The Long War

Maggie caught her breath. The second Armstrong was a new dirigible marque, semi-secret, designed to explore the Long Earth far beyond the limits reached so far, even by the Valienté expedition, even by the rumoured Chinese venture.

‘Your primary mission, as you’ll understand, will be to seek out whatever became of the Armstrong I and her crew. We haven’t even been able to send a ship out to search. Well, now we can. After that—’ He gestured. ‘Out there. Of course you can select your own crew.’

She thought of Mac, and Nathan, and Harry – even Toby Fox. ‘That won’t be a problem, sir.’

‘I thought not.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Well, we have a heavy duty to fulfil when we get to Valhalla. I think we’re done here.’ He stood. ‘But while I’m aboard, I think I would enjoy meeting your Ensign Carl, in a less confrontational situation . . .’

That night, Maggie lay half asleep in her bunk, lulled by the micro-sounds of the ship: every little click and creak and groan, so familiar after the voyage. Every sailor knew that a ship had a life of its own, an identity, idiosyncrasies – even moods.

She felt paws on the bed. She turned over. The cat’s face loomed in the dark, green eyes glowing bright.

‘You aren’t asleep,’ said Shi-mi.

‘You really are a genius of perception, aren’t you?’

‘What are you thinking, Captain?’

‘That I’ll miss this battered old tub.’

‘Yes. I hear congratulations are in order.’

‘You would hear that, wouldn’t you? And through you the whole of the Black Corporation, probably. In any event I haven’t decided. You hear that, Abrahams, whoever you are?’

‘You’ll need a cat.’

‘Oh, will I?’

‘Personally I like the Benjamin Franklin. But I wouldn’t mind roughing it with you. Think it over.’

‘I will. I promise. Now get some sleep.’

‘Yes, Captain.’

63

THREE DAYS AFTER his discovery that the ring was gone, when they got to the world they had informally called the Rectangles, there was only one obvious location for Joshua to make for.

He sat silently as Bill guided the airship over an arid, crumpled landscape to a dry valley, its walls honeycombed with caves, its floor marked with those familiar rectangular formations, like field boundaries or the foundations of vanished buildings – and that one monumental stone structure, like a sawn-off pyramid.

Even from the air the place oppressed Joshua. Here, ten years ago, with Lobsang and Sally, he had found sapient life, some reptilian form. How did they know it was sapient? Only because, in a jumble of dried skeletons in a cave, a relic of some last spasm of dying, Joshua had found a finger-bone wearing that ring he’d taken away: clean gold with sapphires. So these creatures had evidently been sapients, and were just as evidently long dead, and Joshua still felt the odd, existential ache of that near miss, as if he were stranded on some island watching a ship pass, oblivious.

And, oddly, he felt an echo of that strange experience in this new time, the Long Earth without the trolls. More worlds with something missing.

‘Well, this is the site,’ he called up to Bill. ‘I kind of expected it to be swarming with trolls.’

He could almost hear Bill’s shrug. ‘And I never expected it to be that easy.’

‘I guess not.’

‘The world’s a classic arid Joker,’ Bill said. ‘According to my instruments. Drier than my gob in Lent.’

‘Take us down well away from that pile. It’s hot.’

‘Actually I thought I might make for the person on the ground down there waving to us.’

When Joshua looked away from the monument, it was obvious. Silvery emergency blankets had been spread over a rock bluff, positioned to be visible from the sky but not from the ground. And somebody was standing there in olive-green coveralls, waving both arms.

‘Good plan,’ Joshua said.

The Shillelagh descended smoothly. They both disembarked this time, with their boots on and packs on their backs – Bill was laden with a Stepper box, and Lobsang’s troll translation kit – ready to explore.

Joshua wasn’t particularly surprised at the identity of the person who had summoned them from the sky. ‘Lieutenant Jansson.’

‘Joshua.’ Jansson was thin, pale, sweating, evidently a lot more unwell than when he’d last seen her. As they walked up she sat down on an outcrop of rock, clearly exhausted from all the waving.

‘We came to the right world, then. We guessed correctly.’

‘About Ms. Linsay taking the ring? What it signified, where you were to come? Oh, yes. She complained about it being hard for her to find – the ring. “Trust that idiot to take it with him on his holidays,” was her phrase, I’m afraid. Then she hoped you wouldn’t notice its absence. And even if you did, you wouldn’t follow her here. She hoped that, she said, but she did plan for you showing up . . . You took your time to work it out, Joshua.’

Joshua shook his head. ‘You’re still a cop, retired or not. Only a cop would call Sally “Ms. Linsay”. We need to be here, Monica. We have our own mission, from Lobsang. About the trolls.’