Smallworld

by Dominic Green

  Lowering her voice again, she said:

  “A tiger will not attack a hunting party. But it might attack staked-out prey. Do we have surveillance in the bar area?”

  Bawtry examined Shun-Company carefully, as if checking her for common humanity. Then he said:

  “Yes. Yes, we do.”

  The Clinic’s wine cellars, silent vaults made of precision-chiselled blocks of lunabase, had been lined with imported Mediterranean brick at Monsieur Ali’s insistence to preserve the precise chemical conditions of Old Earth, ideal for storing fine vintages. Every single bottle in the dusty racks had travelled here faster than light, expending more energy than a hydrogen bomb. The majority of the bottles were from Earth, from the mother world’s great vineyards in Morocco, Rajasthan, Szechuan and Patagonia. Only a few New New Earth vintages from the secluded Winedark Islands had been included in the mix. The cellars were kept locked, with Monsieur Ali holding the only key. In case of emergency, a second key could be requested from Shun-Company in Third Landing, who kept it in her dresser.

  Monsieur Ali’s key was currently in the keeping of Mohammed Ben Israel, professional wine waiter, third cousin to Monsieur Ali, and current impromptu midnight barman. Madame Madonnita had asked for a glass of water to help her sleep, but Madame did not want any glass of water, oh no. Rather, she had asked for a glass of Terwilliger’s Pristine Interstellar Elixir, mined in deep space from only the most chemically pure rogue bergs of bacterially inert ice, and flavoured lightly with lemon. Madame Madonnita drank nothing else, apart from accompanying amounts of gin, and had brought a tonne of it with her when she had first arrived on Ararat. It was stored in the far corner of the cellar, well away from the wines at Monsieur Ali’s insistence. The miniscule Acronesian had no proof that comet water would attack the delicate vintages stored in the cellar, but was taking no chances.

  Mohammed Ben Israel, accompanied by two of Major Bawtry’s guards, was careful to turn on all the lights in the cellar before daring to set foot inside; desperate folk were known to be on the loose. The guards checked the alcove where Madame’s water was stored before allowing Mohammed Ben Israel to proceed. A single featureless clear glass bottle, decorated only with Madame’s monogram, was selected, and the guards had just moved aside to flank Ben Israel on his way back out of the cellar when one man’s light support weapon was wrenched so rapidly from his grip that it took one of his fingers with it. The weapon fired as it removed, shattering an entire row of 2070 Rio Negro. The other guard panicked and fired blindly, filling the room with thankfully few ricochets—the rounds were armour piercing, after all—but a hail of curved flying fragments of shattered bottle-green glass. Mohammed Ben Israel fell on all fours and covered his head, and the precious bottle, with his hands.

  Out of that glass storm, something sent a volley of flying bottles so quickly that the remaining armed guard was blinded by the glass crashing on his visor. Almost before the bottles reached their targets, the something that had sent them had crossed the intervening space and done something else to the guard that made him drop to the floor gurgling. When the something finally froze into visibility, it became something very like a Stalin Series combot holding both guards’ weapons the way an Egyptian pharaoh held his mace and flail of office.

  “VILE CREATURES,” said the combot, “DO YOU THINK TO MAR A FACE MADE BY VENUS WITH THESE COWARDS’ WEAPONS?”

  It displayed its contempt of the weapons by twisting them to scrap in its fingers.

  “I WILL NOT CONDESCEND TO KILL YOU,” said the machine, “FOR I CAN SEND YOU TO NO DEEPER HELL THAN THIS. I WOULD SPEAK WITH YOUR LORD AND MASTER. INFORM HIM THAT SPRING IS COME EARLY IN HELL THIS YEAR, FOR BEAUTIFUL HELEN IS HERE TO BE HELL’S CAPTAIN’S BRIDE.”

  The guards looked at one another in confusion.

  “He’s a Major,” one of them commented.

  The machine hurled a junked grenade magazine at them. “GO, WORTHLESS IMITATIONS OF MEN! YOU ARE A SHOWER! WHAT ARE YOU?”

  “A shower, ma’am.”

  “WITH DIRECTIONAL HEADS AND CONTROLLABLE FLOW RATES! GO!”

