The Long War

“Hand me over to the professors at the university. Put me in a cage and study me.”

She felt shocked. “No, Joshua. Never that. Listen. You’ve become notorious. A legend, whether you like it or not. But right from the start, from Step Day, I’ve done my best to keep you off the official record.”

He thought that over. “Why?”

“Because it would be bad for you. You can do as you please. But I want you to think… well, about working with me. Not for me. Put your abilities, and all that positive energy you have, to good use. I can get you assignments. Ways to help people. I’m talking about paid work. Like a Saturday job—it won’t get in the way of your school work. Joshua, I promise that if you work with me I’ll continue to protect you.”

He flinched. “But if I won’t work with you, you won’t protect me.”

“No. No! Joshua, that came out wrong. Look, I’ll protect you come what may—”

But he had just vanished, a pop of displaced air, gone, leaving the two Sisters exasperated.

Jansson had looked on the bright side. He hadn’t actually said no.

She had kept on trying, until, grudgingly, he became an ally.

And he had been an ally ever since.

“Nice story,” Sally said. “And that was really your way of protecting him, right?”

“A friend for life, that’s Joshua. He does seem to surround himself with strong women. You, Helen, Sister Agnes—”

“And you too, retired Lieutenant Jansson.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment. Must be difficult for Helen sometimes, however. She is his wife.”

Sally looked away. “I’m profoundly uninterested in Helen. A gloomy little stay-at-home. Although she did throw a good right hook at that nutjob in immigration.”

“That she did.”

Sally kept glancing at her watch.

Jansson asked cautiously, “So where are you going next?”

“The Gap.”

“Really? Because of Mary the troll, I guess.”

“Yeah.”

Jansson smiled. “What will you do, wave a placard?”

“Why not? It’s better than letting the poor creature be put to death, out of sight and out of mind.”

“True enough. It was a shocking incident. When I saw it I wrote a few mails myself, you know… That was how I got the leverage to have Joshua meet Senator Starling. I wish I could go with you.”

Sally faced her. “Are you serious?”

That took Jansson aback; she’d spoken on impulse. “What? Well—yes, I guess. If I could. Why do you ask?”

“Because you’re useful, that’s why. You’re Joshua’s ‘Spooky’ Jansson. You can get things done in the human world where I can’t.” Sally looked diffident, as if she hated to admit the slightest weakness. “Maybe together we could do some good. Or at least scare the spacesuit pants off those dweebs up at the Gap. Joshua said you put things right. That’s your strength. Well, because of this whole business with the trolls, there’s soon going to be something ‘not right’ with the whole of the Long Earth. Come with me. What do you say?”

Jansson smiled weakly. “What, just like that? It’s kind of Thelma and Louise, isn’t it? And at my age, and my condition? I’m not supposed to be more than a couple of hours from my hospital. I suppose I could self-medicate. But I’ve never been nearly that far stepwise. It’s two million steps to the Gap, right? I don’t think I’d make it.”

“Don’t be so hasty.” Sally winked. “Remember who you’re speaking to. I know a couple of short cuts…”

“It’s crazy. It’s impossible. Isn’t it?”

29

As Jansson and Sally were preparing to leave Madison West 5, Maggie Kauffman was just arriving.

“Find me a troll expert,” Maggie had told Joe Mackenzie. What the Captain wanted, the Captain got.

It had taken a couple of days. No outernet search was quick, by the nature of its very infrastructure, although the closer you got to the Datum the faster information was swapped around. But Mac soon turned up a number of universities that had investigated trolls in the wild. He showed Maggie some of their reports. Trolls were found to be inquisitive, convivial, and quick learners. It was generally agreed that they were at least pre-sapient, but a minority of scholars declared that they were in fact truly sapient, though their intelligence had a different perspective, a different basis from human minds. Clearly they learned at a phenomenal rate…

All this seemed a little dry to Maggie. She asked Mac to find somebody who knew trolls better than as test subjects or specimens. Somebody who lived with them.

Which was why she left her command briefly, and, without letting her superiors know—stuffed shirts like Ed Cutler would have squashed this initiative before it had begun—she dashed on a fast commercial twain back East, ending up on a world five steps West of the Datum, at the new city of Madison, Wisconsin…