The Long War

laughter.
    ‘And that ,’ Helen said wearily, ‘is what I can’t stop Dan running around doing to all his little friends, every time his father tells that story.’
    Joshua winked at Jansson. ‘He’ll grow out of it. Price worth paying, right?’
    Jansson just smiled neutrally. An experienced cop knew better than to get involved in family arguments.
    They were distracted by the approach of a short, slim, wiry-looking man in his fifties. He looked vaguely familiar to Jansson. Somewhat shyly, he all but stood to attention as he addressed Joshua. ‘Excuse me, sir. You’re Joshua Valienté, right?’
    ‘Guilty as charged.’
    ‘Sorry to trouble you . . . I don’t know anybody here and I know her.’
    ‘Sure. And you are?’
    The man offered his hand. ‘Wood. Frank Wood. USAF, long retired, once of NASA . . .’ There was a comedy moment; Wood had put forward his left hand to shake, but recoiled when Joshua’s elderly cybernetic claw was produced in response.
    Jansson snapped her fingers. ‘I thought I recognized you, Mr. Wood. I met you at the Gap. I was up there with Sally myself.’
    He seemed startled to see her, then pleased. Evidently he hadn’t recognized her through the increased decrepitude of her illness. ‘Lieutenant Jansson? Good to see you again . . .’
    More handshakes; Wood’s hand was dry, firm. Jansson remembered, awkwardly, how she’d suspected this poor guy had had a crush on her out at the Gap.
    Helen said, a tad reluctantly, ‘I think Sally is down there, near the big group of trolls. With some Happy Landings types.’ She led the way.
    Jansson followed, accompanied by Frank Wood. When he saw how slowly and stiffly she walked now, he discreetly offered her his arm.
    Just as discreetly she smiled her thanks. She said, ‘Frank, just so you know—’
    ‘I heard you were ill.’
    ‘It’s not that. I’m gay, Frank. And ill. Ill and gay.’
    He took that with a self-deprecating grin. ‘So our budding romance is doomed, huh? My radar never was too reliable. Probably why I never married.’
    ‘Sorry about that.’
    ‘Does being ill and gay preclude your being bought dinner, however?’
    ‘It will be a pleasure.’
    They found Sally with a bunch of trolls, and a few people dressed in what struck Jansson as a peculiar style even for colonial folk, kind of alternate eighteenth-century. Sally herself wore her usual sleeveless travel jacket, as if she were about to leave any second for another urgent stepwise jaunt.
    More introductions followed, and Jansson was able to match more names to faces. The oddly dressed types were from Happy Landings. A slim, shy-looking, youngish man turned out to be Jacques Montecute, headmaster of a school at Valhalla. A teenage girl, sober and serious, standing quietly at Montecute’s side, was Roberta Golding, a student at the Valhalla high school who had made the news, along with Montecute, by travelling with the Chinese expedition to Earth East Twenty Million. They were here as guests of Joshua, it turned out; Dan Valienté would be starting at Montecute’s school from next year. The Happy Landings folk seemed to stand a little way away from the rest, as if not quite part of the crowd.
    And there was something particularly odd about Roberta Golding. A watchfulness, a stillness, that Jansson hadn’t seen in such a young person since Joshua himself was that age. But she didn’t detect Joshua’s eerie calm about Roberta, nor his irreducible survival instinct. She had a look that Jansson, in her duty days, had associated with kids from damaged families. She had seen too much, too young. Jansson wondered uneasily what this flawed child might become, in future.
    The trolls included Mary the runaway, and there was no mistaking the cub, Ham, who even now still wore bits of his silvery spacesuit. As soon as Ham saw Jansson he ran straight at her, making to hug her legs, and would have knocked Jansson clean over if Joshua hadn’t intercepted him first.
    Sally, being Sally, immediately homed in on Frank Wood. ‘Well, well. Buzz Aldrin. What do you want?’
    Wood nodded, graciously enough. ‘I was hoping for a burger and a beer.’
    Sally spat, ‘Enough with the Right Stuff crap; you don’t charm me. More trouble at the Gap, right?’
    ‘Not at all. I came to thank you, Ms. Linsay. And you, Lieutenant Jansson. For dealing with that business with the trolls the way you did. My colleagues up there are not bad people, but they are somewhat driven.