The Long Earth

42

THE MARK TWAIN was a haven. Once you were airborne and stepping away you left your troubles behind. Now it was a relief to get away from the Rectangles, and head into the new and unknown. Joshua welcomed the escape, despite the increasing, foreboding pressure in his head.

Lobsang was still stepping slowly, inspecting the Earths with relative care, while Joshua and Sally hung out on the observation deck. They were stepping at cloud height — but even so, once, over a dark green world, Joshua thought that he heard the scraping of leaves along the keel, the touch of what must be the titanic trees of some Joker planet.

‘Lobsang’s worried, isn’t he?’ said Sally. ‘And distressed by what we found at the Rectangles.’

‘Well, he is a Buddhist. Veneration for all living things and all that. But bones are never feelgood. Elephants are the same, aren’t they? Aware of the significance of bones, either as a signature of threat, or of the death of one of their kind…’ He sensed her attention was elsewhere. ‘Sally, is there something wrong?’

‘What do you mean by “wrong”?’ It sounded like an accusation.

Joshua recoiled from her tone; he didn’t feel like a fight. He went up to the galley and started to peel potatoes, a gift from Happy Landings delivered in a woven sack. He gave all his attention to the action of knife on potato. Displacement activity, he knew, but comforting even so, given what he was displacing.

Sally followed him, and stood in the doorway to the lounge beyond. ‘You watch me a lot, don’t you?’

It wasn’t really a question, and so he replied with what wasn’t an answer. ‘I watch everybody. It’s good to know what they are thinking.’

‘So what am I thinking now?’

‘You are frightened. You’re probably as spooked by the Rectangles as me, and Lobsang, and under all that the troll migration has you seriously spooked — you more than either of us, as you know the trolls better than we do.’With the potato chopped, he leaned down and picked another out of the woven bag. He would have to keep the bag; somebody in Happy Landings had probably spent hours making it. ‘I’ll make chowder. Wouldn’t do to leave the clams too long. Another gift from Happy Landings—’

‘Stop it, Joshua. Stop with the damn potatoes. Talk to me.’

Joshua cleaned the knife and put it down carefully; you always took care of your tools. Then he turned around.

Sally glared at him. ‘What makes you think you know me at all? Do you actually know anybody?’

‘A few people. One policewoman. My friends at the Home. Even some of the kids I helped on Step Day, who kept in touch later on. And then there are the nuns. It is sensible to know nuns when you live close to them; they can be somewhat mercurial—’

‘I’m sick of hearing about your damn nuns,’ she snapped.

He kept his calm, and defied his instinct to escape into the cooking again. He had the feeling this was an important moment. ‘Look — I know I’m not a people person. And Sister Agnes would leather me for using a phrase like that. But there’s no substitute for people, I know that.

‘Look at the trolls. Yes, the trolls are friendly and helpful, and I would not wish any harm to come to them. They are happy, and I could envy that. But they don’t build, they do not make, they take the world for what it is. Humans start with the world as it is and try to make it different. And that’s what makes them interesting. In all these worlds we are rushing over, the most precious thing that we can find is another human being. That’s what I think. And if we are the only minds like ours in the Long Earth, in the universe — well, that’s pretty sad and scary.

‘Right now I see another human being. And it’s you, and you are not happy, and I would like to help you if I can. You don’t have to say anything. Take your time.’ He smiled. ‘The clam chowder won’t be ready for a couple of hours anyhow. Oh, and the movie this evening will be The Ballad of Cable Hogue. A bittersweet saga of the last days of the West, starring Jason Robards, according to Lobsang.’

Of all their eccentricities, Sally most ferociously mocked the habit Lobsang and Joshua had developed of watching old movies in the bowels of the Mark Twain. (Joshua was glad she hadn’t been on board when the two of them had dressed up for The Blues Brothers.) This time she didn’t react. The silence was punctuated only by the metronomic clicks and whirs of the galley’s hidden mechanisms. They were two flawed people, Joshua thought, stranded together.

At last Joshua turned back to his work and finished the chowder, adding bacon and seasoning. He liked cooking. Cooking responded to care; if you did things right, then it went well. It was dependable, and he liked dependable things. But he wished he could have got his hands on some celery.

When he’d finished, Sally was in the lounge, sitting on the couch, grasping her knees, as if trying to make herself small. He said, ‘How about a coffee?’

She shrugged. He poured coffee from the pot.

Evening was falling on the worlds below, and the deck lights came on. The lounge was wrapped in a honey glow, a great improvement.

Joshua said hesitantly, ‘I find it best to worry about the little things. Things that can be helped by being worried about. Such as the making of clam chowder, and giving you a coffee. The bigger stuff, well, you have to handle that as it faces you.’

