Singularity Sky

by Charles Stross

  It should have been a simple recruitment meeting: put the arm on a useful contact and brief him for a single task. Nice and objective. Instead, she’d found herself sharing a dinner table with a quiet but fundamentally decent man who hadn’t tried to grope her, didn’t treat her like a piece of furniture, listened with a serious expression, and made interesting conversation: the kind of man who in ordinary circumstances she’d have considered a pleasant date. She’d gone a little bit crazy, walking along a knife edge of irresponsibility: and he’d been stir-crazy too. And now she was worried about him—which wasn’t in the plan.

  It had come to a head across the kitchen table as they finished discussing business. He had looked up at her with a curious expectancy in his eyes. She crossed her legs, let a foot peep out beneath her skirts. He studied her intently.

  “Is that everything?” he asked. “You want me to keep my eyes open for clock-skew rollback instructions, carry the plug-in, notify you if I see anything that looks like a CVD—that’s all?”

  “Yes,” she said, staring at him. “That’s essentially everything.”

  “It’s ah—” He looked at her askance, sharply. “I thought there was something more to it.”

  “Maybe there is.” She folded her hands in her lap. “But only if you want.”

  “Oh, well,” he said, absorbing the information. “What else is part of the job?”

  “Nothing.” She tilted her head, meeting his angled gaze, steeling herself. “We’ve finished with business. Do you remember what I said earlier, back in the restaurant?”

  “About—” He nodded. Then looked away.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Oh, nothing.” He sighed quietly.

  “Bullshit.” She stood up. “Come on. Let’s talk.” She reached for his hand and gave him a little tug.

  “What?” He shook his head. “I’m just—”

  “Come on.” She pulled a little harder. “The parlor. Come on.”

  “Okay.” He stood up. He was no taller than she was; and he seemed to be avoiding her eyes. Uncomfortable, really.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked again.

  He chuckled briefly; there was no amusement in it. “You’re the first sane person I’ve met in the past four months,” he said quietly. “I was getting used to talking.”

  She looked at him, steadily. “You don’t have to stop,” she said.

  “I—” He froze up again. Why is he doing that? she wondered.

  “Say something,” she said.

  “I—” He paused, and she was afraid he was going to stop. Then he burst out, all at once. “I don’t want to stop. This place is squeezing me into my own head all the time—it’s like being in a vise! The only thing anyone wants of me is my work—”

  Rachel leaned against him. “Shut up,” she said quietly. He shut up. “That’s better.” He was, she decided, really good at being leaned on. She put her arms around him; after a moment he hugged her back. “Forget work. Yeah, you heard me. Forget the New Republic. Think you can do that for a few hours?”

  “I—” she felt his breath shuddering. “I’ll try.”

  “Good,” she said fiercely. And it did feel good: here was somebody who she could be sure about. Somebody who seemed to feel the same way about this whole claustrophobic abortion of a culture as she did. He held her steadily, now, and she could feel his hands running up and down her back, exploring how narrow her waist was. “The parlor. Come on, it’s the next room.”

  Martin had stared back at her. “You sure you want this?” he asked. That was part of his charm.

  “What’s to be unsure about?” She kissed him hard, exploring his lips with her tongue. She felt as if she was about to burst right out of her clothes. He gently pulled her closer and let her dig her chin into the base of his neck; she felt stubble on his cheek. “It’s been so fucking long,” she whispered.

  “Same to you too.” He took some of her weight in his arms. “Been lonely?”

  She barked a hoarse laugh. “You have no idea. I’ve been here ages; long enough that I feel like some kind of deviant because I talk to strange men and have some role in life besides hatching babies. The way they think here is getting its claws into me.”

  “What? A big strong government agent like you is letting something like this get to you?” he said, gently mocking.

  “You’re damn right,” she muttered into his shoulder as she felt a tentative hand begin to explore below her waistline.

  “Sorry. Just—six months alone in this dump, having to act the part? I’d have gone nuts,” he said thoughtfully.

