God Emperor of Didcot Read online

  ‘You may know it by its other name. People call it Urn.’

  ‘Urn,’ Smith repeated. ‘Yes, I’ve heard of Urn alright. Is that a force field around it?’

  ‘No, that’s where I was using the map as a coaster. Urn is a self-governing British Protected Dependency. It has a permanent contract to supply the Empire with tea. In return, we have supplied it with a missile grid to deal with orbital threats and have promised to protect its integrity.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘It was indeed good,’ W said. ‘Perhaps too good to last. Recently, a rabble-rouser calling himself the Grand Hyrax seems to have appeared from nowhere. He’s already gained considerable support on Urn. He’s a cultist, probably a lunatic, and he claims to represent the Brotherhood of the New Eden.’

  ‘Wait a moment,’ Smith said, ‘isn’t that the same funny church they have on – oh, New Eden?’

  ‘Quite. The same thing.’

  ‘Gilead,’ said Carveth.

  New Eden was a league of human worlds allied to the Ghast Empire. They worshipped a god of their own design called the Grand Annihilator, a delinquent amalgam of the worst features of several of Earth’s old gods. Smith had run up against the Edenites before, when the brutal, stupid Captain Gilead had tried to capture Rhianna, believing her to be an angel who could be forced to fight on his side. There weren’t many people who could make the Ghasts look sane, but the Edenites were making a good job of it.

  ‘The Grand Hyrax is a maniac,’ W explained. ‘His version of Edenism is even more extreme than the sort practised by Edenite High Command. He has amassed a horde of fanatical followers known as the Crusadist Cult, who have pledged to overthrow the democratic governor and make the Hyrax their divine emperor. We believe that, if this happens, the Crusadists will ally openly with New Eden and halt the export of tea. And you realise now what would happen to the armies of the Empire were they to be deprived of tea.’

  ‘By God!’ cried Smith. ‘What an evil plan! We can’t just sit here and let a man like that plot against the Empire! We should fly to Didcot this minute, settle his goose and cook his hash!’

  ‘Sort of,’ said Carveth.

  Suruk had been sitting quietly, listening to the humans discuss a lot of stuff that did not greatly interest him. Now, however, the talk was taking a more appealing turn. He made a rattling noise at the back of his throat. ‘Then, tea-makers, I will be glad to assist. My humans here will transport me to the world of Urn, and I shall confront this fool and chop off his head.’

  ‘No,’ said W. ‘If the Grand Hyrax is to be stopped, it must be done with subtlety. The potential for civil unrest is too great.’

  ‘I could creep up on him first,’ Suruk suggested. ‘Then chop his head off. How about that?’

  ‘You’re to fly straight to Urn,’ W said. ‘There you will meet up with our chief – and only – secret agent there. He’s been instructed to make contacts with the Teasmen, the local settlers. From the amount of money he’s been asking for, he should have built up some strong contacts by now. I will reach Urn a few days later, undercover as a journalist. I’ll claim to be researching a story for the Daily Monolith. Together we’ll work out what to do, and together we’ll put a stop to this conspiracy against the common people of the Empire. For a plot against tea is a plot against the liberty of the human race.’

  ‘Well said,’ Hebblethwaite declared. ‘Grand sentiments!’

  From the side came the creak of wheels. Smith had forgotten about the Grandmaster of the Collective Union of Plantation Production Associates, as much as one could forget about a man who lived in a gigantic vat of tea. He looked around at the Grandmaster, and saw his own face reflected in the smudged, dented metal above the little tap: a mask of determination with a well-kept moustache.

  ‘The tea must brew,’ the Grandmaster said.

  ‘We will go at once,’ Smith promised. ‘We will prepare for all eventualities and, if needs be, we will destroy this man. But we need to do this the Imperial way. First, before we kill him and take this planet for ourselves, we shall see if he will listen to reason.’

  2 Casino Imperiale

  ‘Crusade! Crusade! Butcher the unbelievers! Wade in their blood! Rejoice in the lamentation of their women and drive their children before you like lambs to the slaughter! Crusade!’

  ‘So much for reasonable,’ said Isambard Smith.

