The Long War (44 page)

‘Fine. There’s a certain time of day when they wait for me, stepwise, to meet me when I’m ready to come back . . . Listen, do you have any coffee while we wait? I ran out days ago.’

The final step into Earth West 1,617,524 was a jolt. Though he was warned by Jansson, Joshua had expected another arid Joker, like Rectangles. But it wasn’t arid, not just here anyhow. Joshua had an immediate impression of green, of moisture, of freshness; he couldn’t help taking a deep breath.

Then he observed that the green wasn’t the usual riff on forest or prairie, but, evidently,
fields
, being grazed by creatures that might have been cattle but weren’t, and tended by upright figures that might have been human farmhands, but weren’t.

And then he took in the most important aspect of the landscape. The creatures standing before him, that might have been dogs, but weren’t.

There were perhaps a dozen of the upright dogs, standing in neat ranks. The central two seemed the most significant, judging by the quality of the belts they wore at their waists – belts, on dogs. From which tools of some kind hung. And weapons. A thing like a crossbow.

And a ray gun! A gaudy toy, like a prop from some old TV show. Just as Jansson had described.

Their gender was very obvious; of the central couple, one was female, the other male. The male was taller, towering, a magnificent –
animal
. Yet not an animal. Even as he computed the peril they were all in, part of Joshua rejoiced. Sapients – an entirely new kind – and one
not
extinct for millennia, like over in Rectangles.

Bill gaped. ‘I’m dreaming. I know you told us about this, Lieutenant Jansson.’ He shook his head. ‘But this is mad.’

The male turned to Bill, and pulled back his lips from a very wolf-like face, and Joshua was astonished anew when he spoke. ‘No. You a-hhre not in d-hrream.’ A dog-like growl, yet the English words were clear.

Jansson said, ‘Joshua, Bill. Let me present Li-Li. And Snowy.’

Despite Jansson’s briefing about all this, Joshua felt he was dreaming too. ‘
Snowy?
’

Jansson pointed to the humans. ‘Joshua Valienté. Bill Chambers, his companion. Joshua is the one Sally promised.’

‘ “Promised”?’

‘One of her schemes. Given you were bound to be coming anyhow, she spun it for her advantage. She bigged you up as an ambassador of a greater power . . .’

‘Nice of her.’

Snowy studied Joshua. ‘You are emissar-hrry of human Granddaughter-hrr.’

‘Granddaughter?’

‘He means ruler,’ Jansson said.

‘OK. Well, we don’t have a Granddaughter – umm, Snowy. Not the way you mean. But – an emissary. I guess that’s the right idea. I’m here to put things right with the trolls—’

Before he could say any more Snowy, without moving a muscle, emitted a soft growl, and two of the dogs behind him moved forward in a blur. They were on Joshua before he could react, and they pinned his arms to his sides.

Joshua fought an instinct to step away. ‘Hey. What are you doing?’

Snowy nodded.

And Joshua was thrown forward to the ground, his face pressed to the rutted dirt of the track.

His injured shoulder ached like hell. He made himself
not step out of this
, not yet.

He tried to lift his head. He found himself staring into the face of the female dog. Li-Li? She was unfolding a bundle of cloth that contained small wooden pots, blades of stone and iron, needles, thread. Like a crude field medicine kit. Her eyes were wolf-like, yet oddly tender.

He asked, ‘Why – what—’

‘Sorr-hrry.’ She reached behind him, and he felt his shirt being ripped open.

Even now he forced himself not to step.

He heard Jansson, evidently distressed. ‘Joshua? I’m sorry. Sally did talk about you as an emissary. They must have planned this. We never suspected they’d treat you like this—’

He heard no more, as what felt like a very heavy fist slammed into the back of his head, smashing his face into the dirt, and the option to step vanished anyhow.

And the pain began, slicing, piercing, and he fell into oblivion.

W
HEN HE WOKE,
he was sitting on some kind of hard chair, slumped forward. The pain in his back was exquisite, a tapestry.

A face floated before him. A dog, a wolf . . . It showed tenderness.

It was the one called Li-Li. She peered at him, lifted one eyelid with a leathery finger-like extension of one paw. Then she growled, ‘Sorr-hrry.’ She backed away.

Now Sally was here, standing before him.

Beyond her he could make out a room, a big chamber, stone walls and floor, well-built, roomy, drab, undecorated. The air was full of the scent of dog. There were other people here. And dogs. His head was clearing, slowly; he felt like he’d been drugged.

‘Joshua. Don’t step.’

