Free The Long Cosmos by Terry Pratchett Page B

mental map into a third dimension, to include similar landmarks in the nearby stepwise worlds. Once he’d invested all the labour in his stockade he was going to be tied to this world, at least until he chose to end the sabbatical altogether. But the stepwise worlds were always there as refuges – only sapients could step – and as alternate sources of food, of escape from bad weather, even hides to use when hunting. He’d never had any trouble with this kind of mental mapping. Lobsang had come to the conclusion that this sort of visualization of the world, or worlds, was at the core of his enhanced ability to step in the first place.
    And it paid to be prepared, because there were always threats out there. At least you knew that what animals wanted of you was primal: either to eat you, or to avoid being eaten by you. Sapient threats were worse, both from malevolent humans and from some variants of humanoids. Some thought of the Long Earth humanoids as mere animals. Nobody would ever convince Joshua that there was no malice in the heart of some of the killer elves he’d encountered over the years.
    â€˜Well, Crusoe had his cannibals,’ he told the world now. ‘And I got bandits and elves. But he intended to live to tell the tale, and so do I.’
    No reply.
    This was a quiet world, he thought. No birdsong.
    And he hadn’t even heard the trolls’ long call, not an echo of it. Which was kind of unusual; trolls were to be found most everywhere. But one reason he’d stopped here was precisely because of that absence. He liked trolls, but right now he didn’t much want to be around any of them, because if a troll saw you he or she told the pack, who added the news to their long call – the endless improvised opera that united all trolls everywhere in a kind of bath of information. If your name was Joshua Valienté, the news tended to get out, and next thing you knew the whole Long Earth knew what colour your boxers were . . .
    Now there was a sound in this quiet world. A deep rumble, from far away to the north, like a lion’s roar maybe but deeper, almost like something geological. A big beast advertising its presence. Just as he needed to know his landscape, Joshua was going to have to learn about the creatures he shared his world with, although with any luck he’d never need to get close up and personal with most of them.
    It was a classic High Meggers landscape. And, as the sun dipped towards the horizon, Joshua Valienté was king of all he surveyed.
    â€˜In Madison, when I was a kid, I was nothing,’ he announced. ‘Didn’t want to be nothing. Soon as I went stepwise, with everybody else stumbling and crying, and I just strode away, I was something. Me. Joshua Valienté! Right here! . . .’
    Fine. So why the hell couldn’t he sleep?
    He took his second book out of his backpack. It was a fat paperback, sheets of coarse Low Earth paper crudely bound together. And it wasn’t ageing well. This was Helen’s journal, which she had started to keep at age eleven, before she went trekking with her family into the Long Earth. It was pretty much all of his marriage that he’d kept: this book, and his wedding ring. He flicked at random through the pages.
    I miss being online. I miss my phone!!! I miss school. Or some of the people in it, anyway. Not some others. I MISS ROD. Even though he could be a weirdo. I miss being a cheerleader. Dad says I should say some of what I like too. Otherwise this journal won’t be a fun read for his grandchildren. Grandchildren!? He should be so lucky . . .
    If he cried himself to sleep, it was nobody the hell’s business.
    In the dark of night, under a subtly different moon, he was disturbed.
    There were the usual cries in the dark, as a population of feeders and hunters came out of the shadows and the burrows and the tree stumps to live out their nocturnal lives: a subtle symphony