The Long Cosmos Read Online Free

I’ll give you that.’
    â€˜And they say that innovation stalled after Step Day.’
    Bill said simply, ‘Shame it is they haven’t yet developed an unbreakable heart.’
    Joshua looked away.
    â€˜Sorry, man,’ Bill said. ‘That was cheesier than a mouse’s wet dream. I never would have said such things once, would I? We were lads together, you and me. Feelings were for those fecking nuns to have, not us. Well, I changed. And you changed too. But you’ve changed – well, back .’
    Joshua was a little shaken by that. To cover, he selected a shirt from the line and pulled it on. Suddenly Bill, sixty-eight years old, sitting on his own junk-cluttered desk, sipping his coffee in the gloom of the office, looked like a mayor to Joshua. Mature. As if mad old Bill the fake Irishman had somehow grown up when Joshua wasn’t looking. Had, in fact, overtaken Joshua himself. ‘What do you mean, changed back?’
    Bill spread his hands. ‘Well, for instance, when it was all kicking off with those rebel types in Valhalla, and all the trolls in the Long Earth went AWOL, remember? And you and me were handed a twain by that fecker Lobsang and told to go off and find Sally Linsay.’
    â€˜Jeez, Bill, that must be thirty years ago.’
    â€˜Sure. And as far as I remember we just slept on it, and up and left, and pissed off to the ends of the Long Earth. I don’t remember you doing all this packing . Counting your fecking socks.’
    Joshua looked around the room, at all his gear in its neat rows and piles. ‘You have to do it right, Bill. You’ve got to make sure you have everything, that it’s all in working order. Then you have to pack it right—’
    â€˜There you go. That’s not Joshua the mayor of Hell-Knows-Where talking, Joshua the father, Joshua Valienté the hero of half the fecking Long Earth. That’s Josh the boy I used to know at the Home, when we were eleven or twelve or thirteen. When you used to make your crystal radio sets and model kits, just the way you’re doing your packing now. You’d lay everything out first, and fix any bits that were damaged—’
    â€˜Paint before assemble.’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜That’s what Agnes used to say to me. “You’re the sort of boy who always, but always, paints before assembling.”’
    â€˜Well, she was right.’
    â€˜She usually was. In fact she usually still is . . . And she’s supposed to come by to see me today, no doubt to be right one more time. Well, Bill, so what?’
    â€˜There’s always a balance, man. You’ve got to hit the right proportion. And, just to raise another point, Mister Chairman, aren’t you getting too fecking old to run off playing Daniel Boone?’
    â€˜None of your business,’ Joshua snarled.
    Bill held up his hands. ‘Fair enough. No offence.’
    There was a knock at the door.
    Bill stood. ‘Maybe that’s Sister Mary Stigmata now, right on cue. I’ll leave you to it. I mean, I won’t get any work done in here until you’re out of it anyhow.’
    â€˜Bill, I appreciate it—’
    â€˜Just remember one thing. Put a bloody marker somewhere high up where a twain can see it, an emergency blanket on top of a rock, so they can find you when you do yourself in.’
    â€˜Roger.’
    The rap on the door was harder this time.
    â€˜All right, all right.’
    The opened door revealed, not Agnes, but Joshua’s son. Bill Chambers cleared off fast.

3
    D ANIEL R ODNEY V ALIENTÉ was thirty-eight years old. Framed in the doorway, taller than his father, he was as pale of complexion as his mother had been, but his hair was as dark as Joshua’s. He wore a practical-looking hooded coverall, and carried a small leather bag on a strap slung over one shoulder. Joshua suspected that this would be all the possessions he had with him – all