Neptune's Brood

by Charles Stross

  A stable, sober, reliable banker had been chosen in each star system: one who would maintain custody of the deposits down the centuries until, after a suitably long period had elapsed, the surviving creditors could come together and wind up the residual funds that had been held in trust. The banker would make arrangements to build a capability to revoke and unwind half-completed exchanges of slow money, carefully collecting the loose ends retrieved by her minions. Once the key meeting had been held, the clerks entrusted with these instruments would unwind the remaining transactions and hand everything over to their employer (and owner and parent) to deal with. And that, the fraudsters had assumed, would be that.

  * * *

  “Hello, Ana.”

  Andrea looked older, this time: Or perhaps she was tired, under stress. She wore the same elaborate (even baroque) outfit: Clearly fashion in New California a few years ago had been iterating through ostentatious status displays even faster than usual. She lounged by the side of the ornamental pond she’d used in her message to me, but there was a tension in her shoulders. And I could see walls behind her: She’d brought up a maintenance screen, deliberately enclosing this volume and flagging it as off-limits, under repair.

  “We’re in deep trouble.”

  She said it without relish, reluctantly, somewhat hesitantly, as befitted the bearer of bad news.

  “Sondra knows that one or more of us has uncovered her history. There’s been a leak; someone sent an assassin to steal one of the uncommitted transactions and replace it with a forgery. The target they picked was the uncompleted carnet payable to Ivar Trask on Shin-Tethys. I believe you may know something about this. Sondra has a suspicious mind, and naturally her suspicions turn to those of her children who are trained in the art of forensic reconciliation and who have a connection to Dojima System—meaning you and Krina. I’ve already sent a warning after Krina, telling her to cut short her pilgrimage and go straight to Shin-Kyoto, but I doubt it’ll catch up with her before she heads out to meet you; right now New California is closer to Dojima System than to Ganesh. Meanwhile, Mother has been raging through the vaults like a mad thing and has latterly checked one of her soul chips into the departure hall for immediate transmission to parts unknown. She’s splitting herself. That’s never happened before, and I think it’s a very bad sign indeed.”

  Andrea took a deep breath, flushing her lungs. “When I said she’s sending another instance of herself to parts unknown, I meant it. The beacon crew are in lockdown, not talking to anyone for money or love. There are armed guards on the departure hall door to stop people getting out, or getting in. I managed to convince a—friend—to sneak a pleasure boat out around the hull, and they say one of the high-power lasers is pointing near to, but not at, Dojima System. The High Council is in session and there have been rumors about an Enabling Act, emergency legislation, all sorts of draconian nightmares. Other rumors are circulating about New California going dark for a few decades while this plays itself out.”

  Another deep breath. “There is a witch hunt in progress, and we three shall not meet again. Once I’ve sent this message, I’m going to run away very far, very fast: I’m activating my personal bug-out plan. Ana, you need to hide as deep and as anonymously as possible. If you can do so safely, leave Dojima System—if Sondra turns up there, it will be very bad news indeed—but if not, change your identity, change your body plan, find a crypt and estivate for a century, whatever it takes. For your own safety you should assume that Sondra has captured me and extracted the rendezvous plans and knows all our plans: They’re all compromised. If you get a chance to warn Krina off, do so: I sent her another memo but can’t be sure she’ll receive it in time. If you get word via trustworthy channels that Sondra is dead or has been overthrown in a palace coup, then it might be possible to return home—but be wary of entrapment and lies.

  “I’m sorry it’s come to this, sis. But we’re all on our own now.”

  * * *

  “That’s Ivar’s soul chip.”

  “Yes.”

  “Ivar Trask-1. SystemBank Dojima’s long-missing executive.”

  “Yes.”

  “He was the countersignatory? The designated recipient for the big transfer from Atlantis that Sondra was involved with? You’re sure?”

  Ana’s pupils were fully dilated, luminous and black in the gloom of her office. “Yes.”

  “You know I’ve— I’m carrying—”

  “Yes, Krina.”

