Dark State

by Charles Stross

  “It’s not impolite.” Brill led her into the parlor, which was furnished to excess with floral-fabric flounced drapes, flocked wallpaper, and club chairs: “I was Helge’s lady-in-waiting at Court in Niejwein. Uh, that’s the Duchess Helge, as she was called there. You probably know her as Miriam Beckstein. Your mother.”

  Rita boggled. “A lady-in-waiting? What did you do?”

  “Oh, the usual: manage her household, escort her to formal functions, look good in a ball gown, shoot assassins. I was assigned by the head of Clan Security, initially as an informer and personal protection detail, but I swore personal fealty when she became queen and organized her bodyguard—”

  Suddenly there was an over-stuffed chair under Rita’s backside. She was extremely grateful for its presence. “Became what?” she squeaked.

  “Queen of the Gruinmarkt, in the middle of a really nasty civil war. Huw, would you be a dear and sort out coffee for us? She needed bodyguards badly back then, there were a number of assassination attempts between the coup and the miscarriage—”

  The room spun around Rita’s head. “Miscarriage?”

  “You were supposed to have a younger brother,” Brill said, peering at her from the opposite chair, head tilted to one side. “You can blame medieval dynastic politics and a very unscrupulous doctor. I’m sorry to dump this on you so fast, but I’m assuming nobody gave you a briefing—I can cut through the bullshit because I’m your mother’s right hand and she expects me to deal with this stuff. Internal Clan politics is nothing like as important as it used to be, but they’ll all have been walking on eggshells around you, and you need to understand the family politics in case you accidentally say something inappropriate. Your mother—back before the Gruinmarkt holocaust—grew up in the USA in ignorance of all this, much like yourself, but she was shoved into a position of power while the Clan was in the middle of a civil war. Initially she was set up as a puppet figurehead by her mother, who was running a coup against her mother, but Miriam learned just enough political judo to turn it into this, this exile. The Clan doesn’t officially exist anymore and the Commonwealth has other plans for producing new world-walkers. But she’s still the leader of the modernist faction. And here in the Commonwealth, she and her husband of fifteen years are now very important People’s Commissioners.”

  Rita shook her head numbly. My mother was a queen? What the fuck does that even mean, am I a princess or something? What is a princess, anyway? Disney images of carefree young women in enormous pink frocks vied with a more cynical definition. A princess is the larval reproductive host in the life cycle of a parasitic hereditary dictatorship, as Kurt had told her after one Disney-induced, sugar-fueled, pre-teen meltdown too many. The bit about a missing younger brother she would shelve until later: I’ve already got a younger brother, he’s called River, and he’s a pest. “What’s a Commissioner?”

  “We’ve got a politburo that’s elected by the Party membership and approved by the Council of Guardians. The politburo in turn elects a number of Commissioners to run important ministries. The politburo sets policy and the Commissioners keep the, the civil service—Miriam calls it the Deep State—on track to execute those policies. Meanwhile, the Chamber of People’s Magistrates are elected directly by the public, they’re lawmakers, but the Deep State holds everything together at a constitutional level. Your mother runs the Ministry of Intertemporal Technological Intelligence, which is tasked with accelerating the industrial and scientific development of the Commonwealth. Erasmus—her husband—is the Minister of Propaganda. Or the Minister of Happy Fun Distraction, as he calls it. He’s in charge of television, radio, newspapers, and the movie industry. Oh, and computer games once we start building consoles: the first eight bit games platforms are due for rollout next year. He’s basically the chief censor.”

  “Censor?” Rita squeaked.

  “Yeah, he’s a regular Joseph Goebbels.” Brilliana’s cheek twitched in something that might have been a wink. “Wears a swastika armband and personally blue-pencils the headlines every morning. Um, no: it doesn’t work that way. The Commonwealth is a democracy and we are supposed to have freedom of speech, so the tools of political propaganda and censorship have to be a lot more subtle than in a monarchy or a dictatorship. Ras is a big fan of Noam Chomsky; calling it the Propaganda Ministry keeps things honest, he says. Like having a Ministry of War rather than a Department of Defense, or Counting Other People’s Murdered Children instead of talking about Collateral Damage.” Now her cheek twitched. “We try to learn from other folks’ mistakes. Especially when lives are at stake.”

