Smallworld (20 page)

“
It would not be my face,”
hissed Skuse.
“This face is more honest.”

“
AS YOU WISH. WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW?”

Skuse smiled liplessly. A notch on the frame that hung around his honest face emitted a cooling mist to moisturize his mucous membranes.
“The structure is preparing to open. The base home corner opens first.”

“
WHICH IS THE BASE HOME CORNER?”

“
Look for the manufacturer’s logo.”

“
…YES. I SEE.”

A blunt-cornered square had opened in the structure; a square of light. The dull red daylight on Ararat was dimmer than the Earth-standard illumination in the prison’s interior.

A square section of the gaol’s side punched out, falling into the mosaic gravel at its base.

A dark shape shouldered its way out of the light. A voice bellowed, impossibly loud, seemingly right inside Mr. Skuse’s skull.

“BY MY MOTHER’S SAINTED VIRGINITY,” boomed the voice. “I BREATHE AIR I HAVE NOT BREATHED BEFORE. THAT IMPERFECT DEMIURGE WHO IMPRISONED ME COULD NOT MAKE A WALL I COULD NOT BREAK.
I
DID IT, WITH THE POWER OF MY WILL, I, LEGION, FATHER OF LIES, GIVER OF GOOD AND EVIL. WHERE ARE THOSE WHO ONCE FORCED ME INTO THIS VILE PRISON? THEY SHALL PAY UNTO THE SEVENTH GENERATION—”

“
Oh dear,”
said Mr. Skuse

“
DO WE HAVE A PROBLEM, MR. SKUSE?”

“
I fear we may, sir. Notice how Thorsten is attempting gamely to resist shooting himself with his own sidearm, and Nicolae is banging his head repeatedly against the side of a building? I fear we may have set free the wrong person, to wit a rather dangerous psychotic homicidal telepath—”

“
SHALL I PUT THE ROVER INTO REVERSE?

“
I feel that may be wise. I apologize; I was under the impression, from our densitometer, that our man was currently in the base home corner. The cells inside must have shifted.”

The rover’s engines cut in almost silently, and the machine hummed back up the track past the single signpost marked SADDLE LANDING, guiding itself on autopilot as Mr. Skuse’s employer gave occasional watchful glances into its mirrors.

“
DO WE HAVE A CONTINGENCY PLAN FOR THIS EVENTUALITY?”

Mr. Skuse’s repulsively visible facial musculature rippled in a welter of emotions. “
I suspect this man to be highly dangerous; if my memory serves correctly, he can only be one William Yancy Voight, raised in a somewhat backward colony of Skanker Christians on Presterjohn, next planet out from Krell in the Altair system. The Skankers were slow to realize they had an unidentified telepath in their midst, and in those days research on the subject was far less advanced. Their response was derived directly from the
malleus maleficarum.
Voight’s own mother, among others, was tried and sentenced as a witch. Voight, whose home life had been troubled, and whose upbringing religious, strict, and unforgiving in the extreme, genuinely came to believe himself to be the Devil in his neighbours’ midst. His own mother, burned in his stead, had told him so, screaming abuse at him as the flames consumed her.”

“
I AM GLAD, AT ANY RATE, THAT WE ARE NOT GENUINELY CONFRONTING THE TRUE DEVIL INCARNATE.”

“
I fear your relief may be misplaced. The community on Presterjohn was backward, but its inhabitants could manufacture primitive firearms. They were capable of defending themselves. Even after they’ d identified him as a threat, Voight wiped out every man, woman and child in a hundred-thousand-inhabitant colony. His mind had a telepathic reach greater than the range of any weapon they could send against him; he was able to detect any attempt to attack him and simply coerce his attackers to turn their weapons on themselves. He was only eventually captured by the Gifted Perpetrators Unit of the MRB, using robotic constables coordinated from a vessel in orbit. He has, thankfully, never learned to get inside mechanical minds.”

The Rover came to a gradual halt. Both men continued to stare in the direction of the community of Second Landing, where men were running, screaming, falling, apart from one figure striding bold among the buildings.

“
WE MAY NEED,”
concluded Mr. Skuse’s employer,
“TO USE THE NUCLEAR WEAPON AFTER ALL.”

“
I knew,”
said Mr. Skuse,
“you would come to my way of thinking in the end, sir.”

