The Long War

Jackson hadn’t yet said a single word. He was struggling here; he felt as if he’d been hit by some primal force. ‘Why don’t you take a seat, Mr. Valienté, and Mr.—’ he glanced at his briefing ‘– Chambers?’

At least they complied to that degree.

What was this Valienté? Jackson’s briefing had suggested some kind of retard with nothing more than a gift for stepping . . . He was evidently more than that. His very voice was strange, Jackson thought as he tried to size up this man, a voice which laid down words as a poker player laid down cards, with finality and decision. He seemed slow rather than fast, but relentless. As hard to stop, once he came rolling at you, as an oncoming tank.

As for the trophies on the wall, Jackson knew that the tiger head had been acquired by Starling’s grandfather who’d bought it from a dealer in Chinese aphrodisiacs, but most of the rest were the result of the Senator’s own efforts. All these trophies were a signal – Valienté was right to spot the symbolism – to inform any visitors that the Senator had an impressive and well-oiled armoury and was not shy of using it. But then, practically everybody who voted for him was a firearms enthusiast. Jim Starling was not

a man to take any notice of latter-day eco-tards wetting their pants because they thought somebody was killing Bambi out in some dismal stepwise Earth. Which, of course, was the background to this whole business.

Anyhow this was not Jackson’s problem; he just had to get through the next hour or whatever until these guys were shown the door. ‘Coffee, gentlemen?’

Chambers said, ‘You wouldn’t have a cup of tea at all?’

Jackson made a call; the drinks arrived in a couple of minutes.

Then, to Jackson’s relief, he heard a flush from the bathroom. The door opened and the Senator came in with, fortunately, for once, everything safely stowed away.

Starling, a burly fifty-something in shirtsleeves, evidently in the middle of his working day, looked disarmingly welcoming. The colonists stood up, and looked a little less, well, bristling, as the Senator shook their hands. This was what Starling was good at, working people even from the first second he walked in a room.

And Jackson could see it shook Valienté up when Starling asked for his autograph, as they sat down. ‘Not for me, it’s for my niece. She’s a big fan.’

Valienté seemed to feel the need to apologize as he signed a card. ‘I didn’t vote for you. Postal votes don’t get out as far as Hell-Knows-Where.’

Starling shrugged. ‘But you’re still my constituent, according to the Aegis definition and the electoral records.’ Joshua maintained a legal address at the Home in Madison West 5. ‘And you’re in politics yourself now, right?’ He flipped through the paperwork on his desk. ‘A mayor in some pioneer-type community. How admirable.’ The Senator flopped back in his big chair and said, ‘Well, now, gentlemen, you came all the way back from your distant Earth, you came all the way in to DC, you wanted to see me urgently. So let’s get to it. I believe the issue is game preservation in the subsidiary Earths, yes?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the Irishman, Bill Chambers.

‘No,’ said Valienté, back on the attack again. ‘Trolls aren’t game. And there are no such things as subsidiary Earths; every Earth is an Earth, a whole world. That’s a very Datum-centric point of view, sir.’

Jackson drew breath to intervene at this point. But the Senator took this with good humour. ‘I stand corrected. But the Earths that interest me are the ones containing US citizens, under the Aegis. And my concern is to ensure that our citizens are allowed those liberties that our Constitution demands.’ He shuffled his paperwork, glancing over it again. ‘I believe I understand why you’re here. But why don’t you put it in your own words?’

Valienté was no orator, evidently, Jackson saw, despite his own political experience. Haltingly, as best he could, he tried to summarize the concerns gathering across the Long Earth over the treatment of the trolls.

‘Look – when I heard about this notorious case, of Mary and her cub at the Gap, I was dismayed. But it’s only the tip of the iceberg where the trolls are concerned. At Hell-Knows-Where, you know, we protect our trolls under a citizenship extension.’

‘What? You’re serious? So how far do you take that? Oh, don’t answer that. Look, whatever hayseed laws you pass in Who-Knows-What—’

‘Hell-Knows-Where.’