Halting State hs-1

by Charles Stross

  “Right. Right.” She nods, her expression intent. “So we’ve got these two, uh, clans. Teams? Red versus Blue, playing for Scotland or Poland. And it’s all happening quietly when Chen and his accomplice…?”

  “Chen’s over here, being a pair of hands for Team Red. And he’s got access to their key cracker back home, and he thinks, why shouldn’t I make some money on the side? It’s typical, really: Great plan, but the operational security is blown wide open because a team member got greedy and ran a bank robbery in Avalon Four. Which must have netted him, oh, all of about ten thousand euros’ worth of loot, and maybe a death sentence from the Guoanbu when they find out. Which is why he was so desperate to spill his guts when we showed up.” Unconsciously, you find yourself rubbing your ribs. Right where the pocket with your keyboard was. “Jesus. He probably thought we were zombies closing on him, and we were going to put him in a taxi.”

  “The taxi was already waiting.” Elaine shudders delicately. “We weren’t its real target, we were just the useful idiots who were going to shanghai Chen. Only we screwed up.” She’s staring at you, you realize.

  Timing is everything. (But at least the mummy lobe has shut its trap, leaving you to coldly consider the picture with your Spy Sensibility, or maybe your Gamer’s Gonads.) “I was arrested in Amsterdam.”

  “Yes?” She sits up straighter.

  “On Friday night, last week. The bank robbery on the Island of Valiant Dreams happened on Thursday morning, didn’t it? Triggering Michaels’s man-trap.”

  “The man who never was, Nigel MacDonald—the fake identity built around your résumé.” She’s still staring at you. It’s as if you’ve fallen into the centre of her world. “How long have you been playing SPOOKS?”

  “Huh? Like I said, I did it years ago—on-the-job research, actually.”

  “Okay.” She makes deliberate eye contact. “So you expect me to believe that Hayek Associates had a Jack-shaped hole in its corporate structure just waiting for Mr. Chen to try a penetration attack on them?”

  “No, I—” You look away, embarrassed. Then an idea surfaces in your imagination like an iceberg. It’s too preposterous for words, but it fits the observable facts—“whoops.”

  “Yes?” She leans forward.

  “What if the whole reason STEAMING was shitcanned last week was because Michaels was planning to hire me anyway? Or rather…they’ve got a hole in their org chart with my name on it—or rather, ‘Nigel MacDonald,’ but I’m there if they need to activate me—and it’s not the only hole, they’ve probably got a bunch of other ones. Hell, there’s probably an agency somewhere with an ElaineBarnaby-shaped hole in it by any other name, just waiting. Let’s suppose Michaels already had the wind up that something shitty was stinking up the Beijing gutters, and was getting ready to activate a counter-espionage unit to go looking for it. He was planning on running most of the team via SPOOKS, but he’d need some clueful people on the inside—I suspect he tapped me for the job of GM. But then the robbery pointed to the bad guys having penetrated a lot further than anyone realized, and the idiot marketing manager called in the cops. So he ensured that when you asked for a native guide, I was hired”—you flash back to that weird interview, with Mr. PinStripe and Mr. Grey and the not-quite-right uncanny valley graphical overlay—“and he probably leaned on your boss to make sure you were left up here because, after all, you’re one of his pawns.”

  “Sounds plausible. I think you’re right about him tapping you for a job—but it’s not just the matter of your old employment being terminated. I think he had you arrested in Amsterdam just to drive you home with your tail between your legs.” She puts her coffee mug down.

  “Agh!” The mummy lobe manages to blurt out an indignant denial of your innocence, then shuts down in complete catatonic withdrawal.

  She grins at you impishly. “That’s how I’d have done it, anyway.”

  “You have an evil mind!”

  “And this is a bad thing how, exactly?”

  You find yourself returning her grin. “We’re going to need it if we’re going to figure out what Barry isn’t telling us. As long as you can remember only to use your powers for good.”

  “I’ll do my best. But anyway, Team Red are dug in, they can listen in on any communications in Scotland, and they can crack any of the common encryption systems in use.” She looks dubious. “Are we safe?”

  “I don’t know. Certainly Barry’s man-behind-the-curtain operation has got stuff that Team Red don’t know about or can’t break. And”—another iceberg heaves into view—“I think I just got it.”

  “Got what?” She looks anxious. “Is it catching?”

  “Skill set: Nigel MacDonald. Let’s suppose…yeah. Let’s say Barry got wind of Team Red’s existence and also got wind of Chen’s little bank robbery before it happened. Yes? Or even just the capability Chen had tucked up his post-graduate-student sleeve. ‘Nigel MacDonald’ shows up, encourages Chen to do the deed, then vanishes after the robbery. Team Red are trying to figure out what the ingenious Mr. Chen was up to, and they realize MacDonald has done a runner, so they focus on him as the accomplice. Then I turn up in their trawl, and—”

  Her eyes go wide. “Carry on, Nigel.”

