Rule 34

by Charles Stross

  You check the phone wiki again and again. Digging deeper, looking for clues. Then a thought strikes you, and thirty seconds later you’ve got another number. You feed another contact to the phone app, and ten seconds later a voice answers you in the flattened vowels of London’s East End: “’ Ello, you’ve reached the consulate of the Independent Republic of Issyk-Kulistan. How can I help you?”

  I not we, you notice. “Hi,” you say, “this is Anwar, at the Scottish consulate. Listen, can you tell me, have you had any email through from the Ministry since Monday afternoon?”

  It takes a minute or two for you to get Mr. East-Ender to grudgingly acknowledge your identity, and another minute for him to get the picture, but by the time you put the phone down, you know two new facts: that IRIK have only bothered to establish a one-man consular presence in England, and no, he hasn’t heard anything from head office either.

  Your moustache twitches at the half-imagined odour of dead Rattus norvegicus, and you turn to your browser. There are news aggregators and search engines and attention proxies, and you are a master of the web, a veritable expert. Even though you’re having to pipe everything through a mess of translation agents, it is but the work of half an hour for you to churn through a hundred searches, refining and reducing and recycling your terms until you’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s not going on. There’s no public holiday today. There are no football matches, riots, or debates going on in the chamber of deputies. More significantly, a bit more digging reveals that there are no bandits, bank robberies, or bombings. In fact, Issyk-Kulistan is a bit of a news black hole. It’s as if a cone of Internet silence has descended across the entire country, and nobody outside has noticed.

  Your skin crawls; you’re running low on excuses. If Adam’s right—then the sock-puppet nation is about to be wadded up and thrown away. And you know too damned much. You know about empty-eyed men with suitcases they want you to look after, and trade delegations with bags of not-bread mix. You don’t have to be Inspector Rebus to know what happens to bagmen who aren’t sitting tight when the music stops.

  You try a different strategy and waste a few minutes hunting for notifications of service outages afflicting the major trunks in and out of the country. Then you have a moment of blinding realization.

  Voice mail.

  You flip through the Ministry’s online directory until you come to a different section. With a shaky finger, you drag the address card into your phone and prod the connect button, already rehearsing your abject apologies. It rings twice, then a man answers it, speaking an unfamiliar language. There’s music in the background, tinny voices singing. “Hello?” you say tentatively: “Is Colonel Datka there?”

  “One moment.” The speaker’s English is very good, almost unaccented. There’s a scraping sound, as of a hand covering a mobile phone, some muffled conversation. “Felix is tied up right now, but he’ll be along in a minute. Who should I say is calling?”

  Your tongue swells abruptly, and you cough. “To whom am I speaking?”

  “This is Bhaskar.” Whoever Bhaskar is, he sounds amused. “And you are?”

  “This is the Scottish consulate,” you say, your voice barely above a dry-mouthed whisper. “I need to talk to the colonel.”

  “The—you say the Scottish consulate?”

  “Yes.” You swallow, hoping the phone app they gave you is adequately encrypted. “There’s a problem.”

  “A problem. And for this problem you need to talk to Felix Datka.” His tone sharpens.

  “Yes.” You realize you’re clutching the edge of your desk as if it’s a life-belt. “I know what you’re doing, what you’re using me for, and I don’t, I can’t . . .”

  “Wait, please. Ah, Felix—you, you had better explain this to the colonel himself. He will speak to you now.” There’s a muffled noise, as of a phone being passed between hands, and then a new speaker.

  “This is Felix Datka. Identify yourself.”

  The background music has stopped. “It’s Anwar, Anwar Hussein. From Edinburgh, your honorary consul.”

  The colonel snorts superciliously. “And you are calling because . . . ?”

  All your indignation comes boiling up at once.

  “My cousin’s dead, Colonel. Since your man arrived in my city, with his curious demands. Surely this is not a coincidence? And it is not bad enough being held up to ridicule by the other diplomats of this city, oh no! Everybody knows that Issyk-Kulistan is a front for some strange diplomatic game. And the trade delegations with the bread mix that is a culture medium for illegal nanosystems, you have me handing this stuff out openly as if on the street-corner! Where the police can find me, red-handed! And this week, this week even the news stops. There is no news, as if you cannot even be bothered to maintain the pretense! Have you no decency, sir?”

