“Don’t be ridiculous, man,” said the European—sounding, however, rather less sure of himself than previously.
“Ridiculous! This is business! Do we joke about business? Why, sir is standing here in a half-demolished reception area when sir should be, should be—what would be sir’s ideal evening?”
Bawtry put up a hand. “Uh, young Mr. Apostle, sir, you have all three of the safeties off on that thing.”
Apostle gestured madly with the weapon. Security guards dived for cover wherever it waved. “What do I care for safety, when the comfort of my guests is threatened? His Majesty Mr. Johns Smiths here requires good food, good wine, the company of an attractive boy. Do we have any attractive boys?”
The male domestic staff—even that part of it that was openly homosexual—did its best to look unattractive.
“Then send a packet to the next system for some! Kidnap some if need be. What a guest wants, a guest gets. If Mr. Smiths desires that I set this light armour piercing cannon to my head and pull the trigger—” he strode demonstratively about the serving staff, setting the gun to his head with some difficulty—”then it will be done. Mr. Smiths! Do you wish me to pull the trigger on this weapon and end my miserable life? You have only to say the word.” Apostle crabbed sidelong towards the guest, being careful to keep a direct line between the weapon, his own head, and that of Mr. Smiths.
“Mr. Apostle!” snapped Bawtry. “That weapon is rated to enfilade up to ten men standing in line. It was tested as such on Made prisoners-of-war, and they tend to be more resistant to gunfire than we are.”
“Please put the gun away,” cried the shoulder-faced lady.
“I will agree to live,” said Apostle, hugging Mr. Smiths close and gluing his ear firmly to the other man’s, “only if my favourite guest agrees to enjoy my hospitality. Songs around the Christmas tree, a roaring log fire, mulled wine, bawdy sex games and adequate radiation shielding.”
Mr. Smiths’ lips pursed, but also trembled.
“Very well,” he said. “I consent. Just put the gun down.”
Apostle separated from Mr. Smiths, beaming, and set all three safeties on the weapon with one fluid movement.
“My guests,” he said, “are more important to me than life itself.” He clicked his fingers. “Domestics ho! A cake! A cake for His Majesty, in the shape of Latvia!”
“I have never been crowned,” objected Mr. Smiths. “And Latvia is no longer a sovereign nation. It is only the thirty-third Eurasian commissary district nowadays, run by an Emergency Committee. My father made his money from comfortable yet functional thermal feminine underclothing. I am rather afraid he married into the nobility.” He frowned and grudgingly drew out a shape on the floor in the debris from the Anchorite’s robot. “Latvia is that shape.”
Apostle spread his arms wide. “All our guests, be happy! You are under the aegis of the renowned Safety Officer Rajinder Rai, the man who ran to ground the executor of the terrible Christmas murders, and Colonel Fernando Bawtry, the unconquered Grand Master of the Beautopia Robotic Inquisition.” And he turned to the domestic staff and whispered the magic words: “Double pay till the end of this crisis period.”
No sorceror could have made a closet full of broomsticks jerk to ancillary life more quickly than that simple statement. Chambermaids smoothed their uniforms. Cooks straightened their backs and began thinking of methods and ingredients, and of how they were going to ice that difficult bit around Liepaja. Security staff clicked the safeties quickly on on their weapons, and moved them into positions where they were not quite so obviously aimed at Apostle.
“All is well with the world,” said Apostle. “With this world, at any rate.”
“But not with all the other ones, Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus, sir.”
Apostle turned to see Mohammed Ben Israel, the trauma of the past decidia written on his face in premature worry wrinkles. He had entered the reception area behind the Warden, and was breathless with both running and fear.
“I heard a Priority One Alert sounding when I came past the comms room,” he said. “There is a message missile in orbit. It is sending out a broadcast for General Mobilization. Ten of our Early Warning Shell stations have been destroyed without notification of any incoming enemy, and a large formation of unidentified vessels has attacked the Home Systems Fleet in dock at Lagrangia. The Ottilia Vos, the Firm Hand of Government, and the Spartacus are all reported lost. The current status of New Earth is not known. All reservists are being called to muster, and there’s a list of civilian spacecraft being requisitioned for government use—”
The elderly lady dropped her face in shock; its pseudo-musculature screwed itself up against the impact, and when it righted itself on the tiling, looking up at the stairwell lintels with black empty eyesockets, it was scowling.
“How many of you,” said Apostle, turning to the staff and guests alike, “live on New Earth?”
A small grove of hands rose.
Apostle looked at his brother. “Will that Revenue cruiser of yours fly?”
Testament nearly soiled his underwear in shock. “It claims so, brother. But several of its onboard diagnostic systems also claim two hundred per cent thrust efficiency, and I’ve never flown anything but its onboard simulator.”
“That’ll have to do. It’s time for an emergency evacuation. If,” he said, “New Earth is still safe to evacuate to.” He nodded to Miss Valentin. “Madame, if you could organize an orderly withdrawal.”
Miss Valentin stood momentarily disorientated, then ground herself.
