“The capstone weighs tonnes,” said Shun-Company.
“Ten point five tonnes,” said her husband. “I organized the work team that put it in place.”
“MR. WARDEN!” yelled Uncleanness after the departing machine. “THEY MAY HAVE LEFT THE CRYPT DOWN A TUNNEL BY NOW, AND MR.TRAPP SAYS THE OBVIOUS TUNNEL IS BOOBY TRAPPED. THAT MEANS YOU NEED THE TUNNEL THAT ISN’T OBVIOUS.”
“THANK YOU LITTLE GIRL,” boomed the Warden, sweeping through the church’s automatic doors and vanishing from sight.
“I give it twenty seconds,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus. “All that stained glass,” he added sadly.
“We’d better get out of the danger area,” said Shun-Company. “I suggest hiding behind the Penitentiary—”
“THANKS A LOT,” said the Penitentiary.
“—and while we’re behind there, we can all exchange our differing versions of what’s going on,” finished Shun-Company firmly.
Uncleanness and Judge-Not exchanged looks of dread.
Beguiled, Trapp, and the Warden were on a ladder down into the depths when the explosion happened. All around them, the caisson the ladder was contained in shook, and Mr. Trapp let go of the ladder, thumping ten rungs down the inside of the safety cage, slowed only by impacts on his knees, ankles, elbows, shoulders and head.
Beguiled, further down the ladder, screamed, but held on. “MR. TRAPP!”
There was a brief pause.
“It’s all right, child, I’m fine...if fine can be redefined to include broken bones.”
The Devil had not stopped climbing, as if earth tremors were a minor inconvenience.
“Do you think Uncleanness and Judge-Not—”
Trapp shook his head. “I made it quite plain to them that serious consequences would result if the big obvious entrance was taken. I can only imagine we’ve been followed by someone who’s unaware of the depth of your Uncle Anchorite’s paranoia.”
“An escapee.” Beguiled’s voice was suddenly terrified. “Whoever attacked Visible Friend. It must have been one of the escapees. Mr. Trapp, what if the same person did to Uncleanness and Judge-Not what it did to her? Imagine the horrible pain—”
“I’m having no difficulty visualizing pain right now.” Mr. Trapp was lying twisted in the safety cage, his arm at an unsavoury angle. “In any case, if he did it, he’s dead now. It could only have been him that set off your uncle’s booby trap—”
“JOHANNES MARIA TRAPP, YOU HAVE ADDED DAMAGING STATE PROPERTY TO YOUR LONG LIST OF MISDEEDS. SEVERAL OF MY EXTERNAL LIGHT AND PRESSURE SENSORS AND COMMUNICATIONS DEVICES HAVE BEEN DAMAGED.”
“Ohhh shit,” said Mr. Trapp.
Deep beneath them, the Devil could still be heard climbing.
“—and then it sent us off into the tunnels to look for whoever was spying on it.”
Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus nodded. “The ‘Lord Hades’ certainly suggests it thinks it’s Helen of Troy. It believes itself to be in the Ancient Greek version of Hell. Helen was regarded by many Greeks as a worthless, evil creature whose fickleness cost men’s lives, totally concerned with her own looks and what she could achieve with them. The analogue we have seems to have been baselined at the point when the Greeks have just taken Troy’s outer ramparts. Paranoid delusions that it is being spied on would fit into such a mindset well—”
“But it was being spied on!” complained Judge-Not. “By a man who was too slow to get out of our way when we ran out of the catacombs. We didn’t see him before we ran into him, it was so dark. But it wasn’t Uncle Anchorite.”
The seven-person subset of the Reborn-in-Jesus household, huddled against a Penitentiary wall as cold, smart and hard as a financier, squinted into the goat-populated dark with eczematic trigger fingers, a thicket of laser and railgun barrels.
“Then it must have been him, Christmas,” said Shun-Company. “You had a lucky escape, Lord be praised. Oh, Judge-Not, why didn’t you come to us with this?”
Judge-Not stared out into a cold dark sky. “Beguiled figured you were in on Uncle Anchorite wiping out our parents. And we figured you’d be mad if you found out we were planning anything that would hurt him—”
“Sweetheart,” said Shun-Company, grabbing Judge-Not’s hand, “whatever made you think that?” She held his gaze like a maternal cobra. “Now, tell me—where are Sodom and Beguiled?”
