The Long War

Then a man came strolling into the clearing, whistling, rods in his hand, and some kind of big fish on a line he had thrown over his shoulder. He might have been fifty, Nathan thought, with a deep-tanned face, and a lithe toughness about him when he walked. When he found a dozen armed warriors glaring at him he briefly froze, but then his face broke into a broad grin. ‘Hey, soldiers,’ he said. ‘Did I break an ordinance? I’ll throw it back, I promise . . .’

Lieutenant Allen glared at the civilian. Then he turned to Wang. ‘Ask him if he knows the way to this Reboot place.’

‘Sir, do you know the way to Reboot?’

‘My name’s Bill Lovell, by the way,’ he said heavily. He looked around at them; Nathan felt profoundly embarrassed, and somewhat overdressed. ‘Don’t tell me you’re lost.’

Allen didn’t respond.

Nathan tried to explain.

Lovell shook his head as he listened. ‘How the hell did your pilots manage to make a drop in the wrong world?’

Nathan said ruefully, ‘We’re kind of learning our way around here, sir.’

Lovell was still grinning. ‘I can see that. You folks just don’t get the Long Earth way of thinking, do you? Here you are, lost as babies. And you’re really planning to go all the way up to Valhalla?’

Wang asked, ‘You know about our mission?’

‘Oh, news travels fast out here. That might surprise you, not me. I used to be a postman. I mean, for the US postal service, before they cut out the service to the far stepwise worlds. Yeah, we heard about you.’

Allen looked as if he longed to pistol-whip this guy. ‘You going to show us to Reboot, or not?’

Lovell mock-bowed. ‘Follow me.’

Nathan wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting of Reboot. A Dodge City movie set? Some kind of cluttered steampunk nirvana? A few primitive farms hacked out of the wilderness? Banjo players? In fact, as you could clearly see as you walked down the main drag from the river, it was a town. An American town, judging by the big Stars and Stripes hanging over the schoolhouse.

Bill Lovell pointed out the sights. ‘That’s the old Wells place. One of the original plots.’ A woman worked a garden behind a neat whitewashed fence, a real Acacia Avenue kind of scene. She looked up, smiled. ‘Not that it looked like that

when the first trekkers got here in ’26 . . .’

Toby Fox asked, ‘As recently as that? Just fourteen years ago?’

‘There’s Arthurson’s general store. The only store in town right now, though a few of the farmhouses will sell you beer or liquor, or make you a meal, or hire you a room.’

Santorini asked, ‘Will they accept dollars?’

Lovell just laughed.

There were horses, and camels, tied up at the rail outside the store. Laughter sounded from within.

Then a bunch of children burst out of one of the houses and ran across the street. They might have been Native American kids to Nathan’s urban eye, with hand-sewn leather trousers and jackets, and some kind of moccasins on their feet.

‘School’s out,’ Bill said. He cupped a hand behind a fat ear. ‘And can you hear that?’

When the kids had dispersed and their chatter subsided, Nathan heard a distant clank-clank-clank . . .

‘The new sawmill. Or rather the old sawmill with its new steam engine. Everything made locally, or at least every iron part. They’ve promised themselves a water-turbine power supply soon. They’re even trialling a telegraph system, to keep in touch with some of the outlying farms, which are pretty remote. Geographically, I mean.’

He sounded as if he was proud of the citizens of Reboot, Nathan thought. Fatherly.

‘Lots of little kids,’ Wang observed.

‘Well, you have population booms going on across many of the settled Earths. In a few centuries you might have hundreds of Earths teeming with billion-fold populations. Think of it. All those little tax-payers!’

Wang’s eyes widened. Her mind was being opened up almost visibly, Nathan thought.

‘But probably nobody’s ever going to count them,’ Wang said.

‘Actually that’s my job,’ said Toby Fox, with a touch of pride.

‘Hey, there she is. Katie! Katie Bergreen!’

A woman, strawberry-blonde, aged maybe thirty, was crossing the road with a determined stride. She glanced over in surprise at Bill Lovell, and with evident caution at Nathan and his buddies in their bristling combat gear. ‘What’s this? An invasion?’

Lovell shrugged. ‘I think they’re here to count us. Or something. Right now these guys have lost their way. You think your father would give the US Navy some water?’

She grinned, almost cheekily. ‘Well, they could ask. This way,’ she said to Nathan. ‘But you’ll need to leave your weapons at the door . . .’

19

JACK GREEN, AGED about sixty, was a bookish firebrand kind of a guy, it seemed to Nathan Boss. He stared down Lieutenant Allen on his doorstep – actually stared down this huge, armed marine – before allowing him and his troopers into his house. Even then they did indeed have to leave their weapons at the door, and take their combat boots off at the porch.