The Long Earth

by Terry Pratchett

  So Lobsang told Joshua the story of Jared Orgill, one of the first natural steppers to come to the attention of the authorities.

  It had been just another game of Jack in the Box: that was what they called it in Austin, Texas, although kids had independently invented variants of the game across the planet, with lots of different names. And this particular day it was the turn of Jared Orgill, ten years old, to be Jack.

  They’d found an old fridge on the illegal garbage dump, Jared and his friends. A big slab of stainless steel, lying on its back amid the garbage. ‘It looks like a robot’s coffin,’ remarked Debbie Bates. Once they’d pulled out the shelves and plastic boxes and stuff it was more than big enough to take one of them.

  Jared wasn’t bullied into going into the box, though his parents would later protest otherwise. In fact he would have fought the others for his turn. He handed his cellphone to Debbie – you never took in a phone, of course – climbed in and lay down. It wasn’t comfortable, with the bumps and ridges of the fridge’s inner fittings poking into him, and there was a stink of some chemical or other. The big heavy lid slammed down, shutting out the sky, the grinning faces. It didn’t bother him, it would only be for a few minutes. For a while he heard bumps and bangs and scrapes, as the others followed the usual routine of heaping up garbage on top of the fridge to pin down the lid.

  Then there was a moment of quiet, a few more scrapes – and the fridge started rocking. The other kids had thought of a better way of pinning him in there. It took them a minute to get organized, but soon the half-dozen of them were lined up, heaving at the heavy fridge, rocking it a little further with each pull. The fridge rolled over, and fell forward so its weight trapped the door closed. Jared, buffeted by the rolling in the dark, landed face down on the inside of the door … and he heard something crunch. His Stepper, at his waist, was just a plastic box full of a jumble of components, tied on to his belt with string. Kind of fragile.

  The game was that he would wait five minutes, ten – maybe as long as an hour. Of course he couldn’t tell the time. Then he would step out to West 1 or East 1, move aside from the fridge, and step back – ta-da! – there would be Jack, out of the box.

  But he’d fallen on his Stepper.

  It might still work. He didn’t try it, not straight away. He didn’t want to look chicken by coming out too soon. Also, he didn’t want to know that the Stepper was broken, and that he was stuck.

  He didn’t know how long he waited. The air already felt hot, stuffy. Maybe it was ten minutes, maybe more.

  He felt for the sliding switch on the Stepper, closed his eyes, pulled it over to East. Nothing. Only the stuffy dark. Fear stabbed again. He pulled the slider to West, with no result. He yanked the slider this way and that, until it broke off in his hand. He tried not to scream. He turned on his back and pummelled at the fridge carcass. ‘Help! You guys! Get me out! Debbie! Mac! Help, get me out!’

  He lay, listened, waited. Nothing.

  He knew what they’d do, for he would do the same. They’d wait for minutes, a half-hour, an hour, maybe even more. Then they’d start to fret that something had gone wrong, so they’d split up and run home. They would blab in the end, and everybody would drive out to the dump, and Dad would scream at the others to tell him where the damn fridge was, and he’d pull off the garbage with his bare hands…

  The trouble was, that could be hours away. The air was already starting to feel thick, it strained his chest to breathe. He panicked again. He pulled at the wreck of the Stepper until it started to come apart in his hands. He screamed, and banged the hull of the fridge, and pissed his pants. He started to cry.

  Then, exhausted, he lay back down again, and felt over the wreck of his Stepper in the dark: the potato, the power lead, the bits of circuit board. He shouldn’t have pulled it about like that. He should have tried to fix it. Maybe if he remembered how he’d made it in the first place he could put it back together now. He remembered the circuit diagram, as it had first come up glowing on the screen of his phone. He had a good memory for stuff like that. He thought his way around the diagram, the coils, the tuning, and he—

  And he fell, a foot or so, and landed with a thump on soft ground. Suddenly there was sky above him, dazzling bright, and the air rushed into his lungs.

