Smallworld

by Dominic Green

  “Then, one morning, we woke up to find the Arkarch and his handgun missing. We searched the settlement, but could find him nowhere. We were arranging a team to drag the basin, when one of the ladies whose child had died in the first month after landing, who was out at the South End paying respects at her little girl’s grave, discovered a newer, more professional-looking tombstone standing next to the child’s. Feeling rather sheepish, we dug under it, and discovered our Arkarch’s head and body, neatly disunited.

  “You might imagine this would have led to rejoicing, but human beings are queer creatures. First of all the settlement was up in arms against the Arkarch’s murderer, but after we finally worked out everyone had an alibi for the killing, it was realized there was a malevolent force here in this place besides ourselves. That other force was unanimously agreed to be a devil that had killed our good and holy leader. The Anchorite was our first prime suspect; he fled into the rocks of the South End Chasm, and would not come out. Our leader at that difficult time was a woman named Ogundere, who had taken the name of Cast-Out-The-Devil. Unable to catch the Anchorite, she identified three of our number as complicit in the Arkarch’s murder, and had sufficient flammable material collected together to burn them alive. The next morning, a fresh grave was discovered in the South End, containing Ogundere and Ogundere’s head. Those who had been accused of witchcraft, cut down from their stakes, immediately made Ogundere a martyr and swore to avenge her. From snippets of evidence laced with supposition, they came to the conclusion that the devil that had caused the deaths lived at the bottom of the South End Chasm, possibly at the very core of our world itself. They resolved to make war on it, without really knowing what weapons they might use, or whether their enemy even existed. Holy water, garlic, home-made explosives, electric fencing, laser tripwires, silver bullets, and even aconite were all used. And every time a party went out into the South Chasm, at least one of them would fail to return.”

  “So they were correct,” said Adeti, “about the enemy’s location.”

  “But the Anchorite also lives in the South Chasm,” said Planetometrist Wong. “And he has not been harmed.”

  “Nor has any child,” said Reborn-in-Jesus. “I am convinced the tragic sickness of little Rejoice-in-the-Name-of-the-Lord Stevens was simply that. Since then no child has died on Mount Ararat. On the final day when Behold-the-Hinder-Parts-of-God Raffaele attempted to plant charges in the chasm and was later found interred in the South End Yard, I decided I had had enough, and decided to Adapt. I painted a sign of the Devil on my front door, and carved devils for my doorknockers. I made devil gargoyles leer from every roof truss in my house. I laid out offerings for this place’s demonic inhabitant on the edges of town, as do we all nowadays. And, Lord be praised, from that day forward no man or woman has died on Mount Ararat either, and I and my wife—though admittedly no-one else above the age of thirteen—live to till the land and tell the tale.”

  “Can you prove to us,” said Asahara, “that you did not murder these people?”

  “Explain to me how I could have constructed, with the few poor steel tools at my disposal, forty exquisitely-chiselled gravestones, and overcome forty other armed and homicidally paranoid settlers, and I will concede your point.”

  “This devil of yours. Has it ever been seen?”

  “Some of the children have seen it. It will not attack them, you see. If any adult catches sight of it, he or she dies.”

  “Which means,” said Wong, eyes focussed on an invisible logic, “that it cannot afford to be seen by anyone who knows what he or she is looking at.”

  Adeti nodded curtly in agreement. “Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus, you will please arrange for all your children who have caught sight of this creature to report here for questioning. It is my belief that we have here a life form which is intelligent, dangerous, and possibly technologically competent.”

  “And which draws the line at killing children,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus.

  “Colleagues, I believe,” said Adeti, “that we may have encountered an abandoned Made war machine.”

  Despite the cramped quarters, the temperature in the room appeared to drop. Adeti was aware that this was only blood draining from extremities to hearts to prepare for either fighting or flying, but the illusion was there.

  “We should run,” said Planetometrist Wong. “We are not a military ship.”

  “We should not jump to conclusions,” said Gravitographer Shankar. “This might be humanity’s first contact with an intelligent species we did not make ourselves.”

  “Or an abandoned Made war machine,” repeated Asahara.

  “And it’s already indicated it’s prepared to kill,” reminded Wong.

  “Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus—will you ask your children to report here?” said Adeti.

  Reborn-in-Jesus shrugged. “They will report here for questioning,” he said. “I urge you not to attempt to harm them. I don’t think the Devil would permit it.”

  “Mr. Wong, you will arrange for transportation. And while you’re about it, get that fly shooed outside the lock. I’m not running a dirty ship.”

  Wong nodded and remained seated, but at a further glare from Adeti, rose and began to chase the fly round the compartment, clapping his hands together to confuse it.

