Smallworld (24 page)

“It’s true, I’m afraid,” said Unity. “An escapee from the Penitentiary. This man here and his associates hijacked a Revenue vessel in an attempt to cut their way into the gaol to free a prisoner.”

The scarred man grinned in glee. “And what a prisoner! We got the wrong man, sprung the wrong jack out of the box. You and I are dead as the lost art of conversation. Those who are capable of flying a starship might live a little while longer.” He turned his sash badge round to face front. “Officer XYZ One Zillion Armitage reporting.”

“Impersonating a Revenue officer,” said Comptroller Lahti. “That will cost you dear in both years and tax credits. I am going to shoot you in the leg now. When a processor arrives to talk to you, please render up your central registration code if the round has not identified it, or it will go badly for you.”

“You don’t understand,” guffawed Armitage. “You are as dead as I am—OUCH!”

Having shot Armitage in the leg, Lahti turned to address a Revenue Service trooper approaching at a run from the Penitentiary, accompanied by a squat, heavy automaton trundling on three stubby legs and bristling with weapons orifices.

“This is the Warden from the Penitentiary,” explained the trooper. “He, it, believes three of its prisoners have escaped.”

“Which three?” said Armitage, grinning in agony on the ground.

“He is not at liberty to divulge that information. However, one of them
is
a highly dangerous Grade Seven telepath.” The trooper bowed curtly to Unity. “It is not safe for your people to be here. You should prepare yourself to be evacuated at a nominal zero-profit charge to your personal tax account.”

“I HAVE TRACKED THE TELEPATH’S DNA MOVING IN A SOUTHERLY DIRECTION FROM HERE,” said the Warden. “LEADING TOWARD A STARSHIP PARKING AREA.”

“I have seen this man,” said Unity. “He believed he was the Devil.”

The Warden’s turret turned towards Unity. She stood still, uncertain whether what was being directed at her was a sensor or a weapon.

“THAT INFORMATION IS CONSISTENT WITH THE PRISONER’S PERSONAL PROFILE,” said the Warden.

The southern horizon—from Third Landing, all horizons were southerly—was suddenly thrown into saw-toothed relief as something horribly, infernally bright blazed behind it.

The Comptroller dropped his laserglare visor and began yelling commands into his communicator, then stood around conducting a one-sided conversation with the inside of his own helmet. Finally, he turned and condescended to speak to Aidid and Unity again.

“Someone has just taken off from your landing strip,” he said, “in the vessel we disabled. She’s running on chemical boosters only, and stick only, with no avionics. There’s no way the pilot will get her as far as orbit, certainly not in these gravitational gradients, and—”

Three shining points of light rose toward the zenith, then suddenly became the focus of a three-dimensional ripple in space-time as the object that contained them vanished from the conventional universe.

Mr. Lahti gawped up into the sky.

“A considerable pilot to get so high on chemical boosters alone,” he said. “A considerable navigator to engage FTL so deep in a gravity well.”

“Whoever he is,” said the other trooper, cupping his hand over an earful of radio traffic in his helmet, “he also killed two of our men taking off. As soon as the ship floated on its retros, it turned arse-end on to
Death and Taxes
and fired its orbital boosters at spitting distance. There’s a ten-metre hole down our left side, and all our sensors are blind with unburnt heptyl. We couldn’t see to shoot shit, otherwise he’d never have made orbit. He’s also abandoned a heavy payload on the ground. It seems to have been pushed out of the ship to allow it to make orbit. A secure packing container of some sort. The fall from the cargo bay seems hardly to have scratched it.”

“It won’t have,” said Mr. Aidid.

“We can try and cut it open,” suggested the trooper to Comptroller Lahti.

“You can try,” said Mr. Aidid. “That container is the reason why Armitage, Skilling and Skuse were here. They couldn’t open it, and they’d tried everything with the exception of a skilled cracksman imprisoned in the Penitentiary. Your men will notice minor abrasions on it which were inflicted by light field artillery. Whatever is in there was put there in the days of the Dictatorship, and the Dictator evidently didn’t want it to fall into the wrong hands.”

An emerald insect settled unnoticed on Mr. Aidid’s shoulder.

“Fascinating,” said the Comptroller. “We will take charge of this container. Is it small enough to fit into our cargo bay?”

The trooper nodded. “Only a cubic metre or so. But Forward sensors indicate it has a mass of over nine hundred tonnes.”

“Hence the reason for slinging it out as waste payload. We’d need a reinforced cargo bay to carry it. For the time being, detail a squad of men to bury it, and spread the word among the men that it does not exist.”

