Smallworld (3 page)

The Captain looked around her at the black dust stretching out like a starless night to an uneven horizon. The dust, she knew, actually proved to be green when taken inside under white light. It was that full of venomous compounds of copper. “You’re suggesting someone would deliberately
make
a world like this? To
live
on?”

“Ma’am, the family Reborn-in-Jesus say that when they first arrived,
there was already breathable air.”

He had Adeti’s attention now. “No cyanobacteria? No need for terraforming? Didn’t they think that was odd?”

“No, ma’am. Their leader, a man calling himself Duke Allion who registered the mission with the Outworlds Colonization Bureau, New Earth Branch, in Kilodia Zero, took it to be evidence of Intelligent Design. That this world had been made for them.”

Adeti snapped her fingers. “The Anchorite!” She jabbed a finger at the spare, bearded face on the screen. “What does the Anchorite say on the matter?”

“According to Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus, he was already here when they arrived. He also,” said Wong meaningfully, “attempted to stop us drilling in the South End Chasm. And he’s either an Uncensored Individual or someone who doesn’t want us to view his personal data.”

“Of course, Mr. Wong,” nodded Adeti sarcastically. “The Recovery Bureau might take away his vast wealth in back taxes. He lives in a cave, I hear.”

“A cave he appears to have chiselled from the rock itself,” said Planetometrist Wong. “Manually. I have been taken there by the children and agree that he has little to fear fiscally.”

A fly green as verdigris was droning irritably around Adeti’s head. Somehow an insect, one of particularly loathsome dimensions, had got on board her vessel. The ship would need decontaminating throughout as soon as they returned to depot. Adeti flicked a lucky penny up in the air, caught it on the back of her hand, and worked it across her fingers. The penny, worth a hundredth of a credit, was no more legal tender than a bushel of wheat or a wife would have been; nowadays, coinage was produced solely for numismatists. Modern state centicredits bore the ring of linked hands on one side, Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man on the other. This was an older coin, however. It had a face.

She held the coin between two knuckles. The face was aquiline, crowned with laurels, looking left towards distant vistas.

Senior Planetometrist Wong crooked an eyebrow.

“Something up, skip?”

“Nah,” grumbled Adeti, and palmed the coin again.

“Have we found the sampling rig yet?”

“Yes ma’am. An aerial survey drone was sent down to investigate. The rig is still down there at the chasm bottom, half submerged in a soil emulsion. It’s simply that the telemetry cable has been cut, and the planet—” he waved his hand at the vast bulk of what Adeti now knew was called Naphil, not deigning to call what they were currently standing on a planet—”puts out enough radio in all bands to prevent the drone’s backup systems from communicating.”

“Did the cable snap? I thought they were supposed to be strong!”

“They are, ma’am. It was a clean cut. No falling rock or micrometeoroid did it.” Wong paused for thought. “But the Anchorite was up top with us the whole time.”

“And that’s the only time we’ve ever seen him,” said Adeti. “At the very moment he needs to get himself an alibi. In any case, I believe the readings up to the point of failure have confirmed our claim. We have beneath our feet a lode of neutronium big enough to be hammered into a crown for God Himself. I have drawn up a Compulsory Field Purchase Request, which we are empowered to serve on planetoids of less than two thousand kilometres in diameter and less than ten thousand population. The family will be more than adequately rewarded.” She patted the head of the child beside her.

Wong fidgeted with his suit jet controls. “Ma’am, the two thousand kilometre rule was created on the assumption that no worlds below two thousand kilometres in diameter have atmospheres.”

“Your point being, Mr. Wong?”

“Ma’am, if we call up a mining ship and cut the neutronium core out of this place, we will destroy that atmosphere. We will destroy everything living here. There are islands in the oceans on Old Earth, ma’am, where unique species had evolved over millions of kilodia and were destroyed in one when sailors arrived in need of eggs, meat, firewood, and places to test their Nuclear Weapons.”

“The Devil won’t let you do it,” said the child.

