The Long War

18

THE CREW OF the Benjamin Franklin did take seriously their mandate to project the authority of the US Datum government across the Long Earth. It wasn’t all about saving kittens stuck up trees, as Maggie told her crew.

Which was why the twain made an unannounced stop at a town called Reboot, Earth West 101,754, in a stepwise New York State.

A small group led by Executive Officer Nathan Boss – a rare jaunt for him away from his desk – were landed from the twain in a kind of clearing of trampled-down mud, beside a spidery trail that ran up from the coast of the local copy of the Atlantic. Nathan had seen the layout for himself clearly from the air, aboard the Franklin. The town itself was out of sight but a short walk away, cut into the green of the crowding forest: neat little fields and houses with smoke rising up, all connected by wide dirt tracks.

This was one of the first of what Captain Kauffman was calling their ‘hearts and minds’ assignments. They would turn up unannounced at a community on some world like this, in order to make themselves and their mission known, and, well, to gently remind these colonial Americans that they were still Americans . . . This early in the mission they were still finding their way. So was Nathan Boss, his first time in charge of a ground team.

And in this case the logistics were surprisingly complicated. This town and its stepwise neighbours were linked in a kind of extended Long Earth ‘county’. So the Franklin was hopping between the worlds, visiting one community after another, dropping equipment and setting down groups of sailors and marines at each of those neighbours.

There were lots of ways such an operation could go wrong, as Nathan was all too well aware.

Add to that the fact that the worlds of the Long Earth were themselves somewhat bewildering, for the twain’s mostly Datum-born crew. As the Navy guys waited for the marines to follow them off the Franklin, reflexively they spread out to form a perimeter, though there was no visible threat, here in Earth West 101,754. They looked around, evidently kind of baffled. Most of them were from urban backgrounds. Well, there was no urban background here. Nothing but the muddy clearing. Nobody around but a deer (well, Nathan thought it was a deer) that peered at them from out of a clump of forest. Nothing to read but a sign, home-made, hand-lettered:

WELCOME TO REBOOT

FOUNDED 2026, A.D.

POP. 1465

Ensign Toby Fox, the IT nerd type from engineering who had been tasked with making a census of the Long Earth, dutifully wrote down the population number.

There was no sign of sun under a clouded-over sky, but the warmth was intense for an early May day, and Nathan was immediately sweating in his combat fatigues, with his pack on his back.

It was when Lieutenant Sam Allen came down from the twain, the last to land, and the Benjamin Franklin popped away stepwise with a soft implosion of air, that the real trouble started.

Allen was in charge of the small chalk of marines attached to this expedition. As his own guys stood around, evidently feeling a little lost in this latest new world just like the sailors, Allen started badgering Specialist Jennifer Wang. ‘So where’s our equipment?’

Wang already had her own pack off her back and was working her radio and locator gear. ‘Lieutenant, our gear was supposed to be landed within a half-mile, not on top of us—’

‘I know that. Which way, Specialist?’

Nathan knew that the equipment drop, a bunch of trunks in rope nets, had radio beacons to alert the arriving troops of its location. But Wang looked confused. She worked touchscreens, and even twisted dials on a very old-fashioned-looking radio receiver. All she picked up was squawking music, a clatter of guitars.

Midshipman Jason Santorini, listening in, grinned. ‘Chuck Berry. My dad’s favourite. Mint stuff, even if it is like a hundred years old, or something.’

‘That’s just some dumb local station,’ growled Allen. ‘Some kid in his barn . . . Turn it off.’

Wang complied.

Ensign Toby Fox was a small guy, and more nervous than the rest. Now, before Nathan had a chance to get hold of the situation, Fox was the one who was unwise enough to ask Allen, ‘So, Lieutenant, where is our stuff?’

Allen turned on him. ‘In the wrong fucking place. Isn’t it obvious?’

‘Actually it’s probably in the wrong, umm, fucking world, Lieutenant,’ Wang put in. ‘Or I’d be picking up its bleep by now.’

By checking rosters, they soon figured it out. The drop had been made at another town, New Scarsdale, the ‘county’ seat.

Wang said, ‘There’s your error, sir. Scarsdale is over on 101,752.’

Allen said, ‘Whereas this dump—’

Fox checked his milspec Earth counter. ‘Right now we’re on 101,754, sir. Where we were supposed to be.’

Somebody had miscounted the stepwise worlds. Nathan suspected miscommunication between the two command lines, the Navy crew and the marines, Datum-born, Datum-trained crew who weren’t used to thinking in terms of planning for operating across different stepwise worlds in the first place. It happened.

‘What a screw-up,’ Allen raged. ‘And those damn Navy boys stepped on without checking they got the rendezvous right.’

Everybody else just stood around, too nervous to be the one to reply. Somewhere something growled, a huge bear maybe, a deep rumble like an earth tremor, and they gathered closer together.

‘OK, OK,’ Allen said. ‘We need to send a runner. Get that ship back here, and bring us to the gear, or the gear to us.’ He poked a finger at random. ‘You, McKibben. Get your Stepper out and get moving—’

‘Sorry, Lieutenant,’ said the man, ‘no can do. I left behind my Stepper.’

‘You did what? . . . OK, who the hell else is here in Earth One Hundred Thousand and Shit without the most elementary and obvious piece of kit of all, a Stepper to get him home again?’

They all looked at each other.

It was an obvious omission, Nathan thought. They were putting on a show of force here; they had come down lightly armed but wearing flak-vests, load-bearing harnesses, and packs with general gear and ammo, and whatever specialist stuff they had to carry. Anyone with any experience knew the score. From the K-pot on your head to the combat boots on your feet, it was a heavy load, and you left behind whatever you didn’t specifically need for the mission. They were only supposed to have been down here, in this small town in this one peaceful world, for a couple of hours. Why carry a Stepper box? Which, built to military specification, was a heavy, robust piece of kit.