  Out! He got to his feet, trembling. Bits of the Stepper fell to the ground. He was dizzy with the richness of the air. As if he’d been dead, and was alive again. His pants were damp, to his shame.

  He looked around. He was in a thick forest clump, but he could see lights through the trees: Austin East 1 or West 1, whichever. He had to get home. How? The Stepper was even more of a mess than before. Still, he walked a couple of paces from where the fridge would be—

  And he was standing on a heap of smashed-up, stinking debris, beside a big mound that had to be the fridge with its covering of junk. He’d stepped back, to the Datum. He didn’t get it. This time he hadn’t even touched the Stepper. He didn’t even feel nauseous.

  He didn’t care. He was home! He ran off, away from the fridge. Maybe his parents wouldn’t have missed him yet. Elated, he started planning how he would get back his phone and brag to his friends.

  Unfortunately for Jared, he had been missed. His parents had already called the cops, one of whom was bright enough to notice the smashed Stepper, and ask the crucial question: how had Jared managed to step between the worlds without a Stepper? To Jared’s dismay he was kept off school for medical checks, and counselling by ‘experts’ in stepping and in the Long Earth, such as they were, a physicist and a psychologist and a neurologist.

  The story made it into a local news site before it was pulled. After that the incident took some covering up, but the US government, an old hand at such assignments, was able to deny the whole thing, discredit the witnesses including Jared himself, and bury the whole thing in classified files.

  Of course Lobsang was fully aware of the contents of those files.

  Joshua asked, ‘So why do people need Steppers at all?’

  ‘Perhaps in a more indirect way than is imagined, Joshua. The brief notes Linsay left insist that the placing of every component is crucial and needs pin-sharp care, so that the builder’s attention is totally wrapped up in the task. The need to align the two home-wound coils reminds me of the tuning of early metal detectors. As for the other components, they appear to be there for the look of the thing, and the look can be very important. The winding of the coils themselves is especially hypnotic. If I may be Tibetan for a moment, I believe that what we have here is a kind of technological mandala, designed to tilt the mind into a subtly different state, disguised as a bit of everyday western technology. It is the act of making a Stepper that enables one to step, you see, not the gadget itself. I myself went through the physical process of constructing a Stepper, via an ambulant unit. I might venture to suggest that it is unlocking a door within us that most of us don’t know exists. But as Jared Orgill’s story illustrates – or even your own – some people are finding they don’t need the Steppers at all, when they step accidentally with a broken box, or step in a panic without a box at all.’

  ‘We’re all natural steppers,’ Joshua said, wondering. ‘It’s just that most of us don’t know it. Or we need this aid to make those muscles in the head work.’

  ‘Something like that. But not all, you’re wrong about that. Enough steppers have been studied now to draw up some rough statistics. Perhaps a fifth of mankind are thought to be natural steppers, to whom the Long Earth is as accessible as a city park – without any aids at all, perhaps with a little coaching, or mental disciplines of the kind Jared inadvertently came across when visualizing his circuit diagram. On the other hand, perhaps another fifth can never leave the Datum at all, unless humiliatingly carried by somebody else.’

  Joshua pondered the implications. Suddenly humanity was fundamentally divided – even if it didn’t know it yet.

  25

  JOSHUA WATCHED WORLDS pass like the turning
pages of a picture book. And, heading steadily geographical west, they passed a boundary marker of their own: the Ural mountains, a north–south band of crumpled landscape that endured across most of the worlds.

  But the worlds were different now. Both Ice Belt and Mine Belt were far behind them. Now the Earths below were Corn Belt worlds, as the American scouts and trek captains liked to call them: rich, warm worlds, and at least in North America covered with grassland and prairie littered with familiar-looking trees and scrub and dense with herds of healthy-looking animals. Worlds ripe for farming. The Earths below now numbered over a hundred thousand on Lobsang’s earthometer. It took trekkers nine months to come out as far as this, on foot. The airship had made it in four days.

