The Long Utopia

‘No. And meanwhile those steppers who remained close to the Datum would have been secretive. Surely the lesson of what became of the Knights of Discorporea wouldn’t have been lost. But no secret is easy to keep.’ He let that hang.

Joshua sighed. ‘Don’t tease me, Nelson. You’ve found a few stories, haven’t you?’

‘Not all of it conclusive. For instance – have you heard of the Angel of Mons?’

‘No. Should I?’

‘Maybe not. The Great War, 1914. British soldiers in the trenches spread stories of mysterious figures who would appear and vanish again, helping the wounded. Some said they were the ghosts of English archers from the Battle of Agincourt, centuries earlier.’

‘Hmm. Whereas in fact they were my great-great-uncles?’

‘That’s the idea.’ He opened a notebook and checked an entry. ‘The official line is that it all came from a bit of fiction by a Welsh writer called Arthur Machen. Which was a very effective cover-up, for the time. In the 1940s, during the next war, I believe there must have been steppers aiding elements of the Home Guard, the volunteer army who were preparing to resist a Nazi invasion of England. I saw a version of a memoir by Tom Witringham, from which some pages had been excised – Witringham set up guerrilla-war training for selected Home Guard units. There could easily have been useful refuges in the stepwise worlds, resistance hideouts, caches of food, explosives, you name it – everything but guns and ammo because of the steel …’

The story went on, in Britain at least reflecting the changing concerns of national history.

‘In the 1950s, Cold War spies. James Bond with a step ability, Joshua! In the 1970s, it looks as if they were infiltrating the unions and the IRA—’

‘This all seems very virtuous.’

‘Oh, I’ve no doubt there was the usual streak of jewel thieves, peeping toms and other rascals. With time I may be able to pin down more from police records. And this is only the British co

36

SALLY WAS HUNCHED over her bronze rifle, peering down at the farmhouse. ‘I know some of this. My father was never a stepper himself. But he married into a family of steppers.’

‘I remember how you told me that as a kid you used to take your father over into stepwise Wyoming, where he had his workshop. Nelson said your mother came from an Irish offshoot of the Hackett clan.’

‘My father loved my mother. I guess he still does love her memory, for all his other faults. And he was fascinated by stepping, even though he was no stepper himself. He studied the phenomenon scientifically, eventually dreamed up the Stepper box. But he hated my mother’s family – the “old-country clan”, he called them – with their letters and phone calls. You see, before she met my father, there had been some family pressure on my mother to “marry the right sort”. I always thought it was to do with money. Well, that was the story they told us kids at the time. I never knew different, until now. Never knew they were breeding steppers. My father never told me. Even though we went all the way to Mars and back together! I suppose it never occurred to him to confide in me. Knowing him, it wouldn’t.’

‘I never heard from any Fund when I was growing up,’ Joshua said. ‘I suppose the Sisters would have kept them away from me, even if they found me. And they never put pressure on you?’

‘They may have tried, but if so they could never find me. I stepped away from Datum Madison a year after Step Day, and I never came back again. Not long enough to be tracked down by that shadowy coven, anyhow. Of course my father got his revenge on them, with Step Day. After that almost anybody could step, with a Stepper box costing a few bucks, and that blew their nasty little conspiracy wide open.’ She looked at him sharply. ‘Anyhow, what about your father? Did Nelson find him in the end? That was the point of the exercise.’

He took a breath. ‘Yes, Nelson found him, Sally. Through the Fund’s records. He’s in a retirement home in New York, West 5. Originally from the Bronx – he’s Irish American.’

‘Heart-warming. Less of the stalling, Valienté. Spill the beans.’

‘He’s – ordinary. He’s called Freddie. Freddie Burdon. You know I grew up using my mother’s name. Of course the Home had no records of my father.’

‘Burdon. Another genetic legacy of the Discorporea days, then.’

‘Yes, but he never stepped, not before Step Day. I guess he carried the gene, though. He’s seventy-four years old now; he was only eighteen when I was born – seventeen when I was conceived. Just a kid, for God’s sake …’

37

‘OF COURSE I remember your mother.’ Freddie Burdon had a broad Bronx accent. Ya madd-ah. ‘Of course I remember Maria. Who wouldn’t? Whaddya think I am, a monster? …’ And his speech broke up into coughing.

He looked older than his age, Joshua thought. Old, shrunken over an imploded chest, face angular and bony. He was like a sick bird. His skin tones were grey. Even his clothes, a worn jacket and trousers, looked grey, as if stained with ash. He claimed that his emphysema was a legacy of heroic volunteer work he’d done in the aftermath of Yellowstone, helping the victims escape, even though he’d already been in his fifties then. Joshua suspected that was bullshit, that smoking had done the damage; even now Freddie’s fingers were stained nicotine yellow.

They were in a charity home, a big boxy construction of timber and concrete typical of a Low Earth footprint city. Outside, the air of this version of Brooklyn was faintly smoggy, like a memory of how its Datum parent had once been.

Freddie looked dwarfed, out of place and out of time. He was lucky, Joshua thought, to have finished up in a refuge like this. Joshua made a silent resolution to pump some money into the place, but out of his father’s sight, and out of his reach.

Freddie, Joshua learned, had trained as an electrician but had never got a qualification. He’d drifted from job to job, spiralling down as he’d aged. He’d never had family – not after Maria – and had never accumulated money.

‘Of course I remember Maria,’ Freddie said again. ‘Look, I was no stepper. Even with a box, when I tried it, I puked my guts up. But I had the genes – didn’t I? And so did your mother. And look what we made.’ He coughed again, but gri

‘How did you find my mother?’

‘Well, they sent me the name, an address.’

‘“They”?’

‘A bunch of bankers representing the families. The Fund, you know. And there was a cheque inside that first letter, with a promise of more if I went to see her, if we got to know each other, if we married, if we had a kid. A regular instalment plan. But it wasn’t, you know, compulsory. Just a kind of suggestion. And the money wasn’t that much, looking back. If I’d ever had any money I probably would have turned it down.’

‘But you had no money.’

Freddie gri

‘She’d run away.’

‘Yeah.’ He coughed, hawked, and spat into a handkerchief. ‘She’d had some version of the same letter. Wasn’t happy at home anyhow, and now there was this pressure to hook up with some stranger. Only fourteen. Well, I tracked her down.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘See, I’m no stepping superhero like you, but I had a brain on me then. She was in this home for kids—’