Adeti and Wong looked down. The child was using a surveyor’s french chalk to fill in the DEARLY BELOVED on the toppled headstone. Adeti reflected idly that the same precise cut seemed to have been used to carve the same precise font in all the epitaphs on all the graves. What she had seen of the colony so far had convinced her that the settlers were essentially city people, muddled masses yearning to breathe less oxygen. Their craftsmanship had grown better over time, but was still basic to the point of crudity—poorly dressed stone walls, botched repairs. These gravestones, however, looked so precise as to be almost—

“Who carved these stones?” said Captain Adeti. The child looked up, all innocence.

“The Devil, of course,” she said, and set to drawing a fluorescent orange fiend beneath the DEARLY BELOVED. The fiend was cramming a protesting person into its mouth,a person clearly wearing Tetsushuri Company EVA gear. Adeti suddenly realized that every single epitaph on every grave also said DEARLY BELOVED.

“God’s-Wound,” said the Captain gently, “where does the Devil live?”

“At the centre of the world, of course,” said the child. “Do you have a red? I have to do all the blood the spaceman will be bleeding.”

“Call up saved link 21317.”

The entire wall lit up with densely-written text. Officer Asahara used her personal laser wand to underline several passages in scarlet.

“This is a Post-Modern English translation,” she explained. “The relevant passage is
tu passasti ‘l punto al qual si traggon d’ogne parte i pesi.
The world—well before Columbus, by the way—is clearly indicated by Dante, in his
Inferno
, to be round, and the would-be usurper Satan is at the centre of that world, paradoxically in a region of extreme cold rather than heat, blocking the passage of Dante out of Hell and into Purgatory and thereby Heaven. It’s an apt cautionary tale for us, perhaps. It’s not five kilodia since the Satanic forces of the Dictator, many of whom genuinely believed their leader was a god, were defeated by the Army of the People.” She glanced sternly round the Bridge, making sure everyone present touched their hands to their hearts and mouthed the Oath of Allegiance. Only Adeti did not.

“I’m the Captain,” explained Adeti gleefully. “I have no heart.”

The crew collapsed in titters. Asahara reddened and marked down Adeti as an a enemy of the State.

“So you’re saying that those people’s Christian belief has caused them to place a devil at the centre of their world? That this is all dirt digger superstition?”

Asahara nodded.

“Bring in the prisoner,” said Adeti. There was very little room on board a prospecting vessel, and the prisoner had had to wait outside, loosely accompanied by the forty-two-kilo Gravitographer Shankar to remind him that he was a prisoner.

Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus had so far been cooperative to the point of meekness. It had not been necessary to restrain him.

“Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus,” said the Captain, “my SCO here has a theory that your local devil, as you call it, is actually,” she searched for a kind word, “a
religious necessity
, credence in which is forced upon you by your belief system.”

“If a religious necessity can kill forty people,” grumbled Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus, “then so be it.”

Adeti sat back in her seat.

“You didn’t tell us that.”

“You didn’t ask me.”

“How did they die?” said SCO Asahara. “Sometimes an illness, a plague, can be characterized as a devil—”

“Plagues,” said Reborn-in-Jesus, “do not remove people’s heads. I am no epidemiologist, but I am almost certain of this fact.” He looked up wearily at the circle of faces. “My father always planned for me to be in advertising, Captain. He advertised products he didn’t understand, understood but didn’t believe in, believed in but knew he would fail, his whole life. He was in advertising because his family were in advertising, as everyone was in Manaus. One day, when I was still quite small, I discovered my distant ancestors had once burned the great forest that had stood on the site of our
favela
and farmed the land, proud to herd great beef cattle for multinational fast food conglomerates. From that day onward, all I wanted to do was to farm, to till the land. I was lucky enough to enter into the society of Adolfo Hitler Talvares Conciecao Bisneto, who later came to call himself Duke Allion. At first, when we came here, things were not so bad. We had only to believe in God, to believe we were His Chosen People, to regard all His other people as tainted, to conduct sexual activity only in order to create more souls for the Lord. But then our Arkarch decreed that all our wives were also his wife, as he was in fact the Son of God, and announced that all children deemed to be bad in an annual audit by Saint Nicholas would not be educated, but would instead be sent to a workhouse at the edge of our settlement, and so forth. He appointed himself Saint Nicholas, of course. And as he was in possession of this world’s only working handgun, we had little choice but to obey.

