The Hidden Family: Book Two of Merchant Princes

by Charles Stross

  “Hmm.” Paulette looked her up and down then glanced at Miriam.

  “This is a kind of what you see is what you get proposition, is it?”

  “Yes,” Miriam said. “Oh, and her family wants her back. They might get violent if they find her, so she needs to be anonymous. All she’s got are the clothes on her back. And then there’s this.” She passed Paulette a piece of paper. Paulette glanced at it, then raised her other eyebrow and did a double take.

  “This is valid?” She held up the check.

  “No strings.” Miriam nodded. “At least, as long as Duke Angbard doesn’t cut off the line of credit he gave me. You’ve got the company paperwork together, ready to sign? Good. What we do is, we open a company bank account. I pay this into it and issue myself with shares to the tune of fifty grand. We write you up as an employee, you sign the contract, I issue you your first paycheck—eight thousand, covers your first month only—and a signing bonus of another ten thousand. You then write a check back to the company for that ten thousand, and I issue you the shares and make you company secretary. Got that?”

  “You want me as a director?” Paulette watched her closely. “Are you sure about that?”

  “I trust you,” Miriam said simply. “And I need someone on this side of the wall who’s got signing authority and can run things while I’m away. I wasn’t kidding when I told you to set this up, Paulie. It’s going to be big.”

  Paulette stared at the banker’s draft for fifty thousand dollars dubiously. “Blood money.”

  “Blood is thicker than water,” Brill commented. “Why don’t you want to take it?”

  Paulette sighed. “Do I tell her?” she asked Miriam.

  “Not yet.” Miriam looked thoughtful. “But I promised myself a few days back that anything I start up will be clean. That good enough for you?”

  “Yeah.” Paulette turned toward the kitchen doorway, then paused.

  “Brilliana? Is it okay if I call you Brill?”

  “Surely!” The younger woman beamed at her.

  “Oh. Well, uh, this is the kitchen. I was going to make some fresh coffee, but I figure if you’re staying here for a while I ought to start by showing you where things are and how not to—” She glanced at Miriam. “Do they have electricity?” she asked. Miriam shook her head minutely. “Oh sweet Jesus! Okay, Brill, the first thing you need to learn about the kitchen is how not to kill yourself. See, everything works by electricity. That’s kind of—”

  Miriam picked up a bundle of official papers and a pen, and wandered out into the front hall. It’s going to be okay, she told herself. Paulie’s going to mother-hen her. Two days and she’ll know how to cross the road safely, use a flush toilet, and work the washing machine. Two weeks, and if Paulie didn’t kill her, she’d be coming home late from nightclubs with a hangover. If she didn’t just decide that the twenty-first century was too much for her, and hide under the spare bed. Which, as she’d grown up in a world that hadn’t got much past the late medieval, was a distinct possibility. Wouldn’t be a surprise; it’s too much for me at times, Miriam thought, contemplating the stack of forms for declaring the tax status of a limited liability company in Massachusetts with a sinking heart.

  That evening, after Paulette and Miriam visited the bank to open a business account and deposit the checks, they holed up around Paulie’s kitchen table. A couple of bottles of red wine and a chicken casserole went a long way toward putting Brill at her ease. She even managed to get over the jittery fear of electricity that Paulie had talked into her in the afternoon to the extent of flipping light switches and fiddling with the heat on the electric stove. “It’s marvelous!” she told Miriam. “No need for coal, it stays just as hot as you want it, and it doesn’t get dirty! What do all the servants do for a living? Do they just laze around all day?”

  “Um,” said Paulette. One glance told Miriam that she was suffering a worse dose of culture shock than the young transportee—her shoulders were shaking like jelly. “Like, that’s the drawback, Brill. Where would you have the servants sleep, in a house like this?”

  “Why, if there were several in the bedchamber you so kindly loaned—oh. I’m to drudge for my keep?”

  “No,” Miriam interrupted before Paulette could wind her up any further. “Brill, ordinary people don’t have servants in their homes here.”

  “Ordinary? But surely this isn’t—” Brill’s eyes widened.

