Smallworld (23 page)

“Your physical description is widely circulated by law enforcement authorities.”

The other man was dressed in the more expensive parts of what looked like three military uniforms. He was formidably tall, and possessed a formidable quantity of teeth, which he now used to good smiling effect.
“Aha, I see you relax. You are not going to die right now, you are dealing with slavers, slavers do not kill people, you will somehow cunningly escape our clutches and deal with us later. Well, I’m afraid I feel obliged to poke holes in your argument, as well as, possibly, your integument.”
The other man sat down on a rock and mopped his brow while his associate continued to cover the Anchorite.
“
Firstly, we slavers operate a stringent system of quality control. We do not go large on the sort of slave who is likely to cunningly escape our clutches. Secondly, we have been ensuring slaves do not cunningly escape us for quite some time, and we are very good at it. You are, I am afraid, used to the kind of custody exercised by policemen and jailers, who have to adhere to tiresome REGULATIONS. We do not have any such constraints.”
He clicked long-nailed fingers, and the Anchorite watched his own foot blow off.

The wave of panic, the Anchorite told himself, was solely due to sudden fluid loss. There was no need for fear to twist in his chest like a knife, no need for his heart to beat as if in orgasm.

“
You see, we have shockingly little regard for nicety. If a prisoner runs away, we cut off his legs. If he returns again to the fold of good and honest sheep, we may give him new ones.”
He looked up at the man who had shot the Anchorite’s foot off.
“
Didier—the legs.”

Didier grinned with considerably fewer teeth than Mr. Skilling, put his weapon down, dropped his hands to his knees, and pulled up his trouser legs. From the knees down, his legs were skeletal metal and plastic.

“
Didier came to us when he was only a child,”
said Skilling.
“
We recognized in him early on a natural aptitude for firearms handling. however, the necessities of business had forced us to eliminate his parents and adult relatives, who had defended the vile burg he came from with their liveS. they would have been uneconomical to repair, and would no longer have made good slaves in any case. this, HOWEVER, went ill with him. There were numerous attempts at escape and suicide; hence the removal of the legs. Over time, however, Didier came to know loyalty and, dare i say, love for his new family, and won his legs back. I trust him with a loaded weapon at my back. That is how effective our readjustment facilities are on the processing planets.”

“How old was he?” said the Anchorite.

“
Ten,”
said Skilling.
“
ONLY A LITTLE YOUNGER THAN MANY of the juvenile inhabitants of this place, in fact.”
He smiled and looked at the Anchorite’s stump critically.
“You know, you really should get that looked at. It’s bleeding quite badly.”
He picked up the severed foot and held it up demonstratively.
“A virgin forest,”
he quipped,
“is a place where the hand of man has never set foot.”

The Anchorite looked back dispassionately.

“
You are an odd one,”
said Skilling. “
Normally men groan at the sight of their own severed limbs being toyed with. It’s peculiarly violating. But you show no reaction. A torturer is a puppet master whose strings are his victim’s nervous system, But you,”
he said, pointing at the Anchorite with the latter’s own big toe,
“
can see those strings. you were a torturer in a previous life. or an interrogator. or one who supervised interrogations.”

The Anchorite breathed in heavily, and shrugged nonchalantly on the outbreath. An emerald insect settled onto the boulder at Skilling’s elbow; he watched it with interest.

“
These devices are quite fascinating. We did not notice their presence until quite late in the game.,”
he said.
“
As soon as we’d swatted one and taken it apart, though, we knew we were being watched. After that it was just a matter of triangulating their control signals, and there you were.”
He examined the condition of the Anchorite’s severed toenails with distaste.
“now, do you have any doubt at all that the consequences of not answering my next question absolutely truthfully would be very, very bad? Good. I need to know how many people like you there still are on this goddamned rock, what they’re armed with, and how I can get them to surrender.”

The Anchorite nodded.

“May I be permitted a question of my own?”

Skilling shrugged.
“gO AHEAD.”

“You’re not here for slaves. This whole world is home to only seventeen officially registered people. You’re here for Hans Trapp. Am I right in assuming you need him to open a door?”

