The Long War

65

SO, FULFILLING THEIR part of the deal, Jansson, Sally and the kobold stepped back to the Rectangles world.

Despite a strong dose of anti-nausea pills, the steps still felt like the usual punches in the gut to Jansson. When she got at last to the Rectangles, she folded over, groaning.

Sally stood over her, rubbing her back. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Never gets any easier. Not since the very first time I stepped.’

‘On Step Day. I know. Out of my father’s living room, with a Stepper he made, and left behind.’

Jansson, doubled over, thumped the ground, frustrated. ‘It’s not just the stepping. This damn illness, it gets in the way of doing stuff. You know?’

‘I can imagine.’

The others waited the few minutes it took her to recover enough to stand straight. Sally was grave, patient. The kobold stood alongside her, restless, his own injuries obviously paining him. But he oddly aped Sally’s stance, and he cocked his head as if in mock-sympathy, his gaze flickering from one face to the other, as if seeking approval. Jansson turned away from him, repelled.

She managed to stand up and look around. There was the airship hovering overhead, Joshua’s Shillelagh, a massive, competent-looking, reassuring presence. Jansson took a deep breath. This world smelled of dryness, of baked, rusty stone. But it didn’t smell of dog, and that was a huge relief.

Sally touched her shoulder. ‘Look. I have to go back, with these reptile ray-guns, whatever, for the sake of Joshua. Always assuming we find the guns at all. But the beagles can’t reach you here; they can’t step. You could just go, Jansson. Get into that airship and—’

Jansson smiled tiredly. ‘And leave Joshua behind? Sally, I’ve known him since he was a boy. He is what he is, he’s where he is, partly because I was in his life from the start. You know? Pushing him. Like you, I’m not about to leave him now.’ She looked at the kobold. ‘Though I have to admit I don’t know why this one hasn’t scarpered already. Why did you hang around to let them beat you up?’

‘Drugs-ss,’ the kobold said simply. ‘They drugged poor Finn McCool. Could not ss-step.’

Jansson said, ‘But you just stepped with us. The drugs have worn off now. Yet you’re still here.’

Sally grinned, an expression that reminded Jansson uncomfortably of the beagles, the wolf-people. ‘Oh, he knows that if he runs I will track him down. You won’t be able to hide. Will you, you little prick? Wherever you go I will find you, and kill you.’

The kobold shrugged; he had already seemed nervous enough. ‘Poor Finn McCool,’ he repeated.

The heat, the dryness, were sucking at Jansson’s strength. ‘Shall we get on with this?’

‘Good idea.’ Sally glanced down the dry valley, at the looming stone mass of the building there. ‘Not too healthy for any of us, hanging around that thing.’ Suddenly she had a ring in her hand. ‘This what you need, Finn McCool?’

On the beagle world, the trolls had gathered by a river bank. Joshua and Bill walked towards them. Bill was carrying a backpack containing Lobsang’s patent translation device.

Every step caused Joshua precise, relentless agonies. His lower back felt hot and damp, and he wondered if his stitches were ripping open as he carried the weight of the crossbow gadget. If so, the blood loss might kill him slow, even if he didn’t step to give the weapon the chance to kill him quick. Even his dodgy shoulder was hurting, a grace note added to the symphony of agony from his back.

He tried to concentrate on his surroundings. The river was wide, strong, placid, and its banks were dominated by green fields and forest clumps. From the fields, the beagles’ strange herd beasts had come to drink, sipping at the lapping water, lowering their misshapen heads.

And the trolls were here, by the water. A band of them had gathered at the closest point of the river to the Eye of the Hunter, where irrigation channels and open sewers cut across the ground to the town. As always the troll group, though sedentary in this world, was mobile in the Long Earth; at the fringe of the pack, scouts and hunters continually flicked away and returned, like ghosts.

There were hundreds of trolls, in this one band. Joshua could see they had been here for some time; the ground was scuffed and muddy, and there was a strong, unmistakable troll musk in the air. There were more bands like this, Joshua could see, spread along the river bank, and on the far side, and deeper into the country. The long call, unending, seemed to hang above them, a cloud of elusive memory.

