Read Online Smallworld by Dominic Green - Free Book Online Page B

arm.

    “That machine is the barely the size of our church,” said Shun-Company. “No mere thief deserves to be confined in such a way.”

    At that point, the screams began in the street outside; and Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus took up his digging tool unashamedly and ran.

    *

    Sixty seconds earlier, the stars had been shining from slightly different quarters, and the scarlet shimmering scimitar of Naphil’s A ring had shone a constellation’s width broader overhead as Mount Ararat hurtled towards intersection. The goats were asleep in their shelter; the Penitentiary was as yet quiet, not yet realizing one of its inmates was absent.

    The communications tower stood out at one corner of the Third Landing village square, a metal tree of dishes, whip aerials and communications lasers. No tree had been planted near it; cables burrowed down from it into the dirt and resurfaced by the Reborn-in-Jesus residence. Halfway up it, accessible via a maintenance ladder, was a manual access panel, which lay open. Inside, mysterious user-unfriendly readouts and schematics marched across a durable plastic screen.

    A voice called from the bottom of the tower. “Are you done yet, Mr. Trapp?”

    A voice answered from up by the maintenance panel. “I’ve located a ship insystem. Her captain says he’s braking into your gas giant’s atmosphere to collect helium-3 and slow himself down to meet another trader and swap mail loads in the inner system. Says he can take both of us on to Twenty. Be landing a kilometre from here in an hour’s time.”

    “So long as he hurries up,” said the voice from the tower’s base. “If anyone finds me out here, no-one’ll talk to me from now till Christmas. I’ll be on goat-leading duty for certain.”

    The panel slammed shut and was screwed home by a man with fastidious attention to detail, who then slid down the maintenance ladder with a spring in his step.

    “Do you really think I have it in me to become a top-rate courtesan?”

    “My dear, you are the image of Ishtar herself. I have contacts at all the best-regarded agencies on Old Earth, in Bangkok, Teheran, Emporium, Pennsylvania, and many other exotic locations.” Mr. Trapp began untying the tether connecting Carries-the-Saviour to the great shelter.

    “I can’t get my legs behind my head. Does that matter?”

    The conversation was suddenly interrupted by a klaxon loud enough to kill a man and wake him afterwards. Trapp began working more quickly, feverishly, looking up in the direction of the Series Three like Damocles at his ceiling decoration.

    “What is that, Mr. Trapp? What’s that sound?”

    A man-sized alcove of light opened in the side of the Penitentiary, and a stubby, three-legged machine emerged, rotated to take in its surroundings, and took off towards the largest house in Main Street. For the first time, Mr. Trapp blessed the fact that he was standing behind a warm dyspeptic ass—Carries-the-Saviour’s extravagant heat signature had masked Trapp’s own.

    “It seems,” said Mr. Trapp, “we still have one more detail to take care of. Please be so good as to follow me.”

    He raised the Reborn-in-Jesus family kitchen knife that he’d used to open the maintenance panel,, so old and oversharpened that its blade was a mere steel sliver. ‘The A ring reflected from it, red as blood.

    Mr. Reborn-in-Jesus skidded round the corner, implement in hand, to be confronted by an empty tranquil pond and a silent, featureless Penitentiary.

    The Warden’s tracks returned to the wall of the unit, and went no further. However, they were also accompanied by human footprints, small human footprints spaced erratically, as if their creator were being dragged unwillingly. There was blood in the footprints. A great deal of blood. Close by, a set of shod hooves had left town along the hundred-eighty meridian, apparently at the closest an ass could get to a gallop.

    Unity Reborn-in-Jesus, who had been following her parents closely,