The Long War

Roberta Golding spoke for the first time since being introduced. “Valhalla is a city supported by combers. Hunter-gatherers. The logic is elementary. Intensive farming can support orders of magnitude more people per acre than hunting and gathering. On a single world a comber community, even if natural resources are rich, would necessarily be spread out, diffuse; the concentration of population needed to sustain a city would be impossible. Here, it is sufficient for the combers to be spread out, not geographically, but over many stepwise Earths—over a hundred parallel Valhallas, left wild for the hunting.” She made a sandwich of her hands, pressing. “The city is the product of a layer of worlds, each lightly harvested, rather than the product of a single intensively farmed world. This is intensive gathering: a uniquely post-stepping urban solution.”

Joshua thought the kid spoke like a textbook.

“You’ve been reading up,” said Helen, as if accusing her of cheating.

“Very good, Roberta,” said Montecute. “I mean, it also helps that we live in such a rich location, geographically, by the shore of a fecund sea…”

Joshua snapped his fingers. “Happy Landings. That’s it. You’re from Happy Landings. Both of you, right? You, Mr. Montecute, I recognize your accent—and your name. I may have met your grandmother once.”

He looked a little uncomfortable, but he smiled. “Kitty? Actually my great-grandmother. She always remembered running into you, Mr. Valienté, all those years ago. Yes, I’m from Happy Landings, as it’s become known. As is Roberta.”

“Happy Landings,” Helen murmured to Joshua. “Sally Linsay’s name for it, right? Seems to have stuck. Happy Landings, where all the kids are super-smart. That’s what they say.” She glanced uneasily at Dan, who seemed to be trying to tie his legs in a knot.

“It’s good for you to have met a schoolmate already, Dan,” Joshua said.

“Actually I will not be here long,” Roberta said, politely enough, but rather blankly. “I’ve been invited to join the East Twenty Million mission.”

Joshua goggled. “With the Chinese?”

Montecute smiled. “And me,” he admitted. “Though I’ll be there more in a supervisory capacity. Roberta has won a sort of scholarship, a gesture of good faith between the Datum US government and the new regime in China… All of which is by the by. Well.” He stood up. “Why don’t I show you around the school, Dan? While Mom and Dad grab a coffee, perhaps—our canteen is just down the corridor.” Dan followed him, willingly enough. “So what do you like at school? Logic, mathematics, debating, technical drawing?”

“Softball,” said Dan.

“Softball? Anything else?”

“Wood-chopping.”

“Really?”

“I’ve got a badge.”

Joshua and Helen glanced at each other, and at the silent, serious Roberta. Then: “Coffee,” they said together, and followed Montecute and Dan out of the room.

10

To get to see her father Helen actually had to make an appointment, which infuriated her.

Jack Green, sixty years old, had an office in the modest building which served as Valhalla’s city hall, courtroom, police headquarters and mayor’s residence. He was working when Helen was shown into the room, sitting behind a desk laden with a laptop, a couple of cellphones, a stack of grainy-looking writing paper. A big TV screen was fixed to the wall. He barely glanced up at the daughter he hadn’t seen since—when? The Christmas before last? Now he held up one finger, eyes fixed on the laptop, while she stood there, waiting.

At last he tapped a key with finality and sat back. “There. Sent. Sorry about that, honey.” He got up, kissed her cheek, sat down again. “Just a few last tweaks to the speech we’ve been writing for Ben.” Ben being Ben Keyes, she knew, mayor of Valhalla, for whom her father worked. “Oh, which reminds me—” He picked up a remote and pressed it; the big wall screen lit up with an image of a podium, a couple of aides in suits, the Stars and Stripes and the ocean-blue flag of Valhalla hanging from poles side by side in the background. “Ben’s delivering the speech any moment now. Talk about last minute, right? But as soon as he’s done his words will be all over this world, of course, and will go all the way down to the Datum as fast as the outernet can carry them. Impressive, huh?”

Evidently Helen had picked a bad moment to call. “Can I sit down, Dad?”

“Of course, of course.” He got up again, a little stiffly, and pushed over a chair for her. Like many of his generation, who had built Long Earth towns like Reboot from scratch, in his late middle age he was plagued by arthritis. “How’s Dan?”

“You got his age wrong on the last birthday card you sent.”

“Umm. Sorry about that. I hope he wasn’t upset.”

She shrugged. “He’s used to it.”

He smiled, but he kept glancing at the screen.

She pushed down her irritation. “I’m just dropping in, Dad. You know we’re going on to the Datum. We’re here to show Dan around the Free School. We’re hoping to get him a place, if it suits him.”