Empire Games Series, Book 1

by Charles Stross

  AGENT GOMEZ: So now we have this introverted liberal hippie actress chick with diplomas in police leadership skills from the FBI, Espionage 101 training, and, and DRAGON’S TEETH capability? In what way does this get us closer to our objective?

  COL. SMITH: We ran out of time. You’re on the distribution. You got the memo about BLACK RAIN.

  AGENT GOMEZ: Yes, but I don’t see how—

  COL. SMITH: She was set for another six months of Clandestine Ops School, then two years pushing a desk with Operational Analysis before deployment. Under constant scrutiny, of course, and we were going to take the time to weld some handles onto her to make her easier to move around—

  DR. SCRANTON: What did you have in mind?

  COL. SMITH: Boyfriend, girlfriend, whichever way she swings. Background says she dated boys in college but didn’t have anyone serious. Meanwhile there was a female BFF in high school, lots of tears when she moved away. So it’s not entirely clear which way she leans. But it doesn’t matter: if we can get her emotionally attached to someone, we have a handle. Or if we find something she’s afraid of, we have a handle. Or if she gets religion, same deal. Or if we get her to imprint on her colleagues—the Small Unit paradigm—that works too. She may be an introvert, but she’s not invulnerable: we just need to get her to open up.

  AGENT GOMEZ: We can use her without a handle if push comes to shove, can’t we?

  COL. SMITH: Yes, but it’s less reliable. Humans are social organisms. We want her to feel protective toward us as a society, before we send her out among them. Otherwise there’s the risk of Stockholm Syndrome.

  DR. SCRANTON: We don’t need that. Termination Expedient is all very well as a policy, but not a sensible option for unique assets. Too much risk of making the wrong call.

  AGENT O’NEILL: So you want her to fall in love, get religion, discover patriotism, discover team loyalty, or learn to fear us. Okay, so noted. But why has everything come so far forward?

  DR. SCRANTON: Because of BLACK RAIN. We’ve lost three drones and detected fallout in that time line. People in high places are beginning to ask questions, and it falls to us to provide answers.

  COL. SMITH: Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, but three times is enemy action.

  DR. SCRANTON: Exactly.

  END TRANSCRIPT

  In the Valley of the Shadow of the Gate

  CONNECTICUT, TIME LINE TWO, JULY 2020

  They started Rita’s training three days, four MRIs, and one swearing-in after her last subarachnoid injections. The evening before, they began to cut back on the bad head meds. In the morning Rita, feeling a lot less mind-fuzzed and mildly irritable (if not stir-crazy), climbed out of bed and dressed in her own clothes before Marianne wheeled in her breakfast. “Well, we’re feeling better, are we? Great! Dr. Lane will be so pleased. I hear y’all have a visitor coming this morning…”

  An hour later, stomach full and nerves buzzing with caffeine—it was the first mug of coffee she’d been allowed since the course of injections—she was in another windowless white room full of unidentifiable medical equipment, with a large display covering most of one wall. This one had markings taped out on the floor in various colors, like a basketball practice court that had accidentally shrunk. And she did indeed have a visitor, tapping his toes with Dr. Jenn. The Colonel smiled. “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “I feel fine,” she said noncommittally. She had a gut feeling that Colonel Smith wouldn’t appreciate her true feelings—a layer cake of resentment at being railroaded into this isolating situation, unease and disquiet at being treated as a medical guinea pig, and a glaze of boredom on top. He probably wanted something more positive: excitement, a sense of adventure, maybe a dose of unreflective salute-the-flag patriotism. “Is this the big day?”

  “Yes, I certainly hope so!” Jenn interjected. “Yesterday’s bloods were looking good so—”

  “I thought it would be best if I came to witness the first test jaunt,” Smith said easily. “It’ll be a major landmark.”

  Rita nodded seriously. Landmark for what? she wondered. “But you’ve got the para-time machines…” She noticed Dr. Lane glance briefly in Smith’s direction, and his twitch of acknowledgment.

  “They’re not very flexible,” he said blandly. His movements as jerky as a small bird’s, he stepped to one side. “Doctor, if you’d like to begin your orientation?”

