‘Children.’
Elena glanced round, pulled a face. ‘He started it!’
‘Sure.’ Huw stood in the doorway, trying not to smile. ‘Did you get the Internet working?’
‘Something’s wrong with it,’ Yul said apologetically.
‘Ah, well.’ Huw shrugged and walked over to the armchair, where a laptop trailed bits of many-colored spaghetti towards the wall. ‘I’ll sort it out. Got to report in.’ Expecting Yul or Elena to do anything technical had been a forlorn hope. Am I the only competent person around here? he wondered. Dumb question: While he’d been studying in schools and colleges in the United States under a false identity, Yul had been bringing joy to their backwoods father’s heart, riding and hunting and being a traditional son on their country estate in the western marches of the Gruinmarkt; and Elena had been under the stifling constraints of a noble daughter, although she’d kicked up enough of a fuss that her parents had allowed her to escape into Clan Security, leaving them with one less dowry to worry about. Which left Huw as the guy who knew one end of an Internet router and a secure voice-over IP connection from another, and Yul and Elena as the armed muscle to watch over him when they weren’t engaging in risky post-adolescent high jinks – risky because the older generation weren’t many years past fighting blood feuds over that sort of thing.
It took him a few minutes, some scrabbling with cables, and a reboot to get everything working properly. Huw was setting up the encrypted link to the ClanSec e-mail hub and looking forward to checking in when he heard footsteps.
‘Yes?’ He glanced round. It was Miriam. She looked – not tired, exactly, but careworn. And something else.
‘Brill tells me we need to talk,’ she said, then glanced across the room at the sofa.
‘She said – ’ Huw’s larynx froze for a few seconds as he stared at her. The first time he’d met her, gowned and bejeweled at a royal reception, she’d been turned out in the very mode of Gruinmarkt nobility; then earlier, when Lady Brilliana had so rudely yanked him (and Yul, and Elena) away from his survey, she’d been wearing an out-landish getup. Now she looked – at ease, he decided. This is her. She isn’t acting a part. How interesting. ‘Ah. Well, she did, did she?’
‘She said.’ Miriam leaned on the back of his chair. ‘You’ve been exploring. Whatever that means.’ She sounded bored, but there was a glint in her eye.
‘Uh, yeah.’ Huw leaned forward and shut the laptop’s lid. ‘Why don’t we go fix something to drink?’ He glanced sidelong at Yul and Elena, who were sitting on the sofa, bickering amiably over the gun, their heads leaning together. ‘Somewhere quieter.’ The TV howled mournfully, recycling the sound track of a guitar in torment.
The kitchen was bland, basic, and undersupplied – they’d traveled light and hadn’t had time to buy much more than a bunch of frozen pizzas – but there was coffee, a carton of half-and-half, and a coffee maker. Huw busied himself filling it while Miriam searched the cupboards for mugs. ‘How did you go about it?’ she asked, finally.
Huw took a deep breath. ‘Systematically. We haven’t started deconvoluting the knotwork’ – the two worlds to which the Clan’s members could walk were distinguished by the use of a different knot that the world-walker had to concentrate on – ‘but I’m pretty sure we’ll start finding others once we do. The fourth world we found – it’s accessed from this one, if you use the Lees’ knot. We couldn’t get through to it in New England, but it worked down south; I think it may be in the middle of an ice age.’
‘Did you find anyone? People, I mean?’
‘Yes.’ Huw paused as the coffee maker coughed and grumbled to itself. ‘Their bones. A big dome, made out of something like, like a very odd kind of concrete. Residual radioactivity. A skull with perfect dentistry, bits of damaged metalwork, fire escapes or gantries or something, that I’ll swear are made out of titanium. It’s clearly been there decades or centuries. And then there’s the door.’
‘Door?’
‘Yul hit it with an axe. Nearly killed us – there was hard vacuum on the other side.’
‘Whoops.’ Miriam pulled out a stool and sat down at the breakfast bar. ‘Too fast. Vacuum? You think you found a door onto another world?’
‘We didn’t stick around to make sure. But it didn’t stop sucking after a couple of minutes. Last time we saw the dome, it was surrounded by fog.’
