The Long Earth

The Bostonian opened the door. ‘Hey, before you go, we like to say here: you’re stepping, wait for it, on the steppe!’ When Joshua tried but failed to summon up a laugh the Bostonian said apologetically, ‘You can imagine we don’t get too many visitors here. Best of luck, fella.’

The three further steps brought him out into rain. There was another shack near by, and another pair of workers, one of them a woman, who shook him by the hand. ‘Good to see you, sir.’ Her accent was richly Russian. ‘Do you like our weather? Siberia’s two degrees warmer in this world, and nobody knows why. I must wait a while for the rest of the gang, but you can just follow the yellow brick road.’ She pointed to a line of orange markers on sticks. ‘It’s a short walk to the construction site.’

‘Construction? Construction of what?’

‘Believe me, you won’t miss it.’

He didn’t, because he couldn’t. Acres of pine woodland had been cleared, and hovering over a circle of denuded land was what looked at first glance like a floating building. Floating, yes; through the rain he made out tethering wires. It was vast, an aerial whale. The partially inflated body was a bag of some toughened fibre plastered with transEarth logos, over a gondola like an Art Deco fantasy, several decks deep, all polished wood and portholes and plate glass.

An airship!

As he stared, yet another worker hurried towards him flourishing a phone. ‘You are Joshua?’ This man’s accent was European, Belgian perhaps. ‘Pleased to meet you, very pleased! Follow me. Can I help you with your bag?’

Joshua pulled his pack away so quickly that it would have burned the man’s hand.

The worker stepped back. ‘Sorry, sorry. By all means keep your bag; security is not an issue, not for you. Come with me.’

Joshua followed him across the soaking ground and under the formless envelope. The gondola, fashioned like a wooden ship’s hull, appeared to be anchored to a metal gantry, presumably constructed of locally manufactured steel, at the bottom of which was a skeleton elevator cage. Cautiously, his guide climbed into the open cage and, when Joshua had joined him, pressed a button.

It was a short ride up to the underside of the gondola, and through a hatch and out of the rain. Joshua found himself in a small compartment, suffused by a rich smell of polished wood. There were windows, or possibly portholes, but right now they showed nothing but the weather.

‘Wish I was leaving with you, young man,’ said the worker cheerfully. ‘Going wherever this thing is going — none of us need to know, of course. If you get a chance, look around the engineering. Non-ferrous, of course, aluminium airframe… Well. We’re all proud of her. Bon voyage, enjoy the journey!’ He stepped back into the elevator, and as it descended out of sight a plate slid across to seal the polished floor.

The voice of Lobsang sounded in the air. ‘Once again, welcome aboard, Joshua. Such dreadful weather, isn’t it? Never mind, I will soon have us above it or, should I say, away from it.’

There was a jolt and the floor rocked. ‘We’ve detached from the gantry. Are we airborne already?’

‘Well, you wouldn’t have been brought here if we weren’t ready to go. Below us they will be breaking camp already, and then this site will suffer a minor version of the Tunguska event.’

‘Security, I take it.’

‘Of course. As for the workers, they are a mixed lot: Russians, Americans, Europeans, Chinese. None of them the kind of people who like to talk to the authorities. Clever folk who have worked for many masters, so very useful, and so commendably forgetful.’

‘Who supplied the plane?’

‘Ah. Did you enjoy your ride in the Lear? It is the property of a holding company who rent it out occasionally to a certain rock star, who tonight is fretting that the jet is unavailable because of an overhaul. But she will soon be distracted by learning that her latest album is two places higher in the charts than it was last night. The reach of Lobsang is great. Now that we are under way …’

An inner door opened smoothly, revealing a corridor of panelled wood and subtle lamps, leading to a blue door at the end.

‘Welcome to the Mark Twain. Please make yourself at home. You will find on this corridor six staterooms, all identical; choose whichever one you like. You can shed your cold-weather gear. Notice also the blue door. That leads to a laboratory, workshop and fabrication plant, among other things. You will find a similar door on each deck. I would prefer if you do not go beyond unless invited. Any questions?’

Joshua changed in the room he’d chosen at random, and then explored the Mark Twain.

The tremendous envelope, rippling under partial pressurization, was evidently coated on the outside with solar-cell film for power, and there were propulsion units, big fragile-looking fans that could swivel and tilt. The gondola was as luxurious within as it had looked from the outside. There were several decks, with staterooms, a wheelhouse, an observation deck, and a saloon deck with a galley as well equipped as the kitchen of a high-class restaurant, and a spacious hall that could serve as a restaurant for fifty — or, incredibly, as a cinema. And on every deck there was that blue door, closed and locked.

As he thought it over, Joshua began to see the point of stepping in an airship — as long as you could get the thing to step in the first place, and how you’d do that he didn’t yet understand. One problem with stepping rapidly was obstacles. He’d discovered on his very first night of exploration of the Long Earth that some obstacles simply couldn’t be walked around, such as the ice cap, sometimes miles high, that typically blanketed much of North America during an Ice Age. The airship was an attempt to get around that: it would ride above such inconveniences as glaciers or floods, and a much smoother journey ought to be possible.

He asked the air, ‘But did it have to be quite so grand, Lobsang?’

‘Why not be grand? We can’t hide, after all. I want my exploratory vessel to be like the Chinese treasure ships which struck awe into the natives of India and Arabia in the fifteenth century.’

‘You’ll strike awe, all right. And no iron in this thing, I take it?’

‘I’m afraid not. The impermeability of the reality barrier to iron remains a mystery even to Black Corporation scientists. I get plenty of theorizing, but few practical results.’

‘You know, when you talked about the journey, I thought I’d be carrying you, somehow.’

‘Oh, no. I am wired into the airship’s systems. The whole ship will be my body, in a sense. Joshua, I will be carrying you.’

‘Only sentient creatures can step—’

‘Yes. And I, like you, am sentient!’

And Joshua understood. The airship was Lobsang, or at least his body; when Lobsang stepped, the airship carcass came with him, just as Joshua ‘carried’ over his body, his clothes, whenever he stepped. And that was how an airship could step.

Lobsang was smug and boastful. ‘Of course this would not work were I not sentient. This is further proof of my claims of personhood, isn’t it? I’ve already trialled the technology — well, you know that, I traced your earlier expedition as I told you. All rather thrilling, isn’t it?’

Joshua reached the base of the gondola and entered the observation deck he’d spotted before, a blister of reinforced glass giving spectacular views of this Low Earth’s Siberia. The construction site sprawled below, with ancillary workings cut into the forest, supply dumps, dormitories, an airstrip.

Joshua, thinking it over, began to realize just what an achievement Lobsang had pulled off here — if the airship stepped as advertised. Nobody before had found a way to make a vehicle capable of stepping between the worlds the way a human could, and that was throttling the expansion of any kind of trade across the Long Earth. In parts of the Near East, and even in Texas, they had human chains carrying over oil by the bucket-load. If Lobsang really had cracked this, essentially by becoming the vessel himself — well, he was like a modern rail pioneer; he was going to change the world, all the worlds. No wonder security was so tight. If it worked. This was all experimental, evidently. And Joshua would be swimming across Long Earth in the belly of a silvery whale. ‘You seriously expect me to risk my life in this thing?’