The Long Earth

her.

11
    WITHIN A WEEK of her meeting with Clichy, Jansson’s colleagues had started calling her ‘Spooky’ Jansson.
    And within a month, she had made an appointment at the Home, as Joshua called it. It was an orphanage, a run-down converted section-8 apartment complex on Allied Drive, in an area that was about as rough as it got in Madison. But you could see the place was well kept. And there she quietly met, once more, fourteen-year-old Joshua Valienté. She had sworn that if Joshua dealt through her she would guarantee that nobody would treat him as a Problem, but as somebody who might be able to help out, maybe, you know? Like Batman?
    That was how, for several years after Step Day, Joshua’s young life had been shaped.
    ‘That must seem a long time ago to you now,’ Selena said smoothly, leading Joshua deeper into the transEarth complex.
    He didn’t reply.
    ‘So you became a hero. Did you wear a cape?’ asked Selena.
    Joshua didn’t like sarcasm. ‘I had an oilskin for rainy days.’
    ‘Actually, that was a joke.’
    ‘I know.’
    Yet another forbidding door opened in front of them, another corridor was revealed.
    ‘Makes Fort Knox look like a colander, this place, doesn’t it?’ Selena said nervously.
    ‘Fort Knox
is
a colander nowadays,’ said Joshua. ‘It’s just lucky that people can’t carry out bars of gold by hand.’
    She sniffed. ‘I was merely making a comparison, Joshua.’
    ‘Yes. I know.’
    She halted. The way he’d paused in the middle of that reply was annoying, and even more annoying when what she’d really been trying to express was that, even now, all this business of stepwise worlds could be so frightening. Not to Joshua, it seemed. She forced a brief smile. ‘This is where I leave you, at least for now.
I
am not allowed to get too close to Lobsang. Very few people are. I know Lobsang wants to discuss your difficulties with the congressional review that’s been looking into the outcome of your earlier jaunt into the remote stepwise worlds.’
    She was fishing, of course. Joshua suspected that this was, in fact, the leverage Lobsang hoped to use to recruit him.
    He said nothing, and she couldn’t gauge his reaction.
    She guided him gently into the room beyond. ‘Nice to have met you face to face, Joshua.’
    He said, ‘May I wish you the security rating you desire, Selena.’
    She stared at the closing door. She was sure that impassive face had broken into a smile.
    The room within this fortress-like inner sanctum was decorated like the study of an Edwardian gentleman, even down to the log fire blazing in the fireplace. The fire was a fake, however, and not entirely convincing, at least to Joshua, who lit a genuine log fire every night out in the wild. The leather on the chair standing invitingly beside the fire, however, was real.
    ‘Good afternoon, Joshua,’ said a voice from the air. ‘I regret that you cannot see me, but in point of fact there is very little of me here to see. And what there is, I feel sure, would be quite dull to observe.’
    Joshua settled down in the chair. For a time there was silence, almost companionable. Beside him, the fire crackled artificially. You could tell, if you listened, because of certain sequences of crackle, that the soundtrack was repeated every forty-one seconds.
    The voice of Lobsang said soothingly, ‘I ought to have paid more attention to that. Yes – I mean the fire. Oh, don’t worry, Joshua, I’m no mind-reader, not yet; you were glancing at the fire every few seconds and you have a tendency to move your lips soundlessly when you are counting. Interestingly enough, nobody else has noticed that little flaw, with the fire.
    ‘But of course, Joshua, you
do
notice. You watch, and listen, and analyse, and inside that roomy cranium of yours you play yourself little videos of all the possible outcomes of the current situation that you can envisage. It was once said of an English politician that if you kicked him in the butt not a muscle would move on his face until he had decided what to do about it. It’s one of the qualities that makes you so useful, that watchfulness.
    ‘And you are not apprehensive, are you? I can detect no fear in you, none whatsoever. I believe this is because you are the only person who has been in this fortress of a room who knows that he could get out at any moment. Why? Because you can step without a Stepper box – oh, yes, I know about that. And without getting nauseous afterwards,