‘Oh my.’ Her shoulders were shaking. ‘God.’
Huw watched her, not unsympathetically. He’d had more than a day to get used to the idea: If Lady Brilliana was right – and his own judgement was right – and Miriam was fit to lead them . . .
‘That changes a lot of things,’ she said, looking straight at him. ‘If it is a door to another world . . . how do you think it works?’
Huw shrugged again. ‘We are cursed by our total ignorance of our family talent’s origins,’ he pointed out. ‘But what we seem to have is a trait that can be externally controlled – that’s what the knot’s for – and I figure if it turns out that other knots take us to other worlds, then it’s no huge leap to conclude that it was engineered. I don’t think anyone’s looked inside us – I figure the mechanism, if there is one, has got to be something intracellular – but the fact that it’s controllable, that we don’t world-walk at random when we look at a maze or a fractal generator on a PC, screams design. This door? There’s more stuff in that dome, lots more, and it looks like wreckage left behind by a civilization more advanced than this one.’ He pointed at the coffee maker. ‘Think what a peasant back home would make of that? You know, and I know, what it is and how it works, because we went to school and college in this country.’ He pulled the jug out and poured two mugs of coffee. ‘Electricity. But to a peasant . . .’
‘Magic.’ The word hung in the air as Miriam poured milk into both mugs.
‘So.’ He chose his words carefully. ‘What do you think it means?’
‘Oh boy.’ Miriam stared at her coffee mug, then blew on it and took a first sip. ‘Where do you want me to start? If nothing else, it makes all the Clan’s defensive structures obsolete overnight. One extra universe is useful, two is embarrassing, three extra universes implies . . . lots. Which means, assuming there are more, that doppelgängered houses stop being effectively defended.’ Doppelgängering – the practice of building defenses in the other worlds, physically collocated with the space occupied by the defended structure, in order to stop hostile world-walkers gaining access – was a key element in all the Clan families’ buildings. But you could build an earth berm or a safe house in one parallel universe – how could you hope to do it if there were millions? ‘And then . . . well. I tried telling the Council their business model was broken, but I didn’t realize how broken it was.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’ She put her mug down. ‘The – hell, I’m doing it again. Distancing. We got rich in the Gruinmarkt by exploiting superior technology – being able to move messages around fast, make markets, that kind of thing. And we got rich in this world’ – she glanced at the window, which opened out onto an unkempt yard – ‘by smuggling. But what they were really doing was exploiting a development imbalance. Making money through a monopoly on superior technology – okay, call it a family talent, and it may be something you can selectively breed for, but if you’re right and it’s a technology, then it’s not a monopoly anymore.’
‘Uh.’ Huw took a mouthful of coffee. ‘What’s your reasoning?’
‘Well, you’re the one who just told me you thought our ability was artificial? And we’ve established that someone else – let’s take your door into a vacuum realm as a given – has a way of moving stuff between time lines – yes, I’m going to take the idea that we’re in a bunch of parallel universes that branch off each other as a given. New Britain really rubs your nose in it – and I think if they can just open a door then we have to admit that – what the Clan can do? The postal corvée? Is a joke.’
Miriam closed her eyes for a moment.
‘The Council are so not going to want to hear this. And it’s not the worst of it.’
‘What else do you figure we’re looking at?’ Huw stared at her, fascinated. Have you figured out the other thing . . . ?
‘Okay, let’s speculate wildly. There are other people out there who can travel between parallel worlds. They’re better at it than us, and they know what they’re doing. That’s really bad, right there, but not necessarily fatal. However . . . we’ve been pointedly ignoring, all along, the fact that what we do isn’t magical. It’s not unique. It’s like, after 1945, the government pretended for a few years that making nuclear weapons was some kind of big secret. Then the Russians got the bomb, and the Brits, and the Chinese, and before you can blink we’re worrying about the North Koreans, or the Iranians. What the Clan Council needs to worry about is the US government – who they’ve spent the past few decades systematically provoking – and who now know we exist. What do you think they’ll do?’
