Dark State--A Novel of the Merchant Princes Multiverse

by Charles Stross

  “Berlin.”

  “Berlin? But that’s—”

  “Yes, it’s a grim provincial capital full of idiot radicals and smoke-spewing factories. And you must be at pains to stay away for the first year, Louis. Let her stew in her own juice.”

  “But I don’t have any people there!”

  “Exactly. By the same token, there’s nobody there to spread poisonous rumors against you.”

  “Oh.” A pause. “Not that again.”

  “Yes, that. Elizabeth is sharp as a razor. She’s not one of those pedigreed Hapsburg cows with the congenital wits of a drunken snail. She takes after her mother. But for all that she’s intelligent and cynical beyond her years, she’s just a girl approaching marriageable age. She’s read the scandal sheets, but as long as you do nothing to inflame jealousy, the noise will die down, and if you are careful to give the impression it’s all behind you, you can be her knight in shining armor when you arrive to rescue her from the backwaters of Prussia. Turn her head and put her on a throne beside you before she wakes up. But if you don’t clean up your act I can’t in all honesty commend your hand in marriage to my daughter.”

  A longer pause. “I understand.” Pause. “And thank you for trying.”

  “I’m not just doing this for myself, Louis. I’m doing it for her future.”

  “Her future? What about your grandson?”

  “My grandson doesn’t exist yet, Louis. That bit is up to you. What I am minded to consider is the fate of my daughter if I lose at the Restoration game. If this gamble we have embarked on fails. There is no shame in a princess of the House of Hanover becoming Queen-Consort of the Sun Throne, but if I return to New London and the rebels prevail … there is a very dangerous precedent in the history of my crown, Louis. The history of the Kings of England and Scotland is still shadowed by the events of 1649. You’re gambling your reputation and your father’s goodwill, but I’m gambling my life on this alliance. If I fail and the rebels keep their heads, they will certainly not suffer me to keep mine. And I would have you remember that.”

  THE SUMMER PALACE, ST. PETERSBURG, TIME LINE THREE, AUGUST 2020

  In due course, the delicate negotiations between the court-in-exile of John Frederick IV and his Imperial Highness, King Louis XXV came to a mutually agreeable and fruitful conclusion. These negotiations coincided with the eighteenth birthday of Her Royal Highness, the Princess Elizabeth. And so a decision was taken to announce her engagement that same evening, at a ball held in her honor in the grounds of the Summer Palace.

  For her part, Elizabeth endured the celebrations with dry eyes and grim determination, smiling fixedly through the ceremonials. The birthday gifts were scant compensation: her father bestowed on her a wholly spurious duchy and the titular leadership of an order of chivalry, at the same time as he stripped away her last illusions of freedom. Her new tiara of sapphires and emeralds in a platinum band was so heavy that it threatened to engrave premature lines on her brow: a fitting metaphor for the evening. It would have been graceless to sulk or throw a tantrum on one’s birthday, whether or not one was to be engaged to a notoriously dissolute rake nearly twice one’s own age. Elizabeth had no desire to be seen as graceless. She had few friends at her father’s court, and a mother who, living as a recluse, having abandoned all interest in her daughter’s education. So she allowed her newly announced fiancé to lead her through the first waltz, and smiled winningly at the round of applause that followed. For his part he refrained from staring down her bosom too obviously and managed not to tread on her feet, for which she was grateful. (His breath was another matter, enriched with port fumes sufficient to stun an ox.) He was, she supposed, quite a catch. She ought in principle to be grateful to have such a husband on the end of her fishing line. But it seemed to her that her tastes ran to dolphins, and he was a vast and ancient whale, white-bellied, barnacle-encrusted, bloated and smelling of rotten seaweed.

  The rest of the evening was hardly an improvement. She sailed alone through a sea of the Dauphin’s courtiers, their pale faces goggling at her as if she were an alien from the planet Venus. Her head ached, and the news of the day left her feeling not glorious, as a young woman should feel at her engagement party, but grim and full of apprehension. She left as early as possible, and back at her apartments she instructed her servants to pack immediately for her departure on the morrow.

  “How long is my lady to be away for?” asked Jessop the butler.

