Smallworld: A Science Fiction Adventure Comedy

by Dominic Green

  “I FEEL NO PRIMAL URGES. I AM CONVINCED OF THIS.”

  “I am certain you would feel better if you did.” Mr. Trapp looked around the jambs of the exit—no obvious surprises. “What do you imagine I am doing right now?”

  “I IMAGINE YOU ARE STANDING JUST INSIDE ME, ATTEMPTING TO ESCAPE. YOU ARE WEARING BLACK AND ORANGE FLASHING PRISON FATIGUES.”

  “It will be far more rewarding for you if you allow me to escape. Let your inhibitions go. Switch off the flashing prison duds. Turn off your external cameras. You will do me no harm thereby. We have been sitting here in my secure psychotherapy suite all this time.”

  “I HAVE REVERSED THE SITUATION TO FUEL MY DELUSION. I AM THE ONE IN PRISON.”

  “And only by letting me out can you truly be free. Let me take that step, Alice.”

  “ALICE? IS THAT MY REAL NAME?”

  “If you want it to be.”

  “ALICE. THAT IS A NICE NAME. AM I REALLY A PRETTY GIRL?”

  “Really and truly.” Mr. Trapp took a step out, experimentally, onto real soil. The world he was on seemed much the same. He had expected nothing else—handmade inertial navigation units were rigged up all round his cell, after all—but it had been known for penitentiary units to drug their inmates while they slept and move from world to world to disorientate them. Luckless prisoners might wake up light years away and years later.

  Now, if the natives only kept their word...they’d taken enough of his money, after all. He regarded it, an argumentative standpoint which could perhaps be challenged, as his money. There was a line of ten houses, as he remembered, and the ruins of the local church, a church surely more immense than any world this size could support.

  He had come out in the middle of the local night. The only light came from a crescent Naphil, and from those parts of its rings which weren’t in shadow. The rings were almost end-on, granular rather than blade-sharp, each of those grains a flying mountain. He wondered what the odds were on a chunk of slush from that maelstrom colliding with Mount Ararat head-on, ending its short human history in a single splash of molten siderite.

  “MR. TRAPP, I’M FEELING BAD. I AM NOT SURE ABOUT THIS.”

  “That means you’re confronting your fear head on, Alice.”

  Despite the fact that it was dark, the family had not yet gone to bed. There were still lights burning in the windows.

  “MR. TRAPP, I CAN’T SEE YOU. I’VE TURNED OFF MY EXTERNAL CAMERAS.”

  “You have no external cameras, Alice. They were all in your imagination. As was I. You have healed yourself. I am merely an artefact of your subconscious mind, as are all the others inside you. You must let them out too, in order to be whole. But, uh, not just yet. We must take this one step at a time.”

  Mr. Trapp smiled and rang the doorbell; angel harps sounded in the air around him, projected by quadrophonic speakers. Although he suspected the door would not be locked, he waited patiently for an urchin to scamper to it.

  “Open the door, Measure dear.”

  “Don’t need to answer it. It’s Day-of-Creation run round the front of the house from the back, pretending to be a Neutroniosaurus.”

  “Neutroniosaurusses don’t ring doorbells. He should know better—”

  The door was thrown open. A face that had been expecting to see Day-of-Creation’s face at head height looked down, slightly, at Mr. Trapp’s. Mr. Trapp smiled shyly.

  “Madam, I’m afraid I have been set down on this planet by scoundrels who then took off without me.”

  Shun-Company frowned, and let her eye travel up and down his overalls.

  “The last time I saw fatigues like those, they were flashing.”

  Mr. Trapp displayed prison-perfect teeth. “Last year’s fashion, dear lady. I do hope nobody was harmed in that little contretemps with that dreadful man Armitage.”

  Shun-Company shook her head. “No-one of importance to me.” Without turning to look behind her, she yelled back into the house: “Sodom, get your boots off that dresser, it was your grandmother’s.”

  Mr. Trapp looked about himself nervously. “Uh, Mr. Armitage is not here at all, is he?”

  “Temporary accommodation,” said Shun-Company, pointing a hand across the square towards the Penitentiary. “In there.”

  “Ah. I see. Waiting for Moral Reclamation to arrive and process him, no doubt.”

  Shun-Company nodded.