“Then, one morning, we woke up to find the Arkarch and his handgun missing. We searched the settlement, but could find him nowhere. We were arranging a team to drag the basin, when one of the ladies whose child had died in the first month after landing, who was out at the South End paying respects at her little girl’s grave, discovered a newer, more professional-looking tombstone standing next to the child’s. Feeling rather sheepish, we dug under it, and discovered our Arkarch’s head and body, neatly disunited.

“You might imagine this would have led to rejoicing, but human beings are queer creatures. First of all the settlement was up in arms against the Arkarch’s murderer, but after we finally worked out everyone had an alibi for the killing, it was realized there was a malevolent force here in this place besides ourselves. That other force was unanimously agreed to be a devil that had killed our good and holy leader. The Anchorite was our first prime suspect; he fled into the rocks of the South End Chasm, and would not come out. Our leader at that difficult time was a woman named Ogundere, who had taken the name of Cast-Out-The-Devil. Unable to catch the Anchorite, she identified three of our number as complicit in the Arkarch’s murder, and had sufficient flammable material collected together to burn them alive. The next morning, a fresh grave was discovered in the South End, containing Ogundere and Ogundere’s head. Those who had been accused of witchcraft, cut down from their stakes, immediately made Ogundere a martyr and swore to avenge her. From snippets of evidence laced with supposition, they came to the conclusion that the devil that had caused the deaths lived at the bottom of the South End Chasm, possibly at the very core of our world itself. They resolved to make war on it, without really knowing what weapons they might use, or whether their enemy even existed. Holy water, garlic, home-made explosives, electric fencing, laser tripwires, silver bullets, and even aconite were all used. And every time a party went out into the South Chasm, at least one of them would fail to return.”

“So they were correct,” said Adeti, “about the enemy’s location.”

“But the Anchorite also lives in the South Chasm,” said Planetometrist Wong. “And he has not been harmed.”

“Nor has any child,” said Reborn-in-Jesus. “I am convinced the tragic sickness of little Rejoice-in-the-Name-of-the-Lord Stevens was simply that. Since then no child has died on Mount Ararat. On the final day when Behold-the-Hinder-Parts-of-God Raffaele attempted to plant charges in the chasm and was later found interred in the South End Yard, I decided I had had enough, and decided to Adapt. I painted a sign of the Devil on my front door, and carved devils for my doorknockers. I made devil gargoyles leer from every roof truss in my house. I laid out offerings for this place’s demonic inhabitant on the edges of town, as do we all nowadays. And, Lord be praised, from that day forward no man or woman has died on Mount Ararat either, and I and my wife—though admittedly no-one else above the age of thirteen—live to till the land and tell the tale.”

“Can you prove to us,” said Asahara, “that
you
did not murder these people?”

“Explain to me how I could have constructed, with the few poor steel tools at my disposal, forty exquisitely-chiselled gravestones, and overcome forty other armed and homicidally paranoid settlers, and I will concede your point.”

“This devil of yours. Has it ever been seen?”

“Some of the children have seen it. It will not attack them, you see. If any adult catches sight of it, he or she dies.”

“Which means,” said Wong, eyes focussed on an invisible logic, “that it cannot afford to be seen by anyone who knows what he or she is looking at.”

Adeti nodded curtly in agreement. “Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus, you will please arrange for all your children who have caught sight of this creature to report here for questioning. It is my belief that we have here a life form which is intelligent, dangerous, and possibly technologically competent.”

“And which draws the line at killing children,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus.

“Colleagues, I believe,” said Adeti, “that we may have encountered an abandoned Made war machine.”

Despite the cramped quarters, the temperature in the room appeared to drop. Adeti was aware that this was only blood draining from extremities to hearts to prepare for either fighting or flying, but the illusion was there.

“We should run,” said Planetometrist Wong. “We are not a military ship.”

“We should not jump to conclusions,” said Gravitographer Shankar. “This might be humanity’s first contact with an intelligent species we did
not
make ourselves.”

“Or an abandoned Made war machine,” repeated Asahara.