Empire Games Series, Book 1

by Charles Stross

  DR. SCRANTON: And she has no background with the world-walkers.

  AGENT O’NEILL: Don’t tell me this is new information.

  DR. SCRANTON: Of course not. We’ve been tracking Rita Douglas since the bad old days. She was just a kid when they nuked the White House. She was on a watch list for eight years—one of my predecessors thought maybe Beckstein would come for her eventually, but it seems they’re not that kind of family. Or maybe she’s forgotten all about her college accident by now. Or thought she could protect the kid by burying her. Anyway, as a civilian and a recessive carrier, Ms. Douglas was of no use to us. Until now.

  AGENT O’NEILL: What changed?

  DR. SCRANTON: This is classified: the brainiacs in the lab under the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory finally figured out how to switch on the JAUNT BLUE world-walking trait in carriers. Carriers such as the DRAGON’S TEETH teenagers and our current person of interest. You’re now authenticated and listed for that particular code word. We’re going to recruit, motivate, train, and run her as an intelligence asset. A para-time spy. And that’s going to be your job.

  AGENT O’NEILL: Holy crap.

  DR. SCRANTON: The DRAGON’S TEETH kids are still mostly in their teens. They’re too young for the job we have in mind. It demands a certain maturity. But Rita Douglas is in her mid-twenties and fits the profile like a glove. I mean, she’s so clean it’s eerie—almost as if her family were aiming her at the political track, or a job in national security. Maybe they knew something, or guessed enough to train her to keep her head down instinctively. Either way, she’s almost the perfect candidate for this operation. Almost.

  AGENT O’NEILL: You’re talking about turning her into a world-walking agent. Actually taking the war to the enemy’s time line?

  DR. SCRANTON: Eventually, yes.

  AGENT O’NEILL: They’re still out there? We have confirmation? You’ve got a fix on them?

  COL. SMITH: You bet your ass they’re out there. As for their location … that’s a need-to-know matter. Let’s just say, we can’t just barge in and trash the joint this time. Which is why you’re being pulled into this sandbox as of now. We think Ms. Douglas is the right tool for the job. We want you to run Rita. Are you up to the challenge?

  AGENT O’NEILL: That’s a big responsibility you’re putting on me, sir.

  DR. SCRANTON: Don’t blame me, blame Project Oversight. But yes. They’ve got a high opinion of you after Stockholm. Question is, are you on the team?

  AGENT O’NEILL: I’ll do my best, sir.

  COL. SMITH: Well, now we need to get your authorizations upgraded. Lifelogger, disable code [REDACTED].

  SECURITY LEVEL EXCEEDED

  LOG REDACTED

  Motivating Rita

  SEATTLE, MARCH 2020

  Being questioned by the men (and women) in black from the DHS was a lot like being under arrest, minus the handcuffs, and with “please,” “thank you,” and makeup remover pads in return for cooperation. Rita was grudgingly grateful. But, as she kept reminding herself whenever they let her alone, it could be a lot worse. Might soon get a lot worse, if … She shied away from that thought. You didn’t need to be guilty of anything to get into trouble with the feds: you just needed them to think that you might have something to feel guilty about.

  They left the conference center in a Tesla with blacked-out windows, then drove her for half an hour through the trackless, office-zoned industrial yards of Seattle. Their destination was an anonymous warehouse with a loading dock and a windowless door. There was nothing to distinguish it from hundreds of others except for a couple of unobtrusive bird-drones soaring overhead like legless, featherless seagulls with telephoto eyes. Inside, it was furnished with office cubicles and, disturbingly, a shipping container tricked out as a motel room—if motel rooms came without windows and had doors that locked from the outside. Gomez and her sidekick—Rita gathered he was called Jack, but his surname remained elusive—ushered Rita into a room like a compact Holiday Inn, then locked the door. Half an hour later it opened again and a uniformed cop shoved her suitcase inside. It had been searched and clumsily repacked, but everything was present.

  She was gloomily going through her toilet bag when the door opened again. It was Gomez.

  “Here’s what you asked for,” she said, holding out a bag at arm’s reach. “Cotton pads, baby oil, the lot. We’re calling out for food in half an hour: do you have any dietary restrictions?”

