Dark State

by Charles Stross

  “I’m to take you directly to Miss Thorold’s office,” said the Inspector. “She will be able to tell you more.”

  “Wh-where exactly is that?” What does Miss Thorold do when she isn’t commandeering police officers and military transport helicopters? Rita wanted to ask. She said she used to run the Clan’s security organization, whatever that was …

  “In the Department of Para-historical Research offices.” Lights strobed by overhead as Greg took the underpass.

  “And the Department of Para-historical Research is what, exactly…?”

  She caught the Inspector watching her in the vanity mirror of her sun visor. “What the name says: they explore parallel time lines and deal with security issues. Much like your Homeland Security organization, I believe?”

  “I, um—” Rita was still trying to work out what to ask next as the car slowed and turned into a side route that led to the surface. They turned again onto a quiet side street that ran between anonymous marble-clad neoclassical office buildings—an architectural style that this time line seemed to have inherited from the same Roman lineage as her own. Greg braked, then drove through a pair of wrought iron gates and stopped at a barrier. He lowered his side window to converse quietly with a uniformed guard. Rita couldn’t help noticing the other soldiers who stood well back behind the barrier, holding submachine guns. Whatever Greg told the guard worked: seconds later the barrier rose and the man stepped back from the car, saluting as it crept forward. “What is Miss Thorold’s position in the Department? I mean, who is she?”

  “Didn’t she tell you?” Inspector Morgan sounded surprised. The car slid to a halt in a courtyard beside a broad flight of marble steps leading up to a portico-fronted entrance. Greg got out from behind the steering wheel and opened the passenger door for Rita. “She’s the Director of Covert Operations, Ms. Douglas. Congratulations: you have come to the attention of very important people…”

  NEW LONDON, TIME LINE THREE, AUGUST 2020

  The steps were not particularly steep. Nevertheless, Rita’s heart was pounding by the time she reached the reception desk in the echoing, imposing atrium. Inspector Morgan got there first. “Signing in a visitor,” she said, presenting her badge. “Rita Douglas, VIP code. She’s expected.”

  The men behind the desk wore comic-opera uniforms but had the universal hallmark of security: a gimlet gaze Rita associated with cops, suspicious of everyone. “Yes, ma’am,” said the guard Morgan had addressed. His colleague turned to a Rolodex-like file. “Rita Douglas, for…?”

  “For Olga Thorold.”

  A slight stiffening told Rita that this was both the correct answer, and a significant one. Guard number two pulled forth a printed card badge and a lanyard. “Wear this at all times,” he told Rita. “Stay with your guide. Good day, Inspector.”

  “Good day,” said Morgan, as Rita slid the lanyard over her head. “Come on.” She strode toward a bank of elevators in the shadow of a wide, formal staircase. Rita hurried to keep up. Greg, the driver, followed behind. Stay with your guide, she repeated silently.

  Despite the neoclassical exterior, this was clearly a more modern office, functional in design and lacking the intricate cornicework and classical paintings of the other building. There were fire doors and she caught glimpses of cubicle-partitioned office pools beneath old-style fluorescent tube lighting. There was background noise: telephones ringing (their tonal cadence and pitch unfamiliar) and people talking. Once, they passed a widening in the corridor that was occupied by photocopiers, giant hulking things operated by uniformed men and women who serviced the copy requests of the office workers. Their uniforms were weirdly retro—bicorn hats and blue wool tunics with gold frogging—but formal uniforms always lagged public fashions. What caught Rita’s attention was the way they were worn, with everyday touches seldom seen in theatrical costumes. Here a patched elbow, there a belt with a worn leather pouch, pencils and a ruler protruding. Some things, however, seemed to be universal—like the signs saying NO SMOKING.

  They came to a closed door fronted by a desk and another security guard. “Passes, please.” Rita held up her badge. “Proceed.” The door hissed open in response to an invisible switch. Beyond it lay another corridor, this time decorated with thicker carpet, wooden paneled walls, and the paintings that had been missing from the outer offices.

  They came to a door that was ajar: Morgan knocked. “Come in,” called a male voice. “Hello, Alice. I see you’ve brought us Ms. Douglas?”