Apostle collapsed in the dim circular chamber at the base of the ladder. His heart was thudding in his chest. His eyes, bizarrely, hurt with every heartbeat.

An indignant voice called down the ladder. “‘Postle, Measure won’t come any further down the ladder. She says her head hurts.”

Apostle had head problems of his own. “Kick her till she comes. Try not to break any bones or make her bleed.”

An inevitable wailing started further up the ladder. Apostle did not greatly care. One of the advantages of a large extended family was that discipline could be outsourced.

The Anchorite was standing over him.

“You okay, boy?”

He nodded his head weakly, understanding now where the hermit got his energy. “Is there more?”

“No. This was the last section. We’re a full four kilometres down. What you can feel on you now is one full Earth gravity. Be careful, now—your heart’s never had to pump this hard a load before. It’s a good thing you’re a farmboy. Any lesser adult would be dead already.”

The door in the side of the shaft read VALVA DOORCO, PRESSURE DOORS FOR ALL OCCASIONS, BANGALORE, EARTH.

“You’re from Earth?” said Apostle.

“Many people are,” said the Anchorite. He tapped the transparent lens at his right temple; it flared into life, beaming red light onto his retina. He tapped it again, several times; with each tap, the light in his eye changed colour, texture, and intensity.

“The greenbottles,” said Apostle. “You’re seeing through their eyes.”

The Anchorite looked round, a perfect image of Apostle’s home drawn on his lens in reverse. “Is that what you call them?”

“The metal insects? Yes.”

“Hmmph,” said the Anchorite. “They look nothing like real greenbottles, you know.”

Day-of-Creation, who, humiliatingly, had not been as badly affected by the climb as Apostle, was already peering through the door, a strange white shadowless light on his face.

“Wow! ‘Postle! You’ve
got
to see this.”

*

Unity won through to the back gate of the house, stepping over the body of one of Armitage’s lieutenants as she did so. The man appeared to have strangled himself, a feat Unity would previously not have thought technically possible.

The back garden was filled with blood orange trees, a one-off promotional GM batch purchased by Magus on New Tibshelf some years back; both the skin and the flesh of the fruit were not orange but purple. Marketed as ‘Tyrian Purples’, they had never caught on due to an acquired taste of salt. The trees clustered thickly round the back of the house, hiding the back door and kitchen window.

The Devil was standing the centre of the lawn, surrounded by statues of himself. Although he looked nothing like the Devil Unity had grown up with—in fact, resembling nothing so much as a naked man in prime physical condition—she somehow knew he preferred to be referred to by that name.

“I like these,” he said, casting a hand round at the leaping, capering Satans, all home-made, arranged around the lawn and vegetable garden. He smiled. Unity knew he had not smiled in a long time.

“You were in the Penitentiary,” said Unity, wide-eyed.

He nodded. He used his mouth to speak, though Unity was aware that this was only through politeness. “You have made pictures of me.”

“Are you the real Devil?” said Unity warily, aware the Penitentiary had contained one prisoner of the name DEVIL, THE.

He nodded, grinning. “People have tried to assign labels to me—telepath, sociopath, survival of a pre-Judaistic Phoenician fertility deity—but one man’s deva is another man’s devil. I am touched that here at least, my name is remembered. I sense that you have always seen me as your protector.

Unity nodded slowly, intensely confused. “I have read Beguiled’s book. In Crowley’s preface, he makes it clear that Milton uses you as an allegory for Cromwell, the rebel against the British king. He sees in your rebellion a kind of nobility, a fierce resistance in the face of overwhelming odds.”

The Devil nodded. “The book is fiction, of course, and terrible flattery, but I am fond of it. I was allowed no religious works in prison. I note you and your family have not subscribed to the populist view of me as an evil bogeyman bent on subverting mankind.”

Unity stammered her objection. “Oh no, sir! The book of Job makes it plain that you operate on the instruction of God himself.”

The Devil considered this a moment. “Could that be so? Perhaps. Not on the instruction of the ineffectual godling who created this imperfect world, but at the bidding of a higher power.”

“Does that not mean, however,” said Unity, regretting the attack of logic almost as it forced her mouth open, “that you are simply pushing the problem of the creation of an imperfect world back one remove, since that higher power would have to have created an imperfect creator?”

