The Long Earth

‘I always wondered why I kept coming across so many bewildered people. I thought they were just dumb.’

‘Possibly many of them were.’

The voice of Lobsang floated in the air. ‘I am aware of the phenomenon you mention, Sally, and would like to take the opportunity to thank you for giving it a most apposite label. Stuttering. But I have been unable to duplicate it.’

Sally glared at the air. ‘Have you been listening to everything we have been saying?’

‘Of course. My ship, my rules. Perhaps you will be good enough to answer Joshua’s question. You’ve given only a partial response; the mystery still divides us. How did you get out here? Rather more purposefully than stuttering, I would hazard.’

Sally looked out of the window. It was dark outside, but the stars glittered with a vengeance. ‘I still don’t entirely trust you two. Out in the Long Earth everybody needs an edge, and this is my edge. I’ll tell you one thing. If you go much further you will meet trouble coming the other way.’

That throb in Joshua’s skull was never far from his awareness. ‘What’s coming?’

‘Even I don’t know. Not yet.’

‘It’s caused the migration of the trolls and the other humanoids, hasn’t it?’

‘So you know about that? I guess you could hardly miss it.’

‘Lobsang and I think we need to pursue this. Find out what’s causing it.’

‘What, and save the world?’

Joshua was getting used to her mockery. She was resolutely unimpressed by Lobsang’s treasure-ship dirigible, and by his grandiose talk and dreams, as well, it seemed, as by Joshua’s own reputation. ‘So why have you come back to us? To laugh at us, or to help us? Or because of what we can do for you?’

‘Among other things. It will keep.’ She stood up. ‘Goodnight, Joshua. Have Jeeves make up another stateroom, please. One that is not right next to yours, preferably. Oh, don’t look so alarmed, your honour is safe. It’s just that I snore, you see…’

37

THE SHIP STEPPED all through the night, and, for once, Joshua thought he could feel every step. He sagged into something like sleep just before dawn, and got maybe an hour before Sally hammered on his door.

‘Show a leg, sailor boy.’

He groaned. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Last night I gave Lobsang some coordinates to aim for. We’ve arrived.’

Once decent, Joshua hurried down to the observation deck. The ship was motionless. They weren’t far from the Pacific coast in this version of Washington State. And below, far, far into the deep Long Earth, far beyond the consensus on where the colonizing wavefront might yet have reached, was a township, where no township had a right to be. Joshua just stared. It sprawled along the bank of a reasonably sized river, with a clutter of buildings, tracks threading through a thick, damp forest. But there were no fields, as far as he could see, no sign of agriculture. There were people everywhere, doing what people always did when there was an airship overhead, which was to point upwards and chatter excitedly. But without farms, how could they live in such a densely populated community?

Meanwhile, by the river, there were familiar hulking forms… Not quite human. Not quite animal.

‘Trolls.’

She glanced at him, surprised. ‘That’s what they’re called out here. As you know, evidently.’

‘As Lobsang knew before we set off.’

‘I suppose I should be impressed. You’ve met them, have you? Joshua, if you want to understand the trolls, if you want to understand the Long Earth, you need to understand this place. That’s why I’ve brought you here.

‘Orientation, Joshua. If this was the Datum we would be hovering over a township called Humptulips, in Grays Harbor County. We’re not so far from the Pacific coast. Of course the details of the landscape differ, the track of the river. I hope they’ve got the clam chowder boiling.’

‘Clam chowder? You know this place that well?’

‘Of course I do.’

In her way, she could be as irritatingly smug as Lobsang.

The airship came down over a broad dirt square at the heart of the township. The buildings scattered around the square struck Joshua immediately as old, of weathered wood, some on eroded- looking stone bases. He had an immediate sense that this township, of maybe a couple of hundred people, had been here long before Step Day. The square itself was dominated by a stout communal wooden building that Sally said was known simply as ‘City Hall’, and she led the way there. Inside, the building, constructed on a frame of impressive cedar beams, had a high ceiling, polished wooden floors and furniture, glassless windows at eyelevel, and large doors at either end. The fire pit in the centre added a decent enough glow.

Lobsang had descended with them, his ambulant unit clothed in saffron robes for the occasion. Despite his 1980s body-builder bulk, he had never looked more Tibetan. And he seemed oddly self-conscious — as well he might, because the hall was full of staring, smiling townsfolk, and trolls, mixing with the people as unnoticed as family dogs at a picnic. The air was full of their distinctive, faintly unpleasant musk.

In City Hall there was indeed chowder to be had, boiling up in huge pots, a thoroughly incongruous treat given their remoteness from the Datum.

The mayor greeted them. He was a small, sleek man who had an accent like a middle European with good English. Of course Sally knew him. She handed him a small package as soon as they met, and he led them to a central table.

Sally saw Joshua’s glance at this exchange. ‘Pepper.’

‘You do a lot of bartering, do you?’

‘I guess. Don’t you? And I stay over. Not just here. If I find settlers who are interesting enough, I stop a while and help them out with their farming, whatever. That’s the way to learn a world, Joshua. Whereas you two, rattling along in your great big penis in the sky, are learning nothing.’

‘Told you so,’ Joshua murmured privately to Lobsang.

‘Perhaps,’ Lobsang replied quietly. ‘But even so, for all our flaws, she came back to us. You’re right, Joshua. There is something she wants from us. Among all these distractions we must persist in finding out what that is.’

Sally was saying now, ‘This place is pretty unique, among my stopovers, however. I call it Happy Landings.’

Lobsang observed, ‘Evidently it has been here a long time.’

‘A very long time. Folk sort of end up here… It seems to be a kind of people magnet. You’ll see.’

The only name the mayor gave was Spencer. Over bowls of chowder he was happy to talk about his unique community.

‘A “people magnet” — yes, perhaps it is something like that. But over the centuries that people have been coming here they have given it other names, or have cursed it, in a multitude of languages. There is some very old building stock, and we find old bones, some in crude coffins. Centuries, yes. People have been arriving for a long, long time. Thousands of years, even!

‘Of course most of the population you see around you were born here — I myself was — but there is always a trickle of newcomers. None of those incoming settlers knows how they got here, and everybody who comes here fresh arrives with the same story: one day you are on Earth, the Datum as they call it now, minding your own business, and suddenly you’re here. Sometimes there’s stress involved, you’re trying to escape something, oftentimes not.’ He lowered his voice and added, ‘Sometimes there are lone children. Strays. Lost boys and lost girls. Even infants. Often they’ve never stepped before at all. They are always made welcome, you may be sure of that. Do try the ale, I like to think we are very good at it. Some more chowder, Mr Valiente? Where was I?