“If this continues,” he said, “I will be unable to approve Mount Ararat as an educational centre for the young. Your children will be required to attend a state school on Celadon, Verdastelo Three, New New Earth, or Farquahar’s World.”
Shun-Company’s eyes narrowed. “Those schools incorporate electric shock discipline, chemical aversion therapy, and subliminal messaging.”
“Granted,” nodded the Pastor, “but it is not all good. Regardless of the excellent disciplinary start in life such an institution would give your children, they would be separated from you. There would be emotional upheaval. This is normally not a step which I would take except in cases of delinquency. But if this continued counter-normal behaviour forces me to that pass—” he shrugged his shoulders.
“And this is,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus, wringing his hands nervously, “all simply because of a few Christmas decorations?”
“The decimalization of time,” said the Pastor, “is one of the State’s great achievements. My remit is to introduce it throughout the education system, from cradle to necro-waste recycling pod. This adherence to an outmoded three-hundred-and-sixty-five-day solar sidereal festival only chains us to the past, to a world to which most of us no longer belong! For this reason, I have ordered the children to take down all Christmas decorations both in the schoolrooms and the wider settlement.”
“Are earthbound people still allowed to celebrate Christmas?” said Shun-Company.
The Pastor threw his arms wide. “You can still celebrate Christmas! At its new official frequency, which is now once per kilodia.”
“That puts the next occurrence of Christmas in,” Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus calculated momentarily, “about two years’ time.”
“I’m sorry?” said the Pastor, capping his hand to his ear as if deaf.
Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus stared at the Pastor as if at a new and interesting variety of field pest. “Uh, that would be seven hundred dia.”
“That’s better,” beamed the Pastor. “And the State realizes this! It is recognized that tiny tots are traumatized when a marvellous and magical festival is removed from them. It is for this reason that the State has created Leader Day, an ad hoc festival celebrating the birth of our great First Citizen, and set me to roaming the stars with my sack of Leader Day presents like a new improved decimal Santa Claus.” He leaned close in his chair and took Shun-Company’s hands, gazing earnestly into her eyes. “Mrs. R-in-J, I am the wind of progress. Let my wind blow through the cobwebs of this silly little house, and let it be breathed in deeply. Or,” he said, straightening up and growing severe once more, “that mighty wind may blow Ararat’s children far away from here.”
“So if we get rid of the Christmas decorations,” said Shun-Company, “you’ll consider passing Mount Ararat as an educational establishment.”
“The children are not adequately connecting with the idea of Leader Day,” beamed the Pastor. “They are getting distracted. But if we took away a few angels, stars and baubles—”
“They will be removed,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus. Shun-Company shot him a look of alarm; he shook his head. “Removal of a festival where we hand out presents doesn’t mean we stop worshipping God, and I personally choose to worship God by providing for my children’s education.”
The Pastor raised a finger. “Ah, but! There must also be no Church services on that date, no Holy Communion, no Advent, no Twelfth Night, no Christingle, no Kris Kringle.”
Fault lines twisted in Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus’s face, yet he said nothing.
Shun-Company put in: “And this would mean you’d be back in the schoolhouse tomorrow, would it?”
The Pastor shook his head, smiling in grim satisfaction. “Alas, no. I am currently observing the Sabbath, and will be leaving for my quarters on my ship shortly. However, the children will be welcome in school at three decidia tomorrow.”
“That’s in the middle of the night,” observed Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus.
“Only on Ararat, Mr. R-in-J, only on Ararat! We must not be bound by the sidereal periods of the various dungballs on which we tumble across the void! And Three Decidia is the State handbook prescribed beginning of the school day.”
“Which corresponds nicely to the rotational period of New Earth at the Capital meridian,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus. “The children have chores to do, Mr. Mulchrone, and I have crops to bring in. How is that going to happen if everyone’s living in the hours of darkness?”
“Electric light, dear sir! Electric light! It’s been in existence for some centuries, you know!”
“I need all the light I have for my crops. Power is at a premium here—”
Shun-Company kicked her husband violently under the table. “The children will be ready for you at three decidia tomorrow,” she said.
The Pastor smiled serenely, rose to his feet, and departed.
Shun-Company looked across at Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus.
“What do you think we should do?” she said.
Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus folded his arms in disgruntlement.
“What I think we should do with him,” he said, “is a sin to name.”
Night was falling, and the shadows growing longer. At Third Landing, however, the process of nightfall could take up half the day.
As the Pastor left the Reborn-in-Jesus house, a stately structure of black clapboard deceptively surrounding a core of airtight steel, a gardener tipped a cap to him from the house across the street, and the Pastor bowed graciously in reply. The gardener, moving with arthritically painful slowness, returned its attention to cutting back a vigorous tree fern in the crook of the house’s porch. Once the Pastor was out of range, however, it finished off the fern in a few rapid clips, too fast for the eye to see, and started work on the red engineered privet framing the fern on either side, this time without the assistance of clippers.
“DEVIL! DEVIL! COME, MEPHOSTOPHILIS!”
The gardener paused in the act of dismembering the hedge, its angstrom-thick fingernails de-blurring into visibility. Children were nearby. Incautious rapid movement might lop off a tiny limb.
The Devil turned, its gardening hat aslant on its horns, wearing the special gardening face the children had made it out of papier mâché. There were four children. One of them, a black-haired girl, came forward.
“Devil! Your face is loose. If anyone sees you in such a state they’ll know you’re no old gardener but a partially self-aware killing machine. How do you get into such a mess. I’ll fix it.”
She reached up behind the Devil’s purely ornamental ears and fiddled with the string that held the face in place. Meanwhile, other children circled round behind the Devil, knocking on its tin tubes of legs, playing with its tail.
A boy jumped on the Devil’s back. “PLAY PIGGYBACK FOR ME, DEVIL!” The Devil only just managed to retract its claws and catch him in time. The boy began yelling incoherent sentences about riding cock horses to Banbury cross, and at that moment, a small hand slipped a jack into a socket and the Devil stood silent, staring at the world.
The children wriggled free and stepped back to a safe distance.
“How long will it take to take?” said Be-Not-Near-Unto-Man-in-thy-Time-of-Uncleanness.
“Should happen pretty much instantly,” said Beguiled.
“Beguiled,” said Uncleanness, “I’m afraid.”
“I’m more afraid than you are,” said Beguiled. “It’s me in there, and I know how bad I am.” She slipped her hand into her foster-sister’s.
The Devil was turning its hands over, examining them minutely, as if surprised that it was made of metal. The Personality Analogue was now taped firmly to its right shoulder.
“It shouldn’t be surprised,” said Beguiled. “I only made the imprint an hour ago. It knows the plan. It should know exactly what body it’s in.”
The robot’s head jerked upwards. A long clawed finger pointed out Beguiled.
“YOU,” it said. “WHAT LANGUAGE DO YOU SPEAK?” It recoiled. “WHAT LANGUAGE AM I
SPEAKING? THIS IS NOT GREEK.”
“What’s it saying, Beguiled?” said Uncleanness. “Why is it talking all old?”
“Uh, Beguiled,” said Pitch-Not-Thy-Tent-Towards-Sodom, shuffling through a stack of imprint slivers, “I’ve still got the imprint you made of yourself right here.”
“Ohhh shit,” said Beguiled.
“WHERE IS THIS PLACE? IS THIS THE DREAD DOMAIN OF HADES? WHAT AM I BECOME? I, WHO WAS ONCE ACCOUNTED BEAUTIFUL?” The robot, its voice like that of a grown woman, deep and aristocratic, cast about to right and left like a questing hound.
“It must be one of the novelty imprints,” said Beguiled. “One of the fancy ones the man gave us for free. Sodom, you idiot.”
“They’re not labelled clearly,” whined Sodom. “And yours isn’t labelled at all.”
“Damn right it ain’t, if Uncle Anchorite gets hold of it I’m one dead niece.” Beguiled thought further on the matter. “We are all dead persons.”
The robot turned and sprinted to the edge of the Pond, leaving scars in the earth where its feet had moved in a blur. It dropped like a falling guillotine blade onto the bank, staring down with whatever senses it possessed into the ripples.
“I HAVE NO REFLECTION,” it mourned. “I AM A SHADE.”
“No,” said Uncleanness, coming up behind it gently. “It’s just that you can only see by radar.”
