Rule 34 hs-2

by Charles Stross

  When you bought (or, more accurately, inherited) the house, you knew it had a loft—but not much more. When you first got up there, you weren’t impressed, but since then you’ve fitted DIY insulation and nailed it down with boards and carpet tiles so you can walk around. A loft ladder followed, and LED lighting tiles and mains outlets; you’re hoping soon to have enough cash to pay for a dormer window to replace the Velux. Bibi doesn’t come up here (she doesn’t like ladders—gets dizzy), and you’ve told her it’s a storeroom. Which is true up to a point, but you’ve got a chair and some bean bags and a projection TV and a small fridge for the beer. Before the filth collared you, you kept your waterpipe and a stash up here: But you don’t want Mr. Webber to get the idea you’re living a “disorganized lifestyle,” so you’ve reluctantly laid off the skunk. There’s also a tin-can aerial lined up on Cousin Tariq’s roof, an interesting router running firmware he downloaded off the dark side of the net, and a clean pad he gave you to work on when you got out of nick. But you haven’t spent much time up here since you got the new job.

  That’s about to change, isn’t it?

  There’s a wee hole-in-the-wall shop just off Easter Road, run by a middle-aged white guy with a straggly beard—Cousin Itt would probably grunt ’ippie on sight—that services the home-brew hobbyists. The shop smells of yeast and hot plastic from the fabber he’s got in the back for running up obscure knobbly connectors; most of the stuff he sells is off-the-shelf, though. When you walk in, he’s deep in conversation with a fat middle-aged woman with crimson hair, whose unseasonal shaggy black coat makes her look like a tank in the sheep army.

  You spend a few minutes gawping at the gleaming stainless steel machine—it looks like a dissected automatic washer/dryer—that sits in pride of place on the shop counter. It’s some sort of German vorsprungdurch-technik microprocessor-managed brewery in a box—put in raw materials, select program, leave for a month, drink the output—but you don’t have a thousand euros to spare for it. Then you poke around the shelves for a bit, hunting for the items on your shopping list. The shopkeeper’s still yacking to the woman, who seems to be some sort of local beer monster, and pays no attention to you until you get to the throat-clearing toe-tapping stage. “Aye, sir? What can I do you for?”

  You ignore the slip of the tongue. “I need these. And, uh, a siphon. And an airlock, I think.” You’ve been doing your homework, but you’re not entirely sure what an airlock looks like until he steps out from behind the counter and produces a transparent plastic hingmy.

  “Boiled water goes here,” he says, showing you how. “Then you stick it in the bung like so. If you’re just getting started, you might want one of our starter packs. What kind of beer were you after?”

  “Um, I’ve already got one,” you say: “a present.”

  “IPA or Lager?” asks the woman, chipping in. “Is it bottom-fermenting or top-fermenting?”

  You look at her blankly. The shopkeeper clocks what’s up and none-too-subtly eyeballs the nosy lass to butt out. “It’s okay,” he says quietly, “I’ve got a starter FAQ on the website. In five languages.” He passes you a card. “If you want, I’ve got a friend who can rent you some cellar space—”

  “No, no, that won’t be necessary,” you say hurriedly: “I just need the, uh, apparatus?” Obviously he kens the ethnic angle, thinks you’re wanting the opportunity to quaff a wee bevvy at home with no betraying six-packs.

  “Well that’s okay, then. Twenty-four ninety-six, please.”

  You hand over the cash and flee, then realize once you’re out of the door that you forgot to ask for a bag and you’re going home clutching a huge plastic bucket labelled FERMENTATION BIN and decorated with pictures of overflowing beer glasses. And he forgot to offer you one! Have these people no shame?

  Bibi, for a miracle, is in the kitchen when you open the front door. You head upstairs at a dash and hurl the incriminating bucket up the loft steps before she has a chance to see it. You’ve still got to figure out how to get twenty litres of freshly boiled water up to it, and how to keep it warm afterwards, but at least she doesn’t have to know about you conducting your filthy haram experiments under her roof.

