The Merchants’ War

by Stross, Charles

  Huw checked his wristwatch for about the ten-thousandth time. It was coming up on eight fifteen, and the sun was already below the horizon. Another half hour and it would be nighttime proper. I could go over and look for him, he told himself. If he misses this return window, I could go over tomorrow. Elena’s video footage had been rubbish, the condensation on her helmet camera lens blurring everything into a madcap smear of dark green shade and glaring sunlight, but Hulius was wearing a radio beacon. If anything had happened—

  Something moved. Huw’s head jerked round, his heart in his mouth for an instant: then he recognized Yul’s tired stance, and the tension erupted up from his guts and out of his mouth in a deafening whoop.

  “Hey, bro!” Yul reached up and unfastened his helmet. “You look like you thought I wasn’t coming back!” He grimaced and rubbed his forehead as he shambled heavily towards the steps. “Give me medicine. Strong medicine.”

  Huw grabbed him for a moment of back-slapping relief. “It’s not easy, waiting for you. Are you alright? Did anything try to eat you? Let’s get you inside and get the telemetry pack off you, then I’ll crack open the wine.”

  “Okay.” Hulius stood swaying on the stoop for a moment, then took a heavy step towards the doorway. Huw picked up the first aid kit and laptop and hurried after him.

  “Make your weapons safe, then hand me the telemetry pack first—okay. Now your backpack. Stick it there, in the corner.” He squinted at his brother. Yul looked much more wobbly than he ought to be. “Hmm.” Huw cracked the first-aid kit and pulled out the blood pressure cuff. “Get your armor off and let’s check you out. How’s the headache?”

  “Splitting.” Hulius pawed at the Velcro fastenings on his armor vest, then dumped it on the kitchen floor. He fumbled at the buttons on his jacket. “I can’t seem to get this open.”

  “Let me.” Huw freed the buttons then helped Hulius get one arm free of its sleeve. “Blood pressure, right now.”

  “Aw, nuts. You don’t think—”

  “I don’t know what to think. Chill out and try to relax your arm.” The control unit buzzed and chugged, pumping air into the pressure cuff around Yul’s arm. Huw stared at it as it vented, until the digits came up. “One seventy four over one ten.” Shit. “You remember to take your second-stage shots on time, two hours ago?”

  “Uh, I, uh, only remembered half an hour ago.” Hulius closed his eyes. “Dumb, huh?”

  Huw relaxed a little. “Real dumb. You’re not used to doing back-to-back jumps, are you?” Lightning Child, he could have sprung a cerebral hemorrhage! “The really bad headache, that’s a symptom. You need those pills. They take about an hour to have any effect, though, and if you walk too soon after you take them you can make yourself very ill.”

  “It’s just a headache—”

  “Headache, balls.” Huw began to pack up the blood pressure monitor. “All you can feel is the headache, but if your blood pressure goes too high the arteries and veins inside your brain can burst from it. You don’t want that to happen, bro, not at your age!” Relief was making him angry. Change the subject. “So how was it?”

  “Oh, it was quiet, bro. I didn’t see any animals. Funny thing, I didn’t hear any birds either; it was just me and the trees and stuff. Quite relaxing, after a while.”

  “Okay, so you had a nice relaxing stroll in the woods.” Why needle him? It’s not his fault you were chewing your guts out. “Sorry.” He glanced away from Hulius just as the door opened and Elena bounced in.

  “Hulius! You’re back! Squeee!”

  Huw winced as Elena pounced on his brother. Judging from the noises he made, the headache couldn’t be too serious. Huw cleared his throat: “I’ll be in the front room, downloading the take. You guys, you’ve got ten minutes to wash up. We’re going out for dinner, and I’m buying.” He picked up the telemetry pack and slunk towards the living room, trying to ignore the giggling and smooching behind him. Young love—he winced again. He might be out from under the matrons’ collective thumb, but being expected to chaperon Hulius and Elena was one of the more unpleasant side effects of the manpower shortage. If the worst happened…At least they’re both inner family, and eligible. A rapid wedding was a far more likely outcome than an honor killing if their affair came to light.

