Ian McDonald - Ares Express

“So you get all this by mail order?” Sweetness whispered to Serpio as they fell in behind Devastation Harx.

“It’s good value,” Serpio said.

“You can say that again.”

“Bottom up,” Devastation Harx, ushering his guests into the lift. “Level one, please.” A plum acolyte closed the gates, a second began to turn a crank.

“You’ve a lot of these people,” Sweetness commented as the cage swayed then began its descent.

“It’s how things get done,” Devastation Harx. “I’m sure Novice Waymender has told you that we reject unthinking dependence on dumb machines. Here everything is done by human labour.”

“Everything?”

The filigree cage was descending through the main lift body; a cavernous chamber ribbed and strutted with lightweight construction beams. Overstuffed bladders of helium were wedged painfully between them like bloated hookers in too-tight suspenders.

“Stop here,” Devastation Harx commanded. The acolyte pulled on a brass brake and flung the door open on a railed catwalk between the pillowy lift bags. “Come and see.” In places Sweetness had to duck down between straining sacks pushed flatly against each other like inflated breasts.

“How much did they charge you for this?” she said to Serpio.

“Three hundred dollars over two years, monthly debit.”

“I’d ask for my money back.”

“The dignity of labour,” Devastation Harx announced as he opened a studded door into a teat of a cabin dangling from the rim of the canopy. Twenty acolytes on twenty bicycles pumped away at pedals. Gear trains and drive bands turned a big rotor shaft above Sweetness’s head. Through the glass she saw propellers blur. The power units wore plum cycling shorts and sweat bands and the glum look of intense youth. They all looked up and smiled as one as Devastation Harx introduced them as Motility Unit 3. Sweetness shuddered. “Don’t be so liberal,” Devastation Harx said. “Do you think any of them would be here if they didn’t want to do it? I won’t have pressed men around me. Idealism appeals to youth. They take turns. One week on, four weeks off. Democracy of employment. What do you think we are? We should get where we’re going by our own efforts, shouldn’t we?”

As the elevator resumed its descent, Devastation Harx said, casually, “So, how do you know it’s your sister?”

“You know your own sister.”

“Yes. I’m sure you do, but forgive me, you were together for a very little time.”

Sweetness suddenly felt outnumbered in the small fragile elevator.

“Has he been telling you stuff about me?”

“We’ve been in contact,” Serpio said.

“You never told me.”

Serpio tapped his occluded eye.

“You see,” Devastation Harx continued, “you say she’s the ghost of your sister, who tragically died on the operating table but, well, as a rule, religious people don’t believe in ghosts.”

“Well then, what is she?”

“Remember when I asked you about vinculum theory and string processors?” Serpio said.

“You told her that?” Devastation Harx said.

“You should be proud of this one,” Sweetness said. “He’s got all the stuff off perfect. So, go on.”

“In a minute,” Devastation Harx said. “Tour continues.”

The elevator touched bottom. Devastation Harx led his guests along a curving corridor.

“Post room,” he said, throwing open a door on to a room where people in purple milled around a long table piled with envelopes, labelling machines and plastic crates filled with brochures, tracts and three-fold flyers. All Swing Radio blared. “Heart of the Empire. As soon as we hit Molesworth we’ll do a mail-drop.”

“So you’re saying,” Sweetness went on as the door closed on King Jupe and his Mint Juleps, “That my sister isn’t my sister at all. That she’s some kind of angel that’s got attached to me.”

“Not any sort of angel…” Serpio began and promptly tripped over.

“Careful,” Devastation Harx admonished. He helped the trackboy up but Sweetness could have sworn she saw the tip of his swagger-stick flick out and tangle itself between Serpio’s ankles. “Must be turbulence. You get odd thermals coming up off the old terrain.” He flung open another door. “Central processing.”

A starkly rectangular room, sinisterly underlit by floor-lights, was filled rank upon rank with wooden prie-dieus . Each bore an acolyte devoutly bent over a wooden abacus. Fingers flicked, beads ricocheted. The air was filled with soft clicking, like a locust army mustering.

“Simple, efficient and good for eye-hand coordination.”

The bead-counters did not look up as their guru passed up an aisle. Some moved their lips silently, eyes reading the shifting digits.

“Data Storage is next door. You haven’t signed on for my ‘Be a Master of Memory’ course, have you?” That, to Serpio. To Sweetness: “People don’t realise half their potential. Entire human faculties atrophy and rot because we hand them over to machines. That, pretty much in a nutshell, is my philosophy. A human world for a human species.”

Sweetness looked around at the human calculus.

“Who feeds everyone?” she asked. “And who makes all the purple gear? And what do you do with the night-soil?”

Devastation Harx clapped his hands softly in delight.

“I so enjoy trainpeople. They’ve such a stubbornly pragmatic bent.”

“You’ve got trainpeople?”

A door at the far end of Central Processing took them back into the circulare corridor. It seemed to Sweetness that it took them back to exactly the point they had left. They processed on.

“I’ve got every kind of people. Our motto.” It was inlaid in marquetry in the wooden wall panelling, bird’s-eye maple and gnarled walnut on ash.

“‘We’re no angels.’ Hah.”

“Then again,” Devastation Harx said thoughtfully, “Trainpeople do live a little too close to their machines.”

“So, what is it with you and these angels, who you say aren’t really angels at all, then?”

“What it is, Ms. Engineer, is, I intend to fight a war against the angels.”

Sweetness stopped dead.

“You what?”

Devastation Harx turned to face her. He rested his hands on the ferule of his cane. Sweetness noticed that Serpio was now standing behind him. Airship, mad-lands, big desert, three kilometres straight down , she thought. How can I make these into an escape plan that doesn’t involve me falling to my death?

“I thought I’d made myself quite clear. I intend to engage these angels—who, as you observed, are nothing of the sort—in battle. And I intend to defeat them.”

Sweetness laughed. It was louder than she had intended, and nastier.

“Let me get this straight. There’s about two hundred and fifty thousand angels up there? Like so many they make a ring round the world? That’s not to mention all the ones that got left behind down here. They’ve got big sky mirrors and lasers and particle beams and superconducting magnets and probably loads of other stuff I can’t even think of. They keep the weather going. They keep the UV from frying us like nimki . They keep the air in. They throw comets around. They go Bedzo and the world disappears. And you go up against these people with an inflatable bouncy church, a mail-order department, a couple of hundred abacuses and a pile of dysfunctional cyclists in purple, and you win?”

“Yes,” Devastation Harx said in that tone of you-know-nothing- really -nothing adults know infuriates teenagers.

“I want a parachute, now.”

“Ms. Engineer…”

“No, you wait.” She turned to Serpio. “This was not part of the deal. The deal was we both run away from what we hate and we go and get a good life somewhere and maybe we end up together or maybe we don’t but whatever, it absolutely did not say I get hijacked by some mail-order messiah in a flying mushroom and end up crisped by partacs. You know something? I think I made a mistake with you, Serpio. I think…I think you arranged all this.” The realisation was marvellous and liberating. There is a strong joy, Sweetness discovered, in understanding your own utter gullibility. “You did! You bastard! You had this all planned. You took one look at me—at us—and it all fitted into some big master plan and you called up Harx-boy here and he said, bring her on. I cannot believe I ever even thought about sleeping with you. And I did. A bit. Not now. You’re not a good person. Go and put your purple on, freak-eye.”