“Let’s see,” said Beguiled, taking the stack of imprint jiggers from Sodom. “What did he give us for free? Uh, ma’am? Are you Paris?”
The robot turned like a whirlwind. “NO I AM NOT PARIS! AND IF THIS IS HELL, YOU ARE AS DEAD AS I, AND JOKING ILL BECOMES THE DAMNED! HAVE YOU SEEN PARIS? I DEMAND THAT YOU TAKE ME TO HIM!”
Beguiled pulled out a data sliver. “Uh, I have Paris right here, ma’am.”
The robot slammed a claw into the data pack, sending it scattering into the dirt. Beguiled yelped and sucked her finger, in which an inch-long gash had opened. “IDIOT GIRL! I WOULD KILL YOU WERE YOU PROPERLY ALIVE! WHERE IS MY HUSBAND!”
“We don’t know who your husband is!” screeched Uncleanness, now in tears. Sodom moved himself in front of his foster-sister. “Ma’am, if you will simply tell us who your husband is, we will gladly attempt to find him for you—”
The claw moved again, too rapidly to react to. Beguiled did not see a wound open in Sodom, but saw him slowly crumple, hugging his chest.
“KNEEL BEFORE ME, EVEN IN HELL!” shrieked the creature. “I AM THE CONSORT OF A KING! I, WHO AM THE GIFT TO MANKIND OF APHRODITE!”
“I’m pretty sure she is Paris Hilton,” said Judge-Not-Lest-Thou-Also-Be-Judged. “We covered her in the History of the Moral Collapse.”
“IS TROY THEN FALLEN?” said the creature. “SO BE IT! THEN I WILL REIGN IN HELL! FOR HALF THE YEAR HELL HAS NO QUEEN. I WILL SIT BY HADES’ SIDE ALL SUMMER, AND WHEN PERSEPHONE RETURNS IN THE AUTUMN SHE WILL FIND HER KING APT TO OVERLOOK THE ENTIRE POMEGRANATE.” The robot turned its eyeless gaze on Beguiled. “YOU, CHILD! WHERE IS HE WHO REIGNS HERE?”
Beguiled lowered her eyes and curtseyed decorously.
“I will give you accurate directions, Your Majesty. I am sure he will be most glad to see you.”
Mr. Mountbanks was impatient. It had been a long time since he had eaten, drunk or slept. The gentleman who had met him on the road had claimed to have a ship at the field—possibly the small government runabout he’d seen in the parking area when he’d disembarked. The gentleman, wearing a priest’s dog collar, had promised him food, drink and rest in return for what he’d described as ‘the simple pleasure of his company’. Mr. Mountbanks had suspected from the glint in the gentleman’s eye that this simple pleasure might become complicated, but for now food was food, and a bed a bed.
The gentleman’s rover was in reasonable condition, though poorly shielded against fines; the interior smelled like wet rust. The chassis and windows all bore Bureau of Safety shields of approval, so he was safer from cosmic radiation than the barefoot urchins scampering about Third Landing’s handful of streets all about the car. There was even an in-rover entertainment centre which, when Mr. Mountbanks had activated it, had intoned “BREATHE IN; BREATHE OUT. STAY ROOTED AS A TREE. YOU ARE AS A MOUNTAIN, IMMOVABLE. YOUR WILL WILL PREVAIL.” The car’s cargo compartment was packed with what the gentleman had described as ‘Leader Day presents’—miniscule holographic snowstorms of Leader Vos and Leader Vos’s husband, children and elderly labrador waving from Leader Vos’s window. The snowstorms seemed to be mutually interactive; in two of the globes which had accidentally touched glass, the Leader in one globe was explaining her theory of political dialectic to the Leader in the other, who was nodding sagely.
The gentleman had said he had a momentary discussion to pursue with the inhabitants of the house, who might conceivably be the parents of the juvenile delinquent horrors he’d met on the road earlier. So far the momentary discussion had lasted an hour. Mr. Mountbanks wondered if the rover had an onboard urine recycling facility, and if anyone would notice him plugging himself into the dashboard.
With the local sun on his back, not warm in itself, but adding warmth to the already overheated interior of the rover, Mr. Mountbanks dozed.
He was awoken by the horrible death of the gentleman who had met him on the road.
