Sister Ships And Alastair - Chapter 5

5. The Moutonotron 9000

"We're not interested in God", said the surly-looking man who'd opened the door. He was white, and wore a black vest top, urban camouflage fatigues, and combat boots. Cleo had come across men had dressed this way at home before, though they tended to have gun cabinets in their halls and halves of cars in their front gardens. The householder had a tattoo on his arm; it might have been a Christian tattoo, a stylized fish like the ones churchgoers stuck on the back of their cars. But Turpin's smile had frozen in his face when he'd seen it.
"You're playing Stars on Sunday", said Turpin, raising an eyebrow and smiling so widely that Cleo was afraid the smile would escape from his face.
Inside the house, another man's voice yelled "HURRY UP WITH THEM BIBLE BASHERS, PETE. FLOSS AND THE GALS HAVE GOT THEIRSELVES A SITUATION IN SECTOR TWELVE."
"My brother plays computer games", explained the man. " We're not of your denomination." The door was only open wide enough for half his face to be visible. Cleo was acutely aware that a gun could be being pointed at them from behind the door itself. There were no less than three chains stopping them pushing through the door.
"We have no denomination", said Cleo quickly. "We believe in an ecumenical conference of all confessions, patriarchies and synods." She pressed the CHILD'S SIMPLIFIED BIBLE into the man's hands. "'And did not Job smite the Ammonites on their Neighbour's Ass?'" she quoted.
The man, who seemed to have accepted the book out of pure politeness, looked down at it in bemusement. "I don't know", he admitted.
"A most painful place to be smitten, I think you'll agree", said Cleo. "We are a multidenominational, faith-based, Christ-centred, God-involving church, dedicated to the one basic truth that God Is Love and Love Is Never Having To Say You're Sorry, don't you agree?"
The man was turning the book over his hands with increasing confusion. "Erm", he said.
"PETE! I NEED YOU ON OVINE TELEMETRY NOW!"
The man came to a decision. "We don't want any God today", he said. "We've already got one."
He shut the door in Turpin's and Cleo's faces just as Cleo was about to shout "WE'VE GOT THREE -"
"How rude", said Turpin.
"How stupid", said Cleo, and pushed the door gently open again.
Turpin gasped. "How did you -"
Cleo pointed to her left hand, which, as the door was closing, had slipped a leather bookmark into the gap between door and jamb, preventing the bolt from shooting home. "Now", she said, "all we need to do is break these chains."
"No problem", said Lieutenant Turpin and, fishing down the front of his trousers, extricated an enormous pair of bolt croppers complete with shears.
"I had one handle down either leg", he said. "It doesn't half make you walk funny."
Three snips, and the door was open.
"I think Anthony and Pen are in trouble", said Turpin, moving cautiously into the hall. "Erm. I'm acutely aware at this point that an elephant recently ate the only weapon I have."
"Are you not a human weapon trained in one hundred different types of unarmed combat, then?" said Cleo sarcastically.
"Not as such", said Turpin. "I can give someone a jolly hard punch on the nose on a good day, but that's about it." They were now standing in a hallway furnished entirely by MFI. Woodchip wallpaper, gigantic coloured swirls on the carpet, and a Green Lady on the wall informed Cleo that the room had last seen a decorator in the 1970's. Turpin slowly slid his head round the corner, then beckoned to Cleo to follow. Past an angle of the hallway, all attempt at home furnishing ceased, and there was not even any plaster on the walls. Instead, a rack of rifles were bolted straight onto whitewashed brick. Each weapon was heavy, squat, and finned, presumably to radiate heat, and bore perforations all the way down its barrel. Each was stamped GYROLITE USA MADE UNDER LICENCE BY ROYAL SMALL ARMS FACTORY ENFIELD MIDDLESEX.
Carefully, Turpin eased one of the weapons off its rack and examined it, then flipped open a catch above its trigger and moved a lever freed by the catch up to the ARMED position. A laser dot winked into existence on the floor in front of him. Turpin moved uncertainly towards one of several doors opening off the corridor, in the direction the first man had moved in and the second man had called from. The door was marked ROBOSHEEP CONTROL.
Stars On Sunday, Cleo noticed, seemed to be coming from a speaker on the wall connected to an old-fashioned tape recorder. It was still deafening.
"...TURN THAT GODBOTHERING RACKET OFF FIRST PETE, I CAN'T HEAR MYSELF THINK..."
