The Long Earth

a red face, the attendant’s suggestion that she should help him on with the thermal underwear. However, he did accept the offer of her assistance with the bulky outer clothing, which he thought made him look like the Pillsbury Doughboy, but was surprisingly light.
    He climbed down from the plane to join a group of men dressed as he was. Joshua immediately began to sweat in the mild air. One man grinned, called ‘West!’ to Joshua in a distinctly Bostonian accent, pressed a switch on the box strapped to his belt, and vanished. A moment later his companions began to follow.
    Joshua stepped West, and arrived in an almost identical landscape – save that he emerged into a blizzard and realized why he needed the winter gear. There was a small shack near by, with the Bostonian beckoning to him from a half-open door. It looked like a halfway house, a travellers’ rest stop of the kind becoming common in the stepwise worlds. But it was utilitarian, just a place out of the wind where a man could upchuck in something like comfort before stepping on.
    The Bostonian, looking queasy, shut the door behind Joshua. ‘You really are him, aren’t you? Feeling fine, are you? I don’t suffer from it too bad myself, but …’ He waved a hand.
    Joshua looked towards the back of the shack where two men were lying face down over the edge of narrow beds, each with a bucket under his face; the smell told it all.
    ‘Look, if you really feel OK, go on ahead. You’re the VIP here. You don’t have to wait for us. You need to take three more steps West. There are rest stations in each one – but I guess you won’t need them … Are you for real? I mean, how do you do it?’
    Joshua shrugged again. ‘Don’t know. Kind of a knack, I guess.’
    The Bostonian opened the door. ‘Hey, before you go, we like to say here: you’re stepping, wait for it, on the steppe!’ When Joshua tried but failed to summon up a laugh the Bostonian said apologetically, ‘You can imagine we don’t get too many visitors here. Best of luck, fella.’
    The three further steps brought him out into rain. There was another shack near by, and another pair of workers, one of them a woman, who shook him by the hand. ‘Good to see you, sir.’ Her accent was richly Russian. ‘Do you like our weather? Siberia’s two degrees warmer in this world, and nobody knows why. I must wait a while for the rest of the gang, but you can just follow the yellow brick road.’ She pointed to a line of orange markers on sticks. ‘It’s a short walk to the construction site.’
    ‘Construction? Construction of what?’
    ‘Believe me, you won’t miss it.’
    He didn’t, because he couldn’t. Acres of pine woodland had been cleared, and hovering over a circle of denuded land was what looked at first glance like a floating building. Floating, yes; through the rain he made out tethering wires. It was vast, an aerial whale. The partially inflated body was a bag of some toughened fibre plastered with transEarth logos, over a gondola like an Art Deco fantasy, several decks deep, all polished wood and portholes and plate glass.
    An airship!
    As he stared, yet another worker hurried towards him flourishing a phone. ‘You are Joshua?’ This man’s accent was European, Belgian perhaps. ‘Pleased to meet you, very pleased! Follow me. Can I help you with your bag?’
    Joshua pulled his pack away so quickly that it would have burned the man’s hand.
    The worker stepped back. ‘Sorry, sorry. By all means keep your bag; security is not an issue, not for you. Come with me.’
    Joshua followed him across the soaking ground and under the formless envelope. The gondola, fashioned like a wooden ship’s hull, appeared to be anchored to a metal gantry, presumably constructed of locally manufactured steel, at the bottom of which was a skeleton elevator cage. Cautiously, his guide climbed into the open cage and, when Joshua had joined him, pressed a button.
    It was a short ride up to the underside of the gondola, and through a hatch and out of the rain. Joshua found himself in a small compartment, suffused by a rich smell of polished wood. There were windows, or possibly portholes, but right now they showed nothing but the weather.
    ‘Wish I was leaving with you, young man,’ said the worker cheerfully. ‘Going wherever this thing is going – none of
us
need to know, of course. If you get a chance, look around the engineering. Non-ferrous, of course, aluminium airframe … Well.