The Family Trade

by Stross, Charles

  Roland frowned thoughtfully. “Listen, is it just your mail and phone that you need? Because if so, it would be a lot safer just to divert everything. We’ve got a telephone switch in the subbasement and we can slam your domestic subscriber lines right over. But it would be a good thing if you avoided your home for the next few days. I can send someone around if there’s anything you need, but—” he shrugged.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because.” He put his butter knife down. “We, uh, when there’s a succession crisis or a war within the Clan, things can get very messy, very fast.” He paused for a moment, then rushed on: “I wouldn’t want to risk anyone getting a clean shot at you.”

  Miriam sat very still, blood pounding in her ears. “Does that mean what I think it means?” she asked.

  “Yes—your house is a target. We have it under surveillance, but accidents can happen, someone can miss something, and you might be walking into a booby trap. Tripwires inside the front door. It won’t be secure until we’ve doppelgängered it, which might take some time because it’s way out in the sticks on this side, and we’d need to fortify the area to stop anyone crossing over inside your living room. It took days for us to find you, even with the office chair in the forest as a marker. But you might not be so lucky next time.”

  “Oh.” Miriam nodded to herself, absorbing this new and unwelcome fact. So you found me by the chair? “What about my mother?”

  Roland looked puzzled. “But your mother’s—”

  “No, I mean my adoptive mother.” Miriam gritted her teeth. “You know, the woman who raised me from a baby as her own? Who is now all alone and wheelchair-bound? Is she at risk? Because if so—” she realized that her voice was rising.

  “I’ll see to it at once,” Roland said decisively and pulled out his mobile phone. It obviously hadn’t occurred to him that Iris was of any importance.

  “Do so,” Miriam said tersely. “Or I’ll never speak to you again.”

  “That’s uncalled for.” Roland looked serious. “Is there anyone else I should know about?” he asked after a moment.

  Miriam took a deep breath. Here goes, she thought. “My ex-husband is remarried and has a wife and child,” she said. “Is he at risk?”

  Roland mulled it over for a minute. “He’s a commoner,” he said finally. “There were no children and you’re divorced. So I guess he’s out of the frame.”

  No children. Miriam shook her head. “You’ll have to tell me about your inheritance laws,” she said carefully. Oh, what complications! Someone out there in America was a twelve-year-old girl—Miriam didn’t know where, she only knew general details about her adoptive family—who might have inherited Miriam’s current problem. She’s too young, Miriam thought instinctively. And she has no locket. But the adoption records were sealed and nobody but Ben and Iris knew about the pregnancy. If the family hadn’t found her, then—

  “Oh, they’re simple enough,” said Roland, a slightly bitter note in his voice. “The, um, family talent? It only breeds true among the pure-blooded line. They found that out pretty early. It’s what the biologists call a recessive trait. On the other side, um, marriage customs are different—cousin marriages are allowed, for one thing—and for another, children who don’t have the talent aren’t part of the Clan. But they’re kept in the families. They form the outer, nonshareholding part of the Clan, but if two of them marry some of their children may inherit the talent.”

  Good news mixed with bad news. On the one hand, her daughter—who she hadn’t seen since two days after her birth—was safe from the attentions of the family, safe to lead a normal life unless Miriam drew attention to her. As long as the family dug no deeper than they had so far. On the other hand—“You’re telling me that my parents were cousins?”

  “Second cousins once removed, I think,” Roland replied. “Yes. By family law and custom marrying out is forbidden. You might want to bear that in mind, by the way, it’s the one big taboo.” He glanced aside nervously. “But you’re probably safe because you did it over here and divorced him before anyone knew.” He was staring at the wall, she realized, staring at something that wasn’t there in an attempt to avoid her gaze. Unpleasant memories? “Otherwise there would be repercussions. Bad ones.”

  “You’re telling me.” She noticed her fingers turning white around the rim of her coffee cup. “So presumably Uncle Angbard will make life hard for me if I try to take off and he wants me to marry someone who’s a not-too-close family member.”