  Back in the front room, he set the tablet PC down and plugged it in. Yul’s camera had worked out okay, although there wasn’t a hell of a lot to see. He’d come out in a forested area, with nothing but trees in all directions, and spent the next hours stooging around semi-aimlessly without ever coming across open ground. The weather station telemetry told its own story, though. Sixty degrees Fahrenheit had been the daytime peak temperature, and towards nightfall it dipped towards freezing. I bet there’s going to be a frost over there tonight.

  Huw poked at the other instrument readings. The scanner drew a blank; nobody was transmitting, at least on any wavelength known to the sophisticated software-directed radio he’d acquired from a friend who was still working at the Media Lab. The compact air sampler wouldn’t tell him much until he could send it for analysis—much as he might want one, nobody was selling a backpack-sized mass spectroscope. He poked at the video, tripping it into fast-forward.

  Trees. More trees. Elena hadn’t been wrong about the tree surplus. If we could figure out a way to get them back, we could corner the world market in cheap pine logs…Yul had followed the plan at first, zipping around in a quick search then planting a spike and a radio beacon. Then he’d hunkered down for a while, probably listening. After about half an hour, he’d gotten up and begun walking around the forest, frequently pausing to scrape a marker on a trunk. Good boy. Then—

  “Oh you have got to be kidding me.”

  Huw hit the pause button, backed up a few frames, and zoomed in. Yul had been looking at the ground, which lay on a gentle slope. There were trees everywhere, but for once there was a view of the ground the trees were growing in. For the most part it was a brownish carpet of dead pine needles and ferns, interspersed with the few hardy plants that could grow in the shadow of the coniferous forest—but the gray-black chunks of rocky material off to one side told a different story. Huw blinked in surprise, then glanced away, his mind churning with possibilities. Then he bounced forward through the next half hour of Hulius’s perambulations, looking for other signs. Finally, he put the laptop down, stood up, and went back into the hall.

  “Yul?” he called.

  “Hello?” A door opened, somewhere upstairs.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about the ruins, Yul?”

  Hulius appeared at the top of the staircase, wearing a towel around his waist, long blond hair hanging damply: “what ruins?”

  “The black stones in the forest. Those ruins.”

  “What stones—” Yul looked blank for a moment, then his expression cleared. “Oh, those. Are they important?”

  “Are they—” Huw tugged at his hair distractedly. “Lightning Child! Do I have to explain everything in words of one syllable? Where’s Elena?”

  “She’s in the—hey, what’s up?”

  I’m hyperventilating again. Stop it, Huw told himself. Not that it seemed to help much. “There’s no radio, it’s really cold, and you stumbled across a fucking road! Or what’s left of one. Not a dirt track or cobblestones, but asphalt! Do I have to do all the thinking around here?”

  “What’s so special about asphalt?” Hulius asked, hitching up his towel as he came downstairs.

  “What’s so special? Well, maybe it means there was a civilization there not so long ago!” Nervous energy had Huw bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. “Think, bro. If there was a civilization there, what else does it mean?”

  “There were people there?” Hulius perked up. “Hey, I think that rates at least a bottle of wine…”

  “We’re going back over, tomorrow,” Huw said bluntly. “I’ll e-mail a report to the duke tonight. Then we’re going to double-check on that road and see where it leads.”
/>   Pursuit

  The small house hunkered a short way back from the sidewalk, one of a row of houses in an area that wasn’t exactly cheap—nowhere in Boston was cheap—but that had once been affordable for ordinary working people. Brilliana knew it quite well. She’d been watching it discreetly for over an hour, and she was pretty sure that nobody was home and, more important, nobody else was watching it. Which suited her just fine, because if it was under surveillance what she was about to do would quite possibly get her killed.

  Swallowing to clear her over-dry mouth, Brill opened the car door and stepped out into the hot summer sunlight. She slung the oversized leather handbag on her left shoulder, discreetly checking that she could get a hand into it in a hurry, then let the door of the rental car swing shut. The key was in the ignition: the risk of someone stealing the car was, in her view, minor compared to the risk of not being able to get away fast if things went wrong.

