The Long Utopia

35

‘YOU CAN GUESS the rest,’ Nelson told Joshua, deep in the hidden basement of the Royal Society, both of them huddled in the cold over Luis’s handwritten journal. ‘Hackett’s programme of inbreeding worked, and very quickly.

‘Within decades there was an explosion of natural steppers in the human population. That’s what I infer from the available evidence anyhow. Surely many of those steppers disappeared into the Long Earth, lost to some accident or other – or just seeking places to hide. It would have been interesting to study Happy Landings, before it was destroyed. See if there was any upsurge in the number of drifters turning up there.’

Joshua thought back. That remote colony, ultimately the source of the genetic upgrading that resulted in the emergence of the Next, had been a kind of natural sink of steppers, a well that all the soft places led to. ‘Yeah. I do remember folk from there saying that in recent times they had come under more pressure. Too many people coming in, the ancient balance with their troll population lost. But it wasn’t the kind of place to keep proper records, was it?’

‘No. And meanwhile those steppers who remained close to the Datum would have been secretive. Surely the lesson of what became of the Knights of Discorporea wouldn’t have been lost. But no secret is easy to keep.’ He let that hang.

Joshua sighed. ‘Don’t tease me, Nelson. You’ve found a few stories, haven’t you?’

‘Not all of it conclusive. For instance – have you heard of the Angel of Mons?’

‘No. Should I?’

‘Maybe not. The Great War, 1914. British soldiers in the trenches spread stories of mysterious figures who would appear and vanish again, helping the wounded. Some said they were the ghosts of English archers from the Battle of Agincourt, centuries earlier.’

‘Hmm. Whereas in fact they were my great-great-uncles?’

‘That’s the idea.’ He opened a notebook and checked an entry. ‘The official line is that it all came from a bit of fiction by a Welsh writer called Arthur Machen. Which was a very effective cover-up, for the time. In the 1940s, during the next war, I believe there must have been steppers aiding elements of the Home Guard, the volunteer army who were preparing to resist a Nazi invasion of England. I saw a version of a memoir by Tom Witringham, from which some pages had been excised – Witringham set up guerrilla-war training for selected Home Guard units. There could easily have been useful refuges in the stepwise worlds, resistance hideouts, caches of food, explosives, you name it – everything but guns and ammo because of the steel …’

The story went on, in Britain at least reflecting the changing concerns of national history.

‘In the 1950s, Cold War spies. James Bond with a step ability, Joshua! In the 1970s, it looks as if they were infiltrating the unions and the IRA—’

‘This all seems very virtuous.’

‘Oh, I’ve no doubt there was the usual streak of jewel thieves, peeping toms and other rascals. With time I may be able to pin down more from police records. And this is only the British connection – well, the whole inbreeding conspiracy did start here – but clearly there were elements overseas too, especially in America. We know that from what you’ve told me of Sally Linsay’s family history …’