The Long War Read online

  ‘A book? What about?’

  ‘The spiritual benefits of female masturbation.’

  Joshua sprayed coffee. The male heads turned again.

  Her eyes glittered, as if she was ready for the fight. ‘We’ve been at war with the Pope and his cardinals since the Second Vatican Council. Just because we think social justice is more important than opposing abortion or same-sex marriage. Just because we reject their patronizing patriarchy – which is why nuns become nuns in the first place, one way or another. Oh, I can’t wait to get back into the fray, Joshua. And with this new body I’m never going to run out of steam, am I? I’ll be the Energizer bunny of militant nuns.’

  ‘What’s an Energizer bunny?’

  ‘Oh my dear child, you have so much to learn.’

  ‘Tell me why Lobsang brought you back. Not for my benefit, I’m guessing?’

  She snorted. ‘Maybe that’s ten per cent of it. Apparently, I am to serve as a moral compass for Lobsang himself.’

  ‘Hmm. That’s not necessarily a bad idea.’

  ‘Maybe so, but I remain astonished that he doesn’t realize that the pointer of my own moral compass is severely bent around the stop.’

  He grinned. ‘I remember when you hit that papal nuncio with a shoe. We all enjoyed that, even though we knew nothing about the scandal that guy was wrapped up in at the time. Then about two years afterwards the cover-up was exposed, and we all wished that you had hit him with both shoes.’

  ‘Of course, at first, I hated Lobsang for bringing me back from the dead. What a cheek. While at the same time, if you can understand me, I was beside myself with gratitude that he did so.’ She looked down at her body, at her hands.

  ‘But he gave you the choice of not going along with this, right? You could have gone off and led some independent – umm, life. Or—’

  ‘Or have him show me where my off switch is.’

  ‘How did he convince you?’

  She looked thoughtful. ‘Well, I’ll tell you the truth. It was one particular conversation we had. Lobsang said about something or other, “Does not compute.” “Right,” I said . . .’

  ‘That was an ironic allusion, by the way,’ Lobsang had added.

  They had been in a kind of gym, both in more or less incongruous tracksuits, where Lobsang was helping Agnes develop her physical reflexes.

  ‘What was an ironic allusion?’

  ‘The phrase “does not compute” was used in an ironic sense to imply bewildered exasperation,’ said Lobsang patiently. ‘It was not used unthinkingly as an error message in response to insufficient or contradictory information.’

  ‘Lobsang?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘You persist in thinking of me as a computer. I am trying to dispel that illusion. Why are you shaking your head?’

  ‘Sorry. It’s just, well, you’re trying too hard, I think.’

  ‘You may call me “Lobby”. Perhaps pet names will break the ice, do you suppose?’

  ‘Lobby . . .’

  (‘Joshua, he kept pausing, waiting for me to carry on talking. Have you ever spent time with a foreigner who wants to practise his English on you? Lobsang was like that, in those first few days, anxiously trying out his humanity on me . . .’)

  ‘Look,’ Agnes said, ‘you’re going about it all wrong. You’re not a human. You can’t be a human. You’re a very intelligent machine. You’re more than human. Can’t you live with that? Being human isn’t about the brain, it’s all tied up with messy things like – well, organs and juices and instincts.’

  ‘You are describing your body, not yourself. In fact your former body.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Externally you were an animal, but that was not your self. Externally I am a machine, but you should not judge by appearances.’

  ‘OK, but—’

  ‘We could try the Turin test,’ said Lobsang.

  ‘Oh, machines have been able to pass the Turing test for years.’

  ‘No, the Turin test. We both pray for an hour, and see if God can tell the difference.’

  And she had to laugh.

  ‘That was it? He made you laugh?’

  ‘Well, it was the first time he actually seemed authentically human. And he did keep on. It was like being licked to death by puppies. He wore me down in the end.’

  Joshua nodded. ‘You know, if this works out even ten per cent, he’s going to be lucky to have you.’

  She snorted. ‘You’d better ask him that. I’m learning to crack the whip . . . Joshua, I know you’ve had your differences with him.’

