The Long Earth

neighbourhood of the Home in Madison alone. There had been a real run on Radio Shack. The electronics seemed laughably simple. The potato you were supposed to install at the heart of it seemed laughable too, but it was important, because it was your power supply. And then there was the switch. The switch was vital. Some kids thought you didn’t need a switch. Just twist wires together. And they were the ones who ended up screaming.

Joshua had put his first Stepper together carefully. He always did things meticulously. He was the kind of boy who always, but always, paints before assembly, and then assembles the pieces in the right order, with every single component laid out with care before commencing. Joshua always commenced things. It sounded more deliberate than starting. In the Home, when he worked on one of the old and worn and incomplete jigsaw puzzles, he would always sort out the pieces first, separating sky and sea and edge, before putting even two pieces together. Sometimes afterwards, if the puzzle was incomplete, he would go into his little workshop and very carefully shape the missing pieces out of hoarded scrap wood and then paint them to fit. If you didn’t know, you wouldn’t believe that the puzzle had ever had holes. And sometimes he would cook, under the supervision of Sister Serendipity. He would collect all the ingredients, prepare them all in advance meticulously, and then work through the recipe. He even cleaned up as he went. He liked cooking, and liked the approval it won him in the Home.

That was Joshua. That was how he did things. And that was why he wasn’t the first kid to step out of the world, because he’d not only varnished his Stepper box, he’d waited for the varnish to dry. And that was why he was certainly the first kid to get back without wetting his pants, or worse.

Step Day. Kids were disappearing. Parents scoured the neighbourhoods. One minute the kids were there, playing with this latest crazy toy, and the next moment they weren’t. When frantic parent meets frantic parent, frantic becomes terrified. The police were called, but to do what? Arrest who? To look where?

And Joshua himself stepped, for the first time.

A heartbeat earlier, he had been in his workshop, in the Home. Now he stood in a wood, heavy, thick, the moonlight hardly managing to reach the ground. He could hear other kids everywhere, throwing up, crying for their parents, a few screaming as if they were hurt. He wondered why all the distress. He wasn’t throwing up. It was creepy, yes. But it was a warm night. He could hear the whine of mosquitoes. The only question was, a warm night where?

All the crying distracted him. There was one kid close at hand, calling for her mother. It sounded like Sarah, another resident of the Home. He called out her name.

She stopped crying, and he heard her voice, quite close: ‘Joshua?’

He thought it over. It was late evening. Sarah would have been in the girls’ dormitory, which was about twenty yards away from his workshop. He had not moved, but he was clearly in a different place. This wasn’t Madison. Madison had noises, cars, airplanes, lights, while now he was standing in a forest, like something out of a book, with not a trace of a streetlight anywhere he looked. But Sarah was here too, wherever this was. The thought constructed itself a piece at a time, like an incomplete jigsaw. Think, don’t panic. In relation to where you are, or were, she will be where she is, or was. You just have to go down the passage to her room. Even though, here and now, there is no passage, no room. Problem solved.

Except that to get to her would mean walking through the tree right in front of him. An extremely big tree.

He worked his way around the tree, pushing through the tangled undergrowth, the briars, the fallen branches of this very wild wood. ‘Keep talking,’ he said. ‘Don’t move. I’m coming.’

‘Joshua?’

‘Look, I’ll tell you what. Sing. Keep singing. That way I’ll be able to find you in the dark.’ Joshua switched on his flashlight. It was a tiny one that fitted into a pocket. He always carried a flashlight at night. Of course he did. He was Joshua.

She didn’t sing. She started to pray. ‘Our Father, who art in heaven …’

He wished people would do what he told them, just sometimes.

From around the forest, from the dark, other voices joined in. ‘Hallowed be thy name …’

He clapped his hands and yelled, ‘Everybody shut up! I’ll get you out of here. Trust me.’ He didn’t know why they should trust him, but the tone of authority worked, and the other voices died away. He took a breath and called, ‘Sarah. You first. OK? Everybody else, go towards the prayer. Don’t say anything. Just head towards the prayer.’

Sarah began again: ‘Our Father, who art in heaven …’

As he worked his way forward, hands outstretched, pushing through briars and climbing over roots, testing every step, he heard the sounds of people moving all around him, more voices calling. Some were complaining about being lost. Others were complaining about a lack of cellphone signal. Sometimes he glimpsed their phones, little screens glowing like fireflies. And then there was the desolate weeping, even moans of pain.

The prayer ended with an amen, which was echoed around the forest, and Sarah said, ‘Joshua? I’ve finished.’

And I thought she was clever, thought Joshua. ‘Then start again.’

It took him minutes to get to her, even though she was only half the length of the Home away. But he could see this forest clump was actually quite small. Beyond, in the moonlight, he saw what looked like prairie flowers, like in the Arboretum. No sign of the Home, though, or Allied Drive.

At last Sarah stumbled towards him and clamped herself on him. ‘Where are we?’

‘Somewhere else, I guess. You know. Like Narnia.’

The moonlight showed him the tears pouring down her face and the snot under her nose, and he could smell the vomit on her nightdress. ‘I never stepped into no wardrobe.’

He burst out laughing. She stared at him. But because he was laughing, she laughed. And the laughter started to fill this little clearing, for other kids were drifting this way, towards the flashlight glow, and for a moment that held back the terror. It was one thing to be lost and alone, quite another to be lost in a crowd, and laughing.

Somebody else grabbed his arm. ‘Josh?’

‘Freddie?’

‘It was terrible. I was in the dark and I fell down, down to the ground.’

Freddie had a tummy bug, Josh remembered. He’d been in the sanatorium, on the Home’s first floor. He must have just fallen, through the vanished building. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘No… Josh? How do we get home?’

Joshua took Sarah’s hand. ‘Sarah, you made a Stepper?’

‘Yes.’

He glanced at the mess of components in her hand. It wasn’t even in a box, not even a shoebox or something, let alone a box that had been carefully made for the purpose, like his. ‘What did you use for a switch?’

‘What switch? I just twisted the wires together.’

‘Look. It definitely said to put in a centre-off switch.’ He very carefully took her Stepper in his hands. You always had to be very careful around Sarah. She wasn’t a Problem, but problems had happened to her.

At least there were three wires. He traced back the circuitry by touch. He’d spent hours staring at the circuit diagram; he knew it by heart. He separated the wires and put the ragged tangle back in her hands. ‘Listen. When I say go, press that wire and that one together. If you find yourself back in your room, drop the whole thing on the floor and go to bed. OK?’

Sniffing, she asked, ‘What if it doesn’t work?’

‘Well, you’ll still be here, and so will I. And that won’t be so bad, will it? Are you ready? Come on. Let’s do a countdown from ten. Nine, eight …’

On zero she disappeared, and there was a pop, like a soap bubble bursting.

The other kids stared at where she’d been, and then at Joshua. Some were strangers: as much as he could see any faces at all, there were plenty he couldn’t recognize. He’d no idea how far they’d walked in the dark.

Right now he was king of the world. These helpless kids would do anything he told them. It wasn’t a feeling he liked. It was a chore.

He turned to Freddie. ‘OK, Freddie. You next. You know Sarah. Tell her not to worry. Tell her a lot of kids are coming home via her bedroom. Tell her Joshua says it’s the only way to get them home, and please don’t get angry.