The door opened. Turpin had his rifle barrel lined up on it. As the face of Pete, the man who had answered the door, reappeared, a red dot marched up his stomach to his forehead, giving him the appearance of a very white, startled Hindu. Turpin's finger, Cleo could see, was on the trigger. Pete's breath was sucking in prior to yelling out for help, and before he could do this, Turpin reversed the gun and rammed it butt first into his gut, pushing all the breath out of him. Unfortunately, this now meant Pete had both hands on Turpin's gun, and even as he staggered forward wheezing, his hands were fighting Turpin's for possession of the weapon. The gun was, of course, still armed, and its barrel was now facing towards Turpin. Although both men were of a size, Pete was far heavier-set, and looked far more capable of handling himself. His fingers were creeping forward towards the trigger of the rifle -
"- LORD ALMIGHTY, PETE, TAKE YOUR TIME -"
Cleo acted. She acted, however, not by hammering pathetically on Pete's heavily-muscled back, or by biting his ears, but by stepping to the tape recorder and turning the volume dial right up to the maximum.
"- PETE, THAT AIN'T FUNNY -"
As the man in Robosheep Control yelled in annoyance, a gunshot, muffled by a particularly exuberant Hosannah on the Stars On Sunday tape, had torn a hole in the house's front door. Lieutenant Turpin closed with Pete, now trying to stay inside the range of the gunbarrel; Pete elbowed him in the face, knocking him back against the wall, but Turpin still had hold of the gun and, despite evidently being dazed, wouldn't release it. Further gunshots ricocheted round the walls, ripping chunks out of the brickwork. Pete looked as alarmed by the ricochets as Turpin - he still, however, clearly had the upper hand.
Cleo sighed. "If you want something done..."
She stepped forward, picked up one of the other weapons from the rack, flipped up the catch, moved the lever to the ARMED position, slipped up next to Pete and shone the laser targeting light directly in his eyes.
Pete screamed and fell back, forgetting the weapon he was holding, his hands held up to his face. Turpin fell back with the gun in his hands, looking down at it in puzzlement as if now surprised he had it. Cleo held up the rifle, carefully moved the lever to the SAFE position, dropped the catch, turned it round again and hit Pete with the butt as if his head were a ball she intended to smack clean over the boundary.
Pete fell like a sack of potatoes. Cleo flipped the catch up, armed the gun, and turned it on the Robosheep Control door just as the other man walked angrily through it. A name tag on his combat jacket identified him as WISE. He was a black man, slighter and shorter than Pete.
"- I'M TELLING YOU, PETE, THIS IS NOT A DRILL -"
Cleo's hand had hit the STOP button on the tape recorder; the house was silent. The man looked down at the laser targeting dot on his chest.
Cleo nodded at Turpin. "He", she said, "is too much of a very nice man for his own good. I am neither nice, nor am I a man. I will shoot you."
The man nodded. He put up his hands.
"So", said Cleo, "you're Pete's brother, are you?"
***
"How do we control these things?" said Cleo. "The user interface isn't very intuitive."
Robosheep Control And Telemetry was a windowless room walled with whitewashed brick, filled with a single gigantic computer console. A manufacturer's label on one side of the console identified it as a MOUTONOTRON 9000. A TV screen set into the console was subdivided into sixteen sectors, most of them displaying a black-and-white image of a sheep's backside. Only five did not. Two showed a picture of a wide open meadow, one an extreme close-up of grass on a wide open meadow, and two of them backsides Cleo recognized.
There was a microphone headset on the console top. Cleo picked it up and put it on her head, flipping the microphone arm down to her lips.
"Ant? Lieutenant Farthing?"
Farthing's voice squeaked in her ear. "Cleo? Is that you? Have those people hurt you?"
"Er, no. Quite the reverse. You seem to be surrounded. I have a very interesting view through cameras SHAUN and LARRY at the moment."
Farthing's voice came back, suspicious: "Who are Shaun and Larry?"
"I think they may be sheep, and I think I may be sitting at their control console right now. Hang on, there must be a user manual here somewhere..."
Behind Cleo and Turpin, trussed up with their own clothes, the two robosheep operators glared hideous promises of vengeance, trying not to breathe too deeply; Cleo had gagged them with their own underpants. Wise wore the same vest top and combat trousers as Pete. Clearly it was a military uniform of some sort, though neither wore any unit insignia.