  “Been more than six months,” she said, looking past the side of his head. He has nice earlobes, she noted vaguely as she leaned closer.

  “Let’s find that wine bottle,” he suggested gently. “I think you’re going a bit fast.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, automatically. “I’m sorry.” She tensed slightly. “No, you can keep your hands there. Let’s walk.”

  They somehow made it into the parlor—overstuffed armchairs and a display cabinet full of crockery—without letting go of each other.

  “At first I thought you were some kind of agent provocateur,” he said, “but instead you’re the first real human being I’ve met in this place.” He left the statement hanging.

  “If all I needed was flesh, there are plenty of sailor boys in this port,” she said, and leaned against him again. “That’s not where my itch is.”

  “Are you sure you should be in this job? If you’re so—”

  “You were going to say vulnerable?”

  “Maybe. Not exactly.”

  She guided him in front of the sofa. “I wanted company. Not just a quick fuck,” she explained, trying to justify it to herself.

  “You and me both.” He held her, gently turned her around so that she was looking into his eyes. “So what do you want this to be?”

  “Stop talking.” She leaned forward closing her eyes, and found his mouth. Then events ran out of control.

  They’d made love with desperate urgency the first time, Rachel lying on the parlor floor with her skirts hiked up around her waist, and Martin with his trousers tangled around his legs. Then they somehow migrated to the bedroom and struggled out of their clothing before making love again, this time gently and slowly. Martin had a thoughtful, considerate manner: talking afterward, he’d mentioned a divorce a few years ago. They’d talked for hours, almost until the artificial dawn, timed to coincide with sunrise on the planet below. And they’d made love until they were both sore and aching.

  Now, lying awake in bed after he’d left, her head was spinning. She tried to rationalize it: isolation and nerves are enough to make anyone do something wild once in a while. Still, she felt nervous: Martin wasn’t a casual pickup, and this wasn’t a quick fuck. Just the thought of seeing him again made her feel an edgy hopeful excitement, tempered by the bitter self-disgust of realizing that mixing business with pleasure this way was a really stupid move.

  She rolled over, and blinked: the clock on the inside of her left eyelid said it was just past 0700. In another two hours, it would be time to get confirmation of her diplomatic status, dress, and go kick some New Republican ass. Two hours after that, Martin would be aboard the Lord Vanek; it would all be over by 2200. Rachel sighed and tried to catch another hour’s shut-eye; but sleep was evading her.

  She found herself wandering, seeking out pleasant memories. There was not a lot else to be done, in point of fact: there was a high probability that she would die if her guess about the New Republic’s intentions was wrong. And wouldn’t that be a grand way to end 150 years? Physically as young as a twentysomething, kept that way by the advanced medical treatments of the mother planet, she rarely felt the weight of her decades; the angst only cut in when she thought about how few of the people she had known or loved were still alive. Now she recalled her daughter, as a child, the smell of her—and what brought that back? Not her daughter, the political matriarc
h and leader of a dynasty. Not the octogenarian’s funeral, either, in the wake of the skysail accident. And she couldn’t even remember Johan’s face, even though they’d been married for fifteen years. Martin, so much more recent, seemed to overlay him in her mind’s eye. She blinked, angrily, and sat up.

  Stupid girl, she told herself, ironically. Anyone would think you were still in your first century, falling in love with a tight pair of buttocks. Still, she found herself looking forward to seeing Martin again tomorrow night. The edgy hopeful excitement was winning over age and cynicism, even though she was old enough to know what it meant. Complications . . .

  the interorbit shuttle unlatched from the naval docking bay and edged outward from the beanstalk, its cold-gas thrusters bumping it clear of the other vehicles that swarmed in the region. Ten minutes after it maneuvered free, the pilot got permission from traffic control to light off his main drive; a bright orange plume of glowing mercury ions speared out from three large rectangular panels hinged around the rear cargo bay doors, and the craft began to accelerate. Ion drives were notoriously slow, but they were also efficient. After a thousand seconds the shuttle was moving out from the station at nearly two hundred kilometers per hour, and it was time to begin decelerating again to meet the ship that now lay at rest almost sixty kilometers from the station.

