The Long Earth

pouring in from neighbouring communities, on foot, some drawing small carts bearing children and old folk. The Humptulips core of Happy Landings wasn’t isolated, then.

Some, they learned, came from as far away as this world’s footprint of Seattle. And that district on this Earth had been called Seattle since 1954, when a lady called Kitty Hartman, minding her own business on her way home from Pike Place Market, stepped without knowing, and was amazed by the disappearance of the buildings around her. The travellers from the Mark Twain were introduced to Mrs Montecute, as she was now known: white-haired, exceptionally spry, very happy to talk.

‘Of course, it was rather a shock, you know, and I remember thinking, I don’t even know what state I’m in! I’m not in Washington any more, that’s for sure. I wondered if I should have brought a little dog and a pair of red shoes! And then the first person I met here was Francois Montecute, who really was kind of cute like his name, who really did turn my head, and who really was an artist between the sheets if you get my drift.’ She told them this with the cheerful directness of an elderly lady who is determined to make young people aware that she has had sex, too, and by the sound of it quite a considerable amount.

There was a certain contented aura about Mrs Montecute, and it seemed to Joshua that everyone in Happy Landings shared it, to some extent. It was hard to pin down.

Sally said when he tried to express this, ‘I know what you mean. Everybody seems so, well, sensible. I have come here many times and it’s always the same. You never get complaints, or competitiveness. They don’t need government, not really. You could say that Mayor Spencer is the first among equals. When there is any big project to be undertaken, they just knuckle down and get on with it.’

Joshua said, ‘It all feels a bit Stepford Wives to me.’

Sally laughed. ‘It bothers you, does it? A happy human community bothers Joshua Valiente, the great loner who’s barely human himself. Well, it is — odd. But in a positive way. I am not talking about telepathy or any of that kind of shit.’

Joshua grinned. ‘As opposed to the hopping from one world to another at a whim kind of shit?’

Sally said, ‘OK, I get your point, but you know what I mean. It’s all so nice. I’ve talked to them about it and they say it’s the fresh air; no crowding, plenty to eat, no unfair taxes, yada, yada, yada…’

‘Or maybe it’s the trolls,’ Joshua said bluntly. ‘Trolls and humans, mixed up together.’

‘Maybe,’ she conceded. ‘Sometimes I wonder…’

‘What do you wonder?’

‘I wonder if there’s something so big going on here that even Lobsang would have to recalibrate his thinking. Just a hunch, for now. I’m just suspicious. But then a stepper who isn’t suspicious is soon a dead stepper.’

39

JOSHUA ROSE EARLY the next morning and explored further, alone. People were friendly and ready to walk, chat and even hand him pottery mugs of lemonade. He overcame his natural inclination to silence, and talked back, and listened.

The area was pretty well homesteaded by now, he learned, with thriving settlements at the coast and along the river valleys. None of them had many more than a couple of hundred inhabitants, though people would get together on festival days — or when interesting visitors showed up, such as Lobsang with his airship. And in response to the greater influx of newcomers in recent decades, the community had had to expand, new settlements seeding across the countryside.

The reason this rapid expansion had been possible, he learned, was the trolls. Trolls were useful, trolls were friendly, companionable — and, crucially, ever ready to lift a heavy load, an exercise they took much delight in. This donation of muscle power had helped the colonists here overcome their lack of manpower, draft animals and machinery.

But in a sense the reason for all the building work, the growth of the new settlements, was the trolls. Trolls, he discovered, were allergic to crowds — that is to say, crowds of humans. No matter how many trolls there were, they would get nervous if there were more than one thousand, eight hundred and ninety humans in the immediate vicinity, apparently a number found by careful experimentation in the past. They didn’t get mad, they just got going, not coming back, sheepishly, until a few dozen humans had kindly found somewhere else to be, and the numbers dropped down under the limit. But as the goodwill of trolls was immensely valuable, Happy Landings was spreading southwards as a confederacy of small troll-friendly townships. This was hardly inconvenient, since you could always walk to the next township in a matter of minutes, and there was plenty of room in this riverine landscape for more.

Later that morning Joshua learned that this fact, the size of the townships, was of intense interest to a young man called Henry. He had been raised among Amish until one day he stepped into a soft place and landed, as it were, among a different kind of chosen. It seemed to Joshua that Henry had come to terms with this elevation quite happily. He explained to Joshua that back home his people had always reckoned that around a hundred and fifty people was just the right size for a caring community, and so he felt at home here. He also thought, however, that he had died, and that Happy Landings was, if not heaven, at least a staging post for the journey onwards. Being dead didn’t seem to bother him very much. He had his place in this little society: he was a good husbandman, gentle around animals and particularly fond of trolls.

And that was why, this morning, when at Lobsang’s request Joshua brought Henry up to the airship with a few trolls, Henry believed he had ascended to heaven at last, and was speaking to God. There are some things which you don’t put up with when you have been brought up by nuns, even if they are nuns like Sister Agnes. Joshua tried to disabuse Henry of the belief that the impressive saffron-clad personage he met after travelling into the sky was, in fact, God. But given Lobsang’s ego and air of omnicompetence there was little to dissuade him.

Lobsang, meanwhile, was burning to learn more about the language of the trolls. And that was why now, on the observation deck, there were already a couple of female trolls flanking Lobsang’s ambulant unit, and four or five juveniles having a lot of fun playing with Shi-mi. Henry had been brought along to help calm the trolls — that had actually been Sally’s suggestion — but nothing seemed to faze a Happy Landings troll. They had trotted into the elevator quite happily, and once on board seemed to take everything in their great, flat-footed stride, including an artificial man and a robot cat.

Lobsang said, ‘Trolls are of course mammals. And mammalian creatures love and cherish their offspring — well, for the most part. Mothers teach their children. And so I am learning like a child, with baby steps, as it were. As I myself play the part of a child, I feel I can with care derive a certain elementary vocabulary: good, bad, up, down. And thus we make progress.’

He was enjoying this, Joshua could tell. ‘You’re the troll whisperer, Lobsang.’

But Lobsang took no notice of that and walked among his happy band of trolls. ‘Please note, I offer a nice shiny ball. Good! Joshua, observe the sounds of appreciation and interest. See the pretty shiny thing! And now, I take it away. Ah, the sounds of sadness and privation, very good. But note that the adult female is alert, emitting sounds of uncertainty, with just a subtle hint that were I to try anything really nasty with her favourite bag of woolliness she would quite likely rip off my arm and beat me to death with the wet end. Splendid! Joshua, see, I give the ball back to the pup; now mother is less apprehensive, and all is sweetness and light once more.’

And it was, thought Joshua. The Mark Twain, anchored over Happy Landings, moved gently in a sunlit breeze, with just enough creaking from the woodwork to lull you almost as if you were in a hammock. A pleasant place with happy, happy trolls.

The spell was broken when Lobsang asked, ‘Henry, could you provide a dead troll, do you think?’

Henry looked deeply uncomfortable. When he spoke he had an odd, lilting accent. ‘Mister, if one of them dies they scrape out a very deep hole and bury the body, scattering flowers upon it beforehand to ensure the resurrection, I do believe.’

‘Ah, then I suppose that a forensic dissection is out of the question? I feared so… I beg your pardon,’ he added, with what struck Joshua as unusual tact for him. ‘I intended no disrespect. But the scientific value would be high. I am confronted with a hitherto unknown species which, despite the lack of what we are pleased to call civilization, and lacking our form of intelligence, has a method of communication of an intricacy and depth unrivalled