Read The Revolution Trade (Merchant Princes Omnibus 3) Online
Authors: Charles Stross
Mike ducked.
They’re not running a stakeout but they’ve got police surveillance,
he told himself. Adding the Beckstein residence to a regular patrol’s list of places of
interest would cost FTO virtually nothing – and they’d missed spotting him by seconds. He stayed down, crouched over the passenger seat as the cruiser slowly drove past. They’d be
counting heads, looking for the unexpected. His cover was good but it wouldn’t pass a police background check if they went to town on him – and they would, if they found Miriam’s
purloined Filofax. Ten seconds passed, then twenty. Mike straightened up cautiously and glanced in the rearview mirror. The cops were nearing the end of the road. Thirty seconds; they paused
briefly, then hung a left, and Mike breathed out.
Okay, back to the motel,
he told himself.
Then we’ll see what we’ve got here
. . .
BEGIN RECORDING
‘My fellow Americans, good evening.
‘It pains me more than I can say to be speaking to you tonight as your president. There are no good situations in which a vice president can take the oath of
office; we step into the boots of a fallen commander-in-chief, hoping we can fill them, hoping we can live up to what our dead predecessor would have expected of us. It is a heavy
burden of responsibility and, God willing, I shall do my utmost to live up to it. I owe nothing less to you, to all our citizens and especially to the gallant men and women who serve
the cause of freedom and democracy in our nation’s armed forces; and I say this – I shall not sleep until our enemies, the enemies who murderously attacked us a week ago,
are hunted down wherever they hide and are destroyed.
‘In time of war – and this is nothing less – it is the job of the commander-in-chief to defend the republic, and it is the job of the vice president
to stand ready to serve, which is why I have appointed to the vacant office of the vice president, as my replacement, a man well-qualified to fight for freedom: former Secretary of
Defense Rumsfeld. I trust that his appointment to this post, vacated by my succession, will be approved by the House. The future of the republic is safe in his hands.
‘But I can already hear you asking: Safe from whom?
‘In the turmoil and heroism and agony of the attacks, it was difficult at first for us to ascertain the identity of our enemies. We have many enemies in the
Middle East, from al-Qaeda and the terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan, to the mullahs of Tehran, and naturally our suspicions first fell on those quarters. But they are not our only
enemies; and the nature of the attack made it hard to be sure who was responsible. The two atomic bombs that exploded in our capital, and the third that misfired in the Pentagon
visitors’ lot, were stolen from our own stockpile. This was not only a cowardly and heinous act of nuclear terrorism, but a carefully planned one. However, we have identified
the attackers, and we are now preparing to deal with them as they have dealt with us.
‘There is no easy way for me to explain this because the reality lies far beyond our everyday experience, but the scientists of our national laboratories assure
me that this is true: We live in what they call a multiverse, a many-branched tree of reality. Scientists at Los Alamos have for a year now been probing techniques for traveling to
other universes – to other versions of this, our own Earth. They had hoped to use this technique for peaceful ends, to solve the environmental and climatic problems that may
arise in future decades. But we have discovered, the hard way, that we are not alone.
‘Some of the alternate earths we have discovered are inhabited. And in at least one of these, the inhabitants are hostile. Worse: They, too, have the
technological tools to travel to other universes. The enemy who attacked us is the government of a sovereign nation in another America, a Godless feudal despotism ruled by terror and
the lash. They know no freedom and they hate our own, for we are a living refutation of everything they hold to be true. Agents of this enemy have moved unseen among us for a
generation, and they have been instrumental in the narcotics trade, using it to fund their infiltration of our institutions, their theft of our technologies. They are followers of an
alien ideology and they seek to bring us down, and it is to that end that they stole at least six atomic weapons from their storage cells on military bases – gaining access from
another unseen universe even as our guards vigilantly defended the perimeter fences.
‘We have a name for this enemy: They call themselves the Clan, and they rule a despotic kingdom called Gruinmarkt. And we know what to do to them, for they
attacked us without warning on the sixteenth of July, a date that will live in infamy with 9/11, and 12/7, for as long as there is a United States of America.
‘To you of the Clan, the cabal of thieves and drug smugglers who have attacked America, I have a simple message: If you surrender now, without preconditions, I
will guarantee you a fair trial before the military tribunals now convened at Guantánamo Bay. Only those of you who are guilty of crimes against the United States need fear our
justice. But you should think fast. This offer expires one week from today. And then, in the words of my predecessor, Harry S. Truman, you face prompt and utter annihilation.