  “I have decided,” said Adeti, “to contact our neutronium harvester Sisyphus, which will be in comms range in twelve hours’ time, to facilitate the compulsory purchase and exploitation of Planetesimal 23 Kranii 3X. This will of course involve core extraction and subsequent loss of gravity and atmosphere. However, there are usually berths available on board harvester vessels with a minimum of sharing, and jobs can be found for yourselves and your family until the ship next docks at a habitable planet—”

  “You will all be dead inside eleven hours,” said Reborn-in-Jesus. “This is not a threat, merely a confident prediction. But I will send the children. They will tell you all they know, and who knows? Their presence may protect you.”

  He nodded curtly, and walked out of the ship.

  *

  Apostle Reborn-in-Jesus was a pale, thin boy who Doctor Ambrose had diagnosed as suffering from a variety of immune deficiency disorders. He looked round the Bridge’s interior nervously. He had evidently never seen the inside of a starship, and had refused to enter unless the wall screen was turned on to show his brothers, sister, and cousins playing a complicated game, which Adeti believed was called ‘Devil Take the Spaceman’, in the cemetery outside.

  “Apostle, do you know what the Made are?” Asahara had been given the task of questioning the children by Adeti. Adeti had implied that this was due to the fact that the children would be more likely to trust a friendly mother figure. Asahara suspected that Adeti actually hoped the Social Correctness Officer’s title would terrify the infants.

  Apostle nodded. “Abominations against God. Intelligent creatures made by man, not God.”

  Thank heaven for organized religion. Adeti smiled at Asahara, who said:

  “What form do you think the Made take?”

  The child thought a moment. “Machines,” he said. “Many forms of machines. And people.”

  Asahara nodded. “People who were not made by Mommies and Daddies.”

  The boy nodded back. “Artificially gestated, genetically-modified clones, yes.”

  “Is that what the Devil looks like?”

  The boy’s eyes dropped to the floor, and his voice grew small. “I only ever saw the Devil once.”

  “What did it look like?”

  “Like a man, but moving so quick it blurred.”

  “And where did you see it?”

  “It come in from the south during an Naphillian Eclipse while I was in the Six O’Clock Field.” He squirmed uncomfortably in a chair much larger than he was. “More felt it pass than saw it, point of fact.”

  “And did it leave a trail?”

  “Hellgosh yes. More like a plough furrow. At the town end of that trail, they found a big splash of O
Positive where See-The-Hinder-Parts-Of-God Raffaele had bin, and that same day a new headstone with his name come up in the South End Yard—”

  “And at the Chasm end?”

  The boy looked up at Asahara suspiciously. “Trail didn’t end at the Chasm,” he said. “Ended at Dispater Crater, one kilometre outside City limits.”

  It was nerve-racking to have to operate the PanScanner. It left her only one hand to operate the carbine, in the use of which she’d only ever had one mandatory lesson. Still, the carbine fired rounds that were guaranteed to stop a charging New Earth mantagator dead in its complete lack of tracks. This was admittedly due to the fact that the only prospector deaths attributable to animal attack had happened in the unfortunate Mantagator Swamp Incident of Year 2230 Old Calendar, but the weapon was comforting nonetheless. Adeti wondered if it would penetrate human flesh.

  Some of the team, mostly the men, had stopped wearing EVA suits, wanting to be able to move and react quickly when whatever might charge over the ten-metre horizon at them. Some, mostly the women, had kept their suits on, on the grounds that they might give them some limited protection against whatever.

  “The crater was probably produced by a stray ring particle,” commented Wong, who still had his suit on. “Probably no more than a speck of ice travelling fast. There’s not much atmosphere here, must have blasted clean through and impacted.”

  “Must have blasted clean through and tunnelled,” corrected Adeti. “Ultrasound shows a hollow chamber right under the surface.” She kicked gently at the sand underfoot. It shifted to reveal a dull alloy hatch cover, with the legend PEARLYGATE VACUUM DOOR CO, PORT YUM CAX, CERES.

  Adeti relaxed with a long outbreath. She had not dared admit even to herself, until this moment, that she had feared she might be facing a genuine devil.

  “So we’re looking for a human being,” said Wong.

  “Or a non-human that used what it could get its hands on,” said Adeti. “From off the last ship that landed.” She moved the ultrasound closer to the hatch. “This is just a fire door, a precautionary measure. The air on the other side’s the same pressure as this.”

  “So are we going through it?” said Shankar nervously, eyeing the hatch.

  “No fear! No, we’re going to rig a charge to blow if anyone opens the hatch. That’s what prospectors are good at, laying charges. Not being tunnel rats.”

  “We could drop charges down the hole.”

  “But it—uh, the alleged Devil—might not be in the tunnel when we blow it. And then we’ll have let it know what we know, without gaining anything.” She nodded to Wong. “Rig the hatch to blow.”

  “How much? A hundred grammes will take out anything human inside a hundred metres. I have a kilo.”

