Joshua closed his eyes. ‘You know, son, you can criticize me for my sabbaticals, for running away from my family – as your mother came to see it. I was born in the Long Earth, you know. In an empty world. Except it wasn’t empty, not for me. I grew up hearing it, when I started to step for myself. The Silence, I called it. The song of the Long Earth itself – the song behind all the songs, the song behind the call of the birds and the rush of the wind. And in a way, when I was out on sabbatical, that was what I was looking for the whole time.’
‘You know, Dad, I don’t think I ever heard you say so many words all together before.’ Tentatively Rod rested his hand on Joshua’s shoulder. ‘I do try to understand, you know. We all did. Including Mom.’
Joshua smiled. ‘I guess that’s all any of us can hope for.’
‘But we can’t stay here.’ Rod looked up at Sancho. ‘We have to go home.’
Sancho growled, ‘Take you.’
‘Thank you—’
‘Thomas Tallis,’ Joshua said suddenly.
‘What movie was he in?’
Joshua grinned at his son. ‘Old English composer – sixteenth century, I think. Georgina played me some of his stuff. I guess it stuck. That’s what I keep thinking I’m hearing, in the trolls’ song. Spem in alium, maybe. And that’s why I’ve been thinking of that line: “I have never put my hope in any other but in You, O God . . .”’
‘Why should the trolls be singing some old English tune?’
‘Motet, I think it was called. I guess our music has been leaking out since long before Step Day. I wonder if Thomas Tallis was a natural stepper . . .’
‘Home,’ the troll said firmly.
47
ON THE DAY they were to leave the cavern of the Librarians, Joshua caught Rod carving something into the face of one of the big root stems that supported the earth walls. Rod looked faintly guilty when he was spotted, but then he shrugged and stepped back.
Joshua leaned down to see. ‘Difficult to read in this light. And the craftsmanship’s kind of dodgy.’
‘Evidently I don’t have the Valienté omnicompetence genes,’ Rod said sourly.
‘A, R, N—’ Suddenly he saw it.
ARNE SAKNUSSEMM
‘I hope I got the spelling right,’ Rod said.
‘I think it varies with the translation.’
‘Couldn’t resist it, Dad. Read that book when it was on your shelf at home in Hell-Knows-Where.’
‘I thought you didn’t like all that old skiffy stuff of mine?’
‘I dipped into it. There are no rules, you know.’
Sancho ambled over to them now, his survival blanket as ever around his shoulders. He peered at Rod’s carving. He showed no offence at this vandalizing of the sacred tree, but no particular interest either. Then he straightened and held up the troll-call. ‘Ready?’
Joshua said, ‘To get out of here?’ He’d always be grateful for this place of safety, but he’d come to find the subdued and unchanging light depressing, and difficult for sleep. He was looking forward to seeing the sky again – any sky. ‘Ready if you are, old friend.’
Sancho held out his huge hands. Joshua and Rod, standing there with nothing more than the grimy clothes they’d been brought here in and the white med pack on Joshua’s back, tentatively took hold.
Joshua eyed Rod. ‘I guess you don’t remember how it was when we came here. Kind of a helter-skelter ride.’
‘Dad, I never saw a helter-skelter.’
‘A skydive off a space elevator, then. We didn’t so much step as plummet. And without your drugs—’
Sancho said sternly, ‘One step two step home.’
Rod smiled. ‘Dad, let’s do it.’
They took hold of Sancho’s hands.
48
WHEN THEY GOT back to the bluff with Joshua’s meagre camp, and Rod’s plane looking safely intact a short walk away, the place seemed deserted. Sancho’s troll band were evidently long gone. But Sancho seemed content to stick around for a while.
Joshua insisted on checking out Rod with the medical gear from the plane that he hadn’t been able to cram into the white backpack. As they’d both suspected, Rod was fine save for some bruising, a banged skull, and his slow recovery from deep dehydration. Having suffered this attention, Rod was keen to apply a little TLC in turn to his long-neglected aircraft.
When he’d gone, Joshua clambered stiffly up on to the bluff, and with a sigh of relief settled down alongside Sancho.
