Neptune's Brood

by Charles Stross

  “Good.” Sondra sat up and began to claw her way out of the cocoon. She, too, was unnaturally etiolated, thin and armored, a parody of the form she had worn into the departure terminal at Taj Beacon: a battlebody. “Where’s Jean?”

  “The lieutenant is inspecting the primary bomb factory, Captain. He indicated that he would have a full report for you shortly after your arrival.”

  “Good.” Sondra floated free of the cocoon. She reached out, grabbed a webbing support, then turned to orient herself on the captain’s chair at the center of the module. “Who’s next on the roster?”

  “Our incoming buffers are full: We are expecting full crew resurrection in four standard days, but for the moment, the lieutenant ordered Arrivals to prioritize construction of your body, Captain. Chief Operations Officer Mao will be the next to hatch, then we will work our way down the list.”

  “Hmm.” Sondra thought for a moment. “And how far are we from beginning our initial deceleration burn?”

  “Your patience please . . . we are less than eighteen light-hours from the entry gate.” The watch officer consulted a checklist retina hanging from one wall. “One hundred and fifty shipboard days, and the main drive will be ready to come online. At which point we will be another sixty light-hours from Dojima’s primary. Call it a year to decelerate to stellar orbital velocity—”

  “We won’t be doing that. Events have run ahead of schedule, and it will take far too long to slow down and execute the original mission profile. We have personnel aboard Taj Beacon already, and a working bidirectional link.”

  “Captain?” The skeletal ensign sounded uncertain.

  “We’re not going to decelerate. Our task is to press our attack until all reaction mass and energy reserves are expended. Then we will abandon ship and upload to Taj Beacon, leaving a scuttling charge behind. We have momentum and surprise on our side: I don’t intend to waste it.” She grinned at the darkness: “My traitorous daughters and their allies must be taught a lesson. One that they won’t live long enough to forget.”

  * * *

  What goes down must come up, especially when there’s a pressure gradient driven by a forty-kilometer-high pressure column behind it. On the other hand, the drag of an irregular body forcing its way through all that liquid is not inconsiderable. And so I dangled in the darkness beneath the bathyscaphe for a very long time indeed, trying not to ponder the things that could go wrong with the ascent, and focusing instead on the alluring opportunities that lay ahead of me.

  I couldn’t think of any.

  I am Krina Alizond-114, and I was born into debt as a slave within the banking mills of New California. Over decades I paid off my debt of instantiation and acquired a modicum of security as an autonomous citizen. I performed my allotted tasks and pursued my hobby in my spare time, a hobby that had been suggested to me by my work: a profitably distracting amusement that coincidentally filled in gaps in my employer’s record-keeping and turned a trivial profit. Until Andrea and Ana (and others whom I shall not name) sucked me into the biggest game of all: trying to run down proof that the disappearance of Atlantis was the blowout at the end of a monumental fraud. But that, too, was a diversion and an amusement: I never, at any point, imagined that it would explode under my feet, that we might simultaneously prove our hypothesis and offend our creator and—whisper it—owner.

  Yes, I was suddenly, shockingly, abruptly wealthy. But by the same token, my life was over. I could never go back to New California. I couldn’t possibly reenter my life within the tissue-wrapped shell of a nun-accountant. To resume my scholastic pilgrimage would inflict chaos on my colleagues, for great concentrations of money exert a gravitational field that tugs strongly upon the minds of the unhinged and desperate. Having become rich, I could not disclaim it—even if I publicly gave it away, there would always be people who imagined that I was hiding a secret fortune. I was, in fact, utterly adrift between worlds. Ana was right: If you come into too much money, the money will eat you.