  There is no sound from the other end of the phone, but a glance at the screen tells you the connection is still there.

  “Sir?”

  There is a pause. Then Datka asks, softly, meditatively, terrifyingly: “What do you mean, ‘bread mix’?”

  Light-headed and nauseous, you collect your possessions and walk out of the consulate. You leave behind: the safe and its contents, the travelling trunk with its commercial samples of bread mix, the laptop, the furnishings, the stale posturing and lies. You are going home, home to your family and your future and the things that matter to you. Fuck Adam and his stupid get-rich-quick scheme, scamming scammers. Fuck Colonel Datka and his secret policeman’s eyes. Fuck the colonel’s man Christie, whoever he is. You don’t need any of them. They can’t give you back Tariq’s annoying jokes, his sly word-play. They can’t give you an extra minute to say good-bye to your cousin. And if they can’t do that, how heavily should your children’s futures weigh on your shoulders?

  If it comes to it, you’ll turn yourself in to Mr. Webber and shop the lot of them. Go back inside Saughton, if that’s what it takes to keep them away from Bibi and the bairns.

  You are hungry—you forgot to make yourself breakfast this morning—and you are sick at heart as you march determinedly towards the tram stop. You’re walking away from a good solid job that was paying you—well, it wasn’t paying you well in purely monetary terms, but it got you respect. And after what you threw in Colonel Datka’s face (or more accurately, his ear) you have zero expectation of keeping the job. Bibi will be livid. She’ll also be exhausted from sitting up all night with Aunt Sameena and Uncle Taleb and the kids, and she’s probably back at work by now—

  Yes, you can see all this. Nevertheless.

  You check your phone for the tram schedule, and it flashes a red warning at you: delays expected due to an accident on Leith Walk, get the bus instead. You can see at least one tram with your own eyes, but who knows how the network works? So you stop by the foot of the Mound, outside the big art gallery, and poke at the time-table. You’ve hit the morning lull after rush hour, it seems, when half the buses return to their depots. Irritated, you put your phone away and start walking. It’s only a couple of kilometres, and the weather’s fine. You’ll even chance a short-cut over the Mound, normally a steep climb best left to the buses’ fuel cell.

  Halfway up the first flight of worn stone steps behind the gallery, your phone shivers. You glance at it, startled. It’s an invite to join a new start-up group on some business network, one of the half-assed by-blows of LinkedIn and Facebook that offer virtual corporate hosting to folks too cheap to rent an office. Somehow it’s dodged your spam stack. You’re about to flag it when you see the sender’s name. JOHN CHRISTIE. You mash your thumb on the delete icon with a shudder, like you’re crushing a sleepy autumn wasp. A minute later, the phone buzzes again: It’s a different invite, this time for some kind of file repository. Same sender. The menacing buzz of the hornet circling your head, looking to sting: He’s relying on your natural curiosity to make you break cover, nose inquisitively into his new business scheme. It’s a trap, of course. You’ve had enough. You flip the ph
one to flight mode and pocket it. It’s not like you need a map to find your way home, and when you get there, you’ll—

  What will you do?

  You’re breathing harder as you climb faster, but you know exactly what you’re going to do. You’re going to take his luggage and dump it out the back yard. You’re going to call Inspector Butthurt and cough everything you suspect, the weird coincidences, the job that’s too good to be true. Give them the bucket, the bread mix, and Colonel Datka’s phone number, much good may it do them. You’re going clean, the cleanest you’ve been: an end to the tears and the in-between . . . yes. Get your priorities right: Naseem, Farida, Bibi, your parents and uncles and aunts and cousins and nephews and nieces and family—

  There’s a buzzing as of an angry swarm of bees from your pocket, then your phone rings.

