The Long Earth (34 page)

Jansson knew this much, at least, was a pack of lies. In the roomy stepwise worlds, without the pressures of crowding and deprivation, such crimes were comparatively rare.

‘And they have a whole system, propped up by your taxes, to ensure that the money those
brave pioneers
leave here, back on the real world, the only true world, is all tied up to keep ’em supplied with all the toys they need – I’m talking about this here Pioneer Support. Some of ’em even have
homes
, standing empty. You know how many people are homeless in America today?

‘And it’s all for what? What do
you
get out of the deal? And you, and you? There’s no
trade
with these other worlds – not beyond Earths 1 and 2 and 3 where you can haul back lumber and stuff. You can’t run an oil pipeline from Earth Gazillion to Houston, Texas. You can’t even drive a herd of cattle over.

‘The federal government has spent years telling you that the expansion into the Long Earth is some kind of analogy of the days of the pioneer trails and the Old West. Well, I might not know much about the ways of the Beltway, but I do know my own country’s heritage, and I know the value of a dollar, and I can tell you this is a
lie
. This is a
boondoggle
. Somebody sure as hell is getting rich off this folly, but it ain’t you, and it ain’t me. Why, we’d be better off going back to the moon. At least it’s God’s own moon! At least you can bring back moon rocks!

‘And I can tell you, when I have my meeting with the President in a few days’ time, my central demand is going to be this: cut your support of the Long Earth colonies. If the steppers left assets here, seize ’em. If they’re productive out there in the godless worlds, tax ’em until their eyes water. Those guys up there want to be pioneers, fine, let ’em. But not propped up by my tax dollars, and yours …’

Growls of approval, disturbingly loud.

Jansson spotted Rod Green, just eighteen years old, his
strawberry-blond
mane easily distinguished. Rod was one of a class the cops had labelled the ‘homealones’, non-stepper kids who had been more or less abandoned by families seduced by the romance of going off to build a new life in the stepwise reaches. A whole class of people injured by the very presence of the Long Earth in ways much deeper than the mere financial. And now here he was, lapping up Cowley’s poison.

Cowley was getting to the meat of his peroration. The hardcore stuff, the stuff these disadvantaged people had really come to hear. The reason he banned recordings of his speeches.

‘Here’s somethin’ I came across,’ he said, producing a clipping. ‘A pronouncement from one of them
pro-fess-ors
in the universities. And this man says, now let me quote, “The stepping ability represents a new dawn for humanity, the arrival of a new cognitive skill on a par with the development of language and multi-component tool-making,” and blah, blah, blah.

‘Do you understand what this man is saying, ladies and gentlemen? What he’s talking about? He’s talking about
evolution
.

‘Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time there was another sort of human being on this planet. We call them
Neanderthals
. They were like us, you see, they wore clothes of skin and made tools and built fires, why, they even cared for their sick and buried their dead with respect. But they weren’t
quite
as smart as us. They were around for hundreds of thousands of years, but in all that time not one of ’em came up with anything as complicated as a bow and arrow, which any seven-year-old American boy could make.

‘But there they were, with their tools and their hunting and their fishing. Until one day, along came a new sort of folk. A new sort with flat faces and slim bodies and clever hands and big, bulging brains. And these folk
could
make bows and arrows. Why, I bet there was some Neanderthal
pro-fess-or
who said something like, “The ability to make a bow and arrow represents a new dawn for humanity,” and blah, blah, blah. Maybe that Neanderthal prof urged Ug and Mug to give over a tithe of mammoth meat to fund
more
bow-and-arrow-making, for the benefit of the new folk. And it was all dandy, and everybody got along fine.

‘But where are Ug and Mug now? Where are the Neanderthals? I’ll tell you. Dead, these thirty thousand years.
Extinct
. Now there’s a terrible word if you like. A word beyond death, because extinction means your children are dead too, and your grandchildren and their children will
never even be born
.

