Terry Pratchett - The Long Mars

Lobsang seemed unaware. ‘But this is different, yes? Your headache. You must have a sense that something about the Datum has changed.’

Joshua grunted. ‘And so do you, right? You’ve got evidence, haven’t you? Evidence of something . Otherwise you wouldn’t have called me back.’

‘Indeed. Evidence of something – well put. Something elusive and difficult to define, yet nevertheless apparent to me, who, despite my post-volcano handicap, still spans the world like a disembodied bardo spirit—’

‘Like a what?’

‘Never mind. Something real, Joshua. Look – you know me. If nothing else I am a keen student of the folly of mankind, which at times has seemed almost terminal.’

‘As we’ve discussed many times,’ Joshua said dryly.

‘Well, now something has changed. The aftermath of Yellowstone seems to have triggered it. People have responded well or badly. But amid the heroism and cowardice, the generosity and the venality, if you take a global view – and I am scarcely capable of less – it seems to me that humanity’s response to Yellowstone has been characterized by a startling outbreak of what Sister Agnes once described as common sense .’

And, just as he uttered those words, a figure in an orange jumpsuit, barefoot, with shaven head, materialized out of thin air, already in the middle of a flying leap. ‘HAAARRRGGH!’

‘Not now, Cho-je!—’

But Lobsang’s words were cut off as the newcomer wrapped his legs tight around Lobsang’s neck. Lobsang was forced to the frozen ground – but as he fell he stepped away, disappearing, leaving the newcomer rolling alone in the dirty ice, ash staining his orange jumpsuit.

Joshua carried a gun, bronze, steppable. He always carried a gun. Before the guy could stir Joshua had the weapon out in front of him, held two-handed, legs wide. ‘I knew I heard something tracking us. Don’t move, grasshopper.’

But Lobsang appeared at his side, breathing hard, his robe ripped at the neck. ‘It’s all right, Joshua. I’m under no real threat. This is just—’

‘HYY-AAGH!’ The guy on the ground did a kind of back flip, and once more launched himself through the air at Lobsang. But Lobsang dipped into his own forward roll, and the newcomer was sent flying. This time it was the assailant who stepped away, before he hit the ground.

Lobsang straightened up, breathing hard. ‘It’s one of Agnes’s ideas. You see—’

‘NYA-HAAH!’ Now the assailant, Cho-je, came back into the world above Lobsang’s head, with his fists clamped together and ready to slam down on Lobsang’s crown. But Lobsang ducked, whirled, and caught him with a kick in the stomach – and again Cho-je disappeared.

Joshua gave up. He holstered his weapon, stood back, and watched the fight. It was a blur of kicks, punches, even head-butts that rained in with hard, meat-slapping impacts, and of stepping, as the two figures popped in and out of existence, each trying to get the down on the other. During his travels with Lobsang Joshua had watched plenty of Jackie Chan movies. And out in the Long Earth he had been involved in his own battles with elves, stepping humanoids honed by the hunt, who could cross between the worlds with such precision that they could materialize alongside you with their hands already in position to close around your throat. This was something like all of that, he thought, hastily mashed together, a high-speed blur of action that was all but impossible to follow.

‘HEE-ARR-AARGH!’

‘Cho-je, you fool!—’

It ended when Lobsang grabbed Cho-je’s left hand, as if to shake it, and, holding on hard, executed a standing somersault. When it was done he was still holding the hand , which had been ripped off at the wrist. Cho-je, bemused, breathing hard, looked at the stump of his arm; Joshua saw LEDs spark amid a whitish fluid that dripped to the ground.

Cho-je bowed to Lobsang. ‘Nice work! Good to see Sister Agnes’s care has not softened you up!’

‘On the contrary,’ Lobsang said. ‘Until we meet again.’

‘Until then. If I may have my detached extremity . . .’ Lobsang gave him back the severed hand, and Cho-je snapped out of existence.

‘So, Lobsang – Cho-je?’

Lobsang was sweating, quite convincingly. ‘As I said, Agnes’s idea. She has the notion that I’m too powerful. I need challenges, she says. So I endure an endless routine of toughening up and training. Actually, Joshua, Agnes got the idea for Cho-je from my account of our sparring matches during our voyage on the Mark Twain . I do derive enormous benefit in terms of ambulant body control from such exercises, and Cho-je is an increasingly ingenious opponent. By the way, in addition to this training partner, she also recruited another, one of the past inmates from the Home, a rather reclusive young man who has devoted his life to launching ingenious computer-virus attacks on me.’

‘Viruses, huh?’

They began to walk back to the twain. ‘Viruses are a worse threat to me than any physical violence, no matter how many backups I create. Any synching between my iterations at all leaves me open to a potentially lethal attack. I’m thinking of installing at least one entirely non-electronic backup.’

‘Such as?’

‘Oh, a few hundred monks in a scriptorium somewhere, endlessly copying my thoughts from one bound paper volume to another. A scriptorium on the moon maybe.’

‘One thing has definitely changed about you, Lobsang. Your jokes are no better. But at least now I can tell they are jokes.’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’

‘And to think that just as this incident with Cho-je occurred you were about to lecture me on “common sense”.’

‘We can continue that discussion in the morning. The twain is relatively spartan but quite comfortable, I think you’ll find.’

‘Any good movies?’

‘Of course. Your choice. But nothing with singing nuns in, if you don’t mind . . .’

IN THE MORNING they ate breakfast in near silence, and flew on. Rather than make straight for the caldera Lobsang at first skirted it to the west, following the line of what remained of a south-to-north highway. As they edged closer to the caldera, the increasing thickness of ash began to overwhelm the landscape as it had existed before the eruption. They were entering a true volcanic province, Joshua thought, like a fragment of an alien world brought down to the Earth.

‘The civilization of Datum Earth will never recover,’ Lobsang murmured, as they peered down at the strange landscape.

Joshua grunted. ‘That seems a tough conclusion to come to. It’s only been a few years . . .’

‘But think about it. We’d already used up all the easily accessible ore, the oil, much of the coal. And the world was already suffering tremendous climate disruption because of all the industrial gases we spewed into the air. When Yellowstone’s effects finally fade, the best guess for the future is widespread instability, as the world seeks a new equilibrium after two massive environmental shocks, one human-induced, one volcanic.’

‘Hmm. So is this why there’s talk of rewilding?’

The idea was, when the winter finally receded from the Datum Earth, why not take the chance to heal the world? All the species that had been driven to extinction on the Datum still prospered in the neighbouring worlds (though once again, Joshua knew, on some of the Low Earths many of those creatures were already in trouble). So, in North America, you could bring back the mammoth and the wild horse and the bison and the musk ox, and the seals in the rivers and the whales in the oceans – just step specimens over, as infants perhaps, to the Datum. Similarly you could let the landscapes and seas recover to their natural state.