Joshua had come across this kind of idea before, mostly from the sort of earnest swivel-eyed zealot who waited to harangue you at twain terminals. It was mildly shocking to hear Lobsang saying this. For all Lobsang’s claims about his origin, that he was the soul of a Tibetan motorcycle repairman reincarnated into a gel-substrate supercomputer, they had never delved too deeply into the mystical side of that proposition. But Joshua thought of the small Buddhist shrine tucked into a corner of the airship. Perhaps Lobsang was changing, reaching for his own deeper roots.

‘I take it you’ve been studying this reincarnation business?’

‘Wouldn’t you? And I’ve had a lot of encouragement from Agnes in such matters. Buddhism, you know, is essentially a way of working with the mind. By developing the basic potential of the mind you can achieve inner peace, compassion and wisdom. All of us can do this. But I am nothing but mind, Joshua. How could I fail to be drawn to such ideas, even without my cultural background? As for ideas of reincarnation, I’ve gone into them deeply. I am familiar with over four thousand texts on the subject, besides my own experience.’

‘Oh.’

‘Also I have been counselled by Padmasambhava, an old friend in my previous life, now the abbot of a monastery in Ladakh. Which is in India, just beyond the Tibetan border, and a place where the old wisdom has been preserved despite the Chinese occupation. Although Padmasambhava is himself a shareholder in a Chinese logging consortium . . . I am not losing my mind, you know,’ said Lobsang severely.

‘I didn’t say you were. But it’s odd to hear you express self-doubt, Lobsang—’

‘I think I remember my death.’

That stopped Joshua in his tracks. ‘What death? You mean—’

‘In Lhasa. My last human death. And my reincarnation.’

Joshua thought that over. ‘So was it like when Doctor Who regenerates?’

‘No, Joshua,’ Lobsang said with strained patience. ‘It was not like when Doctor Who regenerates. I remember it, Joshua. I think. The lamentations of the women, in the kitchen, when the chikhai bardo came, the moment of my death. The Tibetans believe that the soul lingers in the dead body. So for forty-nine days the Book of the Dead is read over the corpse, to guide the soul through the bardos, the phases of existence that bridge life and death.

‘I remember the reading by my friend Padmasambhava. Even the Book itself, I looked down on it from outside my body – the sheets printed from hand-carved blocks, held between wooden covers. I was dead, I was told. Everybody who came before me had died. That I had to recognize my own true nature, the radiant, pure light of continuing consciousness inside the heavy physical body; and with that recognition, liberation would be instantaneous.

‘But after twenty-one days of chanting, if liberation hasn’t come, you enter the sidpa bardo, the bardo of rebirth. You become like a body without substance. You can roam the whole world, tirelessly, seeing all, hearing all, knowing no rest. Yet you are haunted by images from your former life.

‘Now think about that, and look at me, Joshua: I am spread across all the worlds of the Long Earth; I see all, I hear all. What does that sound like but the bardo of rebirth? But to pass on you have to abandon all you have known in this life. How can I do that?

‘Sometimes I fear I am trapped in the sidpa bardo, Joshua. That I am trapped between death and rebirth – that I have never, in fact, been reincarnated, reborn, at all.’ He looked at Joshua with eyes that were dark in the light of a volcano sky. ‘Perhaps even you are a mere projection of my own ego.’

‘Knowing your ego, I wouldn’t be at all surprised.’

‘And it gets worse. What of the future? What if I can’t die? If I have to wait for the sun to fade before I am released, who then will be left to read the Book of the Dead over me?’

‘Look, Lobsang – this doesn’t sound like you. You never did metaphysical doubt. What if this is a false memory? Suppose somebody, some enemy, has uploaded a virus that’s whispering into your gel-based head . . . Maybe it’s just that kid who Agnes hired to test you. Isn’t that more likely?’

But Lobsang wasn’t listening. He seemed unable to listen.

The twain shuddered in the turbulent air, a mote above the lunar immensity of the Yellowstone caldera.

10

THERE WAS NO GREAT space-programme-type fuss before Sally Linsay’s journey to Mars: no bone-crunching physical training or survival exercises, no hours in simulators, no photographs on the cover of Time magazine. It did take a couple of weeks for Willis, Frank Wood and Sally to get their act together, however. There were briefings, which Sally mostly skipped, almost on principle . . .

And then, at last, astonishingly, Sally found herself in what Raup called a white room: a suiting-up room, for astronauts.

With the assistance of a couple of female attendants in jumpsuits bearing Boeing logos, Sally had to strip off, was given a rub-down with alcohol, and then put on soft white underclothes. Throughout the flight she would have to wear a belt of some kind of medical telemetry equipment around her chest: the corporate rules of GapSpace, Inc. Then came the spacesuit itself, a kind of heavy coverall of some tough orange fabric, with a rubbery, airtight inner layer. You climbed into this backwards through a gap in the stomach, then zipped it all up at the front. Sally groused her way through this, and through a pressure test when she had to screw on her helmet and the suit was pumped so full of air it made her ears pop.

But one of the technicians, a humorous-looking older woman, told her to cherish her suit. ‘You’re going to be walking on Mars in this, honey,’ she said. ‘And it’s more than likely that it will save your life en route. You’re going to come to love her. Based on good Russian technology, by the way – decades of experience have gone into the design of that garment. Look, if you like, we can even sew a little name tag on the chest for you—’

‘Don’t bother.’

As she was led out of the white room, the techs made her sign her name on the back of a door already covered with hundreds of signatures. ‘Just a tradition,’ the tech said.

Outside she joined her father, Frank Wood and Al Raup, all suited as she was. Then, with help from the techs, they all bundled into a compact ‘stepper shuttle’, a cone-shaped spacecraft not unlike an Apollo command module. Raup was to pilot this craft, delivering the Mars crew to the Gap. They were in four seats jammed in side by side, with Raup in the left-hand commander’s seat, Willis and Frank in the middle, Sally to the right. The craft had a surprisingly complex-looking instrument panel, most of it in front of Raup, but with basic duplication in front of the others. They wore their spacesuits and helmets but with the visors open. There was a hum of fans, a smell of just-cleaned carpet; it was like being inside a freshly valeted car, Sally thought. Small windows revealed blue English sky.

And a toy spaceman dangled from a chain over Willis’s head.

Sally flicked the toy with a gloved finger. ‘What’s this, Raup? Another dumb astronaut tradition?’

‘No. An essential indicator. You’ll see. Well, we’re good to go. You guys strapped in? Three, two, one—’

There was no more ceremony than that. He didn’t even touch any controls.

But Sally felt the subtle lurch of a step.

Suddenly the sky outside the windows was black. That spaceman started to float upwards, his chain slack.

And the shuttle’s rocket booster lit up, shoving them hard in the back. They were all strapped tightly into their couches, but even so Sally was startled by the sensation. Maybe she should have paid more attention to the briefings.