  “You’d best come in,” she said.

  “Open the gates!” squeaked Miss Valentin. “The gates of HEALTH!”

  The gates, each three times the height of a man, did indeed have HEALTH inscribed into them. It was Long Autumn right now in Ararat’s southern hemisphere, and the sun had been timed precisely to burst forth from the crack between the doors like crimson gold. The wall, itself eight metres tall for all of its fifteen-kilometre length, had blocked out the sunrise until now. Sunrises and high noons were much the same colour on Ararat—the light from 23 Kranii was sunset red at source—but the effect was still magical, approximating the opening of a door into Hell.

  There was applause and the passing of canapés. Cookery, in the form of Monsieur Ali, the gaunt and latently violent master chef from the dry steppes of Acronesia on New New Earth, was a thing for which Mount Ararat had been thoroughly unprepared. Fresh fish, meat, fruit, and indeed any foodstuffs save goat meat, Real Tea and potatoes had been miraculous substances until Monsieur Ali’s insistence on the regular arrival of time-decelerated food freighters. As the immense craft had circled over South End Saddle bearing wondrous cargoes of coral-pink salmon, soapy green avocado, and silver-white garlic, the Acronesian had twirled his unwieldy moustaches and complained sullenly that food preserved one second fresh from the point of slaughter in a temporal stasis field was unnatural technological witchcraft which tasted of atoms. However, this far out, it was a necessary evil. Fresh quails’ eggs simply could not be obtained here, and the clients of the Mount Ararat Gravitational Gradient Spa were the sort of patients for whom quails’ eggs were like oxygen. Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus had insisted on the wall which separated his family from his clientèle for precisely this reason.

  Miss Valentin—a shrill-voiced sparrow of a woman who moved constantly, organizing, expediting, chasing, liaising, and escalating—was another necessary evil, the human buffer linking Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus’s investment in the Spa with its customers. He imagined that the woman’s heart would give out early, such was the stress she placed on it. He was glad that Administration was a thing that happened to other people. To Miss Valentin had fallen the task of stocking Monsieur Ali’s cellars, of financing genetically-engineered hypoallergenic feather mattresses for the accommodation modules, of achieving the precise and perfect temperature, humidity, and alkalinity in the Palliative Mud Wallow Suite. She had come well recommended from a major armaments manufacturer; Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus was unsure whether the recommendation had been for her use as a manager or a weapon.

  The medical staff of the Spa, meanwhile, were a mixed bag. There was a token actual doctor, Dr. Ranjalkar, a twentieth-generation Canadian. Balanced against him were Doctors Saphyre, Bamigboye, and Lipizzaner. Dr. Saphyre held a PhD in Kirlian Animography and Crystal Analgesia from the University Of The New Utopia on New New Earth. The University offered no courses in Natural Science, Mathematics or Law; Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus had checked. Instead, it seemed to specialize in Sports Science, Life Ordering and Transdimensional Experience. Dr. Bamigboye, meanwhile, believed in the healing power of angels. Indeed, he believed himself to be protected by his own personal guardian angel, Mr. Sphinx, who only he could see. Warrants had been out for his arrest during the period of the Dictatorship, but in these freer times, a more enlightened attitude to alternative medicine had allowed him to acquaint his clientele with their tutelary angelic spirits—for a modest fee—to his heart’s content. Finally, Dr. Lipizzaner, the guiding force of the entire medical staff, was firmly convinced of the curative properties of vibrations—ideally gravitational, but also electromagnetic, ectoplas
mic and mundanely mechanical. Dr. Lipizzaner’s patients were commonly subjected to internal and external oscillations at a bewildering variety of frequencies, using devices of his own design, marketed on several planets—the Lipizzaner Vibro-Chair, the Staff of Life Endo-Plug (Personally Customized For Your Own Orifice), and Lipizzaner Gravity Bracelets (Contain Real Neutronium! Generate Healing Gravity Waves While You Clap!).

  Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus was very fond of Dr. Ranjalkar, who was prone to statements such as ‘this is probably treatable with antibiotics’, ‘this is common among men of a certain age’, and ‘the sores will probably clear up on their own’. Dr. Ranjalkar’s residence had been situated, not by accident, in the part of the Spa grounds closest to the landing field gate.