  The road was clear. She glanced both ways before crossing it, a final check for concealed watchers. I hope Paulie’s all right, she fretted. The ominous turn of recent events was bad enough for those who could look after themselves. Paulette wasn’t a player, and didn’t have the wherewithal to escape if things spun out of control. And Brill owed her. Not that she’d had much time to demonstrate it, lately—the past week had run her ragged, and this was the first free day she’d had to spend in the United States for weeks.

  She paused for a moment at the front door, straining for any sign of wrongness, then shrugged. The key slid into the lock and turned smoothly: Brill let herself inside, then closed the door behind her. “Paulie?” She called softly.

  No reply. The house felt empty. Brill began to relax. She’s shopping, or at work. Whatever “work” meant these days—Brill couldn’t be sure, but the huge mess that Miriam had landed in had probably cut Paulie loose from her sinecure. She glanced around the living room. The flat-screen TV was new, but the furniture was the same. Yo, big spender! Paulette wasn’t stupid about money. She kept a low profile. Hopefully she’d avoided being caught up in the dragnet so far.

  Brill put her bag down on the kitchen counter and pulled out a black box. Switching it on, she paced out the ground floor rooms, front to back, checking corners and walls and especially light fittings. The bug detector stayed stubbornly green-lit. “Good,” she said aloud as she stashed it back in the bag. Next, she pulled out another box equipped with a telephone socket and extension cable, and plugged each of the phone handsets into it in order. A twitter of dialing tones, but the speaker on the box stayed silent: nobody had sneaked an infinity bug onto her landline. That left the Internet link, and Brill didn’t know enough about that to be sure she could sweep Paulie’s computer for spyware; but she was pretty sure that unplugged PCs didn’t snoop on conversations.

  “Okay…” Brill picked up her bag and scouted the top floor briefly, then returned to the kitchen. The carton of half-and-half in the fridge was fresh, and there was a neat pile of unopened mail on the tabletop, the most recent postmarked the day before. And there was no dust. She checked her watch: ten past four. Might as well wait, she thought, and began to set up the coffee machine.

  An hour later, Brill heard footsteps on the front path, and a rattle of keys. She dropped her magazine and stood up silently, standing just inside the living room door as the front door opened. One person, alone. She tensed for a moment, then recognized Paulette. “Hey, Paulie,” she called.

  “What!” A clatter of dropped bags. Brill stepped into the passageway. “Brill! How did you—”

  Brill raised a finger to her lips. Paulette glared at her, then bent down to pick up the spilled grocery bags. “Let me,” Brill murmured. “Shut the door.” She gathered the bags: Paulette didn’t need prompting twice, and locked the front door before turning back to stare at her, hands on hips.

  “What do you want?”

  Brilliana shrugged apologetically. “To talk to you. Do you have a cellular telephone?”

  “Yes.” Paulie’s hand tightened on her handbag.

  “Please switch it off and remove the battery.”

  “But—” Paulie looked round once, then shook her head. “Like that, is it?” she asked, then reached into her bag and pulled out a phone. “What happens next?” Brilliana waited. After a moment Paulette slid the battery out of the phone. “Is that what you wanted?”

  Brill nodded. “Thank you. I’d already swept your house for bugs. Would you like a coffee? I’m afraid I’ve been here a while, it’s probably stale, but I could make some more—”

  Paulette managed a brief chuckle of laughter. “You slay me, kid.”

  “No, never.” Brill managed a wan smile. “I apologize for breaking in. But I had to check that you weren’t under observation.”

  “Observation—” Paulette frowned “—why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like this?”

  “Because.” Brill took a deep breath: “You’re not going to like it. Before I say any more—when did you last see Miriam?”

  “Shit, kid.” For a moment Paulette’s face twisted in pain. “She’s in trouble, isn’t she?”

  “When did you last see her?” Brilliana repeated.

  “Must be, let me see…about three months ago. We did lunch. Why?” Her expression was guarded.

  Brill sighed. “You’re right, she’s in trouble. The good news is, I’ve been ordered to get her out of it. The duke thinks it can be papered over, if she cooperates. I can’t promise you anything, but if you happen to see her, if you could make sure that’s the first thing you tell her…?”

