The Merchants’ War tmp-4

by Charles Stross

  Miriam climbed onto the streetcar’s platform, waited while Erasmus paid, then climbed the stairs to the upper deck, her mind whirling. Things have been going downhill fast, she realized: war, a liquidity crisis, and martial law? Despite the muggy warmth of the day, she shivered. Looking around, she realized the streetcar was almost empty. The conductor’s bell dinged and the ’car moved off slowly as Erasmus came up the stairs, his hair blowing in the breeze that came over the open top of the vehicle. Sparks crackled from the pickup on top of the chimney-like tower behind her. “I didn’t realize things were so bad,” she remarked.

  “Oh, they’re bad all right,” he replied a little too loudly: “I’ll be lucky to make my rent this month.”

  She gave him an old-fashioned look as he sat down beside her. “Afraid of eavesdroppers?” she muttered.

  “Yes,” he whispered, almost too quietly to hear.

  Whoops. Miriam shut up and stared out the window as the city unrolled to either side. This city might be called New York, but the layout was bewildering; from the citadel and palaces of Manhattan Island—here called New London—to the suburbs sprawling across the mainland around it, Jersey City to Brookhaven, everything was different. There was no orderly grid, but an insane mish-mash of looping and forking curlicues, as if village paths laid out by drunkards had grown together, merging at the edges: high streets and traffic circles and weird viaducts with houses built on top of them. Tenement blocks made of soot-stained brick, with not a single fire escape in sight. In the distance, blocky skyscrapers on the edge of the administrative district around the palace loomed on the skyline, but they weren’t a patch on her New York, the New York of the Chrysler and the Empire State buildings and, not long ago, the twin towers. High above them a propeller aircraft droned slowly across the underside of the clouds, trailing a thin brown smear of exhaust. For a moment she felt very alone: a tourist in the third world who’d been told her ticket home was invalid. I wanted to escape, didn’t I? To cut loose and go where the Clan can’t find me. She pondered the irony of the change in her circumstances: it all seemed so long ago, now.

  “Nearly there,” remarked Burgeson, and she noticed his hand tightening on the back of the chair in front of them.

  “Nearly where?”

  “New Line crossing. Come on.” He unfolded from the seat and rolled towards the staircase, pulling the bell chain on his way. Miriam scrambled to follow him.

  There were more people here, and the buildings were higher, and the air smelled of coal smoke and damp even in the summer heat. Miriam followed Burgeson across the street, dodging a horse-drawn cart piled high with garbage and a chuffing steam taxi. A lot of the people hereabouts were badly dressed, their clothing worn and threadbare and their cheeks gaunt: a wheeled stall at one corner was doing a brisk trade, doling out cupfuls of stew or soup to a long queue of shuffling men and women. She hurried to keep up with Erasmus as he walked past the soup kitchen. Stagflation, that’s it, she remembered vaguely. The treasury’s rolling the presses to print their way out of the fiscal crisis triggered by the war and the crop failure, but the real dynamic is deflationary, so wages and jobs are being squeezed even as prices are going up because the currency is devaluing…she remembered the alleyway three nights before, the beggar threatening her with a knife, and abruptly felt sick at the implications. They were starving, she realized. This is the capital. What’s going on, out in the boonies?

  Erasmus stopped so suddenly that she nearly ran into his back. “Follow me,” he muttered, then lurched into the road and stuck an arm out. “Cab!” he called, then stepped back sharply to avoid being run over by a steamer. “Get in,” he told her, then climbed in behind. “St. Peter’s Cross,” he called forward to the driver: “An extra shilling if you can get us there fast!”

  “Aye, well.”

  The driver nodded at him and kicked the throttle open. The cab lurched forward with a loud chuffing noise and a trail of steam as it accelerated, throwing Miriam backwards into the padded seat. Erasmus landed at the other side from her, facing. She grinned at him experimentally. “What’s the hurry?”

  “Company.” Burgeson jerked his chin sideways. A strip of cobbled street rattled beneath the cab’s wheels. “We’re best off without them.”

