The Long War

That evening, Maggie met Joe Mackenzie coming out of the ship’s small medical bay.

‘How is she?’ she asked.

‘Thank goodness I spent a semester in a children’s hospital before I signed up.’

‘Would coffee help?’

In Maggie’s sea cabin, Mackenzie accepted the mug with gratitude, and after two blessed swigs, said, ‘You know, the bastard got what was coming to him, in my personal view. But we are officers of the United States Navy. Even Wyatt Earp had to look as if he respected the law.’

‘I’m hoping they’ll work that out for themselves. Plenty of other communities out here have done.’

‘But other communities don’t have those damn flowers. And, to me, there was a definite feel of hippie about the place – you know what I mean? – the feeling that people aren’t taking care of business. The counter-culture gone bad scenario, too many people frazzled out of their brains.’

Maggie stared at the medic. ‘Where did all that come from, Mac?’

‘My grandfather left me a complete collection of the Whole Earth Catalog, a load of sixties and seventies counter-culture stuff . . . I got quite interested in it, you know. Some of their values were laudable. But when it comes to the meat and potatoes – the secret to building a home in a place like this isn’t about ideals and theory, and not about getting high. It’s about hard work, alongside a sense of humour, and the goodwill of your neighbours, and putting your back into the future. But what you’ve got down there, I think, is the seed of tragedy. Along with Margarita Jha from biology, I analysed that lovely little flower that grows everywhere in their woods. Addictive and hallucinogenic like there’s no tomorrow. Growing like a weed.’

‘But, Mac – ye gods! Are we going to have to send a Drug Enforcement Agency unit to every settlement? They have to work it out for themselves.’

‘That’s how it got resolved on the Datum, in the end. After Step Day there was an explosion in the drug trade – with stepping pushers, there was no way to police it. In the inner cities, the cops pulled back and . . . Well, let’s say they let natural selection take its course.’

She looked at him as he said these words, his tone neutral. In the course of his career Mac had evidently seen a lot of stuff even she, in the military, had been shielded from. She said, ‘Well, we’re done with this particular can of worms. I think they’ll let this guy Hartmann out. But it’s been a salutary shock; they’ll figure out ways to order their affairs better.’

‘Sure. A neat wrap-up,’ said Mac sourly. ‘But the frightening part of it is that we’ve barely started this mission. What’s waiting for us in the world next door?’

16

SIX DAYS OUT of Valhalla, somewhere around the Earth million mark, the Gold Dust made a stop at a clearing cut into yet another raw world’s continent-sized forest. From the air the Valientés saw it as a neat little rectangular patch etched out of the green, an oddly touching island of humanity all but lost in this global forest.

But when you looked more closely you could see that it wasn’t humans who’d created the clearing but a party of trolls, under the direction of a human, labouring even as the passengers looked down on them, those massive muscles working under their black pelts.

Bosun Higgs had proved to be a bright kid and surprisingly knowledgeable about the Long Earth – and the importance of the trolls. The big humanoids were ubiquitous, though not necessarily in large numbers. And they shaped the country they moved through, just on account of what they ate, pushed through, moved aside. In their ecological role they were like the big animals of Africa, maybe, like elephants or wildebeest. As a result, Helen learned now, the landscapes of the stepwise worlds, while quite unlike the Datum, were not quite like the Datum as it had once been before humanity either, not for a long time – because as mankind had risen up, the trolls had fled.

Well, the working trolls below looked content enough. But their overseer carried a whip, as Sally quickly pointed out. Joshua suggested he only used it to make a noise, to attract the trolls’ attention.

‘Yeah, right,’ said Sally.

Helen knew it was hard to tell how happy a troll was. You did hear of distressing incidents, such as the notorious case of the troll called Mary at the Gap, the case everyone was talking about, even the snobs aboard the Gold Dust. But you saw trolls wherever people were, working like this. They seemed to enjoy it. Of course if you pushed them too hard they could simply step away.

Maybe they were just too useful to have a conscience about. Disturbing thought. And, as Sally said to Joshua, you wondered what they thought about humans.