The Traders' War (Merchant Princes Omnibus 2) (55 page)
Read The Traders' War (Merchant Princes Omnibus 2) Online
Authors: Charles Stross
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
.
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 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 wartime. 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 think 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. 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.’
‘I, I think – hell, I assumed that if it was possible to do something, it would already have been done, surely?’
‘That’s the assumption everyone who has given the subject a moment’s thought comes up with. It tends to deter experimentation, doesn’t it, if you believe an alley of
inquiry has already been tried and found wanting? Even if the assumption is wrong.’
‘I – I feel dumb.’
(
Pause
.) ‘You’re not the only one of us who’s kicking himself. There have been a number of unexplained disappearances over the centuries, and simple murder surely
doesn’t explain all of them – but the point is, nobody who succeeded came back to tell the tale. Which brings me to the matter at hand. When Helge reappeared with the family Lee in
unwilling thrall, I had reason to send for the archivists. And to have my staff conduct certain preliminary tests. It appears that the Lee family design has never been tested in the United
States of America. And our Clan symbol doesn’t work in New Britain. That is, it doesn’t in the areas that correspond to the Gruinmarkt. The east coast. But that’s all we know,
Huw, and it worries me. In the United States, the authorities have made their most effective attack on our postal service for a hundred years. This would be a crisis in its own right, but on
top of that we have the pretender to the throne raising the old aristocracy against us in Niejwein. He can be contained eventually – we have means of communication and transport that will
permit us to meet his army with crushing force whenever he moves – but that, too, would be crisis enough on its own. And I cannot afford to deal with any new surprises. So I want you
– I have discussed this with members of the council – to set your very expensively acquired skills to work and do what our none-too-inquisitive ancestors failed to do.’
‘You want me to, to find out how the sigil works? Or . . . what?’
(
Clink of glassware
.) ‘When there was just one knot, life was simple. But we’ve got two, now, and three worlds. I want to know if there are more worlds out there. And
more knots. I want to know why sometimes trying a design gives the world-walker a headache, and why sometimes the experimenter vanishes. I want to know, Sir Huw, so that I can map out the
terrain of the battlefield we find ourselves on.’
‘Is it really that bad?’
‘I don’t know, boy. None of us know. That’s the whole point. Can you do it? More importantly, what would you do?’
‘Hmm.’ (
Pause
.) ‘Well, I’d start by documenting what we already know. Maps and times. Then there are a couple of avenues I would pursue. On the one hand, we
have two knots. I can see if the Clan knot is failing to work in New Britain because of a terrain anomaly. If, say, it leads to a world where the world-walker would emerge in the middle of a
tree, or underwater, that would explain why nobody’s been able to use it. And I’d do the same for the Lee family knotwork in the United States, of course. That’s going to take
a couple of world-walkers, some maps and surveying tools, and someone to report back if everything goes wrong. Next, well . . . once we’ve exhausted the possibilities, we’ve got two
knots. I need to talk to a mathematician, see if we can work out the parameters of the knots and come up with a way of generating a family of relatives. Then we need to invent a protocol for
testing new designs: not so much what to do if they don’t work, but how to survive if they take us somewhere new. If this works, if there are more than two viable knots, we’re going
to lose world-walkers sooner or later. Aren’t we?’
‘I expect so.’
‘That’s awfully cold-blooded, isn’t it, sir?’
‘Yes, boy, it is. In case it has slipped your attention, it is my job to be cold-blooded about such things. I would not authorize – I suspect my predecessors
did not
authorize – such research, if the situation was not so dangerous. The risk of losing world-walkers is too high and our numbers too few for gambling with lives. Already there have been
losses, couriers taken in transit by American government agents. You met the Countess Helge. Your opinion . . . ?’
‘Helge? She’s, she’s – what happened to her? Shouldn’t she be here, given her experience?’
‘I am asking the questions, Sir Huw. What was your opinion of her?’
‘Bright . . . inquisitive . . . fun, I think, in a scary way. Where is she?’
‘“Fun, in a scary way” . . . yes, that’s true enough. But she scared too many cousins, Huw, cousins who lack your sense of
fun
. I did what I could to protect
her. If she surfaces again, well, circumstances have changed, and it may be possible to distract her pursuers, as long as she is not involved in the regrettable business unfolding in New York.
But for the time being, she is not available, and so I am turning to you.’
‘I’m, um, I’m at your disposal, sir. How would you like to proceed?’
‘Write me a report. No more than three pages. Tell me what you’re going to do, what resources you need, what people you need, and what you expect to learn from it. I want your
report no later than the day after tomorrow, and I want you to be ready to begin work the day after that.’
‘Sir! That’s rather – ’
‘What, you’re going to tell me you’ve never written a grant proposal in a hurry? Please don’t insult my intelligence.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it, sir! But it’s going to cost, people and money – ’
‘Let me worry about that. You just tell me what you need, and I’ll make sure you get it.’
‘
Wow!
Thank you – ’
‘
Don’t
thank me, boy. Not until it’s over, and we’re still alive.’
END TRANSCRIPT