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 grinned at that. ‘I think she’s telling you that the Next don’t get horny in the presence of skin.’
‘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 grinned. ‘I think she’s being polite, Rocky. She doesn’t “lack the capacity” to do anything. She means, you humans “lack the capacity” to resist the hypnotic wiles of a story-teller.’
‘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.’
Rocky frowned. ‘You say, “those who live here”. Don’t you live here?’
‘Not me, sadly. I grew up in human communities. I’m drawn back there, for better or worse. And that’s where I’m valuable, where my vocation lies, as a sort of interface. A bridge.’ She smiled. ‘You’re probably too young to remember. Once I worked in the White House, as an adviser to the President. But this is home for me. The only place I’m truly safe, for one thing.’
Stan looked around. ‘I see grass. A few wildflowers. Those trees, in the distance. No animals yet.’
‘You’re thinking you could work out where you are in the Long Earth by classifying the flora and fauna? Don’t be fooled.’
Rocky said, ‘What is this, a Joker?’
Stan shook his head. ‘I think she’s saying they engineered it. This location, somehow. Imported samples of different biotas. Something like that?’
Roberta shrugged away the question. ‘That’s all irrelevant.’
They passed a party digging out what looked like a drainage ditch, down towards the river. Grimy, sweating, working hard: at first Rocky had the uncomfortable idea that these might be humans – ordinary people, like him – somehow pressed into labouring for these superhumans with their semi-nudity and their lofty taste in music. But as they passed he heard snatches of quicktalk.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Roberta said. ‘How does the work get done? In a town full of geniuses, who decides who sweeps the street or empties the cess pit?’
‘No,’ Stan said. ‘You just do it. No mystery.’
Rocky frowned. ‘Well, it’s a mystery to me.’
Roberta said, ‘I think Stan understands this, intuitively. We just get it done. When we see a problem, such as the allocation of basic work, we see further than you; we see all the way to a solution, immediately. The work must be done – this ditch must be dug. Some are better equipped for such work. There can be no argument about that. And then that necessary solution mandates our necessary actions. The only discussion is the immediately practicaclass="underline" is it to be my turn today, or yours? Do you see?
‘Newcomers often ask about our governance systems. Do we have councils, leaders? Mayors, presidents, kings? We are still few enough that most of us can gather in one place to discuss significant issues. Again, the solution to a problem is usually obvious to all, the actions circumscribed by necessity. We run our affairs based on reason, you see, rather than opinion. That is, not on guesses based on too few facts. It is only loftier questions of philosophy, if you like, that divide us, where the goals are not clear, even not easily formulated.’
Rocky felt like defending his own kind – if he really was a different kind from these aloof characters. ‘People must cheat. You must have crooks.’
‘Of course they do,’ Stan said. ‘Game theory mandates it. No matter what system you have, a small proportion of cheats can always prosper.’
Roberta said, ‘We tolerate the cheats. Few succeed, actually. Remember that each of us can see the other’s moves clearly – it is as if you tried to cheat in a game open to all the players, like chess. It’s possible, but very difficult. And if an individual’s actions become excessive, social pressure is usually enough to correct the situation. We do have criminals, Rocky – only a handful, our numbers are small. We call them “ill”, and treat them accordingly.’
Stan said, ‘Maybe. But the very first Next individual most people heard of back on the Datum was called David. He was a criminal. Hijacked a military twain, killed most of the crew, got rescued by another twain, tried again. Next criminals are attracted to the human worlds, are they, Roberta?’
‘We are aware of such issues, and deal with them—’
‘Is it possible that the only Next that humans encounter out there in their own worlds are all criminals or insane?’
Rocky thought Roberta kept her temper remarkably well, after days of travelling with Stan, of goading like this. Maybe that was an authentic sign of superior intellect.
She said, ‘You should not rush to judgement. Now, the school …’
The ‘school’ was centred on a small building, but most of the teaching seemed to be done in the open air – if you could call it teaching.
Out in a yard fenced off by a rope, there were maybe thirty kids, Rocky thought, of all ages from toddlers up to fourteen or fifteen. They sat in groups talking, or they played at games, running, counting, clapping. Some laboured at what looked like actual school work, writing, assembling puzzles, working with tablets – no drawing, he noticed. All of this was laced by their usual high-speed quicktalk, a sound that merged into a kind of white noise for Rocky. The few adults here moved amongst the children, watching, listening, sometimes quietly talking among themselves, a few making notes on pads and tablets.