The Long Earth

just a matter of distance away.’
    ‘Yeah, but with the Steppers they’re only a knight’s-move away.’
    ‘Our instincts don’t understand that, though. Do you know how many people pioneer solo?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘None. Well, hardly any. To be alone on an entire planet, possibly the only mind in a universe? Ninety-nine out of a hundred people can’t take it.’
    But Joshua never was alone, he thought. Not with the Silence always there, behind the sky.
    ‘As Selena said, that’s what makes you useful,’ Lobsang said. ‘That and certain other qualities we can discuss later. Oh, and the fact that we have leverage over you.’
    Light dawned, for Joshua. ‘You want me to make some kind of journey. Into the Long Earth.’
    ‘That’s what you’re uniquely good at,’ Selena said sweetly. ‘We want you to go into the High Meggers, Joshua.’
    The High Meggers
: the term used by some of the pioneers for the worlds, most of them still little more than legend, more than a million steps from Earth.
    ‘Why?’
    ‘For the most innocent of all reasons,’ said Lobsang. ‘To see what’s out there.’
    Selena smiled. ‘Information on the Long Earth is the stock in trade of transEarth, Mr Valienté.’
    Lobsang was more expansive. ‘Consider, Joshua. Until fifteen years ago mankind had one world and dreamed of a few more, the worlds of the solar system, all barren and horribly expensive to get to. Now we have the key to more worlds than we can count! And we have barely explored even the nearest of them. Now’s our chance to do just that.’
    ‘
Our
chance?’ Joshua said. ‘I’m taking you with me? Is that the gig? A computer is paying me to chauffeur it?’
    ‘Yes, that’s the size of it,’ Selena said.
    Joshua frowned. ‘And the reason I’ll do this – you said something about leverage?’
    Selena said smoothly, ‘We’ll come to that. We’ve studied you, Joshua. In fact the earliest trace you leave in the files is a report by Madison PD Officer Monica Jansson, filed just after Step Day itself. About the mysterious boy who
came back
, bringing the other children with him. Quite the little pied piper, weren’t you? Once upon a time you would have been called a celebrity.’
    ‘And,’ Lobsang put in, ‘once upon another time you’d have been called a witch.’
    Joshua sighed. Was he ever going to live that day down? He had never wanted to be a hero; he didn’t like people looking at him in that funny way. Or, indeed, in any way. ‘It was a mess, that’s all,’ he said. ‘How did you find out?’
    ‘The police reports, like Jansson’s,’ said the drinks machine. ‘The thing about the police is that they keep everything on file. And I just love files. Files tell me things. They tell me who your mother was, for instance, Joshua. Maria was her name, was it not?’
    ‘My mother’s none of your business.’
    ‘Joshua, everybody is my business, and everybody is on file. And the files have told me all about you. That you may be very special. That you were there on Step Day.’
    ‘
Everybody
was there on Step Day.’
    ‘Yes, but
you
felt at home, didn’t you, Joshua? You felt as if you’d
come
home. For once in your life you knew you were in the right place …’

3
    STEP DAY. FIFTEEN years ago. Joshua had been just thirteen.
    Later, everybody remembered where they were on Step Day. Mostly they were in the shit.
    At the time, nobody knew who had uploaded the circuit diagram for the Stepper on to the web. But as evening swept like a scythe around the world, kids everywhere started putting Steppers together, dozens in the neighbourhood of the Home in Madison alone. There had been a real run on Radio Shack. The electronics seemed laughably simple. The potato you were supposed to install at the heart of it seemed laughable too, but it was important, because it was your power supply. And then there was the switch. The switch was vital. Some kids thought you didn’t need a switch. Just twist wires together. And they were the ones who ended up screaming.
    Joshua had put his first Stepper together
carefully
. He always did things meticulously. He was the kind of boy who always, but always, paints before assembly, and then assembles the pieces in the right order, with every single component laid out with care before commencing. Joshua always
commenced
things. It sounded more deliberate than starting. In the Home, when he worked on one of the old and worn and incomplete jigsaw puzzles, he would