‘You know what I would say to those Neanderthals? You know what they should have done when those bow-and-arrow folk showed up?’ He slammed his palm on a table. ‘They should have raised their big fists and their ugly old stone tools, and they should have smashed the bulging skulls of those new folk, every last one of them. Because if they had, their grandchildren would be around now.’ He kept slamming the palm, punctuating his sentences. ‘Now I got federal politicians and university
pro-fess-ors
telling me there’s a new sort of human being amongst us, a new evolution going on, a superman among us ordinary Joes. A superman, whose only power is the ability to slip into your child’s bedroom at night, without you even knowing it? What kind of superman is that?

‘You think I’m a Neanderthal? You think I’m gonna make the mistake they made? Are you gonna let these mutants take over God’s good Earth?
Are you gonna submit to extinction?
Are you? Or you? Or you? …’

Everybody was on their feet, on the stage too, hollering and clapping. Jansson clapped too, for cover. Around her she glimpsed FBI guys quietly taking photographs of the crowd.

The world was going to change again. That was the buzz. Once the Black Corporation’s more or less covert airship developments began to deliver the massive transformations in interworld carrying capacity they promised, huge trade flows and massive economic growth could be expected. But it wouldn’t come soon enough for the likes of Russo, or Cowley. Jansson fretted about how much harm might be done while everybody waited for the next miracle.

42

THE
MARK TWAIN
was a haven. Once you were airborne and stepping away you left your troubles behind. Now it was a relief to get away from the Rectangles, and head into the new and unknown. Joshua welcomed the escape, despite the increasing, foreboding pressure in his head.

Lobsang was still stepping slowly, inspecting the Earths with relative care, while Joshua and Sally hung out on the observation deck. They were stepping at cloud height – but even so, once, over a dark green world, Joshua thought that he heard the scraping of leaves along the keel, the touch of what must be the titanic trees of some Joker planet.

‘Lobsang’s worried, isn’t he?’ said Sally. ‘And distressed by what we found at the Rectangles.’

‘Well, he
is
a Buddhist. Veneration for all living things and all that. But bones are never feelgood. Elephants are the same, aren’t they? Aware of the significance of bones, either as a signature of threat, or of the death of one of their kind …’ He sensed her attention was elsewhere. ‘Sally, is there something wrong?’

‘What do you mean by “wrong”?’ It sounded like an accusation.

Joshua recoiled from her tone; he didn’t feel like a fight. He went up to the galley and started to peel potatoes, a gift from Happy Landings delivered in a woven sack. He gave all his attention to the action of knife on potato. Displacement activity, he knew, but comforting even so, given what he was displacing.

Sally followed him, and stood in the doorway to the lounge beyond. ‘You watch me a lot, don’t you?’

It wasn’t really a question, and so he replied with what wasn’t an answer. ‘I watch everybody. It’s good to know what they are thinking.’

‘So what am I thinking now?’

‘You are frightened. You’re probably as spooked by the Rectangles as me, and Lobsang, and under all that the troll migration has you seriously spooked – you more than either of us, as you know the trolls better than we do.’ With the potato chopped, he leaned down and picked another out of the woven bag. He would have to keep the bag; somebody in Happy Landings had probably spent hours making it. ‘I’ll make chowder. Wouldn’t do to leave the clams too long. Another gift from Happy Landings—’

‘Stop it, Joshua. Stop with the damn potatoes. Talk to me.’

Joshua cleaned the knife and put it down carefully; you always took care of your tools. Then he turned around.

Sally glared at him. ‘What makes you think you know me at all? Do you actually
know
anybody?’

‘A few people. One policewoman. My friends at the Home. Even some of the kids I helped on Step Day, who kept in touch later on. And then there are the nuns. It is sensible to know nuns when you live close to them; they can be somewhat mercurial—’

‘I’m sick of hearing about your damn nuns,’ she snapped.

He kept his calm, and defied his instinct to escape into the cooking again. He had the feeling this was an important moment. ‘Look – I know I’m not a people person. And Sister Agnes would leather me for using a phrase like
that
. But there’s no substitute for people, I know that.

‘Look at the trolls. Yes, the trolls are friendly and helpful, and I would not wish any harm to come to them. They are
happy
, and I could envy that. But they don’t build, they do not make, they take the world for what it is. Humans
start
with the world as it is and try to make it different. And that’s what makes them interesting. In
all
these worlds we are rushing over, the most precious thing that we can find is another human being. That’s what I think. And if we
are
the only minds like ours in the Long Earth, in the universe – well, that’s pretty sad and scary.

