The Long War

8

SO THE VALIENTÉ family travelled to the High Meggers city of Valhalla, to catch a long-haul twain to Datum Earth. The twain journey, across less than three thousand Earths, took only a few hours.

At Valhalla, Thomas Kyangu was waiting to greet them with a big handwritten sign: VALIENTÉ. Another old buddy of Joshua’s, Thomas was around fifty, with long black hair pinned back in a ponytail, and a wide grin splitting a dark, reasonably handsome face. His accent was thick Australian. ‘Greetings, clan Valienté! Welcome to Earth West One Million, Four Hundred Thousand. Well, officially it’s one point four million plus thirteen, since our founding fathers were stoned when they first got here and lost count, but we like to round it down for the TV ads . . . Good to see you again, Joshua.’

Joshua grinned and shook his hand. Thomas dived in to help with their bags.

Getting their bearings, some of them a little woozy from the step-nausea medication, they stood on a concrete apron under the swollen hull of the airship: Joshua, Helen, Dan and Bill Chambers, with their baggage accumulating at their feet. They and the other disembarking passengers were lost in the expanse of this apron, Joshua thought.

And beyond sprawled the city of Valhalla itself, clusters of heavy buildings under a blue sky faintly tinged with smog, with a din of traffic, and construction engines clanking and roaring. The air was warm, warmer than at Hell-Knows-Where. But still, behind the hot tar and oil aroma of this brand-new city, Joshua could smell the salt of the nearby inland American Sea, just as he remembered from his first visit to these worlds ten years ago.

A huge form swept over their heads, with a drone of engines and a wash of displaced air: a twain, a big one, a freight vessel heading for the transit routes to the Low Earths and the Datum. Valhalla’s principal function was as a transport nexus, one terminus of the river of airship traffic that flowed endlessly across more than a million Earths to the Datum and back again, carrying freight and passengers. And it was no coincidence that Valhalla had grown up on a location that in most stepwise Americas lay close to what in Datum terms was the Mississippi: the twains took you across the worlds, while the river could carry your goods across a world.

Daniel Rodney Valienté, eight years old, had never seen ships of such a size, and he jumped up and down, thrilled. ‘Are we going to ride in one of those things, Dad?’

‘In a little while, son . . .’

‘And here comes Sally Linsay,’ Helen said. ‘Surprise, surprise.’

‘Give her a break,’ Joshua murmured to Helen. ‘I did arrange to meet her here.’

Sally was wearing her usual pioneer-type gear, her signature fisherman’s jacket with the thousand pockets, and she carried a light leather pack. ‘What a racket,’ she said as she walked up, theatrically clamping her hands over her ears. ‘Noise, everywhere you go. We ought to call ourselves Homo clamorans. Noisemaking Man.’

Helen just looked at her, unsmiling. ‘Travelling with us, are you? The great wanderer hitching a ride on a commercial twain?’

‘Well, we’re all going the same way. Why not get reacquainted? We can swap recipes for ice cream.’

Joshua grabbed his wife’s arm in case she felt like throwing a punch. It wouldn’t have been the first time.

As he watched this byplay Thomas’s grin was becoming a little more fixed. ‘Ri-ight. I’m sensing a little tension here.’

Bill murmured, ‘It’s complicated. Don’t ask.’

Sally snapped, ‘Who’s this character?’

‘He’s called Thomas Kyangu,’ Joshua said. ‘An old friend of mine.’

‘You don’t know me, Ms. Linsay, but I know of you, through Joshua.’

‘Oh, God, a fan-boy.’

Helen stepped forward. ‘And we still haven’t been properly introduced, Mr. Kyangu. My name’s Helen Valienté, née Green—’

‘The wife. Of course.’ Thomas shook her hand.

‘“The wife”?’ Sally laughed.

‘You have all your bags? I have a buggy just over there. Joshua sent a message ahead; I booked you all a hotel in Downtown Four . . .’ As they walked over the apron, through a dispersing crowd of passengers, Thomas said, ‘You can’t blame a Valhallan for following Joshua’s exploits, Ms. Linsay.’

‘He’s a married man,’ Helen said sternly. ‘There’ll be no more “exploits” if I have anything to do with it.’

‘Yes, but he did discover this Valhallan Belt itself, during The Journey. A band of North Americas with generous inland oceans, ripe for colonization.’

‘“Discover”?’ Sally snapped back. ‘I was there already, as I recall.’

They reached Thomas’s buggy, a low, open electric-engine vehicle with eight plastic seats. ‘Please, jump in . . .’ The cart pulled away, heading south.

