The Traders' War (Merchant Princes Omnibus 2)

by Charles Stross

  Inside the entrance the building was dark and still, and cold – at least, as cold as anything got at this time of year. Moving fast, with an assurance born of having worked here for months, Miriam darted round the side of the walled-off office and felt for the door handle. It had always been loose, and her personal bet – that the Polis wouldn’t lock up inside a building they were keeping under surveillance – paid off. The door handle flexed as she stepped inside her former office, raising her suitcase as a barrier.

  She needn’t have bothered. There was nobody waiting for her: nothing but the dusty damp smell of an unoccupied building. The high wooden stools lay adrift on the floor under a humus of scattered papers and overturned drawers. A flash of anger: The bastards didn’t need to do this, did they? But in a way it made things easier for her. Dealing with a stakeout by the secret police was trivially easy compared to sneaking her laptop out past Morgan and making a clean getaway.

  Thirty seconds. The nape of her neck was itching. Miriam stumbled across the overturned furniture, then bent down, fumbling in the leg well below one scribe’s position. The hidden compartment under the desk was still there: her hands closed on the wooden handle and pulled down and forward to open it. It slid out reluctantly, scraping loudly. She tugged hard, almost stumbling as it came out and the full weight of its contents landed on her arms.

  The suitcase was on the floor. Forty-five seconds. She fumbled with the buckles for a heart-stopping moment, but finally the lid opened. Scooping the contents out of the hidden drawer – the feel of cold plastic slick against her fingertips – she swept them into the pile of bundled clothing within, then grabbed the bag by its handles. There was no time to buckle it closed: she picked it up in one hand and scurried back into the body of the empty works.

  One minute. Was that a shout from outside? Miriam glanced briefly at the front door. Doesn’t matter, she thought: they’ll work it out soon enough. Moving by dead reckoning, her free hand stretched out to touch the wall beside her, she headed deeper into the building, following the deepening shadows. Another turn and the shadows began to lighten. At the end of the corridor she turned left and the grimy daylight lifted, showing her the dust and damage that had been brought to bear on her business, in the name of the law and by the neglect of her peers. It was heartbreaking, and she stopped, briefly unable to go on. I’ll rebuild it, she told herself. Somehow. The most important tools were in her suitcase, after all.

  Then she heard them. A bang from the front door, low-pitched male voices, hunters casting around for the scent. Burgeson’s distraction had worked its purpose, but if she didn’t hurry, it would be all for nothing. Grimly determined, Miriam stepped into the abandoned workshop and gripped her suitcase. Standing beneath the skylight, she pulled the locket out of her pocket and narrowed her eyes, focusing on it and clearing her mind of everything else as the police agents stumbled towards her through the darkness.

  This is it, she told herself. No more nice-guy Miriam. Next time someone tries to do this to me, I’m not going to let them live long enough to regret it.

  And then the world changed.

  *

  Huw slept badly after he finished drafting the e-mail report to the duke. It wasn’t simply the noises Yul and Elena were making, although that was bad enough – young love, he reflected, was at its worst when there wasn’t enough to go round – but the prospects of what he was going to have to face on the morrow kept him awake long after the others had fallen asleep.

  A new world. There couldn’t be any other explanation for the meteorological readings. Temperatures that low, that kind of subarctic coniferous forest, hadn’t been found in this part of the world since the last of the ice ages. The implications were enormous. For starters, this was the second new world that the Lee family’s knotwork could take a world-walker to. What happens if I use the original knot, from somewhere in this fourth world? Probably it takes me to yet another . . . Even without discovering new topologies, ownership of both knotwork designs implied access to a lot more than three, or even four, worlds. The knots define a positional transformation in a higher-order space. Like the moves of different pieces on a chessboard – able to go forward or backward, but if you used your bishop to make a move in one direction, then swapped your bishop for a rook, you could go somewhere else. It meant everything was up for grabs.

