But of course most people, whoever could, were heeding the systematic calls to step away. And shots from the air, taken from Earth West and East 1, 2, 3, showed the new communities in the footprints of the threatened Datum cities being swamped by a mass of people stepping over, people unconsciously forming up in blocks and streets, in the forms of the schools and hospitals and shopping malls and churches from which they had come, a human map of the doomed communities just a step or two away.
All this was horribly familiar to Jansson. She murmured, clutching Frank’s strong hand, ‘I remember trying to persuade my chief.’
‘Who, dear?’
‘Old Jack Clichy . . .’
‘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 . . .’
Frank just held her hand.
She heard the Sisters talking of Joshua Valienté, Sally Linsay, others, rushing to the Datum to help with the relief effort. The names snagged her attention, before she sank back into deeper sleep.
When she woke again, Sister John was quietly weeping.
‘They’re saying it’s our fault. Humanity’s. The scientists. All the local versions of Yellowstone have been unstable recently, but it’s only on the Datum that this has happened. Humans disturbing the Earth, like we did the climate. Others are saying it’s a punishment from God. Well, it’s not that,’ she said fiercely. ‘Not my God. But, how will we cope with this? . . .’
By now Jansson was too feeble to get up. Damn morphine, she thought. Sister John had to help her with the bedpans. She was peripherally aware of a nurse in the background, from the convalescent home; Jansson didn’t know his name. But he let Sister John take the lead. That struck her as polite.
And when she woke with a little more clarity, here was Frank Wood, still sitting at her side.
‘Hey,’ she said.
‘Hey.’
‘What time is it?’
‘The time?’ He checked his watch, a big astronaut-type Rolex, then did a double-take. ‘Three days since the first eruption started. It’s morning, Monica.’
‘You need a clean shirt.’
He grinned and rubbed his chin. ‘This is an all-female establishment, as far as adults are concerned. Don’t ask me what I used to shave today.’
Of course there was a TV on, the sound soft, in a corner of the room. The projections were fast changing. As the tremendous cloud of ash and dust spread, across the continental US, even into Canada and Mexico, people were stepping away in their millions, an emigration greater than any in human history, before or after Step Day. Meanwhile the effects of the cloud were already global. Shots of towering sunsets, over London and Tokyo.
It was very strange to watch this, Monica thought, from a world five steps removed, in West 5, where the sun was shining – or not, she realized vaguely: once again it was night. As if she was watching a snow globe, roughly shaken. Or an ash globe.
She felt too weak to move. Only her head. She had an oxygen tube in her nose now. An automated meds dispenser by her bed, like a prop from ER. She drifted helplessly back towards sleep.
‘Carry them in your arms, on your back,’ she’d told Clichy. ‘Then go back and step again. And again and again . . .’
‘You’ve thought about this, haven’t you, Spooky?’
She murmured, ‘It’s why you gave me the job all those years ago, Jack . . .’
Frank leaned close. ‘What was that, honey?’
But Monica seemed to be sleeping again.
On the seventh day, at last, the eruption finished. No more fresh ash, to global relief.
But it ended with a clash of cymbals, as Frank Wood, sleepless, grimy, watched on the room’s wall TV. The caldera, fifty miles wide, emptied of magma, just collapsed. It was as if a chunk of real estate the size of a small state had just been dropped a thousand feet.
Some of the younger Sisters, excited, went stepping over into ash-coated Datum Madison to witness the consequences first hand. After just five minutes the quakes came, a ground-shaking pulse of energy travelling around the planet – though in the ruins of Madison there was only rubble to disturb. Then, after an hour or more, the sound, like a tremendous artillery barrage just over the horizon, or like the launch of a space shuttle, Frank Wood thought, digging back into his boyhood memories.
‘My God,’ Frank said, and he felt for Jansson’s hand. ‘What is to become of us, Monica? . . . Monica?’
Her hand was very cold.
Acknowledgements
We’re very grateful to Jacqueline Simpson, co-author of the invaluable The Folklore of Discworld, for advice on kobolds, theology, and other generous and wise contributions. It was Jacqueline who brought to our attention the poem ‘Unwelcome’ by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge. We’re also beholden once again to our good friends Dr. Christopher Pagel, owner of the Companion Animal Hospital in Madison, and his wife, Juliet Pagel, for their assistance with research, and for another very helpful draft read-through.
All errors and inaccuracies are of course our sole responsibility.
T.P.
S.B.
December 2012, Datum Earth
About the Authors
TERRY PRATCHETT is one of the world’s most popular authors. He is the winner of numerous literary prizes, including the Carnegie Medal, and he was awarded a knighthood in recognition of his services to literature. Pratchett lives in England.
STEPHEN BAXTER is an acclaimed, multiple-award-winning author whose many books include the Xeelee sequence, the Time Odyssey trilogy (written with Arthur C. Clarke), and The Time Ships, a sequel to H. G. Wells’s classic The Time Machine. He lives in England.
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Also by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter
BOOKS BY TERRY PRATCHETT
The Dark Side of the Sun
Strata
The Unadulterated Cat (illustrated by Gray Jolliffe)
Good Omens (with Neil Gaiman)
FOR YOUNG ADULTS
The Carpet People
Nation
The Bromilead Trilogy
Truckers
Diggers
Wings
The Johnny Maxwell Trilogy
Only You Can Save Mankind
Johnny and the Dead
Johnny and the Bomb
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The Color of Magic
The Light Fantastic
Equal Rites
Mort
Sourcery
Wyrd Sisters
Pyramids
Guards! Guards!
Eric (illustrated by Josh Kirby)
Moving Pictures
Reaper Man
Witches Abroad
Small Gods
Lords and Ladies
Men at Arms
Soul Music
Feet of Clay
Interesting Times
Maskerade
Hogfather
Jingo
The Last Continent
Carpe Jugulum
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The Truth
Thief of Time
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Monstrous Regiment
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Thud
Where’s My Cow? (illustrated by Melvyn Grant)
Making Money
Unseen Academicals
Snuff
The Last Hero (illustrated by Paul Kidby)
The Art of Discworld (with Paul Kidby)
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The Discworld Companion (with Stephen Briggs)
The Discworld Mapp (with Stephen Briggs)
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with by Stephen Briggs)
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The Color of Magic
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DISCWORLD FOR YOUNG ADULTS
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The Illustrated Wee Free Men (illustrated by Stephen Player)
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Anti-Ice
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TIME’S TAPESTRY
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Navigator
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DESTINY’S CHILDREN
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A TIME ODYSSEY (WITH ARTHUR C. CLARKE)
Time’s Eye
Sunstorm
Firstborn
MANIFOLD
Manifold 1: Time
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Manifold 3: Origin
Phase Space
MAMMOTH
Silverhair
Longtusk
Icebones
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THE NASA TRILOGY
Voyage
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Moonseed
THE XEELEE SEQUENCE
Raft
Timelike Infinity
Flux
Ring
Xeelee: An Omnibus: Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, Ring
Vacuum Diagrams
THE WEB
The Web: Gulliverzone
The Web: Webcrash
NONFICTION
Deep Future
Omegatropic
Revolutions in the Earth: James Hutton and the True Age of the World
BY TERRY PRATCHETT AND STEPHEN BAXTER
The Long Earth
Credits
COVER DESIGN BY R. SHAI LER, TW
Copyright
THE LONG WAR. Copyright © 2013 by Terry and Lyn Pratchett and Stephen Baxter. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Published simultaneously in Great Britain by Doubleday, an imprint of Transworld Publishers, a division of Random House Group, Ltd.
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Epub Edition June 2013 ISBN 9780062067784
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