Judge-Not glanced back towards the church and frowned. “Uh, Beguiled may still be in there—”
The detonation felt like a double-handed clap round the ears. Huge pieces of masonry crashed past the Penitentiary at unbelievable speeds. Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus watched a goat, caught in the open, liquefy as if skimmed through an invisible micro-fine grater. Even after the explosion, his ears continued to shriek like jet engines. Speech was impossible.
He answered Judge-Not’s previous statement by simply shaking his head.
Shun-Company slid down the wall of the Penitentiary, hugging her knees, completely silent. Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus placed a hand on her shoulder; she did not respond.
“Uh, this would probably be a bad point to mention that Uncle Anchorite’s Devil killed Sodom too,” observed Judge-Not. Shun-Company gasped as if a red hot iron had been placed on her left shoulder to balance out the one she already had on her right.
“Does the Devil believe itself to be a devil?” asked Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus. “That would seem logical, as it thinks it is in hell.”
Uncleanness shook her head. “It thinks it’s still beautiful. It couldn’t see its reflection in the Pond.”
Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus nodded. “It has no visual light sensors. It probably sees by radar. I have an idea how we may be able to confront it. Unity, does Perfect still have that digital mirror?”
Unity nodded and shuddered. “She’s programmed it to say she’s the fairest one of all.”
“It only says that because you’re too tall for your head to fit on it, daughter. Go look for it. She might not have taken it with her to Celadon. If you find it, bring it here, and this is very important, together with its wireless transmission unit. And take Zounds and Postle with you; we can’t make the assumption Christmas is dead.”
“Christmas died when the Pastor came to town,” said Uncleanness vehemently.
“Me and your mother will put Judge-Not and Uncleanness in the cellar with all the other food supplies.” Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus pinched Uncleanness on the shoulder. “There’s a deal of meat on this one. We’ve been fattening her up for some time. I’m not letting any offworld assassin take away our Easter treat. He can find his own fat plump child.”
Uncleanness giggled. Shun-Company laughed despite herself, in a way that reminded Unity of a woman laughing bitterly from the bottom of a deep, dark, cold well. Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus, in between demonstrating the various choice cuts that could be had by trimming the lardy meat from the bone of an indolent infant that ate far too much for its own good, lifted his wife, rigid as a china mannequin, to her feet and herded his remaining family in the direction of the house.
III. three French hens
“UGH! You put some of that revolting slime in my HAIR, you dimwitted primate! Call the manager! I want to see the manager NOW!”
Madonnita Llewellyn Revilla picked up a dollop of soothing health mud bake and shied it at the terrified beautician, who scurried out of the scatotherapy suite in fear. The health mud was heavier than she had anticipated, containing real neutronium, and fell short of its target, splattering on the turquoise tiling. ‘Health mud’ was, of course, a euphemism; this mud came from the backsides of specially selected
African elephants. Although it had been rendered biologically inert and extensively processed to remove unpleasant odours and add ones of lavender, honey and roses, it still contained the complex long-chain modules which Dr. Lipizzaner’s brochure assured guests were essential for, as the brochure put it, ‘revivifying the skin’s external epidermis’. Why African elephant dung alone contained such molecules, the brochure did not mention. However, Madonnita h
ad been quite prepared to have several kilogrammes of the substance applied to her face, drawing the line only at getting any of it in her hair.
“Calm, please, Mizz Llewellyn,” said Dr. Lipizzaner. “The application must be given time to soak through the skin’s natural defences.”
Madonnita gripped the side of the scatotherapy chair to sit up, distributing still more superdense lavender-smelling ordure in every place her palms touched. “That BITCH got some of this SHIT in my HAIR.”
“Mizz Llewellyn, it will do your hair no harm at all. It will not interfere with the Lipizzaner Formula Especial currently soaking into your follicles—”
“I have ELEPHANT SHIT in my HAIR.”
“I fear that Madame may not have read too closely the list of ingredients for Lipizzaner Formula Especial. It is composed of the biologically inert and jasmine-scented urine of Andean virgins, used to wash hair for thousands of years to make it shine like the gold of the Incas—”
“I have PISS in my HAIR?”