  “We were followed?” A sudden sense of dread twisted her stomach. “Who by?”

  “Can’t tell.” He reached out and slid the window behind the driver’s head closed. “Probably just a double-cross boy or a thugster, but you can’t be too sure. Worst case, a freelance thief taker trying to make his quota. Nobody you’d want to be nabbed by, that’s for sure.”

  “In broad daylight?” she demanded.

  He shrugged. “Times are hard.”

  Shit. She stared at him. His closed expression spoke volumes. “What am I going to do?” she asked. “My business. My house. They’ll be under surveillance.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “I’m sure they will be.”

  “But what can I—”

  “You can start by relaxing,” he said. “And letting the salon dye your hair.” His lips twitched in a brief smile. “Then, once we have checked into the hotel, if you’d honor me with your presence at dinner, you can tell me all about your recent travails. How does that sound?”

  “That sounds—” This is going to be tougher than I realized, she thought faintly, as the cab lurched around a corner and pulled in opposite an imposing row of store windows near the base of a large stone building. “—acceptable.”

  Late afternoon in NYC, mid-morning in San Francisco. Colonel Smith had brought a laptop and a briefcase full of work with him on the Air Force Gulfstream, holing up at the back of the cabin while Dr. James worked the phones continuously up front. Dr. James had brought along a small coterie of administrative gofers from NSC, and two Secret Service bodyguards: the latter had sized Smith up immediately and, after confirming he was on their watch list, politely asked him to stay where they could keep their eyes on him. Which was fine by Eric. Every time he ventured down from one of the FTO aeries he got a sensation between his shoulder blades as if a sniper’s crosshairs were crawling around there. Even Gillian had noticed him getting jumpy, staring at passing cars when they went places together—in the few snatched hours of domesticity that were all this job was leaving him. Bastards, he thought absently as he paged through the daily briefing roundup, looking for any sign that things weren’t going as badly as he feared. I hope this isn’t a waste of time…

  Dr. James had been as infuriatingly unreadable as usual, saying nothing beyond the cryptic hints about some project at UC Berkeley. Lawrence Livermore Labs weren’t exactly on campus in Berkeley—it wasn’t even a daily commute—but that seemed to be where they were going. The gray Gulfstream executive jet touched down at San Francisco International and taxied towards a fenced-in compound where a couple of limos and two SUVs full of security contractors were waiting for them. “Take the second car,” James had told Eric: “The driver will take you to Westgate badge office to check you in before bringing you to JAUNT BLUE.” He nodded. “I’ve got prior clearance and an appointment before I join you.”

  “Okay.” Eric swung his briefcase into the back of the Lincoln. “See you there,” he added, but James had already turned on his heel and was heading for the other car.

  It took more than an hour to drive out to the laboratory complex, during which time Eric ran and reran his best scenarios for the coming meeting, absent-mindedly working his gyroball exerciser. James wouldn’t be visiting in person if he didn’t think it was important, which means he’ll be reporting to the vice president. Progress. But what are they doing here? He’d pulled the files on the only professor called Armstrong who was currently on faculty at UCSD: some kind of expert on quantum computing. Then he’d had Agent Delaney do a quick academic literature search. A year ago, Armstrong had coauthored a paper with a neurobiologist, conclusively demolishing the Penrose microtubule hypothesis, coming up with a proof that quantum noise would cause decoher
ence in any circuit relying on tubulin-bound GTP, whatever the hell that was. Then he’d written another paper, about quantum states in large protein molecules, before falling mysteriously silent—along with his research assistants and postdocs. The previous year they’d put their names on eighteen papers: this year, the total was just three, and those were merely citations as co-authors with other research groups.

  Quantum computing. Neurobiology. Quantum states in large protein molecules. Eric shook his head over the densely written papers Delaney had copied for him. Then Armstrong dropped off the map, and now James is taking me to see him. He grinned humorlessly. I wonder if this means what I think it means. The gyroball whirred down as he shifted it to his left hand, twisting his wrist continually, trying to drive out the stiffness and shooting pains by constant exercise.