  “About two years.” She watched his face for signs of disquiet and surprise. Either he had nerves of steel, or someone had leaked her father’s arrangements. “I shall be attending a finishing school for the duration. The wedding will be scheduled after my return.” Her cheek twitched. “There will be other formalities before then. A trip to Rome, I believe.”

  Now Jessop twitched in turn. “To see the ruins?” he asked carefully.

  “An audience with the Pope.” It was a precondition for the engagement, lest the heir to the Sun Throne be born outside the Catholic Church. A compromise her father was willing to accept on her behalf, regardless of her own beliefs.

  “Very well, my lady.” Jessop backed away carefully, as if she was made of stale explosives and might detonate at the slightest disturbance. Not that the Princess was devout by any measure, but when one had been raised to anticipate inheriting the titular leadership of a state Church, being told that one’s father had consigned one to marry a Catholic crown was something of a shock. It underscored her father’s reckless determination to retake New London so firmly that it left her sick to her stomach when she realized the full implications. Although many of the New British Empire’s subjects were Catholic, the Crown had traditionally relied on the support of its Protestant and non-conformist supporters. Her conversion was a necessary precondition to the proposed dynastic marriage, and the marriage was essential to secure the support of the Bourbon Empire, but it risked a tremendous backlash among the Crown’s loyal supporters. The distant memory of Bloody Mary and the less-remote recollection of the Slaveowners’ Treasonous Rebellion provided a rallying cry for anyone who was against Papist Plotters. As a strategy it risked setting the North American dominions ablaze, yet her father was seemingly willing to take the risk.

  I’m not going to marry, she almost called after Jessop. Not him, not any man. And I have no intention of converting! But at the last second she remembered to seal her lips. Let word escape! Let rumor fly where it would. Let turbulence result. And let non-conformists all over Europe wonder if the last royal defenders of the faith were about to kneel and kiss the ring, and if the cold sword of imperial conformity would soon be pressed upon their necks. If nothing else, it might make life easier for her eventually, if she had to save herself …

  “Attend me,” she called, looking around for Susannah, her lady of the bedchamber. “I’m ready to disrobe.”

  “Certainly.” Susannah followed her into the dressing room, closing the door behind them. She still wore her own ball gown, having been part of the Princess’s party this evening. “So it’s going to happen?”

  “As planned, I fear.” Elizabeth sat down. “Unlace me. I’m not staying in St. Petersburg a minute longer than necessary, Susie. Not with my so-called fiancé on the prowl. The risk—no, the prospect—of embarrassment is mortifying.”

  “Your shoulders are very tense.”

  “Yes well, why shouldn’t they be? The cat and his tame mice kept staring. In front of everybody! I was extremely tempted to make a scene. If Mother had been there they wouldn’t have dared, but … Ah, that’s better.”

  “I didn’t see Lady d’Angelou at the ball, though, Liz.”

  “No, he’d not be that shameless, not at my birthday ball. But this marriage…” The Princess shuddered. “It’s not going to happen. It can’t happen. Not only is it unwise, it’s a mistake.”

  “Jolly good,” Susannah muttered as she helped the Princess out of her formalwear. “Which dressing gown, my lady?”

  “The pale blu
e yukata, please.” Elizabeth frowned minutely. “I intend to depart as soon as possible. Classes at the school do not start until mid-September, but I am sure no harm will come if I travel early and spend a week in Vienna on my way to Berlin. The royal air yacht is available: I told Daddy I wanted to borrow it.”

  She rose, extending her arms as Lady Susannah helped her into her robe. “You should prepare for bed, Susie. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.”

  MARACAIBO PARA-TIME STAGING COMPLEX, TIME LINE THREE, AUGUST 2020

  Huw Hjorth, as Explorer-General in charge of opening up new time lines for the Commonwealth, spent much of his time apart from his wife, Brilliana—who was herself responsible for the Ministry of Intertemporal Technological Intelligence’s espionage operations in other time lines. Being one half of a power couple was not conducive to quiet domesticity. Brilliana spent much of her time visiting MITI’s scattered para-time intelligence offices, while he remained in a windowless air-conditioned box adjacent to the Maracaibo staging complex.