  ‘You can say that again. When I called him in to help you it was about the only time I’ve spoken to him since the Madison nuke.’

  ‘I think he misses you, you know. He spans the world, but he has few friends. If any.’

  ‘Which is why he has to manufacture them, right?’

  ‘That’s rather harsh, Joshua. On both of us.’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry. Look, Agnes, as far as I’m concerned, however you got here, it’s just good to have you back.’

  Now she looked oddly concerned. She took both his hands in hers, as she used to when he was small and there was something difficult she needed to tell him. ‘But you and I know the real question, Joshua.’

  ‘What question?’

  ‘I look like Agnes. I think like her. I can carry on her work. I feel like I’m her. But can I be her? I’m a nun, Joshua. Or Agnes was. And enough of a nun to know that there’s no place in Catholic theology for Tibetan-style reincarnation.’

  ‘Then what?’

  She looked away, which was not characteristic of her. ‘My death, Joshua . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I . . .. experienced it. What we call the Personal Judgement, or something like it. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. I encountered God. Or so it feels. So I believe.’ She raised her hands again and turned them over, inspecting them. ‘And now here I am in this miraculous new form. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.’ She twinkled a smile at him. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t ask you for chapter and verse. Maybe I’m some sort of electronic ghost – not Agnes at all, or at best a blasphemous mockery of her. Or maybe, instead, I’m here to fulfil the will of God, in a new way – in a world transformed by technology, to fulfil that will in a way that was never possible before. I feel I’m ready to accept the latter interpretation for now.’

  He stirred the last of his coffee. ‘What does Lobsang want, do you think? What’s he trying to become? The guardian of the whole human race, maybe?’

  She thought about that. ‘I rather believe that he might be more like a gardener. Which sounds nice and bucolic and harmless, right up to the time you remember that a gardener must sometimes prune . . .’

  He stood. ‘I have to go back. My family have had a lot of problems since we got back here.’

  ‘I heard.’

  ‘About the nature of your new existence – well, I did spend a lot of time with Lobsang. I’m no theologian. My advice is, just get on with it. Do the good that’s in front of you. That’s what you always said.’

  ‘That’s true. Actually at some point I’m hoping for a bit of theological guidance from those fellas in fancy dress from the Vatican.’

  ‘I don’t care about the Vatican. As far as I’m concerned you’re my Agnes.’

  ‘Thank you, Joshua.’ She stood and hugged him. ‘Don’t be a stranger.’

  ‘Never.’

  28

  SALLY RETURNED TO Monica Jansson’s home, arriving without any warning, without any explanation of where she’d been.

  Jansson had been alone in the house. She had been waiting for Joshua to return from his visit to the Home, Helen was off talking to cops and lawyers about bail conditions, and Dan was happily playing softball with Bill Chambers, who was monumentally hung over, as ever.

  They sat over coffees. Two od
dballs thrown accidentally together, Jansson thought. Sally seemed restless, as usual. Her pack was waiting at the door, and she wore the multi-pocketed sleeveless jacket that was the basis of her field gear. They tentatively talked, about life, and what they had in common: the Long Earth, and Joshua.

  In an odd way, Joshua had always been at the centre of MPD Lieutenant Monica Jansson’s experience of the Long Earth, as it had opened up on her watch, and ultimately defined her career path, indeed her whole life. Now she told Sally anecdotes about the old days.

  Like about the repeated attempts she had made to recruit Joshua.

  There was one time, seven months after Step Day, when Jansson had arranged to talk to Joshua at the Home, then still located in Datum Madison. The talk had been chaperoned, and that was fair enough, Jansson had thought, sitting on a sofa with a Sister or two, as the old song went. After all, Joshua was still just fourteen years old.

  And his suspicion of her had been so solid it was like an extra person, crowding on the sofa with Jansson and the Sisters.

  He’d said, ‘Do you want to study me?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Hand me over to the professors at the university. Put me in a cage and study me.’

