The Long War

mountain man, if he ever had been. And now here was Sally, charging off into the Long Earth through her soft places, as if challenging Joshua to follow. Here was Lobsang, like a ghost from the past, snapping his fingers once more. Was Joshua just going to jump as commanded?
    Of course he was. Even if he wasn’t the man he used to be. But then, even Lobsang wasn’t who he once was, quite.
    They walked on, stepping occasionally from world to world, from sunset to sunset. The troll songs hung in the richly scented air of each world – but Joshua wondered if they were diminishing, even as he listened.
    Tentatively he said, ‘Having met you now, I can see your instinct was right.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘You did need Sister Agnes.’
    Lobsang sighed. ‘But I think I need you too, Joshua. I often think back to our days together on the Mark Twain .’
    ‘Watched any old movies recently?’
    ‘That’s another thing about Agnes. She won’t let me show any movies that don’t have nuns in.’
    ‘Wow. That’s brutal.’
    ‘Something else that’s good for me, she says. Of course there aren’t that many movies that qualify, and we watch them over and over.’ He shuddered. ‘Don’t talk to me about Two Mules for Sister Sara . But the musicals are the worst. Although Agnes says that the freezer-raiding scene in Sister Act is an authentic detail from convent life.’
    ‘Well, that’s a consolation. Musicals with nuns in, huh . . .’
    A voice rang out across the park, a voice Joshua remembered only too well from his own past. ‘Lobsang? Time to come in now. Your little friend will keep until tomorrow . . .’
    ‘She has loudhailers everywhere.’ Lobsang shouldered his rake and sighed as they trudged across the grass. ‘You see what I’m reduced to? To think I hired forty-nine hundred monks to chant for forty-nine days on forty-nine mountain tops in stepwise Tibets, for this .’
    Joshua clapped him on the shoulder. ‘It’s tough, Lobsang. She’s treating you like you’re a kid. Like you’re sixteen, going on seventeen.’
    Lobsang looked at him sharply. ‘You can pack that in for a start,’ he snapped.
    ‘But I’ve got confidence you can overcome these difficulties, Lobsang. Just face up to every obstacle. Climb every mountain—’
    Lobsang stalked off sulkily.
    Joshua waved cheerfully. ‘So long! Farewell!’

37
    J OSHUA MADE HIS way out of the transEarth facility through the reception building in Madison West 10. Of course he could have stepped away anywhere, but it seemed polite to go back out that way. Besides, he had to give Hiroe his badge back.
    Bill Chambers was waiting for him in the foyer.
    ‘Bill? What are you doing here?’
    ‘Well, Lobsang sent for me. He figured you would need a companion for the trip.’
    ‘What trip?’
    ‘To find Sally, and the trolls. What else?’
    ‘But we only just spoke about it . . .’ He sighed. ‘What the hell. That’s Lobsang for you. OK, Bill, thanks.’
    ‘Fair play to him, he says he’ll give us some kind of translation gadget, so we can talk to the trolls.’
    ‘If we can find them at all. If I’m honest I’ve no idea where to start.’
    ‘I do.’ His ruddy face creased in a wide smile. ‘Which is, I guess, why he sent for me. We have to start with Sally. Figure out where she might have gone.’
    ‘How do we do that?’
    ‘Well, Joshua, you’re as close to her as any member of the human race, like it or not. There must be something she’s done or said, some clue we can follow.’
    ‘I’ll think about it. OK. What else?’
    ‘Then we need to track down them troll lads. And I’ve an idea about that. Look at this.’ He dug an item out of his jacket pocket, and handed it to Joshua.
    It was a tape cassette, a bit of technology fifty years obsolete, or more. Its plastic was worn and grubby, and the label unreadable. The cassette smelled strange, Joshua discovered now as he handled it. Half rutting goat, half patchouli, half chemical. It smelled, in fact, of clear nights in the High Meggers. ‘Who the hell plays cassette tapes, outside of a museum? What is this, Bill?’
    ‘A lure.’
    ‘A lure for what? Or who?’
    ‘Somebody who’s going to help us. You’ll see. So – what first?’
    ‘I’m going to see my family. Try to explain all this to Helen.’
    Bill looked squarely at him. ‘Ah, she already knows, man.’
    And Joshua remembered that fragment of poetry Helen had quoted at the very beginning of all this: