The Long Earth

37

THE SHIP STEPPED all through the night, and, for once, Joshua thought he could feel every step. He sagged into something like sleep just before dawn, and got maybe an hour before Sally hammered on his door.

‘Show a leg, sailor boy.’

He groaned. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Last night I gave Lobsang some coordinates to aim for. We’ve arrived.’

Once decent, Joshua hurried down to the observation deck. The ship was motionless. They weren’t far from the Pacific coast in this version of Washington State. And below, far, far into the deep Long Earth, far beyond the consensus on where the colonizing wavefront might yet have reached, was a township, where no township had a right to be. Joshua just stared. It sprawled along the bank of a reasonably sized river, with a clutter of buildings, tracks threading through a thick, damp forest. But there were no fields, as far as he could see, no sign of agriculture. There were people everywhere, doing what people always did when there was an airship overhead, which was to point upwards and chatter excitedly. But without farms, how could they live in such a densely populated community?

Meanwhile, by the river, there were familiar hulking forms… Not quite human. Not quite animal.

‘Trolls.’

She glanced at him, surprised. ‘That’s what they’re called out here. As you know, evidently.’

‘As Lobsang knew before we set off.’

‘I suppose I should be impressed. You’ve met them, have you? Joshua, if you want to understand the trolls, if you want to understand the Long Earth, you need to understand this place. That’s why I’ve brought you here.

‘Orientation, Joshua. If this was the Datum we would be hovering over a township called Humptulips, in Grays Harbor County. We’re not so far from the Pacific coast. Of course the details of the landscape differ, the track of the river. I hope they’ve got the clam chowder boiling.’

‘Clam chowder? You know this place that well?’

‘Of course I do.’

In her way, she could be as irritatingly smug as Lobsang.

The airship came down over a broad dirt square at the heart of the township. The buildings scattered around the square struck Joshua immediately as old, of weathered wood, some on eroded-looking stone bases. He had an immediate sense that this township, of maybe a couple of hundred people, had been here long before Step Day. The square itself was dominated by a stout communal wooden building that Sally said was known simply as ‘City Hall’, and she led the way there. Inside, the building, constructed on a frame of impressive cedar beams, had a high ceiling, polished wooden floors and furniture, glassless windows at eyelevel, and large doors at either end. The fire pit in the centre added a decent enough glow.

Lobsang had descended with them, his ambulant unit clothed in saffron robes for the occasion. Despite his 1980s body-builder bulk, he had never looked more Tibetan. And he seemed oddly self-conscious — as well he might, because the hall was full of staring, smiling townsfolk, and trolls, mixing with the people as unnoticed as family dogs at a picnic. The air was full of their distinctive, faintly unpleasant musk.

In City Hall there was indeed chowder to be had, boiling up in huge pots, a thoroughly incongruous treat given their remoteness from the Datum.

The mayor greeted them. He was a small, sleek man who had an accent like a middle European with good English. Of course Sally knew him. She handed him a small package as soon as they met, and he led them to a central table.

Sally saw Joshua’s glance at this exchange. ‘Pepper.’

‘You do a lot of bartering, do you?’

‘I guess. Don’t you? And I stay over. Not just here. If I find settlers who are interesting enough, I stop a while and help them out with their farming, whatever. That’s the way to learn a world, Joshua. Whereas you two, rattling along in your great big penis in the sky, are learning nothing.’

‘Told you so,’ Joshua murmured privately to Lobsang.

‘Perhaps,’ Lobsang replied quietly. ‘But even so, for all our flaws, she came back to us. You’re right, Joshua. There is something she wants from us. Among all these distractions we must persist in finding out what that is.’

Sally was saying now, ‘This place is pretty unique, among my stopovers, however. I call it Happy Landings.’

Lobsang observed, ‘Evidently it has been here a long time.’

‘A very long time. Folk sort of end up here… It seems to be a kind of people magnet. You’ll see.’

The only name the mayor gave was Spencer. Over bowls of chowder he was happy to talk about his unique community.

‘A “people magnet” — yes, perhaps it is something like that. But over the centuries that people have been coming here they have given it other names, or have cursed it, in a multitude of languages. There is some very old building stock, and we find old bones, some in crude coffins. Centuries, yes. People have been arriving for a long, long time. Thousands of years, even!

‘Of course most of the population you see around you were born here — I myself was — but there is always a trickle of newcomers. None of those incoming settlers knows how they got here, and everybody who comes here fresh arrives with the same story: one day you are on Earth, the Datum as they call it now, minding your own business, and suddenly you’re here. Sometimes there’s stress involved, you’re trying to escape something, oftentimes not.’ He lowered his voice and added, ‘Sometimes there are lone children. Strays. Lost boys and lost girls. Even infants. Often they’ve never stepped before at all. They are always made welcome, you may be sure of that. Do try the ale, I like to think we are very good at it. Some more chowder, Mr Valienté? Where was I?

‘Of course nowadays the scientific types among us are lining up behind the idea that there is some physical singularity, some kind of hole in space, that leads people here. As opposed to the old thinking that this place is at the centre of some kind of mysterious curse — or possibly, in the circumstances, a blessing.