‘Here we are again, old buddy.’
Sancho sat there, his silver blanket over his shoulders. ‘Hoo.’
‘Like none of it ever happened.’
‘Ha!’
‘Do trolls get philosophical? I guess you must, given all you’ve shown me. You ever think about what it’s all for, Sancho?’
‘Hoo?’
‘What’s the point of life? What would a troll say?’
Sancho scratched a hairy chin. Then he raised the troll-call. ‘Troll cub. Grow, mom-and-pop. Cubs, mom-and-pops, troll band. The song, sing the song.’
‘Yes, yes—’
‘Hunt, eat, sleep, screw—’
‘Thanks for that.’
‘Sing, more cubs. Troll band, long call – get food. Smarter band gets more food. Makes more troll cubs.’
‘A troll band is a machine for food-gathering. The better the band works the more food you collect. Is that what you’re saying? That’s what it’s for? I guess you’d be hard put to give a better definition of a human society. Yeah, but what about the Long Earth, Sancho? You trolls were out here for millions of years before we stumbled out on Step Day. In fact you evolved out here – the Long Earth shaped you. But why?’ He gestured. ‘What’s the point of it all? These uncounted empty worlds . . .’
Sancho grinned and tapped his forehead. ‘Room to run away, from river-singer-beast. Room for long call. Room for think . . . And more cubs.’
Joshua thought that over, and smiled back. ‘I guess . . .’
Rod was walking back from the plane. ‘Hey, Dad? I’m done. We can leave when you’re ready.’
‘Shit,’ Joshua said. Belatedly, he got to his feet. ‘Well, let me say goodbye to my buddy.’
Rod frowned, and glanced around. ‘Sancho? Where is he?’
And when Joshua looked around, he saw, with a pang of regret, Sancho was gone. He’d even taken the silver survival blanket.
‘See you around, you old fart.’
‘Dad?’
‘Never mind. Listen, could you give me a hand packing up my gear? . . .’
49
BY THE TIME they got back to Hell-Knows-Where, Joshua had been away from the worlds of humanity for more than a full year. And he found a heap of messages – mostly from Nelson, who, astonishingly, wanted Joshua to come help him find a lost grandson.
He spent some time with Bill Chambers and other friends. He spent more time in hospital getting his leg, and the rest of him, checked over. Well, it worked; he walked in on crutches and out on a walking stick.
It was June of 2071 by the time Joshua Valienté made it back to Madison, Wisconsin, on Datum Earth: his home town.
But here he was, keeping a promise to his wife.
He stepped back into a small community called Pine Bluff, outside the West Beltline Highway, around ten miles due west of downtown on Mineral Point Road. Leaning on his stick, he had his battered pack on his back, his broad-brimmed hat on his head.
He found himself standing on a cracked asphalt strip, lined by the shells of derelict ash-stained buildings, a handful of newer structures sprouting in cleared plots. Constructed of aluminium and ceramic and treated timber – materials imported from the Low Earths – the new builds looked like colourful mushrooms. Neat-looking electric vehicles were parked here and there.
As usual he felt a kind of cultural, even physical shock at returning to the original Earth, the home of mankind. The sheer extent to which the landscape had been shaped, carved up and built over was startling,
even compared to the increasingly settled Low Earths, even here in this outer suburb of what had always been a small city. This was the legacy of thousands of years of humans working the planet, ripping up the land and building, building, and then demolishing or bombing and building again. It wasn’t until you had walked into versions of the world where only a handful of natural-stepper humans had set foot before Step Day that you truly realized how much difference all that activity had made. And that was even before Yellowstone had turned much of this particular Earth, and in particular North America, into an ash-coated charnel house.
And yet, thirty years after Yellowstone, the Datum was recovering. Standing here in the middle of the road, you had to admit it. This afternoon the sky was a normal-looking midsummer blue, with a litter of cloud. The aerosols and gases pumped into the air from the immense volcanic caldera had more or less washed out now. And the ash had washed away too, although out of town you could still see big reefs of it heaped up by the highways, and if you dug down into the farmers’ fields you would usually find a fine layer of the stuff, only a little way under the surface. But even now, even after so many years, he still thought he could smell soot and gasoline fumes in the air, the ghosts of billions of rusted cars. And it was cold, much colder. Thanks to the volcano winter, Wisconsin, they said, was now more like Manitoba . . .
