Empire Games Series, Book 1

by Charles Stross

  Worse and worse. Miriam glanced sideways at the woman in the wheelchair. “Any thoughts?”

  “Where did they get the world-walker?” Olga looked haggard. She had a bad tendency to insist on working even when she was too ill to do so productively. But as usual she asked the right question. “Do we have a defector, or is this something else?” She gave Miriam a penetrating stare.

  “Defectors.” Miriam rolled her pen between index finger and thumb. Fuck. She looked up. “Action this day: immediate roll call of all world-walking personnel, by order of the Commissioner in Charge, MITI. Make it so.” She glanced at Olga again. The head of the Clan’s own internal security force, such as it was, shook her head doubtfully. “What are the chances they unearthed that bastard Griben’s database?” she asked.

  “Database?” echoed McInnes.

  “Low but not impossible.” Olga raised a frail fist to cover her mouth when she coughed. She was only forty, but looked older than Miriam’s early fifties: life’s unfairness personified. “You’re aware of Griben ven Hjalmar’s position as the Clan’s in-house doctor, back in the day?” McInnes nodded. Ven Hjalmar had thrown in his lot with the wrong side during the confused and turbulent aftermath of the Revolution—not the Royalists, but the quasi-Stalinists. He’d paid with his life. “He ran a fertility clinic in the United States, to help childless couples conceive.”

  Heads around the table nodded, uncertainly. The Commonwealth’s demographic profile and medical technology was such that it still had a surplus of orphanages. “He was compiling a database of children conceived via this clinic—using seed harvested from world-walkers. The plan was to pay the resulting women—at adulthood—to act as host mothers. Producing a crop of active world-walkers, a generation down the line.”

  Heads were shaking, and a low undercurrent of whispering started. “Silence!” snapped Miriam. “Leave the commentary for later. Let her continue.”

  “Your mother assassinated the clinic’s director and stole what she thought was the entire database of latent carriers.” Miriam nodded. Iris had been an unholy terror, even in a wheelchair. “But her grasp of modern technology was sadly deficient.”

  “You think she left something?” Miriam momentarily forgot her own instruction.

  “Don’t know. Insufficient data.” Olga’s cheek twitched. “The first-generation carriers would be aged between seventeen and twenty-two at this point. But they’d be outer Clan—sorry, carriers. Not world-walkers themselves…”

  “But you’re thinking, if there’s some way to activate the ability, the Americans have had more than fifteen years to work on it?”

  Miriam looked round the table. No whispering. Just twelve pairs of eyes drilling into her as if her blood contained answers to their every nightmare question. “I don’t know,” she said. She felt like screaming, Do you think I’m clairvoyant or something? But she didn’t: she knew what would happen. Half of them probably did think she was clairvoyant. The Clan refugees, since that tentative start in the freezing-cold prison camp in the winter of 2003–04, had turbocharged the embryonic Commonwealth with imported alien ideas. The Commonwealth had made as much technological progress in seventeen years as time line two had in three decades. But it had unfortunate side-effects. Everyone looked at her as if she were some kind of Albert Einstein / Marie Curie hybrid: they expected her to have all the answers, all the time.

  “Let me repeat that: I don’t know. But I think we should bear it in mind as a worst case. The United States knows about us—they’ve been sending drones, and we’ve shot down a few. If they’ve got actual world-walkers, then what we’re seeing is an early attempt at clandestine insertion. Possibly supported by tactical drones. It’s an information-gathering exercise, and our friend the station mate accidentally disrupted it.” She shrugged. “Recommendations?”

  Olga spoke up. “Keep looking for UFO sightings. Blanket those areas with watchers. That would be Irongate and Philadelphia, yes? Brief the regular beat police. Also perhaps ask the Commonwealth Guard to put boots on the ground. And move close-range air defense units into position. Hmm. A spy scare in the local newspapers would prime the locals. Remember to brief the cops not to use lethal force. Do they have tasers yet?” Electric stun guns copied from the American products were a new development.

  Commander Jackson shook his head. “They’re available but not issued yet. Men don’t like them—the battery packs are heavy and they’re no use against real guns—”

  Miriam checked him. “Clandestine world-walkers won’t stick around to get into a gunfight. They’ll just leave. I want them taken alive for questioning, if at all possible. Shooting them may not stop them from world-walking, but if you tase them and get them blindfolded they won’t be able to escape.”