  Rita took the bag and Gomez let go as if stung when their fingers made momentary contact. “I’m easy,” she said quietly, trying to give no sign of discomfort that might put the other woman on the alert. Am I a prisoner? A guest? A witness? What is this, anyway?

  “Get yourself cleaned up and make yourself comfortable. We’ll interview you after you’ve eaten, then you can get a night’s sleep and if necessary we’ll continue tomorrow morning.”

  Gomez turned to go. “Wait,” said Rita. “Am I free to leave if I want to?” She looked at Gomez imploringly. The fed wasn’t wearing her government-mandated lifelogging specs. If their interactions weren’t being recorded, what did that mean?

  Gomez paused. “In theory,” she said slowly, then stopped.

  “But…?”

  “I wouldn’t recommend leaving before we’ve had our chat. Be ready in half an hour, Ms. Douglas.”

  The door closed with a too-solid click behind her.

  This is so fucking weird. Rita shuddered and pulled out her phone. They hadn’t even bothered to take it off her. Instead of her regular carrier it was displaying the red FEDERAL OVERRIDE network ID. So the only phone signal in the building was supplied by a government agency picocell, and if she used it she was waiving her Fourth Amendment rights and explicitly consenting to her communications being searched. (Not that withholding consent meant anything these days: the Fifth Amendment—the right not to incriminate oneself—was a dead letter, too.) Her sense of unreality was almost overpowering as she turned the phone off. This was popularly supposed to prevent its bugging her—unless the feds had gone to the trouble of asking for a warrant to override the power switch. She collected a change of clothes from her bag of supplies, then retreated to the bathroom to remove her makeup and costume and seek comfort in simple routine.

  Maybe it was her subcontinental outfit that had triggered Gomez, or maybe she was just a bitch. But off came the sari, choli, and lehenga and on went jeans, bra, and blouse. By the time her half hour was up, Rita was back to resembling her normal all-American self: hair in a ponytail, face scrubbed clean of greasepaint, costume ready to go back in HaptoTech’s trade show wardrobe. But ten minutes later she was beginning to go stir-crazy: the lack of social feeds was almost as irritating an itch as her implants. So she turned the phone on again and was sitting cross-legged on the bed, poking frustratedly at a puzzle game, when the agent who had identified himself as Jack pushed the door open. “Ms. Douglas? Please step this way.”

  “Sure.” She followed him down the indicated corridor. I’ll pretend I’m happy to be here and you can pretend I’m not under arrest, she imagined herself saying. Let’s get this over with. Whatever it is. The sense of dread rasped away at her shell of false bravado.

  They want something. That much was obvious. But they’ve got nothing on me. Her parents and grandfather had raised Rita to be cautious, law-abiding, and risk-averse. She didn’t have a criminal record: not even a parking ticket. If they had anything on her they’d have arrested her right from the get-go—once they had you in the system, they could get a warrant, go on a fishing expedition, and unravel your entire life if you didn’t cooperate. But they clearly didn’t have anything, otherwise why do the low-key approach? Either they were hoping she’d trip up and hand them something or they were going to try to co-opt her some other way, using threats, promises, and lies.

  Grandpa Kurt was East German—he had escaped across the Wall during the cold war. His stories about the way the secret police worked you over when they wanted something
had scared her half to death when she was a kid. She might have discounted them as she was growing up, the way kids always discounted their elders’ cautionary tales, but some of it had stayed with her. Particularly the way he’d sat, staring at the rolling TV news coverage of the mushroom cloud over D.C. back in 2003, muttering “Reichstag fire” until Mom shushed him, glancing in fright at the landline telephone. She’d been nine at the time, and already old enough to realize everything was wrong that day.

  Her fugue state deepened when Jack ushered her into a boringly ordinary meeting room. Gomez was waiting with a plastic carry-out bag full of foil-wrapped burritos: “Qdoba,” she said, pointing. “Help yourself.” There were office chairs clustered around a bleached pine board table. A big bottle of Caffeine-Free Dr Pepper completed the still life. So they’re going to try seduction first, she realized. Of course—the shortest way to an informer’s brain was through her stomach.