‘But we don’t know how the world-walking mechanism works. It’s got to take them time – ’
Miriam took another mouthful of coffee. ‘They’ve had seven or eight months, Huw. That’s how long it’s been since Matthias went over the wall. And there’s’ – she paused, as if considering her words – ‘stuff that’s happened, stuff that will turn hunting us down into a screaming crash priority, higher than al-Qaeda, higher than the Iraq occupation. They’ve got to be throwing money at it like the Manhattan project . . .’ She trailed off.
‘I don’t think they’ll have got anywhere yet.’ Huw reached for the coffee pot again, emptying the dregs into their mugs. ‘It takes time to organize a research project and they’ll be doing it under conditions of complete secrecy.’
‘Yes, but they’ve already got the big national laboratories. And if they’ve got captive Clan members, they’re starting from where the Clan stood, as of forty-eight hours ago. And they could have started months ago! It all depends on whether the problem they’re trying to crack is a hard one or an easy one. If we’ve got some kind of mechanism that lets us do this, then it’s designed to replicate, and there’s got to be some sort of control system wired into our brains – are you telling me nobody has put bits of a Clan member under an electron microscope before to look for anomalies?’
‘You’ve met enough of your cousins by now. How many brain surgeons did you spot?’ Huw looked defensive. ‘It wasn’t a high priority.’
‘Well it is, now. Because if they can figure out what makes us world-walk, they’re probably halfway to mass-producing it. Given they’ve got scouts in the Gruinmarkt – ’
‘They’ve got what?’ Huw sat bolt upright.
‘Eh.’ Miriam cocked her head to one side. ‘Forget I said that?’
‘Sure . . . but can I finish your sentence for you before I forget?’
‘Um . . .’
‘Right now, any scouts they can send our way are going to be riding piggyback. Lightning Child knows how they’re making the couriers cooperate, but nothing would surprise me: The current administration are so Machiavellian they make Prince Egon look like a White House intern. But what you’re speculating about is how long we’ve got until there’s a large-scale incursion.’ Her expression made him look for other words. ‘Invasion. Is that what you’re thinking?’
Miriam nodded. ‘I – no, we – have got to talk to Angbard, and fast. Whatever the prince has been up to back, uh, home’ – he spotted the moment’s deliberation before she chose the word – ‘it’s a sideshow compared to what’s coming. I don’t know how long we’ve got, but I’d guess it’s going to be weeks to months, not months to years.’ She pushed her empty mug away. ‘Do you have Google on that laptop of yours?’
‘What are you thinking of trawling for?’
‘News items. Foreign stuff, not more shit about Paris Hilton’s funeral; I want to hear about anything that suggests that State is planning a hasty exit from Iraq. They’re not going to try and occupy Iraq and Afghanistan and invade the Gruinmarkt simultaneously, are they?’ She slid off her bar stool, visibly jittery. Iraq had been a ghastly object lesson in what the current administration could do to people they didn’t like: the increasingly desperate pleas of the coup plotters after they deposed Saddam, the cringing threats of gas attacks in event of invasion – and in response, the huge B52 raids on Baghdad. All of it had been calculated to send a message: This is what you get if you mess with us.
‘Depends.’ Huw reached over and switched off the coffee maker. ‘Don’t they have some kind of doctrine about being able to fight two wars simultaneously, anywhere on the planet? And the supply lines to the Gruinmarkt are real short, if they can build a world-walking machine. Much less some kind of gate.’
‘And mostly they’d be up against irregulars with muskets. They could roll over in their sleep and crush us, if – ’
A door slammed in the passage. Moments later, Brill darted into the kitchen. ‘Oh. There you are!’ Visibly agitated, she focused on the coffee pot. ‘Ah, you emptied it. Huw, have you brought the e-mail service to life?’
‘Not yet, I was going to – ’
‘Scheisse.’ Brill glanced aside. ‘I’m sorry, milady. The news is bad. I must get in touch right away. Huw, if you would be so good – ’
‘What’s happened?’ demanded Miriam.
‘My pager ordered me to call in, in the clear – maximum urgency. It’s the duke, my lady. I’m afraid there’s been an accident.’
