Lobsang had a point. Whoever she was – how had she got here, more than a million steps out? Was she a natural stepper, someone who didn’t get the nausea, like Joshua? Fine. But there were only so many times you could step in a day. He could manage a thousand steps a day unaided. Surely everybody needed to sleep and eat? You could step-hunt an unwary deer once you had the hang of it, but field dressing and cookery couldn’t be hurried, and that slowed you down… It would take years to step out this far.
She was watching him suspiciously. ‘What are you thinking? Who were you talking to?’
‘Umm, the captain of my ship.’ Not exactly a lie, and since the Sisters had always been rather down on lying, Joshua was relieved.
‘Really? You mean that ridiculous floating gasbag, I suppose. And how big is the crew of that monster? Incidentally, Robur the Conqueror, I hope you have no designs on this world. I rather like these little guys.’
Joshua looked down. The miniature dinosaurs had formed a circle around the pair of them and were carefully balancing upright, like meerkats, with curiosity just outweighing caution.
‘The captain would like you to come aboard,’ Joshua managed.
She smiled. ‘Aboard that thing? Not a chance in hell, mister, no offence meant… However,’ she said more hesitantly, ‘do you have any soap? I make my own lye soap, of course, but I wouldn’t say no to something a little more easy on the skin.’
‘I’m sure—’
‘Maybe with rose scent.’
‘Is that all?’
‘And some chocolate.’
‘Of course.’
‘In exchange I offer … information. OK?’
The voice in Joshua’s ear prompted, ‘Ask her what information she can give us that we cannot find out for ourselves.’
When asked, Sally snorted. ‘I don’t know. What can you find out for yourselves? By the look of all those aerials and dishes up there you could probably hack God’s email.’
Joshua said, ‘Look, I’m going back up, and will grab some soap and chocolate, and will come right back down, OK? Just don’t go away.’
To his embarrassment Sally burst out laughing. ‘My-oh-my, a real gentleman. I bet you were a Boy Scout.’
As he rose up to the Mark Twain Lobsang whispered in his ear, ‘If there is a more efficient way of stepping, it is vital that we find out what it is!’
‘I know, Lobsang, I know! I’m working on it.’ But right now a stepping mystery was the last thing on Joshua’s mind.
They ate lunch on the beach: fresh-caught oysters on an open fire.
The encounter fazed Joshua more than somewhat. He wasn’t used to the company of women, not women without wimples anyhow. Back in the Home all the girls were more or less like his sisters, and the nuns were all possessed of laser eyesight and over-the-horizon hearing: when it came to the opposite sex you were under constant surveillance. And if you spent a lot of time out on the new Earths, seldom seeing another person at all, anyone that you did meet was a nuisance, taking up your space.
And, right now, there was the added distraction of a circle of miniature dinosaurs, craning their necks this way and that so as not to miss the action. It was like being watched by a bunch of curious kids. He felt as if he should be offering them a few bucks to take themselves to the movies.
But he needed to talk to this enigmatic Sally. It was a tension within him, a huge unfulfilled need. And, looking at her, he thought she felt the same.
‘Don’t worry about the dinos,’ she said. ‘They’re no threat, though they are pretty smart. And they’re very bright when it comes to keeping clear of the larger dinos and the crocs. I make a point of coming back to see how they’re doing every so often.’
‘How? How did you get here, Sally?’
Sally poked the embers of her fire, and the little creatures jumped back, startled. ‘Well, that’s none of your business. That was the code of the Old West, and it’s sure as shit the same here. These oysters roast up wonderfully, don’t they?’
They did. Joshua had just eaten his fourth. ‘I taste something like bacon, and I’ve seen plenty of pig-like animals, they look like a universal. But this tastes as if it’s got Worcester sauce in it. Am I right?’