"...Aha! Vickers Ferguson Mark Four Robosheep Technical Manual. Chapter One - To overhaul your Vickers Ferguson Mark Four Robosheep, stand it upright on a flat dry surface and pull hard on the Robomechanical Innard Release (A)...Gosh, I'd want to make sure I was dealing with an artificial sheep before I pulled down on that...no, maybe that's not it...Vickers Ferguson Mark Four Robosheep Automatic Cannon Loading And Cleaning...Technical Bulletin 1995/7 To All Vickers Ferguson Mark Four Robosheep Operators: Regarding Sudden Homicidal Sheep Malfunction...How To Get The Best From Your Artificial Sheep.."
Lieutenant Turpin had sat down in the Ovine Telemetry seat, and was squinting at the controls with an air of great concentration. "What does this one do?" he said, pressing a bakelite button.
"OW!" said Lieutenant Farthing. "The sheep behind butted me!"
"Mr. Turpin", said Cleo, "I don't think you should press that button."
Turpin sat back from the button. "What about this one - SHEEP AGGRESSION. It has five settings."
One of the TV screens showed Lieutenant Farthing's bottom zooming rapidly at the camera. "OW! It did it again!"
"I think", said Cleo, "it should be turned to zero."
Almost regretfully, Lieutenant Turpin turned the dial round to zero. Lieutenant Farthing's bottom stayed put.
"What about this group of eighteen buttons? SHEEP SELECTOR?"
Cleo breathed in at length and frowned, then nodded. "Go on. What harm can it do?"
Turpin chose a button at random and pressed it. Appallingly bad graphics tracked across another screen on the console, saying CURRENTLY SELECTED SHEEP: FLOSSIE. One of the TV images on the first screen lit up with a flashing black-and-white border.
"There are eighteen buttons", remarked Cleo, "but only sixteen sheep."
Ant's voice buzzed in her right ear: "Cleo, don't get experimental on me now."
Cleo frowned. "Press the white button in the dead centre of the keyboard."
Turpin pressed the white button. Appallingly bad graphics tracked across the screen, saying ALL SHEEP SELECTED.
"What's happened?" said Ant. "Something really bad has happened. Hasn't it."
"What about these?" Turpin pointed to a set of handwritten instructions sellotaped to the side of a keyboard in front of the Ovine Telemetrist's station. He read aloud:
RENAME SHEEP - sheeprename
"It's a UNIX system", said Cleo. "I know this." She glanced at the subdivided television screen, leaned over Turpin's shoulder, typed sheeprename FLOSSIE BOB. Immediately, the sheep labelled FLOSSIE on the screen lit up as BOB.
"I did it!" said Cleo in triumph. "I renamed a sheep! What other commands are there?"
Ant's voice sounded in Cleo's right ear again. "Cleo, you're meddling. I can hear you meddling."
"What's this one here? SHEEP ADMINISTRATION MENU - Sam." She typed in SAM and hit RETURN. Immediately, the screen filled with gibberish. The first line of gibberish read:
ALLSHEEP;1$
"I think you've done something wrong", said Turpin. At the top of the screen was a menu with four choices - F1 EDIT, F2 SAVE, F3 EXPORT TO SHEEP, F4 SAVE AND EXIT, and F5 EXIT WITHOUT SAVING.
"Well, I don't know what we're editing", said Cleo, "but EDIT sounds nice." She hit the F1 key; the menu disappeared.
"This is rubbish", said Cleo. "Maybe we need to hit the RETURN key."
"Righty ho." Mr. Turpin dutifully began typing out the word RETURN on the keyboard. Cleo was amazed. "What are you doing?" At the bottom of the screen, a message appeared:
INPUT MUST BE NUMERIC!
INPUT MUST BE NUMERIC!
INPUT MUST BE NUMERIC!
Mr. Turpin hung his head in techno-shame. "This is one of those computery things, isn't it."
"What are you talking about? Don't you have computers in space?"
Turpin nodded. "But remember, our colonies split from Earth in the 1970's. Our computers are the size of a small cottage, and we program them with punch cards. I wrote a program to count up to ten once", he confided shyly. "It only took up two trays full of cards."
"The RETURN key", said Cleo bleakly, "is the big button on the numeric keypad."
Turpin nodded and pressed a button on the numeric keypad.
"Nothing's happening", said Cleo. "Press it again."
Mr. Turpin pressed the key again. Nothing happened again, so he pressed it nine more times to make sure.
"You're pressing the zero key", observed Cleo.
"It's a big key", objected Turpin.
"It also has a big number zero written on it", said Cleo.