  Rita sat down, deliberately (and cautiously) mirroring the cops’ body language. She accepted the offered burrito with unfeigned gratitude, then watched while Jack poured three cups of soda and slid one across the table toward her. This didn’t match any of Grandpa’s horror yarns—but these weren’t ordinary secret police, were they? The DHS had a big concrete office block downtown. The DHS went after terror suspects with drones, GPS tracking, network taps, and Hellfire missiles. The DHS did not invite them round for burritos and soda and a fireside chat. If these cops are regular DHS then I’m the tooth fairy, Rita told herself. But they could call on the DHS for backup in the field. That, if anything, made them even more frightening. Whatever they wanted, they wanted it badly enough to be using kid gloves: that was the scariest realization of all.

  “I expect you’re wondering what’s going on,” Gomez said neutrally, raising her cup but not drinking from it.

  Rita unpeeled the foil from her dinner. “I’m confused,” she said noncommittally, remembering more of Gramps’s advice: The cops don’t have to tell you the truth, they can lie to get you to incriminate yourself. And they can lie by being friendly. “I’m not under arrest, right? Am I under investigation? Should I have a lawyer present?” Not that she could afford an attorney. Or that there was any guarantee they’d let her have one.

  “You’re not—” began Gomez, just as Jack interrupted: “Yes.”

  Gomez glared at him, but Jack cleared his throat, then looked back at Rita. “You are not under suspicion of any crime, but you are nevertheless under investigation.” He paused. “Clear?”

  Rita shook her head, then took a bite from her burrito to buy time and mask her confusion. She was starving: there was nothing like a day of one-woman performances to work up an appetite.

  Gomez shot a look to her colleague and snorted. “Let me explain, Ms. Douglas. Rita. Have you ever met your birth parents?”

  “Have I—” Rita closed her mouth and tried to chew without biting her suddenly dry tongue. “What?” She shivered, suddenly feeling cold and shaky. What? Gathering resentment began to boil over into indignation. “No!”

  “Hey, take it easy,” said Jack. He turned to Gomez. “I told you we should let her chill first before breaking it to her.” He looked back at Rita, crow’s-feet wrinkling the corners of his eyes. “Quickly, before we go into the details: your birth parents—”

  “Donors,” said Rita.

  “What?”

  “DNA donors.” She laid down the partially eaten burrito. Her hands trembled with tension but her movements were slow and deliberate. “They put me up for adoption while I was still in the maternity ward. I have no idea who they are; they never called, and I never saw fit to ask. My real parents are Emily and Franz Douglas, and they raised me and my kid brother. They changed my diapers, nursed me when I was sick, loved me, and put me through school and college. So I’ll thank you not to call those other people my parents, if you don’t mind.”

  “Whoa.” Jack leaned away from Rita’s outburst. Gomez focused intently on a point just off to one side of her face. “Okay, I’m sorry. No offense intended. But, uh, we need to talk to you about them. Your, uh.”

  “Genetic donors,” Gomez said drily.

  “I don’t know anything about them,” said Rita, crossing her arms defensively. “And I don’t want to.” She abruptly realized that her heart was hammering and her palms were moist. Anger or fear or some less nameable emotion made her hunch her shoulders.

  “Well, you see, we’ve got a problem right there.” Jack was implacable. “That’s got to change. Because we got word that they want to know about you.”

  BALTIMORE, NOVEMBER 2019

  FEDERAL EMPLOYEE 004930391 CLASSIFIED VOICE TRANSCRIPT

  COL. SMITH: Okay, motivational crack. Greg, what do you think? Can she do it? How do we put fire in her belly?

  DR. SCRANTON: You scanned the backgrounder. She’s just not interested in her birth mother. She’s bedded in with her, her—

  COL. SMITH: Adoptives.

  DR. SCRANTON: Right. She doesn’t give a rat’s ass about Miriam Beckstein. Or if she does, she resents her.

  AGENT O’NEILL: I don’t think that’s all there is to it. It’s her, um, the adoptives. They were pretty damn good for her, apart from the whole moving to Phoenix thing when she was nicely settled in. It’s a close family. She’s an independent adult but she still likes them. Goes home for Thanksgiving and birthdays. Phones mom and dad every week.

