Smallworld

by Dominic Green

  Magus raised his voice. “WE BELONG TO A RELIGIOUS ORDER WHICH VALUES PRIVACY.”

  “WELL, SHOWING NEW MARKS AROUND IS THE JOB OF THE WELCOMING COMMITTEE. TAKE THESE VALUED GUESTS BACK UP TO MAIN TWO AND RETURN TO YOUR QUARTERS, SHAREHOLDER.”

  The lawyer nodded and pointed in the direction of the Up elevator cage.

  Sub-levels whirred past in the elevator, each with its own particular unpleasant smell.

  “Were they listening to us?”

  The lawyer nodded. “Always. They had the gain cranked right up to the max. That’s why the guy sounded like he’d sat on a succulent when I yelled at him. But it also means they probably didn’t have a smaller, less obtrusive microphone closer by. They probably don’t know what we’re up to.”

  Another elevator cage passed them, going down. The cage was full of offworlders in variously-coloured shorts and utility vests, standing motionless with streams of HUD flickering over their corneas.

  “Who are they?” said Magus, following the elevator with his eyes.

  “Patch me in to the Devil “, said the Anchorite. Magus fished for a connector on the side of the personality-analogue, raised his travelling companion’s hat, and pushed the connector into the Devil’s temple. Immediately, the Devil raised its head and tracked the receding cage with eyes far better than human.

  “Moral Cleansing Analysts blending in,” said the Anchorite. “They will be armed. The weapons will be internal.”

  “Moral Cleansing Analysts are going to retrieve Mr. Von Trapp,” said Magus out loud. “They will not discover him to be the Dictator, but as soon as they sample his DNA, they will discover him to be a wanted criminal and rearrest him.”

  “What do we do?” said Joannou as the elevator cage began to slow. Magus listened to the voices in his head, as his father had advised him. “We must warn Mr. Von Trapp,” he said. “We will require his public access mail address. And then you must get in touch with your wife,” he said, “and instruct her to pack.”

  The lawyer’s eyes shone. He pulled a personal media centre from his coverall and began punching in commands with shaky fingers.

  The Departures terminal was one of two long bores of concrete like the barrels of a shotgun, driven into the rock until they intersected with the top of Smith City. It was empty of all but a handful of Company Area Sales Supervisors and legal representatives. Anadyomene middle management, it seemed, travelled on whatever vile firework drifted into the system, rather than on the sleek executive needles Magus had seen parked in orbit for the Board of Directors. This week’s particular vile firework was a type two trader, the Tears of the Moon. The air in the terminal smelt of sulphur, and the concrete was stained with acid craters. The middle managers all sported slatted ceramic umbrellas.

  Mrs. Joannou was a severe, spare lady who had inspected Magus’s teeth when she had first met him five minutes earlier.

  “You’ve overtanned,” she said. “Your skin will age quickly, with increased risk of melanoma. Your employer should provide radiation shielding. You’re a farmer, you say? What have you been doing, tilling the fields by hand?”

  Magus had only been able to grin and shrug weakly. Curiously, Mrs. Joannou had approved of his diet of potatoes.

  “Potatoes are good,” she said. “Potatoes and milk, the diet of peasants. Peasants eat better than kings, as a rule; their survival strategy is to outbreed the aristocracy, and you can’t breed if you’re not healthy. The only thing better than potatoes and milk is good solid meat, mark my words. Human meat, for preference.”

  The Joannous, who had been a doctor and a lawyer on their homeworld, had two Company lunchboxes of baggage. When Mr. Joannou had asked for their tickets for the impending flight, Magus had simply shaken his head and instructed patience.

  “There will be tickets before the flight departs,” he said.

  A final call was being made for Passenger Zzyzx. Mrs. Joannou’s lips were pursed, and Magus feared the very worst thing in his universe, verbose feminine disapproval.

  At length, however, a sweating, panting figure struggled up the escalator into Departures, toting two suitcases bigger than he was, assisted by two Shareholder urchins bearing cases that were even larger.

  “Mr. Von Trapp, I presume,” said Magus.

  Von Trapp stared warily, a fight-or-flight debate clearly bouncing off the inside of his skull.

  “Plug me into the Master socket on the Devil,” said the Anchorite. Magus found a new port on the Devil’s head cowling.