Surely there were still trolls out there across the Long Earth; nobody had any real idea how many trolls there were in total. But this really did look to be where they were concentrating, he could see that. The centre of gravity of the troll population.

And the band before him was the very pivot of it all, as far as he was concerned. For there was Mary, the runaway from the Gap, and her cub Ham, unmistakable in the remnant of the silvery spacesuit the nerds at the Gap had dressed him up in.

As Joshua and Bill approached the trolls did not quite fall silent, but the volume of their song diminished. Ham sucked his thumb as he watched them, wide-eyed, apparently curious, like all young mammals.

Bill slipped the pack off his shoulders and unloaded it. It contained a tablet, blank and black, a couple of feet square, with a fold-out stand. Bill set this up, and placed the tablet to face the trolls.

Joshua glanced down. ‘That’s it? No on-switch, no boot-up?’

Bill shrugged. ‘Black Corporation shit. It’s not like the troll-call translators that Sally described, by the way, those trumpet things. Some kind of new Black Corporation shit. You figured what you’re going to say here? How you’re going to convince them that humanity loves them after all?’

Joshua had purposefully not thought this far ahead. He was no public speaker, and even preparing for town meetings back at Hell-Knows-Where tended to make him freeze up. ‘I figured I’d wing it.’

Bill patted him on the shoulder, gingerly. ‘Good luck with that.’ He stepped back.

Joshua faced the trolls, standing straight, trying to ignore the liquid pain of his back. He was aware of them watching him, hundreds of pairs of those dark, unreadable eyes – backed up, he reminded himself, by hundreds of pairs of hairy arms, and fists like steam hammers. And he was the representative of a humanity that was probably still treating their kind as brute beasts across a million worlds. What the hell was he going to say?

He spread his hands. ‘Good afternoon.’

‘Actually it’s still morning,’ muttered Bill.

‘I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve gathered you all here today.’

‘That’s it. Start with a gag.’

The trolls were motionless.

‘Whew. Tough crowd.’

‘Shut up, Bill—’

‘I didn’t say that, Joshua.’

Joshua turned. A figure stood beside him, tall, erect, still, with shaven head, in an orange robe, and with a broom in his right hand. ‘Lobsang.’

‘I don’t mean to steal your thunder, Joshua. But I figured you could use a little backup.’

‘You can never have too much backup,’ Joshua muttered.

Lobsang smiled, and for an instant he flickered, shuddering into a cloud of boxy pixels – Joshua could see the green prairie through his substance – before congealing again. A hologram, then, projected from the box. Lobsang took a step forward, glancing back at the translator box. ‘Hit it, boys.’

The thrilling sound of a mass choir burst from the translator box and filled the air, a pounding, repetitive chant, a thousand voices. To Joshua’s ears it was not quite human, not quite troll, but a blend of the two.

The trolls looked astonished. They stopped grooming, stood up, all their faces turned towards Lobsang. And already, Joshua could hear, the song of the trolls was echoing the translator’s riffs.

Lobsang raised his arms, brandishing his broom. ‘My friends! You know me. I am Lobsang, who you know as the Wise One. This is Joshua. They call him the Wanderer. Yea, the Wanderer! And we have travelled far to speak to you . . .’ As he spoke he backed up his words with rudimentary sign language, and his own voice sounded over the chorus from the translator box, thin, high, distinctive, like a Bach trumpet.

‘Just when I thought my life couldn’t possibly get any weirder,’ Joshua muttered.

Bill said, ‘I guess he can take this off around this world. Speak to as many trolls as he can get to. A hologram’s not going to grow tired. The Lobsang world tour, 2040. The good thing is we haven’t got to listen to it every time he does it . . .’

Sally handed Finn McCool the ring. ‘Show us.’

‘Eass-y,’ said the kobold. He took the ring between his supple finger and thumb, set it on his upturned palm, spun it –

The ring blurred into the air, still spinning, shot past Jansson’s face like a bright blue hornet, and made straight for the big stone building. It burrowed into the dirt at the base of the building’s face, whirring like a drill bit, throwing up a spray of sand, until it had disappeared.

There was stillness, silence.

Sally seemed irritated. She glanced at the kobold. ‘Now what?’