‘Right now I see another human being. And it’s you, and you are not happy, and I would like to help you if I can. You don’t have to say anything. Take your time.’ He smiled. ‘The clam chowder won’t be ready for a couple of hours anyhow. Oh, and the movie this evening will be
The Ballad of Cable Hogue
. A bittersweet saga of the last days of the West, starring Jason Robards, according to Lobsang.’

Of all their eccentricities, Sally most ferociously mocked the habit Lobsang and Joshua had developed of watching old movies in the bowels of the
Mark Twain
. (Joshua was glad she hadn’t been on board when the two of them had dressed up for
The Blues Brothers
.) This time she didn’t react. The silence was punctuated only by the metronomic clicks and whirs of the galley’s hidden mechanisms. They were two flawed people, Joshua thought, stranded together.

At last Joshua turned back to his work and finished the chowder, adding bacon and seasoning. He liked cooking. Cooking responded to care; if you did things right, then it went well. It was dependable, and he liked dependable things. But he wished he could have got his hands on some celery.

When he’d finished, Sally was in the lounge, sitting on the couch, grasping her knees, as if trying to make herself small. He said, ‘How about a coffee?’

She shrugged. He poured coffee from the pot.

Evening was falling on the worlds below, and the deck lights came on. The lounge was wrapped in a honey glow, a great improvement.

Joshua said hesitantly, ‘I find it best to worry about the little things. Things that can be helped by being worried about. Such as the making of clam chowder, and giving you a coffee. The bigger stuff, well, you have to handle that as it faces you.’

Sally smiled thinly. ‘You know, Joshua, for an antisocial weirdo you are sometimes almost perceptive. Look – what bugs me above all is that I’ve had to come to you two for help. Well, to
anybody
. I’ve been living on my own resources for years. I suspect I can’t face this problem on my own, but I hate to admit it. And there’s something else, Joshua.’ She studied him. ‘You’re different. Don’t deny it. The super-powered stepper. The king of the wild Long Earth. I have a feeling you’re somehow central to all this. That’s the secret reason I came to
you
specifically.’

That made him deeply uncomfortable, almost betrayed. ‘I don’t want to be central to anything.’

‘Get used to it. And that’s my problem, you see. When I was a kid, all the Long Earth used to be my playground, and mine alone. I’m
jealous
. Because all this may be more yours than mine.’

He tried to take all this in. ‘Sally, maybe you and I—’

And at that moment, very precisely the
wrong
moment, the door opened and Lobsang sauntered in, smiling. ‘Ah! Clam chowder! With bacon, excellent!’

Sally and Joshua shared a glance, parked their conversation, and turned away.

Sally focused on Lobsang. ‘So here you are, the android that eats. Gobbling down clam chowder, again?’

Lobsang sat down and, rather artificially, draped one leg over the other. ‘Yes, of course, why not? The gel substrate that supports my intelligence needs organic components, and why should those components not be of the finest cuisine?’

Sally looked at Joshua. ‘But if he eats, then surely he must eventually …’

Lobsang smiled. ‘Such minimal waste as I produce is expelled as carefully compacted compost in biodegradable wrapping. Why is this amusing? You did ask, Sally. At least your mockery makes a change from your usual disdain for me. And now we have work to do. I need you to identify these creatures, please.’

Behind him a wall panel lowered, to reveal a screen that flickered
into
life. Joshua stared at a familiar biped, scrawny, dirty, yellowish in colour. It was holding a stick like a club, and it was staring at its unseen observers with malice aforethought, and possibly afterthought as well. Joshua knew what it was all too well.

‘We call them elves,’ said Sally.

‘I know you do,’ said Lobsang.

‘I think in some of the colonies they call them Greys, after the old UFO mythology. You see them everywhere in the High Meggers, and sometimes in the lower worlds. They are generally leery of humans, but they will try their luck if you’re isolated or wounded. Super-fast, super-strong, highly intelligent hunters who use stepping when they go for their prey.’