The Long War

Of course there was a steady drizzle of thefts, of food, from the fields—even, in this age of stepping, from within houses. Mostly you turned a blind eye. Things got more serious when a boy called Doug Collinson was caught red-handed taking beta blockers from Melissa Harris’s medicine chest, prescribed for her mild heart condition. Doug didn’t need them himself; he was just going to sell them someplace else. Decent drugs were among the most precious commodities they had. Well, Melissa caught him, and she had the presence of mind to swing her stick and smash his Stepper so he couldn’t get away before the neighbours came running in. Right now Doug was in confinement in somebody’s cellar, while the adults debated what to do about it. Slowly, out of the need to react to such incidents, a framework for maintaining law and order was emerging, maybe ultimately based on some kind of court shared with communities like New Scarsdale in the neighbouring worlds.

The framework of Helen’s own life was slowly emerging too. Dad constantly pointed out that Helen was sixteen years old now and needed to choose a path in life. Well, fine. There was her midwifery. And she was thinking of specializing in medicines: herbs and stuff. A lot of the plants and fungi they found on Earth West 101,754 weren’t familiar from Datum Earth. She could become an itinerant seller, or maybe a tutor, a guru, taking her arts and wares and unique flora across the worlds. Or not. She thought she’d find her way.

They weren’t in paradise. The Long Earth was a big arena, where you could feel lost, and you could lose yourself. But maybe all this room was going to be the ultimate gift of the Long Earth to mankind. Room that gave everyone the chance to live as they liked. Helen had decided she liked the happy compromise they were figuring out in Reboot.

Well, not long after that, along had come Joshua Valienté, returning from the far stepwise West, towing a defunct airship and trailing the romance of the High Meggers—and, yes, with Sally Linsay at his side. Helen, then seventeen years old, had had her world turned upside down. Soon she’d moved away with Joshua, and married him, and now here they were building another fine young community.

The Datum government, meanwhile, had reached out to its scattered colonies once more, and gathered them into the embrace of its “Aegis’. Suddenly everybody had to pay taxes. Jack Green, who had been enraged by the Letter and the cut-off, was if anything even more enraged by the imposition of the Aegis… Without her mother, Helen believed, he was filling an empty life with politics.

And then Sally showed up again, and once more Joshua was distracted.

The night before they were due to leave on the twain for Valhalla, with their bags all packed, Helen couldn’t sleep. She went out on to their veranda, into air that was warm for March on this chilly Earth. She looked at the twain still waiting at anchor in the sky over the town, its running lights like a model galaxy. She murmured, “We were young, we were merry, we were very very wise…”

Joshua came out to find her. He folded his strong arms around her waist, and nuzzled her neck. “What’s that, honey?”

“Oh, an old poem. By a Victorian poet called Mary Elizabeth Coleridge. I helped Bob Johansen teach it to the eighth-graders the other day. We were young, we were merry, we were very very wise, / And the door stood open at our feast, / When there passed us a woman with the West in her eyes, / And a man with his back to the East. Isn’t that haunting?”

“You won’t lose me, to West or East. I promise.”

She found she couldn’t reply.

6

Nelson Aikiwe—or the Reverend Nelson as his congregation called him in church, or Rev as they called him down the pub—watched as Ken the shepherd grabbed a pregnant ewe and slung it over his shoulder. To Nelson this was an astounding display of strength: Ken’s ewes were no lightweights. Then Ken walked forward towards a hedgerow.

And took another step and completely vanished.

And reappeared a few seconds later, wiped his hands with a none too clean towel, and said, “That will do for now. There’s still a few wolves that haven’t got the message yet. I suppose I’d better get Ted to draw me another thousand yards of electric fence. Don’t you want to come and see, Rev? You’ll be surprised at how much we’ve done. Just a step away, you know.”