Empire Games Series, Book 1

by Charles Stross

  The suit-fitting department was part of a clump of windowless, fiercely air-conditioned buildings along one side of the road leading to the staging platforms. Huw walked to the parking lot, surrounded by the clump of bodyguards, assistants, and factotums that seemed to adhere to anyone of any importance. The cars were waiting under a shaded awning, engines already running. “Take me to staging area two,” he said, climbing into the back of the frontmost vehicle.

  “Sir.” The cars moved off in convoy, chillers roaring in the heat. Huw glanced out at the parched, browning vegetation. Six days, he noted. This was the sixth consecutive day in which the nighttime temperature hadn’t fallen below thirty-seven Celsius. Daytime temperatures were in the death zone—without forced ventilation or HVAC, people couldn’t work outdoors here. Global warming had already bitten this time line hard: its population wasn’t any smaller than that of time line two, and they’d stayed on coal- and wood-burning fires longer than the more developed world. Another decade or two of rising sea levels and strengthening hurricanes and they’d probably have to abandon Maracaibo completely: even the desperate plan to switch the Commonwealth over to nuclear power in the next ten years would be too little and too late to stop the warming in its tracks.

  The cars scurried like shiny-carapaced ants from shadow to shadow, until they pulled up beside a windowless door opening onto the second of the big staging area platforms. The guard in the front passenger seat jumped out and held the door for Huw: he stepped into the searing oven-heat of early afternoon. His entourage followed: a few seconds later they reached the lobby. The doors opened automatically; the guards saluted, opening the inner doors before them. “She said you can find her in Hangar B,” said the sergeant on duty.

  “Good.” Huw nodded, then walked straight down the main access corridor, leading a cometary trail of followers.

  “Sir, if you’ve got just a minute…” His secretary—a junior manager, in this continent’s office culture—hurried to keep up with him.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s about the corps task assignments for next week: according to my manifest we’ve just been assigned a new world-walker, a major on transfer from Fort George—”

  Huw stopped dead. “A major?” The secretary nodded. “Would he by any chance be called Hulius Hjorth?”

  “Yes sir, how did you—”

  “Excellent!” Huw carried on, this time with a spring in his step. “He’ll be with her in Hangar B,” he predicted.

  “Possibly, sir, I don’t really—”

  Huw barged through a side door, across a freight corridor, dodged a slowly reversing forklift truck, and walked onto the floor of Hangar B, pausing briefly for the security check.

  The hangar formed a sports stadium–sized open space at the center of the staging platform. Right now, the domed roof was closed and the hydraulic elevator rested at ground level, safety gates down and payload area accessible. Cranes rolled back and forth above it on their tracks, deftly lifting twenty-ton freight containers from a line of flatbed railway wagons and stacking them carefully on the deck of the massive hovercraft that occupied almost the entire surface of the elevator platform. Meanwhile maintenance crews checked over the vast rubber skirts of the vehicle and refueled the engines that would, for a few brief minutes, lift the entire stack a handful of centimeters off the ground.

  Minutes were all that it needed, minutes during which the world-walker on board would concentrate, focusing on a carefully tailored knotwork design that would shift them—and everything they were grounded to—to another time line with a leveled receiving area. World-walkers were a scarce resource, only able to make two trips per day on a regular schedule: but a world-walker using one of the staging platforms at MAC could transfer two thousand tons of freight at a time, and much larger carriers were on the drawing board.

  Huw made a beeline for the site office beside the side entrance, marched in, and took the stairs up to the second floor two at a time. The door to the committee room was open: he charged in. “Brill!” He embraced her, then: “Bro!”

  Hulius stepped forward. They hugged. “It’s been too long.”

  “Far too long. How’s Elena?” Huw caught Brilliana’s look. “What?”

  “Out.” She waved irritably at the secretary who had just arrived, trailing slightly breathlessly behind Huw. “Shut the door. Where’s the security light?”

  Huw flipped the switch for the red SECRET light outside the door. “What’s so urgent?”

  “Yes—” Hulius turned to face Brilliana. “We’re here now.” He raised an eyebrow. “I see no Anglisch…?”