‘More or less. I travel prepared.’ Sally looked at him, with the juice of oysters Kilpatrick leaking from her lips. ‘A deal, right? I will be frank with you, and you will be frank with me. Well, within limits. Let me tell you what I already think I know about you. First, that bloody great thing floating up there contains only one person, I’m guessing. Because when you found me, any crew would have been swarming all over me and my little world. And, plus you, that means a crew of two people. Big ship for two people, no? Second, it looks mighty expensive, and since the universities don’t have that kind of money and governments don’t have the imagination, that means some corporation or other. I guess it was Douglas Black?’ She smiled. ‘Don’t blame yourself, you didn’t give anything away. Black is smart, and this is just his style.’
There was silence from Joshua’s earpiece.
She read Joshua’s slight hesitation. ‘No word from headquarters? Oh come on! Sooner or later anyone who has a talent that interests Douglas Black ends up working for him. My own father did. Although in fact the money isn’t really the lure. Because if you’re really good, your friend Douglas will give you a sack of toys to play with, like that airship up there. Isn’t that right?’
‘I’m not an employee of Black.’
‘Just contracting, is that the fig leaf?’ she said dismissively. ‘You know, in their headquarters in New Jersey every employee of the Corporation wears a little earpiece just like yours, so that Douglas himself can talk to them individually whenever he likes. Even his silence is threatening, they say. But one day my father said, “I am not going to wear this thing any more.” And right now, Joshua, you will do me the courtesy of taking yours off. I don’t mind talking to you. I heard about you, how you saved all those kids on Step Day, you’re obviously a decent human being. But take off that modern-day slave bracelet.’
Joshua did so, feeling guilty.
Sally gave a little nod of satisfaction. ‘Now we can talk.’
‘There’s nothing sinister about us,’ Joshua said tentatively – although he wasn’t entirely sure how true that was. ‘We are out here to explore. To look and learn, to map the Long Earth. Well, that’s the expedition’s intention.’ Or was, he thought, before it became focused on the issue of the humanoid migrations, the disturbance they perceived in the Long Earth.
‘Not your intention. You aren’t an explorer, Joshua Valienté, whatever else you are. Why are you here?’
He shrugged. ‘I’m a failsafe, if you want the truth. Hired muscle.’
She grinned at that. ‘Ha!’
He said, ‘You say your father worked for Black.’
‘Yes.’
‘What did he do?’
‘He invented the Stepper. Though that was on his own time.’
‘Your father was Willis Linsay?’ Joshua just stared, thinking of Step Day, and how his own life had been changed by what Linsay had done.
She smiled. ‘All right. You want the full story? I’m from a family of steppers. Natural steppers… Oh, close your mouth, Joshua. My grandfather could step, my mother could step and I can step. My father couldn’t step, however, and that’s why he needed to invent something like the Stepper box. So he did. I first stepped when I was four. And I soon found out that Dad could step if he was holding my hand. They took a photograph of us. I never had any problem with it, the magic-door stuff, because of Mom. Mom was a reader, and she read to me Tolkien and Larry Niven and E. Nesbit and just about everything else. I was home-schooled, needless to say. And I grew up with my own Narnia! To tell the truth, since Step Day I’ve become pissed at having to share my secret place with the rest of the world. But back then Mom explained to me that I shouldn’t ever tell anyone what I could do.’
Joshua listened, dumbfounded. He could bar
ely imagine how it must have been to be part of a family of steppers, a family all like himself.
‘It was pretty good in those days. I often hung out with Dad in his shed, because the shed was in another world – though, of course, I had to lead him in and out of that other Wyoming.
‘But Dad was hardly ever there, because he was always jetting away, wherever the Black people wanted him, and that could be anywhere from MIT to some research lab in Scandinavia or South Africa. Sometimes, late at night, a helicopter might turn up, and he’d get in, and then maybe an hour later he’d be back home and the chopper was flying away. When I asked him what he’d been doing, it was always, “Just some stuff, that’s all.” But that was OK by me because my Dad knew best. He knew everything.
‘I didn’t know anything about his work projects. But I wasn’t surprised when he succeeded in inventing the Stepper. He was an unusual mix of brilliant theoretician and hands-on engineer; I believe he’s come closer than anybody else to figuring out the true nature of the Long Earth… But it did him no good when Mom died. That was one problem he couldn’t untangle with technology. Things got weird after that.’ Sally hesitated. ‘I mean more weird than before.