  Rita stared at the speaker. He was skinny, a little over six feet tall, and somewhere in the indeterminate thirties. He wore an expression of intense curiosity behind his pince-nez. His suit was a fusty black and looked decidedly lived-in: the only spot of color was a peacock-bright cravat, worn inside the black stand-up collar of his shirt. “That’s me,” she admitted. “Who are you?”

  Morgan cleared her throat. “This is—” she began, just as the fellow said, “Your second cousin once removed, I believe. Huw Hjorth, at your service.”

  “The Explorer-General,” Morgan added, after a stuttering, uncomfortable pause. “Sir.” She ducked her head in his direction.

  “Olga asked me to meet you here,” Huw added. “She’ll be ready in a minute. In the meantime, please come in and take a seat…”

  It was clearly a public office, with a big—and empty—desk, and two doors at the back of the room, presumably leading to an inner sanctum. Huw, Rita noted, didn’t take the chair behind the desk. Was he just another guest? “What kind of Exploration do you…” Rita stopped, suddenly acutely aware that while curiosity was her job, too much curiosity was reputedly felicidal: and that she had a police officer for an escort, even though Morgan appeared to be doing her best to fade into the wallpaper.

  Huw Hjorth looked amused. “Let’s not mess around, you probably already figured we’re in the business of opening up new time lines, don’t you? So that’s my job—supervising that.”

  “And you’re my, uh—”

  “All world-walkers are relatives, if you trace it back far enough.” He shrugged. “It’s the family trade.” A familiar noise emanated from behind one of the doors: “Ah, she’ll be with us in a minute or two.”

  “Oh.” Rita moved her messenger bag around to her front and wrapped her arms around it. The flushing toilet reminded her that she’d been on the move for nearly three hours now. “Does that mean you’re related to, uh, Mrs. Burgeson?”

  “Distantly.” Huw’s smile slipped. “Inspector, I thank you for bringing Ms. Douglas to us, but I think we can handle things from here, and we have matters to discuss that you don’t have need to know.”

  “I think I’ll just wait here until Miss Thorold emerges and then I’ll take my leave, if you don’t mind.” Morgan’s tone sharpened. “Orders.”

  “Have it your way.” The leftmost door swung outward, revealing its occupant. “Miss Thorold? Miss Douglas, as requested.”

  “Good.” Olga raised a handkerchief to her face. “Thank you very much, Inspector: please leave us now.”

  “Certainly.” Morgan gave Huw an unreadable look, then turned and marched away, her back straight.

  Huw stood and closed the door behind her, then turned to Olga. “Do you need anything?” he asked, clearly sounding concerned.

  Olga waved him off. “I’ll be all right,” she said. Then, to Rita: “I’m glad you could come. Do you have anything for me?”

  Rita reached inside her bag and touched the attaché case. “I have a message for Mrs. Burgeson. Or you.”

  “Well, then.”

  Rita pulled out the case and made as if to hand it over. “Ah, no,” said Olga. “If you’d put it over there on the side table, please? Over—”

  “Wait,” said Huw. “Let me open it. I’m disposable.”

  He reached for the case but Rita pulled it back: “What?” she demanded shrilly.

  “Stop it, both of you!” Miss Thorold barely raised her voice, but Rita and Huw both froze. “Huw, you’re not
thinking. Rita, please accept my apologies. Now put the bag on the side table and step over here.” She gestured to the opposite side of her desk.

  Rita complied. The side table in question was oddly undecorated, and featured a bulky metal body, trailing what looked to be a power cable. “What’s that?” she asked.

  Olga picked up the bulky telephone handset and punched in a number. “Security Office? Miss Thorold speaking. Please send the duty screening officer up to my office. Yes, now.” She put the phone down. “Rita, the last time your employers sent Miri—Mrs. Burgeson—a personal message, it exploded. Obviously I don’t expect them to do anything so stupid this time around, but I have been known to err on the side of optimism. Huw, you are not even remotely disposable. Neither is Rita: in fact, none of us are. So let’s refrain from opening the package until the specialists have pronounced it safe, shall we?”

  “You think they’d give me a bomb?” Rita demanded.

