The Long War

Bill Chambers was waiting for him in the foyer.

‘Bill? What are you doing here?’

‘Well, Lobsang sent for me. He figured you would need a companion for the trip.’

‘What trip?’

‘To find Sally, and the trolls. What else?’

‘But we only just spoke about it . . .’ He sighed. ‘What the hell. That’s Lobsang for you. OK, Bill, thanks.’

‘Fair play to him, he says he’ll give us some kind of translation gadget, so we can talk to the trolls.’

‘If we can find them at all. If I’m honest I’ve no idea where to start.’

‘I do.’ His ruddy face creased in a wide smile. ‘Which is, I guess, why he sent for me. We have to start with Sally. Figure out where she might have gone.’

‘How do we do that?’

‘Well, Joshua, you’re as close to her as any member of the human race, like it or not. There must be something she’s done or said, some clue we can follow.’

‘I’ll think about it. OK. What else?’

‘Then we need to track down them troll lads. And I’ve an idea about that. Look at this.’ He dug an item out of his jacket pocket, and handed it to Joshua.

It was a tape cassette, a bit of technology fifty years obsolete, or more. Its plastic was worn and grubby, and the label unreadable. The cassette smelled strange, Joshua discovered now as he handled it. Half rutting goat, half patchouli, half chemical. It smelled, in fact, of clear nights in the High Meggers. ‘Who the hell plays cassette tapes, outside of a museum? What is this, Bill?’

‘A lure.’

‘A lure for what? Or who?’

‘Somebody who’s going to help us. You’ll see. So – what first?’

‘I’m going to see my family. Try to explain all this to Helen.’

Bill looked squarely at him. ‘Ah, she already knows, man.’

And Joshua remembered that fragment of poetry Helen had quoted at the very beginning of all this: A woman with the West in her eyes, / And a man with his back to the East. ‘Yeah. Probably.’

‘As for me, I’m off to get bladdered while I’ve got the chance. See you in the morning.’

38

THE BENJAMIN FRANKLIN was summoned to the town of New Purity, a hundred thousand worlds East of Valhalla, where there had been an ambiguous report of yet more trouble with trolls.

Joe Mackenzie stood by Maggie on the observation deck, looking down on the community. From the air it had a look of competence: town hall, neat fields, and, of course, what looked like a large church. ‘New Purity, huh?’ he said. ‘What’s the name of this sect again?’

Maggie checked her briefing. ‘The Uncut Brethren.’

‘Well, you’d expect a church. But there’s no stockade.’

‘No. And look over there.’ She pointed at what looked like a charnel pit.

Even as the twain descended, Maggie’s instincts started pressing alarm buttons. The Uncut Brethren. Maggie had been home-schooled by avowed atheists – actually not that avowed, they had argued that an outright fundamentalist atheist was just as bad as the worst fire-and-brimstone spittle-dribbling Bible-puncher, and as an adolescent Maggie had been fascinated by both extremes. So, as a connoisseur of believers and unbelievers, she thought she recognized the Uncut Brethren’s type on sight, as they gathered before the Franklin party: uniformly dressed, both male and female, in drab woollen smocks, with long queues of hair down their backs.

Still, they seemed hospitable enough – right up until Jake the troll and his family stepped down the ramp from the hovering twain, after the human crew.

One young man promptly approached Maggie. ‘We don’t allow these creatures on our premises, our homes, our farms. They are unclean.’

Maggie looked into his face, irritated. But she saw tension there. Even grief. Something bad had happened here. ‘Unclean how? Also, Jake is not a creature.’

The man’s face worked. ‘Very well, let him tell me that.’

Maggie sighed. ‘Actually that’s possible, just. What’s your name, sir?’

‘My name is immaterial. I speak for all, it is our way.’

Maggie felt a gentle but persistent pressure on her arm. It was Jake. She beckoned to Nathan Boss, who carried the troll-call. ‘This alive person / close to dead / gone away / person was and is not / song of sadness.’

Hearing these scratchy words coming out of the instrument, the Brethren stared at the troll.

Maggie faced the young spokesman. ‘What happened here? Just show me.’

For answer, he led her away from the neat buildings to that pit they’d spotted from the air.

It was indeed a hole in the ground, full of corpses. A dozen bodies in total, she guessed, maybe more. There were no human remains here that she could see, but many humanoids: trolls, and another species Maggie recognized from her pre-mission briefings. Elves – one of the more vicious varieties, if she remembered the detail.

Maggie turned again to the young man, and said with a note of command, ‘I think you need to tell me your name, son.’