  Overload. Rita shoved her hair back from her forehead as Huw entered the room. A woman in what was probably this culture’s version of a maid’s uniform followed him, pushing a trolley bearing a French press and a set of china coffee cups. “I think my head’s going to explode,” she said.

  “I know, dear. That’s why I wanted to drop it on you right now, before you’re doorstepped by face-stealers. Paparazzi, I mean.” Brill turned to the coffee trolley. “How do you take it? Milk, sugar? I’m sorry, we don’t have artificial sweeteners.”

  Rita mentally translated latte into old-school filter coffee: “Milk, no sugar, thanks.” Paparazzi?

  “She may be under the impression she’s still a covert asset,” Huw remarked, watching Brilliana like a hawk. “Olga hasn’t scheduled her first press conference yet.”

  Brill flinched as she poured, almost spilling the coffee. “Impossible!” she protested.

  Rita tensed. “Imposs—”

  “If we keep her under wraps”—Brill offered the coffee cup to Rita—“I’m sorry, but if we keep you under wraps, you’re vulnerable. You’ve got to understand: the existence of the Clan, and of the United States, has been common knowledge within the Radical Party for seventeen years. It’s been public knowledge for the past fifteen. Miriam has run her election campaigns within the politburo on the slogan The United States is coming for the past decade and a half, and you are the living proof of that proposition.

  “If we don’t show you in public, SCEP will find a pretext to arrest you at the first opportunity. You’ll be a pawn in an internal power struggle. But if we make a public announcement and show you in public, then anyone who tries to touch you has just publicly declared open season on two government ministers and a diplomatic courier from another superpower, and I’m pretty sure Miriam and Erasmus can lean on the Foreign Office to give you limited diplomatic immunity.”

  “But I—” Rita floundered, then raised her coffee cup for a sip. It rattled noisily when she lowered it back to the saucer. “I don’t want this! I had no idea!”

  “Tough.” Brill looked at her husband, who nodded then picked up the thread.

  “Rita, you’re here as a go-between, admittedly at a low level, in the process of arranging direct talks between two governments. Even if they’re just talks about how and when to start having real talks, and even if the news is under lockdown and embargo in the United States, it’s not a secret here. We can’t cover up the Air Force shooting down drones with nuclear-tipped missiles off the New England coastline, as happened a few months ago. Or the Continental Bombardment Force going to war alert. Everyone wants to know what’s going down. Oh, and there’s going to be a snap election some time in the next few months”—Rita saw Huw and Brilliana exchange a sharp look of worry—“which Miriam will be involved in, and which will influence the direction of those negotiations.”

  “But I don’t even know if I can talk to her!” There, she’d said it. She planted the half-empty cup on a side table with a loud rattle: coffee slopped over the edge and pooled in the saucer.

  “Try,” Huw said bluntly. “If not for yourself, then for everybody else.” His eyebrows furrowed. “For your own people, whoever they are.”

  “My own people are—” Rita’s tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. A wolf pack with no leader, roaming a forest in the grip of an eternal winter, starving for lack of purpose. Who are my people
, really? She shook her head. “I’ll try.”

  “And you’ll stay for dinner?” Brilliana smiled.

  “Of course.”

  “Good. Then I’ll show you the spare room and bath, and we can find something for you to wear…”

  BERLIN, TIME LINE THREE, AUGUST 2020

  Boredom is the midwife of mischief. And Elizabeth was nothing if not bored. Winnowing her wardrobe for a season at school hardly occupied her mind, the weather was too vile for sports, and Captain Bertrand was uneasy about her desire to explore the city. Perhaps her security detail had spotted the Major when he made contact. Nothing had been said to her, but the sudden solicitude of her guard gripped her like too-tight stays, suffocating in the name of propriety.