  “Sure.” Jenn smiled at Rita again. “Rita, because we cut back on the suppressors, you should be sensitive to trigger engrams now. So what we’re going to do here is try a very simple test run. First, we’re going to ground you—that should prevent you from jaunting by accident—and use the EEG and EKG to see what happens when we expose you to an engram. I’ll need to take bloods, too. Then this afternoon we’ll do it again, only without the grounding straps and using ambulatory biomonitoring.”

  “Ah.” Rita stared at the marks on the floor. “What will happen?”

  “This is a mirror room; there’s an identical facility in the time line the engram we’re using is keyed to. And there’s a transporter cell next door. What should happen is that you’ll jaunt over there; then we’ll use the transporter to come over and confirm you’re healthy before you make the return jaunt.”

  “Jaunt? You’re using that word—”

  The Colonel shrugged. “We lifted it from an old SF novel. It’s short and descriptive and differentiates what you’ll be doing—jaunting—from what the transporters do—para-time traversal.” He seemed to be mildly amused, if slightly tense. He turned to Dr. Lane: “I’ve got a meeting with Professor Schwartz now; message me before you proceed with the actual jaunt test.” He nodded at Rita and departed.

  Rita stared at the door, then looked at Dr. Lane. “What now?” she asked, feeling hollow.

  Jenn pointed her to the examining table. “Take a nap. Marianne should be here—we need to start by wiring you up. This is going to take a while, I’m afraid.”

  Rita lay down and stared at the ceiling. “Does Colonel Smith visit often?” she asked.

  “Is that his name?” Dr. Lane shook her head. “I wouldn’t know.” Her tone dropped slightly. “You’re asking questions again. Bad habit.”

  “Sorry. I get bored easily.”

  “Try not to.” Dr. Lane stood. “Back in a minute.” She disappeared, leaving Rita alone with her unanswered, stifled questions. More than a minute passed before she returned, Marianne and another paramedic trailing behind. “Okay, showtime! First, we’re going to wire up the EKG harness. You’ll be wearing it for the rest of the day, so if you wouldn’t mind stripping down to your underwear…”

  * * *

  The morning passed in a blur. Wired into an itchy tangle of electrodes, Rita sat through most of it staring at strange knotwork designs on the big screen on the wall opposite. Jenn and her assistants bustled around, discussing their test equipment readings as if Rita weren’t there.

  “Okay, I’ve got another series of knots for you,” Jenn told her. “Ten coming up. Press the button if you feel queasy, have any visual disturbances, or feel unwell in any way—that shouldn’t happen, but it’s a precaution.” The button was attached to a long cable leading to one of the racks of equipment behind her. Rita clutched it nervously, thumb hovering. What appeared to be an elaborate sailors’ joke appeared in the middle of the screen. “Next one coming up.”

  The knot dissolved, replaced by a similar, but somehow different tangle of lines. Rita stared at it, vision blurring. Somehow it didn’t want to come into focus. “How many more—” she began to complain, as the lines writhed and another knot condensed out of the pointillist flickering on the screen. “Hey, your monitor’s broken.”

  “Broken?” Dr. Lane looked up sharply. “Okay. Let’s try the next.”

  The disturbance went away, as another knot appeared. “Hey, it fixed itself,” said Rita.

  “Uh-huh. Next.” Something about Dr. Lane’s tone had changed.

  “Was that it?” Rita a
sked.

  “Listen, why don’t we get through the rest of this sequence then break for lunch,” Jenn suggested. Rita, knowing a diversion when she heard one, nodded and kept watching the screen, and herself for sudden headaches. That was it, she realized. That was a trigger engram. But she was grounded, electrostatically earthed, the Q-machines she still only half believed in blocked from entering their excited state. Somehow it barely seemed real.

  After lunch—another bland burger in the staff canteen—Rita slouched reluctantly back to the test room with Dr. Lane. She was even more enthused than usual: babbling about procedures and test protocols and blood pressure monitoring for some reason. Rita nodded politely and let it all flow over her. The reality was that she didn’t much want to be here, but there was no obvious way out. And the morning’s tests had reassured her slightly that whatever they’d stuck in her hadn’t had any obvious bad effects. She could live with an itch in her left forearm and the inability to focus on a particular odd-shaped knot. “After you’re jaunting controllably we’ll switch on your engram generator,” Jenn told her. “But not until the day after tomorrow at the earliest.”

