The Long Earth

some fringe Humanity First-type group responsible for this. And that’s my business. If I can be on the spot, maybe I’ll see something. Eyeball one of the usual suspects. Kill this thing.’
    ‘Or get your sorry lesbian ass fried!’
    ‘No, sir.’ She patted her waist. ‘I got my Stepper …’
    She heard more sirens wail, over the noise of the car. Inside the vehicle emergency messages started popping up, coming via multiple systems: a reverse-911 call on her civilian phone, emails to her tablet, grave Emergency Alert System messages on the radio. None of it was enough, she realized.
    ‘Listen, Chief. You have to change course on this.’
    ‘What are you talking about?’
    ‘Sounds like everybody’s following the standard plays.
We have to get people to step, sir
. Anywhere, East or West, just away from Madison Zero.’
    ‘You know as well as I do that not everybody can step. Aside from the phobics there are the old, kids, bedridden, hospital patients—’
    ‘So people help each other. If you can step, do it. But
take someone with you
, someone who can’t step. Carry them in your arms, on your back. Then go back and step again. And again and again …’
    He was silent a moment. ‘You’ve thought about this, haven’t you, Spooky?’
    ‘It’s why you gave me the job all those years ago, Jack.’
    ‘You’re insane.’ A pause. ‘I’ll do it if you turn your damn car around.’
    ‘Not a chance, sir.’
    ‘You’re fired, Spooky.’
    ‘Noted, sir. But I’ll stay on the line even so.’
    She hit East Washington, and her view of the Capitol opened up, shining white in the sun. People were milling around, coming out of or going into the offices and shops. Some of them tried to wave her down; they looked annoyed, and probably wanted to complain about the noise of the sirens, wailing on and on apparently without reason. The car ahead of her had a prized old Green Bay Packer licence plate. On the walls she saw posters of Brian Cowley, grave, finger-pointing, like a spreading virus.
    It was impossible to believe that in only minutes all this was going to be a cloud of radioactive dust. But now, coming over the car radio, she heard hurried instructions to step, interspersed with the standard announcements.
Step and help. Step and help
… She smiled. An instant slogan.
    Clichy came back with more information. The only warning the police had had was from a kid who had wandered into a district station in Milwaukee, in distress. Fifteen years old. He had run with a crowd of Humanity-Firsters, for the social life, to meet girls. But he was lying to them. He was actually a natural stepper. And when the Firsters found out they had taken him to a doctor, a man on the MPD’s watch list, who had opened up his head and inserted an electrode and burned out brain centres believed to be associated with stepping. It had left the boy blind, whether he could still step or not. So he went to the cops and spilled the beans on what his friends were planning to bring down in Madison.
    ‘All the kid knows is that the Firsters got hold of what they called a “suitcase nuke”. Now, I’m reading my brief here, the only such device ever to have been acknowledged as manufactured by the US is the W54. A SADM, which stands for Special Atomic Demolition Munition. Yield of around six kilotons, which is about a third of Hiroshima . Alternatively they could have got hold of a Russian device, such as an RA-115 – get this, Spooky, it’s thought the old Soviet Union salted some of these things around the mainland US. Just in case, huh.’
    She had reached Capitol Square. Most days this was cluttered with art fairs or farmers’ markets, now expanded to feature the exotic produce of a dozen worlds, or else some protest rally or other. Today there was a concentration of cops and Homelands types and FBI officers, some in nuclear-biological-chemical protection suits, as if
that
would make a difference, and their vehicles, including helicopters hovering overhead. The bravest of the brave, she thought, running
towards
the bomb. As she ripped around the square Jansson looked down State Street, that linked the main UW campus with the Square in a straight west–east line. State was still full of bustling restaurants, espresso bars and shops, despite the Long Earth recession and the depopulation, still the city’s beating heart. This afternoon it swarmed with students and shoppers. Some were evidently hurrying for shelter, but others