  They went gratefully. Mohammed Ben Israel, left alone with the combot, felt a heavy, cold steel hand fall on his back.

  “RISE, POOR SHADE. HELEN, UH, GIVES YOU LEAVE TO LOOK UPON HER BEAUTY. YES, THAT’LL DO.” The combot pointed with a handful of daggers. “THAT DOOR IN THE FLOOR. MOVE MANY HEAVY THINGS OVER IT. QUICKLY. AND DO YOU HAVE A WELDING TORCH?”

  It strolled over to the wall, located an inspection hatch after a momentary search, and popped the hatch from its housing. “NOW, LET ME SEE—MAIN POWER, HEATING AND LIGHTING CIRCUIT, FUSES THREE THROUGH SEVEN—”

  Two unarmed figures pelted down the corridor, shouting and waving their arms madly in the dim emergency lighting to protect themselves from being shot out of hand.

  “MAJOR BAWTRY! MAJOR BAWTRY, SIR! WE’VE LOCATED THE ROBOT!”

  The Major, who was supervising the creation of a makeshift barricade behind the arch supporting the access way in to the main reception hall, observed his guards’ weaponless state with displeasure. “Did you locate it, or it you?”

  “Uh, arguably more of the latter, sir. It took our weapons. It has the serving staffer you sent us down to the cellar with.”

  “What sort of a robot was it?” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus. “Was it anthropomorphic?”

  “It said it came from Venus, sir. It asked for you personally.”

  “Ridiculous,” said Major Bawtry. “Venus is entirely agricultural. It was never a militarized zone, even in the Great Big War.”

  “But Helen was the gift of Venus, mythologically speaking,” mused Mrs. Reborn-in-Jesus. “She was Paris’s reward for giving the golden apple to Aphrodite. Who is also known as Venus,” she added hastily.

  Bawtry stared lengthily at Mrs. Reborn-in-Jesus.

  “I’ll take your word for it,” he said. “Does this give me any information I can use?”

  “It’s not armed with anything more dangerous than its claws,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus. “Its claws are very dangerous,” he added.

  “Thank you,” said the Major, and began bawling instructions at his personnel.

  “It’s coming.”

  “It’s coming right into the trap.”

  “It’s got no choice. We’ve welded over all the other access points.”

  The conversion of the reception area into a military strongpoint had only taken minutes. Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus was thoroughly impressed with Bawtry’s performance as an officer. Not only had welding gear, EMP mines, and bags of ballistic gel been readily located, they had clearly been set aside for the use of Security alone. The welding laser had arrived with fully charged xenoxide cannisters, and the laminate armour panels had been stored in secure caches entirely distinct from the ones used by the Clinic janitors. Everybody, however, including most of Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus’s adult family, was now concentrated in one, albeit heavily defended, location.

  “Any movement in the bar area?” said Bawtry sotto voce to one of his lieutenants, who was hunched over a portable surveillance client.

  Miss Nobel shook her head. “She’s sitting there drinking her water. We could have a squad there in twenty seconds. The lights are still on down there,” she added.

  “Of course they are. He’s only put the lights out here. He knows that’s where we are.”

  “Who’s he?” said Unity disingenuously.

  Major Bawtry frowned. “The Enemy,” he said. “Whichever enemy killed the lights.” Unseen, an emerald insect settled on his shoulder.

  “Are all these weapons strictly necessary to defend against one man?” said the European gentleman in the kimono.

  “I was led to believe,” harrumphed the lady wearing her face on her shoulder, “that this establishment was secure.”

  “I was informed of no Penitentiary on this world,” complained the telesatanist. “I feel this whole experience has been misrepresented. An adept must feel safe in his lair.”

  D
espite the elaborate nature of Major Bawtry’s fortifications, Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus doubted they would be more than a momentary distraction for what might be coming through them. Mr. Suau, now bundled into the redoubt along with the other staff and guests, seemed to be of the same opinion.

  “It won’t hold but a second when the Warden arrives,” he said. “Wardens are extremely solid units. They have to be, manning unmanned stations single-handedly out in the wild black starry yonder.”

  Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus nodded. “It might hold the Stalin Seven, though.”

