Smallworld (40 page)

*

Mr. Christmas woke up. He was heavier than he should have been.

The air smelt vilely, as if he had awoken in an anus, rather than a cavern bathed with soft white light from a tracery of filaments covering the ceiling overhead. Lichen covered the walls and rocks about him, but there was otherwise no sign of life, apart from the man.

The man was sitting on a lichen-grown boulder close to the heavy concrete-set pressure door that led out of the cave, seemingly into dense undergrowth.

“Good morning,” said the man, though Mr. Christmas saw no proof that it was morning. Already he was seeking to reorientate himself; after reorientation would come escape, if escape was necessary. “You recognize me, I take it. You have, I’m sure, seen me many times when you were hiding in that old abandoned ship. Waiting for your Twelve Days to begin. Counting down the days to yourself, more eagerly than any little boy. And then what? Unpleasantness. Blood and violence, meted out on those who are dear to me. But I bear you no personal malice. I have myself meted out a good deal of blood and violence in my time, and I realize that your mind is a broken thing. Bad things were done to you; terrible things, to you and to those dear to you.”

A tear trickled down the cold face of Mr. Christmas. He wiped his eye dry, and cast his gaze down.

A handgun landed in the gravel at his feet; a military-issue one, with an electronic targetting system.

“The reservoirs are full of compound. The action has not been interfered with. I wish you to have this weapon. I am giving it to you. The question you will want me to answer next is What Date Is It, am I right?”

Mr. Christmas picked up the gun and nodded, a second tear now trailing down his cheek.

“Well, you have been unconscious quite some time. Nine days, in fact. Twelfth Night was yesterday.”

Mr. Christmas nodded, almost in relief. He caressed the weapon’s activation lever.

“I believe,” said the man, “that you represent a risk to other human beings only for twelve days of the terrestrial solar year. I firmly believe that, for the rest of the year, you can be rehabilitated. We can work on those remaining twelve days together.” He gestured at the rock-strewn expanse of the cavern, in which, unaccountably, all the rocks had been arranged into lines, whitewashed, and numbered. “Go on, pick a target. I know you want to know whether the weapon will actually fire. I assure you it will.”

Mr. Christmas raised the gun with professional speed, sighted up on a rock, and fired; the rock exploded like a hand grenade. Flying off-cuts marked his cheek; Mr. Christmas did not even blink.

“You can see that the weapon works. I, meanwhile,” said the man, patting himself down obligingly, “am unarmed. I know you will not shoot me. I was advised so by Officer Rai of Spender’s Delight, who knows you well. He believes that if he had only turned up one day later to apprehend you, instead of on Twelfth Night, he would still be alive and living with his family.”

Mr. Christmas nodded his head in wooden agreement. The man smiled. “Excellent. As our first step towards rehabilitation, then, I would like you to walk through the door you can see on the other side of that chamber. I guarantee that I will not harm you in any way.”

Mr. Christmas looked at the man distrustfully, then shrugged, nodded curtly, and shambled off in the direction of the door. He passed the first line of stones; he passed the second. When he came to the third, he turned suddenly, his weapon sweeping round to cover the man sitting on the rock; at that movement, a gunshot barked and he collapsed, fetched out of the air, into a fan of his own entrails splashed out on the stone.

The Anchorite tutted, and stood up from his rock. “He’s getting stronger. He’s up to the third line now.” He stared at the closed pressure door in concern. “Those two former colleagues of yours, Didier, made it as far as the fourth and fifth lines respectively before he took control of them.”

A coat of living green rose from the undergrowth outside the cave’s mouth, disgorging a man bearing an over-the-horizon sniper weapon. The man’s feet clattered softly on the solid rock underfoot; they were metal-and-plastic talons, more dinosaurian than human.

The Anchorite kicked one of the whitewashed rocks irritably into the chamber. “Leave the body lying and go no further in. We have no proof he isn’t deliberately understating his strength. Seal up this chamber, and never come here in person again. Beg a robot off the Clinic staff. Send all meals in via that.”

He walked out of the chamber, muttering irritably. “Confine a flame without killing it, and an explosion is inevitable.” Didier loped after him in pathetic obedience.

The pressure door swung shut behind the two men, and multiple bolts the thickness of men’s arms thudded home into the jamb around it.

Dominic Green has written several short stories for Interzone magazine, often in a satirical vein, and his story
The Adventure of the Lost World
appears on the BBC Cult TV website. His story
Send Me a Mentagram
was picked for the prestigious Year’s Best Science Fiction anthology in 2003, and
The Clockwork Atom Bomb
was nominated for a 2005 Hugo Award. Interzone published a special issue devoted to Dominic and his stories in July 2009.

Dominic graduated in English from St Catharine’s College, Cambridge and works in IT.

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Enjoyed
Smallworld
? Its sequel
Littlestar
hugely expands on the universe established in the first book, with an astounding story arc that follows troopers Beguiled-of-the-Serpent and Only-Begotten as they become embroiled in the second star-spanning war against the Made.

Littlestar
by Dominic Green -
available now
on Kindle, and in paperback from early 2012.

http://genres.fingerpress.co.uk/littlestar.html

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