  “Not if they’re negotiating in good faith.” Olga wheeled up to her desk. For the first time Rita noticed that it sported a recognizable computer—not one of the strange Commonwealth boards and vacuum tube displays, but familiar QWERTY and a flat-panel monitor. The side of the desk opposite its occupant was solid, as if it was designed to provide protection. “But last time we dealt with the US government directly they played dirty, and it’s not my job to take risks.” There was a knock at the door. “Answer it,” she told Huw. As he did so she glanced at Rita and half-smiled. “Younger cousins: answering doors and running sub-departments is all they’re good for.”

  A uniformed woman entered. “Where’s the package?” she asked.

  “There. I want a non-destructive check on it. I had a fluoroscope sent up—”

  “Got it.” The screening officer picked up the attaché case then opened the lid of the table—no, the fluoroscope—and placed the case on a shelf inside. “If you’d stand back, please?”

  “What for—” began Rita.

  “Metal zipper, paper clips. Am I expecting anything else?”

  “No, that’s all,” Miss Thorold said. “As long as there are no unpleasant surprises you can switch it off now.”

  Huw turned to Rita. “It’s a portable X-ray machine,” he explained. “Nineteenth-century technology, actually.” He walked over to the fluoroscope and accepted the package from the screening officer, then presented it to Miss Thorold. “All yours.”

  “Good.” Olga waited until the screening officer was finished and had left, then unzipped the case. She reached inside and removed a slim white envelope. “How civilized.”

  “Watch out for white powder,” warned Huw.

  “Now that would be amateurish. And Colonel Smith is not an amateur.” Olga slit the envelope open, then read rapidly. There were several pages. “All right, this is going to take some time to respond to.” She put the letter down. “I’m going to have to take it to Miriam, and then we’re going to have to formulate a suitable response.” She looked at Rita. “Have you thought about what I said last time we met?”

  Rita swallowed as she nodded. “Yes.”

  “Well then.” Olga tapped a finger on the letter. “If you want to, you can go back right away. The Inspector will take you to a surveyed transfer point. I don’t know how long this is going to take, but we won’t have anything for you before the day after tomorrow at the earliest—my guess is this will take three or four days of meetings to thrash out a response. So you can go home and check in every day for our reply, or you can stay here until we’ve got a take-home for you.” Her cheek twitched. “I’m sure your boss gave you a nudge along those lines.”

  “How did you know?”

  Olga ignored the question. “Huw, seeing you’re in town for a few days, would you like to play host? I’m sure you can give Rita a useful and informative tour of our department’s public activities, and—” Huw cleared his throat. “What?”

  “In case you’d forgotten, my wife’s also in town this week.” Rita glanced back and forth between Olga and Huw. Their body language was coded, opaque: it suggested the presence of a long-running subtext that she was not privy to. Almost as if they were actual, not figurative, family members. “We planned to throw a small dinner party tonight.” His gaze slid sideways to take in Rita. “You’d be very welcome, but I gather your last meeting with Miriam didn’t go too well and she’ll be there. What do you say?”

  “I, uh—” Rita froze like a deer in the headlights of an onrushing truck. “But I didn’t bring any spare clothes, I don’t have anywhere to stay, and, um—”

  “That can all be seen to,” Huw said briskly. “Brill and I are rattling around in a nearly empty town house, and I’m sure she can find you something to wear. Also—”

  “If I’m serious about pushing the reset button this is my chance,” Rita said slowly, making eye contact with Miss Thorold. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? Am I allowed to say no?”

  Olga spoke gravely. “Yes, Rita, you are allowed to say no.” She hesitated momentarily, then added: “But I think you’ll regret it afterwards if you do.”

  “Well then.” Rita bit her lip. Sometimes knowing you could say no made it easier to say yes. “All right.” She looked at Huw. “Thank you for your invitation. If you’re sure it’ll be all right? You know we, um, had a bad misunderstanding?”