  Paulette nodded at her. “That’s me, common as muck!” she said brightly. “Listen, the way it works in this household is, if you make a mess, you tidy it up yourself. You saw the dishwasher?” Brill nodded, enthused.

  “There are other gadgets. A house this big doesn’t need servants. Tomorrow we’ll go get you some more clothes—” She glanced at Miriam for approval.”—then do next month’s food shopping, and I’ll show you where everything’s kept. Uh, Miriam, this is gonna slow everything up—”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Miriam put her knife and fork down. She was, she decided, not only over-full but increasingly exhausted. “Take it easy. Brill needs to know how to function over here because if it all comes together the way I hope, she’s going to be over here regularly on business. She’ll be working with you, I hope.” She picked up her wineglass. “Tomorrow I’m going to go call on a relative. Then I think I’ve got a serious road trip ahead of me.”

  “You’re going away?” asked Brill, carefully putting her glass down.

  “Probably.” Miriam nodded. “But not immediately. Look, what I said earlier holds—you can go home whenever you want to, if it’s an emergency. All you have to do is catch a cab around to the nearest Clan safe house and hammer on the door. They’ll have to take you back. If you tell them I abducted you, they’ll probably believe it—I seem to be the subject of some wild rumors.” She smiled tiredly. “I’ll give you the address in the morning, alright?” The smile faded. “One thing. Don’t you dare bug out on Paulie without telling her first. They don’t know about her and they might do something about her if they learn…mightn’t they?”

  Brill swallowed, then nodded. “I understand,” she said.

  “I’m sure you do.” Miriam realized Paulette was watching her through narrowed eyes. “Brill has seen me nearly get my sorry ass shot to pieces. She knows the score.”

  “Yeah, well. I was meaning to talk to you about that, too.” Paulette didn’t look pleased. “What the hell is happening over there?”

  “It’s a mess.” Miriam shook her head. “First, Olga tried to kill me. Luckily she gave me a chance to talk my way out of it first—someone tried to set me up while I was visiting you, last time. Then the shit really hit the fan. Last night I figured out that my accommodation was insecure, the hard way, then parties unknown tried to rub out Olga and me, both. Multiple parties. There are at least two factions involved, and I don’t have a clue who this new bunch are, which is why I’m here and brought Brill—she’s seen too much.”

  “A second gang? Jesus, Miriam, you’re sucking them up like a Hoover! What’s going on?”

  “I wish I knew, believe me.” She drained her wineglass. “Hmm. This glass is defective. Better fix it.” Before she could reach for the bottle, Paulette picked it up and began to pour, her hand shaking slightly. “Had a devil of a time getting here, I can tell you. Nearly put my back out carrying Brill, then found some evil son of a bitch had booby-trapped the warehouse. Earlier I phoned Roland to come tidy up—someone murdered the site watchman—but instead someone put a bomb in it.”

  “I told you that smoothie would turn out to be a weasel,” Paulette insisted. “It’s him, isn’t it?”

  “No, I don’t think so.” Miriam shook her head. “Things are messy, very messy. We ran into one of Angbard’s couriers on the train over, so I gave him a message that should shake things loose if it’s anyone on his staff. And now…well.” She pulled out the two lockets from her left pocket. “Spot the difference.”

  Paulette’s breath hissed out as she leaned forward to stud
y them. “Shit. That one on the left, the tarnished one—that’s yours, isn’t it? But the other—”

  “Have a cigar. I took it off the first hired gun last night. He won’t be needing it anymore.”

  “Mind if I?…” Paulette picked the two lockets up and sprang the catch. She frowned as she stared at the contents, then snapped them closed. “The designs are different.”

  “I guessed they would be.” Miriam closed her eyes.

  Brill stared at the two small silver disks as if they were diamonds or jewels of incalculable value. Finally she asked, timidly, “How can they be different? All the Clan ones are the same, aren’t they?”

  “Who says it’s a Clan one?” Miriam scooped them back into her pocket. “Look, firstly I am going to get a good night’s sleep. I suggest you guys do the same thing. In the morning, I’m going to hire a car. I’d like to be able to go home, just long enough to retrieve a disk, but—”

  “No, don’t do that,” said Paulette.