“At once, Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus. NOW—HOW MANY OF YOU PEOPLE HAVE SPATIAL CREWING EXPERIENCE? I AM APPEALING TO GUESTS AS WELL AS STAFF.”
“But what about that poor gel who went to get a glass of water?” said the smart-faced lady. “Did something happen to her? Is anybody listening to me? Hello?”
It had taken hours, and she was still not sure where she was at any rate. The network of drop-shafts and cross-tunnels that led up from the Anchorite’s domain stretched for kilometres, horizontally and vertically; and she knew that she was injured. Something in the air behind that cold door the Devil had opened far below had poisoned her inside. She could no longer breathe or move as effectively, despite the fact that she had to keep climbing to live. She knew that, whatever happened, she could not follow the Anchorite’s machine upwards. That way lay death. And certainly, now, death lay downward too. Now that the hermit knew she had plotted against him, he would surely snuff her out with no more compunction than a hygienist would a bacterium.
The cramped concrete chamber at the shaft head had seemed hardly believable. She had come to trust that the tunnels went on forever. Yet here was an entrance just like the hermit’s back doors at Dispater Crater and St. Duke’s Cathedral. Could it be possible she might find a way out to the surface?
Yet where to go then?
Would her family take her in again, after she had plotted armed revolt not only against the Anchorite, but against them too? The Clinic, too, would surely turn her away. Might she lurk round the landing field, in the hope of persuading the crew of some supply ship or passing agro trader to take her on board? Would Magus or Perfect take pity on her, and give her passage offworld on Prodigal Son?
No. The hermit would be expecting her there for certain. It would be better to lie low until she knew for certain, at least, that the Anchorite’s robot had been eliminated. And even without his demonic assistant, the old man’s vengeance might be shrewd and terrible.
She eased herself out of the hatchway onto bare, wet earth—the wetness in itself suggesting that she was either in the maintained farmlands around Third Landing, or in the extensive gardens around the South End Clinic. The trees, massive and brooding, confirmed the second suspicion. Redwoods produced by Mallorn Arborfactor for seeding on semi-terraformed Areotype worlds, they were large enough to carve elf houses into, Faraway Trees from the same mould as the one in the stories Shun-Company had read the family when they were younger. On su
ch a world as this, a sufficiently lofty tree’s top branches might really and truly touch space. The Clinic trees’ tops were, indeed, noticeably dry and leafless in the thin air a hundred metres up.
She was standing not a hundred metres from the Clinic lake, looking across water so filled with stars that a pail might be dipped into it and dredge up constellations that could be separated into individual tiny dwarf stars when pressed under a slide and put under a telescope.
Across the water, she could see the ornamental island. The feathers of fretful McChickens rustled in the night.
Then every blade of grass bowed low, and the wildfowl around the lake began shrieking as one of the brightest lights in the sky flared even brighter and began to descend towards the surface. She had at first taken it for one of the many tiny ice moons that regulated the Naphillian belts, but it was now plain that it was a spacecraft. And instead of the South Saddle Field, it seemed to be approaching here.
A Varangian class transport—huge, originally tiger-striped with disruptive patterning, now scored and faded by micrometeoroid and cosmic ray bombardment—was hovering on its manoeuvring thrusters over the lake. There could be only one explanation for its current position—it intended to suck up cheap deuterium from a handy liquid water source. Father—she could not help but continue to think of Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus as her father—would be mad. That water had been hauled here from Naphil’s rings at a cost of a credit a litre.
The ship settled lower, wobbling in the dense gravitational gradient like a decelerating top, so much so that her pilot gave up on hovering and turned the vessel in the air, dropping her gently on her landing struts in the open ground on the far side of the lake from the Clinic. The thrusters kept idling several seconds after the vessel settled, in case the struts bogged down in the wet ground; a circle of burnt grass whooshed outwards to steam in the lake water. Terrified birds thundered overhead like rapturous applause. A team of uniformed men rushed out of the ship’s personnel locks to guide a cargo drone trundling a heavy fuel line behind it down to the water’s edge.
Meanwhile, another group in slightly different uniforms were accompanying another cargo drone out across the burnt turf to the edge of the lake. At the touch of a button the drone unfolded into a shop window display several times the size of the one Mr. Mountbanks had possessed. It projected images of Beguiled standing and smiling at herself as she approached the drone, wearing a smart green uniform decorated with ribbons and buttons and epaulettes. As she watched, her holographic equivalent winked at her and saluted. Other holographic equivalents of her to left and right of the first wore heavy armour and chromatophoric cloaks like coats of starlight and fire.
“That, young lady,” said one of the soldiers operating the drone, “is how you could look if you join the People’s Ballistic Infantry, in which you can Be A Man (Or Woman), surgery being available according to preference. We are recruiting now for exciting opportunities for comradeship, travel and unquestioning obedience to Central Authority. Are you interested? Do you have any relatives, who I am legally required to inform you must be of legal age and, like you, genetically human, who might also be interested? Please speak into the voice stress analyzer to agree to a no-obligation period of basic training from which a legal challenge can be issued at any time to remove you.” The recruiting sergeant smiled. He had a very nice smile, which Beguiled had every confidence had been surgically enhanced.