  (And so, it all came down to this.)

  “I’m astonished. I mean, you did it. That’s not supposed to be possible, it’s—”

  “Krina?”

  “Um, yes?”

  “Shut up and confirm it for me? Please?”

  I raised the soul chip reluctantly, then held it behind my neck. Popped the cover from my second socket, currently holding my private journal and memory palace. Removed that chip, slid the new one into place. A shuddery moment of wrongness: Then my vision cleared. “Ivar Trask-1. That’s a huge blob.” I compared it to my copy of the carnet, checksumming. Waited for the hash function to complete—a noticeable delay. “Yes, it matches.” I met her gaze. “I’m completing the signature now.”

  After a moment I popped Trask’s soul from my socket and reinserted my journal. It was strange: I didn’t feel any different. You’d think that becoming a slow dollar multimillionaire would come with lights and noise and a parade of bankers or something. Achievement unlocked. I handed the chip back to Ana. “You want to load that immediately: I split the take.”

  “Wait, but—”

  I took pity on her. “Ana. In addition to the ghost of a dead corrupt banker, that soul chip contains one million nine hundred and forty-two thousand and sixteen unlocked slow dollars.” (Somewhere north of ten trillion in cash at the current prevailing exchange rates: Alas, being cut off from the surface meant that I could not consult the bourses.) “There’s almost exactly double that amount in my head. But you need that money, you and your commune, and besides, without their efforts, we wouldn’t have recovered any of it. Because Sondra has recently become aware that we—well, me and Andrea, and I have set aside a similar share for her—have pilfered the uncommitted transaction from her vault, and she probably guesses that we intend to do what she’s carefully taught us to do with uncommitted slow money transactions. This money is not only a rather large fortune: It’s the proof that Sondra was into the Atlantis scandal up to her eyelids. It’s even proof that Atlantis was a scam in the first place if anyone still doubts it!”

  “Which makes it extremely dangerous.” Ana took the chip, then, without waiting, slid it behind her neck. Her smile was fey. “Thank you.” Small appreciation for someone who had just gifted her with nearly two million slow, I thought for a moment: Then she showed me her hand again. “You’ll be wanting this back.”

  “This is—”

  “The individuals who handled the body-shop work also took a snapshot of your backup,” she said coolly. “Just in case.”

  “Gaah.” I grabbed the chip from her hand. “If you can’t trust your sisters, whom can you trust?”

  “Ask mother dearest.” A reflective pause: “I’m glad I didn’t have to use it.”

  The trouble was, she was right. Our lineage is not invariably trustworthy, as Sondra’s actions demonstrated. On the other hand, assimilating even a close sib’s memories by side-loading their soul chip—well, Father Gould’s unfortunate disposition was among the less florid examples of what could go wrong. Soul chips are best integrated with an unimprinted new body. Ana might have been able to dig the Atlantis Carnet out of my soul (or rather, to dig the pass-codes to my encrypted memory palace, in which I had archived the copy of the carnet that Andrea and I had stolen from Sondra’s vault), but only at risk of her own sanity.

  After a few seconds, I nodded. “I’m glad, too.”

  “You will see that Andrea gets her share
.”

  “I will”—I paused—“try. You saw her message. If I receive confirmation that she’s dead, I will split her share with you.”

  Ana met my gaze. “Thank you.”

  “What . . . what happened to Trask, by the way?” I asked. “Where did you get the chip?”

  She pulled a face. “They found a harpoon not far from the bones. Someone murdered him, clearly enough. Possibly someone who knew about the transaction and wanted to take it but who botched the mugging. Or perhaps he had other enemies; if he was willing to launder dirty money for Sondra and her friends, maybe he had other bad habits that caught up with him.” She shook her head. “It’s of no matter anymore: Over nine hundred years have passed.”

  “Ancient history seems to have developed a taste for our skin,” I reminded her. “Keep your eyes open, sis.”

  She changed the subject. “What will you do now?”