  “Speak hochsprache,” Brilliana replied in the same tongue. It wouldn’t guarantee secrecy, but it would place a major obstacle in the way of casual eavesdroppers. The Gruinmarkt’s language was effectively dead, spoken only by refugees born in time line one. “Family matters.”

  “Family—” Hulius stopped. He dragged out a chair and straddled it, arms resting on its back. “I thought this was official business?”

  “It is.” Brill frowned. “Huw, are you up to date on the weekly intelligence assessments?”

  Huw blinked rapidly. “I believe so. Why?”

  “When I went north to collect Yul for the flight training project, I thought it was routine, but I caught up with the take from his previous month’s dead drop just as he got back from the latest, and it looks like we’ve got a major problem. So major that I had to take time off to brief Miriam, who’s going to raise it with the Survival Committee. They haven’t met yet, but I’m telling you right now because I’m pretty sure they’re going to order you to bring the project forward.”

  Clearly upset, she began to pace. “That fucking quack.”

  “Quack?” Hulius looked puzzled.

  “Are we talking about him?” asked Huw.

  “Yes.” Brill nodded. “Dr. Griben ven Hjalmar, deceased and unlamented Gynecologist to the Clan and sometime would-be kingmaker before he defected to the dark side. We’re pretty sure—from what the old Duchess admitted to—that he kept a copy of the database from that crazy breeding project Duke Angbard was running. Artificial insemination to breed … you know.” Her lips wrinkled, cheeks tensing. “It probably fell into the hands of one or the other of the US government agencies that were stalking us, back in the day. Anyway, we had a copy, too, and, well, let’s say my people have been keeping an eye on them via social networks like Facebook and Google, using throwaway overseas accounts and software running on rented servers in places like Indonesia and Turkey.”

  “Oh shit,” said Huw, running one step ahead of her. “You mean they—”

  “I’m getting to it, love. Give me a minute? It’s not exactly the NSA, but our system is good enough to keep track of five thousand teenagers from a safe distance. It’s all automated, using syntax analysis software to keep an eye on their prose style in case anything happens to them, then squirt a logfile to one of our stay-behind assets”—she shared a glance with Hulius—“every month. Anyway, up till now, nothing’s happened. Our herd of little recessive carriers have been left to their own devices. Except, last month, the prototype went missing.”

  “The proto-what?” Huw sat down. “I thought they were all born over a six-month period.” Dr. ven Hjalmar had, with the backing of Duke Angbard, the then head of Clan Security, used a fertility clinic in New England to distribute sperm samples from world-walkers to infertile couples. They’d kept track of the infants: the plan had been to offer the females good money a generation later to act as host mothers for babies that would grow up to be full-fledged world-walkers to supplement the civil war–depleted ranks of the Clan. (This plan had, like all of the Clan’s operations in the United States, come to an abrupt end in 2003.)

  “Well, that’s not entirely true.” Brill gave him a slow, appraising look. “There’s an older one, born years earlier, who’s listed on the database. Actually, she wasn’t the product of the breeding project—she predates it—but was added to the list as an ad
opted-out carrier born in the US.”

  “Wait—born over there? In the US? But the child of a world-walker?” Hulius raised an eyebrow. “Whose bastard are they? Wasn’t that sort of thing frowned upon strongly? Why didn’t we—”

  Brill raised a hand. “You don’t want to know,” she said, her tone curiously flat. “Trust me, you don’t. Anyway, as of last month, her Facebook page has become curiously bland. No new photo sharing, and the word frequency metric has changed.”

  “That might not be significant.” Huw thought for a moment. “Aren’t those social network accounts prone to being hacked?”

  “Not so much these days.” Brill stopped pacing. “I raised an intelligence order: we should find out something more about this in the next month. It’s amazing how many cameras they’ve got on the Internet over there that aren’t properly secured, and how little it costs to get someone to go through their feeds looking for a face.”

  “Cameras?” Huw looked nonplussed for a moment. The Commonwealth had television now, even in color. There were closed-circuit cameras and videocassette recorders: but they were cumbersome tube-based things that drank electricity and vomited bulky and expensive tapes. Knowing that CCD camera chips and DVDs were possible was one thing: mass-producing them was still a decade away.

