The Long Mars

Joshua was afraid, and he was determined not to show it.

To break the moment Joshua glanced over his shoulder, where the three-way coupling, uncomfortably noisy for him, was still going on. ‘I can see you also get a lot of hot sex.’

‘Well, that’s one thing. When I’m with Greta or Janet or Indra, it’s not like it is with a dim-bulb girl, like poor Miriam Kahn. It’s real, it’s the whole of me engaged with the other, not just my hormones expressing themselves. We don’t even have to obey your rules, your taboos.’

‘I can see that.’

‘People fear us because we’re smarter than them. I guess that’s natural. But what they don’t see is that we’re fundamentally not interested in them, you know? Not unless they’re standing before us, getting in our way. It’s each other that fascinates us. Enriches us. And I thought you would understand because you were special too, weren’t you, Joshua? When you were my age, or younger. You thought you were the only natural stepper in the world.’

‘Yeah.’ And it wasn’t until he was twenty-eight years old, in fact, when he’d met Sally Linsay, that Joshua had first fully understood that he wasn’t alone, that there were whole families of secret steppers out there, if you knew where to look.

‘Maybe you remember how it felt to have to hide, to pretend. And what you feared they might do to you, if they found you out. Well, you’ve told me as much.’

‘OK, Paul. Look, I appreciate you trusting me this far. Showing me all this – showing me yourselves. I know it cost you to do this, that you’re taking a risk. Maybe going forward I can help you some more.’

Paul grunted, sceptical. ‘How? By being the latest in a long line to tell us how we have to “fit in”?’

‘Well, maybe. But I’m Joshua Valienté, king of the steppers, remember. Maybe I can find you a better place to hide. The Long Earth’s got a lot of room. And I can show you a better way to live out there. Ways to set traps and snares, to hunt.’

‘Hmm. Let me think it over—’

But there was no more time for talk. Because that was when the cops arrived.

There were twenty of them, maybe more, an overwhelming number, and they just stepped right on into the forest glade. They seemed to have everything spied out. They jumped on the kids, and took away or smashed their Stepper boxes. Joshua saw just one girl, evidently a natural stepper, get away, but a couple of cops headed off after her too.

Joshua had heard of this kind of tactic, evolved by the Low Earths’ police and military after three decades of dealing with steppers, and their ease of escape and evasion. You did your surveillance. You went in hard, without hesitation, without warning, with overwhelming force. You immediately took away the Stepper boxes from those who used them before they had a chance to react. And you made natural steppers helpless, usually by rendering them unconscious immediately. The theory was brutal, and the reality, if you were on the end of it, even more so.

And, cuffed himself, pushed to the ground, Joshua was able to see who had betrayed them, those Paul had called my kind, the Next. It was Miriam Kahn, who Joshua had last seen brokenhearted and ru

She pointed coldly at Paul. ‘That’s him, Officer.’

29

LONG MARS, one point five million steps East, as near as dammit. More than forty days into this stepwise trek.

And suddenly the crimson plain below the gliders was full of action.

Frank was at the controls of Thor, with Sally sitting behind him. Frank’s first glimpse was of dust rising from charging vehicles, a herd of some tremendous beasts racing, a glint of metal – and fire, fire shooting out like flame-throwers in the Vietnam jungle.

Frank’s first reaction was to pull on his joystick, lifting the nose of the glider up and away. He yelled to Willis in Woden, ‘Climb! Climb! We don’t want that flame weapon to reach us!’

‘Roger that,’ Willis replied more calmly. ‘But I don’t think that’s a weapon, Frank. Take a closer look.’

When he had the glider climbing smoothly, Frank did take another look, through a panel on his console with an image he could zoom in with a touch. He saw again those big animals (how big? – his mind recoiled from making an estimate) fleeing over the plain, some kind of herd of them – maybe a dozen, big and small, adults and children. From above they looked like storybook dinosaurs, massive bodies with long necks, long tails balanced front and back, and galloping legs. ‘They’re like sauropods, maybe,’ he suggested.

‘Maybe. But those “sauropods” are bigger than anything we ever had on Earth,’ Willis said. ‘I’m recording a total length of two hundred and fifty feet, from nose to tail. Like eight blue whales laid end to end. Total height about fifty feet. A lot bigger than even Amphicoelias, which, I’m reading now, was the largest sauropod on Earth. That’s Martian gravity for you. And they’ve got a dozen pairs of legs each. No wonder they’re so fast. Also armoured, with bands of shell on their backs.’

Sally said, ‘Those sand whales had a dozen pairs of flippers. Same anatomy.’

‘I think they’re this world’s versions of the sand whales. Descendants from some common root. Look at the necks, like tubes, and those wide mouths. And – oh, my word—’

One of the big beasts stopped and turned, skidding in the dust of what looked like another dried-up lake. It rose up, uncurling its body so two, three, four sets of limbs were off the ground, and lifted its mighty neck to grow tall, and it loomed over the vehicles following it – Frank hadn’t got a good look at them yet – and it opened that big sand-whale mouth and belched a gout of flame. The fire licked down at the hunters, whose vehicles turned and scattered.

‘There’s your napalm thrower, Frank,’ Willis said.

‘A fire breather,’ Sally said. ‘What a sight.’

‘Just as well it can’t fly,’ Frank said practically.

Willis, in Woden, snorted. ‘Probably just igniting methane from its digestive system.’

Frank forced a laugh. ‘In the service, I knew a guy who lit his farts with a cigarette lighter.’

‘Don’t spoil the magic,’ Sally said. ‘That’s the nearest thing to a dragon I’m ever likely to see.’

‘And think about it,’ Willis said. ‘For some reason this Mars is evidently full of life, and vigorous life. Why would a beast that size need armour plating, and a flame-thrower? Imagine its true predators.’

‘True predators?’

‘As opposed to those hunters down below, Frank. And by the way – too late about avoiding being seen.’

Frank, with an effort, looked away from the big beast at bay.

The little flotilla of vehicles behind the flame-breathing dragon scattered and slowed, and as the dust settled around them Frank made out details. The vehicles weren’t carts, they had no wheels; they were more like sand-yachts, sail-driven, riding on some kind of skid system. The dust-coated structures looked so primitive technologically he guessed they were made of wood, or some local equivalent. Their occupants, two or three to a yacht, were nothing remotely like humans. They were crustaceans, a form familiar from other encounters, but in this particular evolutionary arena they had developed supple armoured bodies, long manipulating limbs that held weapons: spears, bows perhaps.

And, yes, the gliders had been seen. Frank saw what looked like raised chitinous fists waving, even a spear thrown in futile threat into the air.

He said, ‘I’m guessing we don’t go down there.’

‘I wouldn’t,’ said Sally. ‘And look over there.’ She pointed over Frank’s shoulder.

There were more hunters chasing more land-dragons, further away across the plain, oblivious, it seemed, to the presence of the gliders in the sky. As one party caught up with a fleeing beast, Frank saw spears protrude from its hide, and ropes fixed to the spears hauled a handful of yachts along in its wake. It must take some skill to plant a thing like a harpoon between those armour plates. One boat turned over, scattering its occupants, and Frank got a glimpse of the skids, which were white as ivory.