Turpin threw up his arms in exasperation. "Show me the key that has RETURN written on it, then."
"The RETURN key is the one with ENTER written on it", said Cleo. "ENTER is the same as RETURN."
"It is not! They are almost semantic opposites!"
Behind Cleo, Pete grunted in scorn at Turpin's technical ineptitude. Wise's eyes, meanwhile, were rolling in his skull in horror, which unnerved Cleo even more.
"Quiet, you two", said Cleo, "or I'll swap your gags over."
Stunned into silence by this ominous threat, Pete hung his head.
"Hang on", said Lieutenant Turpin. "Something up at the top here's changed."
The first line of gibberish now read:
ALLSHEEP;100000000000$
"I think we've changed something", said Cleo. "I think we should exit-without-saving."
"I can't remember the button for exit-without-saving", said Turpin. "Was it F1?"
Cleo tried F1 without success. Behind her, Wise struggled against his bonds and squealed like a killed piglet.
"Try F2", said Turpin. Cleo tried F2. A line of text appeared at the bottom of the screen:
SAM SAVED SUCCESSFULLY
Wise whimpered.
"I think we'd better get out before we do any real damage", said Cleo. "Try F3."
Turpin hit F3. A line of text appeared at the bottom of the screen:
EXPORTING TO SHEEP
Ant's voice sounded plaintive in Cleo's right ear: "Er - did you guys just do something?"
Cleo ground her teeth together, but said: "Nothing", and then added, "much."
"Cleo, you're grinding your teeth together. You only grind your teeth together when you're lying through them."
Cleo's voice was as bright as a Spring morning. "Haha! Why do you ask?"
"All the sheep in the field have just - well - gone all limp and droopy. They've stopped moving, eating, bleating and, erm, pretending to breathe."
Cleo ran her finger down the list of commands at the side of the keyboard, until her finger stopped at one line saying:
SHEEP AGGRESSION MATRIX - SAM
Next to this line, someone else had written in red biro USE ONLY WITH EXTREME CAUTION!!! and underscored this three times. Underneath this someone had written: USE THE DIAL ON THE CONSOLE INSTEAD, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!
"Oh lordy lordy lummox", said Cleo.
"What?" said Lieutenant Turpin.
"What?" said Ant.
"UNIX is case sensitive", said Cleo.
There was a pause.
"What?" said Ant.
"I didn't type Sam, I typed SAM. I wasn't, uh, administering the sheep, I was making them more aggressive." She counted briefly on her fingers. "100 billion times more aggressive, to be precise."
"WHAT?" said Ant. "They don't look very aggressive", he said dubiously.
"That's because they're, erm, rebooting", said Cleo.
"Rebooting -" began Turpin.
"- has nothing to do with boots", said Cleo firmly, raising a warning finger.
"Right", said Turpin miserably.
"They're turning themselves off and on", said Cleo. "Taking on their new system parameters"
And then, when neither Ant nor Lieutenant Farthing said anything in return, she said:
"That means RUN! RUN, you idiots! Run NOW!"
"- all right, all right, you don't have to shout -"
- and the voice in her ear went dead.
Cleo looked up. All the TV screens were blank.
"Ant?" She tapped the microphone. "ANT!"
"Maybe the sheep have rebooted them to death", said Turpin.
"REBOOTING is NOTHING TO DO WITH BOOTS", said Cleo sternly. "All this just means the microphones and TV cameras inside the sheep have switched off along with everything else...oh please please let it..."
The doorbell rang.
"If that's a sheep", said Cleo, "don't let it in."
One by one, however, the sheep's positions were becoming apparent as the TV screens flicked back on. Most of them were still moving round the field, but in a most un-sheeplike fashion. They were circling. They were zigzagging. They were casting about.
One of the sheepcams showed a view of the front of the house, where Ant and Lieutenant Farthing were standing at the front door. Cleo heard a sheep bleat in her earphone, but it wasn't the happy contented BAA of a white woolly creature that bore no ill feeling toward anything but grass. It was a ghastly, mutated BLEARGH. Behind Cleo, Wise was moaning softly.
"LIEUTENANT TURPIN, GET THEM INSIDE THE HOUSE NOW", snapped Cleo in a tone that made it clear her rank was far higher than Lieutenant.
She saw a garden fence sail past under the TV camera, and heard a clickety-click of cloven hooves on concrete. At the same time, she heard a door opening, Lieutenant Farthing's voice saying "Hi, it's us -", Lieutenant Turpin's voice saying "GET INSIDE NOW", a door slamming, and something hitting the front door with the force of a piledriver.
