The Traders' War (Merchant Princes Omnibus 2)

by Charles Stross

  ‘Um, no.’ Miriam shook her head. ‘Different players, but the game’s the same.’ She sipped her tea. Global climate change? What is the world’s population here, anyway? Suddenly she had a strange vision, a billion coal-fired cooking stoves staining the sky with as bad a smog as a billion SUVs. Convergence . . .

  ‘So times are bad and the constabulary are getting heavyhanded. The Evil Empire is rattling its sabers and threatening to invade, just to add to the fun. And the economy is stuck in a liquidity trap that’s been getting worse for months, with deflation setting in . . . ?’ She shook her head again. ‘And I thought things were bad back home.’

  ‘So where have you been?’ Erasmus asked, cocking his head to one side. There was something birdlike about his movements, but now Miriam could see that it was a side effect of the disease eating him from the inside out, leaving him gaunt and huge-eyed. ‘I thought you’d abandoned me.’ He said it in such a self-consciously histrionic tone that she almost laughed.

  ‘Nothing so spectacular! After you were arrested, the shit hit the fan’ – she ignored the wince and continued – ‘and – well. The people who were trying to kill me have been neutralized. But one of them defected to the police in my own . . . in the world I grew up in. He, his man, killed –’ She stopped for a moment, unable to continue. ‘Roland’s dead. And, and.’ Nothing else matters in comparison. It was true; she couldn’t care less about everything. Roland’s absence still felt like a gaping hole in her life, every time she woke up, every time she noticed it.

  After a few seconds she forced herself to continue. ‘The Clan’s entire fortune there, in my world, is based on smuggling. They’ve been driven underground. Some of them seem to have blamed me for it; as a result, they’ve been keeping me on a very short leash. I’m not the family black sheep anymore, but I’m not exactly trusted, and it took me a lot of work just to be allowed out here on my own. Some of them have got a scheme to marry me off. They’re big on arranged marriages,’ she added bitterly. ‘It’s a good way of silencing inconveniently loud women.’

  ‘You’re not so easy to silence,’ Erasmus noted after she’d stopped talking. He smiled. ‘Which is a good thing: it is our willingness to allow ourselves to be silenced easily that allows scoundrels to get away with so much, as a friend of mine put it – you might like to drop in on her next time you’re in New London, incidentally. She’s another loud woman who doesn’t believe in being silenced. She’s called Margaret, Lady Bishop, and you can find her at Hogarth Villas: I think you’ve got a lot in common.’ He cracked his knuckles again. ‘But you haven’t told me why you wanted to see me. Much less, why you wanted to save my life.’

  ‘I didn’t?’ She shook herself. ‘Damn, I’m stupid. It’s – well. Look, I managed to steal a week over here, and it’s nearly over, and I’ve wasted most of it repairing the damage Morgan inflicted on my company through neglect – ’

  ‘I thought you said he was stupid and lazy?’

  ‘He is. But – ’

  ‘Well then, imagine how much damage he could have done if he was stupid and energetic.’

  ‘I did: that’s why I made him general manager. I think I’ve got him sufficiently house-trained to minimize the damage in future. Only time will tell.’

  ‘Ah, nepotism,’ Erasmus said, nodding sagaciously. ‘But your week is up and you have nothing to show for it?’

  ‘Well.’ She looked at him speculatively. ‘I’ve been doing some thinking. And it seems to me that I’ve been letting them take me for granted. They have their own set of assumptions about how I should behave, and if I let them apply those assumptions to me they’ll back me into a corner. So I need to do something, acquire leverage. Make them let me alone.’

  ‘That could be dangerous,’ Erasmus said neutrally.

  ‘You bet it’s dangerous!’ Miriam rolled her teacup between her hands, fidgeting. ‘They’ve got my mother.’ Tight-lipped: ‘She’s dependent on certain medicines. They think that’s enough to get a handle on me. But if I can establish my autonomy, I can provide her meds. I just have to get them to leave me alone.’

  ‘Hmm. As I understood it, when you first told me about your turbulent family, they wouldn’t leave you alone because you signify an inheritance of enormous wealth, is that not the case?’ He raised an eyebrow at her.