  “Engram generator?”

  “The implant in your left arm.”

  “Huh.” Rita squinted. Her left forearm was a little sore near the wrist, where she might have worn a watch if she were so inclined, and the fine downy hairs were missing. “I can feel something there.”

  “Really? It should be almost unnoticeable. Come over here now—”

  They hung a shoulder harness on her, with slim medical data loggers connected to the EKG and EEG pickups, then stood her on a black plastic mat where the chair had been that morning. “Okay, Rita,” said Dr. Lane. “I want you to just relax and look at the engram when it shows on-screen. That’s all. Don’t move from where you’re standing.”

  Rita glanced over her shoulder. Colonel Smith had arrived, was standing quietly at the back of the room, watching her intently. Another middle-aged man stood behind him, balding and self-important in a white coat. Rita assumed he was the elusive Professor Schwartz. “Are you sure this is entirely safe?” she asked.

  “Quite sure.” Jenn moved aside to one of the control tablets. “Look at the screen…”

  Rita looked. Something shimmered, and she tried to focus on it, then staggered slightly. “Dr. Lane, I don’t feel—”

  She stopped. Jenn, the Colonel, Schwartz, and the nursing orderlies had vanished. So had most of the equipment racks and the examining table. There was a different table on the wrong side of the room, and the screen on the wall had shifted sideways minutely and gone blank. Her ears ached; she swallowed, and they popped.

  “What. The. Fuck?” Rita glanced up. Tiny insect-eyed webcams watched impassively from the corners of the room. Oops. She turned round. A sign on the inside of the door read:

  “Welcome to Nova America four, Rita!”

  Wow. Just wow. She swallowed again, just as the door opened and Colonel Smith, followed by Dr. Lane, rushed in, calling congratulations and questions—“Excellent!”; “How do you feel? Any headache? Visual disturbances?”

  “I’m fine,” Rita said. She swallowed again, her throat dry, and rubbed her left forearm. “Just a bit…” She didn’t want to say freaked out in front of them. They’d take it the wrong way, like the trainers after she’d fallen off the wall when she tried the assault course at Quantico. Or her seventh-grade teacher, Mrs. Stewart, the time she’d forgotten that Mrs. Stewart was easily upset by others’ failure to share her religious beliefs. “Slightly shaken. I knew what to expect but it didn’t feel real…”

  “You’ll get used to it,” Smith said. He was breathing fast, as if he’d had run to catch up with her, but he sounded pleased. “Once Dr. Lane’s checked you out and confirmed everything’s all right, you can jaunt between here and the clinic until Dr. Lane’s satisfied you can control it—and avoid jaunting by accident whenever you see a trigger. Tomorrow, Dr. Lane will switch on your key generator implant and you can try programming it. Then we head back to Camp Graceland.”

  “Wait up!” Jenn raised a hand. “I thought I had her for the next four days? We’ve got commissioning tests to run, and biofeedback training, and—”

  Schwartz cleared his throat. “Prioritize the basics. You’ve got one and a half days. If there are holes in her training, you can travel with her and finish the job on-site.”

  Rita looked between them. “What’s the sudden hurry?”

  Smith’s crow’s-feet wrinkled. “Remember what I told you during your last briefing? Stuff happened.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” Rita nodded, trying to hide her frustration. Stuff happened, and she had to jump to attention without knowing what.

  “We’ve got some final orientation to hurry you through,” Smith said, downplaying it, his tone dismissive. “Nothing you can’t handle in your sleep after your last three months.”

  “Uh-huh.” Final orientation? That sounded ominous.

  “So if you’d like to jaunt back over to the clinic?” Jenn’s lips tightened in something like a smile.

  “How?” Rita asked. Then she saw something on the screen, out of the corner of her eyes. “Oh—”

  And they were gone again, in another round of interdimensional ping-pong. Dr. Lane kept her busy until dinnertime and exhaustion brought an end to the day’s training: and Rita didn’t have a chance to ask Colonel Smith what his final orientation involved.

  BALTIMORE, TIME LINE TWO, JULY 2020

  FEDERAL EMPLOYEE 004910023 CLASSIFIED VOICE TRANSCRIPT

  DR. SCRANTON: So, what progress are we looking at with our JAUNT BLUE subject?