  In orbital terms, sixty kilometers was nothing; the Lord Vanek was right on the beanstalk’s doorstep. But there was one significant advantage to the position. The ship was ready to move, and move fast. As soon as the dockyard engineer finished his upgrade to the driver kernel’s baseline compensators, she’d be ready for action.

  Captain Mirsky watched the shuttle nose up to Lord Vanek’s forward docking bays on one of the video windows at his workstation. He sat alone in his quarters, plowing relentlessly through the memoranda and directives associated with the current situation; things had become quite chaotic since the orders came down, and he was acutely aware of how much more preparation was required.

  Middle-aged, barrel-chested, and sporting a neat salt-and-pepper beard to match his graying hair, Captain Mirsky was the very model of a New Republican Navy captain. Behind the mask of confidence, however, there was a much less certain man: he had seen things building up for a week now, and however he tried to rationalize the situation, he couldn’t escape the feeling that something had gone off the rails between the foreign office and the Imperial residence.

  He peered morosely at the latest directive to cross his desk. Security was being stepped up, and he was to go onto a wartime footing as soon as the last shipyard workers and engineers were off his deck and the hull was sealed. Meanwhile, full cooperation was required with Procurator Muller of the Curator’s Office, on board to pursue positive security monitoring of foreign engineering contractors employed in making running repairs to Lord Vanek’s main propulsion system. He glared at the offending memo in irritation, then picked up his annunciator. “Get me Ilya.”

  “Commander Murametz, sir? Right away, sir.”

  A muffled knock on the door: Mirsky shouted “open!” and it opened. Commander Murametz, his executive officer, saluted. “Come in, Ilya, come in.”

  “Thank you, sir. What I can do for you?”

  “This—” Mirsky pointed wordlessly at his screen. “Some pompous Citizen Curator wants his minion to run riot over my ship. Know anything about it?”

  Murametz bent closer. “Humbly report, sir, I do.” His moustache twitched; Mirsky couldn’t tell what emotion it signified.

  “Hah. Pray explain.”

  “Some fuss over the engineering contractor from Earth who’s installing our Block B drive upgrade. He’s irreplaceable, at least without waiting three months, but he’s a bit of a loudmouth and somehow caught the attention of one of the professional paranoids in the Basilisk. So they’ve stuck a secret policeman on us to take care of him. I gave him to Lieutenant Sauer, with orders to keep him out of our hair.”

  “What does Sauer say about it?”

  Murametz snorted. “The cop’s as wet behind the ears as one of the new ratings. No problem.”

  The Captain sighed. “See that there isn’t.”

  “Aye aye, sir. Anything else?”

  Mirsky waved at a chair. “Sit down, sit down. Noticed anything out of the ordinary about what’s going on?”

  Murametz glanced at the doorway. “Rumors are flying like bullets, skipper. I’m doing what I can to sit on them, but until there’s an official line—”

  “There won’t be. Not for another sixteen hours.”

  “If I may be so bold, what then?”

  “Then . . .” The Captain paused. “I . . . am informed that I will be told, and that subsequently you, and all the other officers, will learn what’s going on. In the meantime, I think it would be sensible to keep everybody busy. So busy that they don’t have time to worry and spread rumors, anyway. Oh, and make damned sure the flag cabin’s shipshape and we’re ready to take on board a full staff team.”

  “Ah.” Murametz nodded. “Very well, sir. Operationally, hmm. Upgrade security, schedule some more inspections, heightened readiness on all stations? That sort of thing? Floggings to improve morale? A few simulation exercises for the tactical teams?”

  Captain Mirsky nodded. “By all means. But get the flag cabin ready first. Ready for a formal inspection tomorrow. That’s all.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Dismissed.”

  Murametz left, and Mirsky was alone with his morose thoughts once more. Alone to brood over the orders he was forbidden to reveal to anyone for another sixteen hours.

