The Long Earth

Lobsang. ‘Excellent! I can’t say that this is what I expected, but it is most certainly what I had hoped for. By the way it would be appropriate if you gave them something of yours.’
    The previous keeper of the magnificent fish was beaming encouragingly at Joshua.
    ‘Well, I’ve got my glass knife, but somehow I don’t think this guy ever needs a knife.’ He hesitated, feeling awkward. ‘And it
is
my knife, I knapped it myself from a bit of imported obsidian.’ A gift from somebody whose life he had saved. ‘Been with me a long time.’
    Lobsang said impatiently, ‘Consider the following. A little while ago you were expecting to be viciously attacked, yes? And now we have the obvious point that it was
his
fish and
he
gave it to
you
. I suspect the act of giving is more important than the gift here. Should you feel naked without a weapon, please do help yourself later to one of the laminated knives in the armoury, OK? But right now,
give him the knife
.’
    Angry, mostly at himself, Joshua said, ‘I didn’t even know we had an armoury!’
    ‘We live and we learn, my friend, and be grateful that you still have the chance to do both. A gift has a worth that has little to do with any currency. Hand it over with a cheerful smile for the cameras, Joshua, because you are making history: first contact with an alien species, albeit one which has had the decency to have evolved on Earth.’
    Joshua presented his beloved knife to the creature. The knife was taken with extravagant care, held up to the light, admired, had its blade gingerly tested. Then there was a cacophony in his headset that sounded like bowling balls in a cement mixer.
    After a few seconds this mercifully stopped, to be replaced by Lobsang’s cheerful voice. ‘Interesting! They sing to you using the frequencies that we think of as normal, while among themselves they appear to communicate in ultrasonics. What you heard was my attempt to translate the ultrasound conversation down to a range that a human could perceive, if not understand.’
    And then, in an instant, they were gone. There was nothing to show that the creatures had been there, apart from very large footprints in the snow, already being filled in by the blizzard. And, of course, the salmon.
    Back on the ship Joshua dutifully put the huge fish in the galley’s refrigerator. Then, cradling a coffee, he sat in the lounge outside the galley, and said to the air: ‘I want to speak to you, Lobsang. Not to a voice in the air. A face I can punch.’
    ‘I can see you are annoyed. But I can assure you that you were never in any danger. And as you must have guessed you are not the first person to have met these creatures. I have a strong hypothesis that the first person who did meet them thought they were Russians …’
    And Lobsang told Joshua the story of Private Percy Blakeney, as reconstructed from notes found in his diary, and comments he made to a very surprised nurse in the hospital in Datum France where he was taken after appearing there suddenly in the 1960s.

21
    FOR PRIVATE PERCY , faced by his row of impassive singing strangers in the green of his unsmashed forest, the penny had quickly dropped.
    Of course! They had to be Russians! The Russians were in the war now, weren’t they? And hadn’t there been a copy of
Punch
magazine passed around in the trenches which showed Russians looking, yes, just like bears?
    His granddad, who had been a Percy too, had once been taken prisoner in the Crimea, and he was always ready to talk about the Russians to an attentive boy. ‘Stank, they did, lad, dirty sods to a man, savages to my mind, and some of them from God knows where in the wilds, well, I’ve never seen the like! So much fur, and beards a man could keep a goat in, except I would warrant the goat would leap out straight away being particular about the company it kept. But they could sing, lad, stinking though they was, they could sing, better than the Welsh, oh yes,
they
could sing! But if you hadn’t been told, you would have thought they were animals.’
    Now Percy looked at the row of hairy, emotionless, but not particularly hostile faces, and said boldly, ‘Me English Tommy, yes? On your side! Long live the Czar!’
    This won some polite attention, with the hairy men looking at one another.
    Maybe they wanted another song. After all, hadn’t his mother told him that music was the universal language? And at least they weren’t imprisoning him, or shooting him, or