The kobold was a humanoid, evidently a relative of mankind whose ancestors had split off the main line about the time some uppity chimp had figured out that banging two rocks together was a good idea. Like other humanoids such as elves and trolls, the kobolds had evolved out there in the Long Earth. Unlike most of their cousins, however, the kobolds had continued to have some contact with humanity, and that had shaped them. They fed off scraps of human culture. They were more like magpies or jackdaws than human traders, it was said: more like kids swapping cards and game tokens in a playground, than like merchants working for profit. Yet people traded with them. And some of the kobolds, at least, were brave enough to come venturing deep into the Low Earths.

But something had gone wrong for this one. Maybe he’d said the wrong thing, made a bad trade. Maybe he’d just come up against another Alexei, Rocky thought, somebody bored by the lack of work and looking for a bit of fun, a diversion.

The mood still seemed playful enough. But Rocky saw a couple of young people, a man and a woman in the green uniform of Arbiters, move forward, evidently in anticipation of trouble.

Now one guy snatched the sash with the trade goods off the kobold’s shoulder, draped it over his own, and paraded around, drawing laughs and catcalls from his buddies.

The kobold was mortified, and tried to grab the sash back. ‘Mmmine mine mine … C-cruel to poor Bob-Bob-mm … Mm-mine …’

The guy who’d robbed him faced him. ‘Muh-muh-mine, Bob-Bob-Bob? Who says so?’

‘Mm-mine … I tr-rrade … You want? Look, pretty mm-mirror, pretty jewel-ss …’

The guy held the sash out of the kobold’s reach. ‘Ooh, look at me, I’m Bob-Bob-Bob-Bob-Bob-Bob … Hey, Fred, what do you think? Maybe LETC should employ this guy.’

‘Yeah, Mario, he’s smarter than Jim Russo.’

‘You’d make a damn fine CFO, Bob-Bob-Bob …’

And there was Stan, right in the middle of it all, just where Rocky knew he would be.

‘Give that back.’ Stan strode up to the worker, Mario, grabbed back the sash, and handed it to the kobold, who clutched it tight to his chest. Now Stan faced Mario. ‘What are you doing here?’ Stan turned to the crowd, whose noise was subsiding into a kind of confusion. ‘What the hell are you doing, all of you?’

‘Rocky.’ Martha Berg was at Rocky’s shoulder. Stan’s mother was about forty, prematurely greying, careworn, wearing her own LETC coverall. ‘I heard the commotion. I just knew it was Stan, I knew it.’

‘You should have seen the poker game.’

‘What poker game?’

‘Never mind.’

‘We have to get him out of there.’

Rocky feared she was right. But he also feared the consequences if they tried. ‘Maybe it will blow over.’

‘It doesn’t look like it,’ she said wearily.

Now Mario, who was twice Stan’s size, shoved Stan’s shoulder. ‘What’s your problem, you little snot? We wasn’t hurting him. Just a slap to keep him here. A little fun, that’s all.’

‘He’s just a damn kobold,’ somebody called from the crowd.

Stan turned that way, fiery. ‘Who said that? Just a kobold? He’s not as smart as you are, so it’s OK to pick on him, right?’

‘No kobold is as smart as a human, dipstick.’

‘Sure. So suppose somebody came along who was as categorically smarter than you, as you’re smarter than Bob-Bob here. Would you say it was right for that person to humiliate you? Would you?’ He faced Mario again. ‘Here. Use me.’

‘Huh?’

‘I’m evidently not as smart as you either. Otherwise I wouldn’t have walked into the middle of this, would I? So, go ahead. You’ve the right, according to you. What do you want to do, trip me up, strip me naked? Beat me to death?’ He turned to the crowd. ‘Come on – all of you, anyone. Who’s going to be the first?’

For about one second, Rocky observed, his moral authority held, one slim young man facing the burly worker, and the crowd of his buddies. For one second Rocky thought he might get away with this.

And then a lump of concrete came whirling in from the crowd, missing Stan’s head by inches. ‘Get the little prick!’

There was a roar, and everybody seemed to surge forward.

Rocky lost sight of Martha, and was swept forward with the rest. But he started to fight back, shoving and pushing his way towards Stan.

And suddenly those two Arbiters were at his side, flanking him, using their shoulders in a coordinated effort to bring him through the crush. In a moment they were over Stan, who was on the ground, having evidently taken a couple of punches, but grinning up at them.

The female Arbiter said to Rocky, ‘You’re his friend?’

‘Yeah—’

‘Get him out of here.’

Rocky reached down and grabbed Stan’s hand.

But Stan, still grinning, said, ‘Leave it to me.’

And for Rocky the world fell away – the sunlight, the pressing crowd, the smell of dust and wet concrete, as if he’d tumbled down a rabbit hole – as Stan dragged him stepwise.

13

RESPONDING TO ROBERTA Golding’s summons, the four Next met in a farmhouse in another footprint of Miami, only a few worlds away from the LETC construction site. The house was just a few decades old yet long abandoned, and the marsh had already reclaimed the ground the vanished pioneers had roughly cleared. For Roberta Golding, at least it offered a welcome relief from the intensity of the sun.

Nobody knew they were here. The Next hid away, in the worlds of dim-bulb humanity.

They were due for a regular update meeting anyhow, which was why Roberta was in this part of the Long Earth, far from the Grange. But after the incident at the Bootstrap site with Stan Berg and the kobold, Melinda Bennett had requested an earlier session. Melinda was one of the two Arbiters who had come to the aid of Stan Berg and Rocky Lewis; the other, here too in his sweat-stained green uniform, was called Gerd Schulze.

The fourth person here today was Marvin Lovelace, the card sharp.

Marvin spoke first. ‘He’s obviously a candidate. The boy Stan Berg. Without even trying he was five, six, seven steps ahead of those construction workers in the game. With poker you need emotional intelligence, of course, you need to be able to read people. It was as if they were showing him their hands …’

He spoke in English, not quicktalk. They all did here. On Low Earths, the crowded worlds close to the Datum, there was always a chance of some kind of eavesdropping. Even in a property like this, apparently abandoned, there could be a low-power cam left running by some opportunistic peeping tom, for instance. It was frustrating to talk so slowly, as if they were spelling out words with a baby’s lettered wooden blocks. But they had to communicate somehow; they had to take a chance.

Gerd said now, ‘He has emotional intelligence, maybe, but not maturity. He put himself at risk by charging into that crowd of bozos around the kobold.’

Roberta took off her spectacles and rubbed tired eyes. She was over thirty years old now; even among the Next, she reflected, maybe age was necessary for true wisdom. She remembered very well her own adolescence. She’d been only a little younger than Stan when she’d travelled on a Chinese twain into the far Long Earth, with all its wonders and horrors. Unable to look away – unable not to understand – she had cried herself to sleep, most nights. ‘Are you mocking him, Gerd? Berg’s instinct, however uneducated, may be better than yours. What was it you called the others – “bozos”?’

Marvin folded his arms. ‘I reckon he was bluffing. Like in his poker. I think he knew he’d be saved.’

Melinda asked, ‘Who by? Us?’

Marvin said, ‘It’s possible. Maybe he’s guessed the true nature of the Arbiters – or at least has some unconscious suspicion about you.’ The Arbiters, a purely voluntary force recruited from amongst themselves by the Next, worked to keep the peace on the Low Earths, in the general absence of police support after the post-Yellowstone implosion of Datum America. ‘I sometimes think you’re a bit too obvious, you guys in your green uniforms, wandering around the dim-bulb worlds, sorting things out.’