Free The Long Cosmos by Terry Pratchett Page A

new home. This was a distant relative of Montana, more than one and a half million steps from the Datum. He was somewhere near the loosely defined border between the band of rich green worlds in which the footprints of North America were dominated by a vast, shallow inland ocean – the so-called Valhallan Belt – and the much more arid, less-travelled worlds further out, worlds so unwelcoming they had only a scientist’s label, the Para-Venusian Belt. For sure this looked like a transitional world, with the eroded aridity of a Para-Venus broken up by water courses and clumps of trees of species unknown to him but looking vaguely deciduous, seasonal, water-loving.
    He was alone, just like Crusoe. Nobody knew he was here. In fact he’d gone to some trouble to ensure that.
    After he’d told Agnes and the Sisters and Bill Chambers and Rod and a few other selected contacts that he was off on a sabbatical, he’d taken one of the few big commercial twains that still sailed the Long Mississippi run from the Low Earths to the city of Valhalla, one point four million steps West. In the few days on board he had fattened himself up with the richest food he could find, and soaked his ageing body repeatedly in clean soapy water, and he’d got his teeth fixed by the onboard dentist. He’d even had his prosthetic left hand serviced by a Black Corporation technician attached to the crew.
    Once at Valhalla he’d hitched a ride at random on a smaller twain, a mineral prospector’s private vehicle, and sailed off for another hundred thousand worlds or so, letting himself be carried crosswise geographically to the footprints of Montana. And then he’d stepped further, on foot, travelling deeper through this band of transitional worlds, heading steadily into the wilderness.
    So here he was, in this world, on this bluff, high in this tree.
    Plenty of people must have travelled through this world before him, heading on out West. He’d gone further out himself, many times. Maybe a few people had even settled here, although only the hardiest pioneers would be this far out. So what? Even most of the Low Earths, the alternates right next to the Datum, had never really been explored, not beyond the most easily habitable places. Why would you bother to go somewhere difficult? More than five decades after Step Day, go just a little way off the beaten track and you found yourself in exotic, untouched wilderness. Which was the way Joshua liked it.
    He’d chosen his geographical location with care too. He wasn’t far from a river. This particular tree he sat in, something like a small-leaved sycamore, was one of a clump that had sprouted on top of a sandstone bluff. Further down the bluff, on the south-west face and still a few yards above the sandy ground, he’d found a hollow – not quite a cave, but with some effort he could probably dig his way into the soft rock and deepen it. That would give decent shelter, and he’d get plenty of light and a good view of the landscape.
    As for security, a look with an experienced eye had informed him it wouldn’t be too much labour to construct a stockade to block off the ground approach to the hollow, the smoke from his fires ought to keep any critters off the bluff itself, and he could lay a few traps for any sneak attacks from humans or humanoids coming from above. And the forest clump above the bluff would serve as a reserve of firewood, if he did manage to get himself besieged in here. He could get it all constructed and stocked up for the winter – he’d arrived at midsummer – and anyhow Joshua hoped the cold wouldn’t be too severe on this world.
    He would have to learn the local landscape, the essentials like forest clumps and water sources, and landmarks for when he got turned around in a storm, or was fleeing a grizzly bear or some such and had to make snap decisions about which way to run. In time he would extend that