  ‘Yes,’ she said grudgingly. ‘Not that it makes a lot of difference to me.’

  ‘Hah. Perhaps not, but they might be reluctant to leave you alone not because they insist on controlling you for control’s own sake but because they fear the disposition of such wealth in directions inimical to their own interests. In which case you will need a tool with which to express your urgency somewhat persuasively . . .’

  ‘I was leaning toward blackmail, myself.’ She frowned. ‘Their pressure is relatively subtle, social expectations and so forth. There are lots of secrets in this kind of culture, embarrassing facts best not aired in public and so on. Given a handful of truths it’s possible to suggest to people that they butt out’ – her expression brightened – ‘and if there’s one thing I’m told I’m good at, it’s digging up embarrassing truths.’

  Erasmus tried again. ‘But, that is to say – you are applying your not-inconsiderable reasoning skills to this as a social paradox. Your real problem is a temporal, political one. If you try to blackmail them – ’

  ‘They’re aristocrats. The personal is political,’ she said dismissively. ‘Once you get a pig by the nose, its body will follow, right?’

  ‘Right,’ he agreed, reluctantly.

  ‘I’d better hope so,’ she added, ‘because if I’m wrong about them, well, it doesn’t bear thinking about. So I’m not going to worry about it. But everything I’ve seen so far tells me that it’s going to work. Matthias blackmailed Roland . . .’ She stared bleakly at the thin patina of dust on top of the lid of Erasmus’s piano. ‘Blackmail seems to be a way of life inside the Clan. So I’d better get with the program.’

  *

  ‘Hi, Paulie!’

  Miriam waved from across the station concourse, smiling when Paulette spotted her and headed straight to where she was standing.

  ‘Hey, Miriam, that’s a great coat! You’re looking good. Listen, there’s this new brasserie just outside the center, you up to eating or do you just want to hang out? We could go back to the office – ’

  ‘Eating would be good.’ Miriam rubbed her forehead. ‘Made two crossings this morning; I need something in my stomach so I can take the ibuprofen.’ She winced theatrically. ‘I’d rather not go near the office,’ she added quietly as Paulie led her toward one of the side doors of the station. ‘Too much chance someone’s bugged it.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Paulette didn’t break stride: not that Miriam had expected her to. Back when Miriam had been a senior reporter for The Industry Weatherman Paulette had been her research assistant – right up until one of Miriam’s investigations had gotten them both escorted off the premises with extreme prejudice. Then when Miriam had gotten mixed up with the Clan she’d hired Paulie to look after her interests back home in Boston, United States timeline. Paulette knew about the Clan, had grown up in a tough neighborhood where some of the residents had mob connections. Angbard knew about Paulette, which meant there was a very real risk the office was indeed bugged, and thus Miriam had arranged to meet up with her at Penn Station.

  The brasserie was crowded but not totally logjammed yet, and Paulette managed to get them a table near the back. ‘I need breakfast,’ Miriam said. ‘What’s good?’

  ‘The bruschetta’s passable, and I was going to go for the spaghetti alle polpette. To drink, the usual hangover juice, right?’

  ‘Yeah, a double OJ it is.’ At which point the waitress caught up with them and Miriam held back until Paulette had ordered. ‘Now, did you get me the stuff I asked for?’

  ‘Sure.’ Miriam felt something against her leg – the plastic shopping bag Paulie had been carrying. It was surprisingly heavy – lots of paper, a box file per
haps. ‘It’s in there.’

  ‘Okay. All of that is for me?’

  Paulette grinned. ‘Give me credit.’

  ‘Yeah, I know you’re good – but that much?’

  ‘I have my ways,’ Paulie said. Quieter: ‘Don’t worry, I kept it low-key. First up are the public filings, SEC stuff, all hard copy. The downloads I did in an internet cafe, using an anonymous Hotmail account I never access from home. To pay for the searches, I got an account with a special online bank: they issue one-time credit card numbers you can use to pay for something over the Net. The idea is, you use the number once, the transaction is charged to your account at the bank, then the number goes away. Anyone wants to trace me, they’re going to have to break the bank’s security first, okay?’

