The Long Earth

would pass muster as vomit, the product of stepping nausea. After all, who was going to look too closely?
    It all worked fine. They had all bitched, squabbled and complained their way through two thousand Earths, and after every step Joshua faked nausea with splashes of ersatz vomit. And then the murderous attack had come.
    They were apes, something like baboons, but smarter, more vicious. ‘Superboons’, some of the scientists had called them. ‘Assholes’, Joshua had decided, watching their pink butts go bobbing into the distance after he’d driven them off.
    Or anyhow, that was his story of what had become of the party. The trouble was there had been no witnesses to back him up, and it had all happened too far out for an expedition to be sent to investigate, so far.
    ‘The damn things could plan an attack! They never bothered
me
after I killed two of them, but the troops were overwhelmed, and the science guys never knew how to defend themselves worth a damn.’
    ‘And you left the bodies for the baboons?’
    ‘You know, it’s hard to dig a grave with a wooden shovel in one hand while holding a plastic gun in the other. I burned the camp and got the hell out of there.’
    ‘I thought the board of inquiry’s tentative verdict was rather unfair on you. It left doubt. Now I want you to know that I can prove that what you said was true. I can
prove
that there is an outcrop of black rock about a kilometre from the campsite by the waterhole, just as you said, behind which still lies the remains of the corpse of the alpha animal, which you shot. Incidentally the rock was low-grade coal.’
    ‘How can you know all this?’
    ‘I retraced your steps. The records you returned were quite accurate. I went back, Joshua.’
    ‘
You
went
back
? When?’
    ‘Yesterday.’
    ‘You got back yesterday?’
    Lobsang said patiently, ‘I went and returned yesterday.’
    ‘You couldn’t have done! It’s impossible to step that fast.’
    ‘So you say, Joshua. You’ll find out in due course. You did make an attempt to cover the corpses with stones, and you left grave markers, just as you mentioned at the inquiry. I brought back photographic records. Proof of what you said, you see?
    ‘In fact I reconstructed the whole thing. I used pheromone trails, checked angles of fire, the lie of the bodies. I found every bullet. And, of course, I took DNA samples. I even brought back the alpha’s skull – and the bullet that killed it. It all fits with your testimony. None of the soldiers put up an effective defence when your asshole-baboons attacked, did they? The superboons are maniacs by the standards of the animal world. Appallingly aggressive. But I don’t think they would have attacked if one of the grunts hadn’t got nervy and fired first.’
    Joshua squirmed with embarrassment. ‘If you checked all this out, you know I crapped my pants in the course of the engagement.’
    ‘Should I think less of you for that? Throughout the animal kingdom, it has always made good sense to jettison the cargo in a threatening situation. All battlefields attest to that, as does every soaring songbird. But then
you came back
, and stabbed one of the superboons in the brain, and drove off the rest, stopping only when you’d shot the leader dead. You came back, and that excuses a lot.’
    Joshua thought for a moment. ‘OK. That’s leverage, all right. You can clear me. But why do you want to recruit me in the first place?’
    ‘Well, we discussed that. It’s the same reason Jansson suggested you for Congressman Popper’s party in the first place. You have Daniel Boone syndrome, Joshua. Very rare. You don’t need people. You quite like people, at least some people, but the absence of people does not worry you. That’s going to be very useful where we’re going. I don’t expect to meet too many other human beings once the expedition is under way. Your assistance would be of great help to me because of that quality: you are able to focus, you’re not distracted by the extraordinary isolation of the Long Earth. And, as Officer Jansson saw from the beginning, your unique stepping talent, your ability to step unaided and, more important, to recover quickly from each step, will be useful if trouble strikes – as it surely will.
    ‘The rewards to you, should you agree to accompany me, will be excessively generous, and tailored to your particular preferences. Among them will be an authoritative account of the massacre of the