Turned out none of them had a Stepper. Not Nathan, not even the Lieutenant, and nobody dared grin at that. Nathan hadn’t the nerve to meet Allen’s eyes.

Then one of the guys asked his buddy if he had some water to spare because he was getting thirsty in the heat, but the other guy didn’t. Turned out none of them had brought water either, because that was all supposed to be in the drop. Not even Nathan, not even the Lieutenant. There was a stream not far away, you could hear it running. But these were all Datum-born types who had had drummed into them from childhood that you didn’t drink the local water, not without an iodine tablet in it at least, and none of them had even that.

Not even Nathan, not even the Lieutenant.

Allen prowled around, his fists clenched, looking as if he needed somebody to punch. ‘All right, then. All right. So we go to this dump Reboot, and start from there. Agreed, Commander Boss?’

Nathan nodded.

‘Which way, Wang?’

But there was no GPS on this world, no airship hovering to give them orientation, and even their paper maps were, predictably, in the air drop. Surrounded by trees like cathedral spires they couldn’t see the rising smoke from the township; they couldn’t even get a direction from the sun, given the cloudy sky. The fuck-up just got fucked-upper with every second.

Then a man came strolling into the clearing, whistling, rods in his hand, and some kind of big fish on a line he had thrown over his shoulder. He might have been fifty, Nathan thought, with a deep-tanned face, and a lithe toughness about him when he walked. When he found a dozen armed warriors glaring at him he briefly froze, but then his face broke into a broad grin. ‘Hey, soldiers,’ he said. ‘Did I break an ordinance? I’ll throw it back, I promise . . .’

Lieutenant Allen glared at the civilian. Then he turned to Wang. ‘Ask him if he knows the way to this Reboot place.’

‘Sir, do you know the way to Reboot?’

‘My name’s Bill Lovell, by the way,’ he said heavily. He looked around at them; Nathan felt profoundly embarrassed, and somewhat overdressed. ‘Don’t tell me you’re lost.’

Allen didn’t respond.

Nathan tried to explain.

Lovell shook his head as he listened. ‘How the hell did your pilots manage to make a drop in the wrong world?’

Nathan said ruefully, ‘We’re kind of learning our way around here, sir.’

Lovell was still grinning. ‘I can see that. You folks just don’t get the Long Earth way of thinking, do you? Here you are, lost as babies. And you’re really planning to go all the way up to Valhalla?’

Wang asked, ‘You know about our mission?’

‘Oh, news travels fast out here. That might surprise you, not me. I used to be a postman. I mean, for the US postal service, before they cut out the service to the far stepwise worlds. Yeah, we heard about you.’

Allen looked as if he longed to pistol-whip this guy. ‘You going to show us to Reboot, or not?’

Lovell mock-bowed. ‘Follow me.’

Nathan wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting of Reboot. A Dodge City movie set? Some kind of cluttered steampunk nirvana? A few primitive farms hacked out of the wilderness? Banjo players? In fact, as you could clearly see as you walked down the main drag from the river, it was a town. An American town, judging by the big Stars and Stripes hanging over the schoolhouse.

Bill Lovell pointed out the sights. ‘That’s the old Wells place. One of the original plots.’ A woman worked a garden behind a neat whitewashed fence, a real Acacia Avenue kind of scene. She looked up, smiled. ‘Not that it looked like that when the first trekkers got here in ’26 . . .’

Toby Fox asked, ‘As recently as that? Just fourteen years ago?’

‘There’s Arthurson’s general store. The only store in town right now, though a few of the farmhouses will sell you beer or liquor, or make you a meal, or hire you a room.’

Santorini asked, ‘Will they accept dollars?’

Lovell just laughed.

There were horses, and camels, tied up at the rail outside the store. Laughter sounded from within.

Then a bunch of children burst out of one of the houses and ran across the street. They might have been Native American kids to Nathan’s urban eye, with hand-sewn leather trousers and jackets, and some kind of moccasins on their feet.

‘School’s out,’ Bill said. He cupped a hand behind a fat ear. ‘And can you hear that?’

When the kids had dispersed and their chatter subsided, Nathan heard a distant clank-clank-clank . . .

‘The new sawmill. Or rather the old sawmill with its new steam engine. Everything made locally, or at least every iron part. They’ve promised themselves a water-turbine power supply soon. They’re even trialling a telegraph system, to keep in touch with some of the outlying farms, which are pretty remote. Geographically, I mean.’

He sounded as if he was proud of the citizens of Reboot, Nathan thought. Fatherly.

‘Lots of little kids,’ Wang observed.

‘Well, you have population booms going on across many of the settled Earths. In a few centuries you might have hundreds of Earths teeming with billion-fold populations. Think of it. All those little tax-payers!’

Wang’s eyes widened. Her mind was being opened up almost visibly, Nathan thought.

‘But probably nobody’s ever going to count them,’ Wang said.

‘Actually that’s my job,’ said Toby Fox, with a touch of pride.

‘Hey, there she is. Katie! Katie Bergreen!’

A woman, strawberry-blonde, aged maybe thirty, was crossing the road with a determined stride. She glanced over in surprise at Bill Lovell, and with evident caution at Nathan and his buddies in their bristling combat gear. ‘What’s this? An invasion?’

Lovell shrugged. ‘I think they’re here to count us. Or something. Right now these guys have lost their way. You think your father would give the US Navy some water?’

She grinned, almost cheekily. ‘Well, they could ask. This way,’ she said to Nathan. ‘But you’ll need to leave your weapons at the door . . .’