The Long War

4

JOSHUA WASN’T SURPRISED when Sally didn’t turn up for breakfast.

Nor to find she’d gone altogether. That was Sally. By now, he thought, she was probably far away, off in the reaches of the Long Earth. He looked around the house, searching for signs of her presence. She travelled light, and was fastidious about not leaving behind a mess. She’d come, she’d gone, and turned his life upside down. Again.

She had left a note saying simply, ‘Thanks.’

After breakfast he went down to his office in the town hall, to put in a few hours’ mayoring. But the shadow of that twain in the sky fell across his office’s single window, a looming distraction that made it impossible to concentrate on the routine stuff.

He found himself staring at the single large poster on the wall, the so-called ‘Samaritan Declaration’, drafted in irritation by some hard-pressed pioneer somewhere, and since spread in a viral fashion across the outernet and adopted by thousands of nascent colonies:

Dear Newbie:

The GOOD SAMARITAN by definition is kind and forbearing. However, in the context of the Long Earth land rush, the GOOD SAMARITAN demands of you:

ONE. Before you leave home find out something about the environment into which you are heading.

TWO. When you get there, listen to what the guys already there tell you.

THREE. Don’t be fooled by maps. Even the Low Earths haven’t been properly explored. We don’t know what’s out there. And if we don’t, you certainly don’t.

FOUR. Use your noggin. Travel with at least one buddy. Carry a radio where feasible. Tell somebody where you’re going. That kind of thing.

FIVE. Take every precaution, if not for your own sake, then for the sake of the poor saps who have to bring what’s left of your sorry ass back home in a body bag.

HARSH language, but necessary. The Long Earth is bountiful but not forgiving.

THANK you for reading.

The GOOD SAMARITAN

Joshua liked the Declaration. He thought it reflected the robust, good-humoured common sense that characterized the new nations emerging in the reaches of the Long Earth. New nations, yes . . .

The town hall: a grand name for a solidly built wooden building that housed everything the settlement needed in the way of paperwork, and looked kind of battered this morning, in the aftermath of the kids’ show. Well, it was fit for purpose; marble could wait.

And of course it had no statues outside, unlike similar buildings in towns back in Datum America. No Civil War cannons, no bronze plaques with the names of the fallen. When the growing town had registered for the twain service the federal government had offered a kind of home-improvement monument kit, to cement this community of the future to America’s past. But the residents of Hell-Knows-Where rejected that, for a wide number of reasons, many of them going all the way back to great-grandpa’s experiences at Woodstock or Penn State. Nobody had shed blood for this land yet, apart from when Hamish fell off the town clock, and of course the predations of the mosquitoes. So why a monument?

Joshua had been startled at the vehemence of his fellow citizens on the issue, and he’d since given it some thought, in his patient way. He’d come to the conclusion that it was all to do with identity. Look at history. The founding fathers of the United States for the most part were Englishmen, right up until the moment when they realized that they needn’t be. The folk of Hell-Knows-Where by default still thought of themselves as American. But they were starting to feel closer to their neighbours on this world, a handful of communities in stepwise copies of Europe and Africa and even China with which they communicated by shortwave radio, than to the Datum folks back home. Joshua found it interesting to watch that sense of identity shifting.

And meanwhile the relationship with Datum America itself was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. The wrangling had been going on for years. Legally speaking, a few years back President Cowley’s administration had worked out – Cowley having previously argued successfully to have all the colonists’ rights and benefits removed – that in practice it was losing out on significant tax revenues, from the trade that was blossoming both between the various Long Earth communities, and between the remote worlds on the one hand and the Low Earths and Datum on the other. And so Cowley had declared that, if you were under the ‘Aegis’ of the United States – that is, if you lived in the footprint of the nation, projected across the stepwise worlds out to infinity, East and West – you were de facto a United States citizen, living under United States laws, and liable to pay United States taxes.

And there was the rub. Taxes? Taxes on what? Taxes to be paid how? A lot of local trade was conducted by barter, or using local scrip, or even with intangibles: a service for a service. It was only when you traded with the Low Earths that dollars and cents came into play. It was a burden on many tax-payers, in fact, to assemble enough currency to satisfy said tax demands.

