The Long Earth

apes, in America. Sometimes the continents join up and these animals cross over, and sometimes they don’t. Nobody really knows. Nobody has a map of any of these worlds.
    In some worlds we can’t find any trees at all. Then we have to collect ‘buffalo chips’ for the fire.
Dung!!
It burns well, but you can imagine the smell, my dear.
    And there are funny worlds, where everything is like ash, or like a desert, or something. Just one world thick. There are usually signposts if it’s dangerous, and we have to put on hats or cover our mouths with filters. Captain Batson calls these worlds Jokers.
    Sometimes you see where people have been before. Scruffy places, the ruins of shacks, burned-out tepees. Even crosses, stuck in the ground. In the Long Earth, hoping for the best isn’t good enough, as Mr Batson puts it.
    Day Sixty-Seven
.
    Ben Doak got sick. He drank from a waterhole that hadn’t been checked out. They get polluted by buffalo piddle. He got pumped full of antibiotics. I hope he’s OK. We’ve had a few people get sick, but nobody died.
    More people have turned back. Captain Batson tries to talk them round, and Mr Henry laughs at them and calls them weak. I don’t think it’s weak to admit you made a mistake. That takes strength, if you ask me.
    We must look very strange, to these animals who live here, and have never seen a human before, probably. What business have we got coming through here and messing everything up?
    Day One Hundred and Two
.
    We’re out of the Ice Belt! And only two days behind schedule!
    Strange to think we’ve travelled across thirty-six thousand worlds, but the distance we’ve covered sideways has only been a few miles. Well, we’re going to travel in earnest across this particular Earth, and go a few hundred miles north, to New York State. Then we’ll step on across another sixty thousand worlds or so until we get to the place we’re going to settle.
    I thought we’d have to walk. No! There’s a regular town here, well, a small one, a trading post. Here we can trade in our Ice Belt gear for stuff that’s more suitable for the Mine Belt worlds.
    And there’s a wagon train waiting for us! With big covered wagons that Dad says are Conestogas. They look like boats on wheels, drawn by horses – funny-looking horses, but definitely horses. There’s a foundry here to make the iron they need, and the wagons have got tyres on their wheels, like car tyres. When we saw the wagons we just whooped and hollered and ran! Conestogas! I wonder if it will be more fun than the chopper ride?
    Day One Hundred and Ninety-Nine
.
    We are on Earth West Seventy Thousand Plus Change, as Dad would say. I’m writing in the early morning, before we break camp. Last night the adults stayed up late arguing about the chores. But when they’re all gassing in their Group Meetings, we kids can slip away, just for a while.
    Not that we do anything bad. Well, not mostly. Mostly, we
    (Pause for thought. Search for word.)
    watch. That’s it. We watch. I know Dad frets that we’re all turning into zombies because there’s nothing to do out here but chores, and the schooling they try to force on us. But it’s not like that. We just watch, with nothing to distract us. That’s why we’re quiet. Not because our brains are mush. Because we watch.
    And we see things the adults don’t see.
    Some
very
odd animals and plants that don’t fit any storybook of evolution I ever read.
    The Joker Worlds, in the middle of these boring, arid Mine Belt worlds. The adults think they’re mostly dead. They aren’t. Believe me.
    And the Greys.
    We call them that, even though they’re orange. They look like hairy little kids, but if you ever see one up close, and see the equipment in those orange crotches, believe me, they ain’t kids. And big eyes, like cartoon aliens. They flicker around the camp. There, gone. Stepping, obviously.
    Animals that step!
    The Long Earth is stranger than anybody thinks. Even Dad. Even Captain Batson. Even Mr Henry.
    Especially
Mr Henry.
    Day Two Hundred and Eighty-One
.
    Is it November? Dad will know.
    We made it!
    We made it to Earth West 100,000! – or, Good Old Hundred K, as us hardened pioneer types call it. The start of the Corn Belt.
    Good Old Hundred K has a
gift shop
. You can buy T-shirts and mugs. ‘I Stepped All The Way to Good Old Hundred K.’ But the labels say Made in China!
    The worlds had been changing for a bit. Greener. Damper. A different set of animals. And,