The Long War (12 page)

Well, the working trolls below looked content enough. But their overseer carried a whip, as Sally quickly pointed out. Joshua suggested he only used it to make a noise, to attract the trolls’ attention.

‘Yeah, right,’ said Sally.

Helen knew it was hard to tell how happy a troll was. You did hear of distressing incidents, such as the notorious case of the troll called Mary at the Gap, the case everyone was talking about, even the snobs aboard the
Gold Dust
. But you saw trolls wherever people were, working like this. They seemed to enjoy it. Of course if you pushed them too hard they could simply step away.

Maybe they were just too useful to have a conscience about. Disturbing thought. And, as Sally said to Joshua, you wondered what
they
thought about humans.

The party dropped off supplies for the logging team, and brought up samples of exotic lichen in little plastic packs, lichen taken from very
old
trees. Old trees were rare on Datum Earth and were becoming so even on the heavily logged Low Earths. That was the nature of the trade across the ‘Long Mississippi’, as Helen had learned the pilots called this stepwise route. Raw materials flowed in towards the Datum – timber, foodstuffs, minerals – but bulk goods mostly came from the Corn Belt worlds further in, and only rare or precious items were worth bringing in from beyond the half-million-step mark, such as unique old-tree lichens and other exotic flora and fauna. Indeed, Joshua suggested as they watched this trade proceed, their own community ought to think about exporting Hell-Knows-Where maple liquor. In exchange the Datum shipped out low-mass but high-tech goods, from medical kit to electrical generators, to coils of fibre-optic cable so the colonists could establish decent communication networks in their new worlds. It was the kind of trade that had always characterized the settlement of new territories, such as between Britain and its American colonies before the Revolution, with high-quality manufactured products being sent out from the homeland in return for raw materials. Helen’s father and his Footprint Congress buddies would probably claim it was exploitative. Maybe, but it seemed to Helen to work.

And besides, whoever was ripping off whom, it had to be a good thing for this great river of airships to be linking all the worlds of mankind together. So Helen thought, anyhow.

Twelve days out from Valhalla and they crossed a diffuse boundary into the Corn Belt, the great band of farming worlds a third of a million steps thick, stretching in towards the Datum from about four hundred and sixty thousand worlds out. The skies were a lot busier now, with twains like their own heading towards the Datum passing those heading back out, ‘upstream’, so to speak.

The
Gold Dust
had made pretty fast progress to this point, but from now on the stops would be more frequent. There were waystations spread out stepwise all along the Long Mississippi, and further down the river geographically too, in many of these worlds. Helen was told that as they approached the Datum these stations would show up more frequently. At the waystations the twains stopped to take on cargo loads gathered here from the nearby worlds for collection. Sacks of corn were the staple export from these particular Earths, and the crews, with plenty of troll labour, worked in chains to get the twains’ gaping holds loaded up. The stations had inns and the like for rest and recreation. These weren’t polite places, Helen observed. Many of them had a calaboose, a little jailhouse.

One waystation they stopped at, however, was in a world that happened to be a little warmer than the rest, and the owners had taken the opportunity to establish sprawling sugar plantations and orange groves and palmettos, rare this far north in any America. The sugar-house where they processed their cane was a huge clanking factory. The owners’ house was like a colonial mansion constructed of the local timber, with verandas and carved pillars draped with magnolias, and the Captain, the Valienté family, and a few other guests were invited down to drink orange liqueur. In the fields you could see the bent backs of the troll workers, and their song floated on the hot breeze.

The real tourist spectacle in the Corn Belt was the timber trade. Rafts of the stuff from the forests to the north were floated downstream on one Mississippi or another. At a waystation the rafts would be lifted out of the water by a twain or two, and then ganged together by trolls and human workers. The end result was one tremendous platform that might be an acre in size, suspended in the air, constructed of long straight trunks stripped and roped together, each held up by a squadron of airships. And off the twains would go, stepping across the worlds with their vast dangling freight, with parties of trolls and their human supervisors riding in huts and tents on the timber platforms. Just an astounding sight.

What was even more remarkable was what they saw going the other way. One of the principal exports of the Low Earths to the outer worlds was horses. So you’d see a twain descend, and the great ramps from the hold fold down, and out would trot a herd of young horses, supervised by cowboys on horseback.

