Terry Pratchett - The Long War

“I am fully equipped to support your current activity. The systems analysis, I mean. Turbine number two is developing metal fatigue. Also the flush in the aft crew bathroom is malfunctioning. Rodent infestation is negligible but not zero, by the way.”

Maggie stared at the cat. Then she came around her desk, grabbed the cat, and set her on the desktop. The beast was heavier than she had thought, but she felt comfortably warm.

She thought over what the cat had said. Then she slapped a comms panel. “Hey, Harry.”

“Here, Captain,” the engineer replied promptly.

“How’s the rear crew head?”

“What?… Umm, let me check my roster. A faulty flush, as it happens. Why do you ask, Captain?”

“How about turbine number two?”

“No faults reported.”

“Would you check it over again? Call me back.” She stared at the cat. “So—what the hell are you?”

“An artificial life form. Well, evidently. Including top-of-the-line artificial intelligence. The nice thing about artificial intelligence is that at least it’s better than artificial stupidity. Don’t you think? Ha, ha.” Her voice was fully human, but diminished, as if issuing from a small loudspeaker.

Maggie stayed stony-faced. “That couple, Dr. and Mrs. Abrahams, left you behind.”

“I am another gift, Captain. Forgive the subterfuge. It was thought that you would refuse me reflexively. Yet I am capable of supporting your mission in a variety of ways. A mission to which I am fully committed, by the way.”

“You have a name?”

“Shi-mi. Which is Tibetan for cat. I am an upgrade of previous models…”

Maggie’s comms unit blipped: Harry Ryan. “Don’t know how you guessed it, Captain, but there is a flaw in number two turbine. Metal fatigue in the bearings. We’ll need to strip it down within seven weeks max—best to do that in dry dock. It’s a very fine imbalance; it wouldn’t have shown up for a few more days’ running, but there is a rising chance of failure. Captain, I’m embarrassed we didn’t spot it.”

“Forget it, Harry. Ask Nathan to put together an itinerary to take us home.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Shi-mi said modestly, “The turbine didn’t sound true. Easy to spot. It was however only one cat’s opinion.”

“But you’re not just a cat, are you?”

“No, Captain. I was built to the finest standard specifications of the Black Corporation’s robotics, prosthetics and artificial intelligence divisions. Whereas your turbine was built for the government on a low-bid contract. Thank you very much, and I hope I have passed the audition. Incidentally—would you be offended if I brought you an occasional mouse? It is rather traditional…”

“No.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“And stay out of Joe Mackenzie’s way.”

“Yes, Captain. Does that mean I can stay aboard?”

“Just get out of here.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Lobsang pulled strings at the Black Corporation and secured Joshua and Bill the use of an airship, for the purposes of their quest in search of Sally Linsay, and the trolls. It was a relatively small, nimble craft, with a translucent solar-capture envelope a couple of hundred feet long, and a gondola the size of a truck trailer, with walls of ceramic panels and big viewing windows. Primarily used as a scout to accompany the great stepwise convoys on the Valhalla run, the ship had no name, only a corporate registration number. Bill promptly named it the Shillelagh .

Bill, for reasons he’d yet to share with Joshua, said he wanted to fly, not out of the usual Mississippi ports, but from the Seattle area in the Pacific north-west. The quickest way to transport the airship from its base at a Low Earth Hannibal to Seattle was to break it down, ship it by rail across the Datum, and then reassemble it on an apron at SeaTac airport. That took a week. The travellers used the time to prepare, to gather supplies and kit for the journey.

Regarding the trolls, Lobsang provided them with what he called a “troll translation kit’, downloaded into a neat jet-black slab, small enough to fit into a backpack.

As for Sally, Joshua did some snooping as Bill had requested, visited the hotels she’d stayed at, even Jansson’s home, looking fruitlessly for leads as to where she’d gone.

And he had to face the family he was leaving behind, as he disappeared on yet another jaunt into the remote Earths—once again leaving at Lobsang’s behest, once again pulled sideways by Sally, Helen’s enigmatic rival. Little Dan was jealous, pure and simple; he wanted to go exploring too. Helen, who was struggling to get permission to visit her Madison-bomber brother in prison, was ominously silent. It wasn’t a happy family that Joshua left behind, and not for the first time, and it tore his heart in two.

But off he went anyhow.

And on an impulse he took the sapphire ring, his one souvenir of his first Long Earth quest a decade ago: took it from where it had been hanging on Jansson’s wall, and hung it up in the gondola lounge. He wondered if Sally would expect him to do that.

Thus, on a bright June morning at Datum SeaTac, Joshua found himself sitting in this compact gondola, laid out just like a travel trailer with a tiny galley area and lounge, foldaway bunks and tables—in fact, he learned, it had been designed by Airstream—while Bill took his place in the small wheelhouse at the gondola’s prow.

The Shillelagh lifted easily. Soon Joshua had a fine view of the airport and the crowded development around it, and of Puget Sound.

All of which was whipped away as they began to step, to be replaced by the increasingly sparse facilities of SeaTac West 1 and 2 and 3, with their ribbons of road and rail tracks and small settlements cut into the enduring forest, each world glimpsed in the space of a heartbeat—until soon, after only a very few worlds, there was barely a sign of mankind at all, only the forest and the Sound, and the Cascades piled up in the distance. The ship rose steadily as it stepped, and Bill directed it laterally towards the mountains, which persisted more or less unchanged as they passed through the worlds. The sky flickered, though; the weather was never unchanging from Earth to Earth, and on this June day they passed from sun to cloud to showers.

In the first few worlds there was nothing much to see but tree tops. Joshua knew there were bears down there in those forests, and beavers, and wolves. And people too, although further out than the Low Earths there was only a long but thinning tail of colonization. More rats than people, probably, now that the twains with their roomy holds and cargoes of foodstuffs flew so thick. What else was down there was guesswork. There was a programme to map the Low Earths from orbit, with small fleets of pole-to-pole satellites that would fly over a turning world, inspecting its continents, oceans and icecaps with cameras, ground-penetrating radar, infrared and other sensors, before stepping on to the next world, and the next… Even such coarse imagery, which would show few details smaller than a reasonably sized car, was only available for a hundred or so of the lowest worlds. Further out than that, save for particular worlds which had been subject to closer study, nobody knew, really.

They were climbing the flank of Mount Rainier itself by the time they hit the first Ice Age world. For a few seconds they rode high over the crumpled white sheets that coated the ground. And then back to the endless forest green.

Joshua sat back, watching the scenery blankly. Already he missed his family. He wondered how he was going to pass the time.

“Bill?”

“Yes?”

“Just checking. How is everything?”