The Long War

‘That’s the one. He’s only seventeen, and if he never gets a chance at developing his music there is no justice.’

Sally looked uncharacteristically thoughtful. ‘Well, with people like you two around, he’ll get his chance.’

Helen’s expression flickered. ‘Are you mocking us?’

Joshua tensed for the fireworks.

But Sally merely said, ‘Don’t tell anybody I said so. But I envy you, Helen Valienté née Green. A little bit anyhow. Although not over Joshua. This drink’s terrific, by the way, what is it?’

‘There is a tree in these parts, a maple of sorts . . . I’ll show you if you like.’ She held up her glass in a toast. ‘Here’s to you, Sally.’

‘What for?’

‘Well, for keeping Joshua alive long enough to meet me.’

‘That’s true enough.’

‘And you’re our guest here for as long as you wish. But – tell me the truth. You’re here to take Joshua away again, aren’t you?’

Sally looked into her glass and said calmly, ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

Joshua asked, ‘It’s the trolls, right? Sally, what exactly is it you want me to do about that?’

‘Follow up the arguments about animal protection laws. Raise the current cases, at Plumbline and the Gap, and elsewhere. Try to get some kind of troll protection order properly drawn up and enforced—’

‘You mean, go back to the Datum.’

She smiled. ‘Do a Davy Crockett, Joshua. Come in from the backwoods and go to Congress. You’re one of the few Long Earth pioneers who have any kind of profile on the Datum. You, and a few axe murderers.’

‘Thanks.’

‘So will you come?’

Joshua glanced at Helen. ‘I’ll think about it.’

Helen looked away. ‘Come on, let’s find Dan. Enough excitement for one night, it will be a trial getting him to sleep . . .’

Helen had to get up twice that night before she got Dan settled.

When she returned the second time she nudged Joshua. ‘You awake?’

‘I am now.’

‘I’ve been thinking. If you do go, Dan and I are coming with you. At least as far as Valhalla. And he ought to see the Datum once in his life.’

‘He’d love that,’ Joshua murmured sleepily.

‘Not when he finds out we’re planning to send him to school at Valhalla . . .’ For all she’d bigged up the town’s school to Sally Linsay, Helen still wanted to send Dan to the city for a while, so he could broaden his contacts, get an experience wide enough for him to make his own informed choices about his future. ‘Sally’s really not so bad when she isn’t channelling Annie Oakley.’

‘Mostly she means well,’ murmured Joshua. ‘And if she doesn’t mean well the recipient of her wrath generally deserves it.’

‘You seem . . . preoccupied.’

He rolled over to face her. ‘I looked up the outernet updates from the twain. Sally wasn’t exaggerating, about the troll incidents.’

Helen felt for his hand. ‘It’s all been set up. It’s not just Sally turning up like this. I get the impression that your chauffeur is sitting waiting for you in the sky.’

‘It is a coincidence that a twain should show up just now, isn’t it?’

‘Can’t you leave it to Lobsang?’

‘It doesn’t work like that, honey. Lobsang doesn’t work like that.’ Joshua yawned, leaned over, kissed her cheek, and rolled away. ‘Grand show, wasn’t it?’

Helen lay, still sleepless. After a while she asked, ‘Do you have to go?’

But Joshua was already snoring.

4

JOSHUA WASN’T SURPRISED when Sally didn’t turn up for breakfast.

Nor to find she’d gone altogether. That was Sally. By now, he thought, she was probably far away, off in the reaches of the Long Earth. He looked around the house, searching for signs of her presence. She travelled light, and was fastidious about not leaving behind a mess. She’d come, she’d gone, and turned his life upside down. Again.

She had left a note saying simply, ‘Thanks.’

After breakfast he went down to his office in the town hall, to put in a few hours’ mayoring. But the shadow of that twain in the sky fell across his office’s single window, a looming distraction that made it impossible to concentrate on the routine stuff.

He found himself staring at the single large poster on the wall, the so-called ‘Samaritan Declaration’, drafted in irritation by some hard-pressed pioneer somewhere, and since spread in a viral fashion across the outernet and adopted by thousands of nascent colonies:

Dear Newbie:

The GOOD SAMARITAN by definition is kind and forbearing. However, in the context of the Long Earth land rush, the GOOD SAMARITAN demands of you:

ONE. Before you leave home find out something about the environment into which you are heading.

TWO. When you get there, listen to what the guys already there tell you.