Halting State

by Charles Stross

  “Ah, Miss Barnaby.” He smiles, affably. “And Mr. Reed is about, I take it?” He holds up a keyfob. “Come drive with me.”

  You know an order when you hear one, but you still bridle at it: “You’ll have to do better than that!”

  “Yes.” He puts his smile back in its box. “It’s time to do breakfast. Today’s going to be a busy day.”

  “The hell it is.” Seeing Wayne laid out on the slab turned your stomach. “I didn’t sign on for this, Barry, I signed on for an artificial reality game, not Raw-head and Bloody-bones. We—I—quit.”

  He shakes his head. “I wish you could, believe me, I wish you could.”

  “Could what?” Jack chooses just this exact moment to pop out of the lavatory, shaking his head in ground-hog confusion. “What’s up?”

  “We’re doing breakfast. I was just explaining to Miss Barnaby that it’s too late to opt out.”

  “The hell it is—”

  You turn away, but he’s too fast: “They have your number, Elaine. I’d let you go—but Team Red won’t.”

  Whoops. You stop, and take a deep, angry breath. “I think you owe us an explanation.”

  “Over breakfast? I’m buying.”

  “Mm, breakfast,” says Jack, doing a convincing imitation of a dumb-ass cartoon character.

  “Fuck off…” But it’s too late, you’re outvoted, and besides, you’re wearing his trousers. What else is there to do but listen to Michaels’s pitch?

  Michaels leads you down an alley-way, across a main road, and into a gloomy-looking pub built into what looks to have been a mediaeval dungeon—all vaulted stone archways a metre and a half high, complete with blackened oak barrels wearing restaurant-drag table-tops. There are TV screens everywhere, as if trying to deny the essentially antediluvian origins of the place, but they can’t cover up the pervasive smell of rising damp. “The cooked breakfast here is really quite good,” Michaels asserts, “very twentieth-century Scottish.”

  You let yourself be steered into ordering the cooked breakfast. You’re a good girl and you take your prophylactic statins every evening religiously: Saturated fats can hold no fear for you, at least in moderation and followed by a penance of tossed green salad.

  “We should be secure in here,” Michaels explains over the top of the menu: “The walls are three feet thick and made of solid stone. People used to avoid the place—they couldn’t get a phone signal inside, and installing wifi was pointless—until a particularly bright landlord figured out she could make money by pitching it as a stuckist hangout.” And indeed when you look at your phone you see you’ve got zero bars of signal, even though you’re within sight of a window looking out onto the canyonlike depths of the Cowgate.

  “So you wanted to tenderize us before breakfast.” Jack leans back against the bare stone wall. “Was that what that little piece of Grand Guignol back at the mortuary was all about, then?”

  Michaels has the decency to look abashed. “That’s a bit unfair.”

  “Really?” You glare at him. “The police roust us out of bed to come and view a body, and you just happen to be passing? Pull the other one!”

  Michaels picks up a fork and stabs it in your direction: “Next you’ll be accusing me of murdering poor Wayne. Can you get it through your thick head that it’s not about you?”

  “If it’s not about us, then who killed Wayne?” asks Jack.

  Michaels frowns. “I wish I knew,” he mutters, shoving his unruly forelock back into place. “Oh, I mean it was clearly Team Red who did it—but the why of it is another matter.”

  Jack tenses. “I heard something,” he says, reluctantly.

  “Yes?” Michaels raises an eyebrow.

  “When I was working late. Day before yesterday.”

  You feel like shaking him. “What did you—” Michaels holds up a hand.

  “I was on my way out, about elevenish. Most of the lights were out. I heard a couple of voices arguing in one of the meeting rooms. One of them was—I’m pretty sure of this—Wayne Richardson.” He winces. “I don’t know who the other was. Male, that’s all. I thought you might know.”

  Michaels is looking at Jack incredulously. “You don’t know who it was?”

  “No.” Jack looks frustrated. “It’s rude to listen at doors, did you know that…?”

