The Long Earth

looking for the latest calling kid.
    And after that kid there was another. And another, who had broken her arm, it looked like, falling from some upper storey. And then another. There was always another kid.
    The first hint of dawn filled the forest clump with birdsong and light. Was it dawn back home too?
    There were absolutely no sounds of humanity now, except for the sobbing of the latest lost boy, who had speared his leg on a jagged length of wood. There was no way the kid would be able to operate his own Stepper, which was a shame, because in the sallow light Joshua admired the craftsmanship. The kid had evidently spent some time in Radio Shack. A sensible kid, but not sensible enough to bring a flashlight, or mosquito repellent.
    Carefully, Joshua bent, picked up the kid in his arms, and stood straight. The boy moaned. One-handed, Joshua groped for the switch on his own Stepper, glad once more he’d followed the instructions exactly.
    This time, when they stepped over, there were lights glaring in his face, and within seconds a City of Madison police car screeched to a halt before him. He stood stock still.
    Two cops got out of the car. One, a younger man in a fluorescent jacket, gently took the injured boy from Joshua, and laid him on the grass. The other officer stood before him. A woman, smiling, hands open. This made him nervous. It was the way a Sister smiled at a Problem. Arms outstretched in welcome could quickly become arms that grabbed. Behind the officers, there were lights everywhere, like a movie set.
    ‘Hello, Joshua,’ the woman officer said. ‘My name is Monica Jansson.’

4
    FOR MPD OFFICER Jansson it had all started even earlier, the day before: the third time in the last few months she’d come out to the burned-out Linsay house, just off Mifflin Street.
    She wasn’t sure why she had come back here. There hadn’t been a call-out this time. Yet here she was poking once more through the heaps of ash and charcoal that used to be furniture. Crouching over the smashed remains of an elderly flatscreen TV. Stepping gingerly over a carpet scorched and soaked and stained with foam, marked by the heavy footprints of firemen and cops. Leafing again through the charred relics of what must once have been an extensive set of notes, handwritten mathematical equations, an indecipherable scrawl.
    She thought of her partner, Clancy, drinking the day’s fifth Starbucks out in the cruiser, thinking she was an idiot. What could be left to find, after the detectives had crawled over everything and forensics had done their stuff? Even the daughter, that oddball college student Sally, had taken it all in without surprise or concern, calmly nodding when told that her father was wanted for questioning over suspected arson, incitement to terrorism, and animal cruelty, not necessarily in that order. Just nodding, as if all that was an everyday occurrence in the Linsay household.
    Nobody else cared. Soon the place would be released as a crime scene, and the landlord could start the clean-up and the arguments with his insurance company. It wasn’t as if anybody had got hurt, not even Willis Linsay himself, for there was no sign he’d died in the pretty feeble fire. It was all just a puzzle that would likely never be resolved, the kind experienced cops came across all the time, said Clancy, and you had to know when to let it go. Maybe at twenty-nine Jansson was still too green.
    Or maybe it was because of what she’d seen when they’d responded to that first call a few months back. Because the first call had come from a neighbour who had reported seeing a man carrying a goat into this single-storey house, here in the middle of Madison.
    A
goat
? Cue predictable banter between Clancy and the dispatcher. Maybe goats gave this guy the horn – et cetera, et cetera, ha ha. But the same neighbour, an excitable woman, said she’d also seen the man on other occasions push calves in through his front door, and even a foal. Not to mention a cage of chickens. Yet there was no report of noise, no barnyard stinks. No evidence of live animals in there. What was the guy doing, screwing them or cooking them?
    Willis Linsay turned out to have been living alone since the death of his wife in a road accident some years before. There was one daughter, called Sally, eighteen years old, a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, living with an aunt. Linsay had been some kind of scientist, and had even once held a theoretical