The Long War

24

MARLON JACKSON, Senator Starling’s aide, was determined to take the meeting with this bizarre Valienté pioneer-type character on the chin.

Jim Starling was mostly manageable, in Jackson’s experience. Regrettably the Senator had a good if erratic memory, which could make him devilishly difficult to steer in the way a decent aide should be able to. But at least the Senator’s tantrums were generally short and futile, and in that the man was not unlike Jackson’s great-grandfather’s description of Lyndon B. Johnson: ‘A goddamn tornado until he ran down, and then you could get the work done.’ Jackson’s forebears had been behind-the-scenes toilers for democracy for generations.

But great-grandpa had never had to deal with modern technology. Such as a diary system into which an appointment for this Joshua Valienté had got inserted, even though everybody with access denied putting it there. Even when Jackson managed to delete the entry, it got put back again. Evidently Valienté had some kind of support; Jackson, an old hand in DC, knew the signs.

And it would have to be someone like Valienté, who last time Jackson had seen him in person had been stonewalling a Senate board of inquiry about his spectacular but mysterious jaunt across the Long Earth, in an apparently pilotless ship. Driven by apparently covert technology, some of which was subsequently gifted by the Black Corporation to the nation, much to the silent fury of the nation’s political classes. Valienté, a walking talking symbol of the Long Earth, backed by some kind of hidden hand – Valienté, who had forced his way in here, more or less, to face a senator whose main support base despised the new colonies and everything about them. A clash of minds occurring just as the political situation vis à vis the colonies had never been trickier, what with the Valhalla declaration on top of all this crap about trolls . . .

In Jackson’s world this was a small incident, but one out of control and fraught with danger. Like a hand grenade rolling across the floor. If he just got the chance to smooth out the Senator’s more idiotic brain dumps into something that sounded like constructive dialogue, then everything would be fine. You just had to hope, in this business.

He gulped down one of his ulcer pills.

In fact Joshua Valienté and his buddy, both dressed in Bonanza-type dung-coloured pioneer gear, were a few minutes late when security finally showed them into the office. To Jackson they looked like an irruption from America’s semi-mythic past into the clutter of this mid-twenty-first-century office.

After a curt introduction, Valienté went straight on the attack. ‘Seven minutes late because of your security protocol. Are you afraid just of me, or all your voters?’ Before Jackson had a chance to respond, Valienté looked around at the hunting trophies on the office walls. ‘And what decor. Looks like they’re all either inedible or from a protected species, or both. Nice symbolism.’

His companion guffawed.

Jackson hadn’t yet said a single word. He was struggling here; he felt as if he’d been hit by some primal force. ‘Why don’t you take a seat, Mr. Valienté, and Mr.—’ he glanced at his briefing ‘– Chambers?’

At least they complied to that degree.

What was this Valienté? Jackson’s briefing had suggested some kind of retard with nothing more than a gift for stepping . . . He was evidently more than that. His very voice was strange, Jackson thought as he tried to size up this man, a voice which laid down words as a poker player laid down cards, with finality and decision. He seemed slow rather than fast, but relentless. As hard to stop, once he came rolling at you, as an oncoming tank.

As for the trophies on the wall, Jackson knew that the tiger head had been acquired by Starling’s grandfather who’d bought it from a dealer in Chinese aphrodisiacs, but most of the rest were the result of the Senator’s own efforts. All these trophies were a signal – Valienté was right to spot the symbolism – to inform any visitors that the Senator had an impressive and well-oiled armoury and was not shy of using it. But then, practically everybody who voted for him was a firearms enthusiast. Jim Starling was not a man to take any notice of latter-day eco-tards wetting their pants because they thought somebody was killing Bambi out in some dismal stepwise Earth. Which, of course, was the background to this whole business.

Anyhow this was not Jackson’s problem; he just had to get through the next hour or whatever until these guys were shown the door. ‘Coffee, gentlemen?’

Chambers said, ‘You wouldn’t have a cup of tea at all?’

Jackson made a call; the drinks arrived in a couple of minutes.

Then, to Jackson’s relief, he heard a flush from the bathroom. The door opened and the Senator came in with, fortunately, for once, everything safely stowed away.

Starling, a burly fifty-something in shirtsleeves, evidently in the middle of his working day, looked disarmingly welcoming. The colonists stood up, and looked a little less, well, bristling, as the Senator shook their hands. This was what Starling was good at, working people even from the first second he walked in a room.

And Jackson could see it shook Valienté up when Starling asked for his autograph, as they sat down. ‘Not for me, it’s for my niece. She’s a big fan.’

Valienté seemed to feel the need to apologize as he signed a card. ‘I didn’t vote for you. Postal votes don’t get out as far as Hell-Knows-Where.’