‘Juss-t wait.’

Jansson smiled at Sally. ‘You OK?’

Sally shook her head. ‘I just get annoyed by stuff like that. Magic-ring crap. What a stunt. I mean, I could imagine how that could work: miniature accelerometers to detect the spinning that activates it, some equivalent of GPS to figure out where it has got to go, some kind of propulsion – magnetic? Even micro-rockets of some kind? Just a dumb trick, to impress the credulous, easily distinguishable from magic . . .’

The ground shuddered under their feet.

Jansson, queasy, stepped back quickly. Sand, thrown up from the foot of the building, settled back quickly in the dry air. What looked like a kind of lizard shot across the valley floor, seeking the shelter of a heap of rocks. Above them creatures like buzzards rose up, alarmed, cawing.

There was a grinding rumble.

And, to Jansson’s blank astonishment, a whole section of the flat valley floor sank out of sight, down into the ground, revealing—

A ladder. Rungs cut into a stone wall.

‘Ha!’ Sally clapped her hands together. ‘I knew it. Natural concentration of uranium my butt.’

The kobold came to Jansson. ‘Watch.’

‘Watch what?’

‘No.’ He tapped his wrist. ‘Watch-ssh.’

Bemused, she handed over her old police-issue timepiece.

He held it up to the sunlight, trying to read its face. ‘Eight minutes-ss.’

‘I knew it,’ Sally repeated, staring at the hole in the ground. ‘The first time we came here I said so. There’s a nuclear pile in that pyramid, or under it. It’s old, old and abandoned technology, yet still hot. So old that later generations, who’d long forgotten the accomplishments of their ancestors, were attracted by the strange phenomena of the ancient waste. And were slowly killed off by it. Of course, this is the way the story was supposed to turn out. All ancient civilizations leave behind underground vaults of secret weapons. And each key works only once, I’m guessing . . .’

Jansson’s cop instinct told her there must be more to this situation than that old movie cliché. This was all supposed to be millions of years old. What possible technology could endure such a time? And why would you set up such long-duration caches anyhow? For whose benefit? The only alternative was that these caches were somehow being replenished. But who by, how, why?

The kobold was still glaring at her watch, a caricature of a timekeeper, and now wasn’t the moment for speculation.

Jansson turned on the kobold. ‘Eight minutes until what, monkey boy?’

‘Until tomb seals-ss again.’ He studied the watch face, but numbers were evidently a mystery to him. ‘Less-ss now . . .’

Sally turned. ‘I’ll go.’

‘No.’ Jansson grabbed her arm with all the strength she could muster. ‘You said it’s radioactive in there.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘I already bought the farm, Sally. Let me.’

‘Monica—’

‘I mean it. I feel like I owe Joshua.’ She put on her determined face. ‘What do I have to do, flash my badge?’

‘Go, then. Go, go!’ She actually pushed Jansson away.

It seemed to wear Jansson out just crossing the dry river bed to the hole in the ground. Was she going to be capable of doing this? What if she just got stuck down there, when the kobold’s eight minutes were done? No help for that, if so. Get on with it.

To her relief the ladder cut into the wall was easy to climb down, with fat hand- and footholds. Getting back out might be more problematic . . .

‘Sally, how much time?’

‘Seven minutes. Less. I don’t know . . . Shift it, Jansson!’

‘I’m doing my best.’

At the base of the shaft she stood in a puddle of light from above. A kind of corridor, too low for her to stand upright, led off into the blackness. Only one way to go.

She carried a flashlight in her pocket, smaller than her thumb, with no iron parts so it worked when she stepped. She was an ex-cop; she always carried a flashlight. She flicked it on now, and followed a splash of light into the deeper dark. Joshua had always carried a flashlight, she recalled. Even as a thirteen-year-old, on Step Day. That was Joshua. This is for you, Joshua, she told herself as she drove herself on. To hell with trolls and beagles. For you.

The walls seemed to be of unpainted stone, no markings, no signs. Yet they weren’t smooth; they were ridged, in uncertain, uneven patterns. Tentatively she touched the markings, let her palm run over them as she hurried deeper into the corridor. She got the sense of meaning in the markings, like the time she’d attended a cop’s familiarization class on Braille. Was this the writing of the reptile-folk who had built this place? Tactile, not visual?