  Nigel? It’s not a name you’d have picked for yourself, but if the hat fits…

  “Whoops. They set me up—and you—to go and poke Team Red with a pointy stick, and Team Red are primed to think that I’m their rogue member’s partner, right? They don’t know what Nigel MacDonald looks like, other than through his NIR entry. Shit, I bet you he’s my spitting image!”

  “What’s the opposite of identity theft? Identity donation?” She shakes her head. “Okay, so they’ve set you up as bait for Team Red. So that makes me…the sniper. Right?” She stands up. “Where’s the bathroom?”

  You point wordlessly and track her as she heads upstairs. The street light filtering through the hall window outlines the calves of her legs beneath the robe, drawing your eyes after her. It’s as if your mind is split three ways. Part of you is still trying to assimilate the fact that the other side play for keeps, and you are it. Not the People’s Republic of Scotland, but you, personally, are facing the sharp end of the best and the brightest of the Chinese Ministry of State Affairs, and you are not qualified to dabble in their games. Another part of you is now almost certain that Elaine is considering inviting you to play a different game, the oldest game there is—and the mummy lobe is tongue-tied and stricken with horror, realizing that, if you take up her invitation, you’ll have to explain both your little problems…And, finally, there’s the little fact that you’re playing a game you don’t understand the rules of against an artificial reality engine that Barry Michaels says has taken Elsie hostage, and that he thought it’d be a good idea to cross-link your National Identity Register files with those of an imaginary double agent. Slick public-school dog-fucker.

  With a creak of floor-boards, Elaine sits down beside you on the futon, graceful and elegant as only a gawky collection of librarian-shaped elbows and knees can be. “I’m trying to figure out what they expect me to do,” she says, arranging the dressing-gown so that it covers her bare toes. “And you,” she adds. “I know what role you’re meant to play, but who am I?”

  She’s eerily focussed, and you’re not entirely sure which game she’s talking about at this point. “Who do you want to be?” you ask, not quite looking at her directly.

  “I think”—she licks her upper lip nervously—“I want to be a spook.” Her pupils are wide and black in the twilight. “I know what I don’t want to be.”

  “Well, then. I think you’re already halfway there. You’re a forensic analyst with a security clearance, and you’re positioned so uncomfortably close to, uh, ‘Nigel MacDonald’ that if Team Red are tracking our meatspace location, they’ll figure MacDonald is under extreme close-up examination.”

  “But that’s not what you should have asked,” she says, nodding at the stack of dead home-entert
ainment gear.

  “Oh?”

  “You should have said, who do you want”—she looks you in the eye, and you realize it’s game on, and you freeze in her path like a pheasant in front of a highland Land Rover; because there’s one special unfair rule to this game that applies to you but not to anybody else: And now it’s time to tell her, you find you’re terrified, but you can’t not tell her, either, and retain a shred of self-respect—“to be?”

  Which is how Elaine ends up staying the night at your flat.

  Face it, it was probably inevitable from the moment you offered to lend her the use of the washing-machine and a spare pair of jeans. If you’d realized she was halfway to fancying you, you’d have panicked and stuck your foot so far down your throat you could have kicked yourself in the ass: But by being considerate and friendly, you accidentally convinced her that you’re not a desperate loser. So she sat on your futon in the twilight, and you both chewed the paranoid cud and realized how isolated you were. And the next thing you noticed it was dark outside and the washing-machine was still running. “How do I get back to the hotel from here?” she asked. “Without using a taxi,” she added with the ghost of a smile.

  “There’s a bus that’ll take you most of the way—or I could walk you”—and then you stood up and looked out the window and saw the rain: not the roaring waterfall that had ambushed you on the way home, but a normal Edinburgh evening’s worth of rain, a sporadic tinkling of liquid shrapnel—“or you can use the futon if you like: There’s plenty of spare bedding.”

  “Thanks,” she said, a genuine smile now, and patted the futon beside her. “How about we order in a pizza? You’ve still got a land-line, right?”

  A pizza in the darkness demanded accompaniment—the neglected litre-bottle of Belgian beer in the fridge—and you rummaged around with the cables and plugged your pod straight into the speakers, and then she started rummaging through your music collection until she found a bunch of tracks by Miranda Sex Garden that you’d completely forgotten about to ooh and ah over, and made small-talk about gigs she’d been to (with a friend, you inferred, conveniently airbrushed out of the frame), and her gaming/reenactment habit. There’d been an odd moment when she found a project you’d forgotten about sitting under the stack of magazines in the bathroom, but then you’d explained it was your knitting, not an ex’s, and she’d taken it in her stride; and that got you both onto talking about how your respective jobs had got in the way of you having a life, and opened the second (unchilled) bottle of Belgian beer. She’d asked how you were feeling after the crash, and confessed her neck was stiff, and you’d gingerly, inexpertly, rubbed it by way of confirmation. Until you’d tipsily noticed how late it was getting and had suggested maybe it was time to go to bed, and fetch the spare bedding—and she’d somehow managed to imply that this was unnecessary. She kissed you like a small, cold creature seeking warmth, and you’d tried desperately to remember how to kiss someone back passionately, half-paralysed with fear that the moment wasn’t going to last.