  After a week of waiting, with only a couple of days to go to her departure for the schloss, Elizabeth cracked. There was a protocol. We should meet and talk about arrangements, she wrote. I cannot leave. Can you meet me here?

  An unwelcome answer arrived the next day. No. Security perimeter too tight: will contact you at Schloss Britz next Tuesday.—H.

  Elizabeth frowned, reread the note twice, then tore it into tiny scraps and fed it to the drafty fire that rumbled flatulently beneath the stone chimney breast in her sitting room. Idiot, she thought petulantly. Whether she meant herself or her correspondent was immaterial. But she’d done what she could, so she dismissed the matter and instead summoned Susannah to give her a list of items she required for the opening term.

  * * *

  Mme. Corinne Houelebecq was fifty-five, pretty in a somewhat retiring kind of way—not remotely in keeping with Elizabeth’s image of the headmistress of an exclusive finishing school—and still wore half-mourning for her husband, even though the Baron had died more than four years previously. “Good day, Miss Hanover,” she started, then smiled tremulously, like a flower opening. “Welcome to my establishment. Please follow me? First I shall show you your rooms, then I thought we might take tea together.” She turned and glided toward the central hall, without waiting to see if Elizabeth would follow.

  “Suz, I’ll be in touch.” Elizabeth gripped her lady-in-waiting’s hand.

  “Really?” Susannah seemed adrift, almost frightened. Behind her, the porters were already leaving, having deposited a neat row of trunks alongside the door to the servants’ quarters. Outside, Captain Bertrand’s guards had finished checking the grounds and would henceforth maintain their watch from a discreet distance. “You’ll write every day?”

  “Of course.” At least, at first. Liz squeezed her hand again, then glanced at Mme. Houelebecq, who showed no sign of noticing. “Remember, I’ll make arrangements to summon you to me. Hold tight!” She leaned forward and kissed Susannah impulsively, then pulled back before the woman could respond. “Au revoir.”

  “A close friend, your maid,” Mme. Houelebecq commented tonelessly as she mounted the stairs.

  “Lady-in-waiting, actually,” Elizabeth said. Then, momentarily, corrected herself: “Maidservant, if you like. That would be best here, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Mme. Houelebecq reached the landing halfway to the second floor and paused. Elizabeth looked down on black-and-white marble tiles framed by carved oak rails, then glanced up at the marvelous crystal chandelier, studded with unlit electrical bulbs. The wallpaper was silk, perhaps in tribute to the eighteenth-century owner who had introduced silk farming to Prussia. “The other girls are of noble birth, but I believe we have only one other royal this year, and no other heirs. Jealousy is very unbecoming and it would be best not to give it any opportunity to take hold. Don’t you agree?”

  “Yes, I think.” Elizabeth chose her next words carefully. “They will work out who I am easily enough, but as long as I do not wave it in their faces there will be no friction.”

  “Not true, alas.” Mme. Houelebecq sighed. “There is always friction. But you do not need to pour flammable spirits on them, if you follow my meaning. Your father’s instructions to me were very specific on the matter.”

  “Ah.” They came to the head of the staircase: a long corridor that connected the second-floor function rooms, the gallery overlooking the main ballroom, and the wings of the house where the apartments lay. “I think so.”

  Elizabeth’s rooms were not spacious, but they were sufficient for a single lady of noble birth, traveling without the circus-sized retinue that would be expected of a crown princess. She had a bedroom adjoining a small study with a desk and a high-set window. A door in the study led to a small room that had originally been a privy (now equipped with a flushing toilet, thank God) and an enameled iron bathtub. The bedroom held two narrow beds. “The other girls share: you will not be expected to do so,” Mme. Houelebecq told her.

  Elizabeth looked up at the study windows. “Are these safe?” she asked.

  “I am sure the gendarmes have found them so. Come now.”