  She felt shocked. ‘No, Joshua. Never that. Listen. You’ve become notorious. A legend, whether you like it or not. But right from the start, from Step Day, I’ve done my best to keep you off the official record.’

  He thought that over. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it would be bad for you. You can do as you please. But I want you to think . . . well, about working with me. Not for me. Put your abilities, and all that positive energy you have, to good use. I can get you assignments. Ways to help people. I’m talking about paid work. Like a Saturday job – it won’t get in the way of your school work. Joshua, I promise that if you work with me I’ll continue to protect you.’

  He flinched. ‘But if I won’t work with you, you won’t protect me.’

  ‘No. No! Joshua, that came out wrong. Look, I’ll protect you come what may—’

  But he had just vanished, a pop of displaced air, gone, leaving the two Sisters exasperated.

  Jansson had looked on the bright side. He hadn’t actually said no.

  She had kept on trying, until, grudgingly, he became an ally.

  And he had been an ally ever since.

  ‘Nice story,’ Sally said. ‘And that was really your way of protecting him, right?’

  ‘A friend for life, that’s Joshua. He does seem to surround himself with strong women. You, Helen, Sister Agnes—’

  ‘And you too, retired Lieutenant Jansson.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a compliment. Must be difficult for Helen sometimes, however. She is his wife.’

  Sally looked away. ‘I’m profoundly uninterested in Helen. A gloomy little stay-at-home. Although she did throw a good right hook at that nutjob in immigration.’

  ‘That she did.’

  Sally kept glancing at her watch.

  Jansson asked cautiously, ‘So where are you going next?’

  ‘The Gap.’

  ‘Really? Because of Mary the troll, I guess.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Jansson smiled. ‘What will you do, wave a placard?’

  ‘Why not? It’s better than letting the poor creature be put to death, out of sight and out of mind.’

  ‘True enough. It was a shocking incident. When I saw it I wrote a few mails myself, you know . . . That was how I got the leverage to have Joshua meet Senator Starling. I wish I could go with you.’

  Sally faced her. ‘Are you serious?’

  That took Jansson aback; she’d spoken on impulse. ‘What? Well – yes, I guess. If I could. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because you’re useful, that’s why. You’re Joshua’s “Spooky” Jansson. You can get things done in the human world where I can’t.’ Sally looked diffident, as if she hated to admit the slightest weakness. ‘Maybe together we could do some good. Or at least scare the spacesuit pants off those dweebs up at the Gap. Joshua said you put things right. That’s your strength. Well, because of this whole business with the trolls, there’s soon going to be something “not right” with the whole of the Long Earth. Come with me. What do you say?’

  Jansson smiled weakly. ‘What, just like that? It’s kind of Thelma and Louise, isn’t it? And at my age, and my condition? I’m not supposed to be more than a couple of hours from my hospital. I suppose I could self-medicate. But I’ve never been nearly that far stepwise. It’s two million steps to the Gap, right? I don’t think I’d make it.’

  ‘Don’t be so hasty.’ Sally winked. ‘Remember who you’re speaking to. I know a couple of short cuts . . .’

  ‘It’s crazy. It’s impossible. Isn’t it?’

  29

  AS JANSSON AND Sally were preparing to leave Madison West 5, Maggie Kauffman was just arriving.

  ‘Find me a troll expert,’ Maggie had told Joe Mackenzie. What the Captain wanted, the Captain got.

  It had taken a couple of days. No outernet search was quick, by the nature of its very infrastructure, although the closer you got to the Datum the faster information was swapped around. But Mac soon turned up a number of universities that had investigated trolls in the wild. He showed Maggie some of their reports. Trolls were found to be inquisitive, convivial, and quick learners. It was generally agreed that they were at least pre-sapient, but a minority of scholars declared that they were in fact truly sapient, though their intelligence had a different perspective, a different basis from human minds. Clearly they learned at a phenomenal rate . . .

  All this seemed a little dry to Maggie. She asked Mac to find somebody who knew trolls better than as test subjects or specimens. Somebody who lived with them.