‘Good night, and God bless America.’
END RECORDING
It was beyond belief how far things could change in just a week.
Sir Huw, beanpole-skinny and a bit gawky, reined his horse in and dismounted painfully while he was still a hundred yards short of the farmstead. He stretched, trying to iron the kinks out of
his thigh and calf muscles.
‘Is this it, bro?’ rumbled the man-mountain driving the cart and pair behind him. ‘In the middle of nowhere?’
Huw glanced around. ‘On the other side, we’re near Edison,’ he said. ‘I’ll go first. We’re expected, but . . .’ No point saying it:
The guards are
jumpy.
Because, this week and forevermore,
all
the guards were jumpy.
Probably expecting Delta Force to drop in,
Huw mused. Not, in his estimate, likely to happen just yet –
although in the long run it couldn’t be ruled out. Anxiety battled caution, and set his feet in motion. ‘I wonder how Her Majesty is.’
‘Nearly three months gone by now,’ chirped another voice from the back of the cart, emanating from beneath a blanket that covered its passenger and a mound of wheeled luggage –
all Tumi-branded, expensive but ultralightweight ballistic nylon. ‘Sick as a mule on a fishing boat.’ Huw didn’t look round: Trust Elena to interpret it as a political question.
Because Miriam’s pregnancy
was
political – and that was all it was. ‘Did you pack the books?’
‘Yes.’ Huw had, in fact, packed the books. Two hundred kilograms of them, paper that was worth far more than its weight in gold, or cocaine, where they were going. The Rubber Bible,
The Merck Manual
, the US Pharmacopeia; and more recondite references, science and engineering and medicine all, with a side order of mathematics and maps. They weighed a bundle, but when
he’d messaged ahead to ask if they should go digital, the reply had been a terse
no
. Which made a certain sense. CD-ROMs and computers weren’t durable enough for what Miriam was
planning – if, in fact, he was reading her intentions aright.
Huw walked towards the farmyard, leading his horse. It was a hedge-laird’s place; the hearth smoke of a small village rose beyond it, and he could see stooped backs in the fields, some of
them pausing and turning to stare at the visitors. But then two guards stepped out in front of him from the barn, and he stopped. The middle-aged sergeant raised a hand: ‘Who hails?’
The other stood by tensely, his rifle pointed at the ground before Huw’s feet.
‘Sir Huw Thoms, lieutenant by order of his grace, accompanied by Hulius Thoms and the Lady Elena of Holdt, in the service of the Council.’ He halted; his horse exhaled noisily, neck
drooping.
‘Approach and be identified.’ Huw took a step forward. The sergeant peered at him, then glanced at a clipboard cautiously. ‘You are welcome, sir.’
Huw stood where he was. ‘The password of the day is “banquet”,’ he stated. ‘
Now
can we come in? The horses are tired.’
The armsman with the rifle relaxed visibly as his sergeant nodded. ‘Very good, sir, the countersign is “mullet”.’ He gestured towards the stables. ‘We’ll be
pleased to sort you out. Sorry about the precautions – you can’t be too careful these days.’
Huw waved a hand at the machine gun dug in just inside the tree line, ready to enfilade the approach to the farm. ‘Any rebels try you so far?’
‘Not yet, sir. Ah, your companions. If you don’t mind – ’
Elena and Yul climbed down from the cart and consented to be inspected and compared to their photographs. ‘Is it that bad?’ Elena asked brightly, shaking out her skirts.
‘Some of Lord Ganskwert’s retainers attacked the house at Doveswood last night, using a carriage and disguises to cover their approach. Three dead, plus the traitors of course. We
can’t be too careful.’
‘Indeed.’ Elena grinned and flashed the sergeant a glimpse of what she had inside her capacious shoulder bag. He blanched. ‘Sleep tight!’ She added, ‘We’re on
your side!’
‘Lightning Child, can’t you keep it to yourself for even a minute?’ Huw complained. To the sergeant: ‘We won’t be staying overnight – we’re wanted by
Her Majesty, as soon as possible.’
‘Ah, we’ll do our best, sir. I’ll have to confirm that first.’ His tone didn’t brook argument.