  Paulie frowned. “I’m telling you the truth.”

  “I know that,” Brill said quietly. “Not everybody would choose to believe you, though. They’d want to believe you’re protecting her. She’s missing, Paulie. Nobody’s seen her for a week, and we’re pretty sure she’s on the run. I’m talking to you because I figure if she makes it over here you’re one of the first people she’ll turn to for help—”

  “What do you mean, if?”

  “It is a long story.” Brill pulled out one of the kitchen chairs and sat down. “I know part of it. I think you know another part of it?” She raised an eyebrow, but Paulette stared at her mulishly and refused to answer. “All right. Three months ago, Miriam did something really foolish. She stole some information about a project she was not supposed to know of, and then she tried to bluff her way into it. It’s a Clan operation on this side, that’s all I’m allowed to say, and she tampered with the Clan’s postal service—that alone is a high crime. To make matters worse, she was caught by the wrong person, a conservative member of the council’s security oversight board. What Miriam did, that sort of thing—” she shrugged uncomfortably “—carries the death penalty. I’m not exaggerating. Sneaking into that particular operation—” She stopped. “You know the one I’m talking about?”

  Paulie nodded once, sharply. “She told me what she was going to do. I tried to talk her out of it, but she wasn’t listening.”

  Brilliana rolled her eyes. “I am going to pretend I didn’t hear what you just said, because if I had heard you say it, certain superiors of mine would want to know why I didn’t kill you on the spot.”

  “Ah—” Paulette’s face paled. “Thanks, I think.”

  “No problem. Just remember, those are the stakes. Don’t let anyone else know that you know.” Brill gestured at the coffee machine. “Shall I refill it? This may take some time.”

  “Be my guest.” There was no trace of irony in Paulette’s voice. “You meant that. About the Clan’s involvement in a fertility clinic being so secret people can be killed out of hand for knowing about it?”

  Brill stood up and walked over to the coffee machine. “Yes, Paulie, I am absolutely serious. The project the center is working on is either going to change the structure of the Clan completely, and for the better—or it will trigger a civil war. What’s more, the authorities here are now aware of the Clan’s existence. There have been disturbing signs of
covert operations…If they discover what has been happening at the clinic, we can’t be certain how they will respond, but the worst case is that several thousand innocent teenagers and their parents will find themselves on a one-way trip down the rabbit hole.” She finished with the coffeemaker and switched it on.

  “I find that hard—”

  “What do you think the clinic’s doing?” Brill demanded.

  “What?” Paulette shook her head. “It’s a fertility clinic, isn’t it? It helps people have babies. Artificial insemination, that kind of…” she trailed off.

  “Yup,” Brill said lightly. “And they’ve been helping couples have children for nearly twenty years now. The fact that the children just happen to be de facto outer family members, carriers of the world-walking trait, is an extra. The clinic is still helping couples who’re desperate to have children.” She looked down at the table. “Half of the children are female. In due course, some of them will be getting letters from a surrogacy agency, offering them good money for the use of their wombs. And they’ll be helping other couples have children, too. Children who will be world-walkers. And when they grow up, they’ll get a very special job offer.”

  Paulette nodded slowly. “I’d gotten that much.”

  “About twenty years from now, the Clan’s going to have to absorb a thousand Miriams, and their male counterparts. They’ll all crop up at once, over about a decade. A torrent of world-walkers. At the peak of our power, before the civil war, there were less than ten thousand of us; now, I’m not sure, but I think only a couple of thousand, at most. Think what that change means. One of the reasons everyone has been bearing down on Miriam is that she’s, she’s a prototype, if you like. Raised outside the Clan. Not uncivilized, but she thinks like an American. They all want to see how—if—she can be integrated. If she’s going to fit in. If Miriam can learn to be part of the Clan, then so can the children. But if not…in fifty years time they could be a majority of our members. And the established elders will not willingly give up their power, or that of their children, in favor of uncivilized upstarts. Think what Miriam is going to do to their lives, if she makes a mess of things now!” Brill stopped abruptly. Her shoulders were shaking.