  “I think everyone does by now,” he said drily. Rita tried not to cringe. “All right.” He stood. “Let me take you home and introduce you to Brill. I think you’ll like her. Then tomorrow we can give you a tour of the capital, just to keep your boss happy…”

  Learning Exercises

  NEW LONDON, TIME LINE THREE, AUGUST 2020

  Okay, this is a setup, Rita told herself as Huw led her to a rear exit opening onto a long driveway. It’s all about family. Because that’s how these people roll. “You’re related to Miss Thorold, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “Yes. We’re first cousins, actually,” Huw added, waving in the direction of a black limousine. It slowly rolled toward them, gravel crunching under tires. “The world-walking ability is a recessive trait, so the Clan practiced first cousin marriages. A lot of first cousin marriages.” The car arrived beside him, and he opened the rear door: “After you, my lady.” He said my lady as if he meant it, totally unironically. Rita boggled slightly as she slid across an acre of high-grade leather, unsure whether to feel insulted or flattered. Huw leaned close to the sliding window that separated them from the human chauffeur. “To the residence, please.”

  The limousine slowly made its way down the drive. “So, um. You’re the Explorer-General?” she asked, succumbing to the anxious impulse to fill an uncomfortable silence. After all, she was alone in the back of a limo with a strange man: and while Huw was anything but threatening, she had no idea what she should do. “What does that mean?”

  “It means I mostly front a bureaucracy and set policy these days.” He busied himself with a seat belt. Either VIPs weren’t above traffic stops here, or it was a habit he’d picked up somewhere else. “It used to consist of three people and a dog, but over time it sort of grew. Now … we’ve got research institutes, remote exploration bases in other time lines, university departments studying everything we find, cooperatives and companies supplying us with specialized equipment. Thousands of people, really: tens of thousands, even. Managing it is a committee process, but it helps to have a front man.” He sat back. “It’s much the same job that the DHS’s Para-time Transportation Safety Agency does, facilitating industrial and scientific access to other worlds.”

  “You know about the PTSA.”

  He caught her eye and nodded. “Yes. You’re wondering if we’re spying on the United States, aren’t you?” It was Rita’s turn to nod. “Well, we’d be idiots not to, wouldn’t we? After what the USA did to the Gruinmarkt.”

  Although inarguably true, his reply killed the conversation for a while. Luckily the ride was short. The limo left the driveway and cruised through a curving maze of row houses
—all of them remarkably well-maintained—until, less than a mile later, it halted outside a white-painted three-story dwelling fronted by cast iron railings. Behind the railings a flight of steps arched across an open-topped cellar with basement windows, ending at a front door trimmed with polished brasswork. “Welcome to my town house,” said Huw. “It’s where Brill and the kids and I live when we’re here—in the city—on business. We don’t own it, it’s an official residence.”

  “When you’re not in the city”—she was already on the front steps—“where do you live?”

  He smiled. “Wherever they send me,” he said as he opened the door and called, “Hi honey, I’m home!”

  Someone, Rita told herself, is laying it on too thick.

  “Halloo!” The answering war cry came from a parlor adjacent to the front hallway of the house. It was clearly a woman’s voice: seconds later she bounced through the doorway and grabbed Huw in a bear hug, then detached from him and took Rita’s hand. “I’m Brill. You must be Rita? I’ve heard so much about you!” Brill pumped Rita’s arm as if it were the crank handle of an ancient car, staring into her eyes as she did so. Brill overflowed with a dangerous energy, but seemed genuinely delighted to see her. In her mid-thirties, a brunette verging on redhead, she wore the tunic-over-trousers combination that Rita was beginning to peg as the equivalent of a trouser-suit in the Commonwealth. “Come in, come on in. Are you going to be staying with us? Not just for dinner, I mean, we have a spare bedroom. Clothes, if you need them—you’re about Nel’s size, and I’m sure she won’t mind until we can get you some made?”

  “I, uh, that is—” Rita spent a couple of seconds untangling her tongue. “Yes, I guess so.” You all just want to meet the long-lost cousin, don’t you? On the other hand: points for not flipping out over my skin color. If Colonel Smith wanted her to spend time between courier jaunts getting a handle on the local culture, this was a golden opportunity—just as long as she could stomach it. Act the part, she thought. These people never abandoned you. They didn’t even know you existed. The idea of suddenly discovering a small army of long-lost blood relatives made her feel curiously unbalanced, as if she’d opened a wardrobe door to discover a pathway lined with streetlights leading through a twilit snowed-in forest. She just wished she knew what the Wicked Witch was planning for her. “If it’s not impolite, can I ask about your family connection?”