  Money. An instrument invented in ancient temple complexes, to keep track of debt: counters that acquired mobility and went a-walking, weaving webs of debt into vast and intricate meshes, enslaving and directing the labor of billions in service of the obligations created by its issuance. Latterly, slow money: a framework invented to systematize the repayment of debt across interstellar distances, to provide for stable exchange of labor by light-speed transmission. Money: a shadow play projected on the walls of our minds by the dark sun of debt. In picking up my part of the Atlantis Carnet, I had laid claim to the repayment of a debt serviced by millions of now-dead people; people presumably killed by my lineage mater and her coconspirators. I found myself looking at it from outside, with newly opened eyes. What I saw looked uncommonly like a different kind of fraudulent vehicle: a Ponzi scheme sprayed across the cosmos, the victims entire solar systems, the pyramid spreading on a wave of starships.

  We rose through darkness and pressure for more than a standard day. The ’scaphe stopped periodically, creaking and popping as its internal systems adapted to the slowly diminishing pressure. I could feel it in my marrow, and in my ’cytes: compressed macromolecules expanding and reconfiguring, lipid membranes unpacking, as the balance of forces holding my internal components in shape at every level shifted. They’d left me a talking box to provide an idiot’s commentary on our ascent, all facts and no insight. “Attention, Krina: Decompression stage two reached. Ascent will pause for one hour. Please connect Red Cartridge Two to your infusion port, then confirm.” I did as I was told: The idea of exploding messily (or, more likely, dying painfully as various mechazymes stopped working, irreversibly denatured by a pressure-induced phase change) did not appeal. Even when life lacks allure, death may still repel.

  As for my rescuers . . .

  I spent a long time staring up into the darkness, at the silhouette of the nearly invisible bathyscaphe above me, without even any monstrous deep-dwelling critters for company: The ’scaphe was big enough to frighten them all away. A solitary pilot light glowed above and around the curve of the pressure sphere, barely limning it against the abyssal night. What was going on inside it? What dreams did Rudi and his crew harbor?

  Acquiring a client of such size would be a monumental coup for Rudi, who would not only reap a gigantic commission from his employer but would, in turn, be in a position to support more large customers: It was the breakthrough his institution had been seeking since its arrival in Dojima System. But was I perhaps too big a client? Big enough to tempt him to discount future business and goodwill and dive overboard into truly lawless piracy? I’d left my soul-chip backup and my spare scratch-pad chip with Ana, committing everything I needed—including my fortune in slow dollars—to the frailty of merely human memory. But I could afford no illusions. If Rudi was ruthless enough to use his slave controller, he could steal my onerous wealth—but at the cost of doing so in public, destroying forever his claim to be an honest privateer acting under letters of marque. My gamble was in guessing that Rudi, as I had come to know him over the past year, would not change markedly in the presence of great wealth: in believing that he was an intelligent rogue, clever enough to act in his long-term best interest. If he wasn’t, we were both probably doomed.

  A second thought hit me then. Suppose that Rudi was indeed trustworthy. But what of his parent institution? What did I really know about the Permanent Assurance? An out-system bank and insurance agency with credentials recognized by some of the governments of Dojima System, it had expanded across interstellar space and opened up a subsidiary here. Pretty tenuous, that background. He’d supplied me with a fine portfolio of reports to read during our ascent, but I had no way of confirming their contents. Going interstellar was a daring, if not radical, business move: Few organizations ever attempted to coordinate at such range, for the only medium of internal exchange that could be used to couple their activities was slow money. Who were they, to have taken such a risk
y gamble in an industry as famously risk-averse as underwriting? Rudi might be trustworthy, but could I trust his bosses?

  I was angsting pointlessly along these lines when, with no warning whatsoever, the retina plastered overhead lit up like a window into the heart of the sun and blared sound at me. “Krina, are you still there?”

  “Quiet!” I called, shielding my eyes from the burning brightness. “You’re too loud and too bright!”

  “Oops.” The retina dimmed a little. “Is this better?”

  “A bit.” The speaker was not Rudi: pitch too high, intonation wrong. “Is that Marigold?”

  “Yes. Rudi asked me to talk to you: He’s busy.”

  “Busy with what?” I asked.