  They stood at the back of a crowd that spread for a hundred yards in every direction from the front of the ex-warehouse that was now the Church of the Grand Annhilator. Above them, the sun of Urn had reached its peak, and the heat was remorseless. The combination of sun and shouting made Carveth slightly queasy and she felt grateful for her hat and ice cream.

  On the balcony of the church, the Grand Hyrax was a flailing mass of beard, hair and wide sleeves. He looked like a battered wizard trying to summon up spirits.

  ‘What do we want? Crusade! When do we want it? Now!’

  ‘What’s he doing?’ Carveth demanded, jumping up and down. The crowd roared approval, a wave of sound.

  ‘Not quite sure,’ Smith said, struggling to lean around the tall man in front of him. The fellow wore a collapsible wire frame on his head, with a piece of cloth stretched over it to form a sun-shade. ‘The tea-towel this chap’s got on his head is spoiling my view.’

  Carveth elbowed him. ‘You can’t say that!’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘That’s, I dunno, racist or something? Rhianna’d have your knackers if she heard you going on like that.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ The man in front turned around. ‘I couldn’t help overhearing. This is a tea towel, actually,’ he said, gesturing to his headwear. ‘It’s traditional on Urn: it bears the symbol of the collective plantation where I work. We Teasmen are a proud bunch, you see. Also,’ he added, pulling the ends of the tea towel over his ears, ‘it’s good for blocking out all the noise made by that colossal tit up there.’

  Behind the Hyrax, a row of robed, wild-looking men ran out like a chorus line and started battering themselves industriously with sticks. ‘You’ve got to admit, he knows how to put on a show,’ Smith observed. ‘He’s even got his own flagellants.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Suruk nodded. ‘He seems full of hot air.’

  ‘Flatulence, Suruk,’ Smith said. ‘Different business.’

  ‘Forgive me, Lord, for I have wind,’ Carveth added.

  ‘Two, four, six, eight, what do we appreciate? Crusade! Give me a C! Give me an R!’

  ‘Let’s go,’ Carveth said. ‘We’re not learning anything helpful here, and the mission briefing says that our contact has a swimming pool.’

  They turned and slipped through the crowd, Suruk leading the way. People moved out of his path: although free citizens, M’Lak rarely came to Urn, and the sentient population was almost entirely human. Around them, the crowd still gawped at the demagogue.

  ‘I wonder why anyone would listen to a load of arse like that,’ Smith said.

  Suruk shrugged. ‘Humans are stupid.’

  ‘Maybe, but not that stupid. You wonder what anyone could see in him.’

  They emerged beside their car, a Crofton Imp that Smith had hired at the spaceport. Smith drove, Carveth sitting beside him and Suruk stretched across the back seats, next to Gerald’s shaded, air-conditioned cage.

  The landing on Urn had gone surprisingly well. The most notable form of local fauna, the allegedly man-eating sun dragons, had failed to appear. This was fortunate, as they were apparently invisible to radar and stored vast quantities of static electricity that they spat at anything passing through the stratosphere, which they clearly considered as their territory. Now the John Pym was tucked out of sight between two larger, better ships, which seemed to make up the entire Urnian merchant fleet.

  Smith pulled out into busy traffic, and the sleek, dusty little car slipped between rows of domed office blocks.

  Carveth rolled her hat up. ‘I don’t like this place,’ she declared. ‘What kind of people call their capital city Cap
ital City? That’s the most stupid place name outside Thisland.’ She looked over her shoulder, towards the Church of the Grand Annhilator. ‘So, you religious, then?’

  ‘Me?’ Smith dialled up the destination on the onboard computer and typed in their course. He sat back, hands resting on the steering wheel in case their car changed its mind. ‘C of E,’ he said, ‘I suppose. There might be something, but if it’s anything like matey boy’s god back there, I’m not sure I’d want to be on its side. I just try to be a good sort and hope I can talk it over with whoever’s on the other side, if there is one.’

  ‘I think it’s generally assumed that God’s an alright bloke,’ Carveth said. ‘As for me, though, I’m atheist. I refuse to follow any god.’

  ‘It is probably mutual,’ Suruk observed. ‘I doubt any deity would want you traipsing after him, continually demanding thinness and male concubines. It would lower the tone.’

  ‘That’s rich coming from you. You worship a stick.’