  Whenever they stopped, Lobsang scanned for short-wave radio transmissions, which ought to carry around the curve of any Earth with an ionosphere. They paused at a couple of Corn-Belt-worlds to listen, one being West 101,754, where they got a long and chatty news update from a colony in a stepwise New England: some kid, originally from Madison as it happened, blogging by reading from her journal. One of a whole trail of such hopeful townships, Joshua imagined, scattered thin across the continents of the Long Earth. And each, he supposed, would have its own story to tell…

  Hi, my loyal listeners, Helen Green here, your low-tech blogger clogging up the airwaves again. This bit’s from three years ago. It was July 5 – which, as you will be aware, is the day after July 4. Here goes…

  Is this what they call a hangover?

  Oh! My! God!

  Yesterday was Independence Day! Yay. We’ve been here eight months, and nobody’s dead yet, yay! That’s an excuse for a party if ever there was one. We’re Americans, and this is officially America, and it was July 4, and that was that.

  Though to look at us, this first summer, you’d imagine we were Indians. We’re all living in lean-tos and tepees and benders and big square communal houses, and some folk are still using their trek tents. There are chickens and puppy dogs that people carried here on their backs, running around everywhere. We ain’t farming. Next year will be the first harvest. We have a rota clearing the fields – burn, slash, haul away the rocks, all brute labour, nothing but human muscle available to do it. For the future we’ve brought seeds, corn and beans and flax and cotton, enough to survive years of failed crops if necessary. Oh, we’ve already planted pumpkins and squash and beans in the cleared ground near the houses, in our ‘gardens’.

  But for now we’re hunter-gatherers! And it’s a rich country to hunt and gather in. In the winter we got bass from the river. In the forest we took things that look like rabbits and things that look like deer and some of those funny little horses, though we were all a bit squeamish about that, it was like eating a pony. Now in the summer we’re spending more time at the coast, where we’re fishing and collecting clams.

  You do feel like you’re out in the wild. Back home on the Datum I was living on top of centuries of other people’s efforts to tame everything. Here the forest has never been cleared, the swamps never drained, the river never dammed or leveed. It’s strange. And dangerous.

  I think my Dad thinks some of the people are dangerous too. We’re all learning more about each other, but slowly, you can’t always tell from the outside. Some folk have come out here, not to go somewhere, but to get away from something. An army veteran. A woman who my Mom thinks was abused, as a child. Another woman who lost a child. Well, that’s fine by me.

  But anyhow, we’re here. And if you go tracking in the woods or up river you can see the little plumes of smoke rising up from the houses, and hear the voices of the workers in the fields. You can feel the difference if you step even just a world or two to either side. A world with humans in, versus a world without. Honestly, it’s true, you can feel it in your head.

  We had a big argument about what to call our new community. The adults had a meet about it, and it turned into the usual word fest. Melissa was determined it should be called some long uplifting name like ‘New Independence’ or ‘Deliverance’ or maybe just ‘New Hope’, but my Dad laughed at that one and made a joke about Star Wars.

  I’m not sure if it was just my suggestion or Ben Doak’s, but we found something that stuck. Or at least that nobody hated enough to veto loudly. When it was agreed, Dad and a few others made up a sign, on the trail up from the coast.

  WELCOME TO REBOOT

  FOUNDED 2026, A.D.

  POP. 117

  ‘Now all we need is a zip code,’ said my Dad.

  And now here’s a bit from a year later than that, written by my Dad! Well, he has helped me out with this journal, including with the spelling, huh. Thanks, Dad!…

  My name is Jack Green. I guess if you’re reading this you’ll know I’m Helen’s father. I have special permission from Helen to add a few notes to this journal, which has become a rather precious thing itself. Just now Helen herself is otherwise engaged, but this is her birthday, and I wanted to be sure the day was marked properly.

  So, where do I begin?

  We have our houses built now, mostly. And fields we’re slowly clearing. Usually I have my head down, working. We all do. But every so often I take a walk around the town, and I see how we’re nibbling into the green.