  “That’s an understatement.” Roland’s cheek twitched. “It’s not as if the council would give him any other options,” he muttered.

  “What else?” Miriam asked as the silence grew uncomfortable.

  “Well!” Roland shook himself and sat up. He began ticking off points on his fingers, his movements precise and economical and tense. “We are expected to abide by the rules. First, when you come over here, you stop by the post room in each direction and carry whatever’s waiting there. You get a free pass this time, but not in the future. Second, you check with Security before you go anywhere. They’ll probably want you to carry a mobile phone or a pager, or a bodyguard if the security condition is anything but blue—blue for cold. Oh, and third—” he reached into an inner pocket—“the duke anticipated that you might want to go shopping, so he asked me to give you this.” He passed her an envelope, the hint of a smile tugging at his lips.

  “Hmm.” Miriam opened it. There was an unsigned silvery-colored Visa card inside with her name on it. “Hey, what’s this?”

  “Sign it.” He offered her a pen, looking pleased with himself, then watched while she scribbled on the back. “Your estate is in escrow for now, but you should consider this an advance against your assets, which are reasonably large.” His grin widened. “There may be problems with the family, but spending money isn’t one of them.”

  “Oh.” She slid it into her purse. “Any other messages from the duke?”

  “Yes.” Roland managed a straight face. “He said, ‘Tell her she’s got a two-million-dollar credit limit and to try not to spend it all at once.’”

  Miriam swore in a distinctly unladylike manner.

  He laughed briefly. “It’s your money, Miriam—Countess Helge. The import/export trade your ancestors pioneered is lucrative, and you can certainly earn your keep through it. Now how about we visit the post room so I can do my business, and then maybe you can do whatever it is that you need to do?”

  The post room was a concrete-lined subbasement, with pigeonholes sized to accommodate the big wheeled aluminum suitcases that the family used for “mail.” Roland picked a clipboard from the wall and read through it. “Hmm. Just two cases to FedEx today and that’s it.”

  “Suitcases.” She looked at them dubiously, imagining all sorts of illegal contraband.

  “Yes. Help me. Take that one. Yes, the handle locks into place as the wheels come out.”

  Struggling slightly, Miriam tugged the big suitcase out of the post room and into the stark cargo elevator next to it. Roland hit the button for the basement, and they lurched upward.

  “What’s in these things?” she asked after a moment. “Tell me if it’s none of my business.” I’m not sure I want to know, she thought, unable to avoid a flashback to the meeting in Joe’s office, the threats on her phone.

  “Oh, it’s perfectly legal,” Roland assured her. “This is all stuff that is cheap enough in Gruinmarkt and Soffmarkt or the other kingdoms of the coast and wants shipping to the Outer Kingdom—that would be California and Oregon—on this side. On the other side, there are no railroads or airports and cargo has to go by mule train across the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains. Which are full of nomad tribes, so it takes months and is pretty risky. We bring our goods across to this side, heavily padded, and ship them by FedEx. The most valuable items in here are the sealed letters sent by the family post—we charge several times their weight in gold in return for a postal service that crosses the continent in a
week. We also move intelligence. Our western Clan members—the Wu family, formerly known as Arnesen, and braided with the eastern families—exchange information with us. By coordinating our efforts, we can protect our traditional shipping on the other side from large bandit tribes like the Apache. It also helps us exert political leverage beyond our numbers. For example, if the Emperor Outside dies and there is a succession struggle, we can loan the Wu family funds with which to ensure a favorable outcome and do so long before news would otherwise reach us across the continental divide.”

  Miriam’s eyes were nearly bulging as she tried to make sense of this. “You mean there’s no telegraph?” she asked.

  “We are the telegraph,” he told her. “As for the rest of what’s in these suitcases, it’s mostly stuff that only comes from the east and is expensive in the west. Like, for example, diamonds from India. They’re expensive enough in the Gruinmarkt and almost impossible to get in the Outer Kingdom—it’s much cheaper to ship them across the Boreal Ocean by barque than the western ocean by junk, especially since the Mongols refuse to trade with the east. Or penicillin. The ability to guarantee that a prince’s wife will not die of childbed fever is worth more than any amount of precious stones.”

