The Long Earth

29

HE HURRIED OUT of the church, relieved to be in the open air, away from the stink of blood.

A quarter-mile west, Lobsang had said. Joshua glanced at the position of the sun, turned and ran that way. Before he had gone a couple of hundred yards he heard the moaning.

It was a humanoid, lying in the dirt, on her back. Not a troll, perhaps a variant of elf, given Lobsang’s definition based on what he had found in the temple, but not identical to the one he’d inspected there — at any rate another species new to Joshua. Maybe five feet tall, skinny, coated with hair, she was a stretched, upright-posture chimp with a hauntingly human face, despite her flat, chimp-like nose. And, unlike the beast in the temple, her head seemed to bulge, the cranium outsized for her body to Joshua’s eyes — the brain was evidently larger even than a human’s. And she was in trouble. She was heavily pregnant. Barely conscious, she moaned and thrashed, and tore at the fur over her swollen belly, and watery blood leaked out between her legs.

As Joshua bent over her, her eyes opened. She had big slanting eyes, like a cartoon alien’s, but ape-brown, lacking the whites of a human’s. Eyes that widened in alarm, briefly, and looked at him imploringly.

He felt the creature’s stomach. ‘She’s close to term. Something’s wrong. The baby should have been born by now.’

Lobsang murmured, ‘I would have hazarded that the big head of this creature’s baby would make it impossible for her to deliver it.’

‘What did you put in this pack?’ Before Lobsang had a chance to reply he had the pack on his chest open and was rummaging inside it for the first-aid box. ‘And, Lobsang? Get that ship down here. I’m going to need more supplies before we’re done.’

‘Done with what?’

‘I’m going to get that baby out.’ He stroked the cheek of the female. His own mother had once lain alone in a world, in the throes of labour. ‘Too posh to push, are we? Let’s do it the American way.’

‘You’re going to perform a caesarean?’ Lobsang asked. ‘You don’t have the capacity to do that.’

‘Maybe not, but I’m quite certain you do. And we’re going to do this together, Lobsang.’ He dumped out the contents of the med kit, trying to think. ‘I’ll need morphine. Sterilizing fluid. Scalpels. Needles, thread…’

‘We’re very far from home. You’ll exhaust our medical supplies on this stunt. I have the facility to manufacture more, but—’

‘I need to do this.’ He could do nothing for the Victims, but he could do something for this elf female — or at least he could try. It was Joshua’s way of fixing the world, just a little bit. ‘Help me, Lobsang.’

An aeons-long pause. Then: ‘I have of course full records of most major medical procedures. Even obstetrics, though I scarcely imagined it would be needed on this trip.’

Joshua fixed the parrot so Lobsang could see what he was doing, and spread out his tools. ‘Lobsang. Speak to me. What’s first?’

‘We must consider whether to make a longitudinal incision or a lower uterine section…’

Joshua hastily shaved the beast’s lower stomach. Then, trying to keep a steady hand, he held a bronze scalpel over the abdomen wall. And just as he was about to cut into the flesh, the baby vanished. He felt its absence, as the womb imploded.

He sat back in shock. ‘It stepped! Damn it — the baby stepped!’

Then the adults came. Two females: a mother, a sister? They moved in a blur of sprint paces and steps, flickering in and out of existence all around him. Joshua wouldn’t have believed stepping at that speed was possible.

Lobsang murmured, ‘Just stay still.’

The adults glared at Joshua, scooped up the mother and disappeared with soft pops.

Joshua slumped. ‘I don’t believe it. What just happened?’

Lobsang sounded exhilarated. ‘Evolution, Joshua. Evolution just happened. All upright humanoids have trouble giving birth. You know that, and your mother learned it the hard way. As we evolved, the female pelvis shrank to allow for bipedalism, but at the same time the baby’s brain grew bigger — which is why we’re born so helpless. We emerge with a lot of growing to do before we’re independent.

‘But it appears that in this species the problem of the pelvis has been sidestepped. Literally.’ He laughed gently. ‘Here, the baby isn’t born through the birth canal. It steps out of the womb, Joshua. Placenta, umbilical and all, I imagine. It makes sense. An ability to step must shape all aspects of a creature’s life ways, if you give evolution time to exploit it. And if you don’t have to go to all the trouble of being born, your brain can get as big as you like.’

Joshua felt empty. ‘They care for their ill. If I’d have opened her up, the mother wouldn’t have survived the wound I’d have inflicted.’

Lobsang murmured in his ear, ‘You weren’t to know. You tried your best. Now come home. You need a shower.’