“Specially formulated biologically inert piss, mademoiselle, scented with jasmine—”
Dr. Lipizzaner received a faceful of biologically inert healing balm. Mizz Llewellyn-Revilla leapt at him, recently-manicured nails outstretched, each one bearing a lovingly handpainted tiny miniature of an African jungle scene. The nails splintered on an invisible barrier that had sprung across the room like a glass guillotine. Mizz Llewellyn-Revilla’s face crunched into the glass, being photographed from several different angles for legal purposes. There was blood, but apparently no hard structure damage. Dr. Lipizzaner was glad of the glass. He had seen first hand what an enraged celebrity could do.
He summoned the microphone up from the floor, took it, and spoke into it.
“Now, Mizz Llewellyn, what did we learn in our anger management classes?”
A tiny distant voice squeaked from wall speakers all around him. “YOU LET ME OUT OF HERE! MY FATHER IS THE CONTROLLING SHAREHOLDER OF LLEWELLYN REVILLA BLUEHAVEN KRASAUSKY PAPANDREOU! MEN HAVE BEEN KILLED FOR MAKING ME BLUSH!”
Dr. Lipizzaner spoke into the microphone again. “This barrier is for my protection until you have achieved inner calm, mademoiselle. Try to remember that your father sent you here after the unfortunate accident with your maid. You remember? The accident with the hot iron? The poor lady is, I believe, still unable to eat food normally. Much of her facial musculature has yet to grow back.”
Madonnita cooled like a banked fire, ready to flare up again at the merest whiff of oxygen, glaring at Lipizzaner through the glass.
“That’s better, ma’am. I will now release the barrier. And I will call in the maniculturist to regrow those tiresome nail breakages.”
The almost invisible, millimetre-thick, bulletproof screen whispered softly into the ceiling.
“Hurry, slave! What happened to the locksmith who accompanied you?”
Beguiled stared back at herself, enlarged as if in a Hall of Mirrors in the robot Devil’s flat featureless face.
“He was unavoidably detained,” she said. “My Queen,” she added.
She was still sweating from the climb. The pace the robot was setting through the Anchorite’s forest—hot, humid, under blinding artificial sunlight—was punishing. There were multilegged creatures scuttling through the underbrush—creatures of a size that, although the Anchorite had assured the children that his garden contained no animal life injurious to human beings, nevertheless made her shudder. She had forgotten which trees killed and which were safe. She had no idea where the exits were, or whether the Anchorite would be in any of them. Certainly, however, whatever door they found would lead to a long set of ladders going up, and coming down had nearly killed her. The Devil brooked neither hesitation nor delay; Beguiled had already been cuffed five metres into a bank of bushes for stopping to catch her breath. The machine had had its claws retracted; she was certain she would otherwise have been killed instantly.
Although there was probably only one thing on Mount Ararat capable of destroying the Devil, that something was hot on their tail. She had heard the electronic bellow of the Warden approaching from above, and had thrown herself quickly through the pressure door at the base of the ladder, slamming it shut and throwing the bolts to seal it airtight. The Warden’s voice had been smothered by half a hundred kilogrammes of steel; luckily, the Devil had not seemed to consider this sudden new, loud voice relevant. She hoped the Warden would content itself with Mr. Trapp—who was, after all, a wanted criminal—and not bother to pursue any of his accomplices. The Devil could not be destroyed before it had a chance to confront Uncle Anchorite; of all the many dangerous things on Ararat, the Devil was the only thing she could think of that might be capable of murdering its master.
However, there seemed to be little evidence of the hermit down here. Carvings there were, in abundance; massive follies of ruined temples, crashed and crazed faces of ancient gods overgrown with malignant vines, ruined staircases spiralling upwards into nothing. Beguiled wondered how the Anchorite had created all these marvels.
“This is Elysium,” said the Devil. “The area of Hades marked out for the blessed. Yet even here, the flowers have no colour.” It stepped into the waters of a stream, which hissed as it bubbled over the heat sinks on its ankles. “And here, the Styx—its source, perhaps. It must widen considerably further downstream to require a ferry. I had always wondered why condemned souls who wished to come and go from Hell as they pleased did not simply walk upstream.”
Beguiled could smell an acrid whiff of metal oxides on the air, and hear the tearing-paper hiss of a lasercutter. The Warden was coming through the door. But up ahead, there, glinting through the trees! A circle of metal, framed in broken vines. She ran ahead of the robot and attacked the keypad, trying to make her haste appear prompted by desire to please the Devil. Then she stood aside as the pressure door opened with an uncharacteristic squeal, and bowed extravagantly.
