The Long Earth

34

AS SHE STEPPED AWAY, Joshua took a step back, to the East, away from the direction of travel of the airship. That was the instinctive way when you were in danger, to step back into the world you’d just arrived from, because the world downstream might be even worse. Now he was in a timber world, fairly standard stuff, nothing but endless trees as far as he could see — which was only a hundred yards or so, because of the aforesaid trees. No girl, no dinosaurs, no airship.

He could see a little more light than average to his right, so he got up and strolled that way. He emerged into a vast area of burned stumps and ash fields: not a recent fire, already new saplings were poking shoots through the stinking black mess, with green leaves apparent here and there. Just a forest fire, a dieback. It was all part of the great cycle of nature which, when you’ve seen it one point three million times, squarely pisses you off.

The airship was above him suddenly; its shadow sprawled across the clearing, an abrupt eclipse. Joshua clipped his earpiece back on.

Lobsang’s voice was an irritating whine. ‘We have lost her! Could you not have beguiled her into the ship? Clearly she has discovered a new way to step! And what’s more—’

Joshua plucked out his earpiece again. He sat down on a stump, a crumbling mass of colourful fungus. He felt stunned by the encounter with Sally, the blizzard of words that had evidently been pent up inside her. And she was travelling alone, as he used to. It was a slightly electrifying thought. On his sabbaticals, he had survived in any number of worlds like this.

Suddenly it occurred to him that he didn’t want or need a giant damn airship hovering over his head any more.

Joshua put the earpiece back on, and considered what to say. What was the phrase that Sister Agnes always used when some high-flying ecclesiastical or other tried to throw his weight around at the Home? ‘Can you hear me, Lobsang? You ain’t the boss of me, sir, you surely ain’t. The only thing you could do right now is kill me, and you still wouldn’t be the boss of me.’

There was no reply.

He got up and strolled downhill, in so far as there was a hill at all. But it was a definite slope, and that would mean a river, and that would mean open ground, cover and, almost certainly, game of some sort. All he’d need to survive here.

Lobsang replied at last. ‘You are right, Joshua. I am not the boss of you and have no desire to be. On the other hand I can’t believe you are serious in the hints you are giving that you might jump ship. We are travelling with a purpose, remember.’

‘Whatever your purpose I’m not about to kidnap anybody, Lobsang.’ He stopped. ‘OK, I’ll come aboard. But under certain conditions.’

The airship was right overhead now.

‘The foremost of these is that I come and go to the ground any time I wish, OK?’

This time Lobsang replied by loudspeaker, a booming celestial voice. ‘Are you trying to negotiate with me, Joshua?’

Joshua scratched his nose. ‘Actually I’m trying to demand, I think. And as for Sally, I have a feeling we shall see her very shortly, regardless of you and your plans. You’ll never be able to find a solitary human being in all these forest worlds, but she will find it very easy to see a damn great airship in the sky. She will find us.’

‘But she travels alone, as you do. She’s travelled much further in fact. Perhaps she doesn’t need people, and will not be motivated to find us at all.’

Joshua walked across the damp ashes towards the lift-ring that was descending to the ground. ‘She doesn’t need people. But I believe she wants people.’

‘How can you possibly know that?’

‘Because of the way she talked to me. All those words pouring out, because they needed to be said. Because your precious mountain men were probably just the same at their rendezvous. Because I’m the same. Because this human called Joshua keeps going back home, just every now and then, to visit, to be with folk. To be fucking human, not to put too fine a point on it, and Daniel Boone can kiss my ass.’

‘I’ve said it before, Joshua. Travel has most definitely broadened your mind, if not your vocabulary.’

‘And besides, there’s something else, Lobsang. Something you’re missing. Do you imagine it’s chance that she happened to show up under our keel, with her campfire blazing?’

‘Well—’

‘She knew we were coming, Lobsang. I’m certain of it. She wants something from us. The question is what?’

‘Your point is well made. I’ll consider it. Incidentally I have captured and dissected several of those flying creatures. They appear to be remarkably like wasps, although they act more like bees. A new order. Which is why one should be wary of arbitrarily applying labels like “dinosaurs”.’

‘Have you changed your voice?’

‘Yes, indeed, it is warm and reflective, is it not?’

‘It makes you sound like a rabbi!’

‘Ah yes, close enough; actually, it is the voice of David Kossoff, a Jewish actor prominent in the 1950s and 60s. I believe the occasional hesitation and slight air of bemused amiability has a friendly and calming effect.’

‘It does, but I’m sure you are not supposed to tell me that it does. It’s like a conjuror telling you how the trick was done—’ Damn it. Lobsang was making him laugh again. It was very hard to stay mad at him. ‘OK, I’m coming aboard. Now do we have an arrangement?’

The ring ascended smoothly.

Aboard, ambulant Lobsang was waiting for Joshua in his stateroom. There had been more upgrades.

Joshua burst out laughing, despite everything. ‘You look like a hotel doorman! What’s that all about?’

Lobsang purred, ‘I hoped to give the effect of a British butler circa 1935, sir, and rather spiffily, if you don’t mind me saying so. I believe the effect is not so creepy as the Blade Runner killer-replicant chic I experimented with before, although I am open to suggestions.’

Spiffily. ‘Well, at least it’s a different kind of creepy. I guess it works. But knock it off with the sir, would you?’

The butler bowed. ‘Thank you… Joshua. Let me say, Joshua, that I think that on this journey we are both learning. For now, I will step us at no more than an average human’s daily pace until the young lady wishes to make her presence known.’

‘Good plan.’

There was the usual, brief feeling of mild disorientation as they began to step once more. Below, passing at a leisurely pace of just a few steps per hour, the Long Earth was like the old-fashioned slide-show kit that Joshua had once found among junk in the attic back at the Home. Click once and there was the Virgin Mary, click twice and there was Jesus. You stayed still while worlds went past. Pick the one you want.

That night on the saloon deck’s big screen Lobsang showed an old British movie called The Mouse on the Moon. In his mobile incarnation, he sat next to Joshua watching it, which would have been weird, Joshua thought, seeing the pair of them through Sally’s eyes, had not this voyage long gone past weird and sailed full speed into bizarre. Nevertheless they watched the ancient film, a spoof on the space race of the twentieth century — and Joshua spotted David Kossoff instantly. For what it was worth, Lobsang had got him exactly right.

After the movie had finished, Joshua was certain he saw a mouse run across the deck and disappear. ‘The Mouse on Earth Million,’ he quipped.

‘I will set Shi-mi on it.’

‘The cat? I wondered what had happened to that thing. You know, Sally told me how she’d grown up in a family of steppers. Natural steppers, I mean. She wasn’t ever alone, out in the stepwise worlds. But her family made her keep quiet about it, as they always had.’

‘Of course they did. As you have always attempted to, Joshua. It’s a natural instinct.’

‘Nobody wants to be different, I guess.’

‘There is that. With a power like stepping, once you might have got yourself burned as a witch. And even nowadays, since Step Day, there are an increasing number back on Datum Earth who are uncomfortable with the whole idea of stepping, and the Long Earth.’

‘Who?’

‘You really have no instinct for politics, do you, Joshua? Why, those who can’t step at all. They resent the Long Earth and those who travel it, and all that this great opening-up has brought. And those who are losing money, in the new order of things. There are always plenty of those…’