Smallworld (14 page)

Magus brightened. “Ah! That’s the clever part.”

The Anchorite’s every hair bristled. “In what way?”

“I paid nothing. I simply accepted their terms of seventy-five per cent of crop yield for the next fifty years.”

The Anchorite stared. Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus’s eyes turned circles in his head.

“You did
WHAT?”

“Be reasonable, pops, the GreenQueen is certain to increase yields tenfold, and we’ll be richer than a man refused entry to heaven if the HiveMind comes through. I was going to get around to telling you, only—”

“Who were these people?” said the Anchorite.

“Well,” said Magus, his smile finally beginning to evaporate under oxyacetylene glares from his two seniors, “just people, I guess.”

“Just people, as opposed to reputable licensed taxpaying businessmen,” said the Anchorite. “Did they have an office?”

“Yes,” said Magus.

“How much plate glass did this office have? Did it have a central atrium and cool tinkling fountains at all? How attractive was the receptionist?”

“Uh, he wasn’t very,” said Magus. “More heavily-armed than attractive. It was more of a sort of temporary affair, a sort of set of pressurized shacks near the landing field on Farquahar’s World. They had these two machines going cheap, remaindered show stock from a receiver’s closing down sale, slightly damaged, recently superceded by newer models—”

“Let me stop you there,” said the Anchorite. “I believe you have painted a full and colourful picture.”

“I doubt very much whether those shacks will still be there,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus gloomily.

The Anchorite shook his head. “I am actually quite certain they will, for the simple reason that our salesmen have not yet been paid. I also imagine that their retaliation for not being paid will not be encumbered by the pedestrian confines of the law. Send your letter; your father and I will deal with these machines in the interim.”

“How do you propose,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus, “to do that? Those units are designed to work continuously for centuries with one half of them in sunshine fit to melt lead, the other half in shadow fit to freeze mercury. Even your Devil will not raise a scratch on them, I fancy.”

“I’m afraid there is only one solution,” said the Anchorite grimly. “Nuclear annihilation. We will have to rig up a small nuclear device and detonate it directly between the two units.”

“But where would we find such a thing?” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus.

“I’m sure I have one about the place somewhere,” said the Anchorite. “I apologize in advance for the fallout. There are ways to minimize it. It is bound, however, to have an effect on your crop yields, maybe even the health of your family. I suggest you begin digging a shelter deep, deep underground. Set your boys to it.”

Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus nodded like a living statue. Across the room, the door suddenly CLUNKed as if an ear pressed against it with the force of an octopus sucker had suddenly been released.

At that very moment, Shun-Company entered with a tray of Real Tea. Mount Ararat now had its own grove of tea bushes, though Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus suspected Magus had been sold some laboratory’s beta version—the tea tasted sweet, smelt of honey, and contained enough caffeine, nicotine, taurine, and saccharides to make it dangerous to apply to children, possibly even externally. The bushes, and the tea made from them, glowed gently in the dark, and Shun-Company turned down the light slowly to get the full effect. The glass mugs luminesced green as witches’ faces.

“Wife,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus, “we have decided to detonate a nuclear weapon at the end of the South Field. Tell Testament and Apostle to get that radiation shielding Gus brought securely welded into place all round the panic cellar, clear the hatches, and tell the children to move their beds below.”

Shun-Company nodded.

Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus looked at his writing desk and frowned. “Where is my paperweight? The sample of pitchblende ore we got from our first survey?”

Shun-Company’s eyes remained downcast. “I believe the boys were using it for some scientific purpose.”

“Well, as long as they bring it back.” He became suddenly suspicious. “What are you all doing in there? I hear you whispering as if at some great secret. Have I forgotten my birthday again?”

“Are you aware, husband,” said Shun-Company, “that gorillas eat their own excrement?”

Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus’s frown deepened. “No,” he said.

“But only once,” advised Shun-Company.

“I see,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus, in a way that made it quite plain that he did not.

“Mrs. Reborn-in-Jesus,” said the Anchorite gently, “there are no gorillas on Mount Ararat.”

Shun-Company nodded. “They would be terrible pests, and they are unclean animals. It would be necessary to exterminate them.”

