Terry Pratchett - The Long War

Sally shrugged. Back then, she’d stepped into the ruins of Madison at his side. Evidently she had no answer.

He became aware of Helen walking ahead of the two of them, talking to a gaggle of neighbours, wearing what Joshua, a veteran of nine years of marriage, called her “polite” expression. Suitably alarmed, he hurried to catch her up.

He thought they were all relieved when they got to the town hall. Sally read the title of the show from a hand-painted poster tacked to the wall: “‘The Revenge of Moby-Dick’. You have got to be kidding me.”

Joshua couldn’t suppress a grin. “It’s good stuff. Wait for the bit where the illegal whaling fleet gets its comeuppance. The kids learned some Japanese just for that scene. Come on, we’ve got seats up front…”

It was indeed a remarkable show, from the opening scene in which a narrator in a salt-stained oilskin jacket walked to the front of the stage: “Call me Ishmael.”

“Hi, Ishmael!”

“Hi, boys and girls!…”

By the time the singing squid got three encores after the big closing number, “Harpoon of Love’, even Sally was laughing out loud.

In the after-show party, children and parents mingled in the hall. Sally stayed on, clutching a drink. But her expression, Joshua thought, as she looked around at the chattering adults, the children’s bright faces, gradually soured.

Joshua risked asking, “What’s on your mind now?”

“It’s all so damn nice .”

Helen said, “You never did trust nice , did you, Sally?”

“I can’t help thinking you’re wide open.”

“Wide open to what?”

“If I was a cynic I would be wondering if sooner or later some charismatic douche-bag might stomp all over this Little House on the Prairie dream of yours.” She glanced at Helen. “Sorry for saying ‘douche-bag’ in front of your kids.”

To Joshua’s amazement, and apparently Sally’s, Helen burst out laughing. “You don’t change, do you, Sally? Well, that’s not going to happen. The stomping thing. Look—I think we’re pretty robust here. Physically and intellectually robust, I mean. For a start we don’t do God here. Most of the parents at Hell-Knows-Where are atheist unbelievers, or agnostics at best—simply people who get on with their lives without requiring help from above. We do teach our kids the golden rule—”

“Do as you would be done by.”

“That’s one version. And similar basic life lessons. We get along fine. We work together. And I think we do pretty well for the kids. They learn because we make it fun. See young Michael, the boy in the wheelchair over there? He wrote the script for the play, and Ahab’s song was entirely his own work.”

“Which one? ‘I’d Swap My Other Leg for Your Heart’?”

“That’s the one. He’s only seventeen, and if he never gets a chance at developing his music there is no justice.”

Sally looked uncharacteristically thoughtful. “Well, with people like you two around, he’ll get his chance.”

Helen’s expression flickered. “Are you mocking us?”

Joshua tensed for the fireworks.

But Sally merely said, “Don’t tell anybody I said so. But I envy you, Helen Valienté née Green. A little bit anyhow. Although not over Joshua. This drink’s terrific, by the way, what is it?”

“There is a tree in these parts, a maple of sorts… I’ll show you if you like.” She held up her glass in a toast. “Here’s to you, Sally.”

“What for?”

“Well, for keeping Joshua alive long enough to meet me.”

“That’s true enough.”

“And you’re our guest here for as long as you wish. But—tell me the truth. You’re here to take Joshua away again, aren’t you?”

Sally looked into her glass and said calmly, “Yes. I’m sorry.”

Joshua asked, “It’s the trolls, right? Sally, what exactly is it you want me to do about that?”

“Follow up the arguments about animal protection laws. Raise the current cases, at Plumbline and the Gap, and elsewhere. Try to get some kind of troll protection order properly drawn up and enforced—”

“You mean, go back to the Datum.”

She smiled. “Do a Davy Crockett, Joshua. Come in from the backwoods and go to Congress. You’re one of the few Long Earth pioneers who have any kind of profile on the Datum. You, and a few axe murderers.”

“Thanks.”

“So will you come?”

Joshua glanced at Helen. “I’ll think about it.”

Helen looked away. “Come on, let’s find Dan. Enough excitement for one night, it will be a trial getting him to sleep…”

Helen had to get up twice that night before she got Dan settled.

When she returned the second time she nudged Joshua. “You awake?”

“I am now.”

“I’ve been thinking. If you do go, Dan and I are coming with you. At least as far as Valhalla. And he ought to see the Datum once in his life.”

“He’d love that,” Joshua murmured sleepily.

“Not when he finds out we’re planning to send him to school at Valhalla…” For all she’d bigged up the town’s school to Sally Linsay, Helen still wanted to send Dan to the city for a while, so he could broaden his contacts, get an experience wide enough for him to make his own informed choices about his future. “Sally’s really not so bad when she isn’t channelling Annie Oakley.”

“Mostly she means well,” murmured Joshua. “And if she doesn’t mean well the recipient of her wrath generally deserves it.”

“You seem… preoccupied.”

He rolled over to face her. “I looked up the outernet updates from the twain. Sally wasn’t exaggerating, about the troll incidents.”

Helen felt for his hand. “It’s all been set up. It’s not just Sally turning up like this. I get the impression that your chauffeur is sitting waiting for you in the sky.”

“It is a coincidence that a twain should show up just now, isn’t it?”

“Can’t you leave it to Lobsang?”

“It doesn’t work like that, honey. Lobsang doesn’t work like that.” Joshua yawned, leaned over, kissed her cheek, and rolled away. “Grand show, wasn’t it?”

Helen lay, still sleepless. After a while she asked, “Do you have to go?”

But Joshua was already snoring.

Joshua wasn’t surprised when Sally didn’t turn up for breakfast.

Nor to find she’d gone altogether. That was Sally. By now, he thought, she was probably far away, off in the reaches of the Long Earth. He looked around the house, searching for signs of her presence. She travelled light, and was fastidious about not leaving behind a mess. She’d come, she’d gone, and turned his life upside down. Again.

She had left a note saying simply, “Thanks.”

After breakfast he went down to his office in the town hall, to put in a few hours’ mayoring. But the shadow of that twain in the sky fell across his office’s single window, a looming distraction that made it impossible to concentrate on the routine stuff.

He found himself staring at the single large poster on the wall, the so-called “Samaritan Declaration’, drafted in irritation by some hard-pressed pioneer somewhere, and since spread in a viral fashion across the outernet and adopted by thousands of nascent colonies:

Dear Newbie :

The GOOD SAMARITAN by definition is kind and forbearing. However, in the context of the Long Earth land rush, the GOOD SAMARITAN demands of you :

ONE. Before you leave home find out something about the environment into which you are heading .

TWO. When you get there, listen to what the guys already there tell you .

THREE. Don’t be fooled by maps. Even the Low Earths haven’t been properly explored. We don’t know what’s out there. And if we don’t, you certainly don’t .