The Long Earth (26 page)

He spent a couple of nights outside the ship, just for old times’ sake. It was almost like his sabbaticals, especially if he stepped a world or two away from Lobsang, but his lord and master didn’t approve of that. Still, when he got the chance he would sit by his fire, listening for the Silence. On a good night he thought he could feel the other Earths, vast empty spaces all around him, just beyond the reach of his tiny circle of firelight. Untold possibilities. And then he would climb back up to the airship, leaving behind a whole world with its own unique mysteries barely examined.

On they would travel, to another, and another yet.

And then, after fifty days, more than one and a third million worlds from home, the land and air seemed to shimmer, and the forest melted as the worlds cleared away, to reveal a sea that stretched to the horizon, foam-flecked and glimmering, at the heart of North America.

Still stepping, Lobsang turned the airship south, looking for dry land.

On world after world the sea persisted, teeming with life, the green of algal blooms, pale white shapes that might have been coral reefs, and creatures that jumped and swam that might have been dolphins. Cautious dips to the water level proved that the sea was saline. That didn’t necessarily mean this American Sea was open to the wider world ocean; inland seas could become saline through evaporation. The water samples Lobsang retrieved were full of exotic seaweed strands and crustaceans – exotic to a specialist anyhow. Lobsang stored specimens and images.

At last, heading south, they hit a coastline. Lobsang cut the stepping, and they inspected one particular world of this latest band, selected at random. They came to fog banks first, then huge
bird-like
forms swooping low over the sea, and then the land itself, where dense forest spilled almost all the way down to the shore. Lobsang thought that the higher land they were approaching might be some relative of the Ozark Plateau.

From here they sailed east until they came to a tremendous valley, perhaps carved by some distant cousin of the Mississippi or the Ohio. They followed this north to an estuary where the river spilled into the inland sea. The fresh water pushing into the saline ocean was visible from a muddy discoloration that persisted miles out from the coast.

And here, in the open, by the banks of the freshwater river, the animals came to drink. As they cruised on, once more stepping through the worlds, Joshua watched herds of tremendous beasts flick into existence and vanish, quadrupeds and bipeds, creatures that might almost have been elephants, others that might almost have been flightless birds, with lesser creatures running at their feet. A few seconds’ glimpse, and then another extraordinary, unearthly scene, and then another.

‘Like a Ray Harryhausen show reel,’ Lobsang said.

Joshua asked, ‘Who’s Ray Harryhausen? And what’s a show reel?’

‘Tonight’s movie will be the original version of
Jason and the Argonauts
, followed by an illustrated talk. Don’t miss it. But – what a find, Joshua! This American Sea, I mean. All this coastline. What a place to come and colonize!
This
North America has a second Mediterranean, an enclosed sea, with all the riches and cultural connectivity that promises. As for the potential for colonization, it knocks the Corn Belt into a cocked hat. Why, this could be the seat of a new civilization altogether. Not to mention the opportunities for tourism. Just one of these worlds alone – and we’ve already sailed over hundreds of them.’

Joshua said dryly, ‘Maybe they’ll call it “the Lobsang Belt”.’

If Lobsang got the joke he didn’t reveal it.

Another night, another easy sleep for Joshua.

And when he awoke the next morning the monitor in his room showed what looked like a close-up of a campfire.

Joshua jumped out of bed. Lobsang came into his room when he was pulling on his pants, causing him to pull a little quicker. He would have to teach Lobsang the meaning of the word
knock
.

Lobsang smiled. ‘Good morning, Joshua, on this auspicious day.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ Joshua had no time for Lobsang’s nonsense today. The idea of company, authentic, undeniably human company, was electrifying. Socks, sturdy boots … ‘OK, I’m ready to go down. Lobsang – that fire, whoever built it. Are they human?’

‘Apparently so. You might find her sunbathing among the dinosaurs.’

‘Dinosaurs! Her! Sunbathing!’

‘You’ll have to see for yourself. But be careful, Joshua. The dinosaurs look amiable enough. Well, some of them. But
she
might bite …’

Apart from the elevator there was now a second means of getting to the ground, a highly technical business which consisted of an old car tyre (scavenged from a store of random garbage in the airship’s capacious hold), a length of rope and a simple panic button on Joshua’s chest pack which could call the tyre down, or, more importantly, get it moving quickly back up if he were being chased. Joshua felt better for having installed this escape mechanism as a backup after his encounter with the murderous elves, and these days always insisted on having the tyre at ground level, ready to run directly towards in an emergency.

