Terry Pratchett - The Long Earth

‘But where are Ug and Mug now? Where are the Neanderthals? I’ll tell you. Dead, these thirty thousand years. Extinct . Now there’s a terrible word if you like. A word beyond death, because extinction means your children are dead too, and your grandchildren and their children will never even be born .

‘You know what I would say to those Neanderthals? You know what they should have done when those bow-and-arrow folk showed up?’ He slammed his palm on a table. ‘They should have raised their big fists and their ugly old stone tools, and they should have smashed the bulging skulls of those new folk, every last one of them. Because if they had, their grandchildren would be around now.’ He kept slamming the palm, punctuating his sentences. ‘Now I got federal politicians and university pro-fess-ors telling me there’s a new sort of human being amongst us, a new evolution going on, a superman among us ordinary Joes. A superman, whose only power is the ability to slip into your child’s bedroom at night, without you even knowing it? What kind of superman is that?

‘You think I’m a Neanderthal? You think I’m gonna make the mistake they made? Are you gonna let these mutants take over God’s good Earth? Are you gonna submit to extinction? Are you? Or you? Or you?…’

Everybody was on their feet, on the stage too, hollering and clapping. Jansson clapped too, for cover. Around her she glimpsed FBI guys quietly taking photographs of the crowd.

The world was going to change again. That was the buzz. Once the Black Corporation’s more or less covert airship developments began to deliver the massive transformations in interworld carrying capacity they promised, huge trade flows and massive economic growth could be expected. But it wouldn’t come soon enough for the likes of Russo, or Cowley. Jansson fretted about how much harm might be done while everybody waited for the next miracle.

THE MARK TWAIN was a haven. Once you were airborne and stepping away you left your troubles behind. Now it was a relief to get away from the Rectangles, and head into the new and unknown. Joshua welcomed the escape, despite the increasing, foreboding pressure in his head.

Lobsang was still stepping slowly, inspecting the Earths with relative care, while Joshua and Sally hung out on the observation deck. They were stepping at cloud height — but even so, once, over a dark green world, Joshua thought that he heard the scraping of leaves along the keel, the touch of what must be the titanic trees of some Joker planet.

‘Lobsang’s worried, isn’t he?’ said Sally. ‘And distressed by what we found at the Rectangles.’

‘Well, he is a Buddhist. Veneration for all living things and all that. But bones are never feelgood. Elephants are the same, aren’t they? Aware of the significance of bones, either as a signature of threat, or of the death of one of their kind…’ He sensed her attention was elsewhere. ‘Sally, is there something wrong?’

‘What do you mean by «wrong»?’ It sounded like an accusation.

Joshua recoiled from her tone; he didn’t feel like a fight. He went up to the galley and started to peel potatoes, a gift from Happy Landings delivered in a woven sack. He gave all his attention to the action of knife on potato. Displacement activity, he knew, but comforting even so, given what he was displacing.

Sally followed him, and stood in the doorway to the lounge beyond. ‘You watch me a lot, don’t you?’

It wasn’t really a question, and so he replied with what wasn’t an answer. ‘I watch everybody. It’s good to know what they are thinking.’

‘So what am I thinking now?’

‘You are frightened. You’re probably as spooked by the Rectangles as me, and Lobsang, and under all that the troll migration has you seriously spooked — you more than either of us, as you know the trolls better than we do.’With the potato chopped, he leaned down and picked another out of the woven bag. He would have to keep the bag; somebody in Happy Landings had probably spent hours making it. ‘I’ll make chowder. Wouldn’t do to leave the clams too long. Another gift from Happy Landings—’

‘Stop it, Joshua. Stop with the damn potatoes. Talk to me.’

Joshua cleaned the knife and put it down carefully; you always took care of your tools. Then he turned around.

Sally glared at him. ‘What makes you think you know me at all? Do you actually know anybody?’

‘A few people. One policewoman. My friends at the Home. Even some of the kids I helped on Step Day, who kept in touch later on. And then there are the nuns. It is sensible to know nuns when you live close to them; they can be somewhat mercurial—’

‘I’m sick of hearing about your damn nuns,’ she snapped.

He kept his calm, and defied his instinct to escape into the cooking again. He had the feeling this was an important moment. ‘Look — I know I’m not a people person. And Sister Agnes would leather me for using a phrase like that . But there’s no substitute for people, I know that.

‘Look at the trolls. Yes, the trolls are friendly and helpful, and I would not wish any harm to come to them. They are happy , and I could envy that. But they don’t build, they do not make, they take the world for what it is. Humans start with the world as it is and try to make it different. And that’s what makes them interesting. In all these worlds we are rushing over, the most precious thing that we can find is another human being. That’s what I think. And if we are the only minds like ours in the Long Earth, in the universe — well, that’s pretty sad and scary.

‘Right now I see another human being. And it’s you, and you are not happy, and I would like to help you if I can. You don’t have to say anything. Take your time.’ He smiled. ‘The clam chowder won’t be ready for a couple of hours anyhow. Oh, and the movie this evening will be The Ballad of Cable Hogue . A bittersweet saga of the last days of the West, starring Jason Robards, according to Lobsang.’

Of all their eccentricities, Sally most ferociously mocked the habit Lobsang and Joshua had developed of watching old movies in the bowels of the Mark Twain . (Joshua was glad she hadn’t been on board when the two of them had dressed up for The Blues Brothers .) This time she didn’t react. The silence was punctuated only by the metronomic clicks and whirs of the galley’s hidden mechanisms. They were two flawed people, Joshua thought, stranded together.

At last Joshua turned back to his work and finished the chowder, adding bacon and seasoning. He liked cooking. Cooking responded to care; if you did things right, then it went well. It was dependable, and he liked dependable things. But he wished he could have got his hands on some celery.

When he’d finished, Sally was in the lounge, sitting on the couch, grasping her knees, as if trying to make herself small. He said, ‘How about a coffee?’

She shrugged. He poured coffee from the pot.

Evening was falling on the worlds below, and the deck lights came on. The lounge was wrapped in a honey glow, a great improvement.

Joshua said hesitantly, ‘I find it best to worry about the little things. Things that can be helped by being worried about. Such as the making of clam chowder, and giving you a coffee. The bigger stuff, well, you have to handle that as it faces you.’

Sally smiled thinly. ‘You know, Joshua, for an antisocial weirdo you are sometimes almost perceptive. Look — what bugs me above all is that I’ve had to come to you two for help. Well, to anybody . I’ve been living on my own resources for years. I suspect I can’t face this problem on my own, but I hate to admit it. And there’s something else, Joshua.’ She studied him. ‘You’re different. Don’t deny it. The super-powered stepper. The king of the wild Long Earth. I have a feeling you’re somehow central to all this. That’s the secret reason I came to you specifically.’