it.
Ben Doak got sick. He drank from a waterhole that hadn’t been checked out. They get polluted by buffalo piddle. He got pumped full of antibiotics. I hope he’s OK. We’ve had a few people get sick, but nobody died.
More people have turned back. Captain Batson tries to talk them round, and Mr Henry laughs at them and calls them weak. I don’t think it’s weak to admit you made a mistake. That takes strength, if you ask me.
We must look very strange, to these animals who live here, and have never seen a human before, probably. What business have we got coming through here and messing everything up?
We’re out of the Ice Belt! And only two days behind schedule!
Strange to think we’ve travelled across thirty-six thousand worlds, but the distance we’ve covered sideways has only been a few miles. Well, we’re going to travel in earnest across this particular Earth, and go a few hundred miles north, to New York State. Then we’ll step on across another sixty thousand worlds or so until we get to the place we’re going to settle.
I thought we’d have to walk. No! There’s a regular town here, well, a small one, a trading post. Here we can trade in our Ice Belt gear for stuff that’s more suitable for the Mine Belt worlds.
And there’s a wagon train waiting for us! With big covered wagons that Dad says are Conestogas. They look like boats on wheels, drawn by horses — funny-looking horses, but definitely horses. There’s a foundry here to make the iron they need, and the wagons have got tires on their wheels, like car tires. When we saw the wagons we just whooped and hollered and ran! Conestogas! I wonder if it will be more fun than the chopper ride?
We are on Earth West Seventy Thousand Plus Change, as Dad would say. I’m writing in the early morning, before we break camp. Last night the adults stayed up late arguing about the chores. But when they’re all gassing in their Group Meetings, we kids can slip away, just for a while.
Not that we do anything bad. Well, not mostly. Mostly, we
(Pause for thought. Search for word.)
watch. That’s it. We watch. I know Dad frets that we’re all turning into zombies because there’s nothing to do out here but chores, and the schooling they try to force on us. But it’s not like that. We just watch, with nothing to distract us. That’s why we’re quiet. Not because our brains are mush. Because we watch.
And we see things the adults don’t see.
Some
The Joker Worlds, in the middle of these boring, arid Mine Belt worlds. The adults think they’re mostly dead. They aren’t. Believe me.
And the Greys.
We call them that, even though they’re orange. They look like hairy little kids, but if you ever see one up close, and see the equipment in those orange crotches, believe me, they ain’t kids. And big eyes, like cartoon aliens. They flicker around the camp. There, gone. Stepping, obviously.
Animals that step!
The Long Earth is stranger than anybody thinks. Even Dad. Even Captain Batson. Even Mr Henry.
Is it November? Dad will know.
We made it!
We made it to Earth West 100,000! — or, Good Old Hundred K, as us hardened pioneer types call it. The start of the Corn Belt.
Good Old Hundred K has a
The worlds had been changing for a bit. Greener. Damper. A different set of animals. And, most important,
Anyhow, now we’re here. And to prove the point they have a couple of fields out back of the shop where there’s corn stubble and sheep grazing, just like home. Sheep! Dad said they were descended from little lambs that had to be carried out here from the Datum in the arms of stepping people, because there’s no native sheep in North America, on any of the worlds that anybody’s found.
At the shop they made a fuss of us kids. They had beer and lemonade, homemade stuff with pips in that was the most delicious drink I ever had. They asked us questions about what’s going on back East on the Datum and the Low Earths. We yapped and bragged, and we told our own story, of our trek. Every year it’s a little bit different, apparently.
An English woman who introduced herself as Hermione Dawes wrote down our story in a sort of big ledger, in a little library place full of records like that. Ms Dawes told Mom her place in life was writing things down, and she was happy to be out here, to have some real history to record. She’ll probably be there for ever, writing stuff down as folk pass her by. People are strange, but if she’s happy that’s fine by me. Apparently she’s married to a cowgirl.
We shopped! What a luxury.
And meanwhile the adults had to go register their claims. There is a US government official, rotated out once every few years, here to check and validate the land grants we bought back on the Datum before we set off. We all compared claim forms to work out where to go. In the event the adults picked a world at random: number West 101,753. A week’s easy stroll. We formed up, the Doaks and Harry Bergreen and his fiddle, yay, and Melissa Harris, well, OK, and Reese Henry, the less said the better. A hundred in all.
And we set off. We stepped and camped with a discipline that would have made Captain Batson proud. Though Mrs Harris still didn’t take her turns with the laundry.
A week later, when we got to 101,753, it was raining. So we all looked at each other, and held hands in our groups, and took another step into the sunshine.
And that was how we chose one whole world over another. Because it happened to be sunny when we got there! There might have been diamond mountains in Australia back in 753 and we’d never know. It didn’t matter. Earth West 101,754:
19
THAT FIRST AFTERNOON of flight, the
And as it stepped, the airship was travelling laterally too, heading west across Eurasia. The monitors had a little map display so Joshua could follow its course; their position was derived from star sightings, but the layout of the landscapes they crossed on these unexplored worlds was based on guesswork.
On the observation deck, sitting opposite Joshua, Lobsang smiled his plastic smile. They both cradled coffees — Lobsang sipped his too, and Joshua imagined some tank in his belly filling up.
‘How’s the ride?’ Lobsang asked.