  Security at the sprawling laboratory complex—more like a huge university campus than anything else—was pervasive but not heavy-handed at first. His driver, Agent Simms, smoothed the way as he checked in his mobile phone, laptop, and the hand exerciser with the security guards. “You ready to visit JAUNT BLUE now, sir?”

  “Take me there.”

  Back in the car, it was another five-minute drive past endless rows of windowless buildings. Eric sat back, watching the chain-link fence and the site road unfold around him. One DoD site looked much like any other, but there were signs here for those who knew what to look for. Inner fences. Curious, long berms humped up beneath a carpet of sunburned grass, like state secrets casually swept out of the view of passing spy satellites by a giant security-obsessed housekeeper. Driving past some clearly disused buildings, Simms turned into a side road then pulled over in front of a gate. “Okay, sir, we walk from here. Building forty-seven.”

  “Right.” Eric opened the door and got out, feeling the heat start to suck him dry. Late morning and it was already set to be a burning hot summer day. “Which way?”

  “Over here.” Simms walked over to one of the disused warehouse units. The walls were simple metal sidings and the doors and windows were missing, the building itself just a hollow shell.

  “Here? But it’s abandoned—”

  “It’s meant to look that way. Building forty-seven. If you’d follow me? Sir?”

  The secret service agent was clearly sure of himself. Someone’s spent a lot on camouflage, Eric told to himself, clutching his briefcase and following behind. What’s going on? The inside of the warehouse was no more promising than the exterior. Huge ceiling panels were missing, evidently the holes where air conditioning units had been stripped out. The concrete loading bay at the rear of the building was dusty and decrepit, the doors missing. Simms walked over to the near side, where a rusty trailer was propped up on blocks. Eric glanced past him, and for the first time noticed something out of place—a black dome, about the size of his fist, fastened to the wall somewhere above head height. Closed circuit cameras? In an abandoned shed?

  Simms climbed a ramshackle flight of steps and opened the door of the trailer. “This way, sir.”

  Eric relaxed, everything clicking into place. The camera, the abandoned trailer, the shadows thick and black under the trailer—it was all intended to deal with visitors from the Clan. “Okay, I’m coming.” He climbed the steps and found himself in a small lobby behind Simms, who was waiting in front of an inner door with a peephole set in it. The door was made of steel and opened from the inside.

  “Agent Simms, Colonel Smith of FTO, visiting JAUNT BLUE,” Simms announced.

  A speaker crackled. “Close the outer door now.”

  Eric reached back and pulled the door shut. The inner door buzzed for a moment, then whined open sideways to reveal the bare metal walls of a freight elevator. “Neat,” he said admiringly as they descended towards the tunnels under the laboratory complex. “If you can’t go up without being obvious, go down.”

  “This all used to be part of the high-energy physics group, back in the sixties,” Simms said laconically. “They repurposed it this year. There are several entrances. Dr. James told me to show you in through the back door.” A back door disguised as a derelict building, complete with spy cameras and probably some kind of remotely controlled defense system: whatever James had going on down here, he didn’t welcome unexpected visitors.

  The freight elevator ground to a halt and Eric did a double-take. Jesus, I’ve just fallen into The Man from U.N.C.L.E! He glanced around at the rough-finished concrete walls, fluorescent lights, innumerable pipes and conduits bolted overhead—and at the end of the passage, a vast, brightly lit space.

  “Badges, please.” The Marine guards waiting in an alcove off one side of the corridor were armed, and not for show. Smith extended the badge he’d been issued and waited while one of the guards checked him off a list. “You may proceed, sir.”

  “Where’s Dr. James’s group?” he asked Simms’s receding back.

  “Follow me, sir.”

