The Long Earth

hotels, stores offering food, clothing, and other essentials for the treks that began here. The Stars and Stripes fluttered from poles and rooftops, with a few Confederacy flags in amongst them. The place bustled with people, some of them clean-looking newcomers wearing bright artificial fabrics like the Greens, but most in worn-looking ‘frontier’ gear — much-patched jackets and trousers, even coats and cloaks of hand-cut leather. It all aped former times when Datum Richmond itself had been a trading post for furs, hides and tobacco, on the edge of an empty continent.

It was like a movie set for some old-fashioned western. Jack felt utterly out of place. He rubbed his stomach, willing away the stepping nausea.

The Prairie Marble Inn turned out to be named after what it was mostly built from — ‘prairie marble’, sod piled up around a wooden frame. It was gloomy, dank, but a big place, and heavily occupied. The woman behind the counter said the rest of their party was gathering in the ‘ballroom’, which was a barn with rough-hewn wooden furniture set out on a rag carpet. It was pretty full, with maybe a hundred people, mostly adults, a few children and infants. One man was speaking, a boisterous fellow with a spectacular mane of grey-blond hair. He was delivering some kind of lecture about the need for rotas. A few of the others turned to the newcomers, warily, some half- smiling.

Tilda smiled back. ‘Most of these are people I dealt with online when we set all this up. Never met them in person before …’

These, Jack reflected, might be the people he would be spending the rest of his life with. Total strangers. Jack had left it all to Tilda, but he understood that it took some skill to assemble a viable Company for a trek. You had your professional captains to lead you, along with scouts, guides, porters; they were relatively easy to find and hire. But the core of the party were the people who would be settling together a hundred thousand worlds away. You needed complementary skill types: tailors, carpenters, coopers, smiths, wheelwrights, millwrights, weavers, furniture makers. Doctors, of course — a dentist if you could find one. Tilda, after being rejected by the first Companies she had approached, had retrained herself, packaging herself as a teacher and historian. Jack had gone for basic farming skills — he felt he was physically fit enough for that — and for backup medical competences.

It struck Jack, on this first glance at his new companions, that they were mostly like him and Tilda. A mix of ethnicities, but they all looked prosperous enough, earnest, a little anxious — middleclass types setting off into the unknown. That was the classic profile of the Long Earth pioneer, just as, according to Tilda, it had been in the Old West. The very rich wouldn’t travel, for they were too comfortable back on the Datum to give it all up. And nor would the very poor, at least not in an organized party like this, for they didn’t have the means to pay for the trek itself. No, it was the middle classes who were heading off into the far West, especially those distressed in difficult economic times.

The blowhard on his feet was called Reese Henry, Jack gathered, some kind of salesman, a survivalist in his spare time. He had moved on from latrine rotas. ‘Once again young Americans are going out into the wild, to places where the streetlights do not shine, where there isn’t a cop at the other end of a cellphone connection. Urbanized, online, civilized, pampered and preened — and now pitched back into nature in the raw.’ He grinned. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to reality.’

17

RICHMOND WEST 10’s only bookseller exulted with every sale he made to the would-be pioneers who passed through here. Books, printed on paper, every one of them! Dead tree technology! Information that, if carefully stored, would last for millennia! And no batteries required. It ought to be on a billboard, he thought.

If Humphrey Llewellyn III could have his way, every book ever written would be treasured, at least one copy bound in sheepskin and illuminated by monks (or specifically by naked nuns, his predilection being somewhat biased in that direction). So now, he hoped, here was a chance to bring mankind back into the book-loving fold. He gloated. There was still no electronics in the pioneer worlds, was there? Where was your internet? Hah! Where was Google? Where was your mother’s old Kindle? Your iPad 25? Where was Wickedpedia? (Very primly, he always called it that, just to show his disdain; very few people noticed.) All gone, unbelievers! All those fancy toy-gadgets stuffed in drawers, screens blank as the eyes of corpses, left behind.

Books — oh yes, real books — were flying off his shelves. Out in the Long Earth humanity was starting again in the Stone Age. It needed to know the old ways. It needed to know what to eat and what not to eat. It needed to know how to build an outdoor privy, and how to manure fields with human and animal waste in safe proportions. It needed to know about wells. About shoemaking! Yes, it had to know how to find iron ore, but also how to work graphite, and how to make ink. And so Humphrey’s presses ran hot, with geological maps and surveys and commonplace books and almanacs, reclaiming the knowledge that had been all but lost to the printed page.

He stroked a polished-leather volume. Oh, sooner or later all that knowledge once more would be precariously imprisoned by electricity. But for now the books had been patient long enough, and their time had come again.

In another part of Richmond West 10, meanwhile, there was a kind of labour market, where Companies tried to find recruits to fill the remaining gaps. Franklin Tallyman carefully pushed his way through the crowd, holding his sign above his head. It was a hot day and he wished he had drunk more water.

He was approached by a small party led by a middle-aged man. ‘You are Mr Tallyman, the blacksmith? We saw your resume at the Prairie Marble Inn.’

He nodded. ‘Yes, sir, that’s me.’

‘We’re looking to complete our Company.’ The man stuck out a hand. ‘The name’s Green, Jack Green. This gentleman is Mr Batson, our Captain. Tallyman, isn’t that a Caribbean name?’

‘No, sir, it’s a Caribbean job description, as far as I know. I could be wrong. I’ve never been there; I was born in Birmingham. In England, not in Alabama. The original and best.’ He got back blank looks. ‘So you have looked at my resume?’

An anxious-looking woman asked, ‘You really can do all you say? Make bronze? Does anyone do that these days?’

‘Yes, ma’am. Back on West 1 I spent four years as apprentice to smiths who knew their stuff. As for iron, starting from scratch, all I need is the ore. I can make my own forge, I can make my own furnace, I can draw wires. By the way I’m a fair electrician; give me a waterwheel and I can fit up your colony with electricity. Oh, and weapons: I can knock up a decent musket — it couldn’t compete with a modern design, but good enough for hunting.

‘The engagement I’m looking for is three years.’ He was warming to his pitch now. ‘Under the aegis regulations I will have American citizenship by the end of the third year. You, ladies and gentlemen, will be way ahead of the curve.’ He held out his notebook, opened at a page. ‘And this is what you will pay me, please.’

There was a gasp from the would-be citizens of the New Frontier. Eventually Green said, ‘Is this negotiable?’

‘Only upwards, I’m afraid. You can make a deposit in Pioneer Support. Oh, if you want me to train up an apprentice then that will be extra, on account of they would be more of a hindrance than a help.’

He smiled before their doubtful faces. It wasn’t the moment for a hard sell, he decided. They looked a decent bunch, just folk keen to step Westward with a group of like-minded individuals, looking for a place to spread out, a place where you could trust your neighbours, in a world where the air was clean and you could start over in search of a better future. It was the dream, it had always been the dream. Even their kids looked bright as buttons.

‘Look, Mr Green, I’ve done my homework too. I’ve seen your Company’s prospectus and I can see that a lot of thought has gone into your venture. You’ve got your medic, your carpenter, you’ve got a chemist. I like your style. Yours won’t be the only offer I could get today, but you guys appear to be a solid bunch with your heads screwed on right. I’m with you if you want me. Do we have a deal?’

They had a deal.

That night Franklin packed his bags and his non-ferrous toolbox for the journey. Now all he had to do was to