The Long War

‘Don’t amount to a hill of beans back here, as your type might say. Let’s get to the point. These trolls are humanoids. Right? Humanoid, pre-human if you like, but not human, no matter what ordinances you pass in your hick Blazing Saddles–type town. They are animals, and, according to my best advice, dangerous animals. So we have these creatures out there, powerful and aggressive creatures, who, according to you, should not be killed or otherwise inconvenienced, yes? I have read the paperwork, even though my assistant probably thinks I haven’t,’ and he winked at Jackson. ‘Powerful, aggressive animals, and now killers.’

Valienté said, ‘Powerful, yes. Even a female troll will weigh as much as a sumo wrestler and can punch like a heavyweight boxer . . . Aggressive? Only if they’re pushed. Mostly they’re helpful.’

‘Helpful?’

‘Senator, humans and trolls work together. It happens all across the Long Earth, even in the Low Earths – hell, you must be aware of that, the economic value-add of troll labour . . .’

The trolls had become an ever-present in the worlds colonized by mankind. To pioneers bereft of heavy machinery, trolls were willing and clever workers who would clear your field, tote your bales of hay, even help you put up the schoolhouse. Nowadays, in the more developed societies in the Low Earths and beyond, trolls were put to work on the vast sheep farms that covered many parallel Australias, even shearing and spinning the wool, and in the tremendous rubber plantations of stepwise Malaysias. They even worked in the assembly lines of factories in some Low Earth Americas.

‘That’s as may be.’ Starling riffled the paperwork. ‘But here I have a sheaf of reports of attacks by these trolls of yours on humans. In one case leading to a man being paralysed, in another a small child traumatized and its mother left lying dead. And so on. What do you say to that?’

‘Senator – trolls are only dangerous in the way that bears in a national park are dangerous. I mean, every so often some dumb tourist wants to get a picture of his toddler sitting nicely with a cute little cub . . . That kind of ignorance is bad enough back in the original USA, but it’s deadly on the stepwise Earths, which are all more or less wild. We tell people this all the time. In most stepwise worlds, being dumb is a prelude to being dead.

‘And the situation’s going to get worse, Senator. The trolls have something called the long call, which means that eventually every troll in every world gets to know what every other troll knows. It takes a while to permeate. But sooner or later, if humanity treats trolls as ferocious animals, then our relationship with them everywhere will be fundamentally altered—’

Starling laughed out loud. ‘And that, sir, sounds like a lot of wu-wu tree-hugger bull hickey to me. The long call

? You’ll be warning me about the wrath of Eywa next. Bottom line, Mr. Valienté: our citizens must be protected, even from being dumb, which is not a crime. Good heavens, if it was, the jails would never empty. Especially here in DC. Ha!’

Valienté pressed his point. ‘All I am asking for, sir, is some kind of declaration that the United States gives the trolls the status of a protected species throughout the Aegis.’

‘That’s all, is it?’ Starling spread his hands. ‘But you must know that the situation regarding animal protection is complicated in this country as it is. We have federal laws, but a lot of legislation is at state level. Who exactly is it you want to define these laws, let alone enforce them? And in any event, as with so much concerning the so-called colony worlds, there’s endless debate about how our Datum laws extend out there.’ He glanced again at his briefing. ‘I see you’ve floated the idea that these trolls of yours could be considered an exotic species. If so they would fall under the Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection service. But there’s a counter-argument that they aren’t exotic at all, but endemic – I mean, they’re native to all the other Earths, aren’t they? So the old categories don’t necessarily apply, legally or morally, it seems to me.