  But the Explorer-General’s younger brother Hulius was happy to admit that when they were home together they set a good table. A formal family dinner party (attended by the two of their four offspring who were not yet of an age to be serving elsewhere) assured Hulius that his brother and sister-in-law were doing well for themselves. Age, experience, and marriage to Brilliana had matured Huw, allowing him to grow into an impressively professorial demeanor. And being married to Huw seemed to agree with her, too, judging by the complicit glances and sentences started by one and completed by the other. Hulius wished he could say as much for himself: the thought brought a mild pang. But at least Ellie and the girls were well cared for, back up north.

  “Is it time to talk business?” he asked as the maid removed the last of the dessert bowls from the table. “Or are we still on family catch-up time?”

  Brill frowned very slightly, then glanced sideways at Roland, their fourteen-year-old, who was looking distractedly at something in his lap. “Roland, put that away.”

  “Aw, Mum…”

  She narrowed her eyes. “I saw your homework list. You can play with your Game Boy when it’s done.” Hulius took note: a game console imported from the other known high-tech time line was quite a prize to be handing out to a bored early teen. “Give it here. You can have it back when you’ve finished your trigonometry.” She held out a hand.

  Huw joined in. “Nel, would you mind taking your brother…?”

  “Yes, Father.” Nel, sixteen and responsible, looked disappointed, but nevertheless rose obediently. “Come along, Rol, they need room for their top-secret management talk. You’d only be bored by it.”

  “You’ve got them well-trained,” Hulius remarked as Nel closed the door.

  “Yes, well.” Huw shook his head. “The Game Boy wasn’t my idea. Erasmus gave it to him for his birthday. I can guess where he got it, and the idea, from—”

  “They like to spoil other people’s kids,” Brill cut in. “Can we change the subject, please?” They were getting close to dangerous ground, Hulius realized. Even though the world-walking Clan didn’t exist as a formal organization anymore, old habits died hard. The personal was political, and Miriam had a claim to leadership over the world-walkers by right of birth. She’d also kept them alive in exile through the deadly white-water ride of the revolutionary years. Not to mention by having risen so high in the Radical Party, although her mother Iris’s planning and foresight had done much to make that possible. The surviving world-walkers had adopted the dress and mannerisms of the Commonwealth’s ruling party elite, and provided service to the state in return for security and privilege. But Miriam’s lack of children—she’d been thirty-seven when she’d led them into exile, nearly forty when she finally married Erasmus—struck dissonant notes among those raised in a dynastic tradition. They were led by a Fisher Queen, casting her net through the shoals and waters of parallel universes in hope of bringing back treasure, but with no clear heir to leave it to.

  “Well.” Hulius paused to dab at his beard with a linen napkin. He was strongly tempted to loosen his embroidered waistcoat. The meal had served to remind him that his stomach was no longer a bottomless pit like one of those black holes that were all the rage on the TV science channels these days. “I assume you didn’t invite me all this way from New York just for dinner?”

  “No.” Brill carefully folded her napkin and laid it beside her plate.

  Huw glanced at her. “What is this—” He looked back at Huw. “Excuse me. What?”

  “JUGGERNAUT is going to need a pilot.” Brill nodded at his blank look. “A classified project you haven’t been briefed on that needs a world-walker. I pulled your medical records. For a male in your late thirties you’ve got low blood pressure. That could be important. You’re big-boned, which is a minus, but—”

  “You are not pulling my brother into this!” Huw burst out, to Hulius’s complete surprise. “For one thing he’s not cleared for it, and for another thing, he’s, he’s—”

  “But it’s a great cover story though, isn’t it?” Brill asked. There was a dangerous light in her eyes. “That’s why Olga suggested him. You believed me, didn’t you?”

  “Wait, what?” Hulius looked first at Huw, then at Brilliana, swiveling his head. “What’s this ‘juggernaut’? What’s Olga hatching now?” Brill sat still, gloved hands clasped in her lap, looking smug.

  Huw shook his head, then pushed his chair back from the table. “Remind me again why I married you,” he murmured to his wife. Then, to his brother: “Whisky? I have an excellent Bourbon. And cigars…”

  “Don’t mind if I do.”

  “Cigars.” Brilliana wrinkled her nose. “Not that I mind the smell at the time, but you men don’t pay the dry cleaning bills. Why can’t you smoke something sensible?”