  “GOOD AFTERNOON, HANSI,” said the Devil in the Anchorite’s voice. Magus had never known it had a speaker. Certainly it had nothing resembling a mouth.

  Von Trapp licked his lips. “Who are you? Your voice is familiar.”

  The Devil set its hat at a jaunty angle and posed extravagantly. “HOW ABOUT MY FACE?”

  “I must say you have lost me there.”

  “I AM AWARE OF YOU BY REPUTATION,” said the Devil. “I HAVE SPENT TOO LONG IN SERIES ONES AND TWOS NOT TO KNOW OF HANS TRAPP, THE MAN WHO MAKES SECURITY SYSTEMS SING THEIR PASSWORDS, THE MAN WITH A MILLION GENOMES, THE MAN NO SERIES ONE OR TWO CAN HOLD.”

  “And no Series Three,” said Trapp defiantly.

  “YOU WERE JUST PLAIN TRAPP WHEN I LAST KNEW OF YOU,” said the Devil. “WHEN DID YOU GET RAISED TO THE PEERAGE? BUT ENOUGH OF SMALL TALK; YOU HAVE PLACES TO GO. WE ALL HAVE A PLACE TO GO. WE ARE GOING BACK TO MOUNT ARARAT, HANSI, AND YOU ARE COMING WITH US.”

  “Mount Ararat?” An eyebrow flickered curiously. “Is that what the place was called?”

  “IT IS. AND THERE IS A GIRL STILL STUCK IN A SERIES THREE FOR THE REST OF YOUR NATURAL LIFE. THERE IS ONLY ONE MAN I KNOW OF WHO CAN GET HER OUT.”

  Trapp grimaced. “She will be well fed. She will have all she needs to live a long life. The world she lived on, the people there live like animals, trying to grow crops in poison dust. Working the land by hand out under hard gamma. Lifetime in a warm cell is better for her.”

  Before Magus even moved, the Devil said “DO NOT KILL HIM, MAGUS, WE NEED HIM ALIVE. GEEHRTER HERR TRAPP, I AM AFRAID THIS IS NOT A PRESENTATION OF ALTERNATIVES. IT WAS WE WHO SENT THE TEXT WARNING FIFTEEN MINUTES AGO, PRECIPITATING YOUR HASTY DEPARTURE. THE WARNING, HOWEVER, WAS REAL. THERE ARE MCB ANALYSTS HERE IN SMITH CITY LOOKING FOR YOU.”

  “Moral Cleansing?” Trapp was incredulous. “I’m no political prisoner!”

  “YOU WERE TOO EXTRAVAGANT WITH YOUR MONEY. THEY BELIEVE YOU ARE THE FORMER DICTATOR, HIS EXCELLENCY SUPREME OVERLORD BUTTON HUMPAGE III, AND I CAN ASSURE YOU, THAT SLY SMIRK YOU HAVE ON YOUR FACE WOULD NOT HAVE REMAINED THERE LONG IF HIS EXCELLENCY HAD STILL BEEN IN OFFICE. HUMPAGE IS KNOWN TO BE DANGEROUS, AND MCB ANALYSTS ARE KNOWN TO SHOOT FIRST AND ANALYZE AFTERWARDS. WE HAVE ONLY TO PLACE A CALL THROUGH TO COMPANY SECURITY. QUITE APART FROM THE FACT,” said the Devil, extending dagger-like fingernails as if checking them for dirt, “THAT IF YOU DO NOT COME WITH US RIGHT NOW, THIS ONE HUNDRED KILOGRAMME PERSONAL SECURITY UNIT WILL CLOTHE ONE OF THOSE GENTLEMEN OVER YONDER WITH YOUR SKIN AND TAKE HIM IN YOUR STEAD. AS YOU HAVE QUITE ADEQUATELY PROVEN, IT IS ONLY THE DNA WE NEED, NOT THE LIVING BODY.”

  “But it took me a year to get out of there! A year of hard work that I began planning when I was first sealed in!”

  “Then you can get out again,” said Magus. “I’ll help you get out. Because I’m going back in with you. If you think I’d send you back in alone into possible solitary confinement with my sister, you’ve another think coming.”

  “I BEG YOUR PARDON?” said the Devil.