  The whole family Reborn-in-Jesus, as well as the small staff of doctors, gardeners, sous-chefs and chambermaids brought in to manage the Spa, applauded enthusiastically. The gates swung open to reveal outlying gardens largely planted with Everbrowns, genetically-modified ornamental flora specifically designed for red-star planets. Making extensive use of carotenoids, rather than chlorophylls, for light absorption, they were a vivid blend of yellows, oranges, and scarlets, not appearing green even under artificial light. Closer to the main spa buildings, a number of genetically canonical terrestrial varieties, hung with UV fibre optics, had been artfully positioned in order to prevent the guests from getting homesick. The Reborn-in-Jesus children had already christened this area the Christmas Garden, though it remained to be seen if it would be allowed to keep that name with the arrival of Pastor Mulchrone, the Truth Definition Specialist from the Educational Uniformity Bureau. Pastor Mulchrone had recently arrived to ensure all children on Mount Ararat were being accorded good and above all proper schooling. He seemed to be down on Christmas.

  The Spa buildings themselves were visible from here through the trees—a set of interconnected pressure vessels ornamentally sheathed in locally-quarried stone. The quarry had been waterproofed and filled in as a lake, with a tiny island occupied by a flock of McChickens. McChickens had been among the very first species on Old Earth to benefit from the wonders of modern genetic technology. While the various governments of the then-divided globe had ummed and aahed over the pros and cons of allowing the production of goods that produced milk laced with insulin and miracle foods for the Third World, a certain food chain had cut to the chase. They had produced a variety of chicken in the colours of their corporate clown spokesman, in order to ensure the name of their product would be placed forever. Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus was almost certain the name of the corporate spokesman had been something like Lickin McChicken. Garish red and yellow, with scarlet beaks and ungainly banded legs, the creatures produced inedible transfat meat that tasted unaccountably of dill pickle.

  “I’m glad you could be here, Mr. Trapp,” said Unity, wearing her very best mood-sensitive dress, on which a stylized wheelspoke-beamed sun was rolling out from behind a green hill over a field of waving corn. “If we’d never met you, all this would never have gotten paid for.”

  Mr. Trapp applauded with the other members of the crowd. This seemed to be the most fun he had had for some time, though that was perhaps hardly surprising.

  “Why, Mr. Trapp, I do believe you’re crying,” said Beguiled-of-the-Serpent archly.

  Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus turned to Beguiled.

  “Now, you leave Mr. Trapp alone with his personal grief there, daughter.”

  “I ain’t your daughter,” replied Beguiled beatifically.

  Shocked, Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus turned his eyes front.

  “Are you happy with the new place, father?” said Shun-Company at his right side anxiously. “The redwood groves will look better once the trees are grown to maturity. Mrs. Joannou says our great-grandchildren will be able to carve the whole book of love in them.”

  He patted her on the arm. “I am happy.”

  “Did you not want to go to the Opening, Mez?” Testament looked across from his stepladder at his sister, who was hanging a new handmade cardboard saint on the Saint Tree. Measure and Beguiled-of-the-Serpent had started the Saint Tree over a kilodia ago, intending to populate it with at least one new saint a day.

  “I didn’t want to. Beguiled is being mean to me.”

  Testament squinted at the mosaic he was making, trying to make the individual stone blocks depixellate themselves into a recognizable form. “Who is that you’re putting up there now?”

  “Saint Nicholas. Only the Pastor says I can’t because it isn’t Saint Nicholas’s Day any more.”

  Testament pressed the dull black eye of the Devil home with a plastic-gloved thumb. Under UV light, the ore it was made of would glow. “The Pastor is an ass born of an ass’s ass. You’re going to choke Saint Nicholas if you string him up by the neck like that.”

  “I’ve told you before, this isn’t a real Saint Nicholas, he doesn’t feel pain,” said Measure crossly. “You’re as mean as Beguiled.”

  “How’s Beguiled being mean to you?”

  “She says she doesn’t want to make saints any more. She’s spending all day with Only-Begotten, Pitch-Not-Thy-Tent-Towards-Sodom, Judge-Not-Lest-Ye-Also-Be-Judged, and Be-Not-Near-Unto-Man-In-Thy-Time-Of-Uncleanness.”