  You bite your lower lip. It would not do to giggle at this point, they’d both get entirely the wrong idea about you, and that would be a mistake. Poor Jack: too honest for his own good. But you knew that already, didn’t you?

  “Oh Jesus fucking Christ,” Michaels says disgustedly. “You thought it was me?”

  Jack just sits there, looking defensive.

  “Well, why didn’t you say so before?” Michaels demands.

  This has gone far enough. “Stop that!” you tell him. “Jack had no good reason to trust you, yesterday.” You’re not sure he has any reason to do so today, either. You take a stab in the dark. “Why should we trust you?”

  Michaels is about to say something, but Jack beats him to it. “Someone’s penetrated your operation,” he says, remarkably calmly. “And you don’t know who. They were working with Wayne, weren’t they?”

  “Go on.” Michaels rolls with the punch.

  Jack swallows. “Let’s start with, who is Nigel MacDonald a cover for?” When Michaels doesn’t respond, he raises an eyebrow. “Well?”

  Michaels shakes his head pensively. “There used to be an old joke in role-playing circles—it isn’t funny, these days—that there were only a thousand real people in the UK—everybody else was a non-player character. Now it’s pretty much the reverse.”

  That’s worth blinking at. You can’t quite picture the urbane establishment-issue Barry Michaels as a spotty teenage D&Der, but it would explain his current position, wouldn’t it? SPOOKS has got to have taken years to develop—it’s clearly a long-term project—which implies funding and pilot projects and all sorts of R&D behind it.

  “Nigel MacDonald was a useful sock-puppet for the SPOOKS development group at CESG,” he says slowly. “He was there so they could interact with the staff quants without tipping them off that they were actually talking to various people inside the Doughnut.”

  “The Doughnut?”

  “Cheltenham.” He frowns. “So we had this telecommuter on the payroll. Wayne tapped me on the shoulder about him a year ago when he realized Nigel didn’t actually live anywhere—he figured there was a payroll scam going on. So I rolled out the cover story and told Wayne to play along.”

  Jack nods thoughtfully. “What’s the cover?” He sounds resigned, almost as if he can guess what’s coming.

  “Hayek Associates play by the rules—officially.” Michaels bares his teeth, briefly. “We don’t have a dirty-tricks department, officially.”

  “Ah.” Jack looks satisfied, but you’re anything but. “What kind of dirty tricks?” you demand.

  “The industry—the games biz—has a habit of playing dirty. Keeping players happy is all about fun, isn’t it?” says Michaels. “So by extension, a tool that can tweak how much fun you’re having in a given game can also…”

  “He’s talking about sabotage tools,” Jack cuts in. He gives Michaels a hard look. “That was your story for Wayne?”

  Michaels nods. “Yes, basically. If we ever had to do anything deniable, we wanted a scapegoat to pin it on.”

  “What did Wayne do after you told him that?” Jacks asks.

  “He played along.” Michaels looks thoughtful. “He suggested we flesh out the role, actually. Rent a flat, pay the bills, work up a credit history, so we’d have something to look shocked about if anyone ever started digging.” He looks straight at you: “When the police broke down the MacDonald residence door and found a blacknet node, that was a shock. But by that point the cover story was out, so it could have been anyone at Hayek Associates, really. But that”—he nods at Jack, with an expression something like respect—“is when we realized we had a real problem. Now we know that
part of the problem was Wayne. The question is, who else is involved?”

  You swallow. It’s time to lay some cards of your own on the table. “I don’t like this game, Barry. I came up here to audit a bank, not identify murder victims.” (Or be abducted by kamikaze taxis, or conscripted by the secret service.) “I’m not cut out for this, and neither is Jack.”

  “Really? I’d never have guessed,” he snarks at you. “Before you get on your high horse, I’d like to say that you’re absolutely wrong about that last bit. You’re here because you’re both graduates of an extensive training course. Only you didn’t see it as training, you paid to subscribe to it; it’s the difference between work and play, nothing more. You’re complaining now because something you used to do for fun turns out to be a paying career—”

  “Paying?” Jack asks sharply.