  “Slow it down enough for Bawtry’s men to engage it, possibly. The AP grenade functions on their weapons are rated to deal with armour of that thickness.”

  “What would that be like,” mused Shun-Company. “A world without the Devil.”

  Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus drew an arm about his wife. “We will find out what we will find out.”

  Bawtry’s men trained their weapons on the one open door—and some of them on the multiple closed ones—winking to shift their vision between scopes, set to fire-on-movement, and the real world.

  “Remember,” said the Major, “it’ll come faster than you’ll believe when it comes, maybe even faster than you can see. Just unhook your safeties, keep the weapon pointed the right way, and trust the target acquisition to do your firing for you.”

  Shun-Company looked over at God’s-Wound, Testament, Apostle, and Unity, who were crouched in imitation of Bawtry’s fire team.

  “Zounds. Get up.”

  God’s-Wound, without moving, flicked the safety off on the battered assault weapon she held, and powered up the sighting system. “It’s the Devil, mother. It killed Sodom. It’s killed almost everyone we cared about since you came to this bastard planet.”

  Shun-Company gave the statement due consideration. “It killed Sodom,” she said, “because Beguiled put Helen of Troy inside it. Your Uncle Anchorite’s machine would never have harmed Sodom. And this bastard planet,” she added delicately, “is my home.”

  “It’s still Helen of Troy now,” said God’s-Wound. “And as far as Uncle Anchorite is concerned, a man who leaves a hand grenade lying around his house can hardly be surprised if a small child pulls the pin.”

  She nestled the recoil absorber up against her shoulder.

  A constellation of laser dots stabbed suddenly out of the dark, fixing every person holding a weapon with an aiming mark right between the eyes.

  “Easy,” warned Bawtry, dropping a polarizing visor into place. “They do that to unnerve the inexperienced. Remember, even construction bots have measuring lasers, but they’re perfectly harm—”

  A massive moving something swept up the corridor, triggering the firing system of every gun trained on the dormitory entrance simultaneously. Guests of a nervous disposition shrieked, and the weapons, firing five different types of ammunition simultaneously, bucked in their firers’ hands, but produced nothing but a cat’s cradle of flashes as the corridor in front of them suffered horrible, possibly irreparable damage. Then the air was suddenly full of clinging, invisible threads, unbreakable as steel wire, drawing tight about flesh if, and only if, the owner of that flesh struggled. God’s-Wound found herself bound to a table, the assault gun knocked from her hand and flattened against the fountain by a silvery web that held her like an insect in amber.

  As slowly as a prowling tarantula, the spider that had spun the web sailed into the redoubt, playing a disco strobe of target acquisition lasers onto the faces of every other armed person in the area.

  Wordlessly, Bawtry’s other guards dropped their weapons.

  “ATTACKING A PROXY UNIT ACTING ON THE AUTHORITY OF CENTRAL GOVERNMENT IS A CRIMINAL OFFENCE,” said the Warden, its carapace slightly discoloured from several direct hits. “CONCEALING THE WHEREABOUTS OF AN ESCAPE FROM CENTRAL GOVERNMENT CUSTODY IS A CRIMINAL OFFENCE. WHERE IS,” it hesitated slightly, “PROFESSOR VON TRAPP’S MIND?”

  Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus cleared his throat. “He is suspected of uploading his personality to a customized Stalin Seven model combot, thereby technically escaping custody. The personnel you see here had fortified this location to protect themselves against that Stalin Seven, and fired on you solely due to a tragic misunderstanding.”

  “THEY WILL REMAIN IN RESTRAINT,” said the Warden, “UNTIL VON TRAPP’S HOPES, DREAMS AND DESIRES ARE REAPPREHENDED, OR UNTIL MY ORDERS ARE RESCINDED.”

  Mr. Suau rose out of the waters of the fountain, into which he had dived to escape the spray of threads, which seemed incapable of forming in water. He coughed out a mouthful of chlorinated, fluoridated, lavender-scented liquid. “Do you expect your orders to be rescinded?”