Sally smiled thinly. ‘You know, Joshua, for an antisocial weirdo you are sometimes almost perceptive. Look — what bugs me above all is that I’ve had to come to you two for help. Well, to anybody. I’ve been living on my own resources for years. I suspect I can’t face this problem on my own, but I hate to admit it. And there’s something else, Joshua.’ She studied him. ‘You’re different. Don’t deny it. The super-powered stepper. The king of the wild Long Earth. I have a feeling you’re somehow central to all this. That’s the secret reason I came to you specifically.’

That made him deeply uncomfortable, almost betrayed. ‘I don’t want to be central to anything.’

‘Get used to it. And that’s my problem, you see. When I was a kid, all the Long Earth used to be my playground, and mine alone. I’m jealous. Because all this may be more yours than mine.’

He tried to take all this in. ‘Sally, maybe you and I—’

And at that moment, very precisely the wrong moment, the door opened and Lobsang sauntered in, smiling. ‘Ah! Clam chowder! With bacon, excellent!’

Sally and Joshua shared a glance, parked their conversation, and turned away.

Sally focused on Lobsang. ‘So here you are, the android that eats. Gobbling down clam chowder, again?’

Lobsang sat down and, rather artificially, draped one leg over the other. ‘Yes, of course, why not? The gel substrate that supports my intelligence needs organic components, and why should those components not be of the finest cuisine?’

Sally looked at Joshua. ‘But if he eats, then surely he must eventually…’

Lobsang smiled. ‘Such minimal waste as I produce is expelled as carefully compacted compost in biodegradable wrapping. Why is this amusing? You did ask, Sally. At least your mockery makes a change from your usual disdain for me. And now we have work to do. I need you to identify these creatures, please.’

Behind him a wall panel lowered, to reveal a screen that flickered into life. Joshua stared at a familiar biped, scrawny, dirty, yellowish in colour. It was holding a stick like a club, and it was staring at its unseen observers with malice aforethought, and possibly afterthought as well. Joshua knew what it was all too well.

‘We call them elves,’ said Sally.

‘I know you do,’ said Lobsang.

‘I think in some of the colonies they call them Greys, after the old UFO mythology. You see them everywhere in the High Meggers, and sometimes in the lower worlds. They are generally leery of humans, but they will try their luck if you’re isolated or wounded. Super-fast, super-strong, highly intelligent hunters who use stepping when they go for their prey.’

‘I know,’ Joshua said. ‘We’ve met them before.’

‘Elves. Not a bad name, when you think about it. Elves weren’t always sweet little creatures, were they? Northern European legends portray them as tall and powerful and quite without souls. A nasty name. I can live with that. They need all the bad press we can give them. And in mythology, aren’t elves often afraid of iron? No wonder, I guess; iron could be used to trap them, to stop them stepping.’

Joshua went back to the chowder in the galley, and as he worked Lobsang gave Sally a curt account of Joshua’s battle with the hog-riding assassins.

When he returned, she looked at Joshua with new respect. ‘You did well to survive.’

‘Yes. And that was supposed to be my day off. Long story.’

‘Fun guys to have around, right?’

‘Here’s another variant,’ Lobsang said. The screen displayed an image of the pregnant, big-brained elf Joshua had tried to save.

‘I call this kind lollipops,’ Sally said. ‘Big-brained, you can see that, but not actually all that bright that I’ve observed.’

Lobsang nodded. ‘It makes sense. The stepping-birth procedure has allowed a dramatic expansion of the physical size of the brain, but perhaps that has yet to be matched by an increase in functional capability. They have the hardware; the software is yet to evolve.’

Sally said, ‘In the meantime some of the other elf types farm them. For their brains, I mean. They eat the big brains. I’ve seen it.’

Silence greeted that pronouncement.

Lobsang sighed. ‘Not exactly Rivendell, then, is it, with all these trolls and elves? Tell me, Sally, are there any unicorns in the Long Earth?’

‘Chowder’s done,’ said Joshua. ‘Get it while it’s hot.’

As they sat down to eat, Sally said, ‘Actually there are unicorns. Some not too many steps from Happy Landings. I can show you if you like. Ugly devils, and not the kind that hang out with Barbie. Just bloody great slabs of battering ram, and so dumb they get their horns stuck in tree trunks. Often happens in the mating season…’

Now the screen showed images of elves feeding on some carcass, squabbling, bloody-mouthed.

Sally asked, ‘Why are you showing us all this, Lobsang?’

‘Because this is a live feed from what is below us, on our latest Earth. Hadn’t you noticed we’d stopped stepping? Eat your chowder; the elves will keep until morning.’