Smallworld (28 page)

“Rights of hospitality,” said the dark-haired girl. “Duties of the host.”

The other girl stamped her feet. “But that’s a thing
mom
tells us!”

“And we agreed it was one of the truths we were happy believing. Like the Ten Commandments. It’s home time, Only-Begotten.”

“Not fair,” muttered Only-Begotten, and stamped her feet. “Not FAIR!”

But when the dark-haired girl turned and began walking back in the direction of Third Landing, Only-Begotten followed her without question, and even tried to skirt past the others to walk alongside her.

“Easy, now! We don’t want to compound the damage. Lift her up here, over the Bot Inspection Pit.”

“She’s leaking fluid…uh, what does the blue fluid do?”

“Her oxygen transport system, like our blood. Is it shooting out under pressure?”

“Not really. Is that bad?”

“No, good. Means her deep-level lines haven’t been cut. She can lose a lot of it too, these units usually have a deal of redundancy in the system. And her skin grows back too. That’s one thing at least—she’s designed to grow repeatedly—”

Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus looked up at Unity.

“But they don’t make parts for her any more.”

Unity’s eyes brimmed with tears. Her best floral mood-sensitive dress had filled with patterns of yew and hyacinth. “Then we take her to a bot chop shop! We’ve had her for a whole kilodia! She’s Beguiled’s little sister!”

From her position hanging from four hoist points at pelvis and scapula, Visible Friend fluttered her eyes weakly open and said
“shwee’ of you to shay”
before shivering into motionlessness again.

Mr. Suau, a walrus-moustached gentleman with a skin that had learned to tan from ice-white to burnt sienna depending on the star it was shown each week, patted Unity on the shoulder. “It’s okay, child. Everyone who’s ever owned a unit suffers from it. They’re designed to look human. It’s only reasonable to be conned into thinking they have a soul and feel pain…”

Visible Friend’s eyes flickered open unobserved and glared down at Mr. Suau, then shuddered shut again.

“This is a respiration-powered unit,” said Mr. Suau. “Also one designed to teach childcare to young girls by actually suffering heartbreaking personal injury if maltreated. The prognosis is not good. If she loses enough blue stuff she could shut down and die. She’d come back again, of course, but the original model’s memories and learned algorithms would be wiped. Effectively, all that made it would be gone.”

Unity stared up at the hanging automaton and began to sob. On her dress, the hyacinths bowed their heads and wilted.

“What about the anti-paedo dye?” said Testament. “He was covered in it. Couldn’t we use it to track him?”

Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus shook his head. “We tracked him as far as the uraninite decontam shed. He’d stood in the dipping trough and turned the hose on himself. It would have removed the dye, though it probably took the top layer of his skin with it. Lord knows the goats squeal when we hit them with it, though it’s their fault for straying into yellowcake patches. We didn’t find any more tracks, at least.”

Testament blinked uncomprehendingly. “He’d be a walking dead man. The goats are engineered for easy cleaning in a radioactive environment. No man could stand the pain.”

“Aye,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus. “If he is a man.”

A cold lizard of doubt slithered down Testament’s spine. Unity, too, was looking at her father in alarm. “What do you mean by that, pops?”

Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus shrugged. “Nothing.” He rose to his feet, and stood in the doorway with his back to the others. “But no human being I know would turn a decontaminant hose on his own skin.”

“Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus, all my automated personnel are accounted for,” reproved Mr. Suau. “And apart from Visible Friend here and your domestic white goods and field tractor—all of which, just between us, would probably have displayed a markedly different
modus operandi—
they’re the only bots on Ararat.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus. “I’m sure you’re right.” And left.

“
Wash a pershon,”
came a soft voice from above.

Testament and Unity looked up.

“
Wash a pershon,”
repeated the voice.
“Woulg ha’ shenshed anovver got’s transkonder.”

“Transponders can be removed,” said Mr. Suau.

“
Looked like a pershon,”
insisted the voice.

“In any case,” said Mr. Suau, “we’re going to make you better. As better,” he qualified ominously, “as humanly possible. I’m going to rig you up an airtight bot coffin and fill it with pure oxygen.” He looked at Unity and Testament severely. “It’ll be a fire hazard, now.”

“We can leave it in the Panic Cellar. There’s an oxygen feed down there.”

“
Fang you Mishter Shuau.”

“Not junked a good bot yet,” said Mr. Suau. But Unity noticed that he had his fingers crossed.

A door banged elsewhere in the house.

“That’ll be Beguiled, Uncleanness, and Sodom,” said Unity. “They’ve been out towards the South Field.”

Testament looked up sharply, still nursing the lump on his head. “Why didn’t Beguiled take Visible Friend with her?”

“Testament, it’s no fault of Beguiled that Friend got attacked,” said Unity reprovingly.

“
Vey woulgn’let me go wiv’em,”
came a soft voice from the ceiling.

Unity, Testament and Mr. Suau turned round to the robot.

“What did you say, Friend?” said Unity. Her dress was breaking out in angry red poppies.

“
I coulgn’go,”
repeated the voice.
“Vey woulgn’let me shee wa’ vey were doing.”

“Why not?” said Testament.

“
I don’g know. Beguile’saig i’ wash a shecret.”

The door to the Bot Bay banged open.

“Unity! Testament!”

“Apostle met us at the edge of town with a gun! A real
gun!”

“What’s happened to Visible Friend?”

Unity turned to Beguiled, who had entered with her coterie. “She was caught on her own, without any of her brothers and sisters to protect her.”

Unity left the room in a flurry of Flanders red.

Beguiled blinked. “What’s the matter with
her
?”

Testament shrugged weakly.

“Ah, Visible Friend has been quite badly damaged,” said Mr. Suau, clearing his throat. “By an unknown assailant who probably mistook her for a real girl, hence Apostle’s gun.”

Beguiled looked up at the bleeding android.

“Ah well,” she said. “She was only a robot, after all.”

She turned on her very-latest-fashion variable-height heels and departed. The fibre optic invisibility was wearing out on the shoes’ arches; from an oblique angle, they looked like an old pair of farmers’ boots.

“
Why woulg’she shay tha’?”
said the voice from the ceiling mournfully.

“Best shut down,” said Mr. Suau, patting Visible Friend’s head tenderly. “Don’t make me go Kill Minus Nine on your ass, now.”

The robot went limp. Mr. Suau looked across to the knot of concerned children and winked.

“Look away now. The main power converter access is in that place mommy told you to scream if a bad man ever touched you.”

Pastor Mulchrone looked sternly over the Best Parlour table at Mr. and Mrs. Reborn-in-Jesus.

“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 mache. 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.