Skilling slapped his thigh.
“EXCELLENT! MOST PERCEPTIVE. i HAVE INDEED COME INTO A MOST SINGULAR PIECE OF PROPERTY, THE USE OF WHICH IS SADLY DENIED ME ONLY BY THE FACT THAT SOME CHURL HAS PUT IT IN A LOCKED BOX. a LOCKED BOX WHICH, OF ITSELF, IS A MOST AMAZING PIECE OF WORK. eVEN MY EMPLOYEE, THE REDOUBTABLE mR. sKUSE, IS INCAPABLE OF OPENING IT.”
He waved cheerily across the plain at the grey-cloaked man, who did not trouble to wave back.

“Is it a weapon?” said the Anchorite.

Skilling considered this.
“
You know, I really have no idea. All I know is that the vessel carrying it was escorted by three first-rate void Superiority cruisers, and that those CRUISERS were ambushed and destroyed by a Made squadron in the first year of the Great Big War. The vessel itself was left drifting; very possibly the Made did not realize its importance. Now both vessel and cargo have fallen into my hands.”

“Was the vessel in question called the
Dawn Treacher?
”

Skilling blinked. He peered into the Anchorite’s eyes curiously, as if trying to see the ideas being formed inside the head. He looked over at Didier.

“
Are we
sure
that telepath is still somewhere in Third Landing?”
he said.
“this one appears to be reading my thoughts.”

“Have I earned myself another ten seconds of life?” said the Anchorite wryly.

Skilling waved a hand indulgently.
“Why stop at TEN?”
he said.
“Have twenty if you will. Thirty! I am in a generous mood.”

“I only needed ten,” said the Anchorite.

“
Why—”
said Skilling, and never finished the sentence.

“STOP,” said the Anchorite.

The robot Devil stopped, frozen in the act of severing the neck of Didier. Skilling’s corpse hit the ground, whooshing out dead breath, blood and fart gas as it impacted. The Anchorite heard several ribs snap as it did so.

“He is dead now,” said the Anchorite.

Didier nodded. His face was ashen.

The Anchorite snapped his fingers; the robot Devil’s claws retracted from Didier’s throat. It stood to attention. It had come here in a hurry; parts of it were glowing.

“Who is in charge of me now?” said Didier.

“You,” said the Anchorite sourly. “If you wish it.”

“I do not wish it,” said Didier, with a horrified expression. “You killed Mr. Skilling; you are now in charge of me.” He bowed curtly. “I require instruction.”

“Good grief,” said the Anchorite. “I don’t know. Walk north till your hat floats.”

“Sir, the slave does not understand the instructions of his master, sir.”

The Anchorite, however, was now staring up into what Mount Ararat called a sky. The air was full of twinkling points of light that were not stars; white noise in heaven. Through that static, something brighter was approaching, moving fast, decelerating on a pentagon of fire.

“What is
that?
”

The Revenue Grey Ops ship
Death and Taxes
slowed on a plume of flame at the very last moment, minimizing the time during which she would be exposed to enemy ground fire. Maximum use of the retros was needed, as Ararat’s atmosphere was not thick enough to provide much help in deceleration. The ship had kept Mount Ararat between herself and the enemy for as much of her approach as possible, which had meant staying under thrust constantly for several hours; had her crew been normal men, this would have caused blackouts, thrombosis and vomiting. But when
Death and Taxes
opened her parachutes, spread her atmosphere wings, and slammed down into the South End Saddle, grey-clad heavily-armed qualified tax accountants poured out of her without even breaking step.

The Saddle and Third Landing comms towers died first, victims of an anti-radar missile which keened down through the air broadcasting through tinny speakers: “EMP WEAPON! EMP WEAPON! CLEAR THE AREA! CLEAR THE AREA!” By the time
Death and Taxes
was on the apron, the vessel purporting to be the Revenue vessel
Render Unto Caesar
had had her avionics nose shot off and her main plasma vents sealed shut by laser fire. From that point on, any of Skilling’s crewmen foolish enough to attempt an EVA carrying anything
Death and Taxes’
sensors construed to be a weapon rapidly became charcoal fused into a circle of smoking glass in the runway.

