The Long Earth

tangles that must be the remains of reinforced-concrete structures. Dust, dry as hell, choked him immediately. The battered airship hung blindly over these ruins.
    Somebody was standing before them. Some guy in a coverall suit, no, a woman, Joshua realized, seeing her face through a dusty visor.
    ‘We’re here to meet steppers,’ she said, her voice a relay from a speaker. ‘Get out of here. Go straight back.’
    Alarmed, shocked, Joshua and Sally stepped hand in hand back to West 1, taking the airship with them. Here, in the bright sunlight, another young woman in a FEMA uniform approached them with a clipboard and data pad. She looked up at the airship, shook her head in disbelief, and said reproachfully, ‘You’re going to have to go through decon. We do post warnings in the neighbouring worlds. Hey, you can’t catch everybody. Don’t worry, you’ve broken no law. I’ll need your names and social security numbers …’ She started to peck at her pad.
    Joshua began to take in the surroundings. This parallel Madison was crowded, compared with the last time he was here. Tent cities, feeding hospitals, feeding stations. A refugee camp.
    Sally said bitterly, ‘Here we are in the land of plenty, with everything anybody could ever want, multiplied a million times over. Nevertheless somebody wants to start a war. What a piece of work is a man.’
    ‘But,’ Joshua said, ‘you can’t start a war if nobody turns up. Listen, I need to get to the Home. Or where the Home would be …’
    The FEMA official’s phone rang, at her waist. She looked at the screen, seemed puzzled, and glanced at Joshua. ‘Are you Joshua Valienté?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘It’s for you.’ She handed him the phone. ‘Go ahead, Mr Lobsang.’

Acknowledgements
    We chose to use Madison, Wisconsin as a location in this novel partly because as we were developing the book it occurred to us that in July 2011 the second North American Discworld convention was to be held there, and we could get a hell of a lot of research done, as we authors like to say, on the cheap. That convention became in part a kind of mass workshop on the Long Earth. We’re grateful to all the contributors to that discussion, who really are far too numerous to list here, but particularly to Dr Christopher Pagel, owner of the Companion Animal Hospital in Madison, and his wife Juliet Pagel, who gave up an unreasonable amount of their time to show your authors Madison both primeval and modern, from the Arboretum to Willy Street, and on top of that made an incredibly helpful read-through of a draft of this book. Thank you Madisonians, and we hereby apologize for what we have done to your lovely city. All errors and inaccuracies are of course our sole responsibility. Our thanks also to Charles Manson, the Tibetan Subject Librarian at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, for helping us build Lobsang’s world.
    T.P.
S.B.
December 2011, Datum Earth

About the Authors
    Author of the bestselling Discworld series, Terry Pratchett is one of the UK’s most popular – and bestselling – writers. His books have sold over 70 million copies worldwide and been translated into nearly 40 languages. He is the winner of multiple prizes, including the Carnegie Medal, as well as being awarded a knighthood for services to literature. He lives in Wiltshire.
    Visit www.terrypratchett.co.uk to discover everything you need to know about Terry Pratchett and his writing, plus all manner of other things you may find interesting, such as videos, competitions, character profiles and games.
    Stephen Baxter is one of the UK’s most acclaimed writers of science fiction and a multi-award winner. His many books include the classic
Xeelee
sequence,
A Time Odyssey
novels (written with Arthur C. Clarke) and
The Time Ships
, a sequel to H. G. Wells’s
The Time Machine
. He lives in Northumberland.
    More details of Stephen Baxter’s works can be found on www.stephen-baxter.com

ALSO BY TERRY PRATCHETT
    The Discworld® series
    1. THE COLOUR OF MAGIC
    2. THE LIGHT FANTASTIC
    3. EQUAL RITES
    4. MORT
    5. SOURCERY
    6. WYRD SISTERS
    7. PYRAMIDS
    8. GUARDS! GUARDS!
    9. ERIC (illustrated by Josh Kirby)
    10. MOVING PICTURES
    11. REAPER MAN
    12. WITCHES ABROAD
    13. SMALL GODS
    14. LORDS AND LADIES
    15. MEN AT ARMS
    16. SOUL MUSIC
    17. INTERESTING TIMES
    18. MASKERADE
    19. FEET OF CLAY
    20. HOGFATHER
    21. JINGO
    22. THE LAST CONTINENT
    23. CARPE JUGULUM
    24. THE FIFTH ELEPHANT
    25. THE TRUTH
    26. THIEF OF TIME
    27. THE LAST