  ‘I do not "worship" anything. I honour my ancestors, whose valour I see enshrined in the weapons I wield. Anything else would be absurd, and my spear agrees with me.’

  ‘Well, I’m a free agent,’ Carveth declared. ‘I kneel before no man.’

  ‘I shall not lower myself to comment on that,’ Suruk said.

  *

  The Grand Hyrax closed the doors behind him and the cheering crowd became silent. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow. ‘How was that?’

  Two men watched him from the side of the room. There were biscuits and coffee cups on the table. ‘Not bad, not bad,’ said one of them.

  The speaker was youngish and slim, neat and groomed in contrast to the Hyrax’s tattered robes and potent odour.

  ‘I think you put up a strong performance there, Steve. But you’ve got to remember that you’re addressing confirmed party stakeholders here. It won’t be half as easy to work a crowd that considers you a deranged tyrant.’

  The Hyrax reached into his beard and rubbed his chin. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Focus groups suggest that the proles are going to want reassurance on key touchstone issues: health and schools, for instance, pensions too.’

  ‘Well,’ said the Hyrax, ‘that’s easy. Once we’re in charge, God the Annihilator will provide us with health so we can fight his crusade. Obviously, schools won’t be necessary, except to tell children to obey me, and to go on crusades. And as for pensions. . . some sort of crusade, maybe?’

  ‘I think people are worried that we’re a one-issue party,’ Calloway said.

  ‘That’s the point,’ the Hyrax replied. ‘There won’t be any other issues to worry about once everyone is dead. Or any voting. The unimaginable suffering I intend to impose upon mankind will make all other issues unimportant. Problem solved.’

  Calloway frowned. ‘That might take some spinning.’

  ‘Hell, I like it!’ the third man said. He sat in the shadows, a rug across his lap. He leaned across the table to the coffee pot, and the rug fell away.

  His body was a robot’s: the spindly, stripped-down body of an old-fashioned mechanical android, painted in army drab. The metal stopped at the base of the throat.

  From there, a thickly muscled neck led to a jutting slab of brutal, chiselled jawline. Above the jaw was a Caucasian face that cosmetic surgery had left angry and permanently surprised, the face of a beach-bronzed Adonis for whom kicking sand in people’s faces had never been quite enough.

  ‘You see?’ said the Grand Hyrax. ‘ Gilead likes it.’

  ‘Oh, I like it alright,’ Gilead said, his voice dreamy. ‘Everything you say is right, especially the suffering bit. These people stole my body; they deserve to pay. Every day a hundred things remind me how much I owe the British Empire.’ Out of instinct he scratched his crotch, leaving scratches in his paintwork. He glanced down. ‘See what I mean?’

  ‘I see,’ said Calloway.

  ‘Yeah.’ Gilead paused, the coffee pot tilted at his cup. ‘All I need is the call from my uh, sponsors, and we’ll be good to go. And then this place will be ours.’

  ‘Mine,’ the Hyrax said.

  ‘It will belong to the New Eden, with you as governor.’ Gilead explained. ‘This rock may not look like much, but it’s the right hand of the British Empire. Once we’ve got control of it, we will squeeze – and squeeze – until we’ve choked the life out of these godless bastards and paid them back for what Isambard Smith did to me.’

  ‘You choke someone around the neck, not the right hand,’ Calloway observed.

  ‘You choke them how I say,’ Gilead retorted. ‘When Johnny Gilead plays hardball, if you’re not rolling with us, then you ask how high. Remember that next time you doubt the word of the Lord, because the word of the Lord is strong.’

  He raised his hand and crushed the coffee pot in his metal fingers. From his metal chest a female voice said, ‘Compression damage imminent.’

  ‘We hit them very soon, and then they stay hitted,’ Gilead said. ‘Once our new allies are ready, all your people need do is take the missile grid and this planet belongs to us.’ The pot buckled; coffee ran down his steel fist, onto the table and the cups. ‘My cup runneth over,’ Gilead said. ‘It’s a sign.’

  ‘It’s going on the carpet,’ Calloway said coldly. ‘Which is presumably a sign that you’re a fool.’

  *

  ‘Still,’ said Smith, as they turned into the suburbs, ‘leaving aside these religious madmen and the coup they’re obviously plotting, it is quite a lucky assignment because we’ll be able to see Rhianna again. Once we’ve foiled the Crusadist uprising, I thought I might take her some flowers and see if she’d like to go out for dinner sometime.’