  There is, of course, the old electric kettle, if you can remember where it’s lurking. It’s corroded and leaks alarmingly around the water gauge, but you don’t think Bibi threw it out. You clamber down the ladder and go into the kitchen to hunt around. Finally you think to look in the cellar, where the mains distribution board, the gas meter, and several piles of junk lurk villainously in wait for unshod feet. The kettle is resting under a layer of moldy plaster dust in one of the slowly deliquescing cardboard boxes. The cellar smells of damp brickwork, and your sinuses clamp shut in protest before you can beat a retreat. Which is why Bibi finds you in the kitchen, clutching a dusty kettle and breathing heavily through your mouth, when she bustles in with a wheelie-bag full of groceries.

  “Help me unpack this,” she says breathlessly, then notices the kettle: “Oh good, are you taking it for recycling?”

  “I need it for the office,” you say, then the breath catches in your throat as a convulsive sneezing fit takes hold. “Aaagh! Choo!”

  “Not over the saag, you naughty man!” She thrusts a wad of tissue at you. “This bag needs refrigerating. When you’re feeling better?”

  You blink red-rimmed eyes at her. “The cellar is damp.”

  “Oh dear, has the dehumidifier filled up again?”

  “What dehumidifier?”

  “The one we borrowed from Martin, silly. Don’t you remember?”

  She looks at you with a speculative expression that puts you in mind of a stableman sizing up an elderly mule for the glue factory. You sigh. Now that she mentions it, you remember her telling you something about dampness and a gadget the old guy next door had offered to loan her. “No, no I didn’t,” you admit. “You say it’s filling up?”

  “Yes,” she says brightly: “It needs emptying once a week!”

  “Damp. In the cellar.” If Sameena’s plans to try and hold a family reunion in Lahore to corral everyone into buying into some kind of extended family takeover of a half-completed hotel complex had worked, you wouldn’t have a problem with rising damp in the cellar. (You might have to dodge the occasional lunatic in explosive corsetry, but it can’t be any more risky than running the gauntlet of the random bampots down the Foot of the Walk on a Saturday night.) Alas, you were one of the idiots who balked at the idea of turning to the hospitality trade. “Besides, it rains too much there!” you moaned at your mother-in-law, regurgitating childhood memories of a June vacation. Oh, the irony.

  “Yes. I think it’s getting worse.” Your wife tilts her head on one side as she looks at you. “What are you going to do about it?”

  You sigh, deeply. “I’ll see if I can round up someone who knows about such things.”

  She hands you a cardboard punnet full of mushrooms. “You’d better. Or we’ll be growing these down there.”

  You help Bibi unpack the groceries that need refrigerating, then retreat upstairs to the bathroom, clutching the kettle. Not being entirely stupid, you wash the filthy thing out in the wash-basin, then take it up to the attic and return for a bucket of water (which you manhandle up the ladder precariously, with much sloshing and dripping).

  Finally, you glance at the brew shop’s website, where there is indeed a multilingual FAQ. It’s in Arabic, Turkish, and Farsi among other languages, if you recognize the characters correctly: You’ll have to settle for English.

  “First boil 20 litres of water and allow to cool to 40 degrees . . .”

  You plug the kettle in, fill it up, throw the switch, and all the lights and electrics go out. A few seconds later, you hear Bibi cursing most immodestly downstairs.

  You’re really going to have to tackle the damp now, aren’t you? Otherwise, you’re never going to hear the end of it.

  On day four of your new occupation, you receive an invitation to a diplomatic reception at
the Georgian consulate.

  Actually, you received it on day two, or rather your spam filter received it, whereupon it languished in MIME-encapsulated limbo until you could be bothered to skim the contents of the mailbox, swear, then freak out and run squawking in circles.

  “You are invited to attend an informal cheese and wine reception at the Georgian Consulate on Brunswick Street on—” (tonight) “—at 7:30 P.M., hosted by the Trans-Caucasian Inward Investment and Tourism Trust. RSVP, etc.”

  After about fifteen minutes you wise up and dash off a hasty query to Head Office: Should I stay or should I go? You haven’t been keeping up with the daily bulletins from the Diplomatic Service—they are replete with information about yak wool exports, the lemon harvest, and the urgent need to redress the balance-of-trade deficit, but not so fascinatingly full of matters of statecraft—so you have not the veriest inkling of a clue as to whether the Independent Republic of Issyk-Kulistan is on kissing terms with Georgia, or at war, or something in between. All you really know about politics in the part of the world you represent is that it can be alarmingly personal at times, not to mention bloody-minded, brutal, byzantine, and any number of other unpleasant adjectives beginning with “b.”

