The Long Earth

refreshment I would definitely have returned it. Or provided the soda.’
    Joshua struggled to make sense of this encounter. ‘Lobsang
who
?’
    ‘I have no surname. In old Tibet, only aristocrats and Living Buddhas had surnames, Joshua. I have no such pretensions.’
    ‘Are you a computer?’
    ‘Why do you ask?’
    ‘Because I’m damn sure there isn’t a human being in there, and besides, you talk funny.’
    ‘Mr Valienté, I am more articulate and better spoken than anybody you know, and indeed
I
am not inside the drinks machine. Well, not wholly, that is.’
    ‘Stop teasing the man, Lobsang,’ said Selena, turning to Joshua. ‘Mr Valienté, I know you were …
elsewhere
, when the world first heard about Lobsang. He is unique. He is a computer, physically, but he used to be – how can I put this? – a Tibetan motorcycle repairman.’
    ‘So how did he get from Tibet to the inside of a drinks machine?’
    ‘That
is
a long story, Mr Valienté …’
    If Joshua hadn’t been away so long he’d have known all about Lobsang. He was the first machine to successfully convince a court that he was a human being.
    ‘Of course,’ Selena said, ‘other sixth-generation machines had tried it before. Provided they stay in the next room and talk to you via a speaker they can sound at least as human as some of the lunkheads you see around, but that proves nothing in the eyes of the law. But Lobsang doesn’t claim to be a thinking machine. He didn’t claim rights on that basis. He said he was a dead Tibetan.
    ‘Well, Joshua, he had them by the shorts. Reincarnation is still a cornerstone of world faith; and Lobsang simply said that he had reincarnated as a computer program. As was deposited in evidence in court – I’ll show you the transcripts if you like – the relevant software initiated at precisely the microsecond a Lhasan motorcycle repairman with a frankly unpronounceable name died. To a discarnate soul, twenty thousand teraflops-worth of technological wizardry on a gel substrate apparently looks identical to a few pounds of soggy brain tissue. A number of expert witnesses testified to the astonishing accuracy of Lobsang’s flashes of recall of his previous life. And I myself witnessed a small, wiry old man with a face like a dried peach, a distant cousin of the repairman, conversing with Lobsang happily for several hours, reminiscing about the good old days in Lhasa. A charming afternoon!’
    ‘Why?’ Joshua asked. ‘What could he gain out of it?’
    ‘I’m right here,’ said Lobsang. ‘
He
’s not made of wood, you know.’
    ‘Sorry.’
    ‘What did I gain? Civil rights. Security. The right to own property.’
    ‘And switching you off would be murder?’
    ‘It would. Also physically impossible, incidentally, but let’s not go into that.’
    ‘So the court’s agreed you’re human?’
    ‘There’s never actually been a legal definition of human, you know.’
    ‘And now you work for transEarth.’
    ‘I part-own it. Douglas Black, the founder, had no hesitation in offering me a partnership. Not only for my notoriety, though he’s drawn to that sort of thing. For my transhuman intellect.’
    ‘Really.’
    Selena said, ‘Let’s get back to business. You took a lot of finding, Mr Valienté.’
    Joshua looked at her and made a mental note to make it a lot
more
finding next time.
    ‘Your visits to Earth are infrequent these days.’
    ‘I’m
always
on Earth.’
    ‘You know what I mean. This one,’ said Selena. ‘Datum Earth, or even one of the Low Earths.’
    ‘I’m not for hire,’ Joshua said quickly, trying to keep a trace of anxiety out of his voice. ‘I like to work alone.’
    ‘Well, that’s rather an understatement, isn’t it?’
    Joshua preferred life in his stockades, on Earths far from the Datum, too far away for most to travel. Even then he was wary of company. They said that Daniel Boone would pull up sticks and move on if he could as much as see the smoke from another man’s fire. Compared with Joshua, Boone was pathologically gregarious.
    ‘But that’s what makes you useful. We know you don’t need people.’ Selena held up a hand. ‘Oh, you’re not antisocial. But consider this. Before the Long Earth, no one in the whole history of mankind had ever been alone; I mean really
alone
. The hardiest sailor has always known that there’s someone out there somewhere. Even the old moonwalker astronauts could
see
the Earth. Everyone knew that other people were