The Long War

67

GEOGRAPHICALLY VALHALLA was near the coastline of the inland ocean of this distant America, on Earth West One Point Four Million Plus Thirteen (stoner miscount correction applied, as Ensign Toby Fox solemnly told Maggie). The dirigibles of Operation Prodigal Son arrived in this world about midday of a sparkling late July day, and hovered in a blue sky as pure as a special effect in a computer game.

Admiral Davidson briefed his captains. They were here to assert the authority of the United States over these rebels, he said, but he wanted a show of goodwill, not a shooting match. His strategy was that a detachment of marines would accompany a group of senior officers, to be nominated by the respective captains, in a march on city hall. It was to be a good-natured, hearts-and-minds kind of event. However, he added, the marines would be armed.

And when Maggie heard that Captain Cutler from the Lincoln, the idiot who’d pulled a gun on Carl, was to be put in charge of this bizarre parade, she decided to nominate herself for the march.

At the drop point they formed up, fifty personnel in all, and walked through the streets of Valhalla – through this city of Earth West one-million-plus-change, this symbolic stronghold of the rebels of the Long Earth. At Admiral Davidson’s orders the marines kept their weapons in sight but with safeties on. Meanwhile the silent dirigibles floated overhead, a menacing presence, full of watchful eyes, ready to act in a C2 role, as nodes of command and control – but, it was hoped, not as weapons platforms, not today.

And, this hot, humid noon, Valhalla was empty.

That was what they found as they walked on steadily from their mustering point. The marines stuck to the middle of wide, empty roads, with the officers walking behind, the only sounds their footsteps, and the calls of birds. There were a few abandoned vehicles in the empty streets, small hand-drawn carts. A couple of horses were tied up at a rail outside a Wild West-type saloon. There were even a couple of steam-powered cars, neatly parked up. No sign of people anywhere.

The dirigible crews reported that the picture was much the same as far as they could see from the air. Nobody at home.

Maggie walked beside Joe Mackenzie. ‘Is it just me, Mac, or do you feel kind of ridiculous?’

The doctor said cynically, ‘Well, we are military. You said it yourself; this operation can’t all be about kittens stuck up trees. We have to do some soldier-type stuff from time to time.’

‘True enough.’

At least Maggie felt relatively at home in this place, which unlike most stepwise communities felt like an authentic American city, with its scale, its streetlights, a few elements of traffic control, even posters for concerts and dances and lectures and such, although these were mostly hand-lettered in a small-town kind of way. It was definitely a Long Earth settlement, though, with the buildings massive blocks of timber and sandstone and concrete, the roadways crude lanes of tar, the sidewalks compressed river-bed gravel.

Then she heard the singing.

They came to a kind of square, really just the intersection of two main drags. Here, in the shade of a shop awning, were a dozen trolls, singing some kind of song about Mohawks and tea and taxes, as far as Maggie could tell. The marines, in the van of the party, slowed to a halt and stared.

Admiral Davidson and Captain Cutler had a quick conference.

Then Cutler gave the order that they were to take a break. It was a reasonable position from the point of view of security. They were in the open here, but were overlooked by no tall buildings, and had a clear view in four directions down these empty streets. As the rest dumped their packs and fished out water bottles, Cutler posted sentries to each of the square’s four corners, and guys with Steppers were sent a world or two to either side also. It was a classic Long Earth security drill.

Maggie stood on the tarmac with Mac and Nathan. Nathan dug an Mr.E out of his pack, a meal ready to eat, popped it, and dug into a hot beef pie.

Mac looked on, seeming faintly appalled. ‘Don’t know how you eat like that at a moment like this, man.’

Around a mouthful of pie Nathan said, ‘Takes years of dedicated training, Doctor. You got any salt?’

‘No, I don’t have any salt.’ Mac dug a handheld computer out of his own pack, and held it up to the trolls. ‘I’m trying to identify that song they’re singing . . . Aha. Bring in your axes, and tell King George we’ll pay no taxes on his foreign tea . . . It’s a Revolutionary War ballad. The Boston Tea Party. Whoever taught the trolls that is sending us a message. And has a sense of humour.’

Nathan said, finishing up his Mr.E, ‘But where the hell is everybody else?’