  Miriam looked at her. “I’m not stupid. I know they’re probably watching the house in case I show up. It’s just frustrating.” She shrugged.

  “It’s not that bad,” Paulette volunteered pragmatically. “Either they got the disk the first time they black-bagged you—or they didn’t, in which case you know precisely where it is. Why not leave it there?”

  “I guess so,” Miriam said tiredly. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s safe where it is.” She glanced at Brill, who mimed incomprehension until she was forced to smile. “Still. Tomorrow I’m going to spend some time in a museum. Then—” She glanced at Paulette.

  “Oh no, you’re not going to do that again,” Paulie began.

  “Oh yes, I am.” Miriam grinned humorlessly. “It’s the only way to crack the story wide open.” Her eyes went wide. “Shit! I’d completely forgotten! I’ve got a feature to file with Steve, for The Herald! The deadline’s got to be real soon! If I miss it there’s no way I’ll get the column—”

  “Miriam.”

  “Yes, Paulie?”

  “Why are you still bothering about that?”

  “I—” Miriam froze for a moment. “I guess I’m still thinking of going back to my old life,” she said slowly. “It’s something to hang onto.”

  “Right.” Paulette nodded. “Now tell me. How much money is there on that platinum card?”

  Pause. “About one point nine million dollars left.”

  “Miriam?”

  “Yes, Paulie?”

  “As your legal advisor I am telling you to shut the fuck up and get a good night’s sleep. You can sort out whether you’re going to write the article tomorrow—but I’d advise you to drop it. Say you’ve got stomach flu or something. Then you can take an extra day over your preparations for the journey. Got it?”

  “Yes, Paulie.”

  “And another thing?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Drink your wine and shut your mouth, dear, you look like a fish.”

  The next day, Miriam pulled out her notebook computer—which was now acquiring a few scratches—and settled down to pound the keyboard while Paulette took Brill shopping. It wasn’t hard work, and she already knew what she was going to write, and besides, it saved her having to think too hard about her future. The main headache was not having access to her Mac, or a broadband connection. Paulie, despite her brief foray into dot-com management, had never seen the point of spending money to receive spam at home. Finally she pulled out her mobile and dialed The Herald’s front desk. “Steve Blau, please,” she said, and waited.

  “Steve. Who’s this?”

  “Steve? It’s Miriam.” She took a deep breath. “About that feature.”

  “Deadline’s this Thursday,” he rumbled. “You needing an extension?”

  She breathed out abruptly, nearly coughing into the phone. “No, no, I’m ready to e-mail you a provisional draft, see if it fits what you were expecting. Uh, I’ve had a bit of an exciting life lately, got a new phone number for you.”

  “Really?” She could almost hear his eyebrows rising.

  “Yeah. Domestic incident, big-time.” She extemporized hastily. “I’m having to look after my mother. She’s had an incident. Broken hip. You want my new details?”

  “Sure. Hang on a moment. Okay, fire away.”

  Miriam gave him her new e-mail and phone numbers. “Listen, I’ll mail in the copy in about an hour’s time. Is there anything else you’re looking for?”

  “Not right now.” He sounded amused. “They sprang a major reorg on us right after our last talk, followed by a guerilla page-plan redesign; looks like that slot for a new columnist I mentioned earlier is probably going to happen. Weekly, op-ed piece on medical/biotech investment and the VC scene, your sort of thing. Can I pencil you in for it?”

  Miriam thought furiously. “I’m busier than I was right after I left The Weatherman, but I figure I can fit it in. Only thing is, I’ll need a month’s notice to start delivering, and I’d like to keep a couple of generic op-ed pieces in the can in case I’m called away. I’m going to be doing a lot of head-down stuff in the next year or so. It won’t stop me keeping up with the reading but it may get in the way of my hitting deadlines once in a blue moon. Could you live with that?”

  “I’ll have to think about it,” he said. “I’m willing to make allowances. But you’re a pro. You’d give me some warning wherever possible, right?”

  “Of course, Steve.”

  “Okay. File that copy. Bye.”

