“Well, then.” The king frowned, his forehead wrinkling as if to withstand another fit of sneezing: “We shall have to see to such measures, shall we not?” He leaned forward in his chair. “But I want to hear more on this matter of where the homegrown thorns in our crown are obtaining their finances. It seems to me that if we can snip this odious weed in the bud, as it were, and demonstrate to the satisfaction of our peers the meddling of the dauphin at work in our garden, then it will certainly serve our purposes. Lord Douglass?”
“By all means, your majesty.” The prime minister glanced at his minister for special affairs. “Sir Roderick, if you please, can you see to it?”
“Of course, my lord.” The minister inclined his head toward his monarch. “As soon as we have something more than rumor and suspicion I will place it before your majesty.”
“Now if we may return to the agenda?” The prime minister suggested.
“Certainly.” The king nodded his assent, and Lord Douglass cleared his throat, to continue with the next point on the afternoon-long agenda. The meeting continued, and in every way beside the sneezing fit it seemed a perfectly normal session of the Imperial Intelligence Oversight Committee, held before his imperial Majesty John the Fourth, king of New Britain and dominions, in the Brunswick Palace on Long Island in the early years of the twenty-first century.
Time would show otherwise…
Acknowledgments
No novelist works in a creative vacuum. Whatever we do, we owe a debt to the giants upon whose shoulders we stand. This book might not have happened if I hadn’t read the works of H. Beam Piper and Roger Zelazny.
Nor would this book have been written without the intervention of several other people. My agent, Caitlin Blaisdell, nudged me to make a radical change of direction from my previous novels. David Hartwell of Tor encouraged me further, and my wife, Feorag, lent me her own inimitable support while I worked on it. Other friends and critics helped me in one way or another; I’d like to single out for their contributions my father, Jan Goulding, Paul Cooper, Steve Glover, Andrew Wilson, Robert “Nojay” Sneddon, Cory Doctorow, Sydney Webb, and James Nicoll. Thank you all.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE FAMILY TRADE
Copyright © 2004 by Charles Stross
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Edited by David G. Hartwell
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
ISBN: 978-0-7653-4821-0
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2004049576
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