The Devil’s eyes opened in genuine surprise. “An interesting viewpoint,” he said.

Unity hesitated a moment before nodding. “The last time I saw you, you were different. I’m afraid we may have been operating under the assumption you were a fictional character exploited by one of our planetary inhabitants.”

The Devil nodded. “Yes, I see. Your ‘Anchorite’. You suspect him to have once been a notorious criminal. No matter. There is neither hatred nor disgust in you. Some fear, it is true, but fear is only appropriate in a worshipper.” He nodded curtly. “I must meet this ‘Uncle Anchorite’ who has been taking my name in vain, but I see no way to find him in you. You sent your dearest siblings out to find him, only to see them perish in an explosion at a crater named after myself.” The Devil sucked in a richly oxygenated breath. “I
like
it here! I believe that I shall stay. I find it convenient, however, for the time being, that you do not see me.”

With that, he clicked his fingers theatrically, and vanished. Unity drew in a small startled breath of shock.

“There is a man,” said the Devil’s voice, “in a house down the street, hiding under a Wang-period sofa, almost dying of fear. In his own way, he is quite heroic, as he has risked his life recently to do what he believes is good and right and true. He regards you highly, and considers you beautiful. He also greatly admires your mental capabilities, though he does not consider himself tall enough to impress you physically. The two of you might make an effective couple.”

With that parting gift, he was gone, at least as far as Unity knew. Suddenly realizing her heart was pounding in her chest, she walked to the back door and set her hand on the knob to open it.

Then, reconsidering, she walked back over the lawn, turned unafraid out of the garden, and moved toward the only house she knew to have a Wang-period sofa. Behind her, unregarded, a small emerald insect buzzed from a branch and struck out, weaving erratic but not entirely random spirals through the air, in a completely different direction.

All of a sudden, there was a BANG loud as a rotten tin exploding, followed by a clatter of debris. Unity turned to see the mangled component parts of a small emerald insect, scattered over the earth by the back gate. Beside the silvery solid non-organic shrapnel in the leaf litter lay Armitage’s dead lieutenant’s handgun, some distance from Armitage’s dead lieutenant, its accelerator coils still ticking gently.

Unity chose to take no further notice, and turned to walk into the house.

“These chambers,” said the Anchorite, “existed prior to my arrival. I have set up home in them, but did not dare disturb anything technological.”

Apostle stepped, slack-jawed, into the cave.

“There’s
daylight,”
he said.

“That’s not daylight,” complained Day-of-Creation, hanging back in the entrance. “It hurts my eyes.”

“That’s because it’s
real
daylight,” said Apostle, entranced.

“Not exactly. It’s the right mix of wavelengths. The light comes out of about a zillion germinator units in the ceiling.”

Apostle blinked in disbelief. “That many? How did you—?”

“Had an old captured Made Von Neumann machine,” said the Anchorite. “Got it to make all this stuff for me.”

“A Made war machine?” Apostle looked around in fear, and added: “Where is it now?” in much the same way a concerned parent might say
so, where’s the tarantula
now
, little Jimmy?

“Easy. I put it down. Single shot to the CPU. It’s down here somewhere.”

“Don’t some of them have backup CPU’s?” said Apostle.

The Anchorite huffed. “No.” He looked round the shadows nervously. “I’m almost certain of it. Where did you hear that?”

“Must have read it somewhere.” Apostle continued into the Anchorite’s garden, but more gingerly now. “This place is a jungle.”

“A tropical rainforest shrub layer, to be precise,” said the Anchorite. “I don’t have enough light to make anything else. These plants thrive on ambient light. They’re built to live off sunlight scraps from rich trees’ tables, so they’re perfect for here. No other crop would grow.”

All about them, the world was as green as if seen through eyes of emerald. The fields of Ararat far above were scarlet and black as a backgammon table; 23 Kranii radiated no other colours. Only a torch taken out into the crop, like a diver’s light shone on a growth of coral, would show that flowers could be white, or blue, or orange. Bees could not live on Ararat. Father had tried them; they couldn’t see the UV cues laid out on the flowers, and simply buzzed confused around every leaf and stalk.

God’s-Wound’s voice screamed with delight from over a rise. “Water! There’s running water here!”

The Anchorite smiled. “There’s plenty of water underground on Ararat. Always has been.”