  Jackson nodded, unhappily. “Tasers, blindfolds, and you want everyone briefed? It’s going to cause chaos.”

  “Not necessarily.” Olga looked thoughtful. “It is a first-contact scenario. Miriam, I believe you have some experience in this regard. Perhaps you could explain to the Commander here how a world-walker goes about making first contact with a new time line? Then he can focus his planning accordingly…”

  PHILADELPHIA, TIME LINE TWO, AUGUST 2020

  It was, Rita supposed, a sign of how urgent the operation was becoming that the chaos today was constrained. Rubbernecking was discouraged, and the guards were enforcing the guest list as sternly as bouncers at a Hollywood red carpet event.

  But not everything was running so smoothly. “It makes me look like a hippie,” Rita complained to Gladys Jensen, the wardrobe supervisor. “Are you sure it’s meant to be this color in daylight?”

  “That’s what the analysts told me.” Gladys looked apologetic. “That camera of yours is okay. It captured a decent spectrum from the lights, so we were able to calibrate a proper color balance and white point and extract useful color information from the people you photographed. This is what they wear in daylight. The pattern block is guesswork, and we don’t know what fiber mix they use, but I’m betting on cotton and wool, natural all the way.”

  Rita looked at herself in the mirror. The dark gray smock hung to her ankles. And the accompanying blouse and jacket made her look like an extra out of a historical movie. Dr. Zhivago, maybe. “This really isn’t my style.”

  “Tough. You were shooting at night, from cover, and the crowding on the platform obscured the detailing. Those baggy pant-and-tunic outfits are risky, unless you can bring me some more shots. If you find a dressmaker’s shop, how about scanning some fashion plates or patterns for me? And get a bunch of daytime candid camera shots around the station, so next time you look more like a respectable citizen and less like you push a broom in a factory.”

  “Boots.” Rita sat down.

  “That’s less of a problem. I’m guessing they use leather and go for durability. I’m assuming they lace up. I didn’t see any obvious zip fasteners in your camera roll. So we got you a pair of regular boots with half-inch heels. Again, if you pass a cobbler or shoe shop, grab some images.” Gladys offered her a cardboard box. Rita opened it, and gave black calf-high boots a grudging nod.

  “Okay. What about headgear?”

  “This.” Gladys held out a hat with a floppy brim. “Off the shelf. It’s a close enough match for one of the subjects. If it attracts the wrong kind of attention, ditch it. But only if you’re sure it’s not going to get found. None of these items will stand up to examination—the fabric’s going to be all wrong, right down to the fiber lengths, never mind the lack of labels and detail work. Any halfway-competent detective who gets their hands on you will figure out you’re a clandestine agent in thirty seconds flat, just from your clothing. That’s why we need coins to clone, and real local clothes, before we can begin to build out a reliable agent insertion protocol.”

  “Oh great.” Rita sighed. “Gear bag? Purse?”

  “We’re still working on them,” Gladys admitted. “The shift workers you shot mostly weren’t carrying any—
they probably eat at a diner in the factory. One of the women had something big, like carpetbag big, but we didn’t get a good enough shot. Again: if you pass luggage shops or a department store, scans would be good.”

  “Scans.” Rita sighed. “What with? I mean, if I don’t have a bag, what am I meant to carry a camera in?”

  “Check out the coat. See that seam? There’s a concealed pocket in there. And more pockets, here and here.” Gladys grinned. “It’s a genuine old-school spy coat! If you invert it, it’s fawn. This way out, it’s charcoal.”

  “Ah!” Rita sat up. “So, um. I have a mapper”—Props had taken her through the basics of the milspec inertial navigation system earlier in the afternoon—“What about a camera?”

  “You’ll be using this.” Gladys pulled out a compact slab of blackened aluminum. It sported a touchscreen on the back, and on the front a shuttered synthetic sapphire lens turret, beneath a rough patch where the rune CANON had been ground away. “It’s a light-field camera. Saves to a memory card if there’s no phone signal. The smarts are all in the adaptive optics and the light-field sensor—it’s got a times-fifty zoom and infinite focal depth.”

  “Oh great.” Rita turned it over in her hands. “Smile!”

  “Hey, no!” Gladys protested before Rita could push the shutter button: “No way! That’s going over to BLACK RAIN! You better keep it sterile!”