  And then you had to say it.

  “There’s something I’ve got to tell you,” you said, through a throat that felt like bricks lined with cobwebs.

  “Mm?” She tensed slightly and pulled back.

  “When I was fourteen, at school”—she stopped moving in your arms, going limp, listening—“I got caught on camera.”

  It was the old shame and embarrassment tap-dance. It took you a moment to gather your wits: during which she tensed. “What were you doing?”

  “I was”—you took a deep breath—“she was fifteen. We were doing this, more or less. Kissing.”

  You felt the tension go out of her. “That’s all?”

  “The head teacher was having a, a demonstration. Showing his new camera system to the community relations constable. Who noticed it officially. They called me up.”

  “What?” The tension in her arms is systolic, squeezing you like an ocean.

  “Under the Sexual Offences Act, the new one they’d just passed, any sexual contact with an under-sixteen was—well, we didn’t know any better, and it was before they passed the amendment a couple of years later. I accepted a caution. And so did Claire.”

  “What?” Her arms tightened around you.

  “I’m just trying to say.” You took a deep breath: “You may not want to go any further. With someone who’s listed on the sex offender’s register as a paedophile.”

  She shuddered slightly. “A what?” She sounded incredulous.

  “Sexual contact with a minor. It covers kissing or copping a feel, you know? She was nearly a year older than I was; another twelve months and we’d have been legal, anyway, but the trouble is, neither of us knew better than to accept a caution. It means they won’t prosecute; but it’s an admission of guilt, it gets you a criminal record, and unlike a conviction in court which carries a sentence with an expiry date, a caution is never spent. If I’d kicked up a fuss and demanded a trial, the children’s panel would have told the police to piss off and stop wasting their time, but as it is…it follows me around.” Your breath was coming too fast. “I’m scared.”

  You realized after a moment that she was still holding on to you tightly. Almost like she was drowning. “Jack.” She spoke into the base of your throat. “I have to ask you this. Are you a nonce?”

  “No, but I have to tell—” No, you don’t have to tell, but the mummy lobe, the five-year-old who believed what the grown-ups said about always telling the truth, had to confess to everything, just like that horrible morning in the head’s office—

  “Honestly, Jack, you don’t.” Her nose was at the side of your neck. You could feel her tongue, exploring your clavicle. “It’s just a bug in the legal code. You don’t need to punish yourself any more.”

  “What they’ll do—Michaels says Elsie is missing—”

  “Shut up!” She was fierce, angrier than Lucy was when she found out and dumped you, hotter than the coldly venomous whispering behind your back during that last, miserable (not to mention celibate) year at university. But the strength of her hug told you it wasn’t you she was angry at. “Idiot. How old do you think I was the first time I kissed a boy?”

  “I’m afraid—”

  She kissed you again. “They didn’t catch me on camera. That’s the only difference between us.”

  And now she’s breathing evenly and slowly, a faint draught of cool, slightly beery breath riffling through the fine hairs on your arm: And you’re studying her closed eyelids and relaxed face, her dark eyebrows relaxed in sleep, by the faint glow of the red LED street-lamp outside the bedroom window, and you’re feeling a tenderness almost as vast as the sea of surprise that’s crashed through your front door and made itself at home under the duvet, warm and naked and sleeping next to you as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.

  And you think, This probably changes everything. But whether it changes it for better or worse, only time will tell.

  SUE: Missing in Action

  You know what Liz wants you to do, don’t you? She wants you to go and find the nerd and the librarian, Jack Reed and Elaine Barnaby, and put it to them that they can be of help in your investigation. (That, and she wants you to switch all your network services off and wear a tinfoil hat under your four-leafed clover.) Which would be easy enough, if you could only bloody locate the terrible twosome. As it is, when you get back to the station and go live again, you bounce in quick succession off their voice mailboxes, IM receptionists, and social websites. Which tells you a lot about them (Jack’s into extreme knitting, Elaine likes dressing up as Maid Marian and hitting people with a sword) but nothing particularly useful like where they’re hiding. After half an hour of persistently not finding them—you know they headed over to Glasgow in the morning, but, by the time you get to the point of escalating your search, both their mobies are off-line—you’re out of ideas. So it’s time to get all twentieth-century and hit the pavement.

  Except these two aren’t your us
ual neds. They’ve got no pavement to hang out on, just a hotel room and a recycled nuclear bunker. By the time you’ve confirmed they’re not filling up a conference room at the hotel, you’ve narrowed it down a wee bit: But then you hit a blank wall down at the bunker.

  “They’re not here.” It’s Beccy Webster, the Market Stabilization Executive, coming on all Lady Macbeth at you. “I haven’t seen them, they haven’t been signed in, and you’re wasting your time.” She sniffs and stares down her nose, like you’re from the cleaning agency, and you’ve just smeared printer toner all over her nice clean walls.