  “Well, if you insist…”

  Huw ferried a decanter and tumblers from the sideboard to the low table between the two chesterfield sofas that dominated the far side of the room, then returned to fetch an ornate multi-stemmed narghile and a silver-chased box which, to Hulius’s satisfaction, proved to be overflowing with freshly aromatic herb. “Cascadian Gold, from the former Royal Plantations,” he told his brother as he primed the water pipe. “My dear, if you’d do the honors?”

  Brill nodded grudgingly. She rose and moved to one of the sofas; then, taking lighter in one hand and a flexible-stemmed pipe in the other, she puffed the apparatus into life. She handed the other stems to her husband and brother-in-law before sitting down to inhale properly.

  After a contemplative moment she leaned back against the sofa and gently exhaled, trying to blow a ring. “I am so very glad that Helge found a new form of arbitrage for us to pursue, all those years ago,” she mused. “We would have been in terrible trouble if she hadn’t. Even if we were still in business in the United States.”

  The war on drugs had died with a whimper rather than a bang, but it was dead for all that. And in this time line, the Commonwealth (and the Empire that preceded it) had avoided teetotal crusaders entirely—a side effect of the Empire’s bloody birth pangs. The sweetly heady smell took the edge off Hulius’s urgent sense of inquiry, and a sip of the whisky—an excellent single barrel—settled warmly in his overfull stomach.

  “So,” Hulius began, “there is something secret called JUGGERNAUT, and I am sufficiently suited for it that you”—he nodded at his brother—“were taken in by your lady wife’s proposal that I might pilot it, which you”—he met Brill’s steady gaze—“thought would make an excellent cover story for something else. So I am presented with the existence of two secrets, only one of which concerns me. Am I right?”

  Brilliana brushed an unseen crumb from her gown, then sat up again, back straight. “You are not wrong.” She took a brief sip of smoke, then leaned forward to replace the pipe. “You do not currently need to know about JUGGERNAUT in any detail. All I can tell you is that it’s part of our worst case contingency plan for dealing with the
US government, or any other technologically-equipped time line, and you will not mention it to anyone outside this room. Think Manhattan Project.”

  Hulius nodded hesitantly. (The history of the United States’ atomic weapons program—and its disastrous fruition—were a matter with which he was regrettably familiar.) “And my involvement is the cover story?”

  Huw gave his wife a look. “My dear, I think you owe us both an explanation.”

  “Surely, if you will bear with me. Yul, after we came over here, you spent some time learning to fly, didn’t you?”

  Hulius blinked rapidly, unsure whether the smoke or the maze of mirrors he found himself within was responsible. “It was Rudi’s idea. Rudi thought we needed more world-walkers who were pilots.”

  “Really?” Huw raised an eyebrow. “You could have told him—”

  “Well yes, but that was before we discovered the problems. World-walking while airborne works fine, if you enjoy playing Russian roulette with the weather in parallel universes. Or happen to be on board a multi-engined transport aircraft or a bomber with an experienced flight crew and a few thousand feet of altitude for recovery if there’s a storm cell or clear air turbulence in the wrong place when you transition. Rudi and I—” He shook his head. “Private pilot’s license, visual flight rules, single engine? I’m not going there, it’s a game best played by eighteen-year-olds who are convinced of their own immortality.”

  Huw looked at his wife. “But he’s got a pilot’s license. And even Olga thought he was suitable for JUGGERNAUT…”

  “Yes.” She took a slow sip of whisky, looking thoughtful. “It is plausible, isn’t it.”

  JUGGERNAUT is some sort of flying machine, Hulius realized. Para-time capable, almost certainly nuclear armed, and not just a bomber. Any damn fool general could see that you could put a couple of world-walkers in every cockpit of a bomb wing and have them transition simultaneously while their planes were in the air, three minutes out from an enemy city. Approaching their target’s location in another time line, they’d be impossible to detect or intercept, right up until they shifted time lines and began dropping nukes. The Commonwealth couldn’t build anything in the same league as a B-2 Spirit or an F-22 Raptor, but it didn’t have to. Their existing six-engined subsonic battlewagons, designed to rain instant sunshine on the French Empire in Europe, were in the same class as a B-52. More than sufficient for a first strike through para-time. So, if JUGGERNAUT wasn’t a first strike weapon, designed for a swift decapitation strike on the United States, there must be some sort of deep para-time strategy—