The Long War

The operation had been launched three weeks before, on an April day in Richmond, Virginia, Datum Earth. Maggie Kauffman had stood there in the open, in a downtown park, with her officers and crew, Executive Officer Nathan Boss and ship’s chief surgeon Joe Mackenzie at her side, before an empty stage with an unoccupied podium, a big Stars and Stripes dangling limply to either side, and a huge banner draped above: UNITY IS STRENGTH. This downtown park wasn’t far from the north bank of the James, and, this being Datum Earth, high-rise buildings had loomed out of the smog, some obviously abandoned, their windows boarded up like poked-in eyes.

The hundreds of Navy personnel drawn up here were separated by a barrier from members of the public, lured in from across the Datum city and even neighbouring worlds for the show. And it was quite a show, even if you weren’t too impressed by rows of Navy grunts standing on their hind legs. The twains themselves were a staggering sight, you had to admit that, six brand-new state-of-the-art military-specification airships hanging in the sky, proudly constructed by a consortium of United Technologies, General Electric, the Long Earth Trading Company and the Black Corporation: Shenandoah. Los Angeles. Akron. Macon. Abraham Lincoln. And Benjamin Franklin, thirty-eight-year-old Maggie’s own command. Proud old names on proud new vessels, and the mightiest in the fleet save only for the experimental USS Neil Armstrong, already dispatched on its own exploratory mission into the very remote stepwise West.

At last there had been a stir by the podium, and here came President Cowley, a heavy-set man visibly sweating in his dark suit, and with lustrous hair sprayed so thick it was like a plastic sculpture sitting on his head. He was flanked by security guys in regulation black suits and glasses.

On stage he was greeted by Admiral Hiram Davidson, USN. Based in Camp Smith, Hawaii, Davidson controlled the newly formulated Long Earth military command, USLONGCOM. He in turn was shadowed by an aide, Captain Edward Cutler, a straight-as-a-die bureaucrat if ever Maggie had met one, and he was welcome to the desk he commanded as far as she was concerned.

The famous, or notorious, Douglas Black was present in person too, one of a group of pols and other dignitaries already lined up on the stage to shake Cowley’s hand. Black was surprisingly short in person, Maggie thought, staring curiously. In his seventies, kind of wizened, bald, wrinkled, he looked like Gollum in sunglasses. Of course it was Black who had donated the basic technology behind these military twains, the same technology that underpinned all stepping twains; he had a right to be here if anybody had. And whether or not he was handing over money to Cowley’s re-election campaign (he was probably funding both sides and a gaggle of independent candidates, Maggie’s cynical side suspected), his presence was going to make this telegenic event even more so for Cowley.

As the handshakes and backslaps proceeded on the stage, a chopper clattered overhead, a Little Bird, a sign of protection and menace. This mission and the launch event had been planned for some time, but in response to the Valhalla Declaration the military symbolism had been beefed up.

But as Cowley approached the podium, despite all the hoop-la and the obvious politicking, Maggie Kauffman felt a visceral thrill to be standing here in front of the President himself.

Cowley started to speak, his voice amplified, his face projected on a screen behind him. After some good-old-boy introductory stuff, he cut to the chase. ‘On Step Day it was as if a tremendous door opened in the wall of the world, to reveal a beguiling new landscape. And what were people going to do with that? Why, some of them were just going to walk away – those who believed that a better life waited for them out there, rather than on this fine green world God gave to us, which we must now call the Datum.

‘And off they went! Every family that ever felt dispossessed, every gang or cult or faction that felt it could do better someplace else – the restless, the antisocial, the just plain curious – all of them went stepping off down the trek trails into the blue yonder. I can’t deny the appeal of it. It was a door that couldn’t be locked, not ever again. History will show that we lost fully a fifth of mankind from the Datum Earth, the true Earth, in the first few years after Step Day.