Smallworld

by Dominic Green

  A touchscreen on the wall lit up with a list of seven names. Magus leaned past Trapp to read them.

  TRAPP, JOHANNES MARIA

  VLAAMINCK, DR. ANTONINUS

  BOLABAS, CITIZEN PADRAIG

  DEVIL, THE

  CARNEIRO PAVE, CITIZEN YELENA

  SPINK, ANESTIS

  CHRISTMAS, FATHER

  Trapp typed out a few more comments, then swore under his breath.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The information on the cells’ current position is encrypted. I can’t figure out which cell is which.”

  Magus cast a troubled eye at the side wall. “Mr. Trapp, is this wall moving?”

  “Yes, it will do that. That’s why you never get into the empty cell if you’re escaping. It doesn’t stay empty for long.”

  The wall was still moving. “Uh, are we in any danger?”

  “I hope not. The machine knows we’re in here, after all.”

  “I mean, it’s not moving very quickly, but—”

  “Of course, we have screwed around with its innards…tarnation, I hope I don’t have to do any real engineering. In any case,” he said, bouncing a finger down the list of names, “we have access to the internal command prompt. I can send out messages to various cell addresses, and once we find out which one is your sister—”

  “Stepsister,” corrected Magus.

  “Aha, figured out who you can and can’t breed with on this rock already, I see,” said Trapp. Magus reddened. “Well, don’t worry, we’ll have her out in a jiffy… I hope…” he typed out several lines of command syntax, and the screen cleared to a single number in binary:

  001

  The screen was silent for long seconds, during which the wall crept a full millimetre closer. Then, the prompt scrawled back:

  IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE?

  Jamming his lip into the corner of his mouth, Trapp typed back:

  MORAL RECLAM BUREAU MAINT ENGINEER

  Magus leaned over Trapp’s shoulder. “What are you doing? Just ask her if she’s my sister.”

  Trapp frowned and shook his head. “Six of these cells are filled with people far, far worse than I will ever be. You want to be very, very sure who it is you’re letting out.”

  The screen cleared, and came back:

  YOU MUST LET ME OUT. THIS IS A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY

  Trapp sucked in his lips, contemplated, and tapped back:

  WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

  The screen replied instantly:

  I’M JUST A LITTLE GIRL

  “It must be her,” said Magus. “Ask her who her father is.”

  Trapp shrugged, and tapped the question in.

  The screen cleared.

  I HAVE NO FATHER

  “That’s perfectly true,” said Magus. “He died in the, uh, plague in the fourth year of colonization.

  “True of a lot of little girls,” said Trapp. He thought awhile, and keyed:

  WHY DO YOU HAVE NO FATHER?

  The screen cleared, and came back:

  I HAVE NO FATHER BECAUSE HE HURLED ME OUT OF HEAVEN *I* AM THE FATHER THE FATHER OF LIES DESPITE MY INCARCERATION HERE MY LEGIONS WAIT READY TO REND THE FLESH OF MAN DID I SAY HE HURLED I *CHOSE* TO BE HURLED I AM THE STRONGER IN HERE I LURK GNAWING EVER ON THE LIVER OF PROMETHEUS AND THE BONES OF JUDAS I AM ASMODEUS SATAN THE SERPENT IN THE GARDEN APOLLYON AND LEGION

  As the reply continued in the same vein, Trapp tapped in another sequence of commands, and the screen cleared to

  010

  “I think it is safe to assume,” said Trapp, “that that was not your sister.”

  Magus gawped at the screen, his face pale.

  “He can’t get into her cell at all, can he?”

  “Not at all. The cell walls are everything-proof.”

  “Then how did you get out?”

  “Everything-but-me-proof.”

  HELLO? IS THAT A HOUSEKEEPING PROGRAM, OR ANOTHER HUMAN BEING?

  “Doesn’t sound like her,” said Magus. “Too wordy.”

  WHO ARE YOU?

  typed Trapp.

  THAT DOES NOT MATTER. WHAT DOES MATTER IS THAT THE SECRET OF ETERNAL LIFE REACHES THE OUTSIDE WORLD. THE SECRET IS—

  The screen cleared, and nothing Trapp could do would clear it.

  “There must be a watch program on that cell’s communications, shutting it down if it types certain phrases.”

  “No matter, it didn’t sound like Perfect,” said Magus. “Erm, the wall is getting closer.”

  “Fear not,” said Trapp, and cleared the screen again so that it came up:

  011

  The screen stayed silent for many, many seconds.

  “She could be asleep,” said Magus. Trapp shook his head. “An incoming message for the block administrator causes an Appell in the cell. She’ll have heard it. Unless she’s comatose or dead. Which is really unlikely,” he added hastily.

  Suddenly, the screen typed back, very slowly:

  IS THIS A KEYBOARD?

  “That’s her,” said Magus quickly—but, just to make sure, leaned around Trapp and typed in:

  WHO WAS UR FATHER?

  The screen cleared and replied with painful, single-fingered slowness:

  TAKE-EAT-THIS-IS-MY-BODY OGUNDERE

  Frantically, Magus typed back:

  WHO HAS EVER SEEN U NEKKID

  The screen responded:

  IS THAT U GUS?

  Tongue in the corner of his mouth, Magus stabbed out furiously:

  WE R GETTING U OUT

  Trapp stared at the screen fatalistically. “I’d like to know how, exactly.”

  “What?”

  “All the cells are full. I was about to invoke administrator privileges and order a cell-to-cell transfer, but that’s not possible. And these cells won’t do double occupancy. The inmates are too dangerous. It’s hardwired into the design.”

  Magus eyed the wall, now a full half metre closer, nervously. “Isn’t there a LET ALL THE PRISONERS GO command?”

  “Thankfully, no. I’m afraid we really have only one option.” He pulled out a gun-shaped device from an inside pocket and slotted a gas cannister into its handgrip, then pointed the gun at the outside wall.

  “Look away”

  “But won’t we be suffocated by the exhaust?”

  Trapp shook his head. “It’s only a noble gas compound laser. It puts out xenon and oxygen. If I ran it for too long you might catch fire. Look away.”

  The light from the gun filled the chamber, even when Magus looked away.

  “But you’re cutting into the outside wall! We don’t need to cut out, we need to cut further in!”

  “We’re not cutting out,” said Trapp sadly. “Only an idiot would try to cut out of one of these rigs.” He looked at the wall screen, which had changed font size and colour and begun to print coded messages at a speed almost too fast for the human eye to follow.

  “She’s got a spider inside her,” grinned Trapp, switching off the gun. “Now, you and I know she swallowed us spiders to catch the fly, but all she sees is spider. She thinks someone’s trying to tunnel out of her.” He tapped the hot metal with a fingernail. “Ow! But see how the metal’s bunching up around the cut, like a bruise round a wound? The wall’s getting thicker at twice the rate I’m cutting.”

  The walls began to hiss around them. “That’ll be the gas,” said Trapp. “Should take no longer than the end of this sent—”

  “WAKE UP, GUS! WAKE UP!”

  Magus woke up. His head was lying in the lap of someone who stank of potatoes. His brothers and sister were gathered all around him, and they also reeked of potatoes. Their breaths smelt of potatoes when they yelled “HE’S MOVING! HE’S ALIVE!” and “WAKE UP, PERFECT! PERFECT, WAKE UP!” He had not realized his world smelt so badly of tubers before.

  He was sitting in the shade of the Penitentiary Unit. No portal or aperture was visible in it anywhere. He could still smell the urine stench of the gas. He felt like vomiting, but did no
t want to do it in what he realized was God’s-Wound’s lap.

  “SHE’S ALIVE! SHE’S ALIVE!” All around him, step-brothers and step-sisters were dancing. A goat was licking his face with a tongue like a rasp. The goat stank of goat.

  The Anchorite, his mother, and his father were looking down at him.

  “Are you feeling okay?” said his father.

  He nodded groggily.

  “Trapp,” he said.

  The Anchorite shook his head. “Read what’s in your top pocket.”

  He felt in the pocket of his utility vest, and found a neatly-folded square of paper with the heading of the Anadyomene Company, on which were even more neatly printed block capitals.

  HAVE CONVINCED MACHINE AM ATTEMPTING TO TUNNEL OUT. MACHINE KNOWS THERE ARE TWO ENGINEERS INSIDE IT. ONCE IT CHECKS OUT MY DNA, SHOULD SPIT BOTH ENGINEERS OUT AND KEEP THE ESCAPEE. WISH IT COULD HAVE GONE ANOTHER WAY; WILL BE OUT AGAIN SHORTLY. KEEP A CANDLE IN THE WINDOW.

  X

  J.M. TRAPP

  Magus stared through the letters as if they weren’t there.

  “He did the right thing,” he said.

  “Sure,” said Shun-Company contemptuously. “In the end.” He yelped suddenly as the Personality Analogue in his pocket became abruptly, unaccountably hot. It was all he could do to rip it from his clothing and dump it in the dust before it collapsed into a hissing cloud of molten plastic and femtocircuitry. He looked up. The Devil was now standing to stiff robotic attention above him. Formerly, it had been slouching like a disgruntled hermit.

  “Self destruct,” said the Anchorite. “I couldn’t have had two of me running around. Especially when the one of me that wasn’t me laughed cruelly at gunfire. It could have led to some awful me-on-me violence.” He helped Magus unsteadily to his feet.

  “I promised Trapp we’d get him offworld when he got out again,” said Magus.

  Shun-Company regarded her offspring severely. “What a stupid thing to promise. You were in no position to promise such a thing.”

  “I was in a perfect position to,” said Magus. “and I will keep a light in the window.” He leaned up against the lamellar bark of a genetically-modified palm. The dates it bore ate cancers. “You didn’t check my inside pocket.” He pulled out a sheaf of bearer bonds of the largest denominations in circulation, the new imprints bearing geometrical designs where the head of the Secretary General or the Dictator, would formerly have been.

  “That is stolen money,” said Shun-Company. “You should return it instantly.”

  “This is compensation for my foster-sister’s incarceration,” corrected Magus, “and Mr. Trapp paid it to me fair and square out of his directorial salary. It will pay for a number of improvements around here, including a proper working atmosphere conditioner and a thousand tonnes or so more water for the fields. and I intend,” he said, swallowing hard, “to go to New New and obtain an interstellar navigator’s licence.”

  Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus stood stunned. Mrs. Reborn-in-Jesus did likewise for only so long as was required to suck in enough air to set to wailing “My baby is leaving home!,” pushing her head into her husband’s shoulder and pounding ineffectually on his ribcage with her fist. By feminine sympathetic magic, all the girls of the household set to wailing with her. The Anchorite scowled and jammed his fingers in his ears.

  “I should be able to afford our own ship with this much money,” said Magus. “We rely far too much on corporate agro vessels, father. I’ve seen the prices at source. If we can buy goods from the independent GM labs, we’d only be paying a fraction of agribiz markup.”

  Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus thought for several seconds, then nodded almost imperceptibly. The boys of the household set up a cheer, making the women wail even louder, and Magus was forced to defend himself against a torrent of backslapping.

  Meanwhile, propped up against the wall of the Penitentiary, Only-God-is-Perfect was staring up at the dawn.

  “It’s all real,” said the Anchorite, as if it were necessary to make this clear.

  Perfect nodded. “It would make stars, the machine, if I asked it to. But I could always reach up and touch the ceiling.”

  “Reach up,” said the Anchorite. “Feel the ceiling.”

  Only-God-is-Perfect reached up and actually jumped in an attempt to touch the sky. She grinned.

  “These stars are harder to reach,” she said.

  “Though not impossible,” boasted Magus, swollen with pride at having been to them.

  Perfect’s lip began to tremble. “Oh, Uncle Anchorite! It was horrible. The food was bad, the cutlery blunt, and this thing kept coming out of the wall inviting me to bestial congress with it. And it tried to expand my mind with literature. It kept reading me a book by a man called Ivan Denisovich. And another by a doctor called Faustus. You wouldn’t believe the horrid things it said about the Devil.”

  She collapsed, weeping, against the Anchorite’s beard-upholstered chest.

  “There, there,” said the hermit, patting her on the shoulder. “All lies and propaganda. You are home now.”

  The focus of the community’s sympathy now seemed to have shifted to Mrs. Reborn-in-Jesus, who was still inconsolable.

  “Mother is very upset,” said Magus.

  “She’ll get over it,” said the Anchorite. “May I hand you a woman? I can’t seem to put a foot out of doors without getting infested with the damned things.”

  Magus nodded solemnly, and Perfect was passed giggling from the hermit to Magus, allowing the Anchorite to slope off in the company of Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus.

  “Have you really been to the sky for me?” said Perfect.

  “To two or three different skies of different colours,” said Magus. “One sky that rained corrosive acids. One as blue as copper oxides, with birds with wings the colour of tourmalines. We could ship in air and water and ozone. We have the gravity. We could have a sky like that.”

  Perfect looked up at the eclipsed A ring of Naphil hanging in space like smoke, backlit by starlight.

  “I think I quite like our sky. But I’m open to persuasion.”

  The Anchorite and Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus stood apart, unheard by the others. Only the Devil, standing motionless, heard or saw any evil. It was still wearing its hat.

  “If he escapes,” said the Anchorite, “or if there is a ship that comes here, or if more people settle—”

  “They will come closer to you,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus.

  “I cannot permit that,” said the Anchorite.

  “We can apply for a colonization licence,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus. “The whole surface area of this world is not much more than eight hundred square kilometres. There are cattle ranches on New New that are larger. We could apply for a licence for the whole surface. Anyone coming here would have to answer to us.”

  “They could also turn your application down,” said the Anchorite. “And parcel up the land among whichever rich citizens bribed them highest.”

  Reborn-in-Jesus threw his arms wide. “But who would want the land?” He bent and picked up a handful of copper oxides. “Crops have to have their genomes hammered flat to live in it, we have to bring our own UV to the party, whatever we plant mutates almost as soon as we grow it—” he let the green-black dust trickle out of his hand in disgust.

  “You’re speaking as a farmer. Remember that a mining company could, and did, apply for a compulsory purchase to ream this world out for its neutronium core. And then,” he cast his hand round at the vast sweep of Naphil’s rings, “there are sightseers, tour operators, hoteliers. This place is a cosmic oddity. Where else does a place with one-gee gravity orbit inside a gas giant’s rings? I chose this place, you know, for the view.” He stared up at the brilliant terminator starting to mark out time along the rings.