The air was full of falling chaff litter, reeking of dimethylhydrazine and magnesium. The amount to which Ararat’s limited atmospheric oxygen was being used up now activated monoxide alarms in both hemispheres. Through the incandescent countermeasure snow moved grey-uniformed snipers, picking off running men with specially-designed rounds that recorded the DNA of their victim, matched it against the central Revenue database, and added the cost of the shooting to the victim’s current tax statement. Those men unlucky enough never to have been centrally registered had tax accounts created and immediately debited with back tax bills appropriate to their ages. Mr. Skuse, hit in the back by an Accounts Receivable round, squealed in pain and horror as the bullet inside him extended a metre-long aerial back out of the entry wound and began flashing rhythmically to attract clerical processing staff following in the combatants’ wake, accompanied by a stentorian bellow of “CASE FOR SPECIAL ATTENTION! CASE FOR SPECIAL ATTENTION!”

A small group of AFV’s, infantry riding on their upper hulls, rolled into Third Landing, the target acquisition systems on their weapons acquiring and just as quickly ignoring as threats a gaggle of confused goats, hyraxes, Persian cats and magpies. Nowhere in the whole shabby one and only thoroughfare could a human being be found. The wreck of an EVA rover was bobbing in a pond that adjoined a secure State Penitentiary across the street. The communications tower, although present, was broadcasting no more radio traffic than a totem pole. Occasional dead bodies of Armitage’s men lay in obscene positions in the waterless dirt, appearing variously to have choked to death on their own fists, brained themselves on the stone walls of nearby houses, and shot themselves in the anus with their own weapons.

At the very end of the main street was a halted EVA rover with three people bent over it, arguing vehemently—two men in dishevelled Revenue uniforms and an unthinkably tall but undeniably female farmer’s daughter wearing her brother’s overalls.

The EVAFV ground to a halt in a cloud of dust, its pilot running the tracks for an extra few metres in order to maintain forward visibility. Armed men leapt from the hull and secured the area around it whilst still more armed men dashed into the first line of houses, directed to clear them one by one. The turret on the vehicle, meanwhile, tracked menacingly up and down the street.

The officer commanding, his eyes obscured by an anti-laser visor, ran up to the rover, halted with his weapon at low port, and addressed the two putative Revenue men.

“Senior Tax Comptroller Vitaly Lahti, Special Revenue Service. We happened to be in the area conducting a heavy audit on several local billionaires and received a distress call. Are you in distress? Not being in distress would constitute grounds for a chargeable addition to your tax statement for this current period.”

The shorter Revenue man swallowed hard and stared down at the device strapped to the back of the EVA rover as if violently ill. “Erm, it is safe to say we are in distress. What do you know about defusing nuclear weapons?”

His tall, scarred-faced colleague snickered in a way unbecoming a Revenue officer.

Comptroller Lahti frowned. “A little. What form does the fuse take?” He flipped up his visor, revealing eyes blue as acid lakes. “Aha, a simple time switch with keyed firing authorisation.”

“Which wire do we cut?” said the tall girl, her voice tremulous.

“Well,” mused the Comptroller, “this red wire
here
is the fibre optic link to the simultaneous firing triggers, and this blue one
here
is the power to the detonator, the fusion core apparently having no protective shielding and looking pretty subcritical in mass, so—” he raised his weapon and fired point blank into the machine, which erupted in a cloud of searing white sparks. He lowered the gun and fanned his hand over the device, which was now a tangle of melted wires. No nuclear detonation appeared to have happened.

“That should do it,” he said cheerfully. He looked up at the two Revenue men, and pulled his Revenue officer’s sash around his body until the warrant badge showed. “Comptroller Lahti 3412713 identifying.”

The shorter man showed his own warrant. “Collector 9315824 Aidid identifying.”

Lahti turned to the taller man.

“Do you not understand?” said the scarred face. “I have skipped here out of the frying pan like an idiot, because I was afraid of being shot. But
he
is still here. The man out of the machine. He is more dangerous than
this
little trifle.” He tapped the box. “He will kill us; he will kill us all. And once he takes your ship, he will take his anger to the stars.”

Comptroller Lahti looked across the nuclear weapon at Aidid and Unity.