  AGENT GOMEZ: You could fridge them, pin it on the world-walkers to motivate her—

  COL. SMITH: (emphasis) No, we couldn’t. We don’t do that shit anymore. We don’t discuss that shit. We prosecute that shit, ‘pour encourager les autres.’ It is illegal and off-limits. This isn’t the fucking CIA.

  AGENT GOMEZ: Hey! I wasn’t suggesting—

  COL. SMITH: Damn right you weren’t.

  DR. SCRANTON: Well, how about you come up with something legal that will motivate her instead? As it is she’s got nothing you can sink your claws into … nothing. I mean, I read her file and I will concede it is eerily clean. In thirty years of intelligence operation oversight work, I’ve never seen anything like it. None of the three-felonies-a-day stuff. No sexting, no unusual Facebook drama, no underage drink or drugs. Even her hobbies are boring: painting, landscape photography, going for long walks with a bit of geocaching to liven them up. It’s like she anticipated coming to our attention from the age of eight! Or as if she was trained by a professional paranoid—the grandfather perhaps. I can tell you right off that blackmail’s not going to work. It’s okay if an informant hates their handler, but a field agent in a foreign state—an illegal—has to love you. If you threaten her adoptive parents she’ll hate you, so that’s out too.

  AGENT GOMEZ: You said she doesn’t give a damn about her original parents. How about we make her give a damn, then give her a hand up? So she has to go through us to get them.

  AGENT O’NEILL: Hmm. Like, if we can’t fridge her encumbrances, how about we run a false flag op? Make her think Beckstein wants her dead?

  DR. SCRANTON: She doesn’t even know who the fuck Miriam Beckstein is. What are you going to do, reel her in and give her a background briefing first?

  AGENT GOMEZ: Why don’t we do just that? Crazier shit has worked.

  DR. SCRANTON: Colonel, how about it? What do you think?

  END TRANSCRIPT

  SEATTLE, MARCH 2020

  Jack looked sympathetic but continued implacably: “Back in 1992, two medical students met at Harvard and did what happens when two bright, not terribly worldly students strike sparks. He was a high-flying scholarship boy, the son of first-generation immigrants from Pakistan. She was adopted, like you: her parents were a lapsed Jewish political bookstore owner with a discreet trust fund and his left-wing activist wife. Anyway, our two students moved in together, and one thing led to another and they had a little accident with a burst condom which blew out the third year of her degree. He continued in medicine: she took six months out and transferred sideways, picking up credits in journa
lism after the adoption. They got hitched six months before he graduated, but separated eight months later and then divorced. It was a patch-it-up marriage, and it didn’t work out.”

  Jack stopped reading from his tablet. Why are you telling me this? Rita wanted to scream. I don’t know these people! I don’t want to know them! But her lips felt numb, her tongue frozen. Gomez drained her cup of Dr Pepper and took up the thread.

  “The father went on to a career in clinical oncology and moved to North Carolina. He remarried: you have a half-brother and two sisters. The mother—”

  “I don’t want to know this!” The pressure valve had blown: Rita’s voice broke as she raised it, ragged and angry.

  “Yes you do.” Gomez stared coldly at Rita. “The woman I’m telling you about pursued a career in investigative journalism in Boston for some years before dropping off the radar in 2002. Subsequently she became a person of interest in the ongoing investigation into world-walkers. And yes, they are real. She and her adoptive mother—the father died in 1993—disappeared for good shortly before 7/16, but not before we confirmed that they were both world-walkers.”

  “What? The fuck?” The half-eaten burrito in Rita’s stomach seemed suddenly to have turned to lead. “You’re telling me I’m related to time travelers? The ones who nuked the White House?”

  Gomez glanced at Jack, who took over: “They’re not time travelers, exactly. And you are not under suspicion of having nuked the White House,” he added, deadpan. “For one thing, you were eight years old. You also have a rock-solid alibi provided by your third-grade teacher, Mrs. Chu.” Rita stared at his hands. It seemed like a safe thing to do. He wore a signet ring, embossed with the initials CTR. She noticed him glance at Gomez. They’re tag-teaming me, she realized sickly. She’d seen enough TV shows and movies to recognize the good cop / bad cop dynamic. Keep the subject off-balance.