The Long Utopia

‘Not this side of the grave,’ Lobsang said gloomily. ‘You see, Joshua, there’s something specific I need to ask of the two of you.’

Joshua touched his controls. The Shillelagh turned gracefully in the air and headed for home.

‘What’s that, Lobsang?’

‘We need to get the band back together, Elwood. I need you to go find me.’

31

STAN AND ROCKY weren’t told where the home of the Next was.

When they got there, after passages through a lot of soft places, and while their travelling companions exchanged bursts of quicktalk, Rocky and Stan stood and looked around. Despite all the mystery, the Grange seemed nondescript to Rocky. They had emerged on the outskirts of a small township by a river: a few dozen houses built of wood and mud brick and what looked like prefabricated ceramic panels. Smoke rose up from chimney stacks. Just houses, Rocky thought at first glance, perhaps a few small workshops, even barns, though he saw no domesticated animals. Beyond the town a grassy plain stretched off to the horizon, where trees crowded, a misty green mass. There were more such townships, three, four, five, some blending into each other, off across the plain. The sky was blue, the day warm – very warm, given they were at the latitude of Valhalla, of Datum Chicago, so they were told.

Surely it was just another world, in the great stepwise necklace of worlds that was the Long Earth.

‘This could be anywhere,’ Rocky said.

‘No church,’ Stan murmured.

Rocky looked again; he was right. ‘What about it?’

‘Every other place you go. Every human place. There’s a church, or a mosque, or a synagogue, or a temple. And no town hall either. Humans always build town halls. Americans anyhow.’

Rocky shrugged. ‘Maybe the Next just don’t like town halls.’

‘Or clothes? …’

A small group of people came by, a variety of ages; evidently they’d been down to that river, swimming, fishing maybe, and now were on their way back into town, for their skin was glistening wet. And they were showing a lot of that skin. They wore variants of moccasins on their feet, and belts hung with tools, twine and other oddments. Not much else. And no adornments, Rocky managed to notice as he stared, no jewellery or pendants; even their hair was cut neatly but with no sense of styling.

When they saw the boys staring, the group, young men and women alike, shared bursts of quicktalk, and turned away, laughing.

Marvin was gri

‘I seriously doubt that,’ Rocky said.

The little group of travellers broke up. As Roberta and Jules made off for destinations of their own, Marvin led the boys to a small house on the outskirts of the township. ‘This is a place I share with a few others. It’s not mine. You’ll get the idea, we don’t really own stuff here. I’ll go bunk down elsewhere for now. You’re going to need a private space, time alone. Time to decompress. You especially, Rocky.’

‘I can see that.’

‘But you too, Stan, you’ll have a lot to take in. There’s food in there. Dried meat, fruit, coffee. Go to the river for water, it’s clean. You can build a fire. There’s blankets, clothes that ought to fit if you need them. By which I mean, cover-up clothes like you’re used to. You’re in Rome, but you don’t need to do as the Romans do. Get some rest. I’ll come by in the morning.’ He glanced at them. ‘You won’t be disturbed. People will leave you alone.’

Rocky said, ‘Why? Good ma

Stan cocked an eyebrow at him. ‘Not that. You don’t pat the head of a stray dog, do you?’

Marvin said tiredly, ‘Make up your own mind. See you in the morning. Oh, one thing. I wouldn’t recommend trying to step away. The only way out of here is via soft places. The worlds to either stepwise side are much less hospitable …’

The cabin turned out to be cramped, functional, neat, clean, with no decoration whatsoever. Stan dumped his bag, and went straight out ‘to explore’, he said. He didn’t pause to ask if Rocky wanted to come.

Rocky set the fire, put on some coffee, unpacked his own bag, laying out his stuff. He found the routine comforting.

He made one trip out of the cabin, to fetch water from the river in a couple of pails. He came across another group of people in the water, in the warmth of evening, a little further downstream. Laughing, playing, they could have been kids ski

Back in the cabin he made up a bed from a heap of blankets and turned in early. He didn’t expect to sleep well. He dug out his e-reader, a precious item brought out of the Datum by his parents when they’d first moved out to West 4, and, by candlelight, flicked through some comics.

He was surprised to find himself being shaken awake by Stan. Suddenly it was morning.

Stan asked, ‘You OK?’

‘I slept like a baby, I guess. You?’

‘Me too.’ Stan shrugged. ‘I think maybe they put something in the food.’

‘I didn’t eat any food.’

‘Or the coffee. Something to keep us savage apes quiet.’ He looked restless. ‘Listen, let’s get cleaned up. I bet you Roberta’s here any minute.’

Rocky was just putting his e-reader outside the cabin door, to allow it to charge up through its small solar panel, when Roberta did indeed show up. To Rocky’s relief, though she was dressed much as had been the people he’d encountered yesterday, she at least wasn’t showing much flesh, wearing a kind of shift under a loose sleeveless jacket full of pockets.

She smiled. ‘Ready? Good morning, boys. Come on, let’s walk.’

Rocky asked, ‘Where are we going?’

‘Well, I want to give you a flavour of how we live here. I thought we’d start at the school.’

Stan shrugged, indifferent, as he closed the cabin door behind him.

As they walked she went on, ‘Lesson one, by the way. We dress for practicality, not for show. This jacket I’m wearing, as you’ll see, does feature arguably the single most useful invention human beings ever came up with: pockets. Otherwise we wear only what we need, what is comfortable, generally as little as possible. You can tell we don’t go much for surface appearances.’

Stan gri

‘Not quite that,’ Roberta said patiently enough. ‘Sex is very important to us. It binds us together, just as it did our ancestors. We’re just not – obsessed by it. It’s the way a child’s behaviour may be controlled by mild hunger, say, which an adult can easily put aside. Besides, there is a different balance in the Next cortex, it seems, away from shallow visual stimuli towards an appreciation of the deeper content. Looking doesn’t excite us so much. There are downsides. We don’t appreciate visual art, as you do. We understand it – we just aren’t moved by it.’

That shocked Rocky, and he thought of the comics on his e-reader. ‘You have no art?’

‘Not visual art, not primarily. Nor do we appreciate fiction – story-telling. We seem to lack the capacity to immerse ourselves in the imaginary.’

Stan gri

‘If you wish. We do appreciate music – especially elegant, structured, mathematical music. But we do have bodies, you know. We dance, we sing; we need that. And you don’t play a Bach fugue at a line dance.’

Rocky said pragmatically, ‘Well, you can only get away with dressing like that if you’ve got the climate for it.’

‘That’s true, and we do have the climate here. Which is why those who live here chose it, a world of this particular band, this temperate, seasonless location.’