The Long War

On the second evening of the voyage the grown-ups had a treat, when they dined at the Captain’s table. What else would you expect, for the Valienté family? The restaurant was at the prow, just beneath the wheelhouse itself. Helen couldn’t believe how ornate the place was, with white wooden filigree work everywhere, and gilt mammoth tusks and oversized acorns hanging in the corners, and what looked like original oil paintings of various Long Earth scenes hanging on the walls, and armchairs and carpets soft as puppy fur—even a chandelier hanging over the table. All of which was a pleasant distraction from their fellow diners, who were generally the obnoxiously rich: Long Earth traders splashing the profits, or tourists from the Datum on the “cruise of a lifetime’, who mistook Helen and Joshua for staff more than once.

The view outside was the main attraction. From the Captain’s table right up by the forward window you could see the worlds flash by below, and the gleaming hulls of the companion ships of the fleet, dozens of them hanging like Chinese lanterns under the changing sky. They had already travelled a long way—at its top speed of a step a second, the twain could cover the best part of ninety thousand worlds a day—but they would be slower than that on average, and it would take some weeks to reach the Datum. As the evening gathered in, most of the landscapes that washed beneath the ship’s prow were dark, largely uninhabited—though one sparkled with town lights, and the Captain told them that this was Amerika, the new Dutch nation, one whole copy of the footprint of the United States given by the federal government. The Long Earth hadn’t been much use to the Dutch at first, since on all the stepwise worlds the landscapes they had spent centuries carefully preserving from the sea were still drowned…

The climax of the show—the Captain had timed the meal so they could witness the specific moment, just as the dessert trolley reached their table, and just as the setting sun touched the horizon—came when the great American Sea, the inland ocean whose footprint had been their constant companion since they left Valhalla, melted away, first crumbling into scattered lakes, then submitting to a forest cover that stretched as far as the eye could see, dark green-black in the light of the setting sun. Helen’s heart ached a bit when they lost contact with their sea, or at least its footprint.

But as the light faded further they began to see what had taken its place, below the prow: a river, wide and placid, a shining ribbon cutting across the land. It was the Mississippi, or a remote cousin of that great river on the Datum, a constant in most Americas—indeed Hell-Knows-Where stood on the banks of one stepwise copy. The river would be an unfailing companion for the rest of the trip.

They had a hell of a time getting Dan to sleep after that. Helen blamed the dessert: too much chocolate. Joshua, meanwhile, went off to find Bill, who’d spent his own raucous night with the crew.

13

The good people of Four Waters City, deep in a stepwise Idaho, seemed happy to see the USS Benjamin Franklin appear in the skies above their town. They quickly threw a kind of mass lunch for the dirigible’s entire fifty-person crew; the beef was so flavour-some and so relished that the ghost of the steer was probably looking down approvingly, Maggie thought.

But afterwards the conversation soon grew tricky, to say the least.

Captain Maggie Kauffman strolled along the main, indeed the only, drag of Four Waters City. Somewhere in the region of a hundred and fifty thousand steps from the Datum, set in a typical Corn Belt farming world, the place was neatly laid out and was bustling with people. It looked at first glance like Dodge City without the gunplay, but with, of course, the inevitable mobile communications tower courtesy of the Black Corporation. Maggie’s local guide, Mayor Jacqueline Robinson, pointed out with some pride various other civic improvements, including a reasonable hospital which the town shared with similar cities in neighbouring stepwise worlds.

But the mayor, a tough-looking woman of about fifty, was oddly tense, nervous. Maggie wondered if that was because of the small stands of cannabis she saw flourishing in one or two gardens, along with a few other exotic blooms, out in open view, by the street.

When Mayor Robinson finally noticed Maggie looking, she said, “Actually, that’s mostly just hemp. Blameless. Gives a good fabric for working clothes. My maternal family were originally Czech. My grandfather told me that one day the cops raided what was eventually to have been his new shirt…”

Maggie let that stand. She knew when to let silence do the questioning. Then she said, “Mostly?”