Terry Pratchett - The Long Earth

Finally the quasi-salmon was cooking, although Joshua had to keep an eye on it.

Lobsang stopped pacing at last. ‘You are good at concentrating, aren’t you, Joshua? You can ignore distractions, a very useful skill, and it makes for a certain tranquillity.’

Joshua didn’t respond. Through the window, light flared: a distant volcano blossoming against the endless Eurasian green, to be snatched out of existence in a heartbeat, as they stepped on, and on.

Lobsang said, ‘Listen, Joshua. Let’s talk about natural steppers. Like you.’

‘And Private Percy?’

‘You asked me about my researches. Since Step Day I have endeavoured to explore all aspects of this remarkable new phenomenon. As one example I sent researchers off around the world, to study cave systems used by early man. They were tasked to inspect similar caves in the adjoining worlds, to investigate parallel habitations, if any. It was an expensive endeavour but it yielded fruit, because my researchers quickly found in a cave near Chauvet in a stepwise France, among other things, a painting. More accurately it was the badge of a certain Kent regiment at the time of the First World War, and rendered with great accuracy.’

‘Private Percy?’

‘Quite. Well, I already knew about him and his stepping exploits. But then, in a stepwise version of the caves at Cheddar Gorge in Somerset, England, my indefatigable investigators found the complete skeleton of a middle-aged man, in possession of a corked flagon of cider, a few coins, and one gold watch of mid-eighteenth-century manufacture with only the gold and brass remaining of the metal parts. This was a wet cave, but his boots had survived, slightly glistening like the poor man himself, thanks to a sheen of calcium carbonate deposited by drips from the roof. Interestingly, the hobnails and the aglets on his laces were not there.’

‘Aglets?’

‘The small steel caps once fitted to the end of a lace… I’m painting a picture for you here, Joshua.’

‘It’s kind of a dull picture, Lobsang.’

‘Patience. The intriguing thing about this particular find is that the corpse was discovered only because he was lying with the fingers of one hand jammed into a very small space at the bottom of the cave. My operatives found the gentleman in fact as they were exploring a lower cave. They saw the bones protruding through the roof, as if the man had been trying fruitlessly to widen the little gap. All very Edgar Allan Poe, don’t you think? Of course they broke their way through from the cave below, and you can work out the rest. The man was a notorious thief and ne’er-do-well known locally as Passover.’

‘He was a stepper, wasn’t he?’ said Joshua, flatly. ‘And I just bet that there was no other entrance to the cave.’ For a moment he imagined the drip of icy water oozing over bleeding fingers in the darkness, a man trying to scrabble his way out of a cave like a coffin… ‘So maybe he’d had a few drinks. Sister Serendipity once told me that Somerset cider was made of lead, apples and handsaws. He lost his bearings, stepped , ended up in his small cave without even knowing that he’d stepped at all, which would of course make him even more disorientated. He tried to feel his way out, banged his head, knocked himself out. How am I doing?’

‘Superbly. And the skull itself was, indeed, slightly damaged,’ said Lobsang. ‘Not a good death, and I wonder how many other individuals get themselves trapped in some corner before they know what is happening to them.

‘ Natural steppers , Joshua. The history of Datum Earth is full of them, if you know how to interrogate the record. Mysterious disappearances. Mysterious arrivals! Locked-room mysteries of all kinds. Thomas the Rhymer is a favourite example of mine, the Scots prophet who, it is said, kissed the queen of the elves and left this world… In more modern times there are plenty of cases documented in the black scientific and intelligence literature, of course.’

‘Of course.’

‘You are unusual, you see, Joshua, but not unique.’

‘Why are you telling me all this now?’

‘Because I don’t want there to be secrets between us. And because now I am going to tread on dangerous ground. And tell you about your mother.’

The Mark Twain stepped Westward, with little sound other than the pop of the air getting out of the way.

Carefully, Joshua turned down the heat on the cooking fish. He said, as casually as he could, ‘What about my mother? Sister Agnes told me everything there is to know.’

‘I don’t think so, because she didn’t know all of it. I do. And let me say that the whole truth is, on the whole, a good truth, and a truth that explains many things. I think it would be good for you to know. But I will put it out of my mind if you tell me to. That is, I will actually delete the subject from my memory for good. The choice is yours.’

Calmly, Joshua kept his attention on the fish. ‘In what world can I say anything other than «Tell me about her»?’

‘Very well. You know, surely, or at least you must have worked out, that Sister Agnes took over the Home in the first place as a result of the affair. I mean the scandalous business that surrounded your birth. It was a coup that made the throwing of the moneylenders out of the Temple look like a bachelor party. I’ve seen the files, believe me; I doubt whether a convocation of cardinals would try to take Agnes’s office away from her now. She knows all the dirt. Moreover, she knows what’s under the dirt…

‘Your mother was young when she became pregnant with you, far too young. The Home failed her in that, clearly. And your father, by the way, is unknown, even to me.’

‘I know that. Maria would say nothing about him.’

‘Under the old regime, her world was one of daily penance. Relevant affidavits to demonstrate how this penance was administered exist in Sister Agnes’s personal safe, as well, of course, as in my own files, awaiting the right time to be revealed. The regime was utterly inappropriate in the modern age — and would have been in any age, though it might once have been tolerated.’

Joshua faced Lobsang and said in a flat voice, ‘I know that somebody took her monkey bracelet off her. It was a silly thing, but it was given to her by her own mother. It was sort of all she had. Sister Agnes told me. I suppose it was considered superstitious or something.’

‘They did think that way, yes. Although there was a strong streak of petty cruelty in the mix. Maria was in the late stages of pregnancy at the time. Yes, it seems a trivial incident, but it tipped her over the edge, at the worst of times. And so that evening, when the labour pains first started, Maria tried to flee the home, and panicked, and stepped . At which point you entered the situation.

‘She actually stepped twice . She gave birth to you, and stepped back to the Datum, emerging near the road outside the Home where Sister Agnes caught up with her. Agnes tried to calm her down; Maria was clearly in a dreadful state. But she realized what she had done, and stepped yet again. And when she returned she brought you back with her, wrapped in her pink angora sweater, and handed you over to an astonished Sister Agnes, who understood nothing of what had happened. It was not until Step Day, when stepping became common, that she began to grasp the truth.

‘And Maria died, Joshua, of post-partum hemorrhaging. I’m very sorry. Sister Agnes, quick to react though she was, could not help her.

‘All of which leaves you, my friend, as most unique, being, at the moment of birth, if only for a matter of a minute or two, the only person, almost certainly, in a universe . Totally solitary, utterly alone! I wonder what that must have done to your infant consciousness?’