  You pull it out and stare at it. It’s in flight mode: How can this be? It’s ringing, though. The screen says INTERNATIONAL CALL.

  You answer the phone. “Hello.”

  The voice at the other end of the connection is heavily accented, male. “Presidential palace,” it says. “Please wait.”

  You stop and lean on the iron railing near the top of the steps, just below the intersection with Market Street. Turning to face back the way you came, you stare out across the deep gulf of Princes Street Gardens, the classical stone pile of the Royal Scottish Academy, towards the stony frontages of the New Town, blocks hacked out of history. There’s a light breeze blowing, and high above you it tears cotton-wool shards from the passing clouds. There’s a sour taste in your mouth. After a moment you realize it’s fear.

  A new voice, gravelly, with a faint American accent: “Good afternoon. Am I speaking to Mr. Anwar Hussein?” You half recognize it, but you can’t quite place where you’ve heard him before.

  “Yes,” you say cautiously.

  “Excellent. Please accept my apologies for intruding on you—I understand, I’m told, you have recently had a death in your family?”

  “Yes.” You bite your lower lip, then glance around. Just in case somebody’s watching you.

  “I’m very sorry about that.” A momentary pause. “I gather that when you called Felix Datka half an hour ago, we had a slight misunderstanding.”

  “I resigned,” you say icily, tightening the shreds of your dignity around you.

  “Yes, he told me that. Mr. Hussein—Anwar—I want to explain to you: Matters are not so simple that you can just resign.”

  You’d tell him to fuck right off except he rang through to your phone while it was in flight mode, and that’s supposed to be impossible, isn’t it? Or isn’t there a backdoor for the emergency services? You vaguely remember hearing something about that, something about external emergency reactivation—“I’m quitting,” you repeat, less firmly. “Who are you, anyway?”

  “I’m Colonel Felix Datka’s boss,” says the man on the phone. “You can call me Bhaskar. Or Professor Tanayev. I am, very indirectly, your employer. Or ex-employer, if you insist on resigning.”

  The tram bells far below might as well be fire alarms, telling you to get out now. “Professor Tanayev. You’re the colonel’s boss? How exactly does that work?”

  He chuckles. “They can kick me out of the presidential palace, but they can’t strip me of tenure.”

  Silence. You realize you’re clutching the phone like it’s turned into a gold brick between your fingers. “President of Issyk-Kulistan?”

  “No; President of Kyrgyzstan. Issyk-Kulistan is a wholly-owned subsidiary operated by a shell company, if you prefer a business metaphor. Felix’s job is to keep IRIK running for as long as we need it.”

  Now you cringe and start looking round. But not for snoopers; you’re more worried about assassination drones cruising overhead, looking for a lock on your skull. “Why are you interested in me?”

  “Because you’ve been approached by a highly questionable business man working for a foreign private-equity organization. They’re not angel investors so much as fallen angels—please stop looking around like that, you will only attract unwanted attention—and it is important to us that this business man should not be frightened away or prematurely introduced to the police—yes, I said prematurely. Mr. Hussein, are you paying attention? Hello?”

  There’s a stream of traffic flowing along Bank Street, and you’ll only get yourself run over if you try and dash across it. The crawling sensation in the small of your back won’t go away, but the fire in your lungs is growing, so you stop, bent over, wheezing (so out of shape! Bibi will scold you!), and hold the phone to your ear again.

  “Hello? Hello?”

  May you come to the attention of important people: Supposedly it’s an ancient Chinese curse, but the modern Kyrgyz version has got you bang to rights. “I’m here.”

  “Excellent. Listen, Mr. Hussein, Anwar—may I call you Anwar? This is only for the next day or so. You have heard of, ah, sting operations? A sting is in progress, and your consular post is part of the bait. We would like you to continue with the job and comply with any of John Christie’s requests—if they remain reasonable, of course—while we gather evidence against his associates. For whose arrest there will be a generous reward, incidentally. Colonel Datka assures me that this fellow is the key to a major international criminal investigation, and he will see to it that Europol treat you as a material witness when—”

  “What about the bread mix?” you burst out.

