The Long Earth

something of an obstacle to Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday had they come riding down the street. The fungi had a creamy look, and not to put too fine a point on it smelled wonderful, a thought which had also occurred to the little mice-like creatures that had honeycombed them like Emmental cheese.

In the earpiece Lobsang said, ‘Try some if you wish. And in any case, bring me back a reasonably large piece for testing.’

‘You want me to eat some before you know if it’s poisonous?’

‘I think that is very unlikely. In fact, I intend to try it myself.’

‘I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve seen you drink coffee. So you eat too?’

‘Why, yes! A certain input of organic matter is essential. But as I digest the fungus I will break it down and analyse it. A mildly tedious process. Many humans with special dietary requirements must go through the same routine, but without using a mass spectrometer, which instrument is part of my anatomy. You would be surprised how many foodstuffs actually do contain nuts…’

Lobsang’s verdict that evening was that a few pounds of the flesh of the giant mushrooms contained enough proteins, vitamins and minerals to keep a human alive for weeks, although in culinary terms totally bored. ‘However,’ he added, ‘something that grows so quickly, contains all the nutrients a human being needs, and can flourish more or less anywhere, is undoubtedly something for the fast food industry to take an interest in.’

‘Always glad to help transEarth make a quick buck, Lobsang.’

To break up the routine, that night Joshua sat up to witness the journey in the dark. Sometimes there were fires, scattered across the darkened landscapes. But there are always fires, wherever you’ve got trees and lightning and dry grass. Move on, folks, nothing to see here.

He complained about the drabness of the view.

‘What did you expect?’ said Lobsang. ‘Generally speaking, I would expect many Earths to be, at least at a first glance — and remember, Joshua, a first glance is mostly all we get — rather dull. Remember when you were young, all those pictures of dinosaurs in the Jurassic? All those different species gathered in one snappy frame, with a tyrannosaur wrestling with a stegosaur in the foreground? Nature generally isn’t like that, and nor were dinosaurs. Nature, by and large, is either reasonably silent, or earth-shakingly noisy. Predators and their prey spread out sparsely. Which is why I have maintained my habit of stopping in relatively drought-stricken worlds, where many specimens collect at waterholes, albeit in rather artificial conditions.’

‘But how much are we missing, Lobsang? Even when we stop at a world we barely take a look at it before going on, despite your probes and rockets. If all we are getting is one first glance after another…’ From his own experience on his sabbaticals, Joshua had a visceral feeling that you needed to live in a world to understand it, rather than scan it as you riffled the Long Earth pack. This was the thirty-third day of the journey. ‘So where are we now?’

‘I assume you mean in terms of Earth geography? Approximately around Northern California. Why?’

‘Let’s take a halt. I’ve been more than a month in this flying hotel. Let’s spend at least one whole day in one place just, well, chilling out, OK? And experiencing. One whole day, and a night. You could fill up your water tanks. And frankly I am getting stir crazy.’

‘Very well. I can hardly object. I will find a suitably intriguing world and cease stepping. As we are over California, would you like me to fabricate a surfboard for you?’

‘Ha ha.’

‘You have changed, Joshua, do you know that?’

‘You mean because I’m arguing with you?’

‘As a matter of fact, yes. I am intrigued; you are quicker, less hesitant, less like a person walking around in his own head. Of course, you’re still you. Indeed I’m wondering if possibly you are more you than you have been for a very long time, now that you know how you were born.’

Joshua shrugged this off. ‘Don’t push it, Lobsang. Thanks for the bracelet. But you’re no therapist. Maybe travel broadens the mind—’

‘Joshua, if your mind was any broader it would start pouring out of your ears.’

Though it was midnight Joshua wasn’t sleepy, and he began to fix a meal.

‘How about a movie, Joshua?’

‘I’d prefer to read. Any suggestions?’

The book screen lit up. ‘I know of no more apposite a title!’

Joshua stared. ‘Roughing It?’

‘In many respects, Twain’s best work, I always think, although I will always have a soft spot for Life on the Mississippi. Read it. It is what it says, a journey into new territory, and often very funny in an acerbic way. Enjoy!’

And Joshua enjoyed it. He read, and dozed, and this time dreamed of Indian attacks.

The next day, around noon, the stepping stopped with that familiar lurch. Joshua found himself looking down at a lake, a shield of grey-blue that broke up the forest.

Lobsang announced, ‘Surf’s up, dude.’

‘Oh, good grief.’

On the ground, the forest was a pleasant place to be. Squadrons of bats hurtled after flies in the green-lit air above, air that smelled of damp wood and leaf mould. The soft sounds around Joshua were, oddly, much quieter than mere silence would have been. Joshua had learned that absolute silence in nature was such an unusual state that it was not only noticeable but positively menacing. But the murmur of this deep forest was a natural white noise.

Lobsang said, ‘Joshua, look to your left. Quietly now.’

They were like horses, shy-looking, furtive creatures, with oddly curving necks and padded feet, the size of puppies. And there was something like an elephant with a stubby trunk, but only a couple of feet tall at the shoulder.

‘Cute,’ said Joshua.

‘The lake is straight ahead,’ Lobsang said.

The lake was surrounded by a wall of tree trunks and a fringe of open ground. The still water was choked with reeds and rushes, and in the rare open sunlight, under a blue sky, exotic-looking birds descended in clouds of pink-white flapping. On the far shore Joshua glimpsed a dog-like animal, tremendously large — it had to be four, five yards long, with a massive head and enormous jaws that must themselves have protruded for another yard. Before he could raise his binoculars it had slipped into the forest shadows.

He said, ‘That was surely a mammal. But it had jaws like a crocodile.’

‘A mammal, yes. In fact I suspect it’s a distant relative of the whale — our whale, I mean. And there are real crocodiles in the water, Joshua, as usual. A universal.’

‘It’s as if parts of animals have been jumbled up — as if somebody’s been playing at evolution.’

‘We are now many hundreds of thousands of steps from the Datum, Joshua. In this remote world we’re seeing representatives of many of the animal orders we have on our branch of the probability tree, but as if reimagined. Evolution is evidently chaotic, like the weather—’

He heard a kind of grunting, like a pig, a big heavy-chested pig, coming from behind him.

‘Joshua. Don’t run. Behind you. Turn very slowly.’

He obeyed. He visualized the weapons he carried, the knife at his belt, the air gun in his chest pack. And up above was the airship, Lobsang with a flying arsenal at his command. He tried to feel reassured.

Huge hogs. That was his first impression. Half a dozen of them, each as tall as a man at the shoulder, with powerful-looking legs, and backs that rose in bristling humps, and tiny coal-black eyes, and jaws long and strong. And each of them carried a humanoid — not a troll, a skinny upright figure with a chimp face and rust-brown hair, sitting astride his hog as if riding a huge ugly horse.

Joshua was a long way from the cover of the trees.

‘More elves,’ Lobsang whispered.

‘The same breed that wiped out the Victims?’

‘Or their first cousins. The Long Earth is a big arena, Joshua; there must be many speciation events.’

‘You sent me down here to encounter these creatures, didn’t you? This is what you call a restful break?’