*
There was a room on one of the upper floors of the Hjalmar Palace with a huge canopied bed in it, and the bed stank of death and uncontrolled bowels. Lady Olga sat on the edge of the bed and spoke to its occupant, as a medic cleaned him and a soldier stood by, waiting to replace the fouled sheets.
He’d been strong once, and clever and ruthless, a bulwark for his allies and a terror to his faction’s foes, during the years of madness when the Clan’s member families had engaged in a bloody succession of mortal feuds. Then, as the madness receded, he’d helped broker a series of treaties – some on paper, others cemented by blood in marriage – to disarm the worst of the remaining hostilities. He’d risen to dominate the Clan’s external security apparat, modernizing it and turning it into the glue that bound the new settlement together. The hammer of the council, his combination of force and guile had cowed the hotheads and brought the wily to his table. But he was just one man – now paralyzed on one side and barely conscious, lonely and adrift in what might be his deathbed.
‘We’re holding out,’ she said quietly, touching his immobile left hand, hoping against hope for a reaction. ‘Earl Fredryck’s observers report that the federal presence at the doppelgänger site is continuing, but all our people made it across ahead of the siege. We have plenty of ammunition. The monarchists dropped the culvert from the river, and attempted to poison the well, but the osmotic purifier is working. Earl Riordan reports that the pretender’s army is encamped athwart the valley just downriver of the bend, ’tween here and Wergatsfurt. The scouts are already preparing a route for us through New Britain, once Riordan’s men have manufactured a sufficiency of knot-work badges.’
The duke made an odd noise in the back of his throat, something between a cluck and a gurgle. Olga leaned close, trying to discern words. His eyes rolled, agitated: ‘Guh-uh . . .’
‘Fear not, we have prepared for you.’ A fireman’s carry and a hike in the dark – then, if he survived the one-kilometer haul, a stealthy transit back to the American side, land of neurological wards and intensive care facilities, where a private ambulance would be waiting to whisk him to a hospital bed. ‘The body of the force will return, taking the Pervert’s army in the rear if he’s still encamped. And should he occupy the palace, we have a warm welcome prepared for him.’
Olga was of the opinion that it was better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission; and in any event, the warm welcome in question was one with a short expiry date – shorter than ever, now that she’d learned what that thrice-cur
sed bastard idiot Matthias had told the DEA, or whoever they were. And what Otto had been doing was the icing on a very unpalatable cake. To his credit, he’d actually volunteered the information. ‘Baron Henryk never put his faith in intangibles,’ he’d explained. ‘He wanted to see these mythical nuclear weapons. He wanted to own them. He argued about it with the duke, but then the duke changed his mind – one suspects Matthias forged his signature on the letter – and so the baron set me to oversee Matthias on organizing the theft. It was meant to be a harmless shell game, and additional leverage in council. Nobody had looked at them for more than eight years! How were we to know Matthias would sell his story to the outlanders?’
‘Guh. Uh. Pa. Pat. Uh.’ He was clearly trying to say something. Alerted, Olga leaned closer.
‘Please, I ask you, try to speak slowly. Is it a person?’
‘Uh!’
‘Patricia?’ It was the obvious name: his half sister, mother of Helge, the wayward wildcat orphan and loose cannon who called herself Miriam.
‘Yuh.’
‘Oh! Good. Do you want to see her?’ That could be difficult. Like most of the Clan’s elders who were familiar with American culture, she’d vanished into a deep cover identity when the shit hit the fan, and trying to bring her over could draw attention to her.
‘Nuh.’
‘All right.’ Olga racked her mind for options. ‘Do you have a message for her? Or about her? Hang on, if it’s a message for her, blink once? About her, twice?’
One blink.
Olga sat up, heart hammering. He’s still inside there. A hot flush of relief washed over her: The idea that Angbard, Duke Lofstrom, had lost his mind had been too terrible to voice, or even think. Paralyzed, deathly sick, but still the will to control went on . . . ‘Can you spell it out? One for no, two for yes?’
The Revolution Trade (Merchant Princes Omnibus 3) Page 6