The Long War

And Sister Agnes looked down at herself. At her body: pink, naked, raw, and very female. Without feeling her lips move – and indeed without actually feeling her lips at all – Agnes demanded, ‘Who ordered those?’

2

SALLY LINSAY ARRIVED at Hell-Knows-Where fast and furious. But when had that ever been unusual?

Joshua Valienté heard her voice coming from the house, as he was heading back from an afternoon’s work in his forge. On this world, as on all the worlds of the Long Earth, it was late March, and the light was already fading. Since she’d shown up on the day of his wedding nine years ago, a visit from this particular old friend had been rare, and generally meant that something was amiss – amiss in spades. As Helen, his wife, would also know all too well. His stomach knotting, Joshua hurried his step.

He found Sally sitting at the kitchen table, nursing coffee in a local-pottery mug. She was looking away from him, she hadn’t noticed him yet, and he paused at the door to study her, taking in the scene, getting his bearings.

Helen was in the dry store, and Joshua saw she was digging out salt, pepper, matches. On the table, meanwhile, Sally had dumped enough butchered meat to last for weeks. This was pioneer protocol. The Valientés didn’t need the meat, of course, but that was no matter. The deal was that the visiting traveller brought the meat, and the householder repaid the gift not only with a meal, the catch properly dressed and cooked, but also with some of those little comforts that were hard to find in the wilderness, such as salt, pepper, a good night’s sleep in a proper bed. Joshua smiled. Sally prided herself on being somewhat more self-sufficient than Daniel Boone and Captain Nemo put together, but surely even Daniel Boone must’ve craved pepper – just like Sally.

She was forty-three years old now, a few years older than Joshua – and sixteen years older than Helen, which didn’t help their various interrelationships. Her greying hair was tied neatly back, and she wore her usual garb of heavy-duty jeans and sleeveless, multi-pocketed jacket. Just as she’d always been, she was lean, wiry, eerily still – and watchful.

Right now she was watching an object on the wall: a gold ring set with sapphires, hanging on a loop of string from a stubby local-forge iron nail. It was one of the few trophies Joshua had kept of the journey of discovery across the Long Earth that the two of them had made with Lobsang. Or, The Journey, as the world knew it ten years later. It was a gaudy thing, and too large for a human finger. But then, humans hadn’t made it, as Sally would remember. Just below the ring hung another bit of jewellery, a monkey bracelet, plastic and paste: a thing for a kid, gaudy, silly. Joshua was pretty sure Sally would remember the significance of that too.

He walked forward, deliberately pushing the door to make it creak. She turned and surveyed him, critical, unsmiling.

He said, ‘Heard you arrive.’

‘You’ve put on weight.’

‘Nice to see you too, Sally. I take it you’ve a reason for coming here. You always have a reason.’

‘Oh, yes.’

I wonder if Calamity Jane was like this, Joshua thought as he reluctantly sat down. Like a gunpowder explosion going off periodically in the middle of your life. Maybe, though Sally had marginally better access to toiletries.

Helen was now in the kitchen, and Joshua smelled meat on the griddle. When he caught Helen’s eye she waved away his silent offer of help. He recognized tact when he saw it. Helen was trying to give them some space. Tact, yes, but he also feared this was the beginning of one of Helen’s icy silences. Sally after all was a woman who’d had a long, complicated and famous relationship with her husband before he’d even known Helen. Sally had been at his side, in fact, when he first met Helen, then a seventeen-year-old pioneer in a brand-new Long Earth colony town. His young wife was never going to jump for joy when Sally showed up again.

Sally was waiting for him to respond, ignorant of such subtleties, or uncaring.

He sighed. ‘So tell me. What brings you here this time?’

‘Another slimeball killed another troll.’

He grunted. There had been a blizzard of such incidents in the news brought by the outernet – incidents occurring across the Long Earth, from the Datum to Valhalla and beyond, evidently all the way up to the Gap, judging from recent sensational reports of a lurid case involving a cub in a 1950s-type spacesuit.

‘Butchered it, in this case,’ Sally said. ‘I mean, literally. Reported at an Aegis administration office at Plumbline, just inside the Meggers—’

‘I know it.’

‘It was a young one this time. Body parts taken for some kind of folk medicine. For once the guy’s actually been arrested on a cruelty charge. But his family are kicking up because, what the hell, it was just an animal, wasn’t it?’

Joshua shook his head. ‘We’re all under the US Aegis. What’s the argument? Aren’t Datum animal cruelty laws supposed to apply?’