‘He kept working. But I got the impression that he stopped caring about what he was working on, and what it was for. He’d always been ethical, you know? A hippie from a long line of hippies. Now he didn’t care.
‘But he was living a double life. He kept stuff like the Stepper hidden away. Dad did like hiding things. He said he learned it in his hippie days when he hid his marijuana plantation in the cellar. He showed me once. It had a secret door that would only open if one loose nail was pushed just so far and one of the paint pots was turned ninety degrees, and then a panel would slide, and there was a large space that you couldn’t believe was there, and you could still smell where the plants had been…
‘So that’s my story. I always stepped, I grew up with it; Step Day was just a bump in the road to my family. Whereas you had to discover stepping for yourself, didn’t you, Joshua? I heard you were brought up by nuns. It’s part of your legend.’
‘I don’t want a legend.’
‘Nuns, eh? Did they beat you up, or try anything … funny?’
Joshua narrowed his eyes. ‘There was none of that stuff. Well, apart from Sister Mary Joseph, and Sister Agnes had her out of there in an hour, boy, had she got the wrong number. But, yeah, it was a totally weird place, looking back. But the right kind of weird. Good weird. The nuns had a lot of freedom. We read Carl Sagan before the Old Testament.’
‘Freedom. Well, I can sympathize with that. That’s why my father walked out on Douglas Black. Douglas found out about the Stepper box one day, he somehow forced it out of my Dad. With Mom gone and everything I think Dad was beginning to hate people anyhow. But what Black did was the final straw. One day Dad just disappeared. He took a post at Princeton under phony credentials. But that was kind of high profile, so when he got a sniff of a pursuit by Black he went out to Madison, took a college post under another assumed name. He took the Stepper technology he was developing with him. I followed and went to college out there. Didn’t see much of him. I guess I kept a watching eye on him, however. His real name isn’t Willis Linsay, by the way.’
‘I didn’t think it was.’
‘And that was when he decided, because he suspected the Black Corporation was on his tail again, that he would give stepping to the whole world, so no one could own it or put chains around it, or slap a tax on it. He really didn’t like big industry, and he really didn’t like governments. I think he hoped the world would be a much better place if everybody was able to step out of their grasp. As far as I know he is still alive out here somewhere.’
‘And is that why you’re out here? Looking for him?’
‘One reason.’
There was a curious change in the air. The little dinosaurs stood, stretching, their gaze combing the sky. Joshua looked at Sally. She didn’t react; she was carefully retrieving the last wayward oyster in the pan with a stick.
He asked, ‘Do you think he was right to do what he did? With the Stepper?’
‘Well, maybe. At least he gave people a new option. Although he said people were going to have to learn to think, out there in the Long Earth. He said once, “I am giving mankind the key to endless worlds. An end to scarcity and, may we hope, war. And perhaps a new meaning to life. I leave the exploration of all these worlds to your generation, my dear, though personally I think you will fuck it up royally.” Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘Your father said that to you?’
Sally shrugged. ‘I told you. He was a hippie born of generations of hippies. He was always saying things like that.’
At that moment the loudspeaker voice of Lobsang boomed out over the beach, startling the small dinosaurs again. ‘Joshua! Back to the ship right now! Emergency!’
There was a strange new smell in the air, like burning plastic. Joshua looked at the northern horizon; there was a grey cloud, and it was getting bigger.
‘I call them suckers,’ said Sally calmly. ‘Rather like dragonflies. They pump a venom into anything organic, which breaks down cells remarkably fast, and you become a bag of soup that they suck up, as if through a straw. For some reason they don’t bother the dinosaurs. Your electronic friend is right about the emergency, Joshua. Now run along, there’s a good boy.’
And she disappeared.