Now he was being lowered towards a new Earth, once again. And there was another human here … somewhere. He could
feel
it. He really could. People made a world feel different, to Joshua.

As was becoming customary for Lobsang, he had decided to land Joshua a little way from the target to allow for a cautious approach, as opposed to a drop from out of the open sky. So the airship floated over the edge of the estuary, a place of scattered
trees
, scrub, marshland and small lakes. The air was fresh but laden with the smells of salt, and a kind of wet-rot stink from the jungle’s edge – and a subtler, drier scent, Joshua thought as he descended, that he couldn’t quite place. The denser forest lapped to the edge of this muddy plain, tumbling down from the higher land to the south. And that thread of smoke rose up from somewhere inland.

Joshua came down a little way from the water’s edge, in the forest. Once on the ground he walked forward, watchfully, heading for the smoke. ‘I smell … dryness. Rust. It’s like the reptile house in a zoo.’

‘This world may be very different from the Datum, Joshua. We’ve come a long way across the contingency tree.’

The forest cleared away, revealing a stretch of beach, the slow-moving water. And on a bluff of rocks, close to the water, Joshua came upon a group of fat, big, seal-like creatures lazing in the sun, around a dozen including a few infants. Pale blond hair lay streamlined along their heavy bodies, and they had small, almost conical heads with black eyes, and small mouths, and flat nostrils like a chimp’s. They were like seals with humanoid faces. The parrot on Joshua’s shoulder, repaired since being used as a club, whirred as lenses panned and zoomed.

The seal-beasts noticed the visitor long before he got close. They looked up, ape heads swivelling, and with hoots of alarm they clambered off their rocks and slithered over the sand towards the water, the calves scuttling after the adults. Joshua saw that their limbs were a kind of compromise between ape-like arms and legs and true flippers, with stubby hands and feet that had webbing stretched between fingers and toes. They slid easily into the water, evidently much more graceful in the sea than on land.

But then there was a flurry of spray, and an upper jaw the size of a small boat came levering out of the water. The seal-beasts scattered in panic, squealing and thrashing.

‘Crocodile,’ Joshua muttered. ‘Every damn place you go.’ He picked up a flat stone and headed for the water’s edge.

‘Joshua, be careful—’

‘Hey, you!’ He hurled the stone as hard as he could, skipping it over the water. He was gratified to see it slam into the croc’s right eye. The beast turned in the water, rumbling.

And it came bursting out of the sea, upright, on powerful-looking hind legs. The croc must have been twelve yards long; it was as if some amphibious craft had suddenly raced out of the water. He could feel the very ground shudder as the croc’s footsteps slammed into the earth. And it was coming for him, enraged.

‘
Shit
.’ Joshua turned and ran.

He reached the cover of another forest clump, and pushed his way into the trees’ damp shadow. Excluded by the trees the beast roared, turned its huge head, baffled – and then bounded away along the beach, after some other prey.

Joshua leaned on a tree, breathing hard. There were flowers on the trees around him, and on the ground; the place was full of colour, despite the shade. And there was noise everywhere, calls echoing around the forest: squeaking cries from the canopy, deeper grumbles from further away.

‘You were lucky with that super-croc,’ Lobsang said. ‘Stupid, but lucky.’

‘But if he’s snacking on those humanoids right now, it’s my fault. They
were
humanoids, weren’t they, Lobsang?’

‘I would say so. But they’re only part-adapted – two million years isn’t long enough to turn a bipedal ape into a seal. These humanoids are like Darwin’s flightless cormorants …’

Shadows shifted, huge. Something passed across Joshua’s sky, a tremendous mass, like a building on the move. A foot slammed down, round like an elephant’s – a leg, thick as an oak trunk and taller than he was. He squinted, not daring to break out of the cover of the trees, and peered up at a body, the skin heavy and wrinkled and pocked with old scars, crater-like, as if inflicted by artillery shells.

