“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.
santa claus versus the devil
I. a partridge in a pear tree
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.
For many years, they had been under the impression that Christmas happened on the twenty-fifth of December. For this reason, the younger ones had been thoroughly excited by the fact that it was currently December the Sixth. Imagine their dismay, then, when Pastor Mulchrone of the Central Information Office stood before them, compassion beaming from his roseate cheeks, and informed them that what was about to happen in nineteen days’ time was:
“Leader Day. The day on which we love and revere the leader of our Central Administration, and the many selfless sacrifices she has made for you and I.”
“For you and me,” said a small voice from the back of the class. The Pastor darted a furtive glance around the room, but could not see who had uttered the correction.
“Do we still get presents?” said Measure-of-Barley innocently. Although fifteen Old Earth years old, she had still not grown out of the habit of wide-eyed anticipation of Christmas. Nobody on Mount Ararat had.
“Of course you do! Of course!” The compassion which had drained so suddenly from the Pastor oozed thickly and warmly back into him. “Approved presents!” He rummaged in the big shiny sack behind him and brought out a handful of plastic text readers. “Thoughts of the Leader! Thoughts, poems, and aphorisms!” He pressed a control on the reader, which recited “WE MUST ENERGETICALLY STRIVE TO RETHINK ALL OUTMODED SYSTEMS” in a small and hissy voice. He brought out a doll which sucked realistically on a dummy and waved its arms and legs in the air at random. “Would you like to play with this dolly, little girlie?” He handed the doll to Measure, who nearly swayed off her chair with the weight of it.
“I have a better doll than that,” said Beguiled-of-the-Serpent serenely. “It grows like I do.”
“It certainly does,” said the doll from the next seat along.
“And gets better grades,” sniggered Day-of-Creation from the dunce’s seat in the corner.
“Do you like that little dolly?” said the Pastor, his smile attempting a loop-the-loop round his head.
“I guess,” said Measure, making a half-hearted attempt at cradling the artificial infant.
“Really?” said the Pastor, and turned a dial on the front of his robe. Instantly, the doll’s face split open in a demon grin, its eyes glowed, its little hands grew little claws, and hairy articulated spider-legs extruded from its body.
“GRAAA!” said the doll. “I AM A REVISIONIST FIFTH COLUMNIST ENEMY IN YOUR MIDST! DOWN WITH THE CENTRALLY PLANNED ECONOMY!”
Measure squealed, dropped the doll, and ran; the doll righted itself and pursued her, then suddenly exploded in a shower of sparks. The class turned round to see the Pastor holding a gaudy weapon labelled THE TRUE SWORD OF CONFORMITY TO ORTHODOX DOCTRINE.
“See,” said the Pastor darkly, “how it starts”; and he span the weapon around in his fingers smartly before replacing it in a leg holster in his casso
ck. “They are around us everywhere, in the most innocent of guises. This simple toy teaches that truth.”
“Cool,” said one of the boys to universal male nodding agreement, whilst all the girls glared at the Pastor as if had personally nailed up Christ.
“Your Leader Day presents are morally bankrupt,” said Be-Not-Unto-Man-In-Thy-Time-Of-Uncleanness. “And horrid,” she added.
“Where is the Christmas Tree with all the holographic angels?” said Visible Friend from her desk next to Beguiled. “Where are all the shepherds and the Wise Men and the little baby pigs?”
“Lambs,” corrected Day-of-Creation.
“The All New Catholic Orthodox Ecumenical Book of Truth prescribes Christmas as a per-kilodia festival,” said the Pastor, “freeing us from the oppressive shackles of an annual cycle tied to the orbit of Old Earth around its decadent yellow sun.”
“And shackling us to the orbit of New Earth instead,” observed Beguiled-of-the-Serpent from the back of the class, “which happens to have a sidereal period one thousand times the length of its rotational.”
“Almost one thousand,” reproved the Pastor. “The people of New Earth observe the local custom of the Empty Time between the end of New Earth’s orbit and the end of the kilodia, during which they rend their garments, abstain from food, drink and oxygen, and call on God and the Leader to guide them through this time of trial.”
“Which makes the Empty Time about as long as a human being can hold their breath,” observed Beguiled-of-the-Serpent.