  There’s no immediate reply, so you call the Gnome. “Help,” you say succinctly.

  There’s a brief, pregnant pause. “Help what?”

  “I’ve been invited to a diplomatic reception! Help!”

  “You’re beyond help, laddie.” He sounds amused. “You’ll just have to fend for yourself. Is it one of the Middle East missions?”

  “No!” You swallow. “It’s Georgia.”

  “Georgia next to Alabama or—oh, I see. Well you may be in luck, then: They drink alcohol. Just remember not to mention the South Ossetian question, the Transnistrian dispute, Azerbaijani shi’ite separatism, or the existence of Abkhazia. You’ve never heard of any of those places, so you should be able to quaff a free bevvy or six and leg it without giving mortal offence.”

  “How do you know all this?” you ask in something like awe.

  “I looked it up on wikipedia. Oh, and try to remember, the Russians are not their friends. Have a fun party! Cunt.” He hangs up.

  (Cunt isn’t an unusual expostulation from the Gnome; it’s commonly directed at any lucky acquaintance who has gotten to stick their gristle missile in a particularly cute twink, and indicates envy rather than ire. Nevertheless, you feel acutely inadequate: It’s a shame you can’t send the man himself in your place, but he’d probably piss in the punchbowl and start a trade war or something. Just to drop you in it. The cunt.)

  There is no reply from the Foreign Ministry, and with a sinking heart you realize it’s Thursday afternoon over here and probably closing in on sundown—they’ll be knocking off early for Friday. You’re on your own. So you apply yourself to wiki-fiddling for a couple of hours of fascinated voyeuristic geopolitical prurience—you had no idea the IRIK had such interesting neighbours. Then it’s knocking off time for you, too, with a few hours to fill until the party.

  The shortest route to the Brunswick Street consulate is via Calton Hill, and your favourite pub; so you decide to fortify yourself with some water of life and a pitta wrap before you nip round and do the James Bond cocktail-circuit thing.

  The Gnome is not in residence at this time. Neither is Olaf, the Norwegian barman you quite fancy. It’s still quiet—the Friday night meat market hasn’t opened yet—so you sit in a corner and quietly shovel back your ale and chicken tikka wrap. You’ve got time to borrow a pad, boot an anonymous guest VM, and spend half an hour poking around a somewhat dodgy chat room Tariq introduced you to—one that you’re not supposed to go within a thousand kilometres of during your probation, maybe because it has something to do with the seamy underside of Internet affiliate-scheme marketing. (But they’d have to swab the screen for DNA to prove you were there: And anyway, you’re just looking, aren’t you?) Right now it’s a big disappointment. Nobody seems to be posting there this week—it’s like the usual denizens have all gone on holiday. Or been lifted by the Polis, more like, you think uneasily and log out of the anonymous guest account, which goes poofing up to bit-rot heaven.

  With a sinking heart, you stand and make your way round the hill towards London Road, and thence towards the Georgian consulate, which is itself ensconced in a different-kind-of-Georgian town house opposite a row of imposingly colonnaded hotel frontages. Scotland, being one of those odd semi-autonomous states embedded within the EU post-independence and still only semi-devolved from their former parent nation, doesn’t rate actual embassies. Nevertheless, the glowing affluence of a real consulate fills you with mild envy: There’s a shiny black BMW hybrid in diplomatic plates plugged into the charge point outside the front door, and a flag on a pole sticking out of the second-floor window-casement. Not to mention bunting and coloured lights inside the wedged-open front door.

  A Scottish woman in a trouser suit and expensive eyewear clocks you and smiles professionally. “Mr. Hussein. We’ve been looking forward to meeting you! Have you had your tea, then?”

  Your ears perk up at this decidedly non-Edinburgh hospitality, but your stomach’s been rumbled: You nod. “Alas, yes, Ms.—”

  “Macintosh, Fi Macintosh.” She beckons you in like an affable praying mantis—she’s about ten centimetres taller than you, and looms alarmingly. “Notary and assistant to the first consul. That’s Dr. Mazniashvili. Won’t you come in? We have grape juice—or wine, if you’re so inclined.”