Even if you did pay, the taxes bought you what? The colonists were rich in food, fresh water and unspoiled air, and land: lots and lots of land. As for advanced products, even ten years ago you had had to run home to Uncle Sam for anything high-tech or complicated, from dentistry to veterinarian services, and you needed US dollars to purchase such things. But now, why, there was a spanking new clinic in Hell-Knows-Where itself, and a veterinarian downriver in Twisted Peak, and he had a fast horse and a partner and an apprentice. If you needed a city, well, Valhalla was an authentic campus city growing up in the High Meggers, with everything cultural and all the tech you could want.

The colonists found it increasingly hard to understand what they needed the Datum government for – and, therefore, what they were buying with their taxes, principally sliced off the profits on the shipments of raw materials the twain caravans hauled endlessly back to the Datum. Even in this neat and civilized town, far from the think-tanks of Valhalla inhabited by the likes of Helen’s father Jack, there were some who called for cutting ties with the old US altogether.

And meanwhile, in turn, after years of relative appeasement, in recent dealings with the Datum Joshua had detected an increasing unpleasantness about the federal government’s regard for its new young colonies. There were even mutterings back in Datum USA that the colonists were in some way parasitical, even though all their residual holdings back home had long since been liquidated. All this was no doubt linked to Cowley’s push for re-election this year; having tacked to the centre during his first run for the White House – a necessity in the aftermath of the Madison incident, when much of the population had been saved from a nuclear attack by stepping away from ground zero – some commentators suggested he was now veering back to his original support base, the virulently anti-stepper Humanity First movement. The United States had long been used to being suspicious of every other country on the planet, and was now becoming suspicious of itself.

Joshua, looking at the sunlit sky through his window, sighed. How far could this go? It was well known that Cowley was putting together some kind of twain-based military arm to go out into the Long Earth. Seeping through the outernet there had been darker rumours, or maybe disinformation, of sterner actions to come.

Could there even be war? Most wars of the past had been over land and wealth, one way or another. Given the literally endless riches of the Long Earth, surely there was no longer any reason for war. Was there? But there were precedents, when the repressive taxation and other policies of a central government had led to its colonies agitating for independence . . .

A Long War?

Joshua gazed at the twain still mysteriously hanging over the town. Waiting to take him away, to participate in the affairs of the wider world once more.

He wandered out to look for Bill Chambers, the town’s secretary, accountant, best hunter, excellent cook, and amazingly good liar, although this latter skill threw minor suspicions on his claim to be a distant heir to the Blarney estate in Ireland.

Bill was about Joshua’s age, and had once been a buddy at the Home, as much as a recluse like Joshua had had any buddies at all. A few years back Joshua had welcomed Bill, when he’d shown up at Hell-Knows-Where, with open arms. When Joshua had returned from his journey with Lobsang and discovered his unwelcome celebrity – not helped by the fact that Lobsang himself, along with Sally, had retreated to the shadows, leaving Joshua exposed – he’d found himself turning increasingly to people he’d known before he was ‘famous’, and who therefore were discreet and tended not to demand anything of him.

In some ways Bill hadn’t changed. He had an Irish background, and he liked to play that up when he got the chance. Also he drank a lot more than he had as a teenager. Or rather, even more.

Right now, Bill was ambling to the lumber yard when he spotted Joshua. ‘Top, Mister Mayor.’

‘Yeah, top to you too. Listen . . .’ Joshua told Bill about his need to go to the Datum. ‘Helen’s insisting on coming, with Dan. Well, it’s not a bad idea. But I could do with some backup.’

‘The Datum, is it? Full of hoodlums and thugs and other bad lads. Ah, sure, I’m your man.’

‘Will Morningtide let you go?’

‘She’s busy making tallow in the yard right now. I’ll ask her later.’ He coughed, his best attempt at delicacy. ‘There is the question of the fare.’

Joshua looked up at the waiting twain. ‘I have a feeling none of us will be paying for this trip, buddy.’

Bill whooped. ‘Fair play to you. In that case I’ll book us the finest ride I can find. And you’ve got your own release forms signed by Helen, have ye?’

Joshua sighed. Another hard scene waiting in his future. ‘I will do, Bill. I will do.’

They walked together.

‘How was your lad’s show, by the way?’

‘Jumped the shark.’

‘Oh, was it that bad?’

‘No, Captain Ahab really did jump the shark. Big set piece of the second act. Pretty impressive on one water-ski . . .’