The Long War (35 page)

He couldn’t step. And presumably none of his kind could, either. Jansson had to cling to that thought, that she could do something he couldn’t—

She coughed, and shivered, a wave of weakness passing over her.

The beagle turned on her. ‘Your name?’

His language was distorted, a mix of dog-like growls and whines.
Hrr-your-rrh ne-rr-mmhh?
Yet he clearly spoke English, his words understandable. Another astonishing conceptual leap for an ex-cop like Jansson to absorb.

Jansson tried to stand straight. ‘Monica Jansson. Formerly Lieutenant, Madison PD.’

The beagle cocked his head on one side, evidently puzzled. He turned to Sally. ‘You?’

‘Sally Linsay.’

The beagle raised his fore-limb, his arm, and pointed at his chest. Jansson saw that his paw, his hand, had four extended finger-like appendages, nothing like a thumb, and he wore a kind of leathery glove over his palm. Protection for when he went on all fours, perhaps. ‘My name,’ he said now. ‘Snowy.’

Sally clearly tried not to, but burst out laughing.

Jansson turned to the kobold. ‘
Snowy?
’

The kobold grinned nervously. ‘Other pathless-ss ones came befo-rre . . . Gave na-mme.’

Sally said, ‘And I know your name. Finn McCool, right?’ She glanced at Jansson. ‘One of the smarter of his breed. Good with humans. I might have known you’d be involved in this, chasing some angle.’

The kobold just grinned. ‘Josh-shua.’

Sally scowled. ‘What about Joshua?’

But the kobold would not reply.

Snowy studied them. ‘You,’ he said to Sally, ‘crotch-stink human-nn.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Smell same as befor-rre. Like othe-hhrs of your kind. But-tt
you
. . .’

He came closer to Jansson. She tried not to flinch as, his eyes half-closed, he sniffed her breath. He smelled of wet fur and a kind of musk.

‘St-hhrange. Sick. You smell sick-hrr.’

‘Very perceptive,’ murmured Jansson.

He stepped back, raised his head and howled, a sharp, supremely loud noise that made Jansson wince, and Sally cover her ears. It was answered within a few seconds by another howl coming from the east.

Snowy turned and pointed that way. ‘My Den. Smell of my litter-hrr. Name, Eye of Hunter-rrh. Cart coming, ca-rrhy you. Granddaughter of Den, name Petra. Sh-she see you. Granddaughter back from Den of Mother, fa-hhr from here.’

Sally asked, ‘Does this Granddaughter know about us?’

‘Not yet. Surp-hhrrise by Snowy.’ He pulled back his lips to reveal very canine teeth in a kind of smile. ‘Rewar-rrd for Snowy, for gi-ffft.’ He sounded breathless, agitated.

Sally murmured to Jansson, ‘Don’t look down.’

‘Why not?’

‘If you do you’ll see how he’s already anticipating the reward he’s going to get from this Granddaughter, whoever she is.’

Snowy walked away, to Jansson’s relief, a big priapic animal backing off and looking out for the cart.

The kobold was still here, grinning at them.

Jansson said wearily, ‘So am I allowed to ask questions?’

Sally laughed. ‘If you can figure out where to begin.’

Jansson jabbed a finger at McCool. ‘I know of your kind. The police agencies across the Low Earths keep records of you. Partial sightings, fragmentary reports, scratchy CCTV images . . . What are you doing here?’

McCool shrugged. ‘Hel-pp you. For price.’
Prei-sss
.

‘Of course, for a price,’ Sally said. ‘I knew that the kobolds were always going to know where the trolls are hiding out, Monica.’

‘So you went to them and asked—’

‘They all know each other. They swap information. The trolls have their long call. With the kobolds it’s more like the long snitch. Anything they know is swapped around and sold to the highest bidder. So I followed the rumour trail, one scrawny kobold to the next. At last I found one who told me to bring Mary to the Rectangles. And then – well, you know the rest. From there we were brought here, to this arid world, this Joker, full of these dog-like sapients.’

‘Beagles,’ McCool said. ‘Called beagles-ss.’

Jansson asked, ‘Who by? Why beagles?’

‘Who? Other pathless-ss ones, here before. They call them beagles-ss.’

Sally said, ‘Somebody’s having a joke. I bet we can blame Charles Darwin for
that
.’

Finn McCool shrugged. It was an unnatural motion, Jansson thought, less like a human gesture than a monkey performing a circus trick.

Jansson asked, ‘And is that how he got his “name”? Snowy?’