  “I’m not sure I should tell you in any detail. I’m—” I glanced around, then looked down. Taking in my own deformed shape. On Ana, the mer form looked graceful and somehow right: But every time I stopped to think about myself, I felt as if I teetered on the edge of a storm of body dysmorphia of epic proportions. “I need to get to the surface as fast as possible. I need to hire bodyguards, then book a rapid physical passage to Taj Beacon. Then I’m going to run a very long way.” Just like Andrea. “If Mother tries to catch me . . . I need to record a transcript, I think. As an insurance policy, I intend to arrange a dead man’s handle that will release it if I am murdered, and make sure Sondra knows about it. That will take some thought. Then . . . I’m not sure. What are you planning on doing?”

  “I think what you’re planning is too complicated; you just need to find a home and a tribe you are comfortable with. For my part, I shall stay with my adopted people,” Ana added. “Perhaps even request the operation, to change myself all the way. To swim with the shoal and see the blue smokers for myself. I hope you can make our problem go away before Sondra finds out what they’ve done: Otherwise, there’ll be a blood bath. She’ll hold them responsible.”

  I bit back my first instinctive response, But they’re communists! If little sister valued the idea of belonging to a greater collective higher than owning nearly two million in the hardest currency in the known universe, well, perhaps she was right: some things are worth more than money. And having a shoal of hundreds of thousands, or millions, of squid-folk to hold your back . . . that might be worth quite a lot to one of us, under the circumstances. “I’ll do my best to—” A sonorous chime rippled through the office, making my flanks shiver. “What was that?”

  “It’s an acoustic duplex terminal for private speech. Excuse me.” Ana reached over and pulled an odd device from a niche in the wall above her sleeping oyster pets. She held it to her head and listened. Voices buzzed, high-pitched but inaudible due to some sort of privacy screen of white noise. “Really?” she said, then, “I’ll certainly see him. I’m sure she will, too. Thank you for the warning. Bye.” She put the device back on its hook on the wall. “Alef says we have visitors. They’re asking for you by name, and they know I’m here. They say they want to talk to us.”

  I startled, and nearly swam headfirst into the ceiling: “Who say they want to talk?”

  “Alef wasn’t very clear. Apparently some surface dwellers are visiting in a bathyscaphe. Something about an insurance company you’ve been doing some work for? Wait, you haven’t been dealing with—”

  “Rudi?” I stopped. In the twilight of her office, Ana’s eyes went wide.

  “You know him?”

  “Yes, did you really buy a life insurance policy from the bats?”

  “It was a just-in-case move; they’re honest enough.” She looked at me oddly. “A good tribe. I couldn’t stay with them, but . . .”

  She was holding something back: But I doubted it could be important. “Then let’s go and have a chat with them. I’m sure Rudi will be relieved to know he doesn’t need to make good for your backup, and as for the rest, I think I shall put a little business proposal before him and see if he bites . . .”

  Unimaginably Rich

  The visiting bathyscaphe hovered above the People’s Palace like a giant pearl clamped to the bottom of an archaic cylindrical rocket ship, all fins and nozzles and guidance vanes. I stared at it through the gaps in the manifold skin of the People’s Palace. Spotlights illuminated its iridescent surface, a third of which was covered by a large retina screen: The pearl itself was a solid hollow shell of opaque diamond at least twenty centimeters thick.

  “Assertion: The daystar-light vacuum dwellers cannot come out,” said one of the squid, hovering near the highest point in the palace dome. “Assertion: They are in squishbodies. Speculation-interrogative: They came in haste and were unable to preadapt to reasonable pressure? Discursive-assertion: This one has seen such ’scaphes before, the capsule is grown around the passengers before flight, and dissolved to free them after they return to near vacuum.”

  “Who are they asking for?” I asked.

  “Assertion: They seek Krina Alizond-114.”