  “So I suppose you’re volunteering to go back in with him in my stead?” said Magus.

  The Devil stood as dumb as a mouthless thing.

  “The Series Three learns!” wailed Trapp. “I will not be able to employ the same escape strategy twice.”

  “When you finally do escape,” said Magus, “you will have confederates on the outside ready to arrange passage offworld.”

  Trapp looked Magus up and down contemptuously.
“And how will you pay for such a thing?”

  “I will not. You will, Mr. Richer-than-the-Dictator. And while you’re about it, you will pay for these two fine people to travel from here to New Earth, and reimburse the debt they owe to the Anadyomene Corporation, at that public transaction terminal over yonder.”

  Trapp slumped in defeat.

  “I concede,” he said. He held out his hand for Magus to lead it to the credit reader, and yelled across the departure hall to the flight attendant. “PASSENGER ZZYZX REPORTING, PLUS TWO NEW TICKETS.”

  “They’ll wait,” said Prosecutor Joannou confidently. “They have to pay for their fuel for the outgoing trip. They come here with a full passenger roster, but no-one ever leaves. No-one under the rank of manager.” He looked over to Magus. “You and your family have done us a great service. When we finally successfully nail Anadyomene in court, we will buy you anything within the value of the compensation.”

  Magus grinned thinly. He looked at the back of his hand, tanned as a razor strop.

  “I believe,” he said, “our settlement could do with a tractor. A Terrawatt Altrak Percheron 500, with self-magnetizing fusion torus, lead glass cabin and backhoe attachment. Possibly,” he said, “two, one for operational use and one as a cold standby.”

  “Done,” grinned the Prosecutor. “And now I believe the Gate staff are getting impatient. My dear, it is time for us to go where there is sky again.”

  He squeezed his wife’s hand affectionately; she squeezed his in return.

  The sound of the tramp trader Insert Sweetheart’s Name Here lifting off behind them rumbled through the rock and made the sand dance to the height of a man’s waist. Magus had already tied his scarf into a turban to keep out the stinging dust, but Trapp was coughing like a consumptive. It was an hour before North End sunrise. There was a chance that the relatively gentle landing and takeoff of a small ship might only make the family roll over in their sleep, but it made sense to approach down the Dry Rille until they were as close to the Penitentiary as possible. The Penitentiary had better eyes and ears.

  “This is insane,” complained his father’s analogue in his left ear. “You are committing the most outrageous folly. I demand that you insert my jack into the Devil’s master socket immediately, so that I may take control of the situation.”

  “You will leave the Devil’s master socket alone,” said the Anchorite. “I do not approve of this course of action, but I do not want an atomic-powered bulletproof automaton capable of trimming a man’s head from his shoulders in the hands of a peon.”

  “I,” said Magus sharply, “am a peon.”

  The Series Three loomed large, its metal surface glinting in the dawn. Mr. Trapp’s hands had begun to shake.

  “Easy,” said Magus. “I am with you.”

  “You,” said Trapp, “are dead weight. Getting both of us out will be twice as difficult.” He took a deep breath and strode up to the wall.

  “Where is the entrance?” said Magus.

  “Anywhere on the wall it wants one,” said Trapp. “It will create one only if it needs one. Unfortunately, it does not feel it needs one right now. It knows it has a full complement of prisoners.”

  “But my sister does not have your DNA,” said Magus.

  “She did when she went in. She might not now, but the machine will cleverly realize this is a cunning subterfuge on the part of the prisoner in an attempt to escape. It may possibly be punishing her for this repeated escape attempt even as we speak.”

  Magus felt a cold blade of adrenalin turn in a wound in his heart. “Punishing her for having incorrect DNA?”

  “It’s the way it thinks, or rather, doesn’t. If I were you, I’d be glad she’s being punished. She’ll never be that much of a fool again.”

  “Fool enough to trust you,” muttered Magus.

  “We get in,” announced Trapp, “by convincing the machine that it needs to open up for maintenance. It needs to think it is malfunctioning. It needs to feel in need of a big strong maintenance man inside it.” He nodded to the Devil. “Set the first package we bought on Beltane down over there, gently.”

  “What is it?” said Magus.