  “Uh, okay.” Rita put it down. “How am I meant to practice?”

  “There’s a manual.” Gladys passed her a slim booklet, its cover labeled Getting Started in sixteen languages. “Memorize it or something. Or put the snapper on automatic and leave it to make all the decisions. It’s probably smarter than you and I together.”

  “Great. So is there anything more?”

  “I don’t think so.” Gladys looked her up and down. “If you get a chance to find out what they use for underwear, that would be very useful. And I want to know about men’s fashion too!” Rita gave her a look. “But this is the best we can do for now. You should be all right at a distance. Just remember it probably won’t stand up to close inspection.”

  “Thanks for all the hard work.” Rita eased her trainers off and began to work her way into the boots. “I mean that. Sorry I can’t wait around, though—I’ve got to go and see Ivan next. Last time he was threatening to break out skin-whitening creams, and God knows what he’s going to want to do to my hair.”

  NEW LONDON, TIME LINE THREE, AUGUST 2020

  Adrian Holmes, Secretary to the Central Commission of the Inner Party, ran his department from a small, windowless room deep in the former imperial palace. In place of a window, his office wall had a painting: a classic by George Stubbs, part of the Commonwealth State Art Collection: Frederick, Prince of Wales, Arrives in Boston. A fifty-two-year-old king to be, in white wig, hose, and red coat—not yet the ermine and crown and scepter of the emperor in exile—standing on a pier, graciously accepting the welcome of the city fathers. In the background, lurking, the engineer of the royal settlement and first Prime Minister of the New Empire, Baronet Benjamin Franklin—in Holmes’s opinion, a beacon and an object of emulation.

  Holmes was not happy. Neither, for that matter, were the two men standing before his desk. “Stop, please, and rephrase your report,” Holmes said, staring at the older, shorter one of the two (silver-streaked gray hair combed back around his shining pate, a deeply lined face and a smashed nose souvenirs of a more exciting youth than his sober minister’s tailcoat now suggested). “As succinctly as possible, if you will.”

  The younger man (skinny and bearing an air of perpetual worried puzzlement) sighed quietly and shifted from foot to foot, his hands clutched behind his back. He glanced at his elder, then back to the Secretary, who was younger than either.

  “The Burgesons are active,” said the older man. “The wife was summoned to an emergency meeting of a cross-departmental security committee the day before yesterday. Other attendees included Commonwealth Guard and Transport Police officials. Her director of espionage at the DPR then took off for Philadelphia with some handpicked officers, wiring orders ahead that stirred up the local constabulary and Guard barracks like hornets’ nests. Something to do with alien spies of the world-walking variety. Meanwhile, Mr. Burgeson is holding meetings with every Commissioner who’ll give him the time of day. Promising them a chicken in every pot and a pie on every plate.”

  “And the other thing?” Holmes turned his gaze on the younger man.

  He dry-swallowed. “My correspondent within the Ministry confirms the rumor we caught wind of back in April. They are pursuing some scheme in great secrecy, on which account they have detached a Major Hulius Hjorth of the DPR—a world-walker—for special duty. The new information is that they’re sending him to Berlin. In great secrecy.

  “The correspondent in question has not yet been able to tell me what is happening, only that the assistant director of security at the Department of Para-historical Research is managing it directly, on Mrs. Burgeson’s orders. And that Major Hjorth is a relative of hers. He went underground a few months ago, but we know nothing about what he’s been doing except that they shipped him down to Maracaibo for some sort of special training.”

  “Lovely.” Holmes looked away, resting his eyes on the painting. “The rats are scrambling.” He looked squarely at the younger fellow. “Keith. I want to know more about this operation in Berlin.” (Keith was not so young: merely in his early thirties. And not so puzzled and worried, unless it was the perpetual puzzlement and worry of the espionage-obsessed. Which was indeed the main purpose in life of Keith Pierrepoint, Holmes’s rat-catcher-in-chief.) “It’s out of their usual territory. I am distressed. Are you following the news from the enemy court?”

  “The royal betrothal, sir?” Pierrepoint raised an eyebrow. “I gather the nuptials are to be delayed until the princess turns eighteen. Rather a late ripening if you ask me.”