Starling shrugged. ‘But you’re still my constituent, according to the Aegis definition and the electoral records.’ Joshua maintained a legal address at the Home in Madison West 5. ‘And you’re in politics yourself now, right?’ He flipped through the paperwork on his desk. ‘A mayor in some pioneer-type community. How admirable.’ The Senator flopped back in his big chair and said, ‘Well, now, gentlemen, you came all the way back from your distant Earth, you came all the way in to DC, you wanted to see me urgently. So let’s get to it. I believe the issue is game preservation in the subsidiary Earths, yes?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the Irishman, Bill Chambers.

‘No,’ said Valienté, back on the attack again. ‘Trolls aren’t game. And there are no such things as subsidiary Earths; every Earth is an Earth, a whole world. That’s a very Datum-centric point of view, sir.’

Jackson drew breath to intervene at this point. But the Senator took this with good humour. ‘I stand corrected. But the Earths that interest me are the ones containing US citizens, under the Aegis. And my concern is to ensure that our citizens are allowed those liberties that our Constitution demands.’ He shuffled his paperwork, glancing over it again. ‘I believe I understand why you’re here. But why don’t you put it in your own words?’

Valienté was no orator, evidently, Jackson saw, despite his own political experience. Haltingly, as best he could, he tried to summarize the concerns gathering across the Long Earth over the treatment of the trolls.

‘Look – when I heard about this notorious case, of Mary and her cub at the Gap, I was dismayed. But it’s only the tip of the iceberg where the trolls are concerned. At Hell-Knows-Where, you know, we protect our trolls under a citizenship extension.’

‘What? You’re serious? So how far do you take that? Oh, don’t answer that. Look, whatever hayseed laws you pass in Who-Knows-What—’

‘Hell-Knows-Where.’

‘Don’t amount to a hill of beans back here, as your type might say. Let’s get to the point. These trolls are humanoids. Right? Humanoid, pre-human if you like, but not human, no matter what ordinances you pass in your hick Blazing Saddles–type town. They are animals, and, according to my best advice, dangerous animals. So we have these creatures out there, powerful and aggressive creatures, who, according to you, should not be killed or otherwise inconvenienced, yes? I have read the paperwork, even though my assistant probably thinks I haven’t,’ and he winked at Jackson. ‘Powerful, aggressive animals, and now killers.’

Valienté said, ‘Powerful, yes. Even a female troll will weigh as much as a sumo wrestler and can punch like a heavyweight boxer . . . Aggressive? Only if they’re pushed. Mostly they’re helpful.’

‘Helpful?’

‘Senator, humans and trolls work together. It happens all across the Long Earth, even in the Low Earths – hell, you must be aware of that, the economic value-add of troll labour . . .’

The trolls had become an ever-present in the worlds colonized by mankind. To pioneers bereft of heavy machinery, trolls were willing and clever workers who would clear your field, tote your bales of hay, even help you put up the schoolhouse. Nowadays, in the more developed societies in the Low Earths and beyond, trolls were put to work on the vast sheep farms that covered many parallel Australias, even shearing and spinning the wool, and in the tremendous rubber plantations of stepwise Malaysias. They even worked in the assembly lines of factories in some Low Earth Americas.

‘That’s as may be.’ Starling riffled the paperwork. ‘But here I have a sheaf of reports of attacks by these trolls of yours on humans. In one case leading to a man being paralysed, in another a small child traumatized and its mother left lying dead. And so on. What do you say to that?’

‘Senator – trolls are only dangerous in the way that bears in a national park are dangerous. I mean, every so often some dumb tourist wants to get a picture of his toddler sitting nicely with a cute little cub . . . That kind of ignorance is bad enough back in the original USA, but it’s deadly on the stepwise Earths, which are all more or less wild. We tell people this all the time. In most stepwise worlds, being dumb is a prelude to being dead.

‘And the situation’s going to get worse, Senator. The trolls have something called the long call, which means that eventually every troll in every world gets to know what every other troll knows. It takes a while to permeate. But sooner or later, if humanity treats trolls as ferocious animals, then our relationship with them everywhere will be fundamentally altered—’

Starling laughed out loud. ‘And that, sir, sounds like a lot of wu-wu tree-hugger bull hickey to me. The long call? You’ll be warning me about the wrath of Eywa next. Bottom line, Mr. Valienté: our citizens must be protected, even from being dumb, which is not a crime. Good heavens, if it was, the jails would never empty. Especially here in DC. Ha!’

Valienté pressed his point. ‘All I am asking for, sir, is some kind of declaration that the United States gives the trolls the status of a protected species throughout the Aegis.’

‘That’s all, is it?’ Starling spread his hands. ‘But you must know that the situation regarding animal protection is complicated in this country as it is. We have federal laws, but a lot of legislation is at state level. Who exactly is it you want to define these laws, let alone enforce them? And in any event, as with so much concerning the so-called colony worlds, there’s endless debate about how our Datum laws extend out there.’ He glanced again at his briefing. ‘I see you’ve floated the idea that these trolls of yours could be considered an exotic species. If so they would fall under the Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection service. But there’s a counter-argument that they aren’t exotic at all, but endemic – I mean, they’re native to all the other Earths, aren’t they? So the old categories don’t necessarily apply, legally or morally, it seems to me.

