The Long Earth (32 page)

Of course there were no answers.

In the gathering twilight Joshua was careful not to walk into trolls. Trolls seldom walked into people. Indeed the general etiquette of Happy Landings was that everybody should try not to walk into
anybody
. But now, suddenly, Joshua walked into an elephant.

Fortunately, it was neither purple nor camouflaged. It was quite small, about the size of an ox, coated with wiry brown hair, and it had a rider, a stocky, grizzled man, who said cheerfully, ‘Another newcomer! And where did you blow in from, sport? My name’s Wally, been here eleven years. Rum go and no mistake, ain’t it? Bit of a bugger, good thing I wasn’t married! Not for want of
opportunity
, you understand, before or since.’ The self-confessed Wally slid off the back of his miniature elephant, and held out a leathery hand. ‘Put it there!’

They shook hands, and Joshua introduced himself. ‘I’ve only been here a couple of days. Flew in. In a flying machine,’ he added quickly.

‘You did? Great! When are you flying out? Got a spare seat?’

Joshua had wondered at the fact that so few residents of Happy Landings had asked that question; so few wanted out. ‘I think the jury is out on that one, Wally. We have a kind of mission to achieve.’

‘No worries,’ Wally said, apparently unfazed. ‘I’ve been poling down the river, found Jumbo here. Amiable little fella, ain’t he? Just the job for the long-haul, and pretty bright. They come up from the plains.’ He sighed. ‘I like spaces, me, don’t like forests, too creepy. I like to feel wind on my face.’ As they walked towards City Hall with Jumbo following dutifully behind, he added, ‘We’ve been working on the new road south, clearing the way. Don’t mind trees if I can cut them down! But I reckon I have earned my keep here now, so it’s time to build a boat and go discover Australia. That’s the longest haul of them all, right enough.’

‘That’s halfway around the world, Wally. And it won’t be the Australia you remember.’

‘Fair enough.
Any
Australia will do for me. Of course, I can’t do it all in one go. But a simple way would be to sail down the coast, staying close to the shore, lots of good eating on the way, and strike out for Hawaii. And you can bet your boots that’s one of the first places steppers would want to colonize. And after that, well, we’ll have to see, but where there are people there’s going to be a pub, and where there’s a pub there’s sooner or later going to be Wally!’

Joshua shook hands with Wally, wishing him bon voyage.

He found Sally back in City Hall, surrounded by friendly faces, as ever. She broke away when she saw Joshua. ‘People are starting to notice. Even here.’

‘What?’

‘About the trolls. That more and more of them are stepping off East. Wild bands come passing through, and even the local ones, what you might loosely call domesticated, I suspect some of them want to leave too, but they are being kind of polite. The locals are getting disturbed.’

‘Hmm. Ripples in the tranquil pool of Happy Landings?’

‘Is Lobsang finished playing at Dr Dolittle? It’s time we were airborne and heading West again.’

‘Let’s go see.’

Back on the ship, the observation deck appeared empty save for a pile of trolls, snuggling like puppies. Then the heap moved, and Lobsang poked his head out, beaming.

‘Fur is wonderful against the tactile areas, is it not? I feel like one blessed. And they speak! Extremely high-pitched, minimal vocabulary … Multiple ways of communicating, apparently; it does seem that communicating is what being a troll is all about. But I suspect the real exchange of information takes place in the songs.

‘I believe I now have learned terms for good/bad, approval/refusal, pleasure/pain, night/day, hot/cold, correct/incorrect, and “I wish to suckle now”, although I suspect the last will not be of much use to me. I will learn more when we continue our voyage, which by the way we will be doing with alacrity at first light tomorrow. I intend to take these trolls. I hope my new friends do not mind travelling by air. I believe they
like
me!’

Sally’s face was a carefully controlled mask. ‘Well, that’s just peachy, Lobsang. But are you doing any actual work in there?’

‘I am coming to tentative conclusions. These are evidently very flexible omnivores. No wonder they’re so widespread, across the Long Earth. They’re ideal nomads. And the product of a couple of million years’ evolution, probably, since the root habiline stock learned to step.’

Joshua asked, ‘Habiline?’