  “Convenience stores, gas stations. I’m not talking about government surveillance here. We should be able to confirm if she’s really missing soon enough. It’s often as simple as paying a credit ratings agency or a skip tracer for a report. But the change in social profile is noticeable. Two months ago our prototype was desperate for a job. Now she’s clammed up.”

  “It might be a coincidence.” Huw took a deep breath. His pupils were wide: unlike Hulius, he’d obviously added two plus two and gotten the correct result. “She might have been murdered or something. Or just have landed a job that keeps her very busy or that she can’t talk about.” Another breath. “I’m whistling past the graveyard, aren’t I?”

  “Yes.” Brilliana flashed him a brief, very tense smile. “It looks like the DHS have decided to pull her in, and there can only be one reason why they’d do that. We know they’re better than we are at genetics and bioengineering: what do you think? My dear, the Survival Committee is going to shit a brick. I might be a little bit paranoid about this, but I think you should prepare to accelerate project JUGGERNAUT. We may be only weeks away from being knee-deep in world-walking spies.”

  Huw closed his eyes. Leave the political shit to Brill. Oh what a mess. “The first driver pits aren’t due to arrive until next month, the boost stage tankage isn’t even finished, and we’ve got a lot of testing to do before we’re going anywhere. Rudi’s flying test-bed was a huge help, but you realize how crazy-dangerous this is? Nobody’s ever done anything like this before. At least, not outside Kerbal Space Program.”

  “Done what?” Hulius said. “Cuz, why exactly am I here? And where is here, anyway?”

  Huw looked at him with mixed affection and exasperation. “You’re a world-walker with a pilot’s license. Or at least you had a license and you can requalify. What do you think you’re here for?”

  “Um.” Hulius’s brow wrinkled. “World-walking while flying?”

  “Exactly!” Huw slapped the table. “But that’s another of Brill’s projects, and anyway, I’m forgetting my manners. You’ve just flown in from New London; you must be tired. How about I get Denis to show you to the officers’ quarters and give you a chance to stow your kit? Then you must join us for dinner.” He glanced at Brilliana. “Unless you’ve got other plans, we’ve got a lot of catching up to do…”

  ST. PETERSBURG, TIME LINE THREE, SPRING 2020

  In one of the more fashionable salons of St. Petersburg, in the upper stories of a grand hotel whose gaudily painted onion-domed towers echoed the long-bombed ruins of the Cathedral of the Protection of Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat, two crown princes egged each other on with wilder and more provocative toasts to the demise of their enemies.

  “And here’s to the extermination of the traitors infesting the Summer Palace in New London: long may their so-called First Man rot in his gibbet when you return at the head of your armada!” Louis, the Dauphin destined to be Louis XXVI of France and her Empire, raised his glass. He was the younger of the two, in his early thirties: blond, cherubic of complexion, with the athletic build of one who had devoted much effort to proving himself in military exercises.

  “I’ll drink to that,” Prince John Frederick Charles of Hanover, by Grace of God heir to the Empire of the Americas, Protector of the Chrysanthemum Throne, and bearer of various other titles, responded laconically. He drained his shot glass of spiced vodka in a single gulp. In his mid-forties, he had gone somewhat to seed in the years of his exile. “Ahh.” He held out his glass and a footman stepped forward to refill it.

  “I still maintain,” said the Dauphin, “that it is in France’s best interests that this treasonous uprising be dealt with harshly, to set an example for the ages, and that furthermore the British Crown is the closest of allies compared to the filthy usurpers and their degenerate ideology. So”—he briefly covered his mouth as he hiccuped—“I am at your confidence, cuz, should you choose to confide in me as to how I might best help a brother monarch.”

  The current fashion in St. Petersburg was a collision of revival styles, the baroque competing with the classical. The two princes reclined on Romanesque couches in a modern and perhaps overelaborate re-creation of a triclinium, while their seven most-favored courtiers (and their mistresses) made elegant and humorous conversation for their edification. Swagged velvet drapes surrounded the gilt-framed floor-to-ceiling windows, beneath fans that twirled lazily overhead. At one side of the room, an imported Japanese stereoautogram played popular love ballads, recordings of a brass band with string accompaniment and drums. Perfumiers from old France used handheld fans to waft the lightest of scents toward their majesties. Belowstairs, in a refectory adjacent to the kitchen, young peasant girls sampled morsels beneath the gaze of gaunt-faced doctors before the courses were served upstairs; their vigilance came of knowing what would happen if a poisoned dish slipped through their guard.