With that, she swept from the room, as unobtrusive as a total vacuum. Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus exchanged glances with the Anchorite; both men shrugged.

“Now,” said the Anchorite, “to the business of nuking your own farmland.”

The nuclear device was heavy, and required both men to heave it onto the back of Carries-the-Saviour, Ararat’s only ass, whose every leg bowed under the load. Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus spoke gently to the ass, and reasoned with her, and arrived at a negotiated compromise amenable to both parties whereby Carries-the-Saviour staggered onward under the burden, and Reborn-in-Jesus walked ahead of her holding carrots which, occasionally, he allowed Carries-the-Saviour to catch up to. It had been necessary to use Carries-the-Saviour, despite her advancing years, as the expensive Percheron 500 had broken down, its magnetohydrodynamic motor refusing to fire.

It was a long, dark journey under the stars to the Saddle. Many of the dimmer stars were now perpetually invisible in the firefly glare of incoming GreenQueen workers, constantly headed for their mother unit and the South End. Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus had not asked the Anchorite how he had come to have a fusion weapon lying about a cave that had hitherto seemed to contain little more than a mattress and a spare pair of sandals. The Anchorite had not volunteered the information.

As they cautiously approached the South End Saddle, however, the gleaming, constantly functioning Von Neumann units and the brooding bulk of the
Prodigal Son
were not the only man-made componentsof the landscape. In the dim dawn, as 23 Kranii began to lift its one bleary eye over the chasm walls eastwards, the lightning-flicker of a welding torch could be seen, and the stench of rare earth oxides hung on the wind. Petticoated shapes were moving purposefully in the dark, hefting huge, impossibly valuable ingots of precious stable heavy elements like house bricks, piling them into cairns, welding them into thick unmanageable sheets.

Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus stopped, dumbfounded. Petticoats were supposed to whisk around kitchens and vegetable garden. At the very most, they were supposed to be hitched up over pretty ankles when their owner wished to move any faster than a slow walk. And yet here they were, shamelessly and openly
welding
where all the world could see.

“It would appear,” said the Anchorite, “that someone has stolen a march on us.”

Shun-Company looked up as the group approached.

“Does your nuclear device contain fissionable material?” she said.

The Anchorite shook his head. “Pure fusion.”

Shun-Company nodded. “Then you’ll be safe. Please come this way, and try to step over the nanostreams.”

Shun-Company, and some of the older girls and boys were arranging the rare earth bricks into small cairns. Once arranged, the gaps between the bricks were welded shut by Unity Reborn-in-Jesus, who shyly looked up from beneath her welding helmet as Reborn-in-Jesus senior and the Anchorite approached. The cairn was then an airtight tube of mined metal open at both ends. At the upper end, a heavy electromagnet of the sort used in magnetohydrodynamic tractor motors had been suspended over the top of the cairn, and was holding a small ferrous metal box fast against itself.

“The box contains a quantity of unmined radioactive ore,” said the Anchorite. “One of the initial samples made during the first survey of Mount Ararat eight kilodia ago. Reborn-in-Jesus’s missing paperweight, I am guessing.”

Shun-Company noded. “The nanos swarm in, attracted by the ore—then, when the cairn is full”—a cairn was kicked over further down the slope, and a flat plate made of ingots slapped over both its ends and welded shut—”they are shut inside.”

Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus was dumbfounded. “They are mining machines. Why don’t they tunnel out?”

“Because gorillas,” said Shun-Company, “only eat their own shit once, husband. The nanos mine transuranic ore and return it to the mother processor, which purifies it and outputs it in stackable ingot form. Why do the nanos not then continue to mine the ingots, which contain transuranics by definition?”

Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus considered this.

“I have no idea,” he said.

“Quite simply, each ingot is status-stamped by the ore processor at the molecular level,” said Shun-Company. “Once output, the ingots will never be touched again by the nanominers. They will avoid them; they will not tunnel through them; they can be contained in a container made of them. Magus’s ship is also made of ore originally extracted by nanominer; most metal nowadays is. Hence the nanos also left
Prodigal Son
alone. Had you forgotten, husband, that before you and I joined a damn fool religious order and set out to found a new life in the stars, I completed five years of state training as an agricultural technopollution cleanup engineer?”

Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus’s past life trickled back into him like a cold enema. “The Lyceum. The
Amazonas Reclamada
project. You were working on clearing out areas of genetically modified intensive-biome forest. Invasive, fast-growing, and fire-resistant, created by irresponsible twenty-first-century ecologists. It destroyed an area of prime Amazon cattle land the size of Wales every day.”

Shun-Company nodded. “And you were working on breeding edible strains of black smoker tubeworm that could be farmed thousands of metres down in the Puerto Rico Trench. We met over soyamphetamine coffee substitute in the Homem Bomba bar. It was very romantic.”

The Anchorite kicked at a chunk of regolith. “Do you have a strategy yet for getting rid of the GreenQueen workers?”

“We are working on it.” Shun-Company, eyes still downcast, allowed herself the faintest smile. “If you will excuse me, I urgently need to speak to our working group in that area.”

She swept away. Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus and the Anchorite stood at a loose end with their ass and nuclear weapon.

“I believe,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus, “that we have been made to eat our own shit.”

“Only once,” reproved the Anchorite.

Up above, paired stars stettled on the breeze towards the South Field.

“Two thrusters,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus.

“Means a personal transport,” said the Anchorite. “No freight haulers use that configuration. Too unstable with shifting cargo. Also means,” he said, “that whoever is landing cares very little for the state of your windows and your children’s health. He’s executing landing burn only fourteen kilometres from your house. And he knows that landing in the South End would be bad for him. His treads would sink into the highly nutritious mulch. His venturis would be flooded. Which means,” he said, “that I know exactly who this is.”

Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus nodded. “The folks who sold Gus the machines.”

“Don’t antagonize them. Take them back to the house. I must gather appropriate forces.”

The Anchorite motioned to two nearby children to heave the now redundant nuclear weapon down off the ass’s back. Carries-the-Saviour’s spine bounced triumphantly back up into shape. The hermit nodded a hasty farewell, and ran off into the rocks.

“Good morning. Mr. Hernan Cortes Reborn-in-Jesus, I take it?”

There were only two newcomers. Both were humanoid. Both were dressed appropriately for formal legal representation, arrears collection or, Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus reminded himself uncomfortably, gangland assassination. Their business suits were understated, with the mood-sensitive neckties sales representatives often wore to indicate to clients that their motives were utterly sincere. Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus, whose eldest daughter had recently acquired a dress in the same material, was certain that the ties had been hacked, and were controlled by short-range radio devices about the salesmen’s persons.

One of the newcomers sported a tie that was baby blue, and held an image of a dove in flight. The other, however, had a tie that was flat and barren grey. At first, Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus had the impression the tie was turned off; then he saw variations shifting within the grey.

“He’s artificial,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus.

The dove-tied newcomer nodded. He was blond-haired, blue-eyed, with a perfect line of glacially white teeth.

“You’re artificial too,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus.

“Yes. He robotic, I genetically engineered human. We are sometimes called Made.” The smile widened. “Is that a problem?”

Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus frowned. “Weren’t we supposed to have fought a war against you? Wipe you out?”

“Indeed.” The newcomer shrugged almost apologetically. “And yet here we are. Are you aware of the hire purchase agreement which your son signed on your behalf?”

“I have recently become party to it, yes.”

The newcomer bowed gracefully. “We have come to collect our first installment. I am Mr. Columbo; this is Mr. Grausam.” Mr. Grausam’s face was astonishingly lifelike; his skin was even bothering to sweat in the mid-afternoon heat. In colour, he was a livid mulatto, zombie-coloured, the colour a dangerous man became just before he struck. Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus wondered whether this was a deliberate design feature. Neither man, he noticed, appeared armed. This did not encourage him.

“I feel,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus, “we had better discuss this at the house. We have encountered operational difficulties with your product.”

Mr. Columbo extended a hand. “By all means,” he said, “let us discuss.”

As Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus walked into town leading his ass on a rope, a small metallic green fly buzzed into his ear and spoke to him.