The Long Earth

The Reverend Blessed smiled. ‘Ah, good old Marcus Aurelius. But, Nelson, he was a pagan!’

‘Which rather proves my point. May I help myself to another splash of brandy, David?’

‘Nelson was essentially right,’ Lobsang told Joshua. ‘The hominid line, and the apes from which they came, clearly had great evolutionary potential. But if the ability to step first originated on the Datum, evidently the stepping humanoids quickly moved out far from Datum Earth, leaving scant traces in the fossil record; only on the Datum will you find bones to illustrate the slow plod towards mankind.’

‘What does it mean, Lobsang? That was Nelson’s question. What is the Long Earth for?’

‘I suppose that’s what we came out here to find out. Shall we proceed?’

33

ON THEY SAILED, leaving the intricate humanoid community far behind. They were travelling east for now, away from the Pacific coast and back into the interior of the continent.

And, almost unobserved, they passed another milestone: a million steps from Datum. There was no dramatic change, no new perception, only the silent turning-over of a new digit on the earthometers. But now they were in the worlds the wavefront pioneers called the High Meggers. Nobody, not even Lobsang, knew for sure if anybody had actually stepped this far before.

The jungle that clad North America gradually grew thicker, denser, steamier. From the air you saw little but a green blanket, punctured here and there by scraps of open water. Lobsang’s aerial surveys suggested that in these worlds there might be forests all the way to the ice-free poles.

As before, every day Lobsang paused to allow Joshua down to explore, and stretch his legs. Joshua would find himself in a dense forest of ferns of all sizes, and trees both unfamiliar and familiar, strung with climbers like honeysuckle and grapevines. The flowers were always a riot of colour. Some days Joshua came back with bunches of grape-like fruit, small and hard compared with domesticated varieties of grape, but still sweet. The dense forest inhibited the growth of large animals, but there were strange hopping animals, a little like kangaroos but with long flexible snouts. Joshua learned to trust these creatures, whose trails, cleared through the undergrowth, led reliably to open water. And he saw aerial creatures in the canopy itself. Giant flapping wings. And, once, a flopping, squirming thing that looked for all the world like an octopus, spinning like a Frisbee through the canopy trees. How the hell had that got there?

He spent a couple of nights outside the ship, just for old time’s sake. It was almost like his sabbaticals, especially if he stepped a world or two away from Lobsang, but his lord and master didn’t approve of that. Still, when he got the chance he would sit by his fire, listening for the Silence. On a good night he thought he could feel the other Earths, vast empty spaces all around him, just beyond the reach of his tiny circle of firelight. Untold possibilities. And then he would climb back up to the airship, leaving behind a whole world with its own unique mysteries barely examined.

On they would travel, to another, and another yet.

And then, after fifty days, more than one and a third million worlds from home, the land and air seemed to shimmer, and the forest melted as the worlds cleared away, to reveal a sea that stretched to the horizon, foam- flecked and glimmering, at the heart of North America.

Still stepping, Lobsang turned the airship south, looking for dry land.

On world after world the sea persisted, teeming with life, the green of algal blooms, pale white shapes that might have been coral reefs, and creatures that jumped and swam that might have been dolphins. Cautious dips to the water level proved that the sea was saline. That didn’t necessarily mean this American Sea was open to the wider world ocean; inland seas could become saline through evaporation. The water samples Lobsang retrieved were full of exotic seaweed strands and crustaceans — exotic to a specialist anyhow. Lobsang stored specimens and images.

At last, heading south, they hit a coastline. Lobsang cut the stepping, and they inspected one particular world of this latest band, selected at random. They came to fog banks first, then huge bird-like forms swooping low over the sea, and then the land itself, where dense forest spilled almost all the way down to the shore. Lobsang thought that the higher land they were approaching might be some relative of the Ozark Plateau.

From here they sailed east until they came to a tremendous valley, perhaps carved by some distant cousin of the Mississippi or the Ohio. They followed this north to an estuary where the river spilled into the inland sea. The fresh water pushing into the saline ocean was visible from a muddy discoloration that persisted miles out from the coast.

And here, in the open, by the banks of the freshwater river, the animals came to drink. As they cruised on, once more stepping through the worlds, Joshua watched herds of tremendous beasts flick into existence and vanish, quadrupeds and bipeds, creatures that might almost have been elephants, others that might almost have been flightless birds, with lesser creatures running at their feet. A few seconds’ glimpse, and then another extraordinary, unearthly scene, and then another.

‘Like a Ray Harryhausen show reel,’ Lobsang said.

Joshua asked, ‘Who’s Ray Harryhausen? And what’s a show reel?’

‘Tonight’s movie will be the original version of Jason and the Argonauts, followed by an illustrated talk. Don’t miss it. But — what a find, Joshua! This American Sea, I mean. All this coastline. What a place to come and colonize! This North America has a second Mediterranean, an enclosed sea, with all the riches and cultural connectivity that promises. As for the potential for colonization, it knocks the Corn Belt into a cocked hat. Why, this could be the seat of a new civilization altogether. Not to mention the opportunities for tourism. Just one of these worlds alone — and we’ve already sailed over hundreds of them.’

Joshua said dryly, ‘Maybe they’ll call it “the Lobsang Belt”.’

If Lobsang got the joke he didn’t reveal it.

Another night, another easy sleep for Joshua.

And when he awoke the next morning the monitor in his room showed what looked like a close-up of a campfire.

Joshua jumped out of bed. Lobsang came into his room when he was pulling on his pants, causing him to pull a little quicker. He would have to teach Lobsang the meaning of the word knock.

Lobsang smiled. ‘Good morning, Joshua, on this auspicious day.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ Joshua had no time for Lobsang’s nonsense today. The idea of company, authentic, undeniably human company, was electrifying. Socks, sturdy boots… ‘OK, I’m ready to go down. Lobsang — that fire, whoever built it. Are they human?’

‘Apparently so. You might find her sunbathing among the dinosaurs.’

‘Dinosaurs! Her! Sunbathing!’

‘You’ll have to see for yourself. But be careful, Joshua. The dinosaurs look amiable enough. Well, some of them. But she might bite…’

Apart from the elevator there was now a second means of getting to the ground, a highly technical business which consisted of an old car tire (scavenged from a store of random garbage in the airship’s capacious hold), a length of rope and a simple panic button on Joshua’s chest pack which could call the tire down, or, more importantly, get it moving quickly back up if he were being chased. Joshua felt better for having installed this escape mechanism as a backup after his encounter with the murderous elves, and these days always insisted on having the tire at ground level, ready to run directly towards in an emergency.

Now he was being lowered towards a new Earth, once again. And there was another human here … somewhere. He could feel it. He really could. People made a world feel different, to Joshua.

As was becoming customary for Lobsang, he had decided to land Joshua a little way from the target to allow