Smallworld (31 page)

He also hoped the lights in the ceiling did not fail. It would be unpleasant to have to find the toilet in the dark. He had been brought here on the shoulders of the hermit’s terrifying personal servant, under strict instructions not to spit on, urinate on, or touch the tunnel walls and thereby leave DNA traces. The darkness had been complete; he was entirely certain he had no hope of finding his way back through the catacombs to the outside world.

And now, he could hear the scrape of footsteps on gravel, and occasional curses as heads banged on unseen ceilings. Somebody—somebody evidently human—was approaching. The Reborn-in-Jesus children were aware of his location, but had been instructed on pain of maternal disapproval, a fate far worse than death, not to visit him here.

Torchlight was bouncing off the walls out of one of the almost invisible cracks, spilling into the catacombs at the far end of the chamber. Eventually, the same torchlight projected a massive, infernal shadow across the images of beatific saints on the far wall. Whoever was approaching, they were bringing the Anchorite’s robot with them.

Mr. Trapp eased himself out of his sleeping bag to receive his guests.

“Good evening-or-morning,” he said. “Has young Mr. Magus’s ship come in early?”

Something about the carriage of the robot, the way it now held its head and arms, alarmed him. He was even more alarmed when it spoke.

“BE SILENT, SHADE, OR I WILL INVENT A TORMENT FOR YOU MORE EXTREME EVEN THAN SIMPLY BEING IN HELL.”

Behind the robot, Beguiled spoke. “This is the, uh, shade I spoke about, mistress. The gates of Lord Hades’ domain are protected by cunning devices that attack the hands of the incautious. This shade was formerly a man of cunning in the world above. He possesses the knowledge to circumvent Hades’ portals.”

“WHAT OF CERBERUS?” said the robot. “I WOULD HAVE THOUGHT A MONSTROUS THREE-HEADED HOUND TO BE PROTECTION ENOUGH FOR ANY HOUSEHOLD.”

“There have been, uh, incidents,” said Beguiled. Two more Reborn-in-Jesus children, who Mr. Trapp believed were called Uncleanness and Sodom, stood behind her. “Involving a certain Hercules, and on other occasions Orpheus, Hermes, Psyche and the Cumaean Sibyl. Cerberus is, as a result, not considered sufficient protection as a stand-alone system.”

“IN THAT CASE,” said the robot, “YOU WILL, VILE SHADE, OPEN THE DOORS TO LORD HADES’ HOUSE FOR YOUR NEW QUEEN, OR SUFFER HER WRATH.”

He realized all of a sudden what was strange about the robot. Its steps had shortened, and its pelvis was now thrust forward to better display its chest unit. Its hands were held close by its side. It was walking like a woman.

Beguiled mouthed frantically at Mr. Trapp: DON’T SUFFER HER WRATH.

Mr. Trapp nodded, then reconsidered his actions and bowed. “Majesty,” he said, “this would be the Astro Standard Bulkhead Pressure Door someone has attempted to conceal under a stack of blank gravestones at the far end of this chamber, would it?”

Beguiled blinked in surprise; Mr. Trapp smirked in satisfaction.

“I will require tools,” he said.

Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus peered out through the net curtains at the darkened street. The house doors and windows were all secure, and the Panic Cellar still sealed, but the talent displayed by Mr. Christmas for repeatedly locating and slaying victims right under the gunsights of armed retribution made him paranoid.

“Keep your eyes on the doors and windows,” he said. “Only I need to watch the display. I will put the analogues on audio. Which do we want first?” He connected the reader to the house media system and opened the record tray.

Mrs. Reborn-in-Jesus sat staring hawklike out of the window. “Safety Officer Rai.”

“Very well.” The record was swallowed up by the apparatus.

A face, two metres tall, appeared on the media wall, looking concerned, startled, and slightly sad.

“
I’m dead,”
said a quiet voice, from the speakers,
“aren’t I”.

Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus nodded. No point in starting off on the wrong foot. “You’re a personality analogue. Extrapolated, I’m afraid, not recorded.”

“
Did I get him?”
said the speakers.

“Yes,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus. “Though not before he got you. You were killed bringing him in.”

