The Long War

“Personally, I particularly liked the way you handled the situation at New Purity. Having the dead of the trolls placed in the same cemetery as those poor pioneers. That went down well most every place that saw the record. You’ve done a great deal, and very visibly, to promote the kind of ideals that I, and others in the military—hell, even some in President Cowley’s administration—believe should be guiding our behaviour in the Long Earth. I wanted you, all of you captains, to reach out your hand to these scattered new cultures. Not to wield an iron fist. Ours is not to police our people, or to moralize; our duty is to protect our own from external threat. But for us to do that we have to know who and what we are protecting, in this strange new landscape we face today. And for you to achieve those goals you had to be open; you had to listen, to learn. Which is what you’ve done. I could never have ordered you to do all this, Captain; you had to learn your way, which you have done, and I’m glad you did.”

“Thank you again, sir,” she said, uncertain.

“As to the future—well, somebody with your experience and particular skills should not be utilized simply to babysit every colonial group that hasn’t read the manual. Captain, once this business at Valhalla is concluded, I’d like you to consider a new command: the USS Neil Armstrong II.”

Maggie caught her breath. The second Armstrong was a new dirigible marque, semi-secret, designed to explore the Long Earth far beyond the limits reached so far, even by the Valienté expedition, even by the rumoured Chinese venture.

“Your primary mission, as you’ll understand, will be to seek out whatever became of the Armstrong I and her crew. We haven’t even been able to send a ship out to search. Well, now we can. After that—” He gestured. “Out there. Of course you can select your own crew.”

She thought of Mac, and Nathan, and Harry—even Toby Fox. “That won’t be a problem, sir.”

“I thought not.” He glanced at his watch. “Well, we have a heavy duty to fulfil when we get to Valhalla. I think we’re done here.” He stood. “But while I’m aboard, I think I would enjoy meeting your Ensign Carl, in a less confrontational situation…”

That night, Maggie lay half asleep in her bunk, lulled by the micro-sounds of the ship: every little click and creak and groan, so familiar after the voyage. Every sailor knew that a ship had a life of its own, an identity, idiosyncrasies—even moods.

She felt paws on the bed. She turned over. The cat’s face loomed in the dark, green eyes glowing bright.

“You aren’t asleep,” said Shi-mi.

“You really are a genius of perception, aren’t you?”

“What are you thinking, Captain?”

“That I’ll miss this battered old tub.”

“Yes. I hear congratulations are in order.”

“You would hear that, wouldn’t you? And through you the whole of the Black Corporation, probably. In any event I haven’t decided. You hear that, Abrahams, whoever you are?”

“You’ll need a cat.”

“Oh, will I?”

“Personally I like the Benjamin Franklin. But I wouldn’t mind roughing it with you. Think it over.”

“I will. I promise. Now get some sleep.”

“Yes, Captain.”

63

Three days after his discovery that the ring was gone, when they got to the world they had informally called the Rectangles, there was only one obvious location for Joshua to make for.

He sat silently as Bill guided the airship over an arid, crumpled landscape to a dry valley, its walls honeycombed with caves, its floor marked with those familiar rectangular formations, like field boundaries or the foundations of vanished buildings—and that one monumental stone structure, like a sawn-off pyramid.

Even from the air the place oppressed Joshua. Here, ten years ago, with Lobsang and Sally, he had found sapient life, some reptilian form. How did they know it was sapient? Only because, in a jumble of dried skeletons in a cave, a relic of some last spasm of dying, Joshua had found a finger-bone wearing that ring he’d taken away: clean gold with sapphires. So these creatures had evidently been sapients, and were just as evidently long dead, and Joshua still felt the odd, existential ache of that near miss, as if he were stranded on some island watching a ship pass, oblivious.

And, oddly, he felt an echo of that strange experience in this new time, the Long Earth without the trolls. More worlds with something missing.

“Well, this is the site,” he called up to Bill. “I kind of expected it to be swarming with trolls.”

He could almost hear Bill’s shrug. “And I never expected it to be that easy.”

“I guess not.”

“The world’s a classic arid Joker,” Bill said. “According to my instruments. Drier than my gob in Lent.”

“Take us down well away from that pile. It’s hot.”

“Actually I thought I might make for the person on the ground down there waving to us.”