‘That’s the idea. So what do you think?’
Burdon said softly, ‘You’ve always thought big, “Foyle”. All the way back to the days of Albert and his Knights. But this is a stretch, even for you. To manipulate the generations – to try to shape the future, centuries ahead—’
Luis tried to take all this in. ‘To change the very flavour of mankind itself. What arrogance, sir!’
Hackett flared, ‘Arrogance? But what is the choice? To leave our descendants unprotected, to be picked off for their magical ability by these – others? An ability with the capacity for so much good – have you forgotten the Underground Rail Road?’ He tapped the cloth-bound cover of the novel. ‘And besides, as this tome shows us, the future will shape mankind willy-nilly if we don’t, like it or not.
‘But the oneness of humanity will be gone, it’s true. “We are living at a period of the most wonderful transition, one which tends rapidly to accomplish that great end to which all history points – I mean, of course, the realization of the unity of mankind.”’ He studied their faces. ‘You recognize that quote?’
‘Albert,’ Luis said. ‘I bought his Golden Precepts after his death.’
‘Well, that fine dream is bogus. The coming war with Germany, and it’s inevitable, you know, will see to that. But after the flags are folded there will be a deeper divergence than any between nations. For we, we humans, will become two kinds, at least – d’ye see? There’ll be the old sort, Radcliffe and his crew, Homo sapiens sedentarius. And then among ’em will arise the new sort, us – Homo sapiens transversus. That’s the best I can do with my schoolboy Latin; let Darwin’s successors sort it out. And in a century or two, if we do this, our new kind will flood this good Earth – and those green forest worlds into which we Waltz, I dare say. And then, who knows what the future will hold? Eh? What’s it to be? It’s that or the subjugation we saw with poor Abel on the Mississippi. Subjugation, or glory.’ He studied their faces, a very old man, determined, intent. ‘Are you with me? Are you?’
35
‘YOU CAN GUESS the rest,’ Nelson told Joshua, deep in the hidden basement of the Royal Society, both of them huddled in the cold over Luis’s handwritten journal. ‘Hackett’s programme of inbreeding worked, and very quickly.
‘Within decades there was an explosion of natural steppers in the human population. That’s what I infer from the available evidence anyhow. Surely many of those steppers disappeared into the Long Earth, lost to some accident or other – or just seeking places to hide. It would have been interesting to study Happy Landings, before it was destroyed. See if there was any upsurge in the number of drifters turning up there.’
Joshua thought back. That remote colony, ultimately the source of the genetic upgrading that resulted in the emergence of the Next, had been a kind of natural sink of steppers, a well that all the soft places led to. ‘Yeah. I do remember folk from there saying that in recent times they had come under more pressure. Too many people coming in, the ancient balance with their troll population lost. But it wasn’t the kind of place to keep proper records, was it?’
‘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 connection – well, the whole inbreeding conspiracy did start here – but clearly there were elements overseas too, especially in America. We know that from what you’ve told me of Sally Linsay’s family history …’
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.’