were slipping away, the core population in Reboot still made a living off the farms they and their parents had carved out of the native forests, starting around a quarter of a century ago. And, following the rhythms of their animals’ lives, they generally retired with the setting sun. Midnight was a foreign country to farmers.

But Helen said now, ‘Oh, hush, Dad. When I’m doing my midwifing we’re up all hours. Newborn babies don’t keep to any clock. Why, you get up in the night to make me coffee when I come stumbling in before the cocks crow. And besides, if this is the only time Rod has to be with us, I’m not about to sleep it away. More tea?’

‘Not yet, thanks.’ Rod looked uncomfortable. ‘Mom, listen – I heard you have some news too.’

Helen raised her eyebrows. ‘Gossip travels fast, even across the Long Earth. Well, I’m not sure what you heard, Rod, but the truth is—’

Jack cackled. ‘She has a new boyfriend. That pasty-faced kid Ben Doak!’

Joshua forced himself not to grin. He was glad he’d had time to absorb this news already himself. By now it didn’t feel so bad; it was just another layer on top of the lump of wistful sadness and regret he’d been carrying around inside since his marriage had broken up. And Ben Doak was kind of geeky.

Helen snapped, ‘Oh, shut up, Dad. He’s not a kid, for God’s sake, he’s only a couple of years younger than me … You know him, Rod. He was another of the first settlers, him and his family. We got to know the Doaks pretty well even during the trek. He has a couple of kids of his own, younger than you, and he lost his wife to a forest disease that hit us hard a year back—’

‘I’ve been back since then, Mom.’

‘Sorry. And since I lost my husband to another kind of disease,’ with a glance at Joshua, ‘we thought we’d – well – join forces.’

Jack snorted. ‘Sounds like a military alliance, not a marriage. You ask her this, Rod, because I’ve tried and I get no answer. Does she actually love this Doak boy?’

Evidently this was an old argument between the two of them. Helen flared back, ‘For all the time you’ve spent out here, Dad, you still think it’s like Datum Madison, where you grew up. Full of people coming and going, full of choice for company. Where you have the luxury of waiting until you’ve found somebody you could fall in love with. Out here it’s different.’

Rod took his mother’s hand. ‘I do understand, Mom. It’s the same for us.’

Jack said, ‘Sure. Running around in the forest like Robin Hood and his outlaws. You’re not in one of those “extended marriages” we hear about, are you?’

‘If I was, I wouldn’t blab about it to you, Granddad, would I?’

Jack thought that over, and winked at Rod. ‘Fair enough.’

‘Mom, I will come back for the wedding.’

‘That’s good.’ But she looked briefly anxious. ‘It’s not settled yet, the date. How will I contact you? I mean—’

‘I’ll just know, don’t worry.’ He added mischievously, ‘Actually it sometimes helps being related to the great Joshua Valienté. People take a bit more notice of what you’re doing. They pass on messages.’

Helen gave Joshua a dismissive look. ‘I know it’s his birthday, but don’t make him any more big-headed. And he knows as well as I do that I’d much rather he spent this big day with his family instead of going off on yet another dumb Long Earth jaunt.’

‘A jaunt with my son,’ Joshua pointed out. ‘Some of it anyhow. Quality time.’

Jack said, ‘It’s only because you couldn’t manage the trip any other way, you old fossil.’

Rod laughed. ‘And speaking of the journey, we need to get going. Mom, thanks – these cookies are delicious, and the sugar will help keep me awake.’

Jack grunted. ‘It keeps me awake knowing how much we had to barter for that sugar. They use the damn stuff as currency out here.’

‘Could I get a doggy bag? …’

So the midnight party, such as it was, broke up. There was a final packing up, a stiff hug and handshake for Joshua from ex-wife and father-in-law, a last slurp of strong coffee.

Then Rod, carrying a lantern, led his father out of the little township and down a forest trail to the river, where there still stood a stone commemorating the too-brief life of Helen’s mother, Jack’s wife.