The Long War

‘So people help each other. If you can step, do it. But take someone with you, someone who can’t step . . .’

Frank just held her hand.

She heard the Sisters talking of Joshua Valienté, Sally Linsay, others, rushing to the Datum to help with the relief effort. The names snagged her attention, before she sank back into deeper sleep.

When she woke again, Sister John was quietly weeping.

‘They’re saying it’s our fault. Humanity’s. The scientists. All the local versions of Yellowstone have been unstable recently, but it’s only on the Datum that this has happened. Humans disturbing the Earth, like we did the climate. Others are saying it’s a punishment from God. Well, it’s not that,’ she said fiercely. ‘Not my God. But, how will we cope with this? . . .’

By now Jansson was too feeble to get up. Damn morphine, she thought. Sister John had to help her with the bedpans. She was peripherally aware of a nurse in the background, from the convalescent home; Jansson didn’t know his name. But he let Sister John take the lead. That struck her as polite.

And when she woke with a little more clarity, here was Frank Wood, still sitting at her side.

‘Hey,’ she said.

‘Hey.’

‘What time is it?’

‘The time?’ He checked his watch, a big astronaut-type Rolex, then did a double-take. ‘Three days since the first eruption started. It’s morning, Monica.’

‘You need a clean shirt.’

He grinned and rubbed his chin. ‘This is an all-female establishment, as far as adults are concerned. Don’t ask me what I used to shave today.’

Of course there was a TV on, the sound soft, in a corner of the room. The projections were fast changing. As the tremendous cloud of ash and dust spread, across the continental US, even into Canada and Mexico, people were stepping away in their millions, an emigration greater than any in human history, before or after Step Day. Meanwhile the effects of the cloud were already global. Shots of towering sunsets, over London and Tokyo.

It was very strange to watch this, Monica thought, from a world five steps removed, in West 5, where the sun was shining – or not, she realized vaguely: once again it was night. As if she was watching a snow globe, roughly shaken. Or an ash globe.

She felt too weak to move. Only her head. She had an oxygen tube in her nose now. An automated meds dispenser by her bed, like a prop from ER. She drifted helplessly back towards sleep.

‘Carry them in your arms, on your back,’ she’d told Clichy. ‘Then go back and step again. And again and again . . .’

‘You’ve thought about this, haven’t you, Spooky?’

She murmured, ‘It’s why you gave me the job all those years ago, Jack . . .’

Frank leaned close. ‘What was that, honey?’

But Monica seemed to be sleeping again.

On the seventh day, at last, the eruption finished. No more fresh ash, to global relief.

But it ended with a clash of cymbals, as Frank Wood, sleepless, grimy, watched on the room’s wall TV. The caldera, fifty miles wide, emptied of magma, just collapsed. It was as if a chunk of real estate the size of a small state had just been dropped a thousand feet.

Some of the younger Sisters, excited, went stepping over into ash-coated Datum Madison to witness the consequences first hand. After just five minutes the quakes came, a ground-shaking pulse of energy travelling around the planet – though in the ruins of Madison there was only rubble to disturb. Then, after an hour or more, the sound, like a tremendous artillery barrage just over the horizon, or like the launch of a space shuttle, Frank Wood thought, digging back into his boyhood memories.

‘My God,’ Frank said, and he felt for Jansson’s hand. ‘What is to become of us, Monica? . . . Monica?’

Her hand was very cold.

Acknowledgements

We’re very grateful to Jacqueline Simpson, co-author of the invaluable The Folklore of Discworld, for advice on kobolds, theology, and other generous and wise contributions. It was Jacqueline who brought to our attention the poem ‘Unwelcome’ by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge. We’re also beholden once again to our good friends Dr. Christopher Pagel, owner of the Companion Animal Hospital in Madison, and his wife, Juliet Pagel, for their assistance with research, and for another very helpful draft read-through.

All errors and inaccuracies are of course our sole responsibility.

T.P.

S.B.

December 2012, Datum Earth

About the Authors

TERRY PRATCHETT is one of the world’s most popular authors. He is the winner of numerous literary prizes, including the Carnegie Medal, and he was awarded a knighthood in recognition of his services to literature. Pratchett lives in England.