The Long Earth Read Free

of it?’
    ‘I’m right here,’ said Lobsang. ‘
He
’s not made of wood, you know.’
    ‘Sorry.’
    ‘What did I gain? Civil rights. Security. The right to own property.’
    ‘And switching you off would be murder?’
    ‘It would. Also physically impossible, incidentally, but let’s not go into that.’
    ‘So the court’s agreed you’re human?’
    ‘There’s never actually been a legal definition of human, you know.’
    ‘And now you work for transEarth.’
    ‘I part-own it. Douglas Black, the founder, had no hesitation in offering me a partnership. Not only for my notoriety, though he’s drawn to that sort of thing. For my transhuman intellect.’
    ‘Really.’
    Selena said, ‘Let’s get back to business. You took a lot of finding, Mr Valienté.’
    Joshua looked at her and made a mental note to make it a lot
more
finding next time.
    ‘Your visits to Earth are infrequent these days.’
    ‘I’m
always
on Earth.’
    ‘You know what I mean. This one,’ said Selena. ‘Datum Earth, or even one of the Low Earths.’
    ‘I’m not for hire,’ Joshua said quickly, trying to keep a trace of anxiety out of his voice. ‘I like to work alone.’
    ‘Well, that’s rather an understatement, isn’t it?’
    Joshua preferred life in his stockades, on Earths far from the Datum, too far away for most to travel. Even then he was wary of company. They said that Daniel Boone would pull up sticks and move on if he could as much as see the smoke from another man’s fire. Compared with Joshua, Boone was pathologically gregarious.
    ‘But that’s what makes you useful. We know you don’t need people.’ Selena held up a hand. ‘Oh, you’re not antisocial. But consider this. Before the Long Earth, no one in the whole history of mankind had ever been alone; I mean really
alone
. The hardiest sailor has always known that there’s someone out there somewhere. Even the old moonwalker astronauts could
see
the Earth. Everyone knew that other people were just a matter of distance away.’
    ‘Yeah, but with the Steppers they’re only a knight’s-move away.’
    ‘Our instincts don’t understand that, though. Do you know how many people pioneer solo?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘None. Well, hardly any. To be alone on an entire planet, possibly the only mind in a universe? Ninety-nine out of a hundred people can’t take it.’
    But Joshua never was alone, he thought. Not with the Silence always there, behind the sky.
    ‘As Selena said, that’s what makes you useful,’ Lobsang said. ‘That and certain other qualities we can discuss later. Oh, and the fact that we have leverage over you.’
    Light dawned, for Joshua. ‘You want me to make some kind of journey. Into the Long Earth.’
    ‘That’s what you’re uniquely good at,’ Selena said sweetly. ‘We want you to go into the High Meggers, Joshua.’
    The High Meggers
: the term used by some of the pioneers for the worlds, most of them still little more than legend, more than a million steps from Earth.
    ‘Why?’
    ‘For the most innocent of all reasons,’ said Lobsang. ‘To see what’s out there.’
    Selena smiled. ‘Information on the Long Earth is the stock in trade of transEarth, Mr Valienté.’
    Lobsang was more expansive. ‘Consider, Joshua. Until fifteen years ago mankind had one world and dreamed of a few more, the worlds of the solar system, all barren and horribly expensive to get to. Now we have the key to more worlds than we can count! And we have barely explored even the nearest of them. Now’s our chance to do just that.’
    ‘
Our
chance?’ Joshua said. ‘I’m taking you with me? Is that the gig? A computer is paying me to chauffeur it?’
    ‘Yes, that’s the size of it,’ Selena said.
    Joshua frowned. ‘And the reason I’ll do this – you said something about leverage?’
    Selena said smoothly, ‘We’ll come to that. We’ve studied you, Joshua. In fact the earliest trace you leave in the files is a report by Madison PD Officer Monica