  For over a century the Clan’s grandees had doppelgängered their houses – building defenses in the other world they knew of, to protect their residences from stealthy attack – without realizing that the Lee family could attack them from a third world. Now there was a fourth, and probably a fifth, a sixth . . . where would it end? Our core defensive strategy has just been made obsolete, overnight. And that wasn’t the worst of it. The Lee family knot was a simple mistake, the lower central whorl superimposed over the front of the ascending spiral, rather than hidden behind it. There would be other topologies, encoding different positional transformations. That much seemed clear to Huw, although he’d had to limit his forays into Mathematica to half an hour per day – trying to work out the knot structure was a guaranteed fast-track route to a migraine. There will be other worlds.

  He lay awake long after Yul and Elena had dozed off, staring at the ceiling, daydreaming about exploration and all the disasters that could befall an unwary world-walker. We’ll need oxygen masks. (What if some of the worlds had never evolved photosynthesis, so that life was a thin scum of sulfur-reducing bacteria clustered around volcanic vents, at the bottom of a thick blanket of nitrogen and ammonia?) Trickster-wife, we may need space suits. (What if the planet itself had never formed?) Need to map the coastlines and relief, see if plate tectonics evolves deterministically in all worlds . . .

  He blinked at the sunlight streaming in through the front window. How had it gotten to be morning? His mouth tasted of cobwebs and dust, but his head was clear. ‘Gaah.’ There was no point pretending to sleep.

  Someone was singing as he wandered through into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes. It was Elena: she’d found the stash of kitchenware and was filling the coffeemaker, warbling one of the more salacious passages of a famous saga to herself with – to Huw – a deeply annoying air of smug satisfaction.

  ‘Humph.’ He rummaged in the cupboard for a glass but came up with a chipped coffee mug instead. Rinsing it under the cold water tap, he asked, ‘Ready to face the day?’

  ‘Oh yes!’ She trilled, closing up the machine. She turned and grinned at him impishly. ‘It’s a wonderful day to explore a new world, don’t you think?’

  ‘Just as long as we don’t leave our bones there.’ Huw took a gulp of the slightly brackish tap water. ‘Yuck.’ Ease up, she’s just being exuberant, he told himself. ‘Where’s Yul?’

  ‘He’s still getting dressed –’ She remembered herself and flushed. ‘He’ll be down in a minute.’

  ‘Good.’ Huw pressed his lips together to keep from laughing. Memo to self: do not taunt little brother’s girlfriend, little brother will be tetchy. ‘Coffee would be good, too, thanks,’ he added.

  ‘What are we going to do today?’ she asked, eyes widening slightly.

  ‘Hmm. Depends.’

  ‘I was thinking about doing breakfast,’ rumbled Hulius, from the doorway.

  ‘That –’ Huw brightened ‘– sounds like a great idea. Got to wait for the duke’s say-so before we continue, anyway. Breakfast first, then we can get ready for a camping trip.’

  Huw drove into town carefully, hunting for a diner he’d spotted the day before. He steered the youngsters to a booth at the back before ordering a huge breakfast – fried eggs, bacon, half a ton of hash browns, fried tomatoes, and a large mug of coffee. ‘Go on, pig out,’ he told Elena and Hulius, ‘you’re going to be sorry you didn’t later.’

  ‘Why should I?’ asked Elena, as the waitress ambled off towards the kitchen. ‘I’ll be sorry if I’m fat and ugly before my wedding night!’

  Huw glanced at his brother: Yul was studiously silent, but Huw could j
ust about read his mind. Not the sharpest knife in the box . . . ‘We’re going back to the forest,’ Huw explained, ‘and we’re staying there for at least one night, maybe two, in a tent. It’s going to be very cold. Your body burns more calories when you’re cold.’

  ‘Oh!’ She glared at him. ‘Men!’ Yul winked at him, then froze as the waitress reappeared with a jug of coffee. ‘No sense of humor,’ she humphed.

  ‘Okay, so we’re humor-impaired’ Huw started on his hash browns. ‘Listen, we –’ he paused until the waitress was out of earshot ‘– it depends what orders we receive, all right? It’s possible his grace will tell me to sit tight until he can send a support team . . . but I don’t think it’s likely. From what I can gather, we’re shorthanded everywhere and anyone who isn’t essential is being pulled in for the corvée, supporting security operations, or running interference. So my best bet is, he’ll read my report and say “carry on.” But until I get confirmation of that, we’re not going across.’