  “There’s more than one of you?” you ask, as she ushers you into a space not unlike a dentist’s waiting room—except that the receptionist’s counter has been stacked three bottles deep in refreshments, and there’s a table stacked high with trays of canapés. Several patients sit in chairs around the room or stand in small clusters, talking quietly with pained expressions. You pounce on a tumbler, splash a generous shot of Talisker into it, and raise it: “Your health.”

  Fi half smiles, then picks up a tall glass full of orange juice. “Prosit,” she replies. “The meat cocktail snacks are halal, by the way.” She takes a sip. “Yes, there are four of us here, but only the first consul is a Georgian national. I understand you’re not actually from Issyk-Kulistan yourself?”

  “No.” You glance from side to side. Here you are, trapped with a glass of single malt and a red-headed stick insect—what can you say? “That is to say, there aren’t any natives of Issyk-Kulistan in Scotland, as far as the Foreign Ministry was able to determine, so they put the job out to tender and ended up hiring me.”

  “Ah.” She nods slowly. “One of those jobs. I don’t suppose it’s terribly busy, is it?”

  You suck in your lower lip and clutch your tumbler close. “No, not really.”

  She nods again. “You’re the sixth, you know.”

  “The sixth? Sixth what?”

  “Sixth pseudo.” She peers at you over the rim of her glasses, which are recording everything and projecting a head-up display on her retinas. “They offered you a steady job in return for processing forms, notarizing documents, sorting out accommodation for distressed natives, and so on. Didn’t they?”

  “I don’t see what business of yours my employment is,” you say, perhaps a trifle more waspishly than is tactful.

  She blinks. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude.” She nods sidelong at a fellow with a face like the north end of a southbound freight locomotive. “That’s Gerald Williams. He’s the honorary consul for the Popular Democratic Republic of Saint Lucia. You might want to look up the, ah, constitutional crisis there seven years ago. They were the first pseudo—in their case, they used to be a real country, albeit a wee one. But after the big hurricane, a consortium of developers literally bought the place—made the population an offer they couldn’t refuse, relocate somewhere with better weather and about ten thousand euros a head. Now it’s a shell country, specializing in banking and carboncredit exports—they’re still signatory to the climate protocols.
”

  She knocks back her OJ like she’s trying to wash away the taste of a dead slug. “They’re legit, if shady. I shouldn’t really say this, but I hope you double-checked who you were doing business with. One of these days, we’re going to see a really nasty pseudo, and the consequences are going to be unpleasant all round.” She smiles tightly. “Georgia’s celebrating it’s thirtieth anniversary later this year, and we’re throwing a party. Perhaps you’d like to come?”

  “I’d—love to,” you manage. “What did you do”—to get this gig, you’re about to say: It comes out as—“before you worked for the Georgian consulate?”

  “A doctorate in international relations, specializing in the history of the Transcaucasus in the latter half of the twentieth century. I did my field work in Tbilisi.” She reaches for the mixers and tops up her OJ, then adds a splash of vodka. “It was this, or move to Brussels. I can do simultaneous translation between English and Kartuli, you know.” Her smile broadens. “And yourself?”

  Rumbled. You shrug. “I’m trying to learn Kyrgyz.” Badly, you don’t add. Nor do you mention that your highest degree is a lower second from the polytechnic of real life with a postgraduate diploma in Scallie Studies from Saughton. “And I’ve got a great line in breadmix samples from the People’s Number Four Grain Products Factory of Issyk-Kulistan. Guaranteed insect-free!”

  “So your republic exists primarily to export bread mix to the EU?” She sniffs, evidently amused. “Wait here, Mr. Hussein, I’ll be right back.” And with that she disappears into the front parlour of the Georgian consulate.

  You amble around the room for a while. The background chatter is getting louder, and more visitors are arriving—to your untrained eye it’s impossible to tell whether they’re diplomats or art-school drop-outs, but they seem to know what they’re doing, and a high proportion of them look even less Scottish than you. You find yourself chatting to a poet who lives in Pilton—apparently an émigré from Tashkent, if you understand his rapid-fire Turkish-accented Scots dialect correctly. You smile and nod politely and work your way towards the bottom of your tumbler.