  “An uprising of serfs is best dealt with by the law of divide and rule,” Prince John Frederick said slowly. A surprisingly studious, scholarly fellow—for a crown prince—he was reputed to have read far more widely than his disengaged father, and it was whispered that while his father had tinkered with clockwork for a hobby, the son had a soul of spring steel and gears that powered a mind like a mantrap. “You pay your Army to crush the rebels using the rebels’ own property as fuel for the machine. But if the rebellion cements a new government in place, especially one that is popular, dislodging it becomes far harder. My father spent the last seven years of his life trying to convince hoi polloi that their so-called Revolution was a monstrous aberration that would eat them all in the end, but they didn’t heed his warnings.”

  He raised his glass toward his lips, nostrils flaring as he sniffed the liquid. “But. But. It is the natural way of the world for men to seek a just and honest ruler. The ruler the revolutionaries chose was, by all accounts, austere and serious. But he is close to death. When he goes, there will be an opportunity to take advantage of the bickering among his followers. The most corrupt and untrustworthy of their number will seek to occupy his chair: they will discredit their own revolution, and I shall make use of the opportunity.”

  “I suppose your spies keep you well-informed of the bickering among the peasant clique?”

  John Frederick met the Dauphin’s gaze. “I couldn’t say.”

  “Indeed not. Nor would you stoop to encourage disquiet among the usurpers by engineering acts of vandalism, either through your loyal supporters or by means of paid agents?”

  “Of course not. What kind of monarch would I make if I were preparing a wave of civil unrest to follow the demise of the rabble’s leader? It would be unconscionable. I must be seen as a sympathetic and emollient king
, one whose return heals all ills and settles all grievances after years of misrule. And of course I must be a peacemaker as well.”

  “External as well as internal, I should hope?”

  “Yes, cuz.” The prince lowered his glass and frowned at it thoughtfully. “The corpuscular era renders the prospect of war between sovereign empires unthinkable, does it not?” He met the Dauphin’s gaze steadily. “Tit for tat, they call their strategy. After the children’s game. But the usurping peasants’ strategic planners are not fools, however baseless their claim to power might be.”

  “I would like to propose a treaty.” The French heir snapped his fingers. Deft hands stripped away the vodka glasses, then presented a silver platter and two goblets of fine pear brandy. “Once you are back on your rightful throne, our two great empires must take every possible step to make common cause, so that a war fought with corpuscular weapons becomes as unthinkable as the prospect of a revolution overturning the rightful reign of a monarch. Your daughter is going to be eighteen soon enough, isn’t she? And unless your lady wife provides you with a son late in the day, Elizabeth will be your heir.”

  John Frederick’s eyes widened. “I say, that’s rather a big step!”

  “Yes, but it would solve our dilemma, would it not? It would put an end to the persistent libelous rumor that you are my father’s unwilling prisoner. And it would give me good and sufficient reason to demand that my father grant me command of the Empire’s forces, to the extent necessary to assist you in retaking your throne.”

  “To place you on her throne,” John Frederick retorted. “As Prince-Consort, as well as, in the due fullness of time—God save him!—your father’s seat. Louis, why now and not ten years ago? Where did this half-baked idea come from? What has turned your head in the past week? Please do not ask me to believe that you dreamed it up on your own without benefit of ministerial counsel. Or that Liz has fallen in love with you and offered to elope.”

  “Of course not.” Louis gave the English monarch a heavy-lidded stare. “And you’re absolutely right. I haven’t suddenly had my head turned by the ethereal beauty of your precious jewel of a daughter, cousin. She is somewhat willful—some might even say waspish—and I believe I need not inform you of her opinion of me, or of my mistress. But the times turn, and the seasons change, and the usurpers have proven themselves to be uncommonly ingenious in the mechanical arts, have they not?” He snapped his fingers and glanced over his shoulder: “Bring me my new toy now!” he called.