  Holmes shook his head. “Big picture, man, follow the big picture.” His tone of mild disappointment made Pierrepoint nervous, with good reason. “She is going to finishing school, Pierrepoint. Can you guess where?”

  Pierrepoint’s mouth made an O. He closed it silently, and nodded. “It falls somewhat outside my remit, sir, but I take your point.”

  “Berlin, Harry,” Holmes said, looking now at the older man. “Commissioner Burgeson has suddenly developed an appetite for meddling in foreign affairs, just as we are called upon to confront the First Man’s unfortunate decline. I do not believe this is a coincidence. I want Keith to find out more about Mrs. Burgeson’s plans for the Pretender’s daughter. I’m afraid we shall find evidence of treason: if not, look harder.” His cheeks tensed in an expression that might have been mistaken for a smile by an excessively naive onlooker. “As for her plan, whatever it is I trust Keith to disrupt it as embarrassingly as possible. If nothing else, she needs to learn to stick to her brief. I’m sure there are channels by which the French might accidentally learn of the presence of an agent in Berlin? But you, Harry, have the bigger job. I’m sure you can read my mind.”

  Harrison Baker, chief of staff to the Party Secretary, nodded lugubriously. “Leverage.”

  “Exactly.” Now Holmes smiled. “A live boy or a dead girl in the minister of sanctimony’s bed should be sufficient. Let Mr. Burgeson bluster his way out of that. Or something of equivalent magnitude. Something to sow distrust between the two of them. Something sufficient that any judge would grant a divorce on the spot. Or some other soot to spill across his spotless reputation. At a minimum, find enough to make his faction question his discretion and his fitness to lead in the months ahead.”

  Baker nodded again. “I am unaware of any singular vices attached to the man, sir, but I’m sure something can be arranged. Not certain it’ll split him from her—they’ve been thick as thieves since before I met them—but it ought to be possible to isolate him otherwise.”

  “Good man.” Holmes’s smile faded. “You’ve both got work to do; don’t le
t me keep you from it.”

  “And a good day to you, sir,” murmured Pierrepoint as he accepted his dismissal and turned to leave. He might as well not have bothered. The Secretary’s nose was already buried in the next of his briefings. Pierrepoint took a deep breath and released it as he and Baker left the claustrophobic inner study behind, passing the vigilant eyes of the outer office staff. An unaccountable sense of relief seized him: unaccountable, for he knew how little it meant to be out from under the direct gaze of the Secretary. Holmes had eyes everywhere.

  If the Burgesons and other Party Commissioners were rats, scurrying about their urgent business with vibrating whiskers and beady eyes, lining their nests and tending their pups, Holmes was something cold-eyed and reptilian. A new ruler in waiting, coiled vigilantly in the cloaking shadows. And when the First Man finally departed, Holmes would ensure that there were fewer rodents in the palace.

  PHILADELPHIA, TIME LINE TWO; IRONGATE, TIME LINE THREE, AUGUST 2020

  The four-thirty wake-up alarm buzzed. Rita surfaced dozily from a melatonin-assisted warm bath of dreamless sleep to find herself in a bunk bed in a compact trailer. Stumbling and red-eyed, she worked her way through morning ablutions in the cramped bathroom, then dressed in the alien-hippie drag Gladys had set her up with. The camera and inertial mapper were fully charged: she stowed them carefully in her concealed pockets before opening the door. It was cold outside, with a predawn chill that hinted at autumnal weather to come. Beyond the security wall, agents in windbreakers moved around, prepping the convoy of vehicles that would escort her to the insertion site.

  “You look like you need this.” Patrick thrust an insulated mug of coffee into her hands. She nodded her sleepy gratitude. “Ivan’s waiting. You’ve got about twenty minutes.”

  Incurably taciturn Ivan, exactly unlike anyone’s stereotype of a male makeup artist, sat her down and examined her. “Huh. Your eyes are shot.” He paused. “Good thing they’re not big on bold statements there.” He applied dull foundation powder and fill-in for the shadows, designed to make her look inconspicuous and pallid—at least by the standards of her natural skin tone. “That crowd was pretty white-bread, but we think you can probably pass for a deep suntan.” He moved around and rapidly gathered her hair, pinning it up so that the hat brim covered it and shadowed her face. “That should do for now. Let’s hope you’re not noticeable. Try not to smile: your dentition is too good.” He frowned. “Next station.”