The sergeant held out the analyzer microphone. His female colleague leaned forward helpfully and whispered: “What you have to say into the analyzer is ‘I agree to induction into the Self Defence Forces of All Humanity with all rights and duties as have been carefully explained to me in not less than one hour of frank discussion. I hereby waive my right to compassionate discharge and agree to assignment to any and all duties including those of reaction chamber swab, drogue target and regimental concubine.’” The text was helpfully replicated in glowing letters half a metre high circling Beguiled. With no compunction whatsoever, Beguiled repeated it.
“Excellent,” said the recruiting sergeant. “Into the ship, report to wardroom three, you’ll receive your uniform when we get to Lagrangia. Now, what have we here? How old are you, young lady? Is this little trooper a friend of yours?”
“I’m of legal age,” said a voice from behind Beguiled, who twisted in shock. The recruiting sergeant beamed at the newcomer. “You’re very short for your age, soldier.” The newcomer looked back with deep blue eyes, framed by beautiful blonde hair that Beguiled had combed only that morning.
“Leave her alone,” said Beguiled. “She’s not six kilodia old. Only-Begotten, go home. Mother will forgive you. Uncle Anchorite will forgive you. It was me. All me. You know this.”
“Into the ship, trooper,” said the recruiting sergeant. “That’s twice I’ve had to tell you now. This young lady is about to be recruited as a tyro, first class in the—what was the name of this place?”
“Mount Ararat,” said Only-Begotten.
“The Mount Ararat Pals’ Battalion,” said the recruiting sergeant happily.
“You won’t get a battalion out of this place,” said Beguiled. “You’ll be lucky if you get a section. That is if they don’t shoot you for stealing water.”
The sergeant narrowed his eyes at Beguiled. “That,” he said, “Is a charge. For your information, mankind has just re-entered a state of war, and the captain of this vessel is authorized to requisition whatever water she wants. As for shooting, we’re well equipped to shoot back, thank you. Shortly we will be going among the inhabitants of this settlement, which seems to be the largest here, and telling them the story of how New Earth’s ten largest cities were destroyed in a single night of thermonuclear fire. We will tell them how their friends and relatives died at the hands of enemies they never saw coming, of how the few survivors clog our hospitals with radioanaemia and nanovenom cases—”
Beguiled’s eyes narrowed back. “Is this true?”
The sergeant looked across at his colleagues to ensure Only-Begotten had already spoken her piece into the analyzer, then said: “What do I care if it is? The grinder needs meat, and that’s the way of it. But I’ll tell you one thing, young lady—you did the right thing today. War is coming to both those as want it and those as don’t, and those of us who are sitting behind radiation armour and point defence cannon when war arrives will be the better for it. Sticking by your little friend here will be the best thing you can do for her.”
“She’s not my Little Friend,” said Beguiled, “she’s my sister. And if she’s hurt, you’ll regret the day you ever handed me a weapon.”
“All the better.” The recruiting sergeant nodded to Only-Begotten. “Into the ship, report to wardroom three, you’ll get your uniform when we get to Lagrangia.” As Beguiled and Only-Begotten moved off into the ship, he spoke softly to his colleague:
“Mark that one down as a squad leader. She’s a thinker and a killer.”
*
The government muster vessel King’s Shilling lifted off up the rings of Naphil as if motoring round a glittering bend into an unseen oncoming tomorrow. Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus watched it go, not caring that its main plasmadrive was engaged. Possible risk of skin cancer was a way of life to a farmer on Ararat.
“No sign of Beguiled or Only-Begotten?” he said. God’s-Wound shook her head.
“They could be hiding. I would be.”
“And they could be dead. Given what they tried to do to the hermit, I know which I put my money on.”
Shun-Company was still distraught, wringing an armour-piercing ammunition cartridge in her fists. Unity and Testament walked her out of the EVA rover towards the house.
Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus pushed his way into the hall, clearly had no idea what to do with his weapon, eventually dropped it into the umbrella stand and called out to Apostle to let the rest of the family out of the Panic Cellar. Divesting himself of his lead-alloy raycheater, he walked into the kitchen, threw open the cupboard, and fetched out
a tin of Real Tea.
“Good evening, Hernan.”
Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus nearly spooned tea down the front of his trousers in shock. He had not seen the hermit sitting at the table. Normally he was too polite to enter the house without permission. Yet here he now sat, lounging on a stool, his staff held out in front of him.
“Good evening,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus.
“I hear it’s God himself who has ensured the safety of this colony for so many years.” An emerald insect, its wings buzzing like razorblades, alighted on the hermit’s shoulder with mechanical precision.
“The Maker provides,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus stiffly.
“I provide,” said the Anchorite, raising his stick to point at Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus’s chest. “Me. If it had not been for my activities, this colony would have been wiped out time and again by fake tax inspectors, Made loan sharks, and escaped murderers and telepaths.”
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