“Don’t you want to know what’s in it?” said Unity.

The Comptroller shrugged. “Money, thieved art treasures, a weapon prototype of some sort or another. If men are willing to kill each other over it, the less my men know the better. The appropriate authorities will be informed; whatever is in the box, it will be liquidated and put towards the Dictator’s back taxes. He is still our most wanted individual in real terms, though I appreciate your escapees are a pressing local concern—”

“Why would the escapee leave?” said Unity suddenly. “He was such a powerful telepath I half thought he
was
the Devil. And I’m sorry to point this out, but you’ve all just come down here and played right into his hands.”

The Comptroller shrugged. “Maybe he figured it was best to get out while he had a chance.” He turned to the warden. “You’re missing
three
prisoners?”

The Warden’s YES light blinked. “ALL HIGHLY DANGEROUS.”

The Comptroller turned to his trooper. “Set up a perimeter, conduct emergency repairs, and send out another distress missile for assistance.” He nodded to Unity. “Ma’am, we’re going to have to ask you to spread the word and ensure nobody comes within a kilometre of your landing field until all prisoners are either accounted for or known beyond reasonable doubt to have escaped offworld.”

Aidid cleaned his throat. “Comptroller, my own crew are still being held captive on their ship in the Verdastelo system.”

“I’m afraid not,” said Lahti. “An Admiralty frigate passed through there several hours ago.
Render Unto Caesar
had had her fuel lines opened and her crew executed in a common Slaver amusement, putting them into the airlock and stepping up the air pressure until one of them grew narcotic enough to open the outer lock. Commonly there is betting on the time it takes, the first victim to break, and so on. The crew were found in orbit around the craft. At that distance from the star, not only their blood, but the air around them had frozen solid.”

“So the men who did this are still out there,” said Aidid. The colour had drained from his face. “Comptroller—are there any vacancies in the Special Revenue Service?”

Lahti eyed Aidid warily. “The SRS commonly rejects applicants whose psychological profile indicates a desire for revenge. It is a hard selection process, a harder induction, and a still harder life. In the Homeaway system, the site of our last audit, extensive legal advice had been hired by the auditees, much of it heavily armed. The entire Toilette Douche Turks and Caicos Loopholeers were waiting for us.”

Aidid paled. “The most feared tax accountants in space.”

The Comptroller nodded. “Three of my section were fatally wounded, two of them with posthumous suits for invasion of privacy lodged against their estates. And,” he said, eyeing the close and tense proximity of Unity and Aidid’s elbows, “it is unheard-of for a married man to be selected. It is unacceptable that any officer of the Service might have a threat placed against the life of his or her spouse or child by an auditee.”

Mr. Aidid turned and, despite the fact that he had never spoken to her before on any subjects but tax piracy, kidnapping, the sending of distress signals, and the disarmament of nuclear weapons, looked—upwards—directly into Unity’s eyes.

Still more incredibly, Unity said: “It’s okay. I can wait.”

Aidid turned back to Lahti. “Comptroller, it remains only for me to say that this world appears not to have received a tax audit since the inception of the New and Improved Era.”

Lahti’s eyebrows raised. “Indeed. This is a serious situation, one requiring an immediate intensive investigation, would you not say?”

“Indeed, Comptroller. It is my belief that certain tax breaks and colonization incentives offered to startup settlements have not been claimed in this case. I have, in the free time afforded me by my kidnapping, conducted a brief preliminary study which I could with your permission firm up into a more detailed investigation, but my initial findings are that Central Revenue owes Mount Ararat ten credits, eleven cents.”

“A very precise figure, Mr. Aidid. Your exactitude does you credit. Please be so kind as to have your detailed investigation available for my attention in the next twenty-four hours.”

Mr. Aidid nodded; Mr. Lahti bowed, turned on his heel and walked off in the direction of his EVAFV, flipping his glare visor down to issue orders into his headset. Before he managed to reach the vehicle, however, he turned to gape up at the sky in earnest apprehension.

A sunset yellow behemoth was approaching over the burnt fields, eclipsing several of the sky’s zodiacal houses, striding on legs ten metres tall, its hands marriages of lift forks and backhoe shovels, its skin pockmarked with micrometeoroid impacts. Mr. Lahti’s subordinate turned and gabbled frantically: “It’s armoured. I sent a microflechette round into it without result. We’re going to have to crank it up to Armour Piercing—”

The thing’s sensory turret inclined slightly, and huge speakers mounted on it blared into life. “GOOD DAY. I’VE BEEN A TAD BUSY DOWN SOUTH. HAS SOMETHING HAPPENED HERE?”