‘As regards the specific case of this base at the Gap, if it was under the US Aegis they would need a Department of Agriculture permit to justify the trolls’ use in research. They should have gone through a process of obtaining such a permit, and maybe there’s some control to be applied through that route. But you see, Mr. Valienté, though US citizens are involved in this work, as I understand it this Gap base isn’t even in the US footprint. Somewhere in England, right? Maybe you should be arguing your case in London, not here.’ He shrugged and pushed away his paperwork. ‘Look, the legal position is vague, and the issue lacks moral clarity to me. I am listening, gentlemen, but I don’t consider the case made. At best, all I could do is bring your concerns to the Senate. But I don’t believe I’m minded to do that. And besides you’re missing the wider issues.’

‘What wider issues?’

‘Whether you like it or not, Mr. Valienté, there are questions of national security involved here. This isn’t about animals, for cripes’ sakes. I’m talking about threat. That’s what concerns my constituents, here on the Datum. The threat of the unknown. It wasn’t so bad when all we had to think about was aliens coming at us from another planet, like in the movies! Shit, at least we’d get warning, you’d think. At least we’d have a chance of shooting them out of the sky. But now we have open borders, it seems to me. Now the aliens could just walk in!’

The Irishman – Jackson had to check the name again, Bill Chambers – spoke for the first time, all but. ‘Senator, you’re talking about these mad military twains you’ve sent out all over the place, aren’t you?’

Starling leaned forward.

Jackson tensed, ready for trouble; he knew the warning signs when his lord and master was getting pissed.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Starling. ‘That’s one response. Somebody must plan for the worst eventuality. That’s the job of a responsible government.’

To Jackson’s horror, Chambers actually blew a raspberry. ‘Ah, come off it, Senator. Are you kidding? This is just another boondoggle, a spending free-for-all, like the missile gap after Sputnik, like 9/11, like Madison. The vaguer the threat the more money you get to chuck at it, right? Look, I live out there, and here’s what I say. I say you can’t have one government for a million Americas, and this proves it. It just can’t work, it would be one god-awful bureaucracy. Well, so it is already. Hell, after all those centuries the fecking English never even managed to run Ireland properly. How are you lot going to manage this?’

Valienté laughed. ‘You’d better not go repeating that when those Navy airships show up over our town hall, Bill.’

‘Yeah. Maybe you should hold that thought, pioneer guy.’

But Chambers wasn’t quite done. ‘You know, before Step Day one world was enough for you characters. Because you didn’t even know the rest existed, did you? Now we’ve gone out there and made something of it all, and you lot who stayed at home want a piece of the fecking pie. Suddenly one world is no longer enough for you. Can’t you just leave us alone?’

Starling just looked at the man, steadily. Then he sat back and turned to Valienté, to Jackson’s relief; at least it didn’t look as though there’d be any actual physical violence, not this time.

‘You know, Mr. Valienté,’ Starling said now, ‘I have nothing to say to your companion here. I’m kind of disappointed in you, however. I understand you are known to be a truthful man, a careful man. I have seen depositions commending you for valour when you were younger, on Step Day. Quite a number of young people owed their lives to you. Then came that episode when you went charging off into the Long Earth – going where no one had gone before, right? All very admirable. Now you come in here with these ridiculous demands, this bullshit about these animals . . . I’d have thought you’d see a bigger picture. Ah, what the hey.’ Then he grinned, unexpectedly. This was often Starling’s way, Jackson knew, to become good-old-boy expansive having mauled his opponent to his satisfaction.

‘Listen. Let’s not part on bad terms. I believe you to be brave but naive, just as you probably believe that I am a mere tool of the military-industrial complex. Nevertheless you have spoken your piece and done it well, and I enjoyed disputing with you. I suspect your Sister Agnes would be proud of you, if I may say so.’

That caught Valienté short, as no doubt it was meant to. Jackson was impressed Starling had read that far in his briefing.

‘Oh, I know all about the Home that used to be on Allied Drive, Mr. Valienté. It’s become part of your legend, for better or worse. And I met Agnes once, when she came into this office to harangue me about a different issue. I was very sorry to hear about her death. I know she meant a great deal to you and other former inmates.’

Valienté actually smiled, which was a measure of Starling’s charisma. ‘Well – thank you. She had a calm death. There was even a representative of the Vatican at her funeral.’

‘A nod of respect to a worthy foe, I imagine, from what I understand of her career.’

‘Yeah. Even though they used to say she was the worst Catholic since Torquemada, or so she claimed. You know, Mr. Starling, I don’t exactly miss her. Somehow it’s as if she never died . . .’