‘Thomas and I are old buddies,’ Joshua said to Sally, by way of explanation, or peacekeeping.

‘You mean, he’s a long-term stalker,’ Sally said.

‘We met up out in the High Meggers, years ago . . . We were both on sabbatical, though Thomas calls it going walkabout. We’re like minds, kind of. Knowing he was here in Valhalla I asked him to help us out.’

Helen said, ‘Well, thank you, Mr. Kyangu. But what do you do the rest of the time?’

‘Look at him,’ Sally said. ‘Can’t you tell? Look at the way he’s dressed. He’s a comber. A professional drifter.’

‘More or less,’ Thomas called over his shoulder as he drove. ‘I grew up in Australia, and I’ve always been fascinated by combers. Many of my family’s people went off to become combers themselves, you know, in stepwise versions of Oz. And I’m intrigued by natural steppers – like you, like Joshua, the whole phenomenon. Though I’m not one myself. I’m also interested in the whole question of how human civilization is going to be shaped by the Long Earth. I mean, it’s still only a single generation since Step Day; we’re only at the beginning. I had a hand in the concept design of Valhalla, of the city itself.’

Sally snorted. ‘“Concept design!”’

Thomas was unperturbed. ‘The purest way of life in the Long Earth is the comber – the solitary individual, or maybe a family, a small cohesive group, just wandering, picking the lowest-hanging fruit. The Long Earth is so rich there’s no need to do anything else. But the point of Valhalla is that it’s a city, a genuine city with all the essential attributes of a Datum community, but sustained by combers . . .’

They were entering a more built-up area now, Joshua saw. He glimpsed a sign: DOWNTOWN FOUR. The buildings, of brick, concrete or timber, were low, squat, massively constructed, and set out in sprawling, empty plots: typical colony-world architecture. If this was a downtown it was definitely a High-Meggers downtown, full of room, with more of the feel of a suburban mall back on the Datum. There were few vehicles on the wide roads, most of them horse-drawn, and few pedestrians to be seen, with most of them wearing Steppers. This wasn’t a place you stayed put in for long.

But it was evidently a city in political ferment. Some of those big blank walls were adorned with posters and graffiti:

SUPPORT THE FOOTPRINT CONGRESS

NO TO DATUM TAXES!

And:

DOWN WITH COWLEY THE GENOCIDE

Thomas was still talking about combers and cities. ‘I’ve written a book on the subject,’ he said now. ‘Combers, and a new theory of civilization.’

Helen frowned. ‘A book? Nobody reads books now. Or at least, not new books.’

Thomas, steering one-handed, tapped his forehead. ‘All in here. I travel the worlds and give readings.’

‘A regular Johnny Shakespeare,’ Sally said dismissively.

The cart pulled up outside a four-storey building with an expansive street-level frontage. Thomas said, ‘Here you go. The Healed Drum, the best hotel in Valhalla. You’re in there for three weeks if you need it.’

Sally scowled. ‘How long? Why? We’ve only come here to catch a twain down to the Datum.’

Joshua said gently, ‘Sally, Helen and I are here to look at a school for Dan.’

Dan’s little jaw dropped. ‘You’re sending me here? To school?’

Helen glared at Joshua. ‘Great way to break the news.’

‘Sorry.’

She patted Dan’s arm. ‘Valhalla’s schools have got a reputation as the best in the High Meggers, Dan. It would be fun, and you’d learn so much new stuff. Things you could never learn at Hell-Knows-Where. But if you don’t want to be away from home—’

Dan scowled. ‘I’m not a little kid, Mom. Can I learn to be a twain driver here?’

Joshua laughed and tousled his hair. ‘You can be anything you want, kiddo. That’s the point.’

Helen said to Sally, ‘Also I need to see my father.’

Thomas nodded. ‘Jack Green! Fast becoming another hero. A founder of the Children of Freedom movement, now an organizer of the Footprint Congress which has attracted delegates from thousands of inhabited Americas—’

‘He’s fast becoming a major embarrassment, is what he is,’ Helen said sternly.

‘This hanging around wasn’t part of the deal,’ Sally snapped at Joshua. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

Joshua shrugged. ‘Well, you didn’t wait to be consulted. Besides, how would you have reacted? Just like this, right?’

Sally picked up her pack. ‘I’m out of here.’ She disappeared with a pop of displaced air.

Thomas sighed. ‘What a woman. I hope I have a chance to get her autograph. Come on, let’s get you checked in.’