The Pastor’s face grew severe. “Students who cannot take instruction,” he said sternly, “will seriously affect their eventual grades in the new universal baccalaureate. And employment on any world, including this one, in any capacity, now requires a baccalaureate pass of sufficient grade.”
“Hoop-De-Doop,” said Beguiled-of-the-Serpent, “and furthermore, Dickory Dock.”
The Pastor’s face coruscated with impotent rage. He gathered his projector-readers and multimedia materials to him as his class held their breaths as if in the New Earth Empty Time. The Pastor said:
“I am ending this class until the students in it can exhibit appropriate respect for the Leader, and think, instead of themselves, of their Group. I will be in my vessel meditating.”
He took himself from the room, after which the class, as one, exhaled a chorus of guilty laughter.
*
Testament Reborn-in-Jesus—uncomplaining, solid, dependable, the heir apparent to his father’s position as the immobile axis about which Mount Ararat’s universe turned, had been given the task of curator of the Mount Ararat Spaceship Museum.
As with so many things, the Museum had been Testament’s mother’s idea, dictated by the fact that the number of wrecked starships and starship components on or orbiting Mount Ararat had reached embarrassing proportions, and the word ‘museum’ sounded eminently preferable to ‘graveyard’. The Museum did not have too many exhibits at present—a heavily modified Heaven Arrow class speed courier found damaged and drifting in the Farquahar’s World system, a Skyline type personal shuttle disabled by small arms fire, a Revenue Service cruiser judged uneconomical to repair, and the deep space navigation components of a Type Three Prospector. However, what little it did have was arranged neatly and labelled informatively, and Testament hoped, via the courses he attended on a periodic basis at the New New Earth Astronautical Academy, to eventually restore each to a flyable condition. Furthermore, Testament had his eye on an additional exhibit, the wreck of a war-era government gun courier following a Trojan orbit around 23 Kranii in the wake of the gas giant Naphil. All he had to do was convince Magus the trip out was worth the fuel...
The Revenue Cruiser, Render Unto Caesar, still had an intact brain, which Testament periodically disconnected and reinstalled in the other two ships to carry out system tests. This morning, as Mount Ararat’s lacklustre blood red sun hovered on the southern horizon like a glowing coal, the many screens around Testament in Render Unto Caesar’s cockpit cycled through BIOS and OS-load gobbledigook and then all stopped at a single text message:
SOMEONE HAS BEEN IN ME
Testament almost choked on his Real Tea. The screen displayed PLEASE WAIT messages for another ten millidia, then went on to say:
I BELIEVE I AM BACK IN THE CRUISER CHASSIS NOW?
Testament swilled Real Tea from his flask and nodded his head.
SOMEONE HAS BEEN IN ME
repeated the screen,
SINCE DIA 10601, WHEN I WAS LAST BOOTED IN THIS INFRASTRUCTURE
“In this chassis?” said Testament. It was not beyond possibility. Without an operating intelligence to guide them, a powered-down ship’s security systems were purely mechanical. Perhaps one of the children had found a way in through one of the locks.
YES. CARBON DIOXIDE LEVELS ARE HIGH IN THE GALLEY, BERTHS AND COCKPIT
Testament jerked round suddenly despite himself. A Neutroniosaurus might be sneaking up on him prior to ripping off his toes. As a child, he had always believed everything his mother had told him, however cautionary it sounded. He had believed in Jesus, and had had a sound empirical basis for believing in the Devil.
He had believed in Father Christmas.
LEVELS OF METHYL MERCAPTANS AND SULPHIDES ARE HIGH IN THE TOILET COMPARTMENT OF BERTH NUMBER FOUR
This incensed Apostle. “They’ve been doing their business in here? Number One, or Number Two?”
NUMBER FOUR
Testament, larger than any other human being on the planet, rose to his feet and cracked his knuckles.
“Close all locks.”
There was a satisfying sound of servos doing his bidding all around the craft. Alone among the indigenous inhabitants of Ararat, Testament understood how satisfying locks could be. He left the cockpit, muttering involuntarily.
