Dead Lies Dreaming

by Charles Stross

  Rupert strode forward into the corridor behind the impossible door. He’d read of such interstitial spaces: he knew the hazards. This one was long-term stable—it had to be, anchored as it was by the Starkey family’s magical pact (never call it a curse, for it brought such wonders into the world). Eve had undoubtedly come this way. So in all probability had the Bond.

  He had just arrived at a curious sight—a dead hedge maze in a glass-walled penthouse, a roof garden or conservatory of sorts dotted with markers like graveyard headstones—when he heard footsteps. A door at the other side of the conservatory opened and a familiar figure stepped onto the path through the skeletal bushes. He drew himself up. “Miss Starkey!” he called, smiling widely. “Good to see you at last! Have you found the book?”

  She gave no sign of hearing him, but as she drew closer he registered that something was not quite right. Her gait was tired and her eyes dull. She wore a coat over a long dress that dragged on the footpath, its hem filthy and soaked in mud or some other noisome liquid.

  “Miss Starkey!” he called again, peremptory. “Pay attention!”

  Eve finally looked up. Her lips moved soundlessly, as if she was mumbling something. Rupert tensed and readied his rings of power, swollen with mana and charged with the blood of innocents. To confront an oneiromancer in the dream palace of her family, where every room represented an inherited spell, was dangerous even for him, even though his control over her was unassailable.

  “Where. Is. It?” he demanded, enunciating each word clearly and distinctly.

  “What?” She shook her head and saw him, as if for the first time. “What? Mr. de Montfort Bigge? What are you doing here?”

  “It’s been eight hours, Miss Starkey! You’ve been gone from the office since yesterday afternoon. Did you find the book?”

  She looked down—not at his feet, as he expected, but at one of the stones protruding from the maze. “Oh yeah, he’s here.” She rested a hand companionably on top of the stone before engaging with him: “Do you know what this is?” she asked.

  “Do I care?” he asked, not unironically.

  “Life … can be defined as the set of natural processes that copy information into the future. Power comes from the destruction of information, by computational or other means, you know.” She patted the headstone. “Our power—yours, mine—comes from death, doesn’t it? The Book of Dead Names, the so-called Necronomicon. Or the bodies in the sub-subbasement, the altar in the chapel in Castle Skaro.” She shrugged: “They all tap into the same source of energy.” She patted the headstone again, looking thoughtful. “Only the personal cost varies.”

  “Where is the book?” Rupert repeated, a hint of steel creeping into his voice.

  “My family is at least honest: the pact we made requires us to sacrifice our own, and we hurt and we bleed and we remember them.” Now she smiled at him, an expression quite fey with derangement. “These are the graves of my ancestors’ brothers and sisters, did you know that? They’re all buried in here. This one is Grandpa’s younger brother. Imp would have been buried here, too, if Grandpa hadn’t broken and Dad hadn’t chickened out. He paid for it with his life, and all I got for it was a doubly incontinent nursing home bed-blocker with no tongue.”

  “Fuck your mother!” Rupert burst out, exasperated. “Where is my book?” he demanded, taking a step towards her.

  “Fuck you, Rupert, I quit!” She sent him a glare that by rights ought to have reduced half of London to cinders.

  “You’re overwrought,” he snapped. He could escalate, he realized, but then he’d have to reveal his true degree of control over her, and she’d react unpredictably. “We’ll talk about this in the office—”

  “You can get the book yourself.” She straightened up. “It’s in the elevator, which is stuck on the ground floor. Give me the map, I’ll mark it for you.” She snapped her fingers at him. “Come on, I don’t have all day to wait around—”

  Rupert handed her the map, and a pencil. “I understand you’re very upset,” he oozed, “but I’m sure if you sleep on it you’ll feel a lot better. And really, you can’t quit.” She scribbled illegibly in the margin and drew an arrow on the map, pointing to the alleged location of the elevator. “Go home, take tomorrow off, and we’ll pretend we never had this conversation—”

  “Enough.” She shoved the map back at Rupert, and pointed to the arrow. “Go through that doorway—we’re in this room, here—and down the hall, then keep on the map until you get to the lift. It’s stuck on the ground floor, the call button up here burned out. There’s a carpetbag in the lift, and the book’s inside it. I verified it: it’s the real deal.”

  “You had it and you left it there?” Rupert said with palpable astonishment.

  “Believe me, it would have been very unwise of me to have carried it further!” she said sharply. “You can go get it yourself if you want it so badly. Like I said, I quit: I no longer work for you.”

  “You can’t quit,” he repeated, “but we will continue this conversation in the office, the day after tomorrow.” He strode off in the direction she’d indicated.

  Eve turned away from him and departed, unwinding the trail through the labyrinth of dreams, leaving the family graveyard in peace.

  A few minutes later, Imp, Doc, Del, Game Boy, and Wendy walked in, checked their bearings on the map, and exited through the same doorway as Eve.

