The Long War

Bemused, she handed over her old police-issue timepiece.

He held it up to the sunlight, trying to read its face. “Eight minutes-ss.”

“I knew it,” Sally repeated, staring at the hole in the ground. “The first time we came here I said so. There’s a nuclear pile in that pyramid, or under it. It’s old, old and abandoned technology, yet still hot. So old that later generations, who’d long forgotten the accomplishments of their ancestors, were attracted by the strange phenomena of the ancient waste. And were slowly killed off by it. Of course, this is the way the story was supposed to turn out. All ancient civilizations leave behind underground vaults of secret weapons. And each key works only once, I’m guessing…”

Jansson’s cop instinct told her there must be more to this situation than that old movie cliché. This was all supposed to be millions of years old. What possible technology could endure such a time? And why would you set up such long-duration caches anyhow? For whose benefit? The only alternative was that these caches were somehow being replenished. But who by, how, why?

The kobold was still glaring at her watch, a caricature of a timekeeper, and now wasn’t the moment for speculation.

Jansson turned on the kobold. “Eight minutes until what, monkey boy?”

“Until tomb seals-ss again.” He studied the watch face, but numbers were evidently a mystery to him. “Less-ss now…”

Sally turned. “I’ll go.”

“No.” Jansson grabbed her arm with all the strength she could muster. “You said it’s radioactive in there.”

“Yes, but—”

“I already bought the farm, Sally. Let me.”

“Monica—”

“I mean it. I feel like I owe Joshua.” She put on her determined face. “What do I have to do, flash my badge?”

“Go, then. Go, go!” She actually pushed Jansson away.

It seemed to wear Jansson out just crossing the dry river bed to the hole in the ground. Was she going to be capable of doing this? What if she just got stuck down there, when the kobold’s eight minutes were done? No help for that, if so. Get on with it.

To her relief the ladder cut into the wall was easy to climb down, with fat hand- and footholds. Getting back out might be more problematic…

“Sally, how much time?”

“Seven minutes. Less. I don’t know… Shift it, Jansson!”

“I’m doing my best.”

At the base of the shaft she stood in a puddle of light from above. A kind of corridor, too low for her to stand upright, led off into the blackness. Only one way to go.

She carried a flashlight in her pocket, smaller than her thumb, with no iron parts so it worked when she stepped. She was an ex-cop; she always carried a flashlight. She flicked it on now, and followed a splash of light into the deeper dark. Joshua had always carried a flashlight, she recalled. Even as a thirteen-year-old, on Step Day. That was Joshua. This is for you, Joshua, she told herself as she drove herself on. To hell with trolls and beagles. For you.

The walls seemed to be of unpainted stone, no markings, no signs. Yet they weren’t smooth; they were ridged, in uncertain, uneven patterns. Tentatively she touched the markings, let her palm run over them as she hurried deeper into the corridor. She got the sense of meaning in the markings, like the time she’d attended a cop’s familiarization class on Braille. Was this the writing of the reptile-folk who had built this place? Tactile, not visual?

“Jansson! You might want to move your ass…”

She came to a T-junction. Unbelievable. Maybe the markings gave definite directions, one way or another: THIS WAY TO THE MAGIC RAY GUNS. But they were useless to her.

She turned left at random, hurried down a corridor, hunching to avoid the low ceiling. Another junction! She took another left, what the hell. But remember the way back, remember the way… The walls were broken here by what looked like storage shelves. She saw pots, boxes, heaps of what looked like clay tablets, engraved. More records? Other kinds of stuff, equipment she couldn’t even recognize…

“Jansson!” Sally’s voice was very faint now.

Another T-junction. She went right, again at random. And now her flashlight picked up a ruby glint.

Rack upon rack of ray guns.

Lobsang apologized for the way humans, some humans, had treated trolls. He spoke of lobbies pressing the US government to grant trolls human rights, at least within the US Aegis, the long footprint of America across the Earths. It was only a start, there was no way to ensure that every human everywhere would behave as decently as they should, but it was a start…

“Maybe it’s the best we can offer them,” Bill said to Joshua, speaking loudly to make himself heard. “Kind of symbolic, but real nevertheless. Like the British Empire formally abolishing slavery in the early nineteenth century. Didn’t get rid of slavery overnight, but it was a sea change.”

“He sounds like Martin Luther King with a heavenly choir. Typical Lobsang.”

“I wonder how much of this abstract stuff they can understand,” Bill said.