Flowers were growing through cracks in the asphalt at his feet, despite the cold.
‘Are you OK, mister?’
‘Huh?’
A young woman stood before him, wearing a practical-looking coverall. She had pale red hair; she might have been thirty. ‘I own the motel over there. Well, with my partner, Joe. I was just putting out the evening sign, and there you were in the middle of the road.’
He glanced over at the motel. A chalkboard outside the door advertised drinks, food and a selection of delicacies based on Wisconsin cheeses. ‘Some things don’t change,’ he said.
‘You got that right. You just stepped in?’
‘Is it that obvious?’
‘You looked a little lost. Strange coming back, huh? Lots of ghosts.’
‘I guess.’
‘You aren’t Mr Valiant, are you?’ ‘Valienté. Joshua Valienté.’
‘Valienté. Sorry. Kind of an unusual name.’
And a name she’d never heard before, it seemed. So much for fame. ‘I guess it is.’
‘We’re expecting you. You’re the only guest we have arriving this evening. Umm, would you like to come in to the warm? We’ll get you checked in, and you can make yourself comfortable. None of the rooms are air-conditioned, you understand. You have a private room, just as you booked, or what we call private anyhow. There’s TV and web connections, on a good day. Oh, and the power goes off at ten p.m. Still, we’re better off than we were. We got a Repatriation grant for redevelopment. Have you heard of that? Money to get people to come back to the Datum and rebuild, now that the weather’s easing at last, or so they say. I like President Damasio, I think. Didn’t vote for her, of course . . . Oh, here I am yapping on while you’re standing there. Can I take your pack?’
‘No. Thank you.’ He began to hobble beside her towards the hotel.
‘That leg looks painful. Arthritis?’
‘A bad break.’
‘You sure I can’t help?’
‘No, thank you.’
They paused in the shade of an awning, by the chalk sign.
‘I had a note you want to visit a cemetery.’
‘Yes. Forest Hill. My wife’s there.’
‘That’s on this side of downtown. It’s an easy drive in. We have carts you can hire . . . Oh, do you have a current driver’s licence?’
He goggled. ‘You need a licence?’
‘I’d be happy to drive you.’
‘I don’t want to trouble you—’
‘I need to go pick up some stores tomorrow anyhow.’ She smiled. ‘I mean, it’s not like there’s a bus service. Not out this far.’
Joshua suppressed a sigh. The great Valienté, the Long Earth wanderer, leaning on a stick, forgotten even in Datum Madison, and reduced to getting a ride from some fresh-faced kid. ‘Well, that’s kind of you.’
‘In the morning, then.’
‘Thank you, Ms – umm—’
‘Green. Phyllida Green.’ She stuck out her hand.
He shook her hand, startled. Helen’s family had been Greens. It was a common enough name. But Madison was a small city, and the hair colour looked about right. Was it possible? . . . Well, if this was some distant cousin of his wife, it felt OK to let her take care of him, just a little bit. Even if she had never heard of him.
‘Are you sure you’re feeling all right?’
‘I’m fine, Ms Green. Just more old memories.’
‘This way, then. Watch the step now.’
50
THE ROOM WAS a hutch, but the walls seemed to be well enough insulated, and Joshua wasn’t cold. Phyllida Green made him a meal, omelette and French fries and beans, and she had a refrigerator stocked with some kind of local homebrew beer in recycled Coke bottles.
The web connection was a bust, but the TV worked well enough; Joshua guessed it was feeding off a signal from some satellite. He channel-surfed, the way he always did when he came back to the Datum, if only because it was still pretty much the only place you could do that. ‘That’s one thing you don’t get in the High Meggers,’ he said to himself. ‘A sprained thumb from a TV remote.’