  The sawmill is working. That was the first big communal project. I can hear it now, as I write – we try to keep it going day and night, with that distinctive two-stroke sound as it slowly processes forest into town. We have a pottery kiln, and a lime kiln, and a soap kettle, and of course our forge thanks to our Brit boy wonder Franklin. The geological survey maps were spot on. In some ways it’s incredible how fast we’ve been able to progress.

  But we were able to rely on help from outside. A family of Amish came our way, following a lead from the Reverend Herrin, our itinerant preacher. Odd folk they are, but friendly enough, and very competent at what they do. Such as when they helped us set up our pottery kiln, which is a boxy oven with a chimney stack. Our pots are rough as hell, but you can’t imagine the pride you get in setting a vase you made on a shelf you built, full of flowers you grew in the garden you dug out from the raw earth.

  But that’s nothing compared to the first iron tools from Franklin’s forge. We couldn’t function without our iron and steel tools, of course. But the iron has had an odd impact on our domestic economy. When we arrived the hundred of us actually spread out over a thin sheaf of nearby worlds, rather than in just one. Why not? There was room. But of course you can’t carry iron across the worlds, even stuff manufactured locally. So people are slowly moving back into 754, the world with the forge in it, rather than start up the whole process over again somewhere else (although Franklin offered to do just that for multiples of his fee).

  Strikes me that everything about the way humanity is opening up the Long Earth is shaped by one simple fact: that you can’t step metallic iron across. As an example, we had the idea of opening up parallel fields on next-door Earths so no single crop could be lost to a blight or poor weather. Not worth it; better to use the iron tools we have already made here to extend our holdings on 754.

  The way we pay visitors like the Amish for their services is interesting, by the way. Well, I find it so. Money! What has worth, out here in the Long Earth? What has value when every man can own his own goldmine? Interesting theoretical question when you think about it, isn’t it?

  Among ourselves we do use Datum currencies. Since the Long Earth recession cut in, the yen and the US dollar have held up, especially since they are unforgeable. The British pound collapsed earlier, when half the population fled from that crowded little island – including Franklin, our invaluable smith. Nevertheless, Britain, not for the first time, showed the way out of adversity. In their bad economic years the Brits evolved the ‘favour’, a currency of flexible worth. In short, it was a unit notional coin whose value was agreed by the buyer and seller at the point of transaction – which made it rather difficult to tax, and so it worked very badly back on the Datum. But it’s the id
eal currency in the new worlds, which is not surprising since the system was once used in the embryo United States of America, when there was no coin to be had and no effective government to validate its use even if there were.

  In places like Reboot, you see, your life is full of small trades. You boil animal fats and make tallow, and since you made too much, maybe your neighbour could use some, and indeed she could, and offers a pound of iron ore in return. That isn’t very useful to you, but it certainly is to Franklin the smith, and you hand it over to him in exchange for favour, to be repaid at some future time. So you are now owed a favour, which might be something solid, or even an offer to bring back store-bought goods next time he has to go to Hundred K or the Datum. Or whatever.

  It’s no system to run a civilization on, but a pretty good one for a colony of a hundred people every single one of whom you know personally, and they know you. No point in cheating; that will only work for a little while. After all you don’t want to be the person who has the doors shut on you when you most desperately need help.

  And so every day or so you total up your favours, positive and negative, and if you are ahead of the game then you might take a day off and go fishing. The nurses and midwives do particularly well. How many favours is a successful birth worth? What price an injured hand, treated so conscientiously that you can work again?

  Common sense works well in a small community like this, where everybody ultimately depends on the goodwill and good humour of everybody else. It even applies to the way we treat the hobos, as we call them, who occasionally come trickling through our landscape. Drifters, working their way from world to world across the Long Earth, without any intention of settling down like us so far as I can see, just walking through the green and helping themselves to the low-hanging fruit. Well, why not? In the Long Earth there’s plenty of room for people to live like that. They come to us drawn by the smoke of the fires; we make them welcome, we’ll feed them and have our doctors treat them if they need it.