The Long War

its scale, its streetlights, a few elements of traffic control, even posters for concerts and dances and lectures and such, although these were mostly hand-lettered in a small-town kind of way. It was definitely a Long Earth settlement, though, with the buildings massive blocks of timber and sandstone and concrete, the roadways crude lanes of tar, the sidewalks compressed river-bed gravel.
    Then she heard the singing.
    They came to a kind of square, really just the intersection of two main drags. Here, in the shade of a shop awning, were a dozen trolls, singing some kind of song about Mohawks and tea and taxes, as far as Maggie could tell. The marines, in the van of the party, slowed to a halt and stared.
    Admiral Davidson and Captain Cutler had a quick conference.
    Then Cutler gave the order that they were to take a break. It was a reasonable position from the point of view of security. They were in the open here, but were overlooked by no tall buildings, and had a clear view in four directions down these empty streets. As the rest dumped their packs and fished out water bottles, Cutler posted sentries to each of the square’s four corners, and guys with Steppers were sent a world or two to either side also. It was a classic Long Earth security drill.
    Maggie stood on the tarmac with Mac and Nathan. Nathan dug an Mr.E out of his pack, a meal ready to eat, popped it, and dug into a hot beef pie.
    Mac looked on, seeming faintly appalled. ‘Don’t know how you eat like that at a moment like this, man.’
    Around a mouthful of pie Nathan said, ‘Takes years of dedicated training, Doctor. You got any salt?’
    ‘No, I don’t have any salt.’ Mac dug a handheld computer out of his own pack, and held it up to the trolls. ‘I’m trying to identify that song they’re singing . . . Aha. Bring in your axes, and tell King George we’ll pay no taxes on his foreign tea . . . It’s a Revolutionary War ballad. The Boston Tea Party. Whoever taught the trolls that is sending us a message. And has a sense of humour.’
    Nathan said, finishing up his Mr.E, ‘But where the hell is everybody else?’
    Mac said, ‘I’m guessing, in other parts of the city.’
    ‘ What other parts? . . . Oh.’
    Mac was pointing at random, his fingers cocked at funny angles.
    ‘Stepwise,’ Maggie said. ‘They’ve all gone stepwise?’
    ‘Kind of. I visited, once. This city actually extends stepwise, in a way. I mean, it’s not like a Low Earth footprint of a Datum town, like New York West 1 or East 5, or whatever. Here, the other worlds are more or less unspoiled, and therefore full of stuff to hunt and gather and eat. People live out there, at least some of the time. Together they support the city at the centre. It is kind of quiet today, isn’t it? Usually there’s some sort of critical mass of people actually here .’
    ‘But not today.’
    ‘Not today. Well, I guess they knew this invasion force was on the way. Who wants trouble? But not much of a war, is it, if nobody’s interested in fighting? Not much fun .’
    Captain Cutler heard that and turned, glowering. ‘Fun, officer?’
    ‘Sure, sir,’ Mac said with a grin. ‘War is fun. That’s the terrible secret, why we’ve been doing it back to the Bronze Age, if not before. Well, now we have the Long Earth, everybody can have as much as they possibly want, there’s always room to just walk away. No more need for war, right? Maybe it’s a phase we need to grow out of.’
    Nathan raised his eyebrows. ‘Good luck with that as a guide to your career progression in the Navy, Doctor.’
    A whistle blew. The break was over; time to continue their march. The marines began to pack up their kit, and sentries flicked away to summon back their buddies from their stepwise posts.
    The city hall, according to the maps they had, was only a couple of blocks north of here.
    Soon Maggie could see it, up ahead, over the shoulders of her officers. It was a squat colonial-era-mansion kind of structure, sitting on a bluff, a scrap of high ground. An open square sprawled before it, another road intersection. Two big flags fluttered from poles high above the building’s frontage. One was the Stars and Stripes; the other was a blue field covered with a string of cloud-blue discs.
    Mac grunted. ‘I wondered when we’d get to see that new flag. There’s a bunch of rebel colonies scattered across the Earths, starting with New Scarsdale back around West 100,000 and working their way all