  “A kilo sounds good.”

  Wong looked down from the edge of the crater, rubbing his feet in the dirt. “There are shoe imprints here, chief. Looks like the children come down here to play Devil Take The Spaceman.”

  Adeti scowled and ground her teeth together. “Rig the hatch to blow.”

  “My Dad says the Devil’s going to take all of you.” The boy’s eyes were not aggressive, only unsettlingly certain. My Dad says it, so it must be true.

  “How do you feel about that, Magus?”

  “Sad. There’ll be no-one to play ball with any more.”

  The wall was full of trees, a beech forest, big-boughed, the sky above it speckled with leaves. Some of the children would not enter the Prospecting ship without a projection of their own world on the wall screen. Magus was fascinated by forests, by worlds that could hold whole square kilometres of trees.

  “Does water come from the air where you come from?” said Magus.

  Asahara nodded. “A great deal of water. Sometimes too much. Sometimes we call it smog, sometimes fug, sometimes acid rain. You saw the Devil, Magus, didn’t you, when it came into the church and took Elder Inherit-The-Wind.”

  The boy nodded. “I drawed it for you.” He pushed a chalk tablet across the table.

  “Wow,” said Asahara. There were horns. There were wings. There was a tail.

  “You missed out the pitchfork,” she said.

  “Didn’t have it,” said the boy. “Must have left it at home.”

  “What was its skin like?” said Asahara. “Did it look like hair, or chitin, or metal?”

  “It was blurry most of the time,” said the boy. “But it had to slow down to turn corners, like a dog on a wet floor. It had great big feet. It digged its claws in when it turned, and dropped down low to the deck.”

  “Yes,” said Asahara. “It would have to.” She looked at the chalk picture again. “These wings are very small.”

  “They were glowing,” said the boy. “It stopped and flapped them after every time it moved fast.”

  “Well I’ll be,” said Asahara. “Heat sinks.”

  “Elder Raffaele said we might be able to track it on something called infrared,” said the boy, pronouncing the word ‘infraired’. “He said that was the same as heat.” He licked his lips, staring at the spigot on the wall. “It’s hot in here. Can I have a glass of lemonade? The others say your lemonade in here is cold.”

  I knew there had to be a reason why they all turned up straight away. Asahara reached for the spigot and poured a clear plastic glass of what the children had been told was lemonade, a carbonated Tetsushuri company vitamin and amino acid delivery system. Then she sat stock still, staring into the liquid.

  “There’s a rainbow in my drink,” said the boy. “If I drink the rainbow, will I have God’s promise to never again destroy the Earth inside of me?”

  The rainbow fanned out from a narrow point. Trying to correct for refraction, she traced the line of rainbows mentally out of the glass, across the Bridge, and—

  —out through the Bridge landing window.

  “It’ll be a hollow promise if you do, Magus.” Frantically, she fished at her belt for the communicator.

  “It’s been listening in on our conversations. That must mean it understands English. The laser beam aimed in through the landing window bounces off the glass, the glass vibrates when people talk, the micro-vibrations in the glass echo back and tell you what they’re saying—”

  Adeti waited patiently for the talking to stop. “Where did this laser come from?”

  “Outside the ship. I’m shining one of our own measuring lasers out at the same angle till I hit rock and following it with image intensifiers. There’s not much of a horizon here, I reckon it would have to be within fifty metres and at least two metres tall—”

  Adeti shouted into the communicator. “Calm down! Calm down, mister! How long ago did this happen?”

  “Just now. Not two minutes. I think it’s gone now. I can’t see it. I think it scooted off over the rocks, there’s some big ones about thirty metres out, I could go out and take a look—”

  Wong and Shankar shook their heads very definitely at Adeti, who confirmed: “Negative. Stay right where you are. There’s two ways it could have hidden. It could have scooted off over the rocks, or it could have dropped down low and scooted in closer to the ship.”

  “Oh god. Did I lock the door? Magus, did I lock the door? No, hang on, hang on, hang on…I’m switching the intensifiers into the infrared band…YES!” The Correctness Officer’s breathing grew slower in the communicator. “It went away over the rocks! Captain, the Devil leaves a hot trail in air! It has to dump waste heat! It’s not a metaphysical Judaeo-Christian entity, it’s a made thing! And if it’s a made thing, it can be unmade—”

  Adeti clicked the communicator off, and frowned.

  “Either that,” she said, “or it’s very hot in Hell.”

  The rover was travelling at the head of a smoking arrow of its own dust, on autopilot, bound for town. Driving on Mount Ararat felt uncomfortably like perpetually motoring over the edge of a cliff. The autopilot was on due to the pressing need for every crewman’s hand to be near their carbine. Adeti hoped fervently that the saf
ety catches were on everyone’s weapons.