  Far below the dead conservatory, malign windchimes played their Tinkerbell theme again as Rupert opened the gates of the elevator and reached for the spell book lurking in the shadows, sleek and vicious with anticipation, waiting to feed again on dreams of death and avarice.

  * * *

  A week later, Imp returned to Bigge HQ to visit his sister in her office.

  The Lost Boys had spent six days tidying up after they got home. The scene that had greeted them on their return was dismaying. Broken glass everywhere, overturned or slashed furniture, someone had trampled the Christmas present Imp had so carefully wrapped for Game Boy, and the kitchen sink contents had achieved sapience and were threatening to sue for full human rights. There was only one thing for it: they did the best they could with the front door, then bedded down on the top floor, Imp and Doc in one bedroom, Wendy and Del in the other, and Game Boy in the bathroom.

  The morning after they won the war for Neverland, Imp had set them to work tidying, scrubbing, cleaning, and fitting new glass in the broken window panes. Four days later the house was spick and span, everyone had their own bedroom back (although Del seemed to be spending most of her time round at Wendy’s flat), and the door to Neverland was nailed shut and boarded over, with a second coat of paint drying.

  Then Imp received a text message—a very headmistressy SEE ME—and of course he had to go and find out how Eve had fared with her boss.

  This time, he didn’t dress to impress. What you see is what you get, and in Imp Eve was going to get what he wanted to grow up to be, which was to say, an aspiring director of artistically challenging long-form visual media, starting with the movie he intended to make: Dead Lies Dreaming.

  When he got to the front door of Bigge HQ and rang the bell, he discovered that there had been a few changes.

  “Mr. Starkey, sir? Please come in and have a seat! Would you like some tea or coffee? Your sister will see you shortly—” The receptionist fawned on him and the imperious butler was perfectly polite, as long as Imp ignored the apprehensive sidelong glances that implied he feared Imp might have him flogged for insolence. Which, quite honestly, wasn’t Imp’s kink, any more than the conventionally pretty blonde receptionist who kept pushing her chest up at him. (For the time being, Imp had decided, his type consisted of Doc, and Doc alone—at least until he got bored with the lack of variety and decided he was poly again.)

  After accepting a cup of very fine tea—just to shut the poor woman up and stop her fussing—Imp settled down to wait. He didn’t have to cool his heels for long. “Jeremy!” His sister smiled warmly as she step
ped out of a corridor leading back into the town house, an expression which (judging by the butler’s double-take) was most unusual. “Long time no see!” she added, unironically air-kissing him as she led him into a gigantic and luxuriously appointed executive lair.

  “This isn’t your office,” Imp said, sounding stupid even to his own ears. There was nothing for it: he doubled down on the oropharyngeal toe-massage. “Moving up in the world, baby?” He propped his hip against the desk and grinned crookedly at her.

  Eve shut the door, stalked around the desk, and flopped bonelessly into a classic Evil Overlord chair that was probably worth more than the house they’d grown up in. “Welcome to my world,” she said, with a careless wave at the bay window overlooking a neatly manicured garden that went on and on and on, looking out over some of the most expensive real estate in the world.

  “Wait, what—” Imp’s brain finally caught up—“you got a promotion?”

  “What can I say?” She shrugged: “Dead man’s shoes.” She smiled a pixie grin that Imp hadn’t thought he’d see again, not since the day their father died.

  “Wait, your boss…”

  “He was so eager he went to get the book himself.” She frowned slightly. “You didn’t run into him upstairs, did you?”

  “No! What happened?”

  “I told him I quit, and he could get it his own damn self.” She glanced around. “Obviously I worded it very carefully. And did it in precisely that order.”

  “Wait, you—”

  “I resigned, then I told him where he could find the book.” The fey grin came out to play again. “He never came back. I’m pretty sure the curse got him: if not, he wandered off into Neverland and didn’t make it out.”

  “Damn.” Imp rubbed his forehead, frowning. “How? I mean, he bought it, didn’t he? Isn’t he its legitimate owner now? Shouldn’t it have recognized him?”

  “You might think that, but the book doesn’t necessarily agree.” She smiled to herself, a knowing expression that made Imp’s blood chill momentarily. “Rupert was the chief executive of de Montfort Bigge Holdings, you see, an investment vehicle domiciled in Skaro for tax purposes, private equity with a specialty in highly unprofitable global subsidiaries—subsidiaries that forwarded their profits to Rupert’s beneficial trust via a double Irish with a Dutch sandwich, or whatever wheeze the rocket scientists in accounting have replaced the Double Irish Jammy Tax Dodge with this week, to stay one jump ahead of the legal loopholes the authorities keep trying to close on us. And sure, he told me to acquire the book for him. And yes, I did that. But I didn’t pay for it using money in one of Rupert’s personal accounts, or even a company he owned a majority share of.

