The Long Earth

out of the way.
    Carefully, Joshua turned down the heat on the cooking fish. He said, as casually as he could, ‘What about my mother? Sister Agnes told me everything there is to know.’
    ‘I don’t think so, because
she
didn’t know all of it. I do. And let me say that the whole truth is, on the whole, a good truth, and a truth that explains many things. I think it would be good for you to know. But I will put it out of my mind if you tell me to. That is, I will actually delete the subject from my memory for good. The choice is yours.’
    Calmly, Joshua kept his attention on the fish. ‘In what world can I say anything other than “Tell me about her”?’
    ‘Very well. You know, surely, or at least you must have worked out, that Sister Agnes took over the Home in the first place as a result of the affair. I mean the scandalous business that surrounded your birth. It was a coup that made the throwing of the moneylenders out of the Temple look like a bachelor party. I’ve seen the files, believe me; I doubt whether a convocation of cardinals would try to take Agnes’s office away from her now. She knows all the dirt. Moreover, she knows what’s
under
the dirt …
    ‘Your mother was young when she became pregnant with you, far too young. The Home failed her in that, clearly. And your father, by the way, is unknown, even to me.’
    ‘I know that. Maria would say nothing about him.’
    ‘Under the old regime, her world was one of daily penance. Relevant affidavits to demonstrate how this penance was administered exist in Sister Agnes’s personal safe, as well, of course, as in my own files, awaiting the right time to be revealed. The regime was utterly inappropriate in the modern age – and would have been in any age, though it might once have been tolerated.’
    Joshua faced Lobsang and said in a flat voice, ‘I know that somebody took her monkey bracelet off her. It was a silly thing, but it was given to her by her own mother. It was sort of all she had. Sister Agnes told me. I suppose it was considered superstitious or something.’
    ‘They did think that way, yes. Although there was a strong streak of petty cruelty in the mix. Maria was in the late stages of pregnancy at the time. Yes, it seems a trivial incident, but it tipped her over the edge, at the worst of times. And so that evening, when the labour pains first started, Maria tried to flee the home, and panicked, and
stepped
. At which point you entered the situation.
    ‘She actually stepped
twice
. She gave birth to you, and stepped back to the Datum, emerging near the road outside the Home where Sister Agnes caught up with her. Agnes tried to calm her down; Maria was clearly in a dreadful state. But she realized what she had done, and stepped yet again. And when she returned she brought you back with her, wrapped in her pink angora sweater, and handed you over to an astonished Sister Agnes, who understood nothing of what had happened. It was not until Step Day, when stepping became common, that she began to grasp the truth.
    ‘And Maria died, Joshua, of post-partum haemorrhaging. I’m very sorry. Sister Agnes, quick to react though she was, could not help her.
    ‘All of which leaves you, my friend, as most unique, being, at the moment of birth, if only for a matter of a minute or two, the only person, almost certainly,
in a universe
. Totally solitary, utterly alone! I wonder what that must have done to your infant consciousness?’
    And Joshua, aware all his life of the far-off, solemn presence of the Silence, wondered about that too. My miraculous birth, he thought.
    Lobsang went on, ‘Now – you weren’t aware of any of these details, were you? Does that help you understand yourself a little better?’
    Joshua stared blankly at Lobsang. ‘I should serve the fish before it spoils.’
    Silently, Lobsang watched Joshua eat a respectable part of the fish, cooked with finely chopped onions (there being no shallots on board), and green beans, and a dill sauce the composition of which even Lobsang’s forensic nose could not entirely work out although undoubtedly there was a lot of fennel in it. He watched as Joshua methodically washed and dried every utensil until it sparkled, and stacked everything away in an order that could only be called shipshape.
    And then he watched Joshua wake up, it seemed to Lobsang, as if reality flowed over him like a spring tide.
    Lobsang said gently, ‘I have something for you. Which I suspect your