The Long Mars

Paul’s room was only sparsely customized, by the standards of others Nelson had seen – or rather, had looked into from above. Posters on the walls: a galaxy image, exotic Long Earth beasts, a singing star Nelson didn’t recognize. On the desk, a phone, tablet, TV, though Nelson had learned that the co

Paul himself, slim, dark, was dressed in a black coverall. All the inmates here had to wear coveralls, Nelson had learned, but at least you got a choice of colours, and only the most defiant chose Gitmo orange. Paul evidently wasn’t the most defiant. He just sat on the edge of the bed, arms wrapped around his torso, legs crossed, a blank expression on his face. A classic sulky-teenager pose.

Nelson sat opposite, on a chair. ‘I bet you didn’t choose any of this stuff,’ he said as an opener. ‘The posters and such. This is some elderly Navy officer’s idea of what people your age like, right?’

Paul returned his stare, but gave nothing back.

Nelson nodded. ‘Lieutenant Irwin, who showed me around earlier, said a lot of things about you and your colleagues in here.’

Paul snorted, and spoke for the first time. ‘“Colleagues”?’

‘But the most perceptive single word she used, in my view as far as I’ve formulated it, was this: institutionalized. And that’s what you’re falling back on now, right? The blank stare, the silence. The old tricks you learned to survive, in one institution or another. That’s OK. But you were lucky, you know. I can tell you there are worse institutions to fall into than the one that caught you, in the end. I mean the Home in Madison West 5.’

Paul shrugged. ‘All those nuns.’

‘Right. And Joshua Valienté. He’s a friend of mine. He sends his regards.’ Nelson stared at Paul, trying to send a subliminal signal. You aren’t alone. Joshua hasn’t forgotten you. That’s why I’m here, in fact . . .

Paul just smiled. ‘Good old Uncle Joshua. The magic stepper boy. Maybe he should be in some cage like this. What is he but the vanguard of a new human species?’

‘Well, in fact there are similarities. The whole Humanity First movement, that brought President Cowley to power, grew out of fear of steppers.’

‘I know. That bunch of nuts blew up Madison because of it. The nest of the stepping mutants.’ He mimed an explosion with his hands. ‘Ka-boom!’

‘Can you understand people feeling that way? About you, I mean?’

‘I understand it in the abstract. The way I understand much of how you dim-bulbs think. Just another aspect of the madness that grips most of you, for most of your waking lives. It goes back to witch hunts, and even deeper. If something goes wrong – it’s somebody’s fault! Find somebody different to blame! Burn the demon! Fire the ovens!

‘Oh, of course they’ve come for us. They were always going to. At least this prison they put us in is secure. I suppose we should be grateful for the organized madness of the US government, which is protecting us from the disorganized madness of the mob. But after all, we haven’t actually done anything to anybody, have we? We aren’t like steppers, who could in theory walk into your child’s locked bedroom and so forth. That’s something worth fearing. All we’ve actually done so far is make a little money. But that was enough to condemn the Jews under Hitler, wasn’t it?’

Nelson studied him. He was coming across now like a defiant youngster, a member of some punk-revival band, maybe, out to shock. Nelson realized he had no real idea what was going on in Paul’s head. ‘But you have the potential for much more than that in the future. Do you believe it’s rational that we should fear you?’

Paul studied him back, as if briefly interested in what he’d said. ‘Insofar as you’re capable of being rational at all – yes. Because we are a different species, you know.’

These words, delivered matter-of-factly, were chilling. ‘You mean, unlike the steppers—’

‘Who are genetically identical to the rest of you. Stepping is just a faculty, like a gift for languages, that people have more or less of. We are all potential steppers. You are not a potential Next. The bumbling dim-bulb scientists at this facility have confirmed what we have long known. We have an extra gene complex. This is expressed physically in new structures in the brain, specifically the cerebral cortex, the centre of higher processing. They’re studying that here too, though thankfully without cutting our heads open, at least not yet. My brain contains a hundred billion neurons, each with a thousand synapses, just as yours does. But the co

‘Hence you’re a brighter bulb.’

Paul shrugged. ‘The biological definition of a species is the ability to interbreed. Our claim of species differentiation is blurred, but it is real enough.’ He smiled. ‘Do you have a daughter, Nelson?’

The question took Nelson by surprise. He remembered that living island, a woman with a red flower in her hair . . . ‘Probably not.’

Paul raised his eyebrows. ‘Odd answer. Well, if you did, she could serve as an incubator for my child. Who would be one of us, not one of you. Does that offend you? Does that frighten you? Does it make you want to kill me? Perhaps it should.’

‘Tell me how this has happened. If you understand it yourself.’

Paul laughed in his face. ‘Oh, you seek to manipulate me through challenging me. I will tell you only what the dim-bulbs in this place must already have figured out. It’s not hard, after all. I was born in Happy Landings, as you probably know. And I am a Spencer, on my mother’s side. You’ve heard of the place.’

It had loomed large in the talk of Lobsang and Joshua.

‘If you know about Happy Landings, you know about the trolls. Nelson, the secret is the trolls. Happy Landings is infested by them, and their presence has shaped that particular society. Not every human being gets along with the trolls, and vice versa. With time, there has been a selection pressure. Only a certain kind of human is welcomed to Happy Landings. Even some of those who are born there know, somehow, it is not for them. There is nothing mysterious about it, nothing psychic, merely a question of complex group dynamics spa

‘And the result is what I see before me?’

He shrugged. ‘Right now Next are emerging all over. Many colony worlds are in turmoil because of the great population flow from the Datum, after Yellowstone. Maybe it’s something to do with the stress of all that. Dormant genes suddenly expressing. But, and I’m sure your dim-bulb scientists have worked this out, many of the emerging Next can trace their ancestry back to Happy Landings, especially to the old dynasties, the Montecutes, the Spencers. That’s the source of the new genetic legacy.’

And a random memory came back to Nelson: Roberta Golding, who had done so much to set up his own assignment here, was originally from Happy Landings . . .

‘But on the other hand,’ Paul said now, ‘we could only have arisen in the Long Earth. Happy Landings, the forcing ground, is a uniquely Long Earth phenomenon, is it not? The unconscious mixing of two separate humanoid species could never have happened on the Datum. The trolls could never have survived at all on Datum Earth, not alongside you, you clever apes, smart enough to destroy everything around you, never smart enough to understand what it is you are losing in the process . . . The trolls needed to be protected by the Long Earth, protected from you, in order that they could participate in the production of us, in such crucibles as Happy Landings.’