“
Bummer,”
said the speaker.
“Which one was he?”

“Casey Michael Bowker,” said Shun-Company, without looking round. “You interviewed him five times.”

The mouth of the face on the screen formed a silent
o.
“Yes. I suppose that makes sense. I was only just there, in fact. He was a ninety per cent profile match. I interviewed a lot of people five times, you see. Some of them seven or eight times, even. I’d just gone to his home to interview him, and he’d invited me in to his lounge and given me a drink, and—”

The face stopped, reconsidered, and said:
“That was when he killed me, wasn’t it.”

“You weren’t to know,” said Shun-Company. “It was the first time he’d used poison.”

“
I should have been on my guard. His creativity was amazing; he had no single
modus operandi.
Many of my colleagues still believed he was two hundred and forty-four different murderers.”

“We have a problem with Casey Bowker,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus. “He has absconded from Penitentiary. We are on a twenty-kilometre-diameter moonlet with anomalous surface gravity and breathable atmosphere. The population is one hundred and eight, most of whom live in a walled curative facility in the southern hemisphere. You are currently in Third Landing, population seventeen, in the northern hemisphere, where the Penitentiary is. The landing field is on the equator.”

The CGI face pursed its lips in thought.
“I understand your concern. But there’s no need to worry till the 25th of December—”

“It’s the 26th of December.”

“
I’m sorry for your loss. That means he’s killed between one and three already.”

“He’s killed three.”

“
One good thing is that he won’t use indiscriminate booby traps of any kind. He has to notch up his precise daily kill total, no more, no less. In Year Zero, he walked into a bar in Delight, shot a precise three people dead, and walked out again leaving all the other customers alive and free to dob him in to the filth.”

“Where will he go now?” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus, wondering what dobbing into the filth involved.

“
Nowhere,”
said the speakers.
“He will try to trick you into thinking he has left the area, whilst remaining almost in plain sight. One of his few weaknesses is that he invests so much time in reconnoitring a killing ground that he is tempted to re-use it. He won’t go back to it immediately, though—he’ll usually leave a gap of a day or so, sometimes even a year.”
The face paused in thought.
“One major difference here is that he’s never been put in a situation before where there’s been a shortage of potential victims. His past history, by comparison, is one of being surrounded by meat on the hoof, so to speak. And he will have seen that you’re armed. Those
are
assault weapons, aren’t they?”

“Sure are. Big fat old assault weapons.”
Shun-Company swept an invisible practice bead across the street, observing its progress through the sights.

“
Uh, in which case, he may well make a decision to switch sites regardless. More victims in the south, probably more places to hide too, and the local population won’t be as watchful. He’ll plan his breakout from here carefully; obsessively, even. He’s used to a heavily-surveilled society.”

“So we should warn the people at the South End?”

The face was incredulous.
“Have you not done so already?”

Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus squirmed. “It’s just that the South End clinic’s clients tend to be wealthy and litigious, and the clinic’s proximity to a maximum security penal establishment was, uh, not advertised in the brochure.”

“
They’ll be a damn sight more litigious if they’re dead. Trust me, I’m dead myself, I know. Warn them. Warn them now. Does your clinic have security?
Armed
security?”

“Yes.”

“
Tell them to double up and ensure no-one, staff or patient, strays out of their sight. Also, tell them the whole deal. They must know they have up to a twenty-four-hour safe period after each time he kills his fill. He psychologically cannot kill in that period, because of his self-imposed limit. They could split up and search for him stark naked and he wouldn’t lift a finger to kill them.”

“He will to hurt them, though,” said Shun-Company, without taking her eyes off the window. “That was how he killed you.”

The face on the screen swallowed uncomfortably.
“Oh. I see.”

“You see, he had no ideological problem with hurting you to
within an ace of
death. He shot you in the stomach with a gas weapon improvised from a vehicular shock absorber, then hacked off all four of your limbs. You then died of shock about eighteen hours too early, as he’d already killed his quota for that day. By the time the rest of your team arrived, he was kneeling on top of your corpse apologizing frantically and trying to apply cardiac massage.”

