Free The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett, Stephen Baxter

friend,’ said Lobsang.
    ‘Let’s stick to “acquaintance” for now.’
    Lobsang laughed. ‘Of course. I stand corrected. Or rather, float in a disembodied way corrected. But I would like to become your friend. Because, in the abstract, in any given situation, I believe that both of us are interested in finding out, above all,
what the rules are
.
    ‘And I believe that you are a remarkably valuable individual. You are smart enough, Joshua – you couldn’t have survived so much time out alone in the Long Earth otherwise. Oh, there are certainly others smarter than you, they are stacked high in the universities achieving little or nothing. But smart has to have a depth as well as a length. Some smart brushes over a problem. And some smart grinds exceeding slow, like the mills of God, and it grinds fine, and when it comes up with an answer, it has been tested. That’s how it is with you, Joshua.’ Lobsang laughed again. ‘And by the way my laughter is not a recording. Each laugh is a unique product of the moment, demonstrably different from any other laugh I have ever emitted. That was a laugh just for you. I was human, you know. I still am.
    ‘Joshua, let’s get to know one another. I want to help you. And of course I want you to help me. I cannot think of a better person to go with me on the expedition I am planning, which will involve some very far stepping indeed. I think it might rather appeal to you. You like to be far from the maddening crowd, Joshua, don’t you?’
    ‘Thomas Hardy’s title was about the madding crowd.’
    ‘Oh, of course it was. But it’s a good idea for me to make the odd little slip – not to appear all-knowing, every now and again.’
    Joshua was growing impatient with this clumsy seduction. ‘Lobsang, how are
you
going to help
me
?’
    ‘I know that what happened to the congressional expedition was not your fault. I can prove it.’
    Now they were getting down to brass tacks, Joshua thought. ‘The assholes,’ he said.
    ‘Oh yes, assholes,’ said Lobsang, ‘and thusly you described them to the preliminary board of inquiry. An unknown species of primate resembling a particularly unpleasant carnivorous baboon. But I suspect the Linnaean Society will not approve your appellation. Assholes!’
    ‘I didn’t kill those men. Sure, I can get along without people. But I had no
reason
to kill anybody. Did you read the report? Those ass—’
    ‘Can we stick to baboons, please, Joshua? It looks better on the transcript.’
    It had been a paid jaunt for Joshua, a gig arranged by his old friend Officer Jansson. ‘You’ve grown up while I’ve grown old, Joshua,’ she’d said. ‘And now I’ve got you some government work. You’ll be a kind of bodyguard and guide …’
    It was an official journey to the far West worlds with a party of scientists, lawyers and a Congressman, accompanied by a platoon of soldiers. It had ended in slaughter.
    The scientists had been gathering data. The lawyers had been taking photographs of the Congressman setting foot on one world after another, making a kind of visual claim to the stepwise Americas, in order to establish symbolically the aegis of the Datum federal government. The soldiers complained about the food and the state of their feet. Joshua had been happy enough to help the party, for his fee, but sensible enough to make sure his ability to step without a box and without after-effects was concealed. So he carried a potion consisting of sour milk and diced vegetables that would pass muster as vomit, the product of stepping nausea. After all, who was going to look too closely?
    It all worked fine. They had all bitched, squabbled and complained their way through two thousand Earths, and after every step Joshua faked nausea with splashes of ersatz vomit. And then the murderous attack had come.
    They were apes, something like baboons, but smarter, more vicious. ‘Superboons’, some of the scientists had called them. ‘Assholes’, Joshua had