‘We can wait awhile,’ Huw conceded. ‘Got to sort out the horses first, grab something to eat if possible, that sort of thing.’
‘There is bread and sausages in the kitchen. If you’d like to wait inside I can have my men deal with your mounts? I take it they’re security livery?’
‘Yes,’ Huw agreed. ‘All yours.’ He handed his reins to the man. ‘We’ll be inside if you need us.’
‘Excellent,’ added Yul, following his elder brother towards the farm building.
Huw and his small team had been well away from the excitement when the putsch by the conservatives and the lords of the Postal Service broke; following up a task assigned to him by Angbard, Duke
Lofstrom, back before his stroke – the urgency of which had only become greater since. Huw had been in a rented house outside Macon, recovering from an exploration run, when Elena had erupted
into the living room shouting about something on the television and waking up Yul (who had a post-walk hangover of doom). He’d begun to chastise her, only to fall silent as the mushroom
cloud, red-lit from within, roiled skyward behind a rain of damaged-camera static.
They’d spent the first hour in shock, but then had come Riordan’s Plan Black; and that had presented Huw with a problem, because they were nearly a thousand miles from the nearest
evacuation point. Flights were grounded; police and national guard units were hogging the highways. It had taken them three days to make the drive, avoiding interstates and major cities. Finally
they’d reached the outskirts of Providence and crossed over, taking another four days to finish the journey from Huw’s family estates to this transit point, barely seventy miles away. A
thousand miles – two hours by air. Or three days by back roads in the United States. Seventy miles – four days, in the Gruinmarkt. It was an object lesson in the source of the
Clan’s power – and a warning.
They didn’t have long to wait; true to his word, the sergeant ducked in through the kitchen door barely half an hour later. ‘By your leave, sir, we have confirmed your permission to
travel. If you are ready to go now . . . ?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Yul, reluctantly setting aside a mug of game soup and a half-eaten cornbread roll. Elena was already on her feet, impatient; Huw set down his wine – a
half-drained glass, itself exotic and valuable in this place – and stood.
‘Have you got a level stage?’ he asked. ‘We need to take the cart’s contents.’
‘We have something better, sir.’ The guard turned and headed towards the barn. Huw followed him. Opposite the stalls – he saw a lad busily rubbing down the horses –
someone had installed a raised platform, planks stretched across aluminum scaffolding. A ramp led up to it, and at the bottom –
‘That’s a
good
idea,’ Elena said admiringly.
Three big supermarket trolleys waited for them, loaded up with bags. ‘The regular couriers will bring them back once you unload them,’ said the sergeant. He picked up his clipboard.
‘In view of the current troubles we have no postmaster, but I’m keeping score. For later.’
‘All right.’ Huw set his hands to one of the trolleys and pushed it up the ramp. ‘What’s the other side like?’
‘It’s in a cellar.’ The sergeant looked disapproving. ‘Good thing too. You don’t want to be seen coming and going over there – it’s a zoo. But
you’ll be safe enough here.’ He caught Huw’s expression and nodded. ‘I’ll go first, see if I don’t.’ He climbed onto the platform and waited while Hulius
and Elena pushed their laden trolleys up the ramp. ‘Here, you let me take that one, young miss. Why don’t you ride for once?’ Laying one hand on the trolley’s metal frame,
he reached up and tugged a cord leading to a blind on the opposite wall. The blind rose –
The basement was brick-walled, and the ceiling low, but the Clan’s surveyors had done their job well and the raised floor was a perfectly level match for the platform in the barn. As Huw
hauled the first of his suitcases out of the trolley, trying to ignore the nausea and migrainelike headache, he heard voices from the top of the staircase: Elena, and someone else, someone familiar
and welcome.
‘My lady Brilliana,’ he said. He deposited his case beside the top step – the cellar stairs surfaced in what seemed to be a servants’ pantry – and bowed.
‘I’m glad to see you.’
‘Sir Huw! How wonderful to see you, too.’ She smiled slightly more warmly than was proper: Huw held himself in check, ignoring the impulse to hug her. He’d been worried about
her for the past week; to find her here, her hair in blond curls, dressed after last year’s New London mode, lifted a huge weight from his heart. She held out her hand, and, somewhat
daringly, he bent to kiss it. ‘Have you had a troublesome time?’ she asked, gripping his fingers.