The face attempted briefly to keep its composure, then spluttered into laughter.
“I’m sorry, it shouldn’t be funny, it really shouldn’t.”
Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus noticed his wife smirking over her rifle. Rai’s expression changed suddenly from one of mirth to one of panic.
“Were my family well provided for?”

“Government death-in-service insurance payments have made them very comfortable.”

The face relaxed.
“That’s good. But you should warn your people. Warn them now.”

Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus nodded. “We will. We have a requirement to switch you off for a moment now. Don’t worry, you’ll be back.”

The face smiled sadly.
“That’s what everyone always says to analogues, isn’t it? Because being turned off is so like death, and no-one wants to tell someone else they’re going to kill them.”

“We need to load another analogue into the machine,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus. “The situation is complicated.”

“
How so?”
said Rai.
“You really should give me all the information you have.”

“We believe,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus, “that Bowker has taken partial control of a military antipersonnel robot, and is recording his own personality in an attempt to make his control total.”

“
Oh my word,”
said the face on the screen.
“You must stop him.”

“Cogent,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus, “if obvious. I am about to load several personality analogues, one of which we believe to be the one Bowker has loaded into the unit in order to remove it from its owner’s control. We will then ask each analogue in turn what
they
would do if loaded into a front-line combot.”

“
Do so. Do so now. Switch me off immediately.”

Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus nodded and thumbed the SAVE BASELINE control. The face faded, to be replaced by a haughty Mediterranean beauty in a glittering primitive head-dress, glaring at Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus as if at an insect.

“YOU,” said the speaker, “WHAT LANGUAGE DO YOU SPEAK? WHAT LANGUAGE AM
I
SPEAKING? THIS IS NOT GREEK.”

*

“You might as well have this,” said Testament, pressing something cold and heavy into Mr. Suau’s hands. “It aligns itself on all humanoid targets in its frontal arc when the first trigger is pulled. You fire it by applying the second trigger.”

Mr. Suau ran his hand over the weapon in distaste. “A hydrahead. Completely undiscriminating. And illegal. You know, these things have a tendency to hit your little sister who was standing a little to the left of the guy you were aiming at.”

“The man we took that off was a very bad man,” said Testament. “He would have aimed
directly at
my little sister. You can switch it to a cone of fire dead-ahead-only using the mode control at the back.”

“Yes, I see. How did a simple farming community get access to quite so many banned military weapons, if it’s not too rude a question?”

“This is the frontier.” Testament looked up and down the darkened street, hefting an assault laser. “Folk come here with guns. Most times they leave their guns behind. Careless, like.”

“I see…you’re holding that gun wrong, by the way. The IHL1 has a hair trigger, it’s notorious for it…flip the safety and hold your finger near to it like this. And either turn the aiming dot function off, or pop it out of the visible spectrum.
He
can see the dot too otherwise. I served two kilodia as the Officer Commanding, Human of a heavy combat platoon,” Mr. Suau admitted guiltily. “Just me and one hundred Stalin Fives for up to a year at a time. The rumours ain’t true, though—no matter how long you’re away from real people, a metal ass never looks any sexier.”

“I can’t see the dot any more.”

“I’ve flipped it into the ultraviolet. Look in your gunsight.”

Up above, Naphil’s rings twinkled like angel dust, with buildings silhouetted against them. Most of Third Landing’s houses were still uninhabited, holdovers from more hopeful days before most of the colony had died of a mysterious plague about which Mr. Suau knew little.

“How did the hermit come to own a customized heavy assault unit? That sort of thing costs blood souls and money.”

“We suspect he was a rich man,” said Testament. “Now he is a very private and religious one.”

“And a disproportionately heavily-armed one,” said Mr. Suau.

“Where did you leave your rover?” said Testament.

“Over by the Penitentiary—not so
fast!”
Mr. Suau knocked Testament’s hand aside. A spot of regolith exploded into vapour as Testament’s laser fired a metre to the left of a man-shaped shadow.

“You need to make a visual identification before firing. Automatic target recognition is not a good thing when over ninety-nine per cent of the people onplanet are friendly. Turn it off.” Suau adjusted the mode switch on his own weapon deftly and shone a dull red beam into the eyes of the approaching figure, which blinked against the glare, its hands already raised in surrender.