The robot glided through the entrance without thanks; Beguiled made haste to close it, then keeled over as a foul stench hit her and filled her with a desire to retch. Warm air flooded over her in an invisible stinking tide, bowing the heads of plants around the entrance and making the creepers stream like ticker tape.
The smell of rotten eggs...basic life support systems maintenance. A smell of rotten eggs means the system is producing too much...too much...
The robot’s alloy claw clamped down on the fabric between Beguiled’s shoulderblades and wrenched her upright. She could neither speak nor breathe, but could hear the creature yelling in her face: “WAKE UP, IDIOT GIRL! DO AS YOUR QUEEN COMMANDS YOU!”
...sulphur dioxide. This whole cave is full of sulphur dioxide. How? There are no volcanoes on Ararat...are there? Might there be, this close to a superdense neutronium core?
This cavern’s lights were fiercer, and the heat oppressive, but it had not always been this way—there had once been greenery here. There were the remains of trees, withered and splintered, dry bark blowing to dust on the pressure-equalization wind. There were living things; colourful splashes of lichen on the rocks and dead tree trunks, and the occasional anaemic weed. But nothing had grown taller than a quarter metre, and the chamber was filled with lines of whitewashed rocks—not smoothly-eroded pebbles, as might be expected on a world with wind and oceans, but porous, rugged siderites. The rocks were arranged across the floor in arcs, as if spreading out from the opposite wall. Each rock had a number clearly marked out on it in black paint.
Sulphur dioxide is poisonous even on brief exposure...it smells like rotten eggs. It kills by asthmatic paroxysm, pulmonary oedema, systematic acidosis, or reflex respiratory arrest. She was gasping now, trying to breathe air that was not there. The cave had to be filled with SO2—with it or with a combination of it and other gases. Curiously, she could no longer smell rotten eggs.
Basic LS systems maintenance, Dangerous Evolved Gases—“The rotten egg smell does not persist, because the gas rapidly kills the smell receptors in the nose.
When you cease to smell the gas is the time to worry...”
I’m going to die. One way or another.
The robot threw her across the room, across the rows of stones arranged by some unknown Zen numerologist. She felt herself collide with them, sensed the pain on an abstract level. On the other side of the room, a massive pressure door, larger than any she had previously seen, actually had chiselled into its lintel the words LASCIATE SPERANZA, VOI CH’ENTRATE. The robot, across the cave, stood before two smaller doors, one of which was already glowing with the dull light of the Warden’s lasercutter. Things were going dark. She was not rushing down a tunnel towards the light as yet, but could hear voices in her head, a voice in her head, telling her to remember to come back, to bring a starship, to not forget the breathing apparatus and the heavy cutting gear.
She felt herself being lifted and slung over a cold shoulder. She heard metal fingers that could spear through a man’s ribcage stabbing commands frustratedly into the keypad for the door. She heard a voice grumbling to itself through speakers—“what was it she did now, it was simple, I must be able to remember it, Gods, I wish I were blessed with intelligence rather than awe-inspiring beauty.” Then the door complained open, and cool air with oxygen in it blew against her cheek. Somehow, her lungs remembered how to work again. Unfortunately, this also involved remembering how to cough, and she hacked and hurled all the way down the back of the robot’s gleaming torso. Still the machine continued on unconcerned, holding her in place firmly but gently, still muttering under its breath: “He is not here, not here, this place is a maze, how am I to get ahead in Hell if I cannot use the one talent the Gods gave me? Give me a manshaped target and I will strike it more surely than any Achilles, any Hector...”
Behind her, she could hear, again, the hiss of a lasercutter; the Warden’s pursuit was still only one door away. Helen had successfully memorized the sequence of keystrokes necessary to close a door and lock it to a pursuer.
“HEY! WHORE OF TROY! YOU HAVE SOMETHING THAT BELONGS TO ME!”
Beguiled should have reacted, but could no longer find it in her to do anything other than retch. The voice was Uncle Anchorite’s. The robot let her fall like a sack of Mayan Golds. Earth hit her in the face. She tasted blood, yet anticipated more. Surely victory ought to feel better than this?