‘
Homo habilis
. Handy Man. The first toolmakers in the human evolutionary line. You see, I’m speculating that maybe the stepping ability evolved alongside the ability to make tools. One surely needs a similar imaginative capacity: to imagine how a bit of stone might become an axe; to imagine how one world might differ from another, and then to step into it. Or perhaps it is related to the ability to imagine alternative futures depending on one’s choices: to go hunting today, or to go back to that rich hazel clump again … Either way, once such an ability developed the species would split, between increasingly adept steppers who would drift away, and those less adept or unable to step at all, who would stay at home, and perhaps become actively resistant to the steppers, who would have a competitive advantage.’

‘A stay-at-home strand that gave rise to humanity on Datum Earth,’ Joshua guessed.

‘Possibly. My colleague Nelson’s archaeological searches would seem to indicate that. But this
is
just my guess. It may be the stepping ability evolved even earlier, during the age of the pre-human apes. One must describe these creatures as humanoid rather than hominid, until a proper study is concluded, evolutionary relationships established.’

Sally asked, ‘Have they told you why they are migrating?’

‘I have an idea … My conclusion has to be tentative, even though the alpha female is remarkably good at pantomime. Imagine a pressure in your head. Storms in the mind.’

And Joshua was aware of the gathering storm in his own head, that sense of pressure as they headed West, just as if the Datum itself with its billions of souls was up ahead of him. Yes, he thought. Bad weather for the psyche, coming this way. But what’s driving it?

Lobsang said no more. Amid the mewings of the troll pups, once again he was submerged in his heap of fur. ‘Ah. Tactile surfaces …’

And suddenly there was no more Lobsang. The physical
presence
of the ambulant unit was still here, but some subtle aspect of the ship had dissipated.

Joshua looked at Sally.

Sally said, ‘You feel that too? Is it something we can’t hear, or see any more? Where’s he gone? He can’t die, can he? Or – break?’

Joshua didn’t know what to say. The ship remained subtly busy, its myriad mechanisms whirring and clicking away as if nothing had happened. But inside this brightly lit complex Joshua could not detect the controlling element, could not detect Lobsang. Something essential was missing. It had been like this when old Sister Regina had died. She had been bed-bound for years, but she liked to see the children, and still, despite everything, had known all their names. They had filed in to see her, nervous of the smell, her papery skin. And then suddenly it had seemed that something that they hadn’t known was there … wasn’t any more.

‘I have been thinking he might be ill,’ he said, uncertain. ‘He hasn’t been himself since he got buried under troll cubs.’

The voice of Lobsang came over the loudspeaker: ‘Do not be unduly worried.’

Sally was startled, and laughed nervously. ‘Should we be
duly
worried?’

‘Sally, please bear with us. There has been no malfunction. You are being addressed by an emergency subsystem. Right now Lobsang is recompiling: that is, integrating vast volumes of new information. This will take a few hours. However, we subsystems are fully capable of fulfilling all necessary functions during the period stated. Lobsang needs his time offline; sooner or later every sufficiently sapient creature needs time to take stock, as we are sure you will understand. You are quite safe. Lobsang looks forward to the pleasure of your company around dawn.’

Sally snorted. ‘Somehow I was expecting him to add “Have a nice day”, but I suppose you can’t have everything. How much of
that
was true, do you think?’

Joshua shrugged. ‘He is learning a lot, I guess, and very fast, from the trolls.’

‘And now he’s absorbing their nightmares. So we have a free evening. How about one more trip down to the bar?’

‘
Which
bar? …’

At the end of a long round of farewell drinks, all of them free, he had to carry her back to the ship. He laid her gently on the bed in her stateroom. She looked younger when she slept. He felt an unreasonable stab of protectiveness, and was glad she wasn’t awake to notice it.

There was no sign of Lobsang, no sound of his voice.

And the trolls, it turned out, had left of their own accord. Joshua thought, troll see elevator button. Troll think about button. Troll press button. Goodbye troll … Lobsang had wanted to get more out of his contact with the trolls. But evidently the trolls had got all they wanted out of
him
.

Alone, Joshua lay down on his couch on the observation deck, looking at the stars.