  “A logical extension of the basic workings of a starship’s FTL drive,” said Trapp. “Any FTL drive is by definition also a time machine, and hence this wonderful device, the bane of any time lock.” He opened the lid of the casket and began to flick switches. “Take the emitter coil over there and clamp it to the hull, if it’ll clamp.”

  Magus shook his head. “Clamp it yourself.”

  Trapp sighed in disappointment, walked over to the hull with a medusa of superconducting cables, and attached them to the metal.

  “Can’t say I blame you,” he said. “If I’d flicked the switch here while you’d been over there, you’d have aged a year in a minute. You’d have suffocated in under a second, used up all the air in your time bubble. If,” he said, raising his finger, “I were a violent man. But I was never in here for being a violent man. I was in here because I’d escaped from everywhere else.”

  A sphere of air around the nest of cables began to glow like a miniature sun.

  “Trapped heat,” said Trapp. “The normal oscillation of molecules. Normally it would dissipate, but it can’t escape quickly enough across the barrier.” He flicked a switch, and the light died. “Now the machine thinks its hull processors are returning a different universal time to its CPU. Messages from the one end to the other can’t be routed. It suspects it’s being interfered with, that its messages are being intercepted. But it knows it hasn’t been cut into. It knows it’s still in one piece. So it sends out a maintenance request—”

  The top of the machine slid back, extruding a communications array which turned slowly until it found the constellation Tridens in the sky, then pulsed briefly three times, physically shaking with the expenditure of energy. Then the machine reabsorbed its communicator and settled down to wait.

  “It requests,” continued Trapp, “an authorized engineer. Unfortunately, travel times being what they are, it will take weeks for him to arrive…” Trapp wandered over to the cables, rearranged them to fit on another part of the surface, then walked back to his console “…which he will do around… now.” The light flared once again, then died. Trapp pulled out a machine-gun feed of authorization cards from an inside pocket. “Now, let me see—authorized Moral Reclamation Authority engineer—”

  He slid a card glittering with smartness into an orifice that opened in the section of hull he’d warped time on as if slit by an invisible knife. A square of hull skin slid aside, revealing a control screen, which Trapp manipulated expertly.

  “Let me see—bringing in a second engineer, on training.” A metal tentacle snaked out of the hull, swaying from side to side as if seeking an opening.

  “Biosampler,” said Trapp. “You’re supposed to stand still.” He pulled back the sleeve on his own left arm; the sampler’s binocular eye-turrets swivelled to focus on it, then the machine struck like a serpent. When Magus had finished blinking, Trapp had the sampler in his right hand, held behind its sampling fangs, with a reflective sheet of foil held over its ocular barbettes. Carefully, with his left hand, he took out a miniscule via of red liquid and held it to the fangs, which pierced the top on the vial and drank greedily.

  “In case you’re wondering,” said Trapp, “I took the blood from him while he was sleeping peacefully. This is the blood of one Punchinello Llewellyn-Sforza, grade three RB engineer. And this,” he said, producing another vial, “is the blood of Alun Fitzakerly, grade four. The machine will shortly foolishly imagine we are both state-sanctioned and will do it no harm.”

  After another lunge from the sampling appendage, a mansized section of hull swung back, revealing a narrow corridor leading into the machine. Trapp inhaled deeply and swallowed hard, then stepped back into prison.

  Magus followed; the hull closed behind him again with the speed of a camera shutter. It was dark, but his eyes gradually be
came accustomed to the gloom. All sound from the outside world had been snuffed like a candle flame.

  “What do we do now?” said Magus.

  “Find out which cell she’s in,” said Trapp. “There are normally seven cells in one of these things, arranged in a two-by-two-by-two matrix. The empty cell—which we are currently in—allows the other cells to move slowly over time, so slowly that the occupant normally doesn’t notice. It gives you a fifty-fifty chance, if you somehow do find a way to tunnel out, of tunnelling further into the structure.”

  “How did you figure out where you were?” said Magus.

  “Have you ever seen one of the really old Earth devices for measuring earthquakes?” said Trapp. “Quite ornate, a circle of brass frogs with balls in their mouths, precisely balanced. When something disturbs the frogs, their balls drop out along an axis directly intersecting with the epicentre. My frogs were similar, made of origami, and you really don’t want to know what I made the balls out of, but it was the same principle—aha!”