  ‘You’ve been getting very good at the anonymous stuff.’

  ‘Knowing whose toes you might be treading on kind of incentivized me! I’m not planning on taking any risks. Look, at first sight it all looks kosher – I mean, the clinic is just a straightforward reproductive medicine outfit, specializing in fertility problems, and the company you fingered, Applied Genomics, is a respectable pharmaceutical outfit. They manufacture diagnostic instruments, specializing in lab tests for inborn errors of metabolism: simple test-tube stuff that’s easy to use in the field. They’ve got a neat line in HIV testing kits for the developing world, that kind of thing. You were right about a connection, though. Next in the stack after the filings, well, I found this S.503(c) charity called the Humana Reproductive Assistance Foundation. Applied Genomics pays a big chunk of money to HRAF every year and none of the shareholders have ever queried it, even though it’s in six or sometimes seven figures. HRAF in turn looks pretty kosher, but what I was able to tell is that for the past twenty years they’ve been feeding money to a whole bundle of fertility clinics. The money is earmarked for programs to help infertile couples have children – what is this, Miriam? If it’s another of your money-laundering leads, it looks like a dead end.’

  ‘It’s not a money-laundering lead. I think it really is a fertility clinic.’ The drinks arrived and Miriam paused to take a tablet and wash it down with freshly squeezed orange juice. ‘It’s something else I ran across, okay?’

  Paulette glanced away.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap. Been having a shitty time lately.’

  ‘You have?’ Paulette shook her head, then looked back at Miriam. ‘Things haven’t been so rosy here, either.’

  ‘Oh no. You go first, okay?’

  ‘Nah, it’s nothing. Man trouble, no real direction. You’ve heard it all before.’ Paulie backed off and Miriam eyed her suspiciously.

  ‘You’re tap-dancing around on account of Roland, aren’t you? Well, there’s no need to do that. I’ve – I’ve gotten used to it.’ Miriam glanced down as the waitress slid a platter of bruschetta onto the table in front of her. ‘It doesn’t get any better, but it gets easier to deal with the, with the . . .’ She gave up and picked up a piece of the bread, nibbling on it to conceal her sudden spasm of depression.

  ‘So call me an insensitive cow, but what else is eating you?’ Paulette asked.

  ‘It’s’ – Miriam waved a hand, her mouth full – ‘reproductive politics. You’d think they’d figure I’m too old for it but no, you’re never too old for the Clan to start looking for something to do with your ovaries. Fallout from the civil war they had a few decades ago: they don’t have enough world-walkers, so the pressure is on those they do have to breed like a bunny. But I didn’t have the story completely straight before. You know all the stuff about arranged marriages I told you? I should have asked who did the arranging. It turns out to be the old ladies, everyone’s grandmother. There’s a lot of status tied up in it, and it seems I got a whole bunch of great-aunts ticked off at me just because I exist. To make matters worse, Ma’s turned strange on me – she’s gone native, even seems to be playing along with the whole business. I think she’s being blackmailed, crudely, over her medication. The king, his mother’s part of the Clan, he’s trying to set up the younger son, who is a basket case into the bargain – brain damage at an early age – and he’s got me in his sights. And the elder son seems to have decided to hate me for some reason. Don’t know if it’s connected, but there’s more.’ Miriam took another mouthful of orange juice before she could continue.

  ‘I ran across this secret memo, from the director of the Gerstein Center to Angbard, of all people, talking about the results of some project that Applied Genomics is funding. And I smell a rat. A great, big, dead-and-decomposing-under-the-front-stoop, reproductive politics rodent. Angbard is paying for in-vitro fertilization treatments. Meanwhile everybody keeps yammering about how few world-walkers there are and how it’s every woman’s duty to spawn like a rabbit, and then there’s this stuff about looking for W-star heterozygotes. Carriers for some kind of gene-linked trait, in other words. And I just learned of a genetic test that’s become available in the past year, god knows from where, that can tell if someone’s a carrier or an active world-walker. You fill in the dotted lines, Paulie – you tell me I’m not imagining things, okay?’ Miriam realized her voice had risen, and she looked around hastily, but the restaurant was busy and the background racket was loud enough to cover her.

