Joshua hurried after her.

‘Agnes? You OK?’

‘Oh, what do you think, Joshua? Look at him lapping up the praise from those creepy brain-boxes. This is what Lobsang is, in the end. Or what he always wanted. The machine that would be God. If he can’t rule in heaven alone, then at least he can be part of the pantheon – so he thinks. And he’s forgotten all about being human, which is what he said he wanted.’

‘But that’s why he brought you back—’

‘Bah. Oh, forget about me, Joshua. What about Ben? He’s the one who counts – he’s the one who will be hurt if he loses his father.’ She faced him. ‘You’re the first to know. We’re splitting up. Me and George. When this latest crisis is over.’

That dismayed him, and he let it show. ‘That’s truly sad, Agnes. I mean, it’s not George’s fault he ended up sitting on top of the biggest current crisis in the Long Earth.’ No, he reflected, if it was anybody’s fault it was Sally Linsay’s, who’d led Lobsang here. In her subtle, offhand, indirect way, maybe Sally was turning out to be central to this whole situation … He tried to focus on Agnes. ‘Where will you go? Back to Madison?’

‘I don’t think so. I’ll find a new place to settle, a home to build, and I’ll live my life as mother to Ben. Which is all I want now.’

‘You say I’m the first to know about this. Does George know, yet?’

‘Since I only just decided – no, not yet. Give me a chance to tell him myself.’

Joshua said, ‘I know you, Agnes. I know damn well there’s no point suggesting you think it over. Because you won’t change your mind, will you?’

‘Never found the need to before. Don’t intend to start now.’ She stood for one moment more, as if reluctant to leave Joshua’s side. Then she smiled sadly at him, and walked out of the gallery.

47

JOSHUA DIDN’T MANAGE to sleep any more during the remains of the brief ‘night’. He washed, shaved, forced down some breakfast. He felt oddly groggy when he arrived back at the observation gallery, in the sudden dawn.

The two Next were already here, along with the Irwins, and Agnes standing uncomfortably between Lobsang and George. Margarita Jha came to join them. Only Sally was missing, which was typical of her. Maybe she had found a way off the ship after all.

And Joshua wondered too if Agnes had broken her news to George yet. Maybe not. Clearly George was in his element here, side by side with the Next facing a major crisis; Agnes was probably kind enough to let him have his moment.

Looking down, he saw that the airship had made its appointment. The landscape below was familiar from his own visit here with Lobsang. There was the profile of Long Island, there the churning Atlantic – and there was the tremendous viaduct constructed by the beetles, just as before, striding across the land and out to sea.

Ken Bowring joined them, wearing dark glasses. ‘Quite a sight, isn’t it, Mr Valienté? George Abrahams told us about the trip you made here, showed us the records. Has much changed?’

‘If you saw our records you’ll know. Last time around, Long Island still had some forest. Now …’

Now the island was bare rock. Joshua imagined tremendous waves battering at coastal provinces like this, stripping them of vegetation cover, every living thing, even the topsoil ripped off. The viaduct itself was just as it had been before. But there was something new, a circular feature directly under the viaduct, dug into the rocky ground – like a crater, perhaps. Its floor glistened, like glass.

Bowring was staring down grimly.

Joshua said, ‘You OK?’

Bowring grinned, a forced expression. ‘One too many cocktails with the Captain last night – hell, it was only a few hours ago, the damn nights aren’t long enough to sleep off a hangover. But this—’ He waved a hand at the scene below.

He didn’t need to say it: overwhelming. ‘I know,’ Joshua said. ‘But what’s that scar? The circular feature.’

‘That’s what I want to know,’ said Marina Irwin.

Ken Bowring said, ‘Marina, you asked yesterday if we’ve been doing anything about this situation. Well, we have tried. Scientifically, we’ve tried to understand the beetles, to communicate with them.’

‘In search of a weapon to use against them,’ Joshua guessed.

Bowring said bluntly, ‘Shoot a gun at one of the damn things and the round just bounces off its hide. Or it absorbs the slug and becomes that bit stronger.’

Jha said, ‘I know it sounds brutal, but I think our commanders hoped we’d find some kind of bioweapon. We’ve come up with nothing so far. And besides, these are cyborgs, a fusion of life and machine; even if we attacked the biology we’re not sure if that would actually stop them.’

George said, ‘And the scar below?’

Jha said, ‘When we failed to make a dent in the bugs themselves, we tried attacking their works. These viaducts. We tried a whole series of demolition tactics—’

‘Cut to the chase,’ Oliver Irwin said. ‘You used a nuke, didn’t you?’

Jha nodded. ‘A tactical weapon. Only a few multiples of the Hiroshima bomb, in energy. Well, we cut the viaduct! Right where you see the scar. We had a party that night.’

‘But,’ Bowring said, ‘within forty-eight hours the damn beetles had built the thing back again. As you can see. The bugs at ground zero must have been destroyed. But for the survivors the fall-out – the radiation – doesn’t seem to affect them. And as far as we can tell the incident made no difference to the spin-up process.’ He glared down at the viaduct. ‘You have to remember that these structures girdle the planet. We have a lot of nukes – including many that have been converted to steppable materials.’ He grimaced. ‘Just in case we ever needed to fight a Long Earth nuclear war. Maybe with some kind of concerted effort we could disrupt them, slow them down. But at what cost? This Earth turned into a nuclear wasteland, on top of its other problems? And we couldn’t eliminate all the beetles anyhow.’

Marina looked horrified. ‘We can’t stop them, then.’

Jha said evenly, ‘Not on this world, no. They’ve simply ignored everything we’ve tried to do to them, just as they ignored every contact we attempted.’

Marina said, ‘So are we just going to give up?’

Now Stella Welch, the Next woman, shared a brief exchange of quicktalk with Marvin, and stepped forward. ‘It’s time for us to be open with you. You have called on us for help, and you were wise to do so. Yes, Marina, we have to give up this world. We can’t destroy the beetles. But we must protect the rest of the Long Earth from these creatures. The threat of their spreading is great.’

‘All this talk,’ Marina said, anxious, angry. ‘What are we going to do?’

Welch faced her. ‘We think we have a way. We must seal off this world. Make it impossible to step into, or out of. We have been studying the phenomenon of the Long Earth. Stepping itself. We believe it may be possible to do this. There will be costs – for us, as well as for you, whose home this was.’

Marvin frowned at her. ‘Costs for us? We haven’t discussed this. You’re thinking of Stan Berg, aren’t you?’

Marina asked, ‘Who?’

Stella ignored her. ‘Yes, Marvin, it may be necessary to use him. He may be the strongest of all of us. As demonstrated by the facility in exploiting soft places that he seemed to develop simply by observing us. If he can be brought here—’

‘You want me to arrange for him to be collected?’

‘I think that would be wise.’

Joshua had no idea who this Stan Berg was, but he already felt sorry for him. ‘What “costs”? Of what kind?’

Stella looked at him gravely. ‘The world must be closed, you see—’

‘From the inside,’ Marvin said.

Ken Bowring gaped, and took off his sunglasses. ‘This is the first I’ve heard of this. From the inside? The inside of what?’