  Smith followed, trying not to gape too obviously. He was used to security procedures on Air Force bases and some other types of sensitive installations, but he’d never seen anything quite like this. The main tunnel was domed overhead, rising to a peak about fifty feet up; it stretched to infinity ahead and behind. There were no windows, but more conduits and the boxy, roaring ducts of a huge air conditioning system overhead. The concrete piles that had once supported a mile-long linear accelerator were still visible on the floor, but the linac itself had long since been removed and replaced by beige office partitions surrounding a forlorn-looking clump of cubicles, and a line of mobile office trailers that stretched along one wall like a subterranean passenger train. The train didn’t go on forever, though, and after they’d walked a couple of hundred feet from the “back door” they reached the end of the column. Beyond it, the concrete tunnel stretched dizzyingly towards a blank wall in the distance, empty but for a grid of colored lines painted on the floor. Lots of room for expansion, he realized.

  Simms gestured at the trailer on the edge of the empty floor space. “Dr. James uses Room 65 as his site office when he’s visiting. I believe he’s in a meeting until fifteen hundred, but he told me to tell you that Dr. Hu will be along to give you the dog and pony tour at eleven thirty. If you make yourself at home, I’ll find Dr. Hu and get things started.”

  Eric paused at the door to the trailer. “Dr. James didn’t exactly tell me what it is you people do out here,” he said slowly. “Can you fill me in on what to expect?”

  Simms frowned. “I think I ought to leave that to Dr. Hu,” he said.

  “Is Dr. Hu one of Professor Armstrong’s team?”

  Simms nodded. “I’ll go get him.”

  “Okay.” Eric climbed the step up to the site office trailer and went inside to wait.

  Begin Transcript

  “You wanted to s-see me, sir?”

  “Yes, yes I did. Have a seat, lad. Your parents: doing well, I hope?”

  “…”

  “Calm down, there’s a good fellow. Try to relax, I’m not going to bite your head off. I’m sure they’ll be perfectly fine, current emergency notwithstanding. No, the pretender isn’t about to go haring off into the Sennheur marches, and if he does, they’ll have plenty of warning to evacuate. Now, where was I…? Ah, yes. I wanted to ask you about your studies.”

  (Mumble.)

  “Yes, I know. In the current situation, it’s difficult. But I think it may be possible for you to go back there in the fall, if things work out well.”

  “But I’ll be behind. I should be working right now, with my roommates—it’s not like a regular school. They’ll want to know where I was while they were working on our project.”

  (Snorts.) “Well, you’ll just have to tell them you were called away by urgent family business. A dying relative, or something. Don’t look at me like that: worse things happen in war time. If you go back to your laboratory at all you will be luckier than many of our less talented children, Huw. But as it happens, I have a little research project for you that I th
ink will smooth your way. One that you and your talking-shop friends will be able to get your teeth into, and that will be much more profitable in the long term.”

  “A research project? But you don’t need someone like me—I mean, the kind of research your staff do, begging your pardons in advance, your grace, aren’t exactly where my aptitude lies—”

  “Correct. Which is why I want you for a different kind of research.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “On the contrary, I think you’ll understand all too well.” (Pause.) “Red or white?”

  “Red, please.” (Sound of glass being filled.) “Thank you very much.”

  “Show me your locket.”

  “My” (coughing) “locket? Uh, sure. Here—”

  “Put it there. Yes, open. Don’t focus on it. Now, this one. You can see the difference if you look at them—not too close, now! What do you think?”

  “I’m—excuse me, it’s easier to study them if you cover part of the design and compare sections. Less distracting.”

  “You sound as if you’ve done that before.”

  (Hurriedly): “No sir! But it’s only logical. We’ve been using the Clan sigil for generations. Surely” (pause) “hey, I think the upper right arc of this one is different!”

  “It is.” (Sound of small items being cleared away.) “It came from our long-lost, lamentably living, cousins. The Lees. Who, it would appear, discovered the hard way that redesigning the knotwork can have catastrophic consequences.”

  (Pause.) “I’d heard they used a different design. But…” (Pause.) “Nobody thought to experiment? Ever?”

  “Some of the Lee family did, generations ago. Either they failed to world-walk, or they didn’t come back. After they lost a couple, their elders banned further experimentation. For our part, with no indication that other realms than the two we know of might exist, who would bother even trying? Especially as most of the simple variations don’t work. Look at yourself, Sir Huw! The finest education we can buy you, a graduate student at MIT, and you, too, took the family talent for granted.”