  “We have a cable to the surface, to the barge we descended from. He’s talking to, to the Queen of Argos, via satellite link.” Marigold sounded troubled. “Medea is very angry. She’s demanding that we turn you over immediately.”

  This might sound strange to you, but I immediately felt a flush of relief at the news. “He’s not planning to do that,” I replied with certainty.

  “Well, no.” She hesitated. “But it raises problems, he says. Do you understand?”

  I understood all too well. Queen Medea had clearly noticed my disappearance from under her nose despite her network of police and spies. Doubtless, she had intended to use me as bait in a trap for Ana, and she was angry that I had been snatched from it so abruptly. Word had somehow escaped that we had done the impossible: Rumor is the only information channel that travels faster than light. She’d probably guessed that Rudi was involved somehow: It wasn’t hard to see why. And now she was trying to stake her claim to the Atlantis Carnet, using the last argument of kings.

  “What do you want?” I asked, carefully feeling the web of support tapes around me.

  “Here’s Rudi,” said Marigold.

  “Krina.” I recognized his voice instantly: The febrile tension was new. “Medea is issuing ultimata. She seems certain that I’m holding you captive, and she is demanding that I hand you over and warning of violent consequences if I do not.”

  “Good.”

  “Yes, that was my reaction: If she knew where we were, she wouldn’t bother with the threats.”

  “What do you intend to do?” I asked.

  “We have an agreement.” And indeed we did, or we had, a day earlier and twenty kilometers deeper: a 10-percent commission in return for services rendered, the establishment of a deposit account secured against shares in the Permanent Assurance, public acknowledgment of my shareholding, and . . . well, it had taken Ana and myself most of a day to hammer out the small print with Rudi.

  “Of course I intend to honor it. But she’s threatening to drop depth charges on Hades-4 and launch missiles at the Five Zero if I don’t hand you over. So I was wondering if you have any suggestions about how to handle her?”

  “Hm. What’s the basis of her claim?”

  “Some nonsense about the Church’s having produced someone who says he was bilked out of a fortune by the annoyingly dead Mr. Trask. Perhaps Trask was implicated in more crimes than merely washing your mother’s laundry?”

  “That’s possible.” I thought for a minute. “But it’s a cash instrument. Trask is long dead. If the Church produced this claimant, then they—” I stopped dead. “Oh no.”

  “Oh no what?” I could picture Rudi at that moment, tongue lolling from his jaws, looking carnivorously amused as only a microgravity flying fox could.

  “The Church.” I should have realized sooner. “Rudi, what is the probability that the chapel would have arrived in Dojima System at this precise time, just by accident or happenstance or coincidence?”

  “Nonsense, it’s just a—” His jaws shut with an audible snap.

  “We are very close to the two thousandth anniversary of the Atlantis blackout,” I pointed out. “Here is the Church. Here am I. I was steered into this vocation about a century ago, while working for my mater’s systembank. Here is Dojima, which is a remarkably rich and pleasant colony system, founded in the wake of the post-Atlantis colonization bubble. Rudi, none of this is a coincidence. Except, I think, possibly your presence—how old is the Permanent Assurance?”

  “Oh, very old! We were incorporated four hundred and seventy standard years ago, from the merger of—”

  “A newcomer and a bystander, in other words. Rudi, the Atlantis fraud was so big that the perpetrators had to wait for the ripples to die down before they could liquidate the proceeds. In the meantime, most of the stolen money was invested under the cover of a wave of new colonization—including the foundation of Dojima’s beacon station and subcolonies. I suspect the core of the conspirators arranged in advance to meet here, after two thousand years, to split the remaining slow money cash pile. But in the meantime, some of them—my mother, whoever is working inside the Church of the Fragile, possibly others—decided to thin the pool of rival beneficiaries. I think you need to assume that anyone who threatens or cajoles us from now on is a mass murderer—”

  BOOOOM.

  A concussive thud ripples through the water around me, and my body: The acoustic positional sense I get from my lateral lines tells me it’s a very long way away, and above us. It’s followed by a hissing, sizzling sound, a distant, eerie shriek of bubbles imploding under extreme pressure.