  “The what?”

  You have never heard a president sound confused before. (Not that you’ve ever knowingly spoken to a president before—it’s not like they’re on Facebook, sending friend requests—but it’s not what you expect from seeing them on the political blogs.)

  “The bread mix,” you repeat. “INSECT-FREE FAIR TRADE ORGANIC BREAD MIX BARLEY-RYE, Produce of People’s Number Four Grain Products Factory of Issyk-Kulistan. That I’m supposed to give samples of to visitors, and never put in a bucket and ferment with a special extra ingredient.”

  There’s noise on the line, as the president speaks away from his headset, his tone rising imperiously: “Felix, what’s this I hear about our consulate receiving bread mix?” There is a delay. “Oh, I see. Mr. Hussein, you are not to worry about the bread mix. Apparently the—criminals—we have been investigating have parasites. They’ve been using your consulate for drop-shipping contraband, but you should not worry about this. It is minor, and if you play your part for just a little while longer, we will arrest them all. Including this Christie person. I will ensure that you are well looked after, you have my word on the matter. If you’ll excuse me, I must go now. Just remember: Play for time. Good-bye for now!”

  Your phone goes dead, and you blink at the screen. It is, indeed, in flight mode. Then you look up. High above the roof-tops, twenty or fifty metres up, the grey discus of a surveillance drone ghosts past the elaborate columns and stone railings and domes of the former bank headquarters.

  Blink and it’s gone: But the sensation that you are being watched remains.

  DOROTHY: Rewind

  Flashback:

  The door opens. You take a step forward into Liz’s open arms, and her friendly face and welcoming hug is just too much. You tear up as you slump chin first onto her shoulder. She tenses up for a moment, then relaxes. “Oh hell. Let’s get you inside.” Two steps forward, the door closes, and you find a futon behind you. You crumple slowly backwards on it.

  Gentle words: Liz fusses around, offering tissues, tea, and sympathy. But, inevitably, the question you’ve been dreading arrives: “What happened?”

  You open your mouth and find the words have gone missing. I don’t know.

  Liz squats in front of you. Takes your right hand in her own, strokes the back of your wrist. She looks—intent. Focussed. You try to speak again, but end up shaking your head.

  “Is it the stalker?” she asks.

  “I—” You’re appalled at your inarticulacy. “I don’t know. Didn’t think so. Not sure now. I’ve been so s
tupid.” Sniff. Is this self-pity or anger, filling the spring of tears? Which is it? “I, uh, I wasn’t telling the truth the other night. When I said Julian was in Moscow.”

  “No?” She’s waiting, hopeful and loyal and . . . just being there. You don’t deserve this.

  “He dumped me a couple of months ago,” you mutter, not meeting her eyes. “I’m not myself right now.”

  “What happened?” she asks, gently stroking your wrist and watching you with inquisitor’s eyes, not accusing, mildly curious.

  You tell her. Then, when she doesn’t explode in a fiery octopus of molten blame, you tell her some more. Being conflicted. Wanting a casual pick-up. Dinner with Christie, and dessert, and, and.

  She listens quietly until you get to the way he chucked you out, and what you thought, the safeword. “Did he rape you?” she asks, gently enough. But you can feel the tension in her fingertips, rubbing.

  “No. Yes. Maybe: I’m not sure.” You take a deep, ragged breath. “I . . . it was regrettable sex. I shouldn’t have done it and felt really bad afterwards, kind of sick . . . I think he might have raped me, if I’d wanted to stop short. But we didn’t go there. Not at that time.”

  “At. That time.” Her finger motion stops, leaving your wrist limp and open to the air. She’s pulled completely away, withdrawn without your noticing. “What happened then?”

  You take a deep breath. “That’s when it got weird. I went back to my room, wedged the door. Then there was a work email.”

  “Work.” You’ve been avoiding eye contact up to now, afraid of seeing what your confession is doing to her. But you force yourself to look up. To your surprise, she looks thoughtful. There’s no contempt or anger or hatred; she looks almost . . . business-like? “What kind of work?”