Occasionally they passed over relics of what used to be an old trekking trail, like the one Helen’s family followed to get out to Reboot, on Earth West 101,754: information flags or warning posts, abandoned halfway houses. Thanks to the twains the days of pioneer trekking, of footslogging across a hundred thousand worlds, were gone, a phase of history that had only lasted a few years but was already passing into legend. Helen wondered what the likes of Captain Batson, who had led her particular trek, were doing now. Yet the trails were still in use, by gangs of humans driving troll bands one direction or the other across the Long Earth. Helen could never tell if the trolls were singing, or not.

These sights were mostly just glimpses, gone in a second or two as they travelled on.

T
EN YEARS AFTER
the epic journey of Joshua Valienté and Lobsang, twain technology, offered as open source by the Black Corporation, had become the standard way of moving groups of people and large cargoes around the Long Earth. But, Jacques Montecute reflected gleefully as he prepared for his mission into deep stepwise China, some twain journeys were more spectacular than others.

This particular journey, with Roberta Golding, was to begin from Datum China. Once the rather lengthy preliminaries were complete, the sister ships
Zheng He
and
Liu Yang
lifted into the dome of smog that hung over Xiangcheng, Henan province. Standing in the
Zheng He
gondola’s main observation lounge, Jacques was able to look up through the window to see the ship’s great silvery hull overhead, the skin flexing like the hide of some muscular animal, as the twain began, literally, to swim through the air. The ship’s mobile hull would have been a remarkable sight even if it hadn’t been adorned with the clasped-hands symbol of the eight-year-old Federated Republic of China.

They soon left the airfield behind, and drifted over the factories and car parks and rubbish tips of a grimy industrial zone. Roberta Golding, Jacques’s charge, fifteen years old, stood by the big floor-to-ceiling windows, impassively inspecting the landscape drifting below.

And a dozen trolls, here in the observation lounge, began to sing ‘Slow Boat to China’, the song strung out into a round and layered with harmony like honey piled on a piece of toast, in the trolls’ usual fashion.

Around Jacques a scattered handful of crew, along with a few more informally dressed types who looked like scientists, glanced out of the windows and laughed at jokes Jacques couldn’t catch, and couldn’t have translated if he had. Jacques and Roberta, from Happy Landings, were used to having trolls around. But some of the crew stared at the trolls, as if they were an utterly unfamiliar sight. Jacques noticed one crewman close to the big animals wearing a conspicuous weapon of some kind at his hip, as if they might be about to go on the rampage.

A uniformed young Chinese, a woman, evidently a crew member, offered Jacques and Roberta drinks: fruit juice, water. Jacques took a water and sipped it. ‘Thanks.’

‘It is my pleasure.’

‘Nice choice of song.’

‘We thought it was an amusing choice to welcome you,’ she said brightly. ‘
We
being the crew. For this is a
fast
boat
from
China, you see.’ She proffered a hand for a strong shake. Dark haired, sensible looking rather than attractive, she might have been twenty-five years old. ‘I am Lieutenant Wu Yue-Sai. A Federal Army officer, but attached to the China National Space Administration.’

‘Ah. Which is running this East Twenty Million project.’

‘Exactly. You can see the logic. Our space engineers are trained to handle advanced technology in unfamiliar and extreme environments. Who better to confront the mysteries of the far East worlds? I however trained as a pilot. I have ambitions to become an astronaut, some day. For now I have been assigned an informal role as companion to your protégée, Ms. Roberta Golding. If that is acceptable to you, and indeed to Ms. Golding. You will call me Yue-Sai, I hope.’

‘And she’ll want you to call her Roberta, I’m sure.’

‘Perhaps she has informal names. Robbie, Bobbie . . .’

Jacques glanced at Roberta, who was solemnly sipping her orange juice. ‘Roberta,’ he said firmly. ‘What do you mean – what kind of companion?’

‘I am relatively close to her in age. Of course I am the same sex. I have enjoyed a broad education, in philosophy and the humanities as well as science and engineering, just as Ms.—as Roberta has.’

‘Well, Roberta’s basically self-taught.’

‘My primary duty is to ensure her safety, whenever we leave the ship. During ground excursions and so forth. No doubt we will encounter many hazardous incidents.’

‘That’s a thoughtful gesture.’

‘It is my honour. I have been studying English especially. As have many of the crew, including the Captain.’