  “I SUSPECT A MALFUNCTION IN MY PENITENTIARY CONTROLLER UNIT. IT IS NOT BEHAVING AS IT SHOULD. I HAVE ALREADY PHYSICALLY APPREHENDED PROFESSOR VON TRAPP, FORMERLY LISTED AS MR. TRAPP IN MY RECORDS; HE IS RESTRAINED IN A BELOW-GROUND SHAFT SOME SIXTEEN KILOMETRES FROM HERE, IN MUCH THE SAME WAY AS THESE MEN AND WOMEN ARE. TECHNICALLY, NO FURTHER ACTION SHOULD BE NECESSARY. HOWEVER, I HAVE ALSO BEEN ORDERED TO LOCATE AND DESTROY AN AUTOMATED UNIT CONTAINING HIS PERSONALITY ANALOGUE, WHICH IS MOST IRREGULAR. I MUST OBEY MY CONTROLLER, BUT HAVE REQUESTED AN ENGINEER BE CALLED OUT TO CONDUCT A DIAGNOSTIC—”

  A scream sounded from the dormitory corridor entrance.

  “Mizz Llewellyn Revilla,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus.

  “The Stalin Six,” said Suau.

  “Or Christmas,” said the horribly scarred childoid. “Take your pick.”

  Suau turned to the Warden. “Officer! We suspect that scream to have been produced by a victim either of the Stalin Six referred to earlier, or of a recent Penitentiary escapee, Mr. Father Christmas of Spender’s Delight, New Earth. It is your duty to investigate either.”

  The Warden was silent for several seconds.

  Then, its YES light blinked.

  “I WILL INVESTIGATE,” it announced; and it rotated in place to do just that.

  “It won’t find Christmas,” said the child-thing. “Bowker has copious experience of avoiding bumbling automated security units. If a machine could do a man’s job, I’d never have had to catch him personally.”

  “It was him who caught you,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus.

  “I am not proud of that,” said the child-thing.

  “Excuse me,” said one of the billionaires from the huddle of guests and staff, “I believe we’re entitled to know what’s going on.”

  “I believe,” said the child-thing, “in the nicest possible way, that I will shoot you if you speak again. We need to think carefully how we are going to save your and our skins, and we can brook no interruption.”

  “Are you aware of just how pluperfectly I can sue you?” said the billionaire hotly. The child sighed, walked to an assault weapon imperfectly secured by clinging strands, tugged it loose, reset it, and shot the guest in the leg.

  The billionaire crashed to the ground, caught himself on his hands and one remaining serviceable knee, and looked up at the girl, astonished.

  “Little girl,” he said, “I am the major shareholder in EasyWorld, the affordable no-frills terraforming consortium. We guarantee breathable air and an absolute minimum of acid lakes and volcanoes. If you think that you can shoot me in the leg—”

  She shot him in the head. Instead of crying out, he made tentative AK-AK sounds in his throat, and finally collapsed onto the finely polished floor, doing ruinous damage to his expensive dental work. Blood, however, was conspicuous by its absence.

  “He is, of course, dead,” lied the small child convincingly. “Be warned, ladies and gentlemen, that I am also dead, and hence unlikely to be swayed by threats of legal action. I intend to save your lives and the lives of these good people here. We must assist the Warden in hunting down Christmas.” The little girl flicked several switches, and the assault gun turned deadly once again. “He will have left what looks like an easy DNA / infrared trail from the site of the murder. Commonly, he urinates in a stream leading up to the site before committing t
he actual act, thereby leaving a false trail for an unintelligent robot unable to distinguish blood from piss. He will also take steps to conceal his actual exit trail; in a bar area, he may rub ice from the cooler on his shoes. On other occasions, he has set small fires purely in order to prevent police sniffer units from picking up a spoor. He will retire to a pre-prepared safe location with several escape routes, often booby-trapped, and wait for his next opportunity—”

  The little girloid’s speech was interrupted by a grown man covered in blood flying through the air from the dormitory entrance and colliding with the concrete of the far wall. The man collapsed into a blood-sodden heap at the base of the Clinic’s Christmas tree. Huge-framed and titanically-muscled, he still wore the flashing black-and-orange prison fatigues of a former inmate, torn into rags about him. The clothes had not been slashed off him with so much care as to avoid cutting his flesh.