The Long War

“The ring, Bill. The ring. Gold, set with sapphires. The one I brought with me and hung on this wall. It’s gone, Bill. When and how she sneaked on board to get it I don’t know. And how long it’s been gone—Sally will be laughing her head off.”

“A ring. Ring-a-ding-ding. It’s only taken you three weeks to figure it out, Joshua. So where do we need to head?”

“To Earth West 1,617,498… To the Rectangles.”

“Fine. We’ll start in the morning. Be there in three days. Now can I go back to sleep?”

62

In preparation for the approach to Valhalla, the Operation Prodigal Son airships assembled a hundred worlds to the East of the target, hovering like low clouds over the empty shore of this version of the American Sea, the best part of a million and a half steps from the Datum.

When the Benjamin Franklin took its place, Maggie was immediately hailed by the Abraham Lincoln, visible on the horizon. The Lincoln’s Captain told her that Admiral Davidson, commander of USLONGCOM, was aboard, and wanted to see her in person. The two ships closed, and touched down. Maggie changed her uniform, and waited for the Admiral in her sea cabin.

But then she got a summons from Nathan. “You’d better get down to the access ramp, Captain. We’ve got a situation.”

When she got there, she found that Acting Ensign Carl the troll, wearing the armband that comprised his “uniform’, had been included in the party that had greeted the Admiral. Or maybe he’d included himself; that would be like Carl, always interested, always wanting to make new friends. Only now, Captain Edward Cutler, aide to the Admiral, was holding a gun to his head.

The Admiral himself, a spruce sixty-year-old, looked on with amusement.

Maggie made her way to Cutler and whispered in his ear. “What are you doing, Captain?”

“Containing a dangerous animal. What does it look like?”

“Captain Cutler, this troll isn’t dangerous. In fact—” Before this steely, intense man, she found herself embarrassed. “Carl is a member of the crew.”

Cutler stared at her. “Is this some joke?”

“No, Captain.” Maggie showed him Carl’s armband insignia. “I deposited the appropriate forms with the fleet.” That was true enough, though she’d done her best to keep the bureaucracy from focusing its attention on the situation. “An experiment in cross-sapient cooperation.”

Admiral Davidson was openly grinning now. “Call it symbolic, Ed.”

Cutler looked at Davidson, Maggie, the troll. Then he called, “Adkins.”

A lieutenant trotted up. “Sir?”

“Send a message to the White House, by the fastest means possible. Tell President Cowley that we are hereby surrendering to the hobo and okie types who infest the Long Earth. And in the process we are handing over control of our vessels to trolls, raccoons, prairie dogs, and any other dumb animals we happen to come across.”

“Right away, sir.”

“But just before I resign my own commission I think I’ll put a bullet in the head of this little one—”

Maggie approached him again. “Cutler. Are you a parent?”

“What? No, not yet.”

“Well, Captain Cutler, Ensign Carl won’t hurt you whatever you do. But if you don’t lower that weapon I will kick you so hard that your chances of ever fathering a child will be pathetically slim…”

It was a relief to get the Admiral into the relative sanity of her sea cabin. An ensign—not Carl—served coffee, and closed the door, leaving them alone.

Davidson leaned forward. “So, Captain Kauffman.”

“Sir.”

“I’ve never been one to waste my time. You know that.”

“No, sir.”

“Let’s get to it, then. In the short time you have commanded the Benjamin Franklin you have treated the ship as if it were your personal property, going well beyond the already loose parameters of your orders—to put it bluntly, making up the rules of engagement as you went along. Not only that, you have allowed possibly dangerous creatures to run free in the ship.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Resulting in such incidents as the humiliation of poor Ed Cutler, out there, over a troll.”

“Yes, sir.”

He grinned. “Well done, Maggie.”

“Thank you, sir.”