34
AS SHE STEPPED AWAY, Joshua took a step back, to the East, away from the direction of travel of the airship. That was the instinctive way when you were in danger, to step back into the world you’d just arrived from, because the world downstream might be even worse. Now he was in a timber world, fairly standard stuff, nothing but endless trees as far as he could see – which was only a hundred yards or so, because of the aforesaid trees. No girl, no dinosaurs, no airship.
He could see a little more light than average to his right, so he got up and strolled that way. He emerged into a vast area of burned stumps and ash fields: not a recent fire, already new saplings were poking shoots through the stinking black mess, with green leaves apparent here and there. Just a forest fire, a dieback. It was all part of the great cycle of nature which, when you’ve seen it one point three million times, squarely pisses you off.
The airship was above him suddenly; its shadow sprawled across the clearing, an abrupt eclipse. Joshua clipped his earpiece back on.
Lobsang’s voice was an irritating whine. ‘We have lost her! Could you not have beguiled her into the ship? Clearly she has discovered a new way to step! And what’s more—’
Joshua plucked out his earpiece again. He sat down on a stump, a crumbling mass of colourful fungus. He felt stunned by the encounter with Sally, the blizzard of words that had evidently been pent up inside her. And she was travelling alone, as he used to. It was a slightly electrifying thought. On his sabbaticals, he had survived in any number of worlds like this.
Suddenly it occurred to him that he didn’t want or need a giant damn airship hovering over his head any more.
Joshua put the earpiece back on, and considered what to say. What was the phrase that Sister Agnes always used when some high-flying ecclesiastical or other tried to throw his weight around at the Home? ‘Can you hear me, Lobsang? You ain’t the boss of me, sir, you surely ain’t. The only thing you could do right now is kill me, and you still wouldn’t be the boss of me.’
There was no reply.
He got up and strolled downhill, in so far as there was a hill at all. But it was a definite slope, and that would mean a river, and that would mean open ground, cover and, almost certainly, game of some sort. All he’d need to survive here.
Lobsang replied at last. ‘You are right, Joshua. I am not the boss of you and have no desire to be. On the other hand I can’t believe you are serious in the hints you are giving that you might jump ship. We are travelling with a purpose, remember.’
‘Whatever your purpose I’m n
ot about to kidnap anybody, Lobsang.’ He stopped. ‘OK, I’ll come aboard. But under certain conditions.’
The airship was right overhead now.
‘The foremost of these is that I come and go to the ground any time I wish, OK?’
This time Lobsang replied by loudspeaker, a booming celestial voice. ‘Are you trying to negotiate with me, Joshua?’
Joshua scratched his nose. ‘Actually I’m trying to demand, I think. And as for Sally, I have a feeling we shall see her very shortly, regardless of you and your plans. You’ll never be able to find a solitary human being in all these forest worlds, but she will find it very easy to see a damn great airship in the sky. She will find us.’
‘But she travels alone, as you do. She’s travelled much further in fact. Perhaps she doesn’t need people, and will not be motivated to find us at all.’
Joshua walked across the damp ashes towards the lift-ring that was descending to the ground. ‘She doesn’t need people. But I believe she wants people.’
‘How can you possibly know that?’
‘Because of the way she talked to me. All those words pouring out, because they needed to be said. Because your precious mountain men were probably just the same at their rendezvous. Because I’m the same. Because this human called Joshua keeps going back home, just every now and then, to visit, to be with folk. To be fucking human, not to put too fine a point on it, and Daniel Boone can kiss my ass.’
‘I’ve said it before, Joshua. Travel has most definitely broadened your mind, if not your vocabulary.’
‘And besides, there’s something else, Lobsang. Something you’re missing. Do you imagine it’s chance that she happened to show up under our keel, with her campfire blazing?’
‘Well—’
‘She knew we were coming, Lobsang. I’m certain of it. She wants something from us. The question is what?’
‘Your point is well made. I’ll consider it. Incidentally I have captured and dissected several of those flying creatures. They appear to be remarkably like wasps, although they act more like bees. A new order. Which is why one should be wary of arbitrarily applying labels like “dinosaurs”.’
The Long Earth Page 21