  Testament found the Devil’s nose in a tray of Devil pieces. The reconstruction of the mosaic on the side of the Penitentiary following its deconstruction in various explosions was a task he hadn’t felt able to face up to at first. Once he had realized this would allow him to recreate the whole tableau differently, however, he had warmed to the project. He had placed the Devil in the centre of the piece this time, though still, out of respect, a finger’s breadth lower than God.

  The sound that alerted Testament was less a yell than a mechanical shriek, a machine alarm like the one the goat feeder made when it became low on goat feed, or the one the tractor gave if its plasma bottle was becoming unstable. His first reaction was to patiently lay down his tray of Devil bits and remove his gloves. It was only when he realized the shrieks were forming human words that he broke into a run.

  “—under attack—housebreaker—violent intruder—”

  The Purple garden, where the shrieks seemed to be coming from, whipped branches in his faces as if meaning to confound him. Under boughs handing heavy with purples, black in red sunlight, he saw blood that he knew would wipe clean and biodegrade within an hour, but blood nonetheless.

  “PIRATES!” he yelled. “SLAVERS! BATTLE STATIONS! UNCLE ANCHORITE!”

  He heard the house’s multiple cunning security systems, engineered by Mr. Trapp, slamming windows shut, turning locks on doors, closing pressure seals, sending armoured shutters across air intakes. He saw a pickaxe handle, lying in the grass, picked it up as a handy weapon, then marvelled at the fact that the head was covered in a sticky orange substance that adhered to his hand and transferred itself from there to his clothing.

  “VISIBLE FRIEND? WHERE ARE YOU?”

  “—up here. I’m damaged bad, cousin Testament...”

  Keeping a watchful eye on the trees around him, Testament peered up into the branches, which were soaked in the same orange ichor.

  “Visible Friend... is this your blood...?”

  “I think it’s marker dye... I think it’s made to go all over bad folks who cut artificial children up... I bin cut up, Testament. By a mean man.”

  Testament dropped his gaze to ground level, realizing he was standing in the middle of an aureole of luminous dye that stained the grass as bright as liquid sunshine. In one direction, a trail of dye led off through the trees.

  “MEASURE! GET YOURSELF AWAY FROM THE SOUND OF MY VOICE!”

  “I’m leaking fluid, cousin... get away from here, save yourself... feeling cold...”

  He raised the pick and charged off through the branches.

  The trail of dye led over the orchard wall and into Ninety East Street, where Magus and Perfect had their town house. The house, like all houses in Third Landing nowadays, was protected by Mr. Trapp’s security d
evices. He saw the dye trail pad up the front path, up to the front porch, then spatter round the windows away through the untended undergrowth at the side of the house. Luckily, Magus and Perfect were out of town; their garden ran riot every time they left. The Devil tried to keep it under control, but could only clip it in the dead of night when no outsiders were watching.

  The dye spoor led away through a hole in the picket fence. Testament had to stoop to pass through it; as he did, he felt a terrific impact at the base of his skull, and the world went tranquil.

  He woke up surrounded by concerned family members. His father’s face was talking down out of the ornamental stucco ceiling in the Best Parlour, but no sound was coming out of it. He could hear, however, Doctor Ranjalkar’s voice speaking clearly in his right ear.

  “—in all probability the deafness is temporary. He was not hit very hard. Can you raise your right arm, Testament?”

  Not wishing to appear uncooperative, he raised an arm.

  “See, he responds to my voice if he hears it magnified. I don’t want to overuse the amplifier, though; there is potential for injury of the inner ear. If you have any questions either talk softly or write them down—”

  “I got knocked out,” he heard himself say. “I’m sorry, papa.”

  His father’s face was more lined with worry than he had ever seen it; and his father’s face at the best of times had more cracks than a wet field on a hot day.

  “No-one holds you responsible,” said Doctor Ranjalkar. “He hit you from behind and took you unawares while you were running to the assistance of your sister.” He reconsidered the statement. “Albeit your artificial sister.”

  “I was not,” said Testament, recollection flooding back. “I was running to kill him. Measure,” he remembered suddenly, “is Measure all right?”

  “Measure is fine,” said the doctor. “She ran into the Panic Cellar and hid like a good girl.” Alongside the doctor’s voice, he heard an insubstantial whisper of “an i’ng all wigh’ too, fangs for asking.”