  She put the phone down for a moment, eyes misting over. I’ve still got a real life, she told herself. This shit hasn’t taken everything over. She thought of Brill, trapped by family expectations and upbringing. If I could unhook their claws, I could go back to being the real me. Really. Then she thought about the rest of them. About the room at the Marriott, and what had happened in it. About Roland, and her. Maybe.

  She picked the phone up again. It was easier than thinking.

  Iris answered almost immediately. “Miriam, dear? Where have you been?”

  “Ma?” The full weight of her worries crashed down on her. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you! Listen, I’m onto a story. It’s—” She struggled for a suitable metaphor. “It’s as big as Watergate. Bigger, maybe. But there’s people involved who’re watching me. I’d like to spend some time with you, but I don’t know if it would be safe.”

  “That’s interesting.” She could hear her adoptive mother’s mind crunching gears even on the end of a phone. “So you can’t come and visit me?”

  “Remember what you told me about COINTELPRO, Ma?”

  “Ah, those were the days! When I was a young firebrand, ah me.”

  “Ma!”

  “Stuffing envelopes with Jan Six, before Commune Two imploded, picketings and sit-ins—did I tell you about the time the FBI bugged our phones? How we got around it?”

  “Mom.” Miriam sighed. “Really! That student radical stuff is so old, you know?”

  “Don’t you old me, young lady!” Iris put a condescending, amused tone in her voice. “Is your trouble federal, by any chance?”

  “I wish it was.” Miriam sighed again.

  “Well then. I’ll meet you at the playground after bridge, an hour before closing time.” Click.

  She’d hung up, Miriam realized, staring at her phone. “Oh sweet Jesus,” she murmured. Never, ever, challenge a onetime SDS activist to throw a tail. She giggled quietly to herself, overcome by a bizarre combination of mirth and guilt—mirth at the idea of a late-fifties Jewish grandmother with multiple sclerosis giving the Clan’s surveillance agents the slip, and guilt, shocking guilt, at the thought of what she might have unintentionally involved Iris in. She almost picked up the phone to apologize, to tell Iris not to bother—but that would be waving a red rag at a bull. When Iris got it into her mind to do something, not even the FBI and the federal government stood much chance of stopping her. The playground. That’s what she’d called the museum, when she was small. “Can
we go to the playground?” she’d asked, a second-grader already eating into her parents’ library cards, and Iris had smiled indulgently and taken her there, to run around the displays and generally annoy the old folks reading the signs under the exhibits until, energy exhausted, she’d flaked out in the dinosaur wing.

  And bridge. Iris never played card games. That must mean…yes. The bridge over the Charles River. More confirmation that she meant the Science Museum, an hour before closing time. Right. Miriam grinned mirthlessly, remembering Iris’s bedtime stories about the hairy years under FBI surveillance, the times she and Morris had been pulled in for questioning—but never actually charged with anything. When she was older, Miriam realized that they’d been too sensible, had dropped out to work in a radical bookstore and help with a homeless shelter before the hard-core idiots began cooking up bombs and declaring war on the System, a System that had ultimately gotten tired of their posturing and rolled over in its sleep, obliterating them.

  Miriam whistled tunelessly between her teeth and plugged her cellular modem card back into the notebook, ready to send in her feature article. Maybe Iris could teach her some useful techniques. The way things were going, she needed every edge.

  A landscape of concrete and steel, damp and gray beneath a sky stained dirty orange. The glare of streetlamps reflected from clouds heavy with the promise of sleet or rain tomorrow. Miriam swung the rental car around into the parking lot, lowered her window to accept a ticket, then drove on in search of a space. It was damply cold outside, the temperature dropping with nightfall, but eventually she found a free place and parked. The car, she noted, was the precise same shade of silver-gray as Iris’s hair.

  Miriam walked around the corner and down a couple of flights of stairs, then through the entrance to the museum. Warm light flooded out onto the sidewalk, lifting her gloom. Paulette had brought Brill home earlier that afternoon, shaking slightly. The color- and pattern-enhanced marketing strategies of modern retail had finally driven Brill into the attack of culture shock Miriam had been expecting. They’d left Brill hunched up in front of the Cartoon Network on cable, so Paulette could give Miriam a lift to the nearest Avis rental lot. And now—