  The car rolled past broad lawns and long, wide houses. Mowing machines slowly drew stripes on grass. The children of Imperial bureaucrats threw balls for retrievers, spaniels and fat Labradors.

  ‘It’s a good plan,’ Carveth said. ‘Of course, you’ll have to find her first.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll find a way.’

  She sighed. ‘I only wish I could be so confident about my own situation.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll meet someone sooner or later,’ Smith replied. ‘There’s probably plenty of single men on a world like this.’

  ‘Most of them have a pulse,’ Suruk observed. ‘You will be spoilt for choice.’

  Something went ping on the dashboard and a needle sprang up in one of the dials. ‘Looks like we’re here,’ said Smith, and he turned the car into a wide gravelled drive.

  Ahead, shining in the hard sun, the front of a huge white house loomed up like a glacier. Long windows winked as the light caught them. A striped awning threw shadow across a pool. Wallahbots rolled across the lawn, clipping the hedges and plumping the pillows on the sun loungers.

  ‘Well,’ Carveth said, ‘it’s nice to know that the Security Service’s budget is going where it’s needed.’

  Smith stopped the car and they got out. One of the wallahbots turned from its work and waddled over to them, gravel crunching under its stumpy legs. A little panel slid back in its domed head and a probe scanned them. It said, ‘Wooty doot-doot?’

  ‘I’m here to see the owner of the house,’ Smith said. He glanced left and right to make sure that he was not observed, and added pointedly, ‘Birds fly south for the winter.’

  ‘Woo,’ said the wallahbot. ‘Woo doot doot Pimms?’ it asked, and the dome flipped back to reveal an array of bottles.

  ‘Bit early for me,’ Smith replied, and the wallahbot’s dome closed up.

  ‘Fair enough,’ it said. ‘I’ll just see if the master’s at home. Wait here please. Woodle-oo.’

  Smith watched it stomp into the house and said, ‘How do I understand those things?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Carveth said. ‘I thought it was a flip-top bin.’

  A sprinkler system hissed into life across the lawn. A small, weasel-like man strolled around the side of the house in a sports jacket. His eyes were half-closed,
like a lizard’s, and there was a cigarillo between his long fingers.

  If he got any more languid, Smith thought, he would fall asleep and topple into the shrubbery.

  He smiled. ‘You must be Smith. Pleased to meet you. James Featherstone.’

  Smith shook hands. Featherstone nodded at Suruk.

  ‘Is this your boy?’

  Smith looked at Suruk. ‘No,’ he said, puzzled. ‘Do we look similar?’

  Featherstone said, ‘Boy as in servant. Any decent spy has servants.’

  ‘He’s not a servant, he’s my friend. I hope that’s not a problem,’ Smith added, giving Featherstone one of his hard stares.

  ‘Not at all. I rather like the fellow. His mouth has a cruel twist. And I must ask, who’s this perky young thing?’

  ‘Hello,’ said Carveth. ‘I’m Polly. Nice house.’

  ‘Polly Carveth, my pilot,’ Smith explained.

  ‘It’s bad to have women on a job: they have to be kept in order. Women are always trouble to someone,’ Featherstone said, with the air of one reciting a proverb.

  He raised an eyebrow and blew out smoke. ‘The only question is, Miss Carveth, are you going to be trouble to me?’

  Carveth grimaced. ‘Which is more platonic: yes or no?’

  Featherstone laughed lightly. ‘Come with me, Smith. We need to talk about your being here. Your moon-man can bring in your things. In the meantime, your people are quite welcome to use the pool, so long as the alien doesn’t turn it green. The little woman’s very welcome.’

  He turned and passed gracefully through the French windows. Smith frowned and glanced at his crew. Behind him, Carveth mimed nausea and Suruk kicked the suitcases over.

  ‘As soon as this cretin is of no more use to us. . .’ he growled.

  ‘True,’ said Smith. ‘He seems a little on the, ah, louche side. Can’t say I’m impressed.’

  Carveth patted her pockets. ‘Has anyone got the keys to the ship?’

  ‘I thought you had them,’ Smith said.

  ‘I gave them to you.’