The Long Earth

were by daylight. By day, however, Joshua negotiated a stay of at least a few hours each day in which he could stand on the good Earth, whichever good Earth it happened to be. Sometimes Lobsang, in the ambulant unit, came down in the elevator with him. To Joshua’s surprise he handled even rugged terrain with ease, strolling, occasionally taking a swim in a lake, very realistically.
    Generally speaking the lapping forest endured, in these remote worlds. During his daily descents Joshua observed differences of detail, different suites of herbivores and carnivores, and a gradual change of character in the grander frame: fewer flowering plants, more ferns, a drabber feel to the worlds. Joshua was covering twenty or thirty thousand new worlds in every day-night cycle. But, truth to tell, as thousands more worlds clicked by it was a case of see one and you’ve seen them all. In between stops, while Lobsang catalogued his observations and drafted his technical papers , Joshua sat in his couch and slept, or let his mind float in green, teeth-filled dreams so vivid he wasn’t always sure if he was awake or asleep.
    There were occasional novelties. Once, somewhere near where Tombstone would have been had anyone been there to name it, Joshua dutifully took samples from enormous man-high fungi that would have proved something of an obstacle to Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday had they come riding down the street. The fungi had a creamy look, and not to put too fine a point on it smelled wonderful, a thought which had also occurred to the little mice-like creatures that had honeycombed them like Emmental cheese.
    In the earpiece Lobsang said, ‘Try some if you wish. And in any case, bring me back a reasonably large piece for testing.’
    ‘You want me to eat some before you know if it’s poisonous?’
    ‘I think that is very unlikely. In fact, I intend to try it myself.’
    ‘I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve seen you drink coffee. So you eat too?’
    ‘Why, yes! A certain input of organic matter is essential. But as I digest the fungus I will break it down and analyse it. A mildly tedious process. Many humans with special dietary requirements must go through the same routine, but without using a mass spectrometer, which instrument is part of my anatomy. You would be surprised how many foodstuffs actually do contain nuts …’
    Lobsang’s verdict that evening was that a few pounds of the flesh of the giant mushrooms contained enough proteins, vitamins and minerals to keep a human alive for weeks, although in culinary terms totally bored. ‘However,’ he added, ‘something that grows so quickly, contains all the nutrients a human being needs, and can flourish more or less anywhere, is undoubtedly something for the fast food industry to take an interest in.’
    ‘Always glad to help transEarth make a quick buck, Lobsang.’
    To break up the routine, that night Joshua sat up to witness the journey in the dark. Sometimes there were fires, scattered across the darkened landscapes. But there are always fires, wherever you’ve got trees and lightning and dry grass. Move on, folks, nothing to see here.
    He complained about the drabness of the view.
    ‘What did you expect?’ said Lobsang. ‘Generally speaking, I would expect many Earths to be, at least at a first glance – and remember, Joshua, a first glance is mostly all we get – rather dull. Remember when you were young, all those pictures of dinosaurs in the Jurassic? All those different species gathered in one snappy frame, with a tyrannosaur wrestling with a stegosaur in the foreground? Nature generally isn’t like that, and nor were dinosaurs. Nature, by and large, is either reasonably silent, or earth-shakingly noisy. Predators and their prey spread out sparsely. Which is why I have maintained my habit of stopping in relatively drought-stricken worlds, where many specimens collect at waterholes, albeit in rather artificial conditions.’
    ‘But how much are we missing, Lobsang? Even when we stop at a world we barely take a look at it before going on, despite your probes and rockets. If all we are getting is one first glance after another …’ From his own experience on his sabbaticals, Joshua had a visceral feeling that you needed to live in a world to understand it, rather than scan it as you riffled the Long Earth pack. This was the thirty-third day of the journey. ‘So where are we now?’
    ‘I assume you mean in terms of Earth geography? Approximately