Unity brightened. “It’s all right. It’s only Mr. Feng. He’s sent a construction unit up here to check on us.” She waved her arms. “HEY! MR. FENG! IT’S US! WE’RE ALL OKAY! QUIT STEPPING ON THE CROPS!”

“AH, MISS UNITY,” boomed the automaton. “THERE SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN A FIRE. AND AN EXPLOSION OR TWO. AND A GUNFIGHT. AND SOME EVIDENCE OF DISMEMBERMENT. ARE ALL THOSE TINY ARMED GENTLEMEN DOWN THERE ON THE GROUND WITH YOU CAUSING YOU ANY DISCOMFORT?”

“THEY ARE OFFICERS OF THE REVENUE SERVICE, MR. FENG.”

The heavy lift unit’s eyes zoomed back and forth in its head. It placed a double-dozerbladed fist behind its back and bowed stiffly. “I DO APOLOGIZE, GENTLEMEN. WELCOME TO MOUNT ARARAT.
PRODIGAL SON
IS INBOUND, BUT THE AUTOMATIC LANDING SYSTEM IS NOT WORKING, AND NEITHER, IT SEEMS, ARE YOUR OWN COMMUNICATORS, BUT I JUST RECEIVED WORD ON MY OWN CONTROL FREQUENCY. THEY ARE CURRENTLY AT TEN THOUSAND KILOMETRES AND CLOSING. THEY ARE CONCERNED.”

“TELL THEM NOT TO BE. WE ARE IN RUDE HEALTH.”

“I AM ALMOST DISAPPOINTED. I HEARD EXPLOSIONS, AND PROJECTILE FIRE COMING OUT OF YOUR HEMISPHERE RIPPED UP ONE OF MY FLOWERBEDS. I SENT TINY TIM HERE OVER TO INVESTIGATE. I WAS RATHER HOPING TO BASH SOMETHING.”

“NOTHING REQUIRES BASHING, THANKS, THOUGH YOU COULD STAMP THAT FIRE OUT OVER BY THE MERIDIAN TRENCH.
WITHOUT
USING RETARDANT FOAM. PLANTS DON’T GROW WELL IN IT.”

“CONSIDER IT TRAMPLED.” The colossus wheeled right and vanished behind buildings. Mr. Aidid waited respectfully until Unity invited him back into her parents’ house for something ominously described as Real Tea, then, as she busied herself in the kitchen, took out his palmframe and laid it in the centre of the wooden dining table alongside his DNA analyzer.

A gentle scrubbing sound could be heard from an adjoining room. Still in possession of a handgun he’d gleamed from one of Mr. Armitage’s men, he powered it up silently and moved mouse-quiet across the carpet, prepared to shoot to kill using whatever projectile, particle or waveform lurked within the weapon.

Across the hallway was a waterless multigravity toilet, a barbaric yet functional design of a sort more often seen shipboard than planetside. Mr. Aidid hoped it was not the only toilet in the house.

A bizarre demonoid robot was cleaning it.

A variety of domestic solvents and disinfectant bottles in its claws, the device was buffing the bowl of the head to a mirrorlike sheen.

It looked up at Aidid. Aidid suspected from the speed with which its head had flicked upwards that a decision had already been made not to kill him. It could have laid its hand on the gun before he’d had time to pull the trigger.

“It was you,” he said. “The extra trace in the DNA analyzer.”

The robot paused, then nodded its head as if at the bidding of a human operator.

“I know who you are,” said Mr. Aidid. The machine seemed to tense slightly, as if preparing to spring. Mr. Aidid considered his next statement carefully.

“You’re, ah, Uncle Anchorite.”

The robot paused for an even longer period, then finally nodded again.

“I am going to the Special Revenue to avenge my colleagues,” said Mr. Aidid. “But I will return. Mount Ararat badly needs a tax accountant. Look after this place and these people. The Revenue will never learn of your existence. Of that you have my word.”

He lowered the gun, and extended a hand. The robot reached out and took it. Thankfully, it neither crushed the bone in it with a grip like a diamond-faced press, nor ripped it from the bleeding stump of his wrist.

With his free hand, Mr. Aidid handed over the DNA analyzer, pressing a single button on its case. The display came up MEMORY DELETED.

The Devil took the analyzer, tucked it under its arm, and recommenced frantically polishing the pan. Mr. Aidid turned, thumbed the gun safe, and walked back into the best parlour to prepare his accounts.

The children of the Reborn-in-Jesus family would have said that correct timekeeping arrived on Mount Ararat in Kilodia Ten of the New Era.