Joshua Valienté was always sceptical about Bill Chambers’s Joker stories. But, he would realize in retrospect, if he’d paid more attention and thought a little more deeply about what Bill was saying, he might have got some earlier clues into the meaning of it all. Such as what Bill told him in 2040 – the same year Stan Berg was born – as he travelled with Joshua in an airship into the High Meggers far beyond New Springfield, a story about a Joker he called the Cueball:
Joshua had actually glimpsed this Joker himself. He and Lobsang had in fact discovered it, nestling in that band of relatively domesticated worlds called the Corn Belt, on their first journey out into the deep Long Earth, during which Joshua had first learned the meaning of the word. ‘Jokers,’ Lobsang had said. ‘Worlds that don’t fit the pattern. And there is a pattern, generally speaking. But the broad patterns are broken up by these exceptions: Jokers in the pack, as scholars of the Long Earth call them …’ Joshua already knew many such worlds, even if he’d had no name for the category. This Joker had been a world like a pool ball, an utterly smooth, colourless ground under a cloudless deep blue sky.
But even though he’d seen the place for himself Joshua knew better than to take Bill’s stories at face value. Bill Chambers, about Joshua’s age, had grown up alongside him at the Home in Madison, Wisconsin. He’d been a friend, a rival, a source of trouble – and always a consummate liar.
Bill said now, ‘I know a fella who knew a fella—’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Who camped out on the Cueball for a bet. Just for a night. All alone. As you would. In the nip too, that was part of the bet.’
‘Sure.’
‘In the morning he woke up with a hangover from hell. Drinking alone, never wise. Now this fella was a natural stepper. So he got his stuff together in a blind daze, and stepped, but he says he sort of stumbled as he stepped.’
‘Stumbled?’
‘He didn’t feel as if he’d stepped the right way.’
‘What? How’s that possible? What do you mean?’
‘Well, we step East, or we step West, don’t we? You have the soft places, the short cuts, if you can find them, but that’s pretty much it …’
Stepping: on Step Day the world had pivoted around mankind. Suddenly, in return for the effort of building a Stepper box, a crude electrical gadget – and some, like Joshua, didn’t even need that – you could step sideways out of the old reality, out of the world and into another, just like the original yet choked with uncleared forest and replete with wild animals – for it was only in the original Earth that mankind had evolved, and had had a chance to shape its world. Whole planets, a short walk away. And, in either direction, East or West, you could take another step, and another. If there was an end to the Long Earth, as the chain of worlds became known, it was yet to be found. After Step Day everything had been different, for mankind, for the Long Earth itself – and, in particular, for Joshua Valienté.
But even the Long Earth had its rules. Or so Joshua had always thought.
‘… Anyhow this fella felt like he’d stepped a different way. Perpendicular. Like he’d stepped North.’
‘And?’
‘And he emerged on to some kind of other world. It was night, not day. No stars in the clear sky. No stars, sort of. Instead …’
‘Your storytelling style really grates sometimes, Bill.’
‘But I’ve got ye hooked, haven’t I?’
‘Get on with it. What did he see?’
‘He saw all the stars. All of them. He saw the whole fecking Galaxy, man, the Milky Way. From outside.’
Outside the Galaxy. Thousands of light years from Earth – from any Earth …
Bill said, ‘Still in the nip he was, too.’
That was the trouble with combers, Joshua had concluded. They were just expert bullshitters. Maybe they spent too much time alone.
But, he realized, reflecting in February 2052, he’d tended to think even of Lobsang as a bullshitter, albeit a shitter built on a truly cosmic scale. If only he’d listened to Lobsang when he’d had the chance.
Now it was too late, for Lobsang was dead.
Joshua had been there when it had happened, in the late fall of 2045:
He and Sally Linsay had waited by the door of the Home in Madison West 5. It was early evening, and streetlights sparked.
Sally was in her travelling gear, her multi-pocketed fisherman’s jacket under a waterproof coverall, a light leather pack on her back. As usual, she looked like she was going to light out of here at any moment. And the longer the Sisters took to answer the damn door, the more likely that became.
‘Look,’ Joshua said, trying to forestall her, ‘just take it easy. Say hello. Everybody here wants to see you, to say thank you for what you did for the Next. Busting those super-smart kids out of the Pearl Harbor facility—’
‘You know me, Joshua. These Low Earths are mob scenes nowadays. And places like this. This Home, where they lock you up for your own good. I don’t care how happy or otherwise you were here, Joshua, with those penguins.’
‘Don’t call them penguins.’
‘As soon as we’re done I’m going to get blind drunk, as fast as possible—’
‘Then you’ll need something stronger than our sweet sherry.’ Sister John had quietly opened the door; now she smiled. ‘Come on in.’