The Long War

49

SOON THEY MADE out a smear of smoke on the eastern horizon.

The trail they followed turned to bare mud scored by the ruts of traffic. The land seemed greener too, away from the open sward of scrubland into which they had stepped. They even passed by a few forest clumps. To Jansson, no naturalist, many of the trees looked like ferns, with squat, stubby trunks and sprawling, parasol-like leaves.

In one place she could see through a screen of trees to a shimmer of open water, a lake, and by its bank creatures had gathered to drink. They were rather like small deer, Jansson thought, but their bodies were a little too heavy, their legs a bit too stubby. Deer with a dash of pig, perhaps.

Li-Li was on the alert as the cart rolled through its closest approach to the lake. At his reins, Snowy stared fixedly at the deer things, his ears erect. Li-Li growled a phrase to him, over and over.

Finn McCool the kobold grinned his anxious, nervy grin at Sally and Jansson. ‘She says, “Snowy. Remember wh-hho you a-are . . .” These dog fellows-ss run off four-legged after prey if they get chance. Sh-should be on leash-shsh . . .’

‘Nothing would surprise me,’ Jansson said, as the cart rolled on away from the water.

Sally said, ‘We ought to remember that our hosts might look like dogs, but they’re not dogs. That might lead us astray. Their ancestors never were dogs, because dogs probably never evolved here, not as we know them. These are sapient creatures carved from some dog-like clay. Just as we are sapients made from heavily modified apes . . .’

Jansson found herself longing for the concrete and glass of the Datum, the reassuringly grubby crimes of lowlife humanity. Perhaps all this, natural selection’s arbitrary shaping of living things, was something you got used to out in the Long Earth. Not her, not yet. ‘The plasticity of living forms.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Nothing. A line from a book.’

Her reaction merely seemed to puzzle Sally.

Now they passed through farmland, a belt of it that evidently surrounded the beagle city. A scrawl of dry stone walls, none of them straight, divided the land into rough fields crowded with beasts browsing or grazing. Some of these looked like fatter, stupider versions of the deer things Jansson had spotted by the lake in the forest. Others were more like cattle, goats, pigs, even what looked like some kind of rhinoceros with lopped-off horns, and a few fat, feathery versions of the bird creatures that drew this truck. Dogs could be seen patrolling the herds. In one field, deer-like animals were being driven into an enclosure, perhaps for milking.

And here Jansson saw trolls, the first since they’d arrived in this world, save for Mary and Ham. A party of a couple of dozen, perhaps, were working their way along a dry stone wall, evidently making repairs. They sang as they worked, the usual beautiful multi-part harmony applied to a lively, jumping melody. Ham, who had been napping on Mary’s lap, woke up now, and climbed up on his mother’s shoulder to see. In his immature piping voice he sang back phrases, echoing the song.

Sally listened hard. ‘I’d swear they’re singing “Johnny B Goode”. My father would have known.’

Jansson said, ‘These are the farms of smart carnivores. Right? Nothing arable, no crops. Nothing but meat on the hoof.’

‘Right. There’ll be plenty of peptides in the arteries after they’ve fed us up a few times here, Monica.’

‘The trolls seem happy, judging by that party we saw.’

‘Yes.’ Sally seemed oddly uneasy with that observation. ‘These dogs are evidently sapient. We know trolls like to be around sapients. I guess that’s why they’re coming here, to this world, for refuge. Sapients, but non-human. So they’re comfortable here.’

‘You’re jealous!’

‘Am not.’

‘Come on. Everybody knows you like trolls, Sally Linsay. You championed their cause even before this latest blow-up, even before we absconded from the Gap with Mary.’

‘What about it?’

‘Well, now you’re finding out that, no matter how special trolls are to you, humans aren’t all that special to trolls.’

Sally just glared back.

Suddenly Snowy stood bolt upright, staring out to the north, ears pricked again, the hairs on the back of his neck rising. Again Li-Li murmured words, or growled commands, and Snowy stayed in control of his reins.

‘You can see why he’s distracted,’ said Sally. ‘Take a look.’

When Jansson twisted to see, she saw small compact brown-furred forms bounding across the fields away from the cart, white tails bobbing. ‘They look like rabbits,’ she said.

‘I think they are rabbits. Authentic Datum pedigree. I wonder how they got here.’ And Sally turned to glare at Finn McCool.

He grinned, showing too many triangular teeth. ‘Beagles-ss love them. Fun to chase. Good to eat.’

‘What else have you sold these creatures?’

‘As-side from rabbits?’

‘Aside from rabbits.’

He shrugged. ‘Not juss-st me. The wheels-ss. The iron . . .’

‘You sold them iron-making?’

‘Brought blacksmith-th. Humann.’

Jansson asked, ‘And the fee you negotiated for all this—’

‘The litters-ss of their litters will be paying in ins-sstallmentss.’

And, Jansson thought, paying for this ‘gift’ of the rabbits. Ask an Australian about rabbits . . .

The kobold had been leaning towards them, apparently keen to join the conversation. Distracted, the women abandoned their talk, and he shrank back. Jansson wondered if Finn McCool picked up some undertone of contempt, of dismissal. Now he dug his elderly walkman out of his pouch, lifted his headphones over his ears, and played his music, swaying to a beat Jansson could hear, tinnily. He smiled again, watching the faces of Sally and Jansson, making sure they were noticing him. The kobold was like a poor imitation of a human, and a needy one, Jansson thought: needing the regard of humans, whatever animal dignity his distant ancestors had once possessed long bred out by corrosive contact with mankind. Jansson turned away with a peculiar disgust.

And she saw, to her horror, that while Li-Li and Snowy were distracted, Sally had slipped the ray gun from its loose holster at Snowy’s waist. She inspected it briefly, then put it back. ‘Dead,’ she whispered to Jansson. ‘I thought it looked kind of inert. Another useful fact, Monica . . .’