The Long War

Joshua faced the trolls, standing straight, trying to ignore the liquid pain of his back. He was aware of them watching him, hundreds of pairs of those dark, unreadable eyes – backed up, he reminded himself, by hundreds of pairs of hairy arms, and fists like steam hammers. And he was the representative of a humanity that was probably still treating their kind as brute beasts across a million worlds. What the hell was he going to say?

He spread his hands. ‘Good afternoon.’

‘Actually it’s still morning,’ muttered Bill.

‘I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve gathered you all here today.’

‘That’s it. Start with a gag.’

The trolls were motionless.

‘Whew. Tough crowd.’

‘Shut up, Bill—’

‘I didn’t say that, Joshua.’

Joshua turned. A figure stood beside him, tall, erect, still, with shaven head, in an orange robe, and with a broom in his right hand. ‘Lobsang.’

‘I don’t mean to steal your thunder, Joshua. But I figured you could use a little backup.’

‘You can never have too much backup,’ Joshua muttered.

Lobsang smiled, and for an instant he flickered, shuddering into a cloud of boxy pixels – Joshua could see the green prairie through his substance – before congealing again. A hologram, then, projected from the box. Lobsang took a step forward, glancing back at the translator box. ‘Hit it, boys.’

The thrilling sound of a mass choir burst from the translator box and filled the air, a pounding, repetitive chant, a thousand voices. To Joshua’s ears it was not quite human, not quite troll, but a blend of the two.

The trolls looked astonished. They stopped grooming, stood up, all their faces turned towards Lobsang. And already, Joshua could hear, the song of the trolls was echoing the translator’s riffs.

Lobsang raised his arms, brandishing his broom. ‘My friends! You know me. I am Lobsang, who you know as the Wise One. This is Joshua. They call him the Wanderer. Yea, the Wanderer! And we have travelled far to speak to you . . .’ As he spoke he backed up his words with rudimentary sign language, and his own voice sounded over the chorus from the translator box, thin, high, distinctive, like a Bach trumpet.

‘Just when I thought my life couldn’t possibly get any weirder,’ Joshua muttered.

Bill said, ‘I guess he can take this off around this world. Speak to as many trolls as he can get to. A hologram’s not going to grow tired. The Lobsang world tour, 2040. The good thing is we haven’t got to listen to it every time he does it . . .’

Sally handed Finn McCool the ring. ‘Show us.’

‘Eass-y,’ said the kobold. He took the ring between his supple finger and thumb, set it on his upturned palm, spun it –

The ring blurred into the air, still spinning, shot past Jansson’s face like a bright blue hornet, and made straight for the big stone building. It burrowed into the dirt at the base of the building’s face, whirring like a drill bit, throwing up a spray of sand, until it had disappeared.

There was stillness, silence.

Sally seemed irritated. She glanced at the kobold. ‘Now what?’

‘Juss-t wait.’

Jansson smiled at Sally. ‘You OK?’

Sally shook her head. ‘I just get annoyed by stuff like that. Magic-ring crap. What a stunt. I mean, I could imagine how that could work: miniature accelerometers to detect the spinning that activates it, some equivalent of GPS to figure out where it has got to go, some kind of propulsion – magnetic? Even micro-rockets of some kind? Just a dumb trick, to impress the credulous, easily distinguishable from magic . . .’

The ground shuddered under their feet.

Jansson, queasy, stepped back quickly. Sand, thrown up from the foot of the building, settled back quickly in the dry air. What looked like a kind of lizard shot across the valley floor, seeking the shelter of a heap of rocks. Above them creatures like buzzards rose up, alarmed, cawing.

There was a grinding rumble.

And, to Jansson’s blank astonishment, a whole section of the flat valley floor sank out of sight, down into the ground, revealing—

A ladder. Rungs cut into a stone wall.

‘Ha!’ Sally clapped her hands together. ‘I knew it. Natural concentration of uranium my butt.’

The kobold came to Jansson. ‘Watch.’

‘Watch what?’

‘No.’ He tapped his wrist. ‘Watch-ssh.’

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 . . .’