Most of the output, though, was ageing comedy or drama, some of it even dating from before Step Day. There were a few news channels, just the day’s headlines delivered by talking heads, with little in the way of field reports. The most interesting stuff was documentaries, even if most of it was pretty crudely made, just a small team and a camera or two burrowing away in the corners of the Long Earth. Here was a piece on hucksters in Miami West 4, under the eggshell-blue thread of a space elevator, selling Stan Berg T-shirts, emblazoned with the eleven words of his Sermon Under the Beanstalk. ‘The only Bible you’ll ever need,’ said one gum-chewing salesman.
Here was some kind of self-styled adventurer in a broad-brimmed hat that looked like it had come straight out of some fancy city store, clutching a copy of the Stepper’s Guide, and bragging about the places he could take you, if you only signed up to his twain-based Long Earth tour business. ‘In a world on the edge of the Corn Belt, I’ve explored the bed of a bone-dry Mediterranean. On a world far beyond the Gap, I’ve climbed the flank of the greatest volcano anybody ever found, a thousand times more powerful even than Yellowstone. Thirty-five million steps from the Datum, I’ve walked the only continent in an entire world, drained by a single river that makes the Mississippi look like a rivulet—’
‘Been there, done that. Actually I don’t have the T-shirt. Next.’ A documentary on Valhalla:
‘With its grid-layout of streets, its industrial zones and parks, the schools and hospitals and shops, and its showpiece central square that has been named Independence Place ever since a bold declaration of autonomy was made here back in 2040, Valhalla has its own history. But as cities go, it is unique. Valhalla is the greatest city of mankind beyond the Datum and the Low Earths, indeed the only substantial city in the High Meggers. And what makes Valhalla unlike any other city in the Long Earth is that nobody farms anywhere near Valhalla. The citizens of this place inhabit a thick band of worlds to either stepwise side, worlds which have been kept largely undeveloped, and where people gather fruit from the trees and hunt the big animals. So a population of hunter-gatherers is able to sustain a modern city. This is a way of living that was not possible before stepping. The Valhallans got the best of both worlds!
‘But now there is a kind of wistfulness about the place. Some buildings, even whole districts, are dark, boarded up. Even the bars seem half-empty. As if the people are trickling away.
‘On Datum Earth, before Step Day, cities used to be magnets of population. People would drift in from the countryside in search of a
n easier life. But out in the Long Earth it’s the opposite. If you can avoid the dirty water and the mosquitoes, living off the land is easy, cheap . . . In the Long Earth people drift away from cities, not into them. Even from the steppers’ dream that was Valhalla—’
Depressed – remembering his father-in-law Jack, firebrand of Valhalla’s Gentle Revolution – Joshua flipped channels.
A documentary about the Long Mars, a quarter of a century on from the pioneering expedition by Sally Linsay and her father:
‘In Australia we had forty thousand years of civilization before the savages landed. It’s not our fault that Captain Cook couldn’t see what was in front of his nose. My daughter, you know, her art is to make shields of eucalyptus bark, and she signs them with handprints on the back – you blow the pigment through a straw and leave a shadow. And in European Ice Age caves you can find stuff that they signed just the same way . . .’
In the background, behind the face of the polite middle-aged woman, some kind of kangaroo went past, across a crimson plain. It looked tall – taller than the spacesuited humans around it – and, maybe in some adaptation to the lower gravity, it seemed to walk, one step after another, rather than hop.
‘Of course I wouldn’t say we were more advanced than you. Not much. But we were settled, we were sophisticated, we were embedded in our landscape, our ecology. We had mapped the continent, not with pictures but with words and songs. And not only that, we stepped. Right from the gitgo. There are rock paintings in the Low Earths that prove it. Stepping for thousands of years, because the outback is sure a useful place to have such a skill – tens of thousands of years, like it was normal, it was what we did. And then when the rest of you “discovered” the Long Earth, the way you “discovered” Australia, we were there already. No wonder more of us as a percentage went walkabout in the Long Earth after Step Day than any other group on the planet . . .’
And behind the roo, standing up from the smooth flatness of the seabed, were a series of dark bands, slender, vertical, black against the purplish sky of this world. Monoliths. Five of them. The image was sharp, the inscriptions on their surfaces clear, if utterly strange.
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