The Long War

44

THE FIRST STEPPERS, exploring the Long Earth, had found no trace of modern man away from the Datum.

Oh, they had found a few stone tools. They had found fossil hearths in the depths of caves. They had even found a few bones. But no great leap forward – no cave paintings, no flower-adorned burials, no cities, no high technology. (Well, none that was human.) The spark of higher intellect must have been lit behind beetling pre-human brows on a million worlds, just as on Datum Earth – but it hadn’t caught anywhere other than on the Datum. Whatever the reason, the alternate universes into which Earth’s pioneers poured out were mostly dark, quiet worlds. Worlds of trees, many of them, Earths like great tumbled forests. The Datum itself was just a clearing in the trees, a spark of civilization, one circle of firelight beyond which the shadows spread to infinity. There were humanoids out there, descendants of lost cousins of humanity, but people knew they would never encounter a humanoid that was anything like as smart as they were. Never a humanoid that could speak English, for example.

The only thing wrong with this generally accepted picture was that it was totally incorrect.

Professor Wotan Ulm of Oxford University, author of the bestselling if controversial book Moon-Watcher’s Cousins: The Humanoid Radiation Across the Long Earth, gave the context for the species known as ‘kobolds’ in an interview for the BBC.

‘Of course, such is the patchiness of our exploration of the Long Earth so far that we can come to only tentative conclusions. The evidence for kobolds themselves is little more than legend and anecdote. Nevertheless DNA analysis of samples returned by early expeditions, including a tooth found embedded in the boot of Joshua Valienté, confirms that the humanoids of Long Earth diverged from Datum Earth stock several million years ago, probably at the time of the rise of Homo habilis, the first tool-making hominid. This supports my own hypothesis that it was the increased cognitive skills of H. habilis that enabled some members of that species to step sideways into the other Earths: the ability to imagine the tool in the stone, perhaps, is related to the ability to imagine another world entirely. And then to reach out for it . . .

‘After this divergence – the departure of the steppers, with the Datum inhabited by the descendants of the residuum who could not step – humanoids radiated into the Long Earth, evolving in a variety of niches. And across four million years natural selection has proved remarkably inventive.

‘One fundamental boundary among the humanoid species is whether they retained their ability to step, or not. Some did, as we know, like the form known as the trolls. Others did not. Having found an Earth of suitable habitability, these groups settled down, lost their ability to step, in some cases also lost the intelligence that underpinned that stepping ability, and began to populate their single Earth. This should not surprise us. The juvenile sea squirt is mobile, with a central nervous system and a brain. Once it has found a suitable rock, it settles down, opens its mouth to begin a life of sedentary feeding, absorbs its brain, and turns on the TV. Similarly birds having colonized an island free of predators will lose their ability to fly. Flight, like intelligence, is energetically expensive and may be selected out if not used, if no longer necessary for survival. Similarly, presumably, with stepping.

‘A second evolutionary boundary among the nomadic species is whether they have had extended contact with humanity on Datum Earth, or not. If they have not had contact they may have evolved into forms quite unfamiliar from experience on the Datum, such as the trolls.

‘If they have had contact with mankind, you might think we would know about it. Well, in a sense, we do. It’s remarkable how much human folklore can be explained away if you postulate humanoid races that can move stepwise at will.

‘As for the human-contact humanoids themselves, their subsequent evolution must have been affected. They may grow to look like us, for cover. They may look threatening or cute, to disarm us. Or, most interestingly, they may have evolved speech mechanisms like ours in order to deal with us, in some way. Even intelligence might have been promoted, in competition with us.

‘And so we come to the kobolds. These creatures may indeed be the “kobolds” of myth, the source of German legends of mine spirits, which are also known as types of gnome or dwarf, or Bergmännlein, “little mountain men”. They would infest metal mines, and would be heard rather than seen. They could be helpful: their knocking could guide human miners to rich ore seams, or warn them of danger. In Cornwall, England, they became known as “tommy-knockers”. And they would sometimes steal human artefacts, gewgaws like mirrors, combs; they were evidently fascinated by human material culture, though they could not emulate it.

‘It has to be said that the observed kobolds’ robust anatomy, their aversion to bright light, their hands and feet evidently adapted for digging into the earth, are all features consistent with an underground origin. Perhaps they evolved in the subterranean Datum, or at least adapted to it, their ancestors having stepped away and returned. And perhaps in recent centuries the rising human population finally drove them away, leaving them separated from humanity until our own stepping diffusion began. The word “kobold” incidentally is the source of the name “cobalt” . . .

‘Oddly enough, though these creatures are in many ways the most human-like of the humanoid species, and in some ways the most cognitively advanced, they are among the most secretive. Perhaps that’s because of the derogatory names humans tend to give them. Or perhaps it’s just because they know humans.

‘It may be surprising to a layman that there are any sedentary Long Earth humanoids who have been shaped over evolutionary timescales by contact with humans. This can only come about, of course, if that species returned to Datum Earth and then lost its stepping ability. Well, there is one Datum species that may fit this category, though the genetic evidence is controversial: the bonobo chimps. In retrospect, who could ever have imagined that these gentle creatures belong on the same planet as the likes of us? Not to mention their cousins the common chimps, who are almost as unpleasant as we are. No wonder the bonobos’ ancestors got out of here as soon as they could steal a car. And bad luck for the present-day bonobos that their more recent ancestors came wandering back.

‘Is that enough, Jocasta? Then perhaps you could tell the long-haired kobold lookalike in the production booth that eating a burger all the way through my interview was even more off-putting than you might expect . . .’