‘I can tell. Thank you. We’ll make a good team.’

‘I’m sure you will.’ Captain Chen Zhong approached now, bustling across the carpeted floor of the deck. As he passed, his crew subtly straightened up, and their faces became more solemn. Chen shook the hands of Jacques and Roberta. He brandished some kind of control box in his left hand. ‘In a moment we’ll be off! Of course we are already in the air, but soon we will be swimming stepwise too . . .’

His accent was stronger than Wu’s, but more complex, some of his phrasing almost British. Aged around fifty he was short, a little stout for a military man, Jacques thought, but sleek, supremely confident. Jacques would have been prepared to bet he was a survivor of the fallen Communist regime.

‘So glad you could come with us, that all the various formalities were overcome. A tricky process given the newness of our nation. Of course the welfare of Ms. Golding is a top priority.’ Now he faced Roberta. ‘I hope you’ll have time to enjoy the experience. Such a pretty thing! Forgive me for saying it. Yet you are so serious.’

Roberta, taller than he was, just looked back at him.

Chen winked at Jacques. ‘Quiet one, is she? But observant. No doubt you’re drinking in the details of the airships even as they are launched. The unusual mode of propulsion, for instance.’

To Jacques’s relief, Roberta deigned to reply to this. ‘The flexible hull, you mean. Strung with some kind of artificial muscle, contracting when electrical impulses are applied?’

‘Very good, very good. With the electricity provided by solar power. You can see why such a system is appropriate? When we observe the worlds we explore, why not do it with as little noise and other disturbance as possible? We hope to reach Earth East 20,000,000, our nominal target – nearly ten times further than any human has ventured into the Long Earth before! – in a mere few weeks. We estimate we will also need to maintain a velocity, that is a lateral velocity, of over a hundred miles per hour in the process. I’m sure you can see why.’

Roberta shrugged. ‘That’s trivial.’

Jacques exchanged a glance with Yue-Sai. That was one of Roberta’s more annoying verbal tics; the need for a sideways speed might be obvious to her, but wasn’t at all obvious to Jacques, or, it seemed, to Yue-Sai. The point went unexplained.

Chen said, ‘You know your engineering, then. But what of your wider education? Are you aware of the provenance of the names of our pioneering ships?’

‘Liu Yang was the first Chinese woman in space. And Zheng He was the eunuch admiral who—’

‘Yes, yes. I can see we have little to teach you.’ He smiled. ‘Then let us explore together.’ He held up the gadget in his left hand; it was like a television remote, Jacques thought, and on it was a familiar corporate logo: a Black Corporation marque. Chen said, ‘I hope you have all been following your nausea inoculation regimes? Now – are you ready? – every journey must begin with a single step.’ He pressed a button.

Jacques felt a familiar jolt to the gut, but faint, a ghost sensation.

The crowded landscape of Datum Henan was whisked away. Suddenly rain clattered on the windows and bounced off the great hull overhead. The trolls, apparently unperturbed, sang on.

Chen led the party to the big downward-looking windows at the gondola’s prow, so they could see better. At first glance Jacques could see little difference in the landscape below, Henan East 1, compared with the original: more, cruder factories and coal-burning power stations belching smoke, roads like muddy tracks, a smoggy tinge to the air. Yet in the distance there were patches of green, of forest, and that
wasn’t
like the original.

Chen said, ‘Henan! Long ago the cradle of Han civilization, you know. But in more recent times something of a hellhole, exploited, over-industrialized. A hundred million people crammed into an area the size of the state of Massachusetts.’ That was a Datum Earth reference that meant little to Jacques, but he got the idea. ‘Datum Henan was once a prime source of migrants to cities like Shanghai, who became the cleaners and the clerks and the barkeeps and the prostitutes. You can imagine that on Step Day a rather large proportion of the population of such places as this wandered over into the new worlds with alacrity. It took the authorities some time to restore order. You should not underestimate the impact that stepping had on the Chinese people as a whole in those early days – and not just the economic or other practical effects. I mean rather the psychological, as you will see. Of course you know that the disruptions after Step Day eventually led to the, ah,
retirement
of the last Communist regime.’ He studied Roberta, evidently curious about her reaction. ‘So we begin our exploration, Ms. Golding. Here we are on Earth East 1, of twenty million. What do you understand the purposes of this expedition to be?’