  Paulette stared at her, clutching her bread knife in one fist as if it were the emergency inflation toggle on a life jacket. ‘I’ve never heard such a . . . !’ She put the knife down, very carefully. ‘You’re serious.’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Miriam took another bite of bruschetta. It tasted of cardboard, despite the olive oil and chopped tomato. ‘What would be the point of being flippant?’

  Paulette picked up her bruschetta and nibbled at it. ‘That is so monumentally paranoid that I don’t know where to begin. You think Angbard is paying for IVF for these families and using donors from the Clan.’ She thought for a minute. ‘It wouldn’t work, would it? They wouldn’t be world-walkers?’

  ‘Not as I understand it, no.’ Miriam finished her starter. The din and clatter of the restaurant was making her headache worse. ‘But they’d have a huge pool of, in effect, outer family members. Half of them female. Thousands, adding many hundreds more every year. Suppose – how long has this been going on for? How long has HRAF been going?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Paulette looked uncomfortable. ‘Sixteen years?’

  ‘Okay. Suppose. Imagine HRAF is about creating a pool of outer family people living in the United States who don’t know what they are. In, say, another five years they start hitting age twenty-one. Six hundred . . . call it three hundred women a year. HRAF have their details. They send them all letters asking if they’re willing to accept money to be surrogate mothers. What does a surrogate cost – ten, twenty thousand bucks? Maybe nine out of ten will say no, but that leaves thirty women, each of whom can provide a new world-walker every year – or walkers, you’re not going to tell me that the Gerstein Center isn’t going to dose them to try for twins or triplets. Call it fifty new world-walkers per year. Say half of the surrogate mothers agree to continue for four years, and you’ve got, let’s see, a hundred and twenty-five new world-walkers per annual cohort from Angbard’s breeding program. Paulie, there are only about a thousand world-walkers in the Clan! In just eight years, half the world-walkers will come from this scheme – in twenty years, they’ll outnumber the Clan’s native-born world-walkers, even if the average Clan female produces four world-walking children.’ She drank the rest of her orange juice.

  ‘It’s like that movie, The Boys from Brazil,’ Paulie said. ‘Cloning up an army of bad guys and making sure they’re raised loyal to the cause.’ She looked uncomfortable. ‘Miriam, I met Angbard. He isn’t the type to do that.’

  ‘Um. No.’ Miriam stared at her plate. All of a sudden she didn’t feel hungry. ‘Charming, ruthless, and manipulative, I’ll grant you. Liable to back a conspiracy to create a test-tube master race? I’m – I’m not seeing it either. Except, I saw that memo! With my own eyes! If it�
��s real, it looks like there’s something really smelly going on at that clinic. And I need to get a handle on it.’

  ‘Why?’ Paulette stabbed at her bruschetta with a knife. ‘What is getting into you, Miriam? What have they got on you?’

  ‘They –’ She stopped for a moment. ‘Blackmail is business as usual. I figure I need to get an edge of my own, before they marry me off to the Idiot Prince. Simple as that.’

  ‘Huh.’ Paulette put her knife down with exaggerated care. ‘Miriam. I told you about what things were like when I was growing up.’

  ‘Yes.’ Miriam nodded. ‘Wiseguys. Well, I was born into the mob, I guess, so using their own tactics – blackmail seems to be the family sport – ’

  ‘Miriam!’ Paulette reached across the table and took her hand. ‘Listen. As your agent, and as your legal adviser, I would really be a lot happier if you would drop this. You’re right, the clinic shit sounds dirty. But if your uncle is involved, it means there’s money involved too, or security. The tough guys, they used to cut their wives and children a lot of slack – as long as they didn’t try to nose in on the business. You see what I’m saying? This is family business and they’re going to take it a whole lot differently if you go digging – ’

  ‘Nuh-uh, no way.’ Miriam shook her head vehemently. ‘I know them, Paulie. They’re more medieval than that. Everything is on the outside, you know? Their politics is entirely personal. So’s their business. If I get the goods on this scheme, then I’ve got a handle on whoever’s running it –’ Miriam stopped dead as the waitress sashayed in and scooped up her plate with a smile.