The Long Cosmos Read Free Page A

the sky did not cease.
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2
    W HEN B ILL C HAMBERS arrived at the office, the final April morning before Joshua left for his latest sabbatical, he had trouble opening the door – and it was the door of his own office, Bill being the current mayor of Hell-Knows-Where, Joshua realized with chagrin.
    Joshua was in the small private bathroom. When he heard muffled cusses he came out bare to the waist, towel around his neck, half his face covered with shaving foam. Though the morning was well advanced, the blinds were still down, and the room was gloomy. Bill was trying to get across the office without stepping on some crucial piece of travelling gear, and it was a challenge. Not only did Joshua have Bill’s fold-out cot still piled with bedding, but the rest of his kit was strewn out in rows and heaps across the floor, even on the desk.
    â€˜Mother of mercy, Josh, what is it ye’re packing here?’ Bill’s faux Irish got stronger every time they met. ‘Hell-Knows-Where is a sophisticated place now, you know. I’ve got to sort out the quarterly cross-taxes by the end of the week.’
    â€˜Bill, I thought you had a computer to handle that sort of stuff.’
    Bill looked pained. That is to say, more pained than previously. ‘Ye can’t leave it to the computer, man! True accountancy is the last refuge of the creative mind.’
    â€˜I did once sit in that chair myself, remember? I’ll be out of your hair—’
    â€˜What hair?’ Bill tried to push a bit further into the room, taking long strides, tottering on awkwardly placed feet. ‘And by God it smells like a troll’s jockstrap in here.’ He pulled up a blind and yanked a cord to open the wooden sash window.
    Cool air flowed in, laden with a scent of dust, hay and spring flowers: air from a world that was chilly compared to others in this stretch of the Long Earth, cool enough to deliver a frost as late as June, sometimes. Kind of refreshing, Joshua had always found it.
    And this was the air of home for Joshua now, as much as anywhere – the place he kept his most significant stash of stuff, anyhow. Hell-Knows-Where wasn’t a place Joshua had founded, or helped to found, but a place he’d made his home for decades, with his wife Helen and his son Rod. When he’d come here, in fact, the nascent town’s only fixed point had been the smithy. As iron couldn’t be stepped between worlds, the smithy was a kind of thumbtack that had pinned the community to this particular Earth, and back then it had served as a meeting point and a gossip focus. Later, it was no coincidence that Joshua and Bill and the others had used the location to build this, Hell-Knows-Where’s first town hall. And on its inauguration they had hung an iron horseshoe over the door. An oddity when you thought about it, making horseshoes on a world without horses yet, but people wanted the good luck that came with it.
    But Joshua’s marriage had broken down. Helen had moved out of here to go back to her Corn Belt home town of Reboot. And then she had died. Now Joshua hardly ever saw his son Rod; he was supposed to show up today, but . . . Well, that was the plan.
    Stepping back from the window into the gloom, Bill ran straight into a row of Joshua’s lightweight shirts and pants, hanging on a line. ‘Feck! Funnily enough I don’t remember a clothesline in here. So where have ye fixed it? Ah, I see, to the bust of the town’s founder on top of the bookcase here. Knotted around her neck . It’s what she would have wanted.’
    â€˜Sorry, man. I had to improvise. You want a coffee? I have a pot running in the kitchen space back here.’
    â€˜You mean, would I like some of my best coffee before it walks out of here in your bladder? Ah, what the hey, give me a shot.’
    Joshua, mopping foam from his face, poured the brew into the least disreputable mug he could