Terry Pratchett - The Long War

“I’ve been in worse flophouses. Right now I feel like I could sleep on concrete.”

Sally leaned closer and spoke more softly. “Listen, Jansson, while we have a minute alone. We need a plan. To get ourselves out of this.”

“We could always just step away. As you said you could carry me out—”

“Of course. They’ve been casual about that, haven’t they? They did take your Stepper box. Maybe they think we’re like trolls, who won’t step away if they leave a cub behind. But I suspect they’re imposing their different way of thinking on us. They don’t use prisons ; that’s not in their mind-set. They spoke about this tradition of the hunt. They’re happy for wrong-doers to escape, right? To run for their lives, rather than be confined. That’s the way they think. So their instinct isn’t to lock us up. I guess they think that even if we do step, they’ll come and hunt us down anyhow, carried on the back of kobolds. We’ll see, if they try.

“But we’re not going anywhere. Our business isn’t done here. We need to normalize relations between humanity and these sapient dogs. We can’t have the likes of the kobolds playing us off one against the other.”

Janssen glanced over at Finn McCool’s cubbyhole. “I agree,” she said fervently.

“Also there’s still the issue of the trolls. If they’re all congregating here, everything is—” Uncharacteristically she seemed to struggle for words. “Out of balance, across the Long Earth. Somehow we have to resolve that. First things first, however. We need to cut that kobold out of his grubby trade, and we need some leverage.”

“You’re talking about the rings. The one the Granddaughter wore, the one you and Joshua brought back from Rectangles.”

“Right. That’s significant somehow. It all has to be connected, doesn’t it? A ring from a world next door—a world the kobold can reach, but the beagles can’t—high-tech weapons similarly retrieved from a stepwise world…”

Jansson tried to think it through. “We only know one possible source of non-human high tech around here. The world called Rectangles, that nuclear pile. Right? And that’s where you found the ring, identical to the Granddaughter’s. The simplest theory is that that is the source of the weapons.”

“I agree,” Sally said. “Occam’s razor.”

“And a cop’s instinct. OK. But for some reason the kobold can’t access more guns right now. If he could, he’d be handing them over already, wouldn’t he?”

“It must be something to do with the rings. Why else would the Granddaughter have that one on display, around her neck? Maybe McCool needs rings to gain access, for some reason. He can’t use the Granddaughter’s any more—”

Jansson smiled. “I see what you’re thinking. Maybe Joshua’s ring would work for him.”

“This is all guesswork, but it fits together. My own kobold contact did send me to Rectangles, not straight here. I always thought there might be some more old high tech on that dusty planet—damn it. We need that ring if we’re to make anything of this. I’m going to have to go get it, the ring, off of Valiente’s living room wall.”

“Go get it? Oh. You mean, step out of here.”

“I’ll have to leave you here for a while. You’re too ill—you’d only slow me down—I’m sorry. Anyhow one of us at least ought to stay, to prove we’re not escaping.”

Jansson grimaced, trying to hide her alarm at the thought of being left here alone. “I’ll cover for you. They won’t even notice you’re gone.”

“Sure. And I’m hoping that Valienté also won’t even notice when the damn ring has gone. The last thing we want is him showing up here…”

“He will come, if he can,” Jansson said firmly.

Sally seemed to think that over. “If he does, maybe we can use him.”

But there was no more time to talk, for in walked the beagle Jansson remembered as the Granddaughter’s adviser, with the human-language name Brian.

“Pleas-se.” Brian waved his hand-like paw in a very human gesture of welcome. “Dine with me. I hrr-ave selected meal-ss which hrr-kobolds chose befor-rre.”

“We’re not kobolds,” Sally snapped.

Jansson went and fetched a blanket, folded it up, and painfully lowered herself down on to it. She glanced over the bowls that had been already laid out. They appeared to be of carved wood. No pottery here?

“Nothing but meat to eat,” Sally said brusquely, inspecting the bowls’ contents. “Don’t ask where the cuts come from. At least it’s all cooked, more heavily than the beagles prefer, I suspect.”

“Bur-hhrned,” growled Brian. “Free of all taste…”

“All except that one.” Sally pointed to a central bowl, filled with fat, pinkish morsels.

“Those cannot be cooked,” Brian said.

Jansson summoned up the energy to deal with more strangeness. “Thanks for your hospitality.”

“Thank you ,” Brian said.

“For what?”

“For being he-hhre. I, I have strange r-hhrole. Fits my st-hhrange mind. My nose follows, hhr, unusual scents. Granddaughter Petra toler-hhrates me, for my sometimes-useful nose. And I, I a slave to he-hhrr scent, just like handsome fool Snowy… Females hhr-ule males. Same with hu-manss?”

“Yes,” said Sally. “Some human males know it too.”

“I, I am st-rrange for beagle. Fo-rrever grow bo-hhred, the same old scents. Same old talk. I hhr-elish strangers and strangeness. Other, other”—he searched for the phrase—“other points of view . What more differ-hrrent than beagle and kobold?”

“We aren’t kobolds,” snapped Sally again.

“Sorry, so-hhry. Wrong term. What a shame we have not found each other before. Two types of mind, two ways of scenting the wo-hrrld. How much hhr-icher.

“Ex-ssample. This city named for our goddess, who is Hunter-rrh. We believe She is the Mother of Mothers. Her pack the Pack of Packs. As-ss Petra is Granddaughter, and there are Daughters over he-hhr, and Mother-hhr of Pack above them. Pack Mother-hrr lives far from here, rules many Dens. Hunter, Mother of Mothers, gave bi-hhrth to world, rules all, even Mother-hhrs. And when we die, our spi-hhrits flee our bodies, to be hunted by the Mother of Mothers, and taken back. What a-hhre your gods?”

Jansson said, “We have many gods. Some of us have no god at all.”

“You see us as ba-hhrbaric. One step f-hhrom the wolf. Is our religion c-hhrude to you?”

Sally looked blank. “I have no opinion.”

“Some of us despise wolf in us. As you pe-hrrhaps despise your ancestor animal, its ma-hrrk in you. We hunt. Kill. Big litters. Life cheap, wa-hrr common. Great slaughters. Cities empty, Dens fall. Then more litters, more little soldie-hhrs.”

“A cycle,” Sally said to Jansson, evidently fascinated. “Boom and crash. They have big litters, lots of unloved warrior pups running around, lots of Daughters and Granddaughters competing to become this Mother, head of the nation. They fight, they have wars—they kill each other off, and when the population collapses the cycle begins again.”

“Like inner-city gangs,” Jansson said.

“Maybe. It’s got to impede their progress. Technological, social. Maybe it’s no wonder they’re stuck at the Stone Age. And why they’re easy marks for weapons dealers, like the kobold.”

“L-look-khh.” Brian leaned forward and picked out a pink blob from the central bowl. “Unborn hrr-rabbit. Cut from the womb of its mother, f-hhresh. Deli… delicacy .” He rested the embryo between his teeth, bit down, and sluiced the blood into his mouth, like a connoisseur savouring a fine wine. “Some of us despise wolf in us-ss. But the tass-te, oh, the tass-te…”