Ant and Lieutenant Farthing were now standing in the hall with faces white as wool.
***
BaaaTHUMP.
Another impact shook the front hallway. Flecks of paint shivered off the doorframe. Elsewhere, unseen hooves could be heard tramping flowerbeds all around the walls. Occasionally, a sheep attempted to butt a wall head-on, sending a shock through the entire structure. As yet, ramming the house had been unsuccessful, but cracks were appearing in the plaster in places.
"What do we do?" said Lieutenant Farthing.
"They'll be in in a minute", said Ant. "That door can't hold much longer -"
- BaaaTHUNK. The doorframe shook again. Cleo could see from the television screen that it was sheep Bob attacking the front door.
"Couldn't we just shoot them?" said Farthing.
Cleo shook her head. "They're designed to be immune to gunfire. We'd only make them mad."
Wise struggled against his gag again, trying to attract Cleo's attention. Cleo bent down and pulled his underpants out of his mouth. His mouth now free, Wise first of all spent a number of seconds spitting out whatever, Cleo could only suppose, had been in his underpants. Then he looked up with a fearful face and said:
"You fools! You should have used the dial! That's why they put in the dial!" He shut his eyes and ground his knuckles into his own temples in frustration. "It says that you should use the dial! On the piece of paper!"
Cleo put both hands on Wise's shoulders and stared earnestly into his eyes. "That's right. I didn't use the dial. Can you make it better again for us?"
Wise shrank back against the wall on hearing another sheepy impact. Then he appeared to come to a decision, licking his lips nervously, looking at the gun in Turpin's hands. "You'll have to free my hands first."
Pete yelled inside his gag at the mention of such treachery; Cleo ignored him, and loosened the bonds around Wise's hands. He thanked her, rubbed the raw skin around his wrists, then dived for Lieutenant Turpin's weapon. This time, Turpin was ready for an attempt to wrestle the gun off him - what he was not prepared for was Wise attempting to jam the gun into his own mouth and pull the trigger.
"SHOOT ME! PLEASE SHOOT ME! WE CAN'T REBOOT FOR ANOTHER ONE THOUSAND SECONDS, AND THEY CAN NUT THEIR WAY THROUGH A BRICK WALL IN UNDER A MINUTE -"
"PEN!" yelled Turpin in panic. "HELP!"
Farthing sighed, drew her Personal Orgonizer, and fired at Wise at point blank range. He collapsed back onto the console with a blissful expression on his face.
"Just for once", said Farthing, "I wish you'd just pull your finger out and shoot somebody."
"It's a Cause For Concern on my psych profile", admitted Turpin dismally. "The doc thinks it makes me unsuited to being a combat pilot."
Wise's eyes crossed in ecstasy as he imagined his immediate future. "I'm going to die! I'm going to be butted and trampled and eaten by things that derive no nutritional value from me...RESULT."
"Now you know how celery feels", said Cleo, kicking him. "Why can't we reboot the sheep for one thousand seconds? Hey! I'm talking to you!"
Wise fell to examining his hands in exquisite beaming detail.
"MMF! MMF!" yelled Pete through his gag. When Cleo released it, he glared up at her, spent several seconds spitting out its contents, and said: "It's to stop us writing system routines that recursively increment sheep aggression above a dangerous level."
"What's a dangerous level?" said Cleo.
"Anything higher than five", said Pete, with no apparent attempt at irony.
"This hand", explained Wise, indicating his right hand, "is like this one, only the other way round."
BaaaCRUNCH. The front door frame jumped a centimetre out of the wall. Plaster swirled in a thick cloud.
"We've got to decoy them away somehow", said Ant. "Give them another target."
Pete's eyes narrowed; Cleo stuck his gag back in his mouth and patted his bleeding head. He snapped at her hand with his teeth. There was nothing playful about the movement.
"We can't throw Pete to the sheep", said Cleo, "much as I'd like to". "But we could give them a target very like Pete." She looked across the room at another, smaller control panel labelled GARAGE DOOR. "The truck tunnel goes all the way to the hangars, doesn't it?"
Before anyone could reply, she had crossed the room and pressed the DOOR OPEN button. Beneath them in the foundations, the gentle hum of an automatic door opening could be both heard and felt.
"Tap the walls!" said Cleo. "Bang on the insides of the walls and draw them round the house to the garage door!"