‘Jansson! You might want to move your ass . . .’

She came to a T-junction. Unbelievable. Maybe the markings gave definite directions, one way or another: THIS WAY TO THE MAGIC RAY GUNS. But they were useless to her.

She turned left at random, hurried down a corridor, hunching to avoid the low ceiling. Another junction! She took another left, what the hell. But remember the way back, remember the way . . . The walls were broken here by what looked like storage shelves. She saw pots, boxes, heaps of what looked like clay tablets, engraved. More records? Other kinds of stuff, equipment she couldn’t even recognize . . .

‘Jansson!’ Sally’s voice was very faint now.

Another T-junction. She went right, again at random. And now her flashlight picked up a ruby glint.

Rack upon rack of ray guns.

Lobsang apologized for the way humans, some humans, had treated trolls. He spoke of lobbies pressing the US government to grant trolls human rights, at least within the US Aegis, the long footprint of America across the Earths. It was only a start, there was no way to ensure that every human everywhere would behave as decently as they should, but it was a start . . .

‘Maybe it’s the best we can offer them,’ Bill said to Joshua, speaking loudly to make himself heard. ‘Kind of symbolic, but real nevertheless. Like the British Empire formally abolishing slavery in the early nineteenth century. Didn’t get rid of slavery overnight, but it was a sea change.’

‘He sounds like Martin Luther King with a heavenly choir. Typical Lobsang.’

‘I wonder how much of this abstract stuff they can understand,’ Bill said.

Joshua shrugged. ‘Their collective intelligence is different from ours. If they get the basic message – give us another chance – that might be enough.’

‘And what about giving these beagle beasts Dan Dare ray guns? Where’s the morality in that?’

‘Well, they’re not our guns,’ Joshua said. ‘And we didn’t provide them in the first place. If we live through this there’ll be other parties to follow, proper contact. We can talk to the beagles then about peace, love and understanding.’

‘Sure we can. After we’ve all had rabies shots. So you think this is going to work? This whole mad stunt of Lobsang’s? And what then?’

To Joshua, all his life, the future had been nothing but a continual surprise. ‘Tomorrow never knows.’

There was a soft tap on his shoulder. He turned, to look up into the cold eyes of Snowy.

‘Talk to t-hrrollss. Going well?’

‘I think so.’

‘Good. Your work-k done?’

‘I guess.’

‘Josh-shua?’

‘Yes?’

‘Hrr-run.’

The rock hatchway had slid back into place, and save for a patch of disturbed earth there was no sign of the passageway into the ground.

Only a heap of toy-like sci-fi blasters, retrieved from the cache.

Oh, and the ring, which had somehow been spat back out, to lie on the ground.

Jansson sat in the dirt, shivering despite the heat.

Finn McCool hissed, ‘Have guns-ss. Now back to beagles-ss. And ss-ay goodbye to Josh-ssua.’

Sally snatched up the ring and harangued him. ‘What did you mean by that, you piece of garbage?’

He backed off, hands raised defensively. ‘Deal nearly finish-ss,’ he said. ‘Ray guns. Trollen. Now payback. Granddaughter honour Joshua. You say goodbye to him-mm . . .’

Sally glanced over at Jansson. ‘You any idea what he’s talking about? I’m guessing, nothing good.’

‘Gang culture,’ Jansson murmured, exhausted. ‘Like that, maybe. The honour of the warrior. She’s going to grant him a good death. Maybe that’s what he means.’

‘Shit. Then we have to help him.’ Sally glanced around. ‘What have we got? Think, think.’ She pocketed the ring, and a ray gun that she slipped inside her sleeveless traveller’s jacket. ‘What else? You. Little Joe.’

The kobold cringed. ‘What, what?’

‘You got your walkman?’

‘Stone that sings-ss?’

‘Give it to me.’

‘But, but, but, mm-mine!’ He sounded like a child.

She grabbed his wrist so he couldn’t step away without her. ‘It’s that or your left bollock. Hand it over. Now we go back. Get ready to step, Jansson . . .’