Charles Stross - The Merchant’s War

Huw nodded-thoughtfully, for he was still getting used to playing the role of responsible adult around the other two. "We'll pick something up if we pass a liquor store. But no drinking in public, okay?"

"Sure, dude."

"Let's go, then."

An hour later they were back in the under-furnished living room with pizza boxes, a stack of six-packs of Pepsi, and a discreet brown paper bag. "Okay," said Huw, licking his fingers. "Taken your pills yet?"

"Um, 'scuse me." Elena darted upstairs, returning with a toilet bag. "Hate these things," she mumbled resentfully. "Make me feel woozy." She threw back her head when she swallowed. What fine hones she has, thought Huw, watching her with unprofessional enthusiasm. That was one of the reasons she was along on (his trip: because she was sixty kilograms, the stocky Hulius could carry her piggyback if necessary.

"Where were we?" asked Hulius, pausing with a slice of Hawaiian halfway to his mouth.

Huw checked his wristwatch. "About an hour and a half short of time zero. You