Then a predator came running, out of nowhere, like a
tyrannosaur
maybe, with massive hind legs, smaller clawed forearms, a head like an industrial crusher, a beast itself the size and speed of a steam locomotive. Joshua flinched back into deeper cover. The hunter leapt up at the giant beast, closed vast jaws and ripped away a chunk of flesh the size of Joshua’s torso. The big beast bellowed, a distant noise like a supertanker’s foghorn. But it kept moving, as oblivious to the huge wound as Joshua might have been to a flea bite.

‘Lobsang.’

‘I saw it. I
see
it. Jurassic dining.’

‘More like snacking,’ Joshua said. ‘Have we found dinosaurs, Lobsang?’

‘
Not
dinosaurs. Though I suspected you would use the name. In this case there has surely been too
much
evolution for that. Some of these are the much-evolved descendants, perhaps, of the Cretaceous-age reptiles, in a sheaf of worlds where the dinosaur-killer asteroid never fell. There was a dinosaur kisser here, perhaps, a gentle brush with death … But the picture is not simple, Joshua. The big herbivore that almost stepped on you is not reptilian at all, but a mammal.’

‘Really?’

‘It was a female – a kind of marsupial, I think. If you’d had the chance you would have seen an infant the size of a carthorse carried in her pouch. I will show you the images later. On the other hand, the morphology – really big herbivores preyed upon by really ferocious predators –
was
common in the dinosaur era and may be another universal.

‘Joshua, always remember, you have not travelled back in time, or forward. You have travelled far across the contingency tree of the possible, on a planet where dramatic but quasi-random extinction events periodically obliterate much of the family of life, leaving room for evolutionary innovation. On each Earth, however, the outcomes will differ, by a little or a lot … You are close to the campfire now. Head for the water.’

With a crunch of trampled undergrowth a new set of animals moved through the forest clump, heading for the estuary and the fresh water. Through the trees Joshua glimpsed low-slung bodies, horns, tremendous coloured crests. There were several of these animals, the adults taller than Joshua at the shoulder, the calves weaving through the moving pillars of the adults’ legs. Immense beasts, but dwarfed by the big marsupial he’d glimpsed earlier. They were making for the water, so Joshua followed as best he could.

He came to the edge of the forest by a braid of fresh water. Across the estuary’s marshy plain huge flocks of birds, or bird-like creatures, strutted, squabbled and fed. The marsh flowers were a mass of colour under a deep blue sky. Joshua thought he saw the ridged backs of more crocodilians sliding through the deeper water. By the water’s edge, those big crested beasts crowded to drink.

And at the edge of a beach of white sand, upright, bipedal lizards were catching some rays, basking. Smaller specimens chased back and forth across the sand and occasionally dived into the surf, such as it was. They were remarkably human in their playfulness, like Californian teenagers. Then one of the bigger bipeds noticed Joshua and prodded its nearest neighbour. There was an exchange of hissing, after which the miniature dinosaur of the second part returned to snoozing, while the first one sat up and watched Joshua with bright-eyed interest.

‘Fun, aren’t they?’ A woman’s voice.

Joshua whirled around, his heart hammering.

The woman was short, sturdy, her blonde hair tied back in an efficient bun. She wore a useful-looking sleeveless jacket that was all pockets. She looked a little older than Joshua: early thirties, maybe. Her face was square, regular, strong rather than pretty, tanned deep by the weather. She eyed him, appraising.

‘They’re quite harmless unless attacked,’ she said. ‘Smart, too;
they
have a division of labour and they make things that you might call tools. Digging sticks, at least, for the clams. On top of that, they make crude but serviceable boats, and fairly sophisticated fish traps. That means observation, deduction, cogitation and teamwork, and the concept of mortgaging today for a better tomorrow …’

Joshua was staring.

She laughed. ‘Don’t you think it’s time you closed your mouth?’ She held out her hand.

Joshua looked at it as if it were a weapon of war.

‘
I know you
. You’re Joshua Valienté, aren’t you? I knew I would run into you some day. Small worlds, don’t you think?’

Joshua was frozen. ‘Who are
you
?’

‘Call me … Sally.’

In Joshua’s ear the voice of Lobsang insisted, ‘Invite her to the ship! Tempt her! We have superb cuisine, somewhat wasted on you, I must say. Offer her sex! Whatever you do, get her on this damn ship!’