Mac said, ‘I’m guessing, in other parts of the city.’

‘What other parts? . . . Oh.’

Mac was pointing at random, his fingers cocked at funny angles.

‘Stepwise,’ Maggie said. ‘They’ve all gone stepwise?’

‘Kind of. I visited, once. This city actually extends stepwise, in a way. I mean, it’s not like a Low Earth footprint of a Datum town, like New York West 1 or East 5, or whatever. Here, the other worlds are more or less unspoiled, and therefore full of stuff to hunt and gather and eat. People live out there, at least some of the time. Together they support the city at the centre. It is kind of quiet today, isn’t it? Usually there’s some sort of critical mass of people actually here.’

‘But not today.’

‘Not today. Well, I guess they knew this invasion force was on the way. Who wants trouble? But not much of a war, is it, if nobody’s interested in fighting? Not much fun.’

Captain Cutler heard that and turned, glowering. ‘Fun, officer?’

‘Sure, sir,’ Mac said with a grin. ‘War is fun. That’s the terrible secret, why we’ve been doing it back to the Bronze Age, if not before. Well, now we have the Long Earth, everybody can have as much as they possibly want, there’s always room to just walk away. No more need for war, right? Maybe it’s a phase we need to grow out of.’

Nathan raised his eyebrows. ‘Good luck with that as a guide to your career progression in the Navy, Doctor.’

A whistle blew. The break was over; time to continue their march. The marines began to pack up their kit, and sentries flicked away to summon back their buddies from their stepwise posts.

The city hall, according to the maps they had, was only a couple of blocks north of here.

Soon Maggie could see it, up ahead, over the shoulders of her officers. It was a squat colonial-era-mansion kind of structure, sitting on a bluff, a scrap of high ground. An open square sprawled before it, another road intersection. Two big flags fluttered from poles high above the building’s frontage. One was the Stars and Stripes; the other was a blue field covered with a string of cloud-blue discs.

Mac grunted. ‘I wondered when we’d get to see that new flag. There’s a bunch of rebel colonies scattered across the Earths, starting with New Scarsdale back around West 100,000 and working their way all the way up to Valhalla, and beyond. They’re the ones who backed the Footprint Congress here at Valhalla, where they composed their Declaration of Independence. And that’s their flag. Multiple worlds, see? . . .’

Maggie heard a series of soft pops, like bubbles bursting: people stepping in. At last they had company.

Cutler started barking orders, relayed by the marine commanders. The marching formation broke up into a line. Maggie took her own position.

And she glimpsed people, men, women, children, most dressed either like farmers or beach bums or a combination of the two, just popping into the world, all over the square before the city hall. They arrived sitting down, and when one landed on top of another the newcomer would fall away, laughing and apologizing. A babble of conversation started up, like a country fair.

All these people were filling in the space between the marines and the city hall. The dirigibles patrolled overhead, observing, impotent, their turbines growling.

Captain Cutler, red-faced, surveyed this scene. ‘Bayonets,’ he snapped.

‘Belay that,’ said Admiral Davidson mildly, but clearly enough for all to hear. ‘We’re here to win hearts, Captain, not to cut them out of warm bodies. And there’ll be no firing either, except on my direct order. Is that clear?’

And still the people kept coming, filling in the square, like human raindrops covering the ground. Some brought picnic baskets, Maggie saw, bemused. Cake, bottles of beer, lemonade for the kids. Others carried gifts: baskets of apples, even strings of big, plump-looking fish that they tried to hand to the marines, and dumped at their feet when they refused.

Captain Cutler pressed Admiral Davidson. ‘Our mission is to take that city hall and raise the US flag, sir.’

‘Well, it rather looks as if Old Glory is already flying.’

‘But it’s the symbolism of the act . . . Let me try at least to clear a path across this square, Admiral.’

‘Oh – very well, Cutler. But play nice, will you?’

At Cutler’s barked orders, marines were sent into the crowd. Meanwhile the dirigibles began gliding over the square, loudhailers broadcasting orders. ‘You are asked to disperse! Disperse immediately!’

Maggie watched marine Jennifer Wang, from the detail that had travelled on board the Franklin, wade in with her colleagues. Surrounded by these people in their country-work type clothes, encased in her K-pot and turtle-shell body armour plates, she looked like some kind of alien invader beamed down from the sky.

