“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 Cortès 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.
“They have no interest in your long-term crop yields. They operate from a temporary office, they turn up immediately to demand payment, and above all, if the Bureau of State Wellbeing realizes they have been reconditioning Von Neumann machines for sale on the open market, they will be removed from circulation to have their commercial acumen surgically extracted and replaced by more important dribbling and bed-soiling skills—”
“SO, YOU’RE ARTIFICIAL,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus loudly. “DOES THE LAW APPROVE OF THAT?”
“That is irrelevant to the matter under consideration,” said Mr. Columbo. “Why are you speaking so loudly?”
“I have slight deafness,” lied Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus, “from the machines.”
The houses of Third Landing, mostly empty, were looming into sight now, surrounded by swirling propellant slag from Mr. Columbo and Mr. Grausam’s engines.
“Easy,” said the fly in Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus’s ear. “There is no radio traffic going on around Mr. Columbo. That tie really is that colour. Mr. Columbo was not genetically engineered for playing well with others. He’s most likely ex-military, his brain most likely not wired the same way yours is. If he feels like making a point by flaying one of your kids’ faces off, he’ll do it. Treat him gently. I’ll be there directly.”
“We have little in the way of a crop right now,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus.
“I can see,” said Mr. Columbo, running his hand through an anaemic stand of wheat. It had been an experimental batch only, but Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus frowned as the dust-dry stems disintegrated at the Made man’s touch.
Luckily, there were few children in Main Street. He had assumed Shun-Company had put them all down in the panic cellar, but she had evidently set them to work dealing with the nanominers. Only little Measure-of-Barley ran out from the goat shelter.
“Daddy! Are these the men Uncle Anchorite’s going to kill?”
She realized her error and clapped her hand to her mouth suddenly. By that time, however, Mr. Columbo had dropped to a crouch in the dust, easily, still smiling, making himself smaller, less of a threat to the child. His tie was still blue; it still had a dove on it.
“No, honey,” said Mr. Columbo. “Your Uncle Anchorite is a bad man to say such wicked things. Where would Uncle Anchorite be right now?” Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus noticed that Grausam was scanning the empty buildings microscopically, his head turning like an owl’s.
Measure-of-Barley looked from Mr. Columbo to her father.
“Don’t know,” she said in a small voice.
“Are you sure?” said Mr. Columbo; and Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus felt a gentle pressure in his leg as Columbo broke his femur with a sly side kick. He collapsed into the dust, amazed at how easy it had been; he felt a gentle pressure on his cheek, smelt real shoeleather.
“Are you sure?” repeated Mr. Columbo.
This only had the effect of making Measure-of-Barley scream, shrilly enough for Mr. Columbo to clap his hands to his ears.
“Their hearing range is wider than ours,” buzzed an informative voice in his ear. “Maybe that wasn’t an entirely positive thing to engineer into them. Anything that’ll make a dog shake his head will probably make them do it too.”
The little girl did not stop screaming. In her current state, she probably represented a minor obstacle to the Made men’s aims in town.
Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus said: “Measure, please stop screaming.”
Mercifully, the screaming stopped, to be replaced by simple whimpering.
“Measure,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus through a mouthful of grit, “tell the nice gentlemen where Uncle Anchorite is.”
Measure shook her head, sobbing. “Don’t know. Don’t know.” Luckily, she didn’t follow this with he went out of town with you.
“I am sorry for the unpleasantness,” said Mr. Columbo, “but you only hurt yourself. Yourself,” he added, taking hold of Measure-of-Barley’s hand, “and the ones you love. You must learn to love yourself.” He grabbed Reborn-in-Jesus’s collar and dragged him, seventy kilos of dead weight, through the dust up the main street, without apparent effort. This time, Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus screamed as the injury in his leg twisted undern
eath him.
“Which house should we enter?” said Mr. Columbo.
“Blue door,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus weakly. His leg felt wet. He wondered whether it was blood or urine. The front door of the house was unlocked. His fracture thumped on the threshold. Then his head thumped into the alloy of the ground floor as he was dropped unceremoniously.
“You,” said the Made Man’s voice in shock.
“I see you recognize me,” said what might have been the Anchorite’s voice—a more educated version of it than Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus was used to. “I imagine it was instilled in your basic programming, in much the same way as human beings instinctively recognize and avoid venomous snakes and spiders.”
“I wasn’t aware,” said Mr. Columbo. Reborn-in-Jesus was certain he recognized abject terror.
“Now you are,” said the Anchorite.
“Hello, Uncle Anchorite,” said Measure-of-Barley, who knew a shift in the balance of power when she saw it.
“Your associate,” said Anchorite, “is circling round the back of the building in hopes to catch me unawares.”
There was a sudden soft POP followed by a loud bang, a terrific flash that left silhouettes of all the doors and windows on the insides of Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus’ eyelids, and a smell of burnt copper and polymers. Something heavy hit the regolith at the side of the house.
“Watch the birdy,” said the Anchorite.
Mr. Columbo moved Measure closer to him as a shield.
“You know that won’t do any good,” said the Anchorite. “It’s been tried before.”
Mr. Columbo gently let Measure go.
“What will do any good?” said Mr. Columbo. Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus, looking up, saw that Mr. Columbo’s necktie had turned white, and that his dove had mutated into a swan. The swan, in a tiny fractal animation, appeared to be singing against a snowspattered sky.
“Nothing,” said the Anchorite.
Mr. Columbo’s hand moved out for the child again, quick as a snake. Before it could make contact, it sizzled off at the wrist in mid-air. Columbo neither yelled nor collapsed, however, but simply converted his forward momentum into a sideways lurch towards the sound of the Anchorite’s voice. Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus had to admire the professionalism of the man. Columbo collapsed, however, onto the carpet, with both legs shot off at the knee. As Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus watched, further awful things happened to Mr. Columbus’s body, culminating with several well-placed shots to the spine and head. All through the process, events seemed to be surrounded by a soft white glow. Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus wondered whether this was death creeping up his optic nerve.