  “And going the other way…”

  “More messages. More diplomatic intelligence. Spices and garnets and rubies and gold from the Outer Kingdom’s mines.”

  Miriam nodded. The elevator doors opened onto the underground garage, and she followed him out into the concrete maze.

  Several vehicles were parked there, including a long black Mercedes limousine—and her own slightly battered Saturn. Roland headed for the Merc. “Once we’ve fitted your car with some extras, you can use it—if you want,” he said. “But you can use any of the other cars here, too.”

  Miriam shook her head, taking in a sleek Jaguar coupe parked behind a concrete column. “I’m not sure about that,” she murmured. What would it do for my independence? she wondered, watching as Roland opened the Mercedes’s trunk and lifted the suitcases into it. The two-million-dollar card in her purse was much more intoxicating than the wine last night, but didn’t feel as real. I’ll have to try it, she realized. But what if I get addicted?

  The Mercedes was huge, black, and carried almost a ton of armor built into its smoothly gleaming bodywork. Miriam only realized this when she tried to open the passenger side door—it was heavy, and as it swung open she saw that the window was almost two inches thick and had a faint greenish tint. She sat down, pulled her seatbelt on, and tugged the door shut. It thudded into position as solidly as a bank vault.

  “You’re serious about being attacked,” she said soberly.

  “I don’t want to alarm you,” said Roland, “but the contents of those two suitcases are worth the equivalent of twenty million dollars each on the other side. And there are several hundred active family members that we know of—and possibly ones we don’t in hidden cells established by their family elders to gain a competitive edge over their rivals in the Clan. You’re unusual in that you’re a hidden one who was never intended to be hidden. The families in camera could raid us, and unless we took precautions we’d be sitting ducks. A young man like Vincenze—” he shrugged—“maybe a bit more mature. Waiting on a street corner. Can set off a bomb or walk up behind someone and shoot him, then just vanish into thin air. Unless there’s a doppelgänger on the other side or maybe a hill where over here there’s a cleared area, there’s no way of stopping that.”

  “Twenty million.”

  “At a very approximate exchange rate,” Roland offered, starting the engine. Bright daylight appeared from an electrically operated door at the top of the exit ramp. He put the Mercedes in gear and gently slid forward. “We’re fairly safe, though. This car has been customized by the same people that made Eduard Shevardnadze’s car. The President of the Republic of Georgia.”

  “Should that mean something?” asked Miriam.

  “Two RPG-7s, an antitank mine, and eighty rounds from a heavy machine gun. The passengers survived.”

  “I hope we’re not going to encounter that sort of treatment,” she said with feeling, reaching sideways to squeeze his fingers.

  “We aren’t.” He squeezed back briefly, then accelerated up the ramp. “But there’s no harm in taking precautions.”

  They came up out of the ground near Belmont, and Roland chauffeured them smoothly onto the Cambridge turnpike and then I-95 and the tunnel. They exited the highway near Logan International, and Roland drove toward the freight terminal. Miriam relaxed against the black leather and propped her feet up against the wooden dashboard. It smelled like a very expensive private club, redolent of the stink of money. She’d been in rooms with billionaires before and any number of sharkish venture capitalists, but somehow this was different. Most of the billionaires she knew were manipulative jerks or workaholics, obsessive and insecure about something or other. Roland, in contrast, was “old money”—old and unselfconscious, mature as a vintage wine. So old that he’d never known what it was like to be poor—or even upper-middle class. For a moment, she felt a flash of green-eyed envy—then remembered the two-million-dollar ballast in her purse.

  “Roland, how rich am I?” she asked nervously.

