The Long Earth

Humanity First movement.
    Jansson had already spotted some familiar faces in the crowd. There was even one on stage, in the row of Cowley’s well-heeled backers: Jim Russo, whose grandly named Long Earth Trading Company was still alive, still trading, but who had lost various fortunes as the world had changed beyond his imagination. Since she’d interviewed Russo a few years back over complaints about workforce exploitation, Jansson had made a mental note to keep an eye on him, and how he would react to the next, and inevitable, downturn in his fortunes. Not well, it seemed. Now here he was, aged fifty, bitter after yet another disappointment and perceived betrayal, handing a portion of his remaining wealth to this man, to Brian Cowley, self-appointed voice of the anti-steppers. And Russo wasn’t alone in carrying financial bruises from the opening up of the Long Earth; Cowley wasn’t short of backers.
    Cowley was moving on to the economic arguments that had gained him most traction in the press.
    ‘I pay my taxes. You pay your taxes. It’s part of our contract with our government – and it
is
our government, no matter what they might tell you once they get themselves safely installed for life inside the Beltway. But the other side of the contract is this: that they should use
your
tax money to benefit
you
. You and yours, your children and your old folk, to keep you safe in your homes. That’s the deal, as I always understood it. But then I’m not inside the Beltway. I’m just an ordinary Joe, like you, like you,’ he said, pointing at the crowd. ‘And you know what this ordinary Joe has found out they’re doing with your taxes? I’ll tell you. They pay for
colonists
. They pay for those folk playing at being pioneers, out on some unnatural world where they don’t even have regular horses and buzzards and cattle like God made them here. They give them
mail services
. They send up
census takers
. They send up
fancy medicines
. They send
cops
, for when those deranged fools take a fancy to killing their own mothers, or fathering children by their own daughters …’
    Jansson knew this much, at least, was a pack of lies. In the roomy stepwise worlds, without the pressures of crowding and deprivation, such crimes were comparatively rare.
    ‘And they have a whole system, propped up by your taxes, to ensure that the money those
brave pioneers
leave here, back on the real world, the only true world, is all tied up to keep ’em supplied with all the toys they need – I’m talking about this here Pioneer Support. Some of ’em even have
homes
, standing empty. You know how many people are homeless in America today?
    ‘And it’s all for what? What do
you
get out of the deal? And you, and you? There’s no
trade
with these other worlds – not beyond Earths 1 and 2 and 3 where you can haul back lumber and stuff. You can’t run an oil pipeline from Earth Gazillion to Houston, Texas. You can’t even drive a herd of cattle over.
    ‘The federal government has spent years telling you that the expansion into the Long Earth is some kind of analogy of the days of the pioneer trails and the Old West. Well, I might not know much about the ways of the Beltway, but I do know my own country’s heritage, and I know the value of a dollar, and I can tell you this is a
lie
. This is a
boondoggle
. Somebody sure as hell is getting rich off this folly, but it ain’t you, and it ain’t me. Why, we’d be better off going back to the moon. At least it’s God’s own moon! At least you can bring back moon rocks!
    ‘And I can tell you, when I have my meeting with the President in a few days’ time, my central demand is going to be this: cut your support of the Long Earth colonies. If the steppers left assets here, seize ’em. If they’re productive out there in the godless worlds, tax ’em until their eyes water. Those guys up there want to be pioneers, fine, let ’em. But not propped up by my tax dollars, and yours …’
    Growls of approval, disturbingly loud.
    Jansson spotted Rod Green, just eighteen years old, his strawberry-blond mane easily distinguished. Rod was one of a class the cops had labelled the ‘homealones’, non-stepper kids who had been more or less abandoned by families seduced by the romance of going off to build a new life in the stepwise reaches. A whole class of people injured by the very presence of the Long Earth in ways much deeper than the mere financial. And now here he was, lapping up