  Mme. Houelebecq led her back along the corridor, back stiff and gaze directed ahead. The schloss felt curiously empty and hollow, like a jaw without a tongue, expectantly awaiting the animating spirit of gossip. Elizabeth had been invited to move in a few days ahead of term, so that she could be settled before the other girls arrived—and perhaps to ensure that she was dutifully playing her new role as a biddable young lady rather than an imperial power. Elizabeth followed the headmistress, keeping her reservations to herself. It was a game, that was all: a new and mildly interesting distraction, but not a role she should take seriously. It was not as if she intended to live within its constraints for long.

  Mme. Houelebecq lived in a small suite on the third floor, directly above Elizabeth’s rooms—the east wing had been extended upward at some time in the nineteenth century—with a parlor in which to receive visitors. Once Elizabeth was settled in a chair and the maids had served tea and withdrawn, Madame unwound very slightly. Expression returned to her face as she inspected Elizabeth over the rim of her teacup. “I imagine you are wondering why you are here so early,” she said. “Are you?”

  “Yes, madame.” Elizabeth nodded. She could do biddable when it served her needs.

  “I thought it best to take a look at you in isolation, as it were.” Mme. Houelebecq’s expression was cool, and for a moment Elizabeth had an alarming premonition that the headmistress had seen right through her. “This is an unusual occurrence, you understand. I would be astonished if you were not already adequately educated in etiquette and court protocol, not to mention the other arts and graces that we attempt to instill in our girls. It would be sheer dereliction of duty on the part of your tutors had they not done so. But you have probably not spent much time among the social stratum immediately below your own. You know princes and kings, of course, and you know servants: your equals and those too far beneath your notice to worry about. But between these levels there is another one, of people who you can inadvertently crush by accident. The wives and daughters of baronets and knights, or even commoners of means—magnates and merchants. Your father wrote to me in confidence”—Mme. Houelebecq sniffed—“to give me a specific task. It has been said that a true lady never unintentionally gives offense. But you, Your Majesty, are not destined for life as a mere lady. Your father wishes for you to learn how to manage jealousy and other unpleasantness, in a setting you can leave behind when the time is right for you to join your husband’s court. After all, even a crushed wasp can sting. And I am very much afraid that from next week, you are going to be the center of a hornet’s nest of vicious gossip.”

  BERLIN, TIME LINE THREE, AUGUST 2020

  Later, settling into her rooms at the schloss, Elizabeth found a letter on her study table.

  At first she overlooked the plain white envelope, for she was still digesting Mme. Houelebecq’s explanation of the reasoning behind her presence at the school. Between shedding her coat and hat—then swearing to herself and, after a brief search for her maid, recalling that she was supposed to attend to such chores herself, thereby necessitating a search for the hat rack and closet—she w
as mildly disgruntled by the time she got her boots off. So she decided to kill time by examining her spartan rooms, and that was when she found it.

  The letter came in an anonymous white envelope, addressed to her as E. Hanover. When she finally noticed it sitting atop the table it rattled her considerably. For a panicky moment she wondered if someone had slipped into her study while she was in the bedroom next door. While she knew that the school was in principle protected by Captain Bertrand’s people, and that the servants had been carefully scrutinized before her arrival, more than one ancestor of hers had been taken by surprise under similar circumstances. The servants had placed her portable writing-slope atop the table. She flipped it open, reached into one of the storage slots, and withdrew her letter opener—a slim, ornamental knife which was of water-patterned steel, honed as sharp as a razor. She carefully checked the hallway, ensured her front door was locked and bolted, made a quick pass through her rooms, then retrieved the letter.

  Elizabeth: arrangements are now in place for your extraction, as per our conversation last month. If you wish to proceed, reply by letter (a simple “yes” will do) and leave the sealed envelope, addressed to “H,” where you found this one.

  The staff here stored your steamer trunks on the shelf in the front hallway above the coat hooks and hat rack.

  If you confirm your intention to proceed, a disguise will be placed in the smallest trunk the following day. You will also find a letter with a date and time. Half an hour before the designated time you should retreat to your rooms, lock and bolt the door, and change into the clothes provided.