Terry Pratchett - The Long Mars

CIA looked faintly disgusted. Then he went on, ‘But we need to think of the wider picture. This is an issue for humanity, not just America. The Chinese are going to have their own “Next” too. The Russians. The rising nations of the equatorial belt on the Datum. We need our Next to counter theirs .’

The DoD laughed out loud. ‘So what are we getting into, an arms race of the Brainiacs?’

The Science Adviser intervened. ‘We seem to persist in describing these young people as a danger, a threat. Is that necessarily so?’

That generated a buzz of conversation. On the anti-Next side, delegates pointed to their private, non-decipherable languages. The fact that they had already been making money by producing investment-analysis algorithms that defied existing market safeguards. The fact that they looked like us , that they were an insidious, insider threat, cuckoos in the nest, like an alien invasion from within our own DNA . . .

And then there was the inarguable fact that a handful of young, unarmed, untrained Next had been able to bamboozle experienced Navy officers, capture a twain, and slaughter many of its crew and abandon the survivors. That incident proved that these Next could be a real and present danger, the military officers argued. There had even been some incidents on Hawaii, attempts at manipulation by the imprisoned children here. Some of the marine guards had had to be rotated; others were in counselling. ‘Real Hannibal Lecter stuff,’ said DoD.

Protests to counter that perception, such as the assertion from the Homelands Security representative that individuals later proven to have Next characteristics had quietly, unannounced, done heroic work in helping the post-Yellowstone rescue and recovery efforts, sounded feeble in comparison.

Nelson felt increasingly uncomfortable as he listened. ‘I don’t like the subtext to all this. What’s been said beneath the words: they aren’t like us, and that’s why we need to destroy them . That’s what they’re really saying. My own background—’

‘South African,’ Roberta murmured. ‘I know. You are sensitive to such undertones. And you are right to be. America, indeed mankind, has undergone revolutions of the spirit in the last generation, from the discovery of the Long Earth to Yellowstone – and now this. People retreat to default positions in such circumstances. Protect what they have.’

‘“People.” Dim-bulbs, you mean?’

She didn’t respond to that. ‘Within the administration itself there has been a kind of emotional coup. Everybody knows that it was the undercurrent of resentment against steppers cresting in the Humanity First movement that gave President Cowley his power base in the first place.’

‘It seems to me Cowley himself has grown beyond that. He reaches for the centre ground. He wouldn’t have got re-elected otherwise.’

‘True. But behind the scenes, some of the President’s closest aides and advisers from those days are still around. Perhaps the stain lingers even in the President’s own soul. And that darkness has come to the fore, in this different context, under the pressure of events. There is a gathering mood to do something . To strike. It is nothing to do, really, with questions of national security, and still less the survival of the species. Such a policy is believed to accord with the perceived public mood. And perhaps it does. People need scapegoats. Ah, the conference may be coming to its conclusion . . .’

The President’s Science Adviser summed up the position, the options, and the mood in the room. ‘This place “Happy Landings”. This is the source, you say?’

‘The nest,’ growled the CIA. ‘The genetics confirms it.’

‘One source,’ said the FBI. ‘No doubt there are others. But many genetic linkages trace back to Happy Landings. Right now it is a primary hub.’

‘OK.’ The Adviser turned to Davidson. ‘And our relevant assets, Hiram? USLONGCOM is your domain.’

‘The Armstrong II and Cernan are the best ships we got. They can be out there in days.’

The DoD grunted. ‘Those ships carry some serious weaponry; we made sure of that before they went off into the dark. Admiral, just make sure your troll-lover Captain Kauffman is forced to ship out Ed Cutler too. Then we might have a serious card to play . . .’

Nelson said, ‘What kind of weaponry? . . . Good Lord. They’re actually considering a military response, aren’t they?’

Roberta said evenly, ‘The conclusion is as I anticipated. The game is nearly played out.’

‘And what of the inmates here? What will be done with them? Nothing good, I imagine. Certainly they will never be freed.’

She turned to him, her face serious, intent. ‘They are young, you know. For all their arrogance, their difficulty. I am like them – I know you see it.’

He did see it now. He thought that she must need iron self-control to keep up camouflaging behaviour in the high-intensity hothouse of Madison West 5, the new DC.

‘I was once enough like them to understand. How it is to be different , how it is to be surrounded by blank faces and empty heads, to know there is nobody you can talk to, no parent, no teacher, no way you can empty your head of the insights rattling inside it. And to be frightened, almost all the time.’

‘Frightened?’

‘The Next can read people, remember, with an acuity you dim-bulbs lack. They look at an adult and it is as if they are reading that person’s mind. They can clearly see the indifference, the malevolence, the lust, the calculation, behind the smile. All this is very visible even to the smallest, most helpless child. We see the world clearly. We have no illusions,’ said Roberta bleakly. ‘We are too intelligent to be comforted by any of your stories, your gods and heavens.’

Nelson considered. ‘Once I saw Paul crying in the night. This was from the viewing walkway. I did not disturb him.’

‘I used to cry at night too.’

He considered that. ‘Do you call yourself Next, then?’

She smiled. ‘Labels like that are for youngsters. As if we’re comic superheroes. I don’t fret about labels. And I am – different. I am less developed than some others here, but, having been raised in human society for most of my life – and with good teachers – I have decided my best place is here, out in the human world, serving as a sort of – interface.’

He smiled. ‘One hell of an interface if you’re in the White House itself.’

‘I try. But my maternal grandmother was a Spencer too. I have deeper loyalties; it’s my family being discussed here. I can find ways to get the inmates out of here.’ She faced him. ‘Will you help?’

‘Of course I will help. It’s why I came.’

‘What must we do?’

Nelson thought of Lobsang, and Joshua Valienté – and what he knew of Joshua’s friend Sally Linsay, and her facility with soft places . . . ‘There are ways.’

The meeting had come to its conclusion. The delegates stood up, mingled, those in the same geographical locations shaking hands. Then, one by one, their hologram representations winked out of existence.

NELSON AZIKIWE CONTACTED Joshua, and Joshua contacted Sally, fresh back from the Long Mars via the Gap. And together they worked out a soft-place escape route from the Hawaii facility.

Joshua and Sally were smuggled into the base, and they started stepping out the Next inmates, one batch after another.

They tumbled through the soft places, hand in hand, Joshua and Sally and the final group of the Next.

Even to Joshua, king of the natural steppers, whenever he followed Sally Linsay through this strange network of linkages it always felt as if he was falling out of control down some kind of invisible shaft, and a cold one too, a deep chill that sucked the innermost heat out of his body: the toll exacted by the universe for this miraculous fast transit.