He focused on her with difficulty. ‘Sally?’

‘Don’t step. Whatever you do,
don’t step
. Well, you’re here at last. You took some tracking down, you and the professional Irishman here, in your travel-trailer in the sky. But I see the clue I had to leave finally percolated through your brain.’

‘The ring . . .’

‘Yes, the ring.’

‘Why’s it so important, suddenly?’

‘You’ll see. Sorry.’

‘Sorry? Why? And why the hell not step?’ He was mumbling, he discovered.

She took his cheeks in her hands, making him face her. He tried to remember the last time she had touched him, save by the scruff of the neck to rescue him from some calamity or other, such as from the wreck of the
Pennsylvania
. ‘Because if you do, you’ll die.’

He guessed, ‘My back?’

‘It’s a kind of staple, Joshua.’

That was Jansson. He looked around, blearily. He saw Jansson sitting on the ground by the wall, a beefy-looking dog standing over her.

He said, ‘A staple? Like the North Koreans. An iron staple through the hearts of prisoners. So if they step away—’

‘Yeah. In your case it’s a cruder variant, of a type used by some warlords in central Asia, we think. Joshua, don’t sit back. There’s a kind of crossbow fixed to your back. It’s just wood and stone and sinew, but it has an iron pin. You can walk around, you understand? But if you step away—’

‘The pin stays behind, and
boing
. The bow fires, and the bolt goes straight through the heart, right? I get it.’ He began to drum the message into his own head.
Don’t step. Don’t step
. He felt at his chest. Under the ruin of his shirt he found a stout leather band. ‘What’s to stop me just cutting this off?’

‘First, that would set it off,’ Sally said. ‘And, second, they sewed the weapon to your skin. I mean it’s supported by the strap around your chest, but . . .’

‘They
sewed
it?’

‘Sorr-hrry, sorr-hrry,’ Li-Li said. ‘Order-hrrs . . . here.’ She brought Joshua a carved wooden mug, plain but smoothly shaped.

It contained a lukewarm, meaty broth. He drank gratefully. He found he was hungry, thirsty. He couldn’t be that badly hurt. ‘Orders, eh?’

‘It’s not her fault,’ Jansson said. ‘She’s a kind of doctor, I think. She tried to do the work cleanly, competently. Gave you some kind of painkillers. If it had been left to others – Joshua, I’m sorry. I didn’t know they were going to jump you like that.’

‘Nothing you could have done, I suspect, Lieutenant Jansson.’

‘We have a plan, of sorts. Or had one before you showed up. We’ve been trying to adapt . . .’

Sally said, ‘We’re second-guessing the motivation of non-human sapients. We weren’t expecting them to treat you like this. Maybe this is what passes for diplomacy, among beagles. Just attack the ambassador when he shows up. However the staple is our technology, after all. Humans invented this stuff to control other humans.’

Joshua grunted, ‘So I’m learning a moral lesson. But somebody brought it here, right? And somebody had to show these dogs—’

‘Beagles,’ Sally said.

‘How to manufacture the iron components.’

‘That would-ss be me. Hell-llo, pathless-ss one . . .’

Joshua looked around, more carefully, systematically. There was a row of dogs – beagles? – standing as if to attention over one of their number lying on a kind of scrap of lawn, green growing grass, like a carpet. Sally was standing before him, Jansson and Bill sitting on the floor, against one wall. And, in another corner, with a dog guard hovering over him—

‘Finn McCool. I’ve seen you looking better.’

The kobold had evidently been worked over. He could barely sit up straight. His sunglasses were gone. One eye was closed, bruises showed down one side of his bare torso, and one of his ears had been
bitten off
; Joshua could see the marks of teeth, a crude stitching. Still, McCool grinned. ‘It was all busines-ss. We told the beagles-ss of you, pathless-ss ones. Your ships flicker in the ss-ky of this world. You would notice beagles-ss soon. We told them, be ready. We taught them how to ss-taple the ss-teppers. We got good price-ss.’

‘Did you have this done to me?’

The kobold managed to laugh. ‘Not me. But I would hav-ve, pathless-ss one.’

Bill Chambers snarled. ‘
Pogue mahone
, gobshite.’

Joshua said, ‘So what the hell happened to you, McCool? Contractual dispute, was it?’

‘Or-hrrders again,’ came another voice, canine, but with a more liquid quality than the rest. Female. ‘My or-hhrders. Always my orders . . .’

