Terry Pratchett - The Long Utopia

‘I can see that.’

‘But you too, Stan, you’ll have a lot to take in. There’s food in there. Dried meat, fruit, coffee. Go to the river for water, it’s clean. You can build a fire. There’s blankets, clothes that ought to fit if you need them. By which I mean, cover-up clothes like you’re used to. You’re in Rome, but you don’t need to do as the Romans do. Get some rest. I’ll come by in the morning.’ He glanced at them. ‘You won’t be disturbed. People will leave you alone.’

Rocky said, ‘Why? Good manners?’

Stan cocked an eyebrow at him. ‘Not that. You don’t pat the head of a stray dog, do you?’

Marvin said tiredly, ‘Make up your own mind. See you in the morning. Oh, one thing. I wouldn’t recommend trying to step away. The only way out of here is via soft places. The worlds to either stepwise side are much less hospitable …’

The cabin turned out to be cramped, functional, neat, clean, with no decoration whatsoever. Stan dumped his bag, and went straight out ‘to explore’, he said. He didn’t pause to ask if Rocky wanted to come.

Rocky set the fire, put on some coffee, unpacked his own bag, laying out his stuff. He found the routine comforting.

He made one trip out of the cabin, to fetch water from the river in a couple of pails. He came across another group of people in the water, in the warmth of evening, a little further downstream. Laughing, playing, they could have been kids skinny-dipping anywhere. A part of him longed to join in. But when he heard the high-speed gabble of their quicktalk, he turned away.

Back in the cabin he made up a bed from a heap of blankets and turned in early. He didn’t expect to sleep well. He dug out his e-reader, a precious item brought out of the Datum by his parents when they’d first moved out to West 4, and, by candlelight, flicked through some comics.

He was surprised to find himself being shaken awake by Stan. Suddenly it was morning.

Stan asked, ‘You OK?’

‘I slept like a baby, I guess. You?’

‘Me too.’ Stan shrugged. ‘I think maybe they put something in the food.’

‘I didn’t eat any food.’

‘Or the coffee. Something to keep us savage apes quiet.’ He looked restless. ‘Listen, let’s get cleaned up. I bet you Roberta’s here any minute.’

Rocky was just putting his e-reader outside the cabin door, to allow it to charge up through its small solar panel, when Roberta did indeed show up. To Rocky’s relief, though she was dressed much as had been the people he’d encountered yesterday, she at least wasn’t showing much flesh, wearing a kind of shift under a loose sleeveless jacket full of pockets.

She smiled. ‘Ready? Good morning, boys. Come on, let’s walk.’

Rocky asked, ‘Where are we going?’

‘Well, I want to give you a flavour of how we live here. I thought we’d start at the school.’

Stan shrugged, indifferent, as he closed the cabin door behind him.

As they walked she went on, ‘Lesson one, by the way. We dress for practicality, not for show. This jacket I’m wearing, as you’ll see, does feature arguably the single most useful invention human beings ever came up with: pockets. Otherwise we wear only what we need, what is comfortable, generally as little as possible. You can tell we don’t go much for surface appearances.’

Stan grinned at that. ‘I think she’s telling you that the Next don’t get horny in the presence of skin.’

‘Not quite that,’ Roberta said patiently enough. ‘Sex is very important to us. It binds us together, just as it did our ancestors. We’re just not – obsessed by it. It’s the way a child’s behaviour may be controlled by mild hunger, say, which an adult can easily put aside. Besides, there is a different balance in the Next cortex, it seems, away from shallow visual stimuli towards an appreciation of the deeper content. Looking doesn’t excite us so much. There are downsides. We don’t appreciate visual art, as you do. We understand it – we just aren’t moved by it.’

That shocked Rocky, and he thought of the comics on his e-reader. ‘You have no art?’

‘Not visual art, not primarily. Nor do we appreciate fiction – story-telling. We seem to lack the capacity to immerse ourselves in the imaginary.’

Stan grinned. ‘I think she’s being polite, Rocky. She doesn’t “lack the capacity” to do anything. She means, you humans “lack the capacity” to resist the hypnotic wiles of a story-teller.’

‘If you wish. We do appreciate music – especially elegant, structured, mathematical music. But we do have bodies, you know. We dance, we sing; we need that. And you don’t play a Bach fugue at a line dance.’

Rocky said pragmatically, ‘Well, you can only get away with dressing like that if you’ve got the climate for it.’

‘That’s true, and we do have the climate here. Which is why those who live here chose it, a world of this particular band, this temperate, seasonless location.’

Rocky frowned. ‘You say, “those who live here”. Don’t you live here?’

‘Not me, sadly. I grew up in human communities. I’m drawn back there, for better or worse. And that’s where I’m valuable, where my vocation lies, as a sort of interface. A bridge.’ She smiled. ‘You’re probably too young to remember. Once I worked in the White House, as an adviser to the President. But this is home for me. The only place I’m truly safe, for one thing.’

Stan looked around. ‘I see grass. A few wildflowers. Those trees, in the distance. No animals yet.’

‘You’re thinking you could work out where you are in the Long Earth by classifying the flora and fauna? Don’t be fooled.’

Rocky said, ‘What is this, a Joker?’

Stan shook his head. ‘I think she’s saying they engineered it. This location, somehow. Imported samples of different biotas. Something like that?’

Roberta shrugged away the question. ‘That’s all irrelevant.’

They passed a party digging out what looked like a drainage ditch, down towards the river. Grimy, sweating, working hard: at first Rocky had the uncomfortable idea that these might be humans – ordinary people, like him – somehow pressed into labouring for these superhumans with their semi-nudity and their lofty taste in music. But as they passed he heard snatches of quicktalk.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Roberta said. ‘How does the work get done? In a town full of geniuses, who decides who sweeps the street or empties the cess pit?’

‘No,’ Stan said. ‘You just do it. No mystery.’

Rocky frowned. ‘Well, it’s a mystery to me.’

Roberta said, ‘I think Stan understands this, intuitively. We just get it done. When we see a problem, such as the allocation of basic work, we see further than you; we see all the way to a solution, immediately. The work must be done – this ditch must be dug. Some are better equipped for such work. There can be no argument about that. And then that necessary solution mandates our necessary actions. The only discussion is the immediately practical: is it to be my turn today, or yours? Do you see?

‘Newcomers often ask about our governance systems. Do we have councils, leaders? Mayors, presidents, kings? We are still few enough that most of us can gather in one place to discuss significant issues. Again, the solution to a problem is usually obvious to all, the actions circumscribed by necessity. We run our affairs based on reason , you see, rather than opinion . That is, not on guesses based on too few facts. It is only loftier questions of philosophy, if you like, that divide us, where the goals are not clear, even not easily formulated.’

Rocky felt like defending his own kind – if he really was a different kind from these aloof characters. ‘People must cheat. You must have crooks.’