century. Of course it’s intellectually interesting that most Americans choose to go
‘Christ, the journey itself takes months. All for a chance to dump the kids in an uncivilized wilderness. And what use is a software engineer going to be out there? Or a lecturer in cultural history, come to that.’
She smiled fondly. It was infuriating; he could see she wasn’t taking him remotely seriously. ‘Whatever we need to know, we’ll learn.’ She put down her coffee and slipped her arms around him. ‘I think we need to do this, Jack. It’s our chance. Our generation. Our kids’ chance.’
Our kids, he thought. All save poor Rod. Here was his wife, one of the most intelligent people he’d ever met, her head full of idealism about the future of America and mankind, and yet contemplating abandoning her own son. He rested his cheek on her greying hair, and wondered if he would ever understand her.
15
DREAMS OF THE Long Earth, all across the old world. Some dreams were new, and at the same time very, very old…
The mates sat near the car, deep in the bush, drinking beer and pondering the changing world, and the stepping boxes they had all made that were resting on the red sand. Overhead, the central Australian sky was so full of stars that some had to wait their turn to twinkle.
After a while one of them said gloomily, ‘Something clawed Jimbo’s guts out, left him looking like a dugout canoe. You know that, don’t you? It ain’t no joke! A cop went in there too!
Billy, who tended not to speak until he had thought for a while, like maybe a week, said, ‘It’s dreamtime stuff, mate, like it was before the ancestors came here. Don’t you remember what that scientist bloke told us, one time? They dug up the bones of big, big animals all over the bloody place, as big as you like! Big, slow food, but with big, big teeth. All these new worlds under the same sky! And no people to be seen in any of them, right? Like this world before it was buggered up! Just think what we could do if we got out there!’
Somebody opposite the fire said, ‘Yeah, mate, we could bugger it up all over again. And I like my head with a face on it!’
There was laughter. But Albert said, ‘Know what happened? Our ancestors bloody well killed them all, ate them up. They wiped out everything except what we got now. But we don’t have to do that, right? They say the world out there is just like here, except no men, no women, no policemen, no cities, no guns, just the land over and over again. The waterhole here is the waterhole there, all ready and waiting for us!’
‘No, it isn’t. The waterhole’s half a mile over
‘Near enough, you know what I mean. Why don’t we give it a go, boys?’
‘Yeah, but this is
Albert leaned forward, eyes sparkling. ‘Yes, but you know what?
In the morning, the little group, slightly hungover, tossed coins to select the one who would give it a go.
Billy came back half an hour later, retching horribly, arriving out of nowhere. They picked him up and gave him water, and waited. He opened his eyes and said, ‘It’s true, but it’s bloody raining over there, mates!’
They looked at one another.
Somebody said, ‘Yeah, but what about all those creatures I’ve heard about, back in the old time? Roos with teeth! Bloody big ones! Big creatures with claws!’
There was silence. Then Albert said, ‘Well, ain’t we as good as our ancestors? They saw off these buggers. Why can’t we?’
There was a shuffling of feet.
Finally Albert said, ‘Look, tomorrow,
By the end of the next day the songlines had begun to expand, as the never-never began to become the ever-ever. Although sometimes the blokes came back for a beer.
Later, there were towns, unfamiliar towns admittedly, and new ways of living, a mix of past and present, as old ways were seamlessly woven into new ones. The eating was good, too.
And later still, surveys showed that in the great post — Step Day migration a greater proportion of Australian Aborigines left Datum Earth for good than any other ethnic group on the planet.
16
Jack Green had always had to do plenty of travelling in the course of his work in software, and in recent years travel had become a lot more interesting. Everybody made their long geographical trips on the Datum, with its elaborate transport networks. A Stepper would take you a thousand worlds stepwise but it wouldn’t give you a foot of lateral movement. So transport had become one of the few boom elements in the Datum’s slumping post-step economy. The Datum, in fact, was starting to look like the crossroads of the Long Earth.
And so you never knew who you might meet at the next rail station. Pioneer types, come back to buy a new set of bronze tools and to have their teeth fixed. High-tech hippies, trading goat cheese for mastitis cream. Once, a woman dressed like Pocahontas blissfully clutching a white wedding dress in a cellophane cover, and there was a whole short story just in her smile. People with new ways of living all jumbled up together in the Datum, at least for the duration of their journeys.
So for this last trip down to Richmond, Jack and Tilda had decided to treat the girls to a helicopter hop. In the future they would be riding in ox-drawn carts and dug-out canoes; why not let them enjoy a little high technology while they could?
Besides, it had distracted them from the distressing scene at the helipad where they had to say goodbye to Rod. Meryl, Tilda’s sister, was willing to take the boy, but she didn’t bother to hide her disapproval of how the family was being split up. And Rod, only thirteen years old, was blank. Jack suspected they had all been relieved when the chopper had finally lifted; he saw that small face upturned, the short-cut strawberry blond hair so like his mother’s, and they were on their way, the girls shrieking with delight.
Richmond West 10 was making a living as the mustering point for treks heading for stepwise editions of the eastern United States, including Tilda’s Company. Jack had had no idea what to expect.
He found himself standing in a bare earth street, in a grid pattern of houses built of heavy logs, clapboard, even lumps of sod. Hand-painted signs told him that the buildings on the main street included churches, banks, inns,