  “Who the hell do you think is footing the bill for the contract you gouged out of CapG?” Michaels raises an eyebrow. “It wasn’t just the stuff you listed on your CV, Jack. We know about the other. The tools. You’ve got exactly what we need for this job.” Then he turns to you: “You also, even though three-quarters of what we’re paying for your services is going into Dietrich-Brunner’s coffers—you’d do better to go freelance.” While you’re gasping indignantly, he adds, “I’m not going to make the mistake of appealing to your patriotism: It’s a deflating currency these days, and an ambiguous one. But I would like to put a word in for ethics, fair play, and enlightened self-interest. It’s not good for any of us to let Team Red run around hijacking certain, ah, critical systems—and killing people.” (He’s clearly got something in mind other than Avalon Four or the Zonespace game platform, and you find his fastidious reluctance to name things extremely disturbing.) “This isn’t the Great Game as it was played in the 1870s, in the high plateaus of central Asia; it’s the extension of diplomacy by other means into the medium of virtual worlds. It wouldn’t be necessary if those virtual worlds didn’t have entry points back into the net at large, or if we used virtual realms only for gaming—but you get the picture.”

  And indeed you do. It’s a heady mixture of blackmail, flattery, appeals to your idealism, and a play for your self-interest, all rolled into one. You’d resent it even more if you weren’t compelled to sit back and admire the sheer brass-necked cheek of his approach. “You forgot to mention the kitten,” you say.

  “The kitten?” Michaels looks nonplussed.

  “If we don’t help you, you’ll have to drown the cute widdle kitten, and it’ll all be our fault.” You glare at him, but it just glances off the glacis of his self-confidence. Michaels’s confidence is disturbing, almost religious in its unshakable faith. Never trust a man who thinks his religion gives him all the answers. “Never mind. What are you trying so hard to get us to do?”

  “What you’ve already been doing. You’ve already spooked one of our security problems into running and given us a handle on another.” He contrives to look innocent as one of the bar staff slopes by and deposits a bowl stuffed with small condiment sachets on your barrel top.

  “But you’ve been penetrated—”

  “Not just us, the entire country. Which is why there’s a very quiet panic going on today as the police go onto a civil contingencies footing and couriers distribute new one-time pads to all the telcos. Once that’s done, we can re-authenticate the entire backbone, and at that point we’ll have locked out Team Red. The trouble is, someone on the inside—and I doubt it was Wayne, he wasn’t clueful enough to pull a stunt like that—sold them a copy of the old pad via the blacknet, and I want to know who. If we don’t identify them, the whole operation’s a waste of time. But I think there’s a very good chance that if you just keep doing what you’ve been doing, you’ll make them break cover.”

  The waiter is back, with two portions of coronary artery disease and a heart attack on the side. Michaels waits while he slides the traditional Scottish cuisine under your respective noses, then clears his throat. “Someone inside Hayek Associates used the Nigel MacDonald sock-puppet as a safe house for a criminal blacknet, then sold the crown jewels.” He bares his teeth as he hacks away at something that looks like a square of deep-fried sausage meat with his steak knife. “None of us is safe until they’re out of the way.”

  Jack glances at you and silently shakes his head. There’s something speared on his fork, waiting in front of his open mouth—the naked cooked Scottish breakfast. You don’t want to look at it.

  “Why?” you persist.

  “Because…” Michaels looks confused.

  “Why us? As opposed to any other specialists you might have on tap, already working in your department?”

  “Oh.” His face clears. “Because you’re not part of the core intelligence group—sorry, but that’s the fact of it. You don’t know enough about us to give anything significant away: You’re outsiders. Skilled, highly trained outsiders. Just like Team Red, actually. Nobody sends real spies these days; everything’s very hands-off. Anyway, once the mole is out of the way and the backbone is secure, their controls will realize that Team Red are blown, and they’ll withdraw. We want to send them a message—don’t mess around on our patch.”