  Which was why she left her command briefly, and, without letting her superiors know – stuffed shirts like Ed Cutler would have squashed this initiative before it had begun – she dashed on a fast commercial twain back East, ending up on a world five steps West of the Datum, at the new city of Madison, Wisconsin . . .

  A few miles outside the city, Dr. Christopher Pagel and his wife Juliet, among other activities, ran a rescue centre for maltreated big cats, animals bought illegally by drug barons and other slimeballs and displayed for the machismo, then abandoned when they were no longer cute. The business pre-dated Step Day – when it was set up the victims had included lions and tigers – but since then, thanks to the opportunities opened up for new kinds of trophies through access to the Long Earth and its kaleidoscope of unspoiled worlds, the roomy cages had also housed such beasts as a sabre-toothed smilodon, and even a cave lion: Panthera leo atrox.

  And the Pagels were using an extended family of trolls to help with the business.

  The Pagels, elderly but elegant and remarkably kindly, told Maggie that the trolls helped with more than just heavy labour. Their very presence seemed to calm the cats. Dr. Chris described how the male of the local family of trolls had a very good way of dealing with one potentially troublesome tiger, who after one attempted attack on its keeper was gripped at the neck by a big troll hand and pushed slowly and carefully to the ground, at a speed and pressure that made it clear to the big cat that ending up underground was just a possibility if he didn’t get with the programme . . .

  Maggie learned a lot of other details about the trolls from the Pagels. Such as, what they wanted from humans, it seemed, was entertainment: variety, new concepts. Show even a juvenile troll something like a lawn mower, with bolts big enough for troll fingers to work, and he or she would carefully take it apart, keeping all the bits neatly in a line, and then put it back together again, for the sheer joy of it. Juliet Pagel had experimented with human music; a good gospel choir would have trolls sitting in rapturous silence, as would 1960s close-harmony groups like the Beach Boys.

  Maggie’s decision about the trolls was slowly solidifying. As far as she was concerned, she had to be mindful of the fact that her command was tasked to be an ever-present symb
ol of the United States Aegis. As such, it wasn’t enough for the Benjamin Franklin to tour these outer worlds like an old-fashioned dreadnought, projecting vague threat and handing out leaflets about how you had to pay your taxes. Her mission had to symbolize the nation’s positive values. And that meant, in this age of the Long Earth, living in harmony with the other inhabitants of the stepwise worlds, in particular with the trolls. Sally Linsay had been right, she’d decided on reflection: how better to show that than by having trolls actually aboard her ship?

  As a twain Captain, Maggie had been granted a great deal of latitude in her decision-making out here. Still, she spent time trying to make sure she had got the support of at least a majority of her crew for this experiment. And she had no intention of telling her superiors what she was up to, until she absolutely had to.

  So, when she returned to her ship, she brought three trolls with her. They were a family, parents with a juvenile: the Pagels had called them Jake, Marjorie and Carl.

  As soon as they boarded, despite all Maggie’s groundwork in advance, the arguments started once more. She let them run; the trolls weren’t going anywhere.

  In the event it was only a week before the crew of the Franklin, as they drifted through the skies of countless stepwise Americas, became accustomed to stopping work at twilight, when the big loading bay doors were flung open, and the trolls joined in the harmonies and undertones of the long call as it echoed across the reaches of world after world.

  ‘I mean,’ Maggie said to Mac and Nathan, ‘in Star Trek they put a Klingon on the bridge.’

  ‘And a Borg,’ said Nathan.

  ‘Well, there you go.’

  ‘Not a Romulan, though,’ Mac said. ‘Never a Romulan.’

  ‘The trolls are staying,’ Maggie said firmly.

  30

  IT TOOK NELSON Azikiwe a couple of months after that talk with Ken, when he’d let the cat out of the bag about his resignation, for him to tidy up his affairs in the parish, dispose of extraneous belongings, and brief his successor – including on the temperamental toilet – before he was ready to depart on the next phase of his life, in search of the Lobsang Project and other mysteries. He took his time. He had always led something of an itinerant life, but believed in making time to say his goodbyes properly.