The Long Earth

trolls. Somehow “incongruous” just can’t carry the load, don’t you think? And now my fillings aren’t tingling so much. The trolls are heading out, see?’
    Joshua saw. It was as if an invisible hand were picking up pieces on a chessboard, but taking all the queens and pawns first, bishops and rooks next, and knights and kings last of all.
    Sally said, ‘The mothers go first, because they would punch the living daylights out of anything that threatened their pups. Elders in the middle, and males last, at the rear of the column … Elves attack from the rear, you see, so you watch your back.’
    And then there were none, leaving nothing more than a slight improvement in the air quality.
    Lobsang ambled over to them.
    ‘How does he
do
that?’ said Sally. ‘Now he’s walking like John Travolta!’
    ‘Haven’t you heard the fabrication deck working away day and night? He is endlessly bettering himself, endlessly rebuilding. The way you’d go to a gym, maybe?’
    ‘I have never in my life gone into a gym, sir. When you are by yourself in the Long Earth you are either in shape, or you are dead.’ She grinned. ‘Mind you, I wish I had legs like that.’
    ‘There’s nothing wrong with your legs.’ And he regretted that sentence as soon as he’d uttered it.
    She just laughed. ‘Joshua, you are fun to know, and a good companion, reliable and all that, even if you are a little bit weird. Someday we might be friends,’ she said a bit more gently. ‘But please don’t make comments about my legs. You’ve seen very little of my legs since most of the time they are inside premium grade thorn-proof battledress. And it’s naughty to guess, OK?’
    To Joshua’s relief Lobsang reached them, smiling. ‘I admit I am rather pleased with myself.’
    ‘No change there then,’ Sally said.
    ‘We haven’t caught an elf,’ Joshua pointed out.
    ‘Oh, that’s no longer necessary. I have achieved my purpose. At Happy Landings I learned the elements of troll communication. But that sedentary population could tell me little about the forces behind the migration. Now these wild trolls have told me more, much more. Don’t you say a word, Sally! I’ll answer all your questions. Let’s get aboard – we have a long journey still ahead of us, perhaps to the end of the Long Earth itself – and won’t that be fun?’

44
    SILENCE REIGNED ON the observation deck. Joshua was alone. Once back on board, Lobsang had immediately retreated through the blue door, and Sally to her stateroom.
    Suddenly the
Mark Twain
began stepping like a tap dancer on speed. Joshua peered out. Outside, skies strobed by, landscapes morphed, rivers writhed like snakes, and Joker worlds popped like flashbulbs. On the ship, everything that could creak was creaking like an ancient tea clipper going around Cape Horn, and the stepping itself was a juddering deep inside Joshua, a hailstorm. And outside, Joshua estimated, they were crossing many worlds with every second.
    Sally came on deck spitting feathers. ‘What the hell does he think he’s doing?’
    Joshua had no answer. But again he fretted about Lobsang’s strange instability and impulsiveness.
    Lobsang’s ambulant unit glided through the blue door. ‘My friends, I am distraught if I have alarmed you. I am now eager to progress our mission. I told you I have learned a great deal from the trolls.’
    ‘You know what’s disturbing them,’ said Sally.
    ‘I do know more, at least. In short, the trolls, and probably the elves and other humanoid types too, are indeed fleeing from something, but not something physical – it is something that gets into their heads, so to speak. And this confirms what we learned from the Happy Landings trolls.
    ‘The feeling is like a plague of pain – like migraine attacks – sweeping over the worlds from West to East. There have been suicides. Creatures throwing themselves off cliffs rather than suffer the anguish of it.’
    Joshua and Sally looked at one another.
    Sally said, ‘A migraine monster? What is this,
Star Trek
?’
    Lobsang looked puzzled. ‘Do you refer to the original series, or—’
    ‘This really is plain crazy. Joshua, are there any manual controls on this airship?’
    ‘I don’t know. But I do know that Lobsang has very acute hearing.’
    ‘Joshua is correct in that respect, Sally …’
    ‘Do the trolls understand what’s coming? Have any of them
seen
anything?’
    ‘So far as I can tell, no. But they imagine it as