  “—is that?” Rudi demanded: “Did you hear that?”

  “It’s a long way away.” My voice sounded flat and distant to me. “Overhead, kilometers away . . .” I tried to remember the direction, but I was too rattled by it. “Someone’s making a point. Medea, probably. You mentioned depth charges? If it’s overhead, she’s not serious about attacking Hades-4 yet—”

  “I’m worried about the support barge.” A pause. “We can’t hurry this along, can we? Grow you a new body up top?”

  “I wasn’t bluffing about leaving my backups behind,” I reminded him. A risky tactic, but a necessary one: I wanted my living body to be indispensable, the only store of the value I held in my memory.

  “Well, we shall just have to string Medea along with some artfully composed lies. Hrrr . . . Krina, how well can you act?”

  Permanent Crimson

  In a secure control room deep in the heart of the royal fortress under Nova Ploetsk, three militant instances of Queen Medea reclined in an outward-facing horseshoe pool, at the focus of a room-sized retina displaying a real-time fish-eye map of the hemisphere of Shin-Tethys. They were not alone: Her Grace Cybelle, Priestess-Missionary of the Church of the Fragile, waited patiently on a poolside recliner, while around them the executive officer corps of the Kingdom of Argos’s orbital defense command attended to their workstations.

  “I’m going to strangle him,” one of the Queens announced, absentmindedly flexing her hands.

  “Get in line,” said another. Turning to Cybelle, she added: “We don’t like thieves. Especially the rent-seeking kind.”

  Cybelle watched the triumvirate with no discernible emotion visible on her face. “We trust you will only do so once you have obtained that which is required.”

  “Bankers,” spat the third queen-instance. “Theft with interest.”

  “He’s an insurance underwriter, not a banker,” said the first. “Just as bad, really.”

  “We can agree that he is thoroughly wicked,” Cybelle interrupted. “But discussion of his eventual disposal is perhaps premature . . .”

  A signal light flashed on above the console of one of the officers in the outer circle. “Your Majesties, Your Grace . . . ?”

  “Report!” snapped the third Queen.

  “Incoming call from Permanent Crimson Five Zero. They are relaying. Do you want to accept?”

  “Send it to the main retina,” said the first Queen. “Pause it on my signal.” Heads turned to face the middle of the situation display as a black rectangle appeared, then sl
owly brightened to reveal a distorted fox face, huge dark eyes and protuberant fangs filling the viewport.

  “Good day. Hrrrr . . .” Rudi grinned, revealing a fang-filled maw. “Greetings from nowhere in particular. I believe we have a commodity to discuss?”

  “We do not negotiate with—” began the third Queen, before her co-instances spoke over her. “What’s your price?” demanded the first. “Our valiant sailors have a firing solution on your vehicle: Think hard before you try our patience!” erupted the second. They fell silent simultaneously.

  Behind them, the priestess spoke: “If I may intercede?” she asked.

  The first queen-instance recovered first: “Please do so.” She extended her hands toward her sisters, both palms pulsing red: “We shall confer meanwhile.”

  The trio of Queens linked hands and fell silent as they attempted to synchronize their emotional states. Cybelle walked around the royal pool and positioned herself in front of the viewport. “May the peace of the Fragile be upon you, branch manager. I gather you have found what you came here for. Is that so?”

  There was a brief pause as the carrier signal clawed its way laboriously up to orbit, then back down to wherever the branch manager was hiding—possibly including some additional delay, just to obscure his location further. Then Rudi replied, “Good day to you, too, Your Grace, and may I take this opportunity to apologize for the circumstances of our previous meeting? Yes, I am indeed in possession of a most interesting financial instrument. I take it you are familiar with the saying that possession is nine-tenths of the law? The other tenth being the last argument of kings—or Queens—a-ha, ha. Ha. And it is that tenth that I should like to discuss with you, assuming your presence in Her Majesty’s command and control suite indicates that you have her confidence.”