At dawn, with all its passengers asleep, the ship rose gently, gaining height until it was above the tops of the highest forest giants, and then stepped, disappearing with a small thunderclap.

40

IN THE MORNING
Lobsang was back. Joshua could sense him, sense that a kind of purposefulness had returned to the ship, even before the ambulant unit joined him on the observation deck, as he drank the first coffee of the day. Sally was evidently still asleep.

They were stepping gently, and worlds washed beneath them. As ever the Long Earth was mostly trees and water, silence and monotony. Joshua was glad to be free of the hard-to-pin-down oddness of Happy Landings, but as they headed West once more that gathering pressure in his head had returned. He tried and failed to ignore it.

The two of them sat in silence. There was no mention of Lobsang’s departed friends the trolls, or of his offline episode. Joshua couldn’t read Lobsang’s mood. He wondered vaguely if he was
lonely
without the trolls, disappointed they had chosen to leave, frustrated that his research was evidently unfinished. It was faintly disturbing that Lobsang seemed to be becoming more unstable, more unpredictable. Overloaded by new experiences, perhaps.

After an hour of this Lobsang said, out of nowhere, ‘Do you ever think about the future, Joshua? I mean the far future?’

‘No. But I bet you do.’

‘The diffusion of humanity across the Long Earth will surely cause more than mere political problems. I can foresee a time where mankind is so dispersed across the multiplicity of worlds
that
there will be significant genetic differences at either end of the human hegemony. Perhaps there will have to be some kind of enforced cross-migration to make certain that mankind remains sufficiently homogeneous to be united …’

A burning forest below made the ship dance briefly on turbulent thermals.

‘I don’t think we need worry about that just yet, Lobsang.’

‘Oh, but I do worry, Joshua. And the more I see of the Long Earth, the more its scale impresses itself on me, and the more I fret. Mankind will be trying to run a galactic empire, effectively, on one ever-repeating planet …’

The airship shivered to a halt. The world below was shrouded in low cloud.

Sally wandered on to the deck, wrapped in a robe, her hair in a towel. ‘Really? Do we have to copy the mistakes of the past? Must there be Roman legions marching into endless new worlds?’

‘Good morning, Sally,’ Lobsang said. ‘I trust you are rested?’

‘The best thing about the beer at Happy Landings is its purity, like the very best German brews. No hangover.’

Joshua said, ‘Although you did your best to test that theory to destruction.’

She ignored him and looked around. ‘Why were we travelling so slowly? And why, in fact, have we stopped?’

Lobsang said, ‘We travelled slowly in order that you might sleep late, Sally. But also I took on board your criticism. It pays to inspect the small details, and so I have slowed the flight of our flying penis, as you so amusingly described it. Small details, such as the relic of an advanced civilization just underneath us. Which is why we have stopped.’

Joshua and Sally, electrified, exchanged a glance.

As the ship lost height they peered down through the haze.

‘My radar scanner is returning images through the cloud,’ Lobsang said, apparently staring into empty space. ‘I see a river valley, evidently long dry. A cultivated flood plain. No recognizable
electromagnetic
or other high technology. Signs of purposeful construction on the riverside – including a bridge, long ago broken. And rectangles on the ground, my friends,
rectangles
of brick or stone! But no signs of complex life surviving. I have no idea who the builders were. This may be a diversion from our main goal, but I am sure I speak for all of us when I say that we should make an initial survey of this phenomenon. Am I right?’

Again Joshua and Sally glanced at each other.

Sally asked, ‘What kind of weapons are we carrying?’

‘Weapons?’

‘Better safe than sorry.’

Lobsang said, ‘If you mean portable weapons we have various knives, lightweight but nevertheless very useful handguns, crossbows that fire a variety of darts tailored to the metabolism types we might expect to encounter, ranging in power from “ever so sleepy” to “instantly dead”, colour-coded, with Braille and pictogram options – I am rather proud of that piece of kit. Aboard the airship there are a number of projectile weapons under my command. If necessary, I can fabricate a small but very sneaky tank.’

Sally snorted. ‘We’re not going to need a tank. We’re dealing with an extinct civilization down there. Although extinct civilizations can leave behind nasty surprises.’