  It sounds superficially plausible, but you’ve got a feeling that things are never simple where Michaels is concerned. The strange cross-linkage between Jack’s ID and the non-existent Nigel MacDonald tells you there’s more to this than meets the eye, as does the business in the taxi, and Chen’s terror. Not to mention Jack’s Elsie. “You expect me to swallow that whole?” you ask, holding up a forkful of slowly congealing baked beans.

  “Of course I don’t!” Michaels carves away at an egg that appears to have been fried in sump oil and lard. “But I can’t tell you everything. It’d be a hideous security breach for starters, despite the variable EULA you signed…What I can assure you is that your role is significant, your co-operation is highly desirable, and if you do what we want, you will be rewarded, both financially and with the knowledge that you’ve helped secure your country’s borders against a probe by an unfriendly foreign agency.”

  “Which country?” Jack asks helpfully: “Scotland, England, the British Isles Derogation Zone, or the EU?”

  “All of the above.” Barry taps his fork on the side of his plate, as if it’s a gavel. “Do you want fries with that?”

  You put your knife down carefully. “What if I just say ‘no’?”

  Michaels looks at you with jailhouse eyes. “You can’t. So I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.”

  You’re getting really fucking sick of slick public-school boys telling you what you do or do not want to do, and saluting the flag and being constructive is nearing the point of diminishing returns; but you get the message. Chris and Maggie and Brendan and the gang can just fire your ass and make sure you never work in the forensic accounting field again, but Michaels can really screw you if he puts his mind to it: He can screw you as thoroughly as only a vindictive civil servant can. On the other hand…“On the other hand, you can’t get my willing co-operation if you twist my arm. If you want that, you’re going to have to pay.” You pick up the coffee cup that came with your breakfast. “Like this: I quit Dietrich-Brunner Associates. Retroactively, with effect from yesterday morning at 9:00 A.M. And you hire me on a freelance basis and pay me the same rate you’re giving Jack. Also retroactive, with effect from yesterday morning at 9:00 A.M.”

  Michaels picks up his coffee cup. “You enjoy living dangerously, do you?”

  “You need her, don’t you? You need her as much as you need me.” Jack flashes a worried look at you from behind Michaels’s shoulder.

  Your mouth is dry. You take a sip of coffee to moisten it, as you realize what you’re gambling for. “Do you want me motivated, Mr. Michaels?” (You’ve just demanded two months’ pay, minimum. Your instincts are yelling don’t give up the day job!—but logic tells you that if he agrees to pay you this once, he’ll pay and pay again for what you can do for him. You and Jack, if you’re se
nsible about it. Because the agency behind Hayek Associates clearly need you far more badly than Dietrich-Brunner ever did. If only you knew why!) “You know what I can do for you, that’s why I’m here.”

  Michaels grunts as if someone kicked his ankle, then looks away. “That falls within my discretionary allowance.” He puts his empty coffee cup down and winces. “But don’t push your luck.”

  “And I want you to do something about Elsie,” says Jack. His guarded expression promises many more words for you, when Michaels isn’t around to hear them.

  “Right,” you agree. “Or we go to the police.”

  “Really?” Michaels gives you a very odd look. Jack is frantically trying to tell you something without moving his face or his lips, but it’ll just have to wait. “I said we were making enquiries, yesterday. I can ask our SOCA liaison how things are going, but they don’t appreciate having their elbows jogged.”

  He might as well be wearing an LED signboard flashing PHONY, but there’s nothing more you can demand right now—and Jack looks as if he’s about to explode, which would be bad, so you nod and finish your coffee, then smile. “So that’s everything settled,” you say. “So how about we go someplace where there’s some signal and place some calls?”

  JACK: Schrödinger’s Girl

  You emerge from the depths of Bannerman’s blinking like a hung-over bat, and glance up and down the canyonlike length of the Cowgate. Someplace where there’s some signal indeed: The stone tenements to either side are nine stories high, and they predate lifts and indoor plumbing. Michaels spots an on-coming taxi (subtype: one with a human driver) and flags it down without waiting for you, so you glance over your shoulder at Elaine, who is glaring at her mobile and fuming. “Come on, let’s take a walk,” you propose.