The Long Cosmos by Terry Pratchett Page B

elderly couples sitting in silence together, dressed in the out-of-date and impractical pre-Yellowstone Datum Earth styles that had recently become a badge of disposable wealth – but it was their money that mostly kept this twain service in the air. In a corner sat a party of early-teens students with harassed teachers, probably on some kind of expensive ecology field trip out of a Low Earth college. A few more earnest types, young adults, busily made notes and took images on tablets, even as the twain sailed over the golf courses and lakeside saunas. And Nelson and Agnes, the most enigmatic of all if anybody knew their personal stories, were receiving no attention at all.
    â€˜You’re right, of course. Nobody sees anybody else.’
    She twinkled. ‘And nobody in all the Low Earths knows you have a secret grandson, Nelson. Nobody but me and Lobsang.’
    His heart thumped, even now, months after he’d had that mysterious automated phone call with its extraordinary news.
    The shadow of the twain crossed a clump of forest and startled a small herd of what looked like deer. Surprising to see them so close to the resort, Nelson thought; maybe they were learning to scavenge garbage. Another subtle modification of animal behaviour by humanity.
    And here he was thinking about anything except his unexpected new family. A grandson . . .
    Then the twain began to step.
    The deer were whisked out of existence, the splash of concrete and glass that was the resort obliterated, to be replaced by lakes and virgin forest. And then it changed again. And again and again, a rippling of worlds that were soon passing at a rate of one a second or so, about the pace of a human heartbeat. The basic shape of the landscape endured: the river beside which the resort had been established, the contours of the hills of this remote footprint of southern England. But everything else was evanescent, even the trees, the clumping of the pines, the distribution of the grassy plains between them. After a dozen steps they passed out of sunshine into a world where a storm briefly battered the windows – and then out again, blink and it was gone, like a dip of lights powered by a faulty post-Yellowstone power grid.
    Agnes sighed, and pressed a finger to her temple.
    â€˜Are you all right, Agnes? I’m no stepper myself, but there are medications, at least for an old-fashioned meat human like me. For you—’
    â€˜Oh, I’m fine. I’m no Joshua, but I could always step well enough with a box, when I needed to. And when Lobsang, ah, restored me, like some bit of old furniture he’d found in a dumpster, I found I’d become some kind of super-stepping steely-eyed android. But I never enjoyed stepping very much.’ She glanced at him. ‘After all, what was the point? Everything I cared about, the people, it was all right where I was – at home. Although of course stepping can be good for the conscience, can’t it? Which, I believe, is the idea behind this travel service you’ve helped set up.’
    â€˜The Buckland ? Yes, I suppose it was my idea, once I learned of the existence of the Twenty-Twenty centre, although I’m a small player in the commercial operation that came out of it . . . Have you noticed how worlds with neat round numbers always attract the big-money facilities? Especially golf courses. I wish I’d thought of that on Step Day and bought up some property! And it did appeal to the founders of Twenty-Twenty to run nature tours out of their resort.
    â€˜Everybody talks about Joshua and his adventures, and the romance of the High Meggers, the very remote worlds. I’m no great stepper either, Agnes. And besides, I’ve always been drawn more to the nearby worlds: what they call the Ice Belt, worlds that are more or less like the Datum, more than thirty thousand of them to both East and West – I’m drawn to them precisely because they are like the