  Elena stabbed viciously at her solitary fried egg. ‘To what end are we going?’

  ‘To see if that stuff Yul found really is the remains of a roadbed. To look around and get some idea of the vegetation, so I can brief a real tree doctor when we’ve got time to talk to one. To plant a weather station and seismograph. To very quietly see if there’s any sign of inhabitation. To boldly go where no Clan explorer has gone before. Is that enough to start with?’

  ‘Eh.’ Yul paused with his coffee mug raised. ‘That’s a lot to bite off.’

  ‘That’s why all three of us are going this time.’ Huw took another mouthful. ‘And we’re all taking full packs instead of piggybacking. That ties us down for an hour, minimum, if we run into trouble, but going by your first trip, there didn’t seem to be anybody home. We might have wildlife trouble, bears or wolves, but that shouldn’t be enough to require an immediate withdrawal. So unless the duke says “no,” we’re going camping.’

  They managed to finish their breakfast without discussing any other matters of import. Unfortunately for Huw, this created a zone of silence that Elena felt compelled to fill with enthusiastic chirping about Christina Aguilera and friends, which Hulius punctuated with nods and grunts of such transparently self-serving attentiveness that Huw began to darkly consider purchasing a dog collar and leash to present to his brother’s new keeper.

  Back at the rented house, Huw got down to the serious job of redistributing their packs and making sure everything they’d need had a niche in one rucksack or another. It didn’t take long to put everything together: what took time was double-checking, asking, What have I forgotten about that could kill me? When finally they were all ready it was nearly noon.

  ‘Okay, wait in the yard,’ said Huw. He walked back inside and reset the burglar alarm. ‘Got your lockets?’ This time there was no need for the flash card, no need to keep all their hands free for emergencies. ‘On my mark: three, two, one . . .’

  The world shifted color, from harsh sunlight on brown-parched grass to overcast pine-needle green. Huw glanced round. A moment earlier he’d been sweating into his open three-layer North Face jacket: the chill hit him like a punch in the ribs and a slap in the face. There were trees everywhere. Elena stepped out from behind a waist-high tangle of brush and dead branches and looked at him. A moment later Hulius popped into place, his heavy pack looming over his head like an astronaut’s oxygen supply. ‘All clear?’ Huw asked, ignoring the pounding in his temples.

  ‘Yup.’ Yul hefted the meter-long spike with the black box of the radio beacon on top, and rammed it into the ground.

  ‘It looks like it’s going to rain,’ Elena complained, looking up at the overcast just visible between the treetops. ‘And it’s cold.’

  Huw zipped his jacket up, then slid his pack onto the ground carefully. ‘Yul, you have the watch. Elena, if you could start unpacking the tent?’ He unhooked the scanner from his telemetry belt and set it running, hunting through megahertz for the proverbial needle in a thunderstorm, then began to unpack the weather station.

  ‘I have the watch, bro.’ Yul’s backpack thudded heavily as it landed in a mat of ferns, followed by the metallic clack as he chambered a round in his hunting rifle. ‘No bear’s going to sneak up on you without my permission.’

  ‘I’m so glad.’ Huw squinted at the scanner. ‘Okay, nothing on the air. Radio check. Elena?’

  ‘Oh, what? You want – the radio?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  Elena reached into her jacket pocket and produced a walkie-talkie. ‘Can you hear me?’

  Huw winced and turned down the volume. ‘I hear you. Your turn, Yul –’ ‘Another minute of cross-checks and he was happy. ‘Okay. Got radio, got weather station, acquired the beacon. Let’s get the tent up.’

  The tent was a tunnel model, with two domed compartments separated by a central awning, for which Huw had a feeling he was going to be grateful. Elena had already unrolled it: between them they managed to nail the spikes in and pull it erect without too much swearing, although the tunnel ended up bulging in at one side where it wrapped around an inconveniently placed trunk.

  Huw crossed the clearing then, stretching as high as he could, slashed a strip of bark away from the trunk of the tree nearest the spike. Then he turned to Yul. ‘Where was that chunk of asphalt?’

  ‘That way, bro.’ Hulius gestured down the gentle slope. The trees blocked the line of sight within a hundred meters. ‘Want to go check it out?’