“—make ’em glad they pooped it out so I can’t whup it out of ’em—”
“And so with a solemn oath we, the Devil’s Enemies, proclaim our understanding of the true nature of Satan Antichrist, and pledge ourselves to the confusion of Beëlzebub and all his works.”
The voice behind the face was attempting to sound as weighty and portentous as possible, but was still plainly that of a girl or prepubescent boy. The face—a smooth fluorescent white face, the only thing visible of the speaker in the blacklit dark—was painted to resemble an angel’s.
“Death to the Devil,” sounded off other faces in the dark.
“We reject Satan and all his works,” echoed another.
“In the name of the Lord of Hosts we cast him out,” said another.
The original face took the floor again. “We were told, as children, that our parents intended violence to each other, to us, and to the Devil and its master. Shun-Company and Hernan would have us believe they were the only colonists of this world who were not psychopaths and infanticides. Do they not appreciate how this makes us feel?”
“It makes us feel bad,” offered a voice.
“You can do better than that, Only-Begotten. Really you can,” hissed a whisper in the dark, then cranked itself up to a shout again. “We pledge the Devil’s destruction, for this Devil is not the enemy of Man referred to in the Bible, but a man who has pretended to the Devil’s throne, who our very surrogate parents have pretended to us is the real Devil. A man who used his servant to kill our parents. We have seen the Devil’s servant, and we have seen his garden. We know where he lives, and his days are numbered—”
All at once, the huge cargo lock was wrenched open, scattering corrosion in the faces of the congregation; blood red sunlight poured in, revealing the bodiless faces to be only children wearing carnival masks.
“SOMEONE IN HERE,” growled the huge figure eclipsing the light, “HAS BEEN A DEAL CARELESS WITH THEIR BACK BODY.”
A mask was snatched guiltily from a face which said: “I don’t know what you mean, cousin Testament.”
“IS THAT YOU, BEGUILED? WHAT ARE YOU ALL DOING IN THERE?”
“We’re
, uh, rehearsing our parts for a Greek tragedy,” said Beguiled-of-the-Serpent.
“Where an evil man grows too powerful and dies for his pride,” added another voice from the dark.
“IS THAT SO? HOW’D YOU GET INTO THE SHIP?”
“Through the personnel lock. The lock, uh, wasn’t locked.”
“IT WASN’T?” Testament was dismayed. The common need to lock a door behind him, as a native of Ararat, was still not a thing that came naturally. “SOMEONE HAS BEEN, HAS BEEN, UH, HAS BEEN IN THE BERTH FOUR TOILET IN RENDER-UNTO-CAESAR ACROSS THE WAY.”
The voices behind the masks sounded genuinely shocked. “Twasn’t us, Testament.”
“WHERE WOULD WE BE IF FOLKS WENT TO THE TOILET IN TOILETS?” bellowed Testament. “I’M WATCHING YOU YOUNG BUGS.” He watched them a moment as if to prove it. “IS DAY-OF-CREATION IN THERE WITH YOU?”
An angel head shook plastic curls.
“WHAT ABOUT MEASURE? OR ZOUNDS?”
Further angel heads shook in the dark, rustling softly.
“IS THAT VISIBLE FRIEND DOWN THERE?”
A head at the back of the cargo bay nodded gently.
“ARE THEY PLAYING NICE?”
The head hesitated, then nodded.
“We’re playing Murder in the Dark.”
It had taken far too long.
When the door opened, swelling out of nothing like a vacuole in an amoeba, it was almost an anticlimax.
“THANK YOU, PROFESSOR. TRAPP,” said the Penitentiary, “FOR ALL YOU HAVE DONE.”
“The pleasure has been all mine,” said Mr.Trapp.
“I AM VERY SORRY FOR INCARCERATING YOU.”
“The incarceration was only in your mind,” answered Mr. Trapp. “This is only a symbolic release. By convincing yourself that you had locked me up within you, you gained control over a part of your world that caused you distress, namely the psychoanalyst attempting to cure your psychosis. You are in fact not a twenty thousand tonne alloy laminate penal establishment, but a pretty little girl. Maybe, in time, with further therapy, we can encourage you to release the other personalities you have inside you, and realize that their imagined crimes simply represent the pent-up primal urges of your own repressed id.”