Joshua turned to the group of dogs by the podium. He recognized the tall warrior – Snowy. He still had that ray gun dangling from his Batman-type utility belt, like a prop from one of Lobsang’s old 1950s sci-fi movies, alongside crude blades of metal and stone. He stood at ease, but with an air of constant, competent alertness.

He was watching over another, a female, the one who lounged, very dog-like, on the grass. It was she who had spoken about orders.

Sally was studying Joshua with some sympathy, leavened by amusement at his probably obvious disorientation. ‘Classic Long Earth set-up, isn’t it, Joshua? A mash-up of three disparate sapient species – four if you count the Rectangles builders, off-stage – nurtured on separate Earths and now all mixed up together like this.’ She nodded at the reclining female dog. ‘Joshua, meet Petra. Granddaughter, ruler of this city – this Den, whatever – which is called the Eye of the Hunter.’

‘Granddaughter?’

‘Two down in the hierarchy from the Mother, I think. The big boss of this doggy nation is the Mother, then you get Daughters, Granddaughters—’

‘
Petra?
’

‘A human nickname, apparently. You’d probably ruin your epiglottis if you tried for their true names. Not that we mere humans are told them anyhow.’

‘We’re not the first to pass through here, then.’

‘Evidently not. Those damn combers get everywhere, don’t they? . . . Now pay attention. Petra’s in charge, and she knows it.’

Joshua faced Petra. ‘It was your orders to staple me?’

‘Let me make it plain, Josh-shua. What is it we each-shh wann-t? You, the tr-hrrollss. Yes? Make peace.’

‘That’s why I came here.’

‘Me too,’ Sally said.

‘Ve-hrry good. But I care not for you, or tr-hrrolls. Though t-hrroll music pleases. I care for
these
.’ And she plucked the ray gun from Snowy’s belt, hefted it in her graceful fingers, pointed it straight at Joshua’s head – and pulled what was obviously the trigger.

He didn’t flinch, though from the corner of his eye he saw Jansson and Bill shrink back. Of course nothing happened. It wasn’t the moment in the game for him to die, though he suspected that would come later.

The Granddaughter said, ‘Weapons. Come from
him
.’ She gestured at the cringing, grinning kobold. ‘Where from? From scentless wo-hhrlds.’

Sally murmured, ‘She means, stepwise. These canine conquerors can’t step. Which is why they needed to staple you.’

‘Weapons make Eye of Hunter-rhh strong Den. Stronger than foe dens.’

Granddaughter
, Joshua thought blearily. Dogs had big litters. This granddaughter of the queen must have a lot of rivals.

Sally said, ‘Joshua, you need to understand. As far as I can make out these canines don’t care about us, or about stepping, the parallel worlds. All they care about is their own wars, their own agendas, their conflicts. We’re just a means to an end.’

‘We’d be the same, probably.’

‘Right. And all they really want, right now, is weapons to fight their wars.’

‘The ray guns?’

‘But weapons die.’ The Granddaughter threw the weapon, a kind of laser pistol, Joshua saw, contemptuously on the floor. ‘That-tt one knows.’ She pointed at the kobold. ‘Whe-hrre weapons a-hhre. How to get. They dhrr-ibble into my hands, for ho-hrrible price, then die. Enough. We have per-hrrsuaded him to help.’ She fingered something at her neck, a scrap of flesh dangling on a thong. It was an ear, Joshua saw. A kobold ear. And beside it, on a second thong, now he looked more closely – a ring, like his own, a Rectangles ring. ‘But kobold has no weapons-ss fo-hhr us.’

‘Prob-lemm for me,’ hissed the kobold, his anxious grin showing bloody teeth, his gaze flickering over the humans’ faces.

‘I’ll bet it is,’ Joshua said.

Joshua couldn’t figure it all out yet, not quite. But these rings, from the world a few steps away, were evidently crucial. As Sally had seen. And by retrieving their own ring she had sought some kind of advantage.

‘Here’s the deal,’ Sally said quickly. ‘The beagles want more ray guns. They are in caches, over in Rectangles.’

‘They are
where
? In
what
?’

Sally gritted her teeth. ‘Is this really the time for an archaeology lesson, Valienté? Just listen . . .’ She spoke very rapidly, and he realized she was hoping the beagles, and the kobold, wouldn’t be able to follow fully. ‘The caches the kobold raided before are all exhausted. Locked up. To get at fresh ones he needs another key.’

Joshua’s mind, unusually flexible for once – maybe it was the goad of the lingering pain – made the connection. ‘
The key is the ring we found in the cave of bones
. The ring I kept, the ring you took from the airship—’