  “Hmm.” I stared at the ’scaphe. Assuming it was Rudi in there, I was probably safe. Probably. There were no outside manipulators to grab me, no sign of explosives or other nasty surprises. Who else could it be? Well, Her Majesty Medea of Argos might have followed me, but as an aquamorph herself she could doubtless have applied the same depth-adaptation packs—she wouldn’t need the hardshell capsule. The Church: Well perhaps, but how would they have found us? And why? With Cybelle awake again and doubtless asking penetrating questions about Deacon Dennett’s reign of mismanagement in her absence, I wasn’t expecting trouble from that direction for a while. Which left Sondra. Who, to the best of my knowledge, had not yet arrived in-system, and whose presence was more likely to be heralded by nuclear depth charges than polite negotiators. “I’ll go and talk to them.”

  “Krina—” Ana paused. “If that’s not Rudi, we can stop them from leaving, but we can’t protect you if you get close.”

  “Yes, but who else are you expecting, so soon?”

  And with that, I swam out through a gap in the filigree of shell enclosing the People’s Palace and shimmied my way up toward the passenger sphere. I paused thirty meters away, facing it.

  “Hello!” I called. “If that’s Rudi, you will tell me what task you paid me to carry out aboard your ship.”

  The illuminated segment on the hull turned slowly toward me. Shadowy forms moved behind it, then an enormous eye and the top of a familiar-looking muzzle filled it. “Krina.” The voice was familiar, accounting for the frequency shift. “You hid it in plain sight! You are a very naughty accountant.”

  “What did I hide?” I asked.

  “You were to tell me about banking scandals, and you did! Only you spun it. Confess: You were looking for Ivar Trask-1 for some reason, were you not? Did you find him?”

  It was Rudi. “I, personally, did not find him.” I smiled. Hopefully he’d be able to discern my expression through the poor-quality retina he was using. “What do you think I was up to?”

  “I think you and your sibs have been playing an underhand game with your patron.” Rudi grinned, baring his teeth hungrily. “Finding stalled transactions and repatriating them, that is part of the job of a banker, is it not? And you found a big one, awaiting the countersignature of a local bank administrator to collect. Your sib Ana was tasked with the search, and she has evidently been successful. You, meanwhile, were the courier, bringing the smuggled instrument here. I infer that because of the secrecy surrounding your activities there is something questionable about the money in question—a taint adhering to it. And I infer from your stalker’s existence that your patron is angry with you and wants her property back. Am I reasoning along the right lines?”

  I made a snap decision, over in a moment: “You are partially correct. It appears that my li
neage mater, Sondra Alizond-1, was engaged in a conspiracy to launder money through Trask’s office. Someone—possibly a rival within their conspiracy—did away with Trask prematurely. With his soul lost, the final transfer could not be completed, until now. As so much time has elapsed, and nobody with a lawful claim to the money will be able to come forward, my sisters and I have claimed it as treasure trove, and our claim has been notarized by the bank of the United People’s Shoal of the Tethys North Temperate Deeps. You’re too late to activate whatever intricate shell game you were considering.”

  “Your paranoia is misplaced.” Rudi paused. “I suspect you have all your bases covered. And I presume you found your missing sister alive? In which case, I suppose I should be saying good-bye and—”

  “Wait!” It was my turn to pause. “Rudi. Before you write this journey off as an expensive waste of time and reaction mass, can I interest you in a business proposition?”

  “Maybe. What do you have in mind?”

  “I’d like to buy an insurance policy.”

  “What kind of insurance do you have in mind?” He sounded distantly amused.

  “The biggest, most expensive kind.” I stared at the image of his eye, looking against the camera inside the hull. “How much does it cost to hire a privateer?”

  * * *

  I—Krina Alizond-114—am not accustomed to the trappings of great wealth. I recognize that by the standards of many people I am a creature of privilege and power—but privilege and power are relative, and while ownership of a single slow dollar might place one among the lower ranks of the wealthy, ownership of many millions of them is something else again.

  While I was busy following Ana’s trail down into the ink-dark realm of the squid-people, the arrivals hall at Taj Beacon was playing host to a remarkable procession of incomers.