  ‘You know it.’ Huw’s stomach rumbled. Going to have to find a stream soon, he realized, or send Elena back over to fill up the water bag. ‘Lead off. Stay close and stop at twenty so I can mark the route.’ It was quiet in the forest, much too quiet. After a minute, Huw realized what he was missing: the omnipresent creaking of the insect chorus, cicadas and hopping things of one kind or another. Occasionally a bird would cry out, a harsh cawing of crows or the tu-whit tu-whit of something he couldn’t identify marking out its territory. From time to time the branches would rustle and whisper in the grip of a breeze impossible to detect at ground level. But there was no enthusiastic orchestra of insects, no rumble of traffic, nor the drone of engines crawling across the upturned bowl of the empty sky. We’re alone, he realized. And: it feels like it’s going to snow.

  Yul stopped and turned round. He grinned broadly and pointed at the nearest tree. ‘See? I’ve been here before.’

  Huw nodded. ‘Good going. How much farther is it?’ ‘About six markers, maybe a couple of hundred meters.’ ‘Right.’ Huw glanced round at Elena. ‘You hear that?’ ‘Sure.’ She chewed rhythmically as she reached up with her left hand to flick a stray hair away from her eyes. She didn’t move her right hand away from the grip on the P90, but kept scanning from side to side with an ease that came from long practice – she’d done her share of summer training camps for the duke.

  ‘Lead on, Yul.’ Huw suppressed a shiver. Elena – was she really as brainless as she’d seemed over breakfast? Or was she another of those differently socialized Clan girls, who escaped from their claustrophobic family connections by moonlighting as manhunters for ClanSec? He hadn’t asked enough questions when the duke’s clerk had gone down his list of names and suggested he talk to her. But the way she moved silently in his footsteps, scanning for threats, suggested that he ought to have paid more attention.

  Ten, fifteen minutes passed. Yul stopped. ‘Here it is,’ he said quietly.

  ‘I have the watch.’ Elena turned in a circle, looking for threats.

  ‘Let me see.’ Huw knelt down near the tree Hulius had pointed to. The undergrowth was thin here, barely more than a mat of pine needles and dead branches, and the slope almost undetectable. Odd lumpy protuberances humped out of the ground near the roots of the tree, and when he glanced sideways Huw realized he could see a lot farther in one direction before his vision was blocked by more trees. He unhooked the folding trench shovel from his small pack and chopped away at the muck and weedy vegetation covering one of the lu
mps. ‘Whoa!’

  Huw knew his limits: what he knew about archeology could be written on the sleeve notes of an Indiana Jones DVD. But he also knew asphalt when he saw it, a solid black tarry aggregate with particles of even size – and he knew it was old asphalt too, weathered and overgrown with lichen and moss.

  ‘Looks like a road to me,’ Yul offered.

  ‘I think you’re right.’ Huw cast around for more chunks of half-buried roadstone. Now that he knew what he was looking for it wasn’t difficult to find. ‘It ran that way, north-northeast, I think.’ Turning to look in the opposite direction he saw a shadowy tunnel, just about as wide as a two-lane road. Some trees had erupted through the surface over the years, but for the most part it had held the forest at bay. ‘Okay, this way is downhill. Let’s plant a waypoint and –’ he looked up at the heavy overcast ‘– follow it for an hour, or until it starts to rain, before we head back.’ He checked his watch. It was just past two in the afternoon. ‘I don’t want to get too far from base camp today.’

  Hulius rammed another transponder spike into the earth by the road and Huw scraped an arrow on the nearest tree, pointing back along their path. The LED on top of the transponder blinked infrequently, reassuring them that the radio beacon was ready and waiting to guide them home. For the next half hour they plodded along the shallow downhill path, Hulius leading the way with his hunting rifle, Elena bringing up the rear. Once they were on the roadbed, it was easy to follow, although patches of asphalt had been heaved up into odd mounds and shoved aside by trees over the years – or centuries – for which it had been abandoned. Something about the way the road snaked along the contours of the shallow hillside tickled Huw’s imagination. ‘It was built to take cars,’ he finally said aloud.