‘Anyhow here we are, marooned, as it were, although I daresay no shipwrecked mariner ever arrived on a more hospitable shore. We can hardly complain. From what we hear from recent arrivals, our older folk are generally glad they missed out on most aspects of the twentieth century.’ Spencer sighed. ‘Some get here thinking that they have landed in heaven. Most arrive disorientated and sometimes fearful. But everybody who arrives here is welcomed. From newcomers we can learn about how all the other Earths are going. And we welcome any new information, concepts, ideas and talents; engineers, doctors and scientists are especially welcome. But I am pleased to say that these days we are growing our own culture, as it were.’

‘Fascinating,’ Lobsang murmured, as he carefully spooned chowder between artificial lips. ‘An indigenous human civilization, spontaneously forming in the reaches of the Long Earth.’

‘And a new way of travelling,’ Joshua said, feeling faintly stunned at this latest conceptual leap. ‘A way to cut out the step-by-step plod.’ In fact, he thought, thinking of Sally, thinking of the ‘stuttering’ she had mentioned, another way.

‘Yes. The Long Earth is evidently even stranger than it seems; we may learn a lot about its connectivity by studying this place. But it remains to be seen how useful this new phenomenon will be.’

‘Useful?’

‘Less so if it is like a fixed wormhole, a tunnel between two fixed points…’

‘Like the rabbit hole to Wonderland,’ Joshua said.

‘We must learn all we can.’

Sally, meanwhile, was watching Lobsang eat, her mouth gaping. ‘Joshua … it eats?’

He grinned. ‘Wouldn’t it look odder if he didn’t, in this company? Nobody else is bothered. We’ll discuss it later.’

Spencer leaned back comfortably in his chair. ‘We know Sally very well, of course. Now, tell me about yourselves, please, gentlemen. The world is evidently changing, and the change brings your wonderful zeppelin! You first, Lobsang. You’ll forgive us our curiosity about your exotic presence particularly…’

For the first time in Joshua’s experience, here in this crowded, sociable place, and with trolls watching them like an audience at a cabaret, it seemed that Lobsang was flustered. This was one of those moments when Joshua genuinely couldn’t tell if Lobsang really was ultimately a human, or just an incredibly smart simulation that was adept at mimicking such subtle human aspects as being embarrassed.

Lobsang cleared his throat. ‘To begin with — I am a human soul, though my body is artificial. You are familiar, perhaps, with the concept of prosthetics? The use of artificial limbs, organs to sustain life… Consider me as an extreme case.’

Spencer looked totally unfazed. ‘Amazing! What a step forward. At my age you do begin to wonder why the universe places intelligence in such fragile receptacles as our human bodies. May I ask if you have any special talents to share with us? That’s what we ask all newcomers, so please don’t be offended.’

Joshua groaned inwardly, anticipating Lobsang’s reaction to that.

‘Special talents? It would be easier to list the exceptions. I am not very good at watercolours, as yet…’ He glanced around curiously. ‘Clearly this is an unusual community, with an unusual background of development. What about industry? You have iron, evidently. Steel? Good. Lead? Copper? Tin? Gold? Wireless radio? You have surely passed the telegraph stage. In addition, printing, if you have the paper—’

Spencer nodded. ‘Yes, but only handmade, I’m afraid. Since arrivals in Elizabethan times. We made improvements, of course, but we haven’t chanced upon an artisan who knows much about paper manufactory for a considerable time. We have to rely on the talents of those who drift here, haphazardly.’

‘If you can provide me with ferrous metals, I will fabricate for you a flatbed printing press utilizing waterpower — if you are familiar with waterpower?’

Spencer smiled. ‘We’ve had water mills since the age of the Romans.’

Again Joshua was struck by the depth of time represented here. Sally looked amused at his reaction.

‘In that case I can construct a robust alternator. Electrical current. Mayor, I can leave you an encyclopaedia of discoveries in medicine and technology to the present day — although I would advise you to take it a bit at a time. Future shock, you see.’

The crowd around them in the hall, drawn by Lobsang’s strangeness, murmured a general approval at this.

But Sally, who had been listening impatiently, said, ‘It’s very kind of you, Lobsang, but all this Robert Heinlein stuff will have to wait. We are here because of the problem— remember?’ She looked at Spencer. ‘And you know all about that.’

‘Ah. The troll migration? Alas, Sally is right. There is clearly cause for concern. It is a slow-burning problem, you might say, but, we believe, it has serious repercussions across the worlds — the Long Earth, as you call it. But even that will wait for tomorrow, Sally. Let us go and enjoy the sunshine.’ He led them out of the building. ‘You are very welcome here, I can’t emphasize that enough. You’ll see that we embrace scatterlings from all the families of mankind. Sally is pleased to call this place Happy Landings, which we find amusing. But to us it is just home. There are always spare sleeping places in City Hall, but if you prefer privacy all the family cabins are roomy. You are welcome, welcome…’