The car’s collision alarm sounded violently, shaking him out of wild dreams of avarice. Something was being slammed repeatedly against the headlight cowling. It was when the wiper blades, factory set to automatic start, began painstakingly removing large amounts of blood from the windscreen that Mr. Mountbanks sat up in alarm. A glittering isoceles blade rose in the air, stabbing repeatedly down at a squirming gurgling figure slumped against the front of the car.
The figure’s face was that of his host.
Mr. Mountbanks sensibly elected to remain in the car. Close to his right hand was a large, obvious control marked LOCKING. He slammed the heel of his palm down on it and heard the welcome clunk of the car’s single airlock dogging shut.
The figure holding the blade towered over the car. Mr. Mountbanks had not believed an unmodified human being could grow so large. Surely, however, even so huge a creature could not easily punch through a Bureau-of-Safety-approved windshield?
It was wearing a red velvet cap trimmed with white fur. The cap did not fit it.
It was also rummaging in the priest’s pockets. As the priest struggled feebly, thinking himself under renewed assault, the attacker irritably finished him off, twisting his neck nonchalantly back on itself. Then, he triumphantly fished out a single octagonal key and turned his attention undividedly on Mr. Mountbanks.
Although Mr. Mountbanks was inside the rover, he realized he did not have a key to start it. Was there a spare inside the vehicle? He searched frantically through the usual obvious places—under the dead man’s handle, on top of the HUD projector pod—but found nothing. And the airlock door was opening.
Mr. Mountbanks scrabbled frantically and belatedly for the release on the four-point safety belt, only to feel dizzy and lightheaded as blood started pouring unaccountably from his neck. The windscreen wipers failed dismally to remove it from the glass; he felt the curious sensation of his own head turning through one hundred and eighty degrees, heard the car’s media system enjoining him to Breathe In, Breathe Out, and Stay Rooted As A Tree, and then he neither heard nor felt anything ever again.
The rover arrowed into the distance at the head of a plume of fines. Testament stood facing his father, mother, and sister and Mr. Suau across two comprehensively dead bodies.
“Well,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus, “at least we don’t have to worry about how to celebrate Christmas now.”
“Hernan!” reproved his wife.
“I only meant to say it’s an ill wind. Perhaps he ran into Saint Nicholas.”
“No saint of any god did that,” said Mrs. Reborn-in-Jesus, “and I can hardly believe any man did either. The poor men’s necks are snapped completely. The Educational Uniformity Bureau
will play merry hell. You know how government departments hate it when their men are sent here and die mysteriously.”
“Who is the other one?” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus. “I don’t recognize him. Could there have been another escape from the Penitentiary? It let three of its prisoners out last year, after all.”
“But they all escaped on Mr. Armitage’s ship,” said Mrs. Reborn-in-Jesus, as if begging her family to agree with her.
“The Anchorite did for one of them,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus. “’Postle told us as much, and the hermit hasn’t denied it.”
“There were three escapees,” said Testament. “The Warden was looking for all three for weeks. And the sort of folk who get lodged in government penitentiaries don’t mix well. The odds against two of them working together to escape are long.”
“You think there’s another still at large,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus.
“Someone’s been living in berth four of Render Unto Caesar. For quite a while.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” said Mrs. Reborn-in-Jesus, shocked.
Testament shrugged. “I figured it was one of the young uns. I caught ’em in the shuttle not two days ago, playing some damn fool game.” He was retracing dusty footprints across the way—very large footprints, leading inexorably out from the churned and blooded soil near where the EVA rover had stood, back to the dipping pen.
“Oh, lord,” he said, standing still in shock. “Oh my.”
“What is it, Testament?”
“Oh, you noddy, you prize-winning plank. I tracked him to the dipping shed here, and thought that just because he’d turned the hose on he’d swilled himself down and run away with half his skin dissolving. I remember thinking at the time no normal human being would ever do such a thing, and I was right, because he didn’t. He just gulled me into thinking he had. He must have been hanging there in the dark above me in the dipping shed right there and then. Oh, law, but he’s clever. He’s been in there hidden among us a whole day.”
Mrs. Reborn-in-Jesus ate her fist in fright. Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus comforted her with a hand.