  Alone with the sure, cold knowledge of impending war.

  the admiral’s man

  his majesty’s battlecruiser Lord Vanek lay at rest, sixty kilometers from the Klamovka naval beanstalk. Running lights blinked red and blue along its flanks; the double-headed eagle ensign of the admiral’s flag winked in green outline just above the main missile launch platform. Kurtz had been piped aboard two hours earlier; soon the ship would be ready to fly.

  Rachel Mansour worked hard at suppressing the treacherous grin of satisfaction that kept threatening to escape. The reaction she’d elicited from the security goons at the entrance to the base almost made up for the preceding three months of isolation and paranoia. They’d barely managed to hold her up before her phone call to the embassy dragged a flustered lieutenant commander out to blush red and stammer in front of her. When he’d half questioned her intent, she’d rammed her credentials down his throat with gusto; he escorted her with her luggage directly to the shuttlecraft for transfer to the battlecruiser, shuddering slightly and glancing over his shoulder all the way. (Evidently self-propelled shipping chests were yet another technology that the New Republic shunned.)

  Ludmilla Jindrisek, the cover identity she’d been using for the past month, had dissolved beneath the morning shower; Rachel Mansour, Special Agent, UN Standing Committee on Multilateral Interstellar Disarmament, stepped out of it. Ludmilla Jindrisek simpered, wore fashionable dresses, and deferred to wise male heads; Special Agent Mansour had started her career in bomb disposal (defusing terrorist nukes and disassemblers), graduated to calling in naval strikes on recalcitrant treaty-breakers, and wore a black paramilitary uniform designed specifically to impress militaristic outworlder hicks. It was, she noted, interesting to observe the effect the change of costume had on people, especially as she held her notional rank through equivalence, rather than actual military service. Meanwhile she watched her fellow passengers waiting under the beady eye of Chief Petty Officer Moronici.

  The airlock door finally rolled open. “Attention!” barked the CPO. The ratings waiting in the bay stood sharply to attention. An officer ducked through the lock and straightened up: Moronici saluted, and he returned the gesture, ignoring Rachel.

  “Very good there,” said the officer. “Chief Moronici, get these kids aboard. Don’t bother waiting for me, I’ve got business that’ll keep me here until the next run.” He glanced a
t Rachel. “You. What are you doing here?”

  Rachel pointed her pass at him. “Diplomatic corps. I’m attached to the Admiral’s staff, by special order of Archduke Michael, Lieutenant.”

  The Lieutenant gaped. “But you’re a—”

  “—colonel in the United Nations of Earth Security Council combined armed forces. What part of ‘by special order of Archduke Michael’ don’t you understand? Are you going to stand there gaping, or are you going to invite me aboard?”

  “Urgh. Um, yes.” The Lieutenant disappeared back into the shuttle’s flight deck; reappeared a minute later. “Um. Colonel, ah, Mansour? Please come aboard.”

  Rachel nodded and walked past him. Still carefully expressionless, she seated herself immediately behind the flight deck door, in officer country. And listened.

  The CPO was educating the new intake. “At ease, you lads,” he growled. “Find yerselves a seat. Front row, facing back, that’s right! Now buckle in. All six points, that’s right. Check the seat in front of you for a sick bag. Welcome to the vomit comet; this boat’s too small to have any gravity emulators and doesn’t accelerate faster’n a quadriplegic in a wheel-barrow, so if you get sick in free fall, you’re damn well going to throw up into those bags. Anyone who pukes up on the furniture and fittings can spend the next week cleaning ’em. Got that?”

  Everyone nodded. Rachel felt cautiously optimistic; it looked as if everyone else on this run, apart from Chief Moronici, was a new assignment to the ship. Which meant her information was probably correct: they were working up to wartime levels, and departure wouldn’t be delayed long.

  The door to the passenger cabin slid closed; there was a rumble below as automatic pallets rolled in and out of the shuttle’s cargo bay. Moronici knocked on the forward door and went through when it opened; he reappeared a minute later. “Launch in two minutes,” he announced. “Hang on tight!”