by Ken MacLeod
Reid smiled thinly. “Neither do I.”
“Oh?”
He spread his hands. “I just sell the policies.”
“Is there any pie you don’t have a finger in?”
Reid rubbed the side of his nose with his finger. “Diversification, Myra. Name of the game. Spread the risks. Learned that in insurance, way back when.” He reached out, waiting for her unspoken permission to take her arm. “We need to talk business.”
“Car,” she said, catching his elbow firmly and turning about on the crunching gravel. They walked side by side to the armoured limousine. Myra, out of the corner of her eye, watched people watching. Good: let it be clear that she no longer suspected Reid. Not publicly, not politically, not even—at a certain level—privately. Just personally, just in her jealous old bones. But there was more to it than making a diplomatic display; there was still a genuine affection between them, attenuated though it was by the years, exasperated though it was by their antagonism. Reid had never been a man to let enmity get in the way of friendship.
Myra glanced at her watch as the car door shut with a well-engineered clunk. They had about five minutes to talk in private as the big black Zhil rolled through Kapitsa’s city centre to its only posh hotel, the Sheraton. She setded back in the leather seat and eyed Reid cautiously.
“OK,” she said. “Get on with it.”
Reid reached for the massive ashtray, stubbed out one cigarette and lit up another. Myra did the same. Their smoky sighs met in a front of mutual disruption. Reid scratched his eyebrow, looked away, looked back.
“Well,” he said. “I want to make you an offer. We know you still have some of your old —” he hesitated; even here, there were words one did not say “—strategic assets, and we’d like to buy them off you.”
He could be bluffing.
“I have no—” she began. Reid tilted his head back and puffed a tiny jet of smoke that, after a few centimetres, curled back on itself in a miniature mushroom-cloud.
“Don’t waste time denying it,” he said.
“All right,” said Myra. She swallowed a rising nausea, steadied herself against a dizzy, chill darkening of her sight. It was like being caught with a guilty secret, but one which she had not known she held. But, she knew too well, if she had not known it was because she had never tried, and never wanted, to find out.
“Suppose we do. We wouldn’t sell them to anyone, let alone you. We’re against your coup—”
It was Reid’s turn to feign ignorance, Myra’s to show impatience.
“We wouldn’t use them,” he said. “Good God, what do you take us for? We just want them… off the board, so to speak. Out of the game. And quite frankly, the only way we can be sure of that is to have control of them ourselves.”
Myra shook her head. “No way. No deal.”
Reid raised his hand. “Let me tell you what we have to offer, before you reject it. We can buy you out, free and clear. Give everybody in this state, every one of your citizens, enough money to settle anywhere and live more than comfortably. Think about it. The camps are going to be wound down, and whoever wins the next round is going to move against you. Your assets aren’t going to be much use when Space Defense gets back in business.”
That’s a threat, I take it?”
“Not at all. Statement of fact. Sell them now or lose them later, it’s up to you.”
“Lose them—or use them!”
Reid gave her a “we are not amused” look.
“I’m not fooling,” Myra told him. “The best I can see coming out of your coup is more chaos, in which case we’ll need all the goddamn assets we can get!”
Reid took a deep breath. “No, Myra. If you do get chaos, it’ll be because we haven’t won. This coup, as you call it, is the last best chance for stability. If we fail the world will go to hell in its own way. Your personal contribution to that will then be no concern of mine—I’ll be dead, or in space—but you can help make sure it doesn’t happen, and benefit yourself and your people in the process.” He was putting all of his undeniable charm into his voice and expression as he concluded, “Think it over, Myra. That’s all I ask.”
“I’ll think about it,” she said, granting him at least this victory, for what it was worth. She looked around. “We’ve arrived.”
* * *
The hotel’s ornately furnished function suite was filled with people in dark clothes, standing about in small groups and conversing in low voices. Already they were beginning to relax out of their funereal solemnity, to smile and laugh a little: life goes on. Fine.
Myra and Reid walked together to the long tables on which the buffet was spread, and contrived to lose each other in the random movement of people selecting food and drinks. With a plate of savouries in one hand and a large glass of whisky in the other, Myra looked around. Over in one corner Andrei Mukhartov was deep in conversation with a lady in a black suit and a large hat; she was answering his quiet questions in a loud voice. Myra hoped this representative of the tattered Western fringe of the former United States wasn’t talking about anything confidential. Possibly that was the point. She noticed that Valentina was standing alone, in an olive-green outfit whose black armband was rather shouted down by an astonishing amount of gold braid. Myra made a less than subtle bee-line for her.
“Ah, there you are,” she said, as Valentina turned. She nudged her defence minister towards the nearest of the many small tables dotted around the vast floor. They sat.
“New uniform?” Myra asked.
Valentina’s rigid epaulettes moved up and down. “Never had much occasion for it before,” she said.
“Never knew you’d accumulated so many medals, either.”
Valentina had to laugh. Teah, it is a bit… Brezhnevian, isn’t it?”
“All too appropriate, for us. The period of stagnation.’.
Valentina devoured a canape, not looking away from Myra. “Indeed. I see you had a little chat with our main inward investor.”
“Yes. He made me an interesting offer,” Myra looked down at her plate, picked up something with legs. “I do hope this stuff’s synthetic; I’d hate to think of the radiation levels if it isn’t.”
“I think we have to rely on somebody’s business ethics on the radiation question,” Valentina said.
“Ah, right.” Myra peered at the shrimp’s shell; it had an ICI trademark. Full of artificial goodness. She hauled the pale pink flesh out with her teeth. “Anyway, Madame Comrade People’s Commissar for Defence, my dear: our inward investor gave me to understand that he knows we’ve done a little less… outward divestment than I’d been led to believe.”
Valentina, rather to her credit, Myra thought, looked embarrassed.
“I inherited the assets from my predecessors… and I never mentioned them because I thought you already knew, or you didn’t and you needed to have deniability.”
So it was true. The confirmation was less of a shock than Reid’s original claim had been. It would take a while for the full enormity of it all to sink in.
Myra nodded, her mouth full. Swallowed, with a shot of whisky. “The latter, actually. I didn’t know. I thought they’d all been seized by the Yanks after the war.”
“Most of them were. There was one exception, though. A large portfolio of assets that made it through the crackdown, that the US/UN just couldn’t get their hands on; one contract that was always renewed. Until the Fall Revolution, of course. Then it… lapsed, and I was left holding the babies. They were sent back to us in a large consignment of large diplomatic bags, from various locations, all controlled by…”
“You can tell me now, I take it?”
Valentina looked around, and shrugged.
“The original ministate, with the original mercenary defence force.”
Myra had to think for a moment before she realised just which state Valentina was talking about.
“Jesus wept!”
“Quite possibly,” said Valentina, “quite possibly he d
id.”
There are times when all you can do is be cynical, put up a hard front, don’t let it get to you… Myra joined in Valentina’s dark chuckle.
“So what happened to the assets, and why is our investor concerned about them?”
“Ah,” said Valentina. “You’ll recall the Sputnik centenary a couple of years ago. We rather extravagantly launched one of our obsolete boosters to celebrate it. What I did at the time was take the opportunity to place most of our embarrassing legacy in orbit.”
“In Earth orbit?” Myra resisted an irrational impulse to pull her head down between her shoulders.
“Some of them,” said Valentina. “The ones designed specifically for orbital use, you know? They’re in high orbit, quite safe.” She frowned, and against some inner resistance added, “Well, fairly safe. But the rest we sent to an even safer place: Lagrange.”
Myra had a momentary mental picture, vivid as a virtual display, of Lagrange: L5, one of the points where Earth’s gravity and the Moon’s combined to create a region of orbital stability, and which had, over half a century, accumulated a cluttered cluster of research stations, military satellites, official and unofficial space habitats, canned Utopias, abandoned spacecraft, squatted modules, random junk… It was the space movement’s promised land, and with the new nanofactured ultralight laser-launched spacecraft its population was rising as fast as Kapitsa’s was falling.
“Oh, fucking hell,” said Myra.
“Don’t worry,” Valentina assured her. “They’re almost undetectable among all the debris.”
Myra didn’t have the heart to tell her how much she was missing the point.
“Why the fuck did you park them there?” she demanded. “Safe, in a way, yeah, that I can understand, but didn’t it occur to you that if it ever came out, we might find our intentions… misunderstood?”
Valentina looked even more embarrassed. “It was—well, it was a Party thing, Myra. A request.”
“Oh, right. Jeez. Are you still in the fucking Party?”
Valentina chuckled. “I am the Party. The ISTWR section, at least.”
“Now that Georgi’s gone. Shit, I’d forgotten.”
They hadn’t even put the fourth flag, the flag of the Fourth, on his coffin. Shit. Not that it mattered now. Not to Georgi, anyway. And not to those who’d gathered to pay their respects—the only one present who’d have understood its significance was Reid.
“Don’t worry,” said Valentina.
“What does the International want with—oh, fuck. I can think of any number of things it might want with them.”
Valentina nodded. “Some of them could be to our advantage.”
“Hah. I’ll be the judge of that. You’ve kept the access codes to yourself?”
“Of course!”
“Well, that’s something.”
“So our man’s proposing in a buy-out, is he?” Valentina continued. “Could be worth considering.”
“Yeah.” Myra stood up, taking her glass. “I’m going to talk to him some more. Thanks for the update, Val.”
She refilled her glass, with vodka this time, and set out in a carefully casual ramble to where Reid stood chatting to an awestruck gaggle of low-level functionaries. Denis Gubanov and one of Reid’s greps circled unobtrusively, keeping a wary distance from the group and from each other, each at a La-grange point of his own. She couldn’t hear the conversation. On her way, she was intercepted by Alexander Sherman. The Industry Commissar was wearing the same sharp plastic suit, its colour adjusted to black. He looked shiftier than usual; a bad sign.
“Ah, Myra. A sad day for us all.” He shook his head slowly. “A sad day.”
“Yes,” said Myra. The phrase get on with it once more came to mind.
Alex took a deep breath and, as if telepathic, announced, T have something to tell you. It’s not a good time, but… Well, I’ve had an offer from Mr Reid.”
“To buy out our assets?”
“No, no!” Alex looked surprised at the suggestion. “An employment offer.”
“Oh, right,” said Myra dismissively. She waved a hand as she walked past him. “Take it.”
She could see herself in the big gilt-framed mirrors as she walked up; they faced similar mirrors at the far side of the room, and for a moment she saw herself multiplied, a potential infinity of different versions of herself: a visual, virtual image of the many worlds interpretation. She had entertained a childish notion, once, that mirror images might be windows into those other worlds. Did the photon ever decide, she’d wondered, did it ever turn aside in its reflection?
What she saw was the endlessly repeated image of a tall, thin woman in a long black dress, moving towards the still oblivious Reid like some MIRVed nemesis. She saw the flickered glances exchange their messages, between her Security Commissar, Reid’s security man, Reid, and herself, until Reid’s reflected eyes met her actual eyes, and widened.
She encountered a sort of deadness in the air, and realised that the security men were, between them, setting up audio countermeasures, casting a cloak of silence around the group. Then she was through the region of dead air, where the voices were garbled and strange, and suddenly the conversation was audible—for the moment before it died on the lips of those who noticed her arrival.
“Well, hello again,” she said. Her gaze swept the half-dozen of her employees gathered around Reid; they were all making comical efforts to flee, walking backwards as discreetly as possible. “Head-hunting my lower-middle cadres as well as my commissars?”
Tup,” said Reid, quite unabashed. He made a fractional movement of his fingertips and eyebrows, and his supplicants—or applicants—dispersed like smoke in a draught. The grep and Gubanov continued their watchful mutual circling. A waiter went past with a salver of glasses and a tray of Beluga on rye; Myra and Reid helped themselves from both, then stood facing each other with a slight awkwardness, like tongue-tied teenagers after a dance.
“I could do some head-hunting the other way, you know,” Myra said. “Perhaps I should buy a spy or two from you. It turns out you’re better informed about our investment portfolio than I’ve been. Particularly its, ah, spread.”
Reid acknowledged this with a small nod.
Tuts us in a difficult position,” he said. “You have the drop on us, frankly. Earth orbit is the high ground, after all.”
Oh? she thought to herself. So he didn’t know about Lagrange? Or didn’t want her to know he knew.
“However,” Reid went on, Tm pretty confident that you won’t, um, liquidate. For obvious reasons.”
“So why the offer?”
“Peace of mind… nah, seriously. Between us, you and I know everyone who knows of the current level of exposure. But neither of us can guarantee that that’ll last. A word in the wrong place and there could be severe market jitters on my side. Which, I hasten to add, would not be to your benefit, either, so we have a mutual—”
“Assured deterrence?”
Reid gave her a shut the fuck up look. “You could say that… but I’d rather you didn’t.”
Myra grinned evilly. “OK,” she said. “It’s still no deal, Dave.”
He gazed back at her, expressionless, but he couldn’t hide the plea in his voice. “Will you at least agree not to dump your assets during the takeover bid? Not to make any offers to the competition?”
Oh, Jeez. This was a tricky one. She had no intention of doing any of the things he feared. On the other hand—if he were to fear them (even if only theoretically, and only at the margin, but still…) it might restrain him. It might keep him, and his allies, from crossing that invisible border, that terminator between the daylight and the dark. Let them hate, as long as they fear.
She shook her head, and saw her multiple reflections do the same, in solemn repetition. The act of observation collapses the wave-function, yes: the die cast, the cat dies.
“Sorry, Dave,” she told him. “I can’t make any promises.”
His gaze measured
hers for a moment, and then he shrugged.
“You win some, you lose some,” he said lightly. “See you around, Myra.”
She watched him walk away, as she so often had. His grep followed at a safe distance. Denis raised his eyebrows, rolled his eyes, came over.
“What was all that about?”
“Oh, just some old stuff between us,” Myra said. “We don’t see eye to eye, is all.” She took his arm. “Let’s see how Andrei is getting on with that lady from the Western United States, shall we?”
Not well, as it turned out. This was not the place for secret diplomacy, even if they’d been using the privacy shields, which they weren’t. Juniper Bear, the West American unofficial consul, was making her diplomatic position no secret at all. Her broad-brimmed black hat with black wax fruit around its crown seemed chosen to amplify her voice, even though her pose indicated urgent, confidential communication.
“…Just in the last month we hit a Green guerilla incursion from SoCal, and at the same time a White Aryan Nations push across the Rockies, and would you believe the First Nations Federation, the goddamn Indians, lobbing significant conventional hardware on our northern settlements on the Cannuck side of the old border? Let me tell you, Comrade Mukhartov, we could do with some orbital backup, this time on our side for a change.” She laughed, grinning at Myra and Valentina as they joined the conversation. “Would you believe? she repeated, “the goddamn Greens are actually lobbying the old guard to keep the battlesats as asteroid defence? Like we ever really needed that, and now we got everything bigger’n a pea out there mapped and tracked, we might as well worry about a new ice age!”
“Well, that’s coming,” said Valentina.
Juniper Bear’s hatbrim tilted. “Sure, the Milankovitch cycle, yeah, but it isn’t a worry, now is it?” She laughed. “Hey, I remember global warming!”
“And thafs happening,” Myra said. “But, like you say, it isn’t a worry, not any more. And the ozone holes, and the background radiation levels, and the synthetic polymers in every organic, and the jumping genes and all that, yeah, we’re not worrying.” She felt surprised at the sound of her own voice, at how angry she felt about all that, now she was articulating it; it was as though she had a deep Green deep inside her, just waiting to get out. “But to be honest, Ms Bear, we are worried about something else. About the plan to revitalise the ReUnited Nations. Even if they will be the enemies of our enemies, in the first instance. We don’t want that kind of power turned against anyone on Earth, ever again.” She took off her hat, fingering the smooth hairs and running her thumb over the red star and gold sigil; realised she was standing there, literally cap in hand, begging for help.