The Long War

about combers and cities. ‘I’ve written a book on the subject,’ he said now. ‘Combers, and a new theory of civilization.’
    Helen frowned. ‘A book? Nobody reads books now. Or at least, not new books.’
    Thomas, steering one-handed, tapped his forehead. ‘All in here. I travel the worlds and give readings.’
    ‘A regular Johnny Shakespeare,’ Sally said dismissively.
    The cart pulled up outside a four-storey building with an expansive street-level frontage. Thomas said, ‘Here you go. The Healed Drum, the best hotel in Valhalla. You’re in there for three weeks if you need it.’
    Sally scowled. ‘How long? Why? We’ve only come here to catch a twain down to the Datum.’
    Joshua said gently, ‘Sally, Helen and I are here to look at a school for Dan.’
    Dan’s little jaw dropped. ‘You’re sending me here? To school?’
    Helen glared at Joshua. ‘Great way to break the news.’
    ‘Sorry.’
    She patted Dan’s arm. ‘Valhalla’s schools have got a reputation as the best in the High Meggers, Dan. It would be fun, and you’d learn so much new stuff. Things you could never learn at Hell-Knows-Where. But if you don’t want to be away from home—’
    Dan scowled. ‘I’m not a little kid, Mom. Can I learn to be a twain driver here?’
    Joshua laughed and tousled his hair. ‘You can be anything you want, kiddo. That’s the point.’
    Helen said to Sally, ‘Also I need to see my father.’
    Thomas nodded. ‘Jack Green! Fast becoming another hero. A founder of the Children of Freedom movement, now an organizer of the Footprint Congress which has attracted delegates from thousands of inhabited Americas—’
    ‘He’s fast becoming a major embarrassment, is what he is,’ Helen said sternly.
    ‘This hanging around wasn’t part of the deal,’ Sally snapped at Joshua. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
    Joshua shrugged. ‘Well, you didn’t wait to be consulted. Besides, how would you have reacted? Just like this, right?’
    Sally picked up her pack. ‘I’m out of here.’ She disappeared with a pop of displaced air.
    Thomas sighed. ‘What a woman. I hope I have a chance to get her autograph. Come on, let’s get you checked in.’

9
    I N THE MORNING , Bill went off for ‘a bit of an old explore on me own’, as he put it. Joshua made sure he had a cellphone so he could call for a ride back, if he got ‘incapable’.
    Bill had gone by the time Thomas showed up to give Joshua, Helen and Dan a lift to Dan’s prospective school. This was in a different urban ‘hub’ called Downtown Seven, on the other side of this intricately designed city. So they climbed into Thomas’s buggy once more, and set off across town.
    The city had grown hugely since the last time Joshua had seen it. Valhalla, starting from a clean slate, was always intended to be more than just another city. It looked attractively different even in its basic layout, built on hexagonal plots that were spreading around the southern shore of the American Sea of this world, and cutting into the native forest. Many of the houses glittered with solar paint, but others had grass and other plants growing thick on their roofs, a natural thatch.
    And wherever the view opened up to the north, Joshua glimpsed the sea, a flat, silver horizon. The coastline lay at about the same latitude as Datum Chicago. At the shore the city took on an older feel to Joshua’s eyes, an echo of an antique America, a maritime past. There was a respectable port now, mostly wooden buildings, warehouses and boat yards, even what looked like a fishermen’s chapel – he supposed the chapel would already have its memorial stones to those lost in this version of the American Sea, stones without graves, stones with no bones beneath. Further out there were wharves and jetties and moles. On the sea itself there were ships, grey shadows, some mechanically driven, mostly coal-burning probably, but many were sailing ships, like reconstructions, museum pieces.
    Sailors were working this new ocean, fishing, trapping. They hunted tremendous reptilian swimmers, something like plesiosaurs, and adorned their boats with their giant jaws and vertebrae. Like the whalers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries back on the Datum, these seafarers were studying their worlds with an intensity that outshone the more scientific explorers, and were linking together the scattered, growing communities around the shores of these stepwise American oceans. They weren’t whalers,