  “Oh, very,” he said casually. He swung the Mercedes into the entrance to a parking lot, where an automatic barrier lifted—also automatically—and then brought them to a halt in front of an anonymous-looking office with a FEDEX sign above it. “I don’t know for sure,” he added, “but I think your share may run to almost one percent of the Clan’s net worth. Certainly many millions.”

  “Oh, how marvelous,” she said sarcastically. Then more thoughtfully, “I could pay all Iris’s medical bills out of the petty cash. Couldn’t I?”

  “Yes. Help me with the suitcases?”

  “If you help me sort out Iris’s medical bills. Seriously.”

  “‘Seriously’? Yes, I’ll do that.” She stood up and stretched, then waited while Roland lifted the heavy cases out of the trunk. She took one and followed him as he rolled the other up to the door, swiped a magnetic card, and entered under the watchful eye of a security camera.

  They came to a small office where a middle-aged man in a white shirt and black tie was waiting. “Today’s consignment,” said Roland. “I’d like to introduce you to Miriam. She might be making runs on her own in future—if things work out. Miriam, this is Jack. He handles dispatch and customs at this end.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Jack, handing Roland a board with a three-part form ready to sign. “This is just a formality to confirm I’ve received everything,” he added for her benefit. Balding, overweight, and red-faced, Jack was about as homely as anyone she’d seen since she’d been pitched headfirst into this nightmare of aristocracy. Miriam smiled at him.

  “There, that’s it, then,” he said, taking the papers back from Roland. “Have a nice day, now!”

  “My best to your wife,” Roland replied. “Come on, Miriam. Time to go.”

  “Okay.” She followed him back to the car. He started the engine and eased them back out into the local traffic around the light industrial area. “Where next?”

  “Oh, we pick up the cases for the return leg, then we’re at liberty,” he said. “I thought you wanted to do some shopping? And some other things to see to? How about a couple of hours at Copley Place and messing around Back Bay, then lunch?”

  “Sounds good,” she agreed.

  “Okay.” He pulled over, into another parking lot. “Give me a hand again?”

  “Sure.”

  They got out and Miriam followed him into yet another office. The procedure was the same in reverse: Roland signed a couple of forms and this time collected two identical, ribbed aluminium suitcases, each so heavy that Miriam could barely carry hers. “Right, now into town,” he said after he lifted them both into the car’s trunk. “It’s almost ten o’-clock. Think you’ve got time to hit the shops and be back by five?”

&nbs
p; “I’m sure I have.” She smiled at him. “There’s some stuff I could do with your help for, actually. Want to hang around?”

  “Delighted to oblige.”

  The Copley Place shops weren’t exactly ideal, but it was totally covered and had enough stuff in it to keep Miriam occupied for a couple of hours. The platinum card didn’t catch fire—it didn’t even show signs of overheating when she hit Niemann Marcus and some less obvious shops for a couple of evening outfits and an expensive piece of rolling luggage.

  After the first half hour, Roland did what many polite heterosexual men did: zoned out and smiled or nodded whenever she asked him for an opinion. Which was was exactly what Miriam was hoping for, because her real goal wasn’t to fill her wardrobe with evening dresses and expensive lingerie (although that was an acceptable side effect) but to pull out a bundle of cash and use some of it to buy certain accessories. Such as a prepaid mobile phone and a very small Sony laptop with a bundle of software (“If I can’t go back home, I’ll need something to write my articles on,” she pointed out to Roland, hoping he wouldn’t figure out how big a loss-leader that would make it). She finished her spree in a sports shop, buying some outdoors tools, a pocket GPS compass, and a really neat folding solar panel, guaranteed to charge her laptop up—which she picked up while he was poking around a display of expensive hunting tackle.

  She wasn’t totally sure what she was going to do with this stuff, but she had some ideas. In particular, the CD-ROMs full of detailed maps of the continental United States and the other bits of software she’d slipped in under his nose ought to come in handy. Even if they didn’t, she figured that if Angbard expected her to shop like a dizzy teenager, then she ought to get him used to her shopping like a dizzy teenager. That way he’ll have one less handle on me when I stop, she thought, a trifle smugly.