  COL. SMITH: She’s nearly ready. I mean, Schwartz’s group hasn’t activated her key implant yet, but she’s already able to jaunt at will if given a trigger engram, and reject inadvertent triggers if she recognizes them in time. Dr. Lane only managed to get her to jaunt by accident once, in the lab, and she came back instantly. The stability is phenomenal compared to the observed capabilities of captured enemy couriers. The blood pressure problem just isn’t there at all—I mean, she made multiple jaunts in a fifteen-minute period and her readings were within ten percent of median. If the key generator works properly, so we can dispatch her to surveyed time lines at will, we’re onto a winner.

  AGENT O’NEILL: Can you tell me about this key generator?

  COL. SMITH: Sure. It’s a very neat bit of engineering—a subdermal implant. Part of it is an ultra-low-powered computing device powered by a fuel cell running off blood glucose. The other part is a color e-ink display embedded just under the skin. Basically it’s a programmable tattoo. Properly equipped operatives like Rita—once we’ve recruited them from candidates among DRAGON’S TEETH—will be able to use the pressure-sensitive switches in the tattoo to feed the key generator the parameters of a trigger engram. Then it generates the knot and displays it on the skin of her forearm. It fluoresces under UV light, so she can see it in the dark if necessary. Or she can blank the display, in which case the adversary would need to X-ray her arm to realize she has an implant. I’m sure we’ll be able to do better in time, but for now it means she can access any time line for which she has a set of knotspace coordinates.

  AGENT O’NEILL: Knotspace—

  COL. SMITH: The trigger engrams resemble complex knots with a couple of standard topological deformations. Vary the deformations and you vary the destination time line. There’s some kind of quantization function, but basically the key can generate engrams for anywhere we’ve ever been and several billion time lines we haven’t visited yet.

  AGENT O’NEILL: Sounds dangerous.

  COL. SMITH: Yes, it is, in multiple ways. She could get lost in para-time—although the implant retains a stack-based memory of past engrams, so she can jaunt backward as well as forward. But there are other dangers. She could miss a digit and end up somewhere with no breathable atmosphere. There are some safeties—she can’t jaunt inside a solid object—but experimentation is discouraged. On the oth
er hand, we can now send Rita to any time line we’ve visited.

  DR. SCRANTON: And she’s a lot less conspicuous than a Predator C or a Rivet Joint aircraft.

  AGENT GOMEZ: Doesn’t burn as much jet fuel either, I’ll bet.

  COL. SMITH: Human intelligence has been the Cinderella of the intelligence services ever since the early 1960s when we were up against the closed societies of the Communist bloc. Look at the National Clandestine Service’s budget compared to the NSA’s, and weep. But ELINT and SIGINT won’t get you anywhere if the targets haven’t invented the vacuum tube yet and are still coordinating by smoke signals or semaphore. We’ve nearly forgotten how to do old-fashioned spycraft, let alone motivate Generation Z slackers to stay loyal to an abstraction while they’re in the pressure cooker. But the best-quality agents can deliver more and better intelligence than any given billion dollars’ worth of network sniffers. And that’s before we start thinking in terms of executive ops—

  DR. SCRANTON: Let’s not go there, Eric. We’re not in that business anymore. I hope.

  AGENT O’NEILL: But, but that assumes we’re looking at an adversary, doesn’t it? I thought all we’d found so far were Stone Age head-bangers? And the stuff in time line four, of course. The archaeological stuff.

  DR. SCRANTON: BLACK RAIN.

  AGENT O’NEILL: But we don’t know who they are yet! I mean, you talked about closed societies, like the Soviet Union—running agents in there always ended in tears. How is this any different?

  COL. SMITH: The big difference is that Rita can jaunt. It’s very hard to trap a world-walker who’s expecting trouble: she can just click her heels and not be in Kansas anytime she wants.

  DR. SCRANTON: The only way they can nail her is if they know about world-walkers and are expecting one. Now, it’s remotely possible that BLACK RAIN is where the Clan survivors have gone—but they’ve historically shown a strong preference for working under cover. So the chances of the BLACK RAIN people being able to grab her are slim. I’m more concerned with how we’re going to hang on to her, once she realizes she can go anywhere she likes.