Wang chose her target at random. ‘Move, please, ma’am,’ she said to one fortyish woman with a gaggle of kids.

‘I will not,’ the woman said clearly.

Her kids took it up like a playground chant. ‘I will not! I will not!’

Wang just stood there, baffled.

They tried lifting people bodily out of the way, grabbing wrists and ankles and just lifting. But others, especially little kids, would come and sit on the person you were trying to shift. And even if you got a clean lift the person would just go limp, like a floppy mannequin, making him or her almost impossible to handle. Cutler, without referring back to Davidson, tried getting his marines to soft-cuff a few of the protestors. But the people involved would just flick away into another world, and come tumbling back where you couldn’t reach them. Maggie found herself impressed with the coordination of this flash mob blocking the square, with the training they’d evidently had in this passive-resistance stuff – with their determination and discipline, almost military class, though with different techniques and objectives.

And gradually the chanting was breaking out all over: ‘I will not! I will not!’

Cutler stormed back to Davidson, frustrated, angry. Maggie thought his right hand hovered a little dangerously near his pistol. He said to Davidson, ‘If we could identify the leaders, sir—’

‘With a mob like this there may not be any leaders, Captain.’

‘Then a couple of rounds above their heads. Just to scatter them.’

Without replying, the Admiral removed his cap, closed his eyes, and raised his lined face to the late-summer sun.

Cutler snapped, ‘No? Then how the hell are we going to fulfil our mission here? Sir.’ That last syllable was almost a snarl, and Maggie thought Cutler had to be close to insubordination – if not to breaking down altogether. ‘We cannot let these people mock us, sir. They do not understand us.’

‘Understand us, Captain?’

‘Admiral, they have never met anybody like us. Sir – you and I have served, we have been to the front line. We have taken fire, we have followed orders, and we have not yielded. And because of that these people were able to raise their kids, and come out to these dumb log-cabin type of worlds, and play at being brave pioneers . . .’

Admiral Davidson sighed. ‘Well, the world has evidently changed around the two of us, son. In my view, the best kind of war is one that’s resolved without a shot being fired. Keep your weapon holstered, Captain.’

‘Sir—’

‘I said, keep it holstered.’

And now a man stood up in the heart of the crowd, and walked towards the officers. He was maybe sixty, portly, dressed as a farm labourer like the rest.

Nathan murmured, ‘I recognize that guy.’

So did Maggie. He was the guy with the favours, from a community called Reboot. Maybe now wasn’t the time to wave and say ‘Hi,’ she suspected.

The man faced Davidson confidently. ‘Fulfilling your mission all depends what that mission is, doesn’t it, Admiral Davidson? If you’re here to talk – well, that’s fine. I very much doubt if you’re going to achieve anything else today. Don’t you?’

Davidson eyed him. ‘And you are?’

‘Green. Jack Green. I helped found a town called Reboot. Now I work for Benjamin Keyes, Mayor of Valhalla.’ He held out his hand; Davidson shook it, to an ironic cheer from the crowd. ‘If you want to talk, why don’t you and your staff come to the mayor’s office? I’m sure your marines will be looked after out here; you can see the picnickers have brought plenty for everyone . . .’ He led Davidson away.

Captain Cutler, visibly livid, just stomped away, off into a side street.

Nathan glanced at Maggie. ‘With your permission, Captain, I’ll go keep an eye on Captain Cutler. Make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid.’

‘Good idea.’

Nathan hurried away.

Mac stood with Maggie. ‘Ed Cutler needs therapy.’

Maggie thought that over. ‘So will a lot of us, if you’re right that war has suddenly become obsolete.’

‘I’m right, though, aren’t I?’

‘You usually are, Mac. You usually are.’

The shadow of a military-specification airship passed over the crowd. People looked up, shielding their eyes against the sun. ‘Ooh,’ they said, as though it were an advertising stunt at a football match. ‘Aah.’

That was when Maggie knew the mission of the Benjamin Franklin was complete. That her own future was to fly the Neil Armstrong II, into stepwise worlds unknown.

That, for better or worse, without a shot being fired, the Long War was over.