Another shrug. ‘Human na-mme. Not true name. Beagles-ss not speak true na-mme to human-nn. Kobolds not ss-peak true name to pathless-ss ones.’

‘How is it he speaks English at all? Learned from humans?’

‘No. Kobolds here first. Kobolds sell beagles ss-tuff.’

Jansson nodded. ‘You already spoke English. So the beagles were the first to learn your language rather than the other way around.’

‘Beagles are smarter than kobolds, then,’ Sally said with a satisfied grin.

McCool looked away, edgy, nervous.

There was a plume of dust, coming from the east. Snowy spotted it, sniffed the air, howled again. There was an answering howl from off in the distance, and what sounded like a throaty caw to Jansson, like the cry of some tremendous bird. Jansson shivered again, having no real idea what she was getting into.

She turned back to McCool. ‘Tell me one more thing. That beagle, Snowy, was carrying a stone-tipped spear – and a ray gun.’

Sally grunted. ‘Actually it looked like a compact laser projector.’

‘We just got here. But I don’t see any cities, any planes in the sky. How did some kind of Stone Age warrior get a laser gun?’

Sally said to McCool, ‘From some other world, stepwise. From you kobolds. Right? So is that your angle here?’

The kobold grinned again. ‘Beagles not ss-tep. Smart but no toolss. Only ss-tone. Buy tool-ss from us-ss, all kinda stuff.’

‘Including a weapon,’ Sally murmured, ‘that looked like it came from a society more advanced even than Datum Earth. Where
did
you get it, monkey boy?’

‘Dug up,’ Finn McCool said simply, and he grinned, and would say no more.

That approaching dust plume resolved into a cart, a heavy frame of wood running on four solid wooden wheels that seemed to be rimmed with rusty iron. Another beagle, perhaps slighter than Snowy, stood on the cart’s bed, wielding reins. Taller than Jansson, taller even than Snowy, the bird things had fat feathered bodies with stubby wings, muscular legs, feet tipped with claws like sickles, long pillar-like necks, and heads that looked all beak. Yet they were harnessed up and appeared obedient.

‘That would be an astonishing sight,’ Jansson murmured. ‘A dog riding a cart. Even if it wasn’t being drawn by two huge birds. If you filmed that and put it on the outernet it would be a comedy sensation.’

Sally touched Jansson’s arm, surprisingly sympathetic. ‘Just let the strangeness wash over you, Lieutenant Jansson. Come on . . .’

Hastily they packed up their few bits of gear.

The cart slowed to a stop. The beagle driver jumped to the ground, and she – nude save for a kind of belt of pockets, you could see she was female – greeted Snowy. They ran around each other briefly, and Snowy even dropped for a moment to all fours, wagging a stub of tail.

‘The females are dominant,’ Sally murmured.

‘What?’

‘Look at the two of them. He’s more pleased to see her than the other way around. Something worth noting.’

‘Hmm. Maybe you’re jumping to conclusions.’

Sally snorted. ‘You could learn all you need to know about
human
males from one miserable specimen. Why not the same here? Listen, we need to find an angle of our own.’

‘We came here to help Mary. We came for the trolls.’

‘Yeah. But we weren’t expecting all this complication. We’ll play for time – and stay alive in the process. Just remember, we can always step out, if it gets bad enough. I can carry you. These dogs can’t follow, we know that now.’

With the greeting done, the female beagle approached the humans. She pointed to her own chest. ‘Li-Li. Call me Li-Li.’ She turned to the cart. ‘Ride to Eye of Hunte-hhr.’

Sally nodded. ‘Thank you. We need to bring the trolls we came with . . .’

But Li-Li had already turned away, and was beckoning to the trolls, singing a kind of warbled melody. Without any fuss Mary stood, picked up Ham and set him on her shoulder, and clambered aboard the cart.

The humans followed, with Finn McCool. Snowy snapped the reins, the bird beasts cawed like pigeons on steroids, and the cart jolted into motion, nearly knocking Jansson over. There were no seats. Jansson held on to the rough-finished wall of the cart, wondering how far it was to this city, and if she could make it all the way without collapsing.

Li-Li approached Jansson. Again Jansson had to endure a wet dog-like nose sniffing at her mouth, armpits, crotch. ‘Sick,’ Li-Li said without ceremony.

Jansson forced a smile. ‘My body’s going wrong, and I’m full of drugs. No wonder I smell strange to you.’

Li-Li took Jansson’s hands in hers. Li-Li wore no gloves, unlike Snowy. Her fingers were long, human-like in that regard, but her palms had leathery pads on the underside, like canine paws. ‘My jj-rrh-
ob
. Care for sick and injured. You lucky.’

‘How?’ Sally asked sharply. ‘How were we lucky?’

‘Snowy found-dd you.’ She glanced up at the big beagle at the reins. ‘Not ve-hhry clever but big spir-rrit. Always truth-tells. B-hhrave. Good hunter, but kind. Takes you back to city, see Granddaughter Petra. Some hunter-hhrs, just take back head. Or ear-rrs.’

Sally and Jansson exchanged a glance. Jansson said, ‘So we’re lucky we got found by a beagle that didn’t just kill us outright.’

‘There’s no higher morality,’ Sally said. ‘By the way,’ she added more softly, ‘I just jumped to another conclusion.’

‘What?’

‘She said Snowy’s truthful. That implies that others aren’t. These super-dogs know how to lie.’

Jansson nodded. ‘Noted.’

S
OON THEY MADE
out a smear of smoke on the eastern horizon.

The trail they followed turned to bare mud scored by the ruts of traffic. The land seemed greener too, away from the open sward of scrubland into which they had stepped. They even passed by a few forest clumps. To Jansson, no naturalist, many of the trees looked like ferns, with squat, stubby trunks and sprawling, parasol-like leaves.

In one place she could see through a screen of trees to a shimmer of open water, a lake, and by its bank creatures had gathered to drink. They were rather like small deer, Jansson thought, but their bodies were a little too heavy, their legs a bit too stubby. Deer with a dash of pig, perhaps.

Li-Li was on the alert as the cart rolled through its closest approach to the lake. At his reins, Snowy stared fixedly at the deer things, his ears erect. Li-Li growled a phrase to him, over and over.

Finn McCool the kobold grinned his anxious, nervy grin at Sally and Jansson. ‘She says, “Snowy. Remember wh-hho you a-are . . .” These dog fellows-ss run off four-legged after prey if they get chance. Sh-should be on leash-shsh . . .’

‘Nothing would surprise me,’ Jansson said, as the cart rolled on away from the water.

Sally said, ‘We ought to remember that our hosts might look like dogs, but they’re
not dogs
. That might lead us astray. Their ancestors never were dogs, because dogs probably never evolved here, not as we know them. These are sapient creatures carved from some dog-like clay. Just as we are sapients made from heavily modified apes . . .’

Jansson found herself longing for the concrete and glass of the Datum, the reassuringly grubby crimes of lowlife humanity. Perhaps all this, natural selection’s arbitrary shaping of living things, was something you got used to out in the Long Earth. Not her, not yet. ‘The plasticity of living forms.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Nothing. A line from a book.’

Her reaction merely seemed to puzzle Sally.

Now they passed through farmland, a belt of it that evidently surrounded the beagle city. A scrawl of dry stone walls, none of them straight, divided the land into rough fields crowded with beasts browsing or grazing. Some of these looked like fatter, stupider versions of the deer things Jansson had spotted by the lake in the forest. Others were more like cattle, goats, pigs, even what looked like some kind of rhinoceros with lopped-off horns, and a few fat, feathery versions of the bird creatures that drew this truck. Dogs could be seen patrolling the herds. In one field, deer-like animals were being driven into an enclosure, perhaps for milking.

And here Jansson saw trolls, the first since they’d arrived in this world, save for Mary and Ham. A party of a couple of dozen, perhaps, were working their way along a dry stone wall, evidently making repairs. They sang as they worked, the usual beautiful multi-part harmony applied to a lively, jumping melody. Ham, who had been napping on Mary’s lap, woke up now, and climbed up on his mother’s shoulder to see. In his immature piping voice he sang back phrases, echoing the song.

Sally listened hard. ‘I’d swear they’re singing “Johnny B Goode”. My father would have known.’

Jansson said, ‘These are the farms of smart carnivores. Right? Nothing arable, no crops. Nothing but meat on the hoof.’

‘Right. There’ll be plenty of peptides in the arteries after they’ve fed us up a few times here, Monica.’

‘The trolls seem happy, judging by that party we saw.’

‘Yes.’ Sally seemed oddly uneasy with that observation. ‘These dogs are evidently sapient. We know trolls like to be around sapients. I guess that’s why they’re coming here, to this world, for refuge. Sapients, but non-human. So they’re comfortable here.’

‘You’re jealous!’

‘Am not.’

‘Come on. Everybody knows you like trolls, Sally Linsay. You championed their cause even before this latest blow-up, even before we absconded from the Gap with Mary.’

‘What about it?’

‘Well, now you’re finding out that, no matter how special trolls are to you, humans aren’t all that special to trolls.’