  “Instead, I used Rupert’s funds to buy a house. And then I remortgaged it. It’s a very valuable property, apparently—it’s on Kensington Palace Gardens, don’t you know? I think you can guess the address. Anyway, it gave me a line on the twenty-five million and change I needed in order to preempt the auction, plus a bridging loan and a few other odds and ends I needed. This all went through a management company I set up, and by the way your name is on the deeds along with mine. Which means the purchase of the book used money coming directly from an offshore financial entity that you and I jointly own, which owes Rupert the twenty-five mil but what the hey, he’s not about to come and collect it any time soon.”

  Imp flapped his jaw. “What. The. Fuck?”

  “Dad was right, you know: accountancy really is magic,” his sister told him. “Only I figured that out too late,” she added quietly.

  “The curse affected anyone who took the book and didn’t own it. But we owned—we own—the family house again? So the curse couldn’t affect you or me, or someone acting under our instructions, but your boss … oh dear fucking me.” He rocked back and forth, thinking furiously.

  “I’m pretty sure Rupert learned about the book a few years ago, when he hired me. But it took him ages to find the map Grandpa left lying around, and even longer to set me up to go fetch. He told me to buy the book for him. But he didn’t say how I was to buy the book for him, and I was very careful indeed not to give him any authority to collect the book on my behalf.”

  “Which is why you resigned first, before you told him where you’d left it.” He looked at her, eyes glittering. “What now?”

  “You go back to the house you co-own and check your bank balance,” she said. “I paid the finder’s fee we agreed, in full. The solicitors should be getting in touch soon. When they do, forward me their email?”

  “But, but…”

  “I’m putting you on salary,” she announced. “You’ll be listed as a janitor, working at, oh, a certain property I mentioned buying earlier: duties to include any housework necessary to keep it in order, the money isn’t great but it includes on-site accommodation for yourself and up to four designated friends and family? You should have plenty of time left over for making movies on the side. But your principal job—which will not be written down anywhere—is to keep that fucking door shut. And don’t, whatever you do, breed. Are we square?”

  Imp stood. “This isn’t fair!”

  “Jerm.” She walked around the desk until she was close enough to reach out and touch his nose: “Life isn’t fair. If life was fair the family curse would come with an escape clause, Dad wouldn’t have died for you, Mum wouldn’t be in a care home, and your elder sister would probably have babies instead of control of a multi-billion-pound hedge fund.” She looked thoughtful. “Although the hedge fund is a really good consolation prize, come to think of it.”

  A pair of cut crystal tumblers filled themselves from the decanter on the sideboard and floated across to her. She took one and passed it to Imp. “Here’s to family,” she proposed, and they raised their glasses to their parents, and the brothers and sisters and children they would never have.

  (THE END—for now)

  ALSO BY CHARLES STROSS

  Singularity Sky

  Iron Sunrise

  Accelerando

  Glasshouse

  Halting State

  Saturn’s Children

  Rule 34

  Scratch Monkey

  The Rapture of the Nerds (with Cory Doctorow)

  Neptune’s Brood

  THE MERCHANT PRINCES

  The Bloodline Feud (comprising The Family Trade and The Hidden Family)

  The Traders’ War (comprising The Clan Corporate and The Merchants’ War)

  The Revolution Trade (comprising The Revolution Business and The Trade of Queens)

  Empire Games

  Dark State

  THE LAUNDRY FILES

  The Atrocity Archives

  The Jennifer Morgue

  The Fuller Memorandum

  The Apocalypse Codex

  The Rhesus Chart

  The Annihilation Score

  The Nightmare Stacks

  The Delirium Brief

  The Labyrinth Index

  STORY COLLECTIONS

  Toast

  Wireless

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHARLES STROSS is a full-time science fiction writer and resident of Edinburgh, Scotland. He has won three Hugo Awards for Best Novella, most recently for the Laundry Files tale “Equoid.” His work has been translated into more than twelve languages. His most recent novel prior to this is The Labyrinth Index, also part of the Laundry Files, published in 2018.

  Like many writers, Stross has had a variety of careers, occupations, and job-shaped catastrophes, from pharmacist (he quit after the second police stakeout) to first code monkey on the team of a successful dot-com startup (with brilliant timing, he tried to change employers just as the bubble burst). Along the way he collected degrees in pharmacy and computer science, making him the world’s first officially qualified cyberpunk writer.

  You can visit his website at accelerando.org, or follow him on Twitter where he’s @cstross. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Crimes Against Marketing

  The Interior Life

  Bookish Lore

  Foul Papers

  Overdrawn at the Pennine Bank

  Bidding War

  Cannonball Run on the M25

  Back to the Future

  Whitechapel Nights

  Charnel Library

  Acquisitions and Takeovers

  Also by Charles Stross

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  DEAD LIES DREAMING

  Copyright © 2020 by Charles Stross

  All rights reserved.

  Edited by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

  Cover photographs: arch © Getty Images;

  skulls and desktop © Shutterstock.com

  A Tordotcom Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates

  120 Broadway

  New York, NY 10271

  www.tor.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-1-250-26702-3 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-250-26701-6 (ebook)