The Long Earth (23 page)

‘What did you put in this pack?’ Before Lobsang had a chance to reply he had the pack on his chest open and was rummaging inside it for the first-aid box. ‘And, Lobsang? Get that ship down here. I’m going to need more supplies before we’re done.’

‘Done with what?’

‘I’m going to get that baby out.’ He stroked the cheek of the female. His own mother had once lain alone in a world, in the throes of labour. ‘Too posh to push, are we? Let’s do it the American way.’

‘You’re going to perform a caesarean?’ Lobsang asked. ‘You don’t have the capacity to do that.’

‘Maybe not, but I’m quite certain you do. And we’re going to do this together, Lobsang.’ He dumped out the contents of the med kit, trying to think. ‘I’ll need morphine. Sterilizing fluid. Scalpels. Needles, thread …’

‘We’re very far from home. You’ll exhaust our medical supplies on this stunt. I have the facility to manufacture more, but—’

‘I need to do this.’ He could do nothing for the Victims, but he could do something for this elf female – or at least he could try. It was Joshua’s way of fixing the world, just a little bit. ‘Help me, Lobsang.’

An aeons-long pause. Then: ‘I have of course full records of most major medical procedures. Even obstetrics, though I scarcely imagined it would be needed on this trip.’

Joshua fixed the parrot so Lobsang could see what he was doing, and spread out his tools. ‘Lobsang. Speak to me. What’s first?’

‘We must consider whether to make a longitudinal incision or a lower uterine section …’

Joshua hastily shaved the beast’s lower stomach. Then, trying to keep a steady hand, he held a bronze scalpel over the abdomen wall. And just as he was about to cut into the flesh, the baby vanished. He felt its absence, as the womb imploded.

He sat back in shock. ‘It stepped! Damn it – the baby stepped!’

Then the adults came. Two females: a mother, a sister? They
moved
in a blur of sprint paces and steps, flickering in and out of existence all around him. Joshua wouldn’t have believed stepping at that speed was possible.

Lobsang murmured, ‘Just stay still.’

The adults glared at Joshua, scooped up the mother and disappeared with soft pops.

Joshua slumped. ‘I don’t believe it. What just happened?’

Lobsang sounded exhilarated. ‘Evolution, Joshua. Evolution just happened. All upright humanoids have trouble giving birth. You know that, and your mother learned it the hard way. As we evolved, the female pelvis shrank to allow for bipedalism, but at the same time the baby’s brain grew bigger – which is why we’re born so helpless. We emerge with a lot of growing to do before we’re independent.

‘But it appears that in this species the problem of the pelvis has been sidestepped. Literally.’ He laughed gently. ‘Here, the baby isn’t born through the birth canal. It
steps
out of the womb, Joshua. Placenta, umbilical and all, I imagine. It makes sense. An ability to step must shape all aspects of a creature’s life ways, if you give evolution time to exploit it. And if you don’t have to go to all the trouble of being born, your brain can get as big as you like.’

Joshua felt empty. ‘They care for their ill. If I’d have opened her up, the mother wouldn’t have survived the wound I’d have inflicted.’

Lobsang murmured in his ear, ‘You weren’t to know. You tried your best. Now come home. You need a shower.’

30

FURTHER WEST YET
, the Long Earth gradually became greener, arid worlds rarer. The forested worlds were blanketed thicker, with oak-like trees spreading out of the river valleys and lapping at the higher ground, like a rising tide of green. Out on the rarely glimpsed plains the animals still mostly looked familiar to Joshua – kinds of horses, kinds of deer, kinds of camels. Yet sometimes he glimpsed stranger beasts, blocky, low-slung predators that were neither cats nor dogs, herds of huge long-necked herbivores that looked like elephants crossed with rhinos.

On the nineteenth day, around Earth West 460,000, Lobsang somewhat arbitrarily declared they had reached the limit of the Corn Belt. The worlds here were surely too warm, the forests too thick, to make farming worthwhile.

And about the same time they crossed the Atlantic coast of Europe, somewhere around the latitude of Britain. A journey that had become a dull jaunt across a largely unbroken green blanket of forest became duller yet as they sailed out over the breast of the sea.

Joshua sat in the observation deck for hour upon hour. Lobsang rarely spoke, which was a mercy for Joshua. The gondola was almost soundless, save for the whisper of the air pumps, the whirring of suspended instrument pallets as they turned this way and that. Cooped up in this drifting sensory deprivation tank, Joshua fretted about the loss of muscle tone and fitness. Sometimes he performed stretching exercises, yoga postures, or
jogged
on the spot. One thing the airship lacked was a gym, and Joshua didn’t feel like asking Lobsang to fabricate any equipment; he’d only end up in rowing-machine challenges with the ambulant unit.

Lobsang had increased their lateral speed over the ocean. On the twenty-fifth day they crossed the eastern coast of America, somewhere around the latitude of New York, and found themselves coasting over another forest-blanketed landscape.

There was no more talk of stopping, or turning back. They both recognized the need to go on as long as they could, until they had made some inroads into the mystery of whatever was driving the humanoid migration. Joshua found himself shuddering when he imagined the panicky carnage he had witnessed in the town of the Cosmic Confidence Trick Victims unleashed in Madison, Wisconsin.

But, once over land again, they reached an arrangement. Lobsang travelled on during the night. This didn’t trouble Joshua’s sleep, and Lobsang’s senses were infinitely finer even in the dark than Joshua’s were by daylight. By day, however, Joshua negotiated a stay of at least a few hours each day in which he could stand on the good Earth, whichever good Earth it happened to be. Sometimes Lobsang, in the ambulant unit, came down in the elevator with him. To Joshua’s surprise he handled even rugged terrain with ease, strolling, occasionally taking a swim in a lake, very realistically.

Generally speaking the lapping forest endured, in these remote worlds. During his daily descents Joshua observed differences of detail, different suites of herbivores and carnivores, and a gradual change of character in the grander frame: fewer flowering plants, more ferns, a drabber feel to the worlds. Joshua was covering twenty or thirty thousand new worlds in every day-night cycle. But, truth to tell, as thousands more worlds clicked by it was a case of see one and you’ve seen them all. In between stops, while Lobsang catalogued his observations and drafted his technical
papers
, Joshua sat in his couch and slept, or let his mind float in green, teeth-filled dreams so vivid he wasn’t always sure if he was awake or asleep.

There were occasional novelties. Once, somewhere near where Tombstone would have been had anyone been there to name it, Joshua dutifully took samples from enormous man-high fungi that would have proved something of an obstacle to Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday had they come riding down the street. The fungi had a creamy look, and not to put too fine a point on it smelled wonderful, a thought which had also occurred to the little mice-like creatures that had honeycombed them like Emmental cheese.

In the earpiece Lobsang said, ‘Try some if you wish. And in any case, bring me back a reasonably large piece for testing.’

‘You want me to eat some before you know if it’s poisonous?’

‘I think that is very unlikely. In fact, I intend to try it myself.’

‘I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve seen you drink coffee. So you eat too?’

‘Why, yes! A certain input of organic matter is essential. But as I digest the fungus I will break it down and analyse it. A mildly tedious process. Many humans with special dietary requirements must go through the same routine, but without using a mass spectrometer, which instrument is part of my anatomy. You would be surprised how many foodstuffs actually do contain nuts …’

Lobsang’s verdict that evening was that a few pounds of the flesh of the giant mushrooms contained enough proteins, vitamins and minerals to keep a human alive for weeks, although in culinary terms totally bored. ‘However,’ he added, ‘something that grows so quickly, contains all the nutrients a human being needs, and can flourish more or less anywhere, is undoubtedly something for the fast food industry to take an interest in.’

‘Always glad to help transEarth make a quick buck, Lobsang.’

To break up the routine, that night Joshua sat up to witness the journey in the dark. Sometimes there were fires, scattered across the darkened landscapes. But there are always fires, wherever
you’ve
got trees and lightning and dry grass. Move on, folks, nothing to see here.

He complained about the drabness of the view.

‘What did you expect?’ said Lobsang. ‘Generally speaking, I would expect many Earths to be, at least at a first glance – and remember, Joshua, a first glance is mostly all we get – rather dull. Remember when you were young, all those pictures of dinosaurs in the Jurassic? All those different species gathered in one snappy frame, with a tyrannosaur wrestling with a stegosaur in the foreground? Nature generally isn’t like that, and nor were dinosaurs. Nature, by and large, is either reasonably silent, or earth-shakingly noisy. Predators and their prey spread out sparsely. Which is why I have maintained my habit of stopping in relatively drought-stricken worlds, where many specimens collect at waterholes, albeit in rather artificial conditions.’

‘But how much are we missing, Lobsang? Even when we stop at a world we barely take a look at it before going on, despite your probes and rockets. If all we are getting is one first glance after another …’ From his own experience on his sabbaticals, Joshua had a visceral feeling that you needed to live in a world to understand it, rather than scan it as you riffled the Long Earth pack. This was the thirty-third day of the journey. ‘So where are we now?’

‘I assume you mean in terms of Earth geography? Approximately around Northern California. Why?’

‘Let’s take a halt. I’ve been more than a month in this flying hotel. Let’s spend at least one whole day in one place just, well, chilling out, OK? And
experiencing
. One whole day, and a night. You could fill up your water tanks. And frankly I am getting stir crazy.’

‘Very well. I can hardly object. I will find a suitably intriguing world and cease stepping. As we are over California, would you like me to fabricate a surfboard for you?’

‘Ha ha.’

‘You have changed, Joshua, do you know that?’

‘You mean because I’m arguing with you?’

‘As a matter of fact, yes. I am intrigued; you are quicker, less hesitant, less like a person walking around in his own head. Of course, you’re still you. Indeed I’m wondering if possibly you are more
you
than you have been for a very long time, now that you know how you were born.’

Joshua shrugged this off. ‘Don’t push it, Lobsang. Thanks for the bracelet. But you’re no therapist. Maybe travel broadens the mind—’

‘Joshua, if
your
mind was any broader it would start pouring out of your ears.’

Though it was midnight Joshua wasn’t sleepy, and he began to fix a meal.

‘How about a movie, Joshua?’

‘I’d prefer to read. Any suggestions?’

The book screen lit up. ‘I know of no more apposite a title!’

Joshua stared. ‘
Roughing It
?’

‘In many respects, Twain’s best work, I always think, although I will always have a soft spot for
Life on the Mississippi
. Read it. It is what it says, a journey into new territory, and often very funny in an acerbic way. Enjoy!’

And Joshua enjoyed it. He read, and dozed, and this time dreamed of Indian attacks.

The next day, around noon, the stepping stopped with that familiar lurch. Joshua found himself looking down at a lake, a shield of grey-blue that broke up the forest.

Lobsang announced, ‘Surf’s up, dude.’

‘Oh, good grief.’

On the ground, the forest was a pleasant place to be. Squadrons of bats hurtled after flies in the green-lit air above, air that smelled of damp wood and leaf mould. The soft sounds around Joshua were, oddly, much
quieter
than mere silence would have been. Joshua had learned that absolute silence in nature was such
an
unusual state that it was not only noticeable but positively menacing. But the murmur of this deep forest was a natural white noise.

Lobsang said, ‘Joshua, look to your left. Quietly now.’

They were like horses, shy-looking, furtive creatures, with oddly curving necks and padded feet, the size of puppies. And there was something like an elephant with a stubby trunk, but only a couple of feet tall at the shoulder.

‘Cute,’ said Joshua.

‘The lake is straight ahead,’ Lobsang said.

The lake was surrounded by a wall of tree trunks and a fringe of open ground. The still water was choked with reeds and rushes, and in the rare open sunlight, under a blue sky, exotic-looking birds descended in clouds of pink-white flapping. On the far shore Joshua glimpsed a dog-like animal, tremendously large – it had to be four, five yards long, with a massive head and enormous jaws that must themselves have protruded for another yard. Before he could raise his binoculars it had slipped into the forest shadows.

He said, ‘That was surely a mammal. But it had jaws like a crocodile.’

‘A mammal, yes. In fact I suspect it’s a distant relative of the whale – our whale, I mean. And there are real crocodiles in the water, Joshua, as usual. A universal.’

‘It’s as if parts of animals have been jumbled up – as if somebody’s been playing at evolution.’

‘We are now many hundreds of thousands of steps from the Datum, Joshua. In this remote world we’re seeing representatives of many of the animal orders we have on our branch of the probability tree, but as if reimagined. Evolution is evidently chaotic, like the weather—’