The Long War

‘The distinction between human and animal is the clincher, you see. You can own an animal; you can kill it with impunity, aside from feeble anti-cruelty legislation. You can’t own a human, not in any civilized society, and killing a human is murder. So should we extend human rights to trolls?’

‘We have, kind of, in Hell-Knows-Where.’

‘Yes, but you’re more sane there than most. The basic quandary is: should we embrace them in our own category of being?’

‘Which is a challenge to our pride. Right?’

‘And more,’ Lobsang said. ‘A challenge to our very self-image. Meanwhile, there are others who argue that the trolls can’t be human because they have no sense of God. Well, not as far as we can tell. What would the Catholics, for instance, do about that? If trolls have souls, then they must be fallen, as we are – that is, tainted with original sin. In which case it is the duty of Catholics to go out and baptize them, to save them from limbo when they die. But, you see, if the trolls are actually animals, to baptize them is blasphemous. Apparently the Pope is preparing an encyclical on the subject. But in the short term the religious debates are just stirring everybody up even more.’

‘What does Agnes say?’

‘“Trolls like ice cream, and they laugh. Of course they’re bloody human, Lobsang. Now go get your broom, you missed a bit.”’

‘That’s Agnes, all right . . . Let’s get to the point. Sally dragged me out of my home and all the way to the Datum because of this. Of course Sally found us in the first place, ten years ago, because of a disturbance of trolls. When they fled from First Person Singular. Now you want me to go out again, don’t you? Out into the Long Earth, beyond the High Meggers. To do what? Find Sally and Jansson with Mary, I guess. Then what? Find where the trolls are hiding? Persuade them to come out, to join the human world again?’

‘That’s pretty much it,’ Lobsang said. ‘Sounds impossible, doesn’t it? And it doesn’t help that we’re already in the middle of so much upheaval from the Valhallan independence demands.’

‘You want to restore the balance.’

‘You and I always did share the same instincts, Joshua.’ Lobsang bent to remove a single dead leaf from an otherwise immaculate lawn. Will you do it, Joshua? He didn’t ask the question, but left it hanging in the air.

Joshua thought it over. He was in his late thirties now. He had a young wife, a kid, a role in society at Hell-Knows-Where. He was no longer a mountain man, if he ever had been. And now here was Sally, charging off into the Long Earth through her soft places, as if challenging Joshua to follow. Here was Lobsang, like a ghost from the past, snapping his fingers once more. Was Joshua just going to jump as commanded?

Of course he was. Even if he wasn’t the man he used to be. But then, even Lobsang wasn’t who he once was, quite.

They walked on, stepping occasionally from world to world, from sunset to sunset. The troll songs hung in the richly scented air of each world – but Joshua wondered if they were diminishing, even as he listened.

Tentatively he said, ‘Having met you now, I can see your instinct was right.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You did need Sister Agnes.’

Lobsang sighed. ‘But I think I need you too, Joshua. I often think back to our days together on the Mark Twain.’

‘Watched any old movies recently?’

‘That’s another thing about Agnes. She won’t let me show any movies that don’t have nuns in.’

‘Wow. That’s brutal.’

‘Something else that’s good for me, she says. Of course there aren’t that many movies that qualify, and we watch them over and over.’ He shuddered. ‘Don’t talk to me about Two Mules for Sister Sara. But the musicals are the worst. Although Agnes says that the freezer-raiding scene in Sister Act is an authentic detail from convent life.’

‘Well, that’s a consolation. Musicals with nuns in, huh . . .’

A voice rang out across the park, a voice Joshua remembered only too well from his own past. ‘Lobsang? Time to come in now. Your little friend will keep until tomorrow . . .’

‘She has loudhailers everywhere.’ Lobsang shouldered his rake and sighed as they trudged across the grass. ‘You see what I’m reduced to? To think I hired forty-nine hundred monks to chant for forty-nine days on forty-nine mountain tops in stepwise Tibets, for this.’

Joshua clapped him on the shoulder. ‘It’s tough, Lobsang. She’s treating you like you’re a kid. Like you’re sixteen, going on seventeen.’

Lobsang looked at him sharply. ‘You can pack that in for a start,’ he snapped.

‘But I’ve got confidence you can overcome these difficulties, Lobsang. Just face up to every obstacle. Climb every mountain—’

Lobsang stalked off sulkily.

Joshua waved cheerfully. ‘So long! Farewell!’

37

JOSHUA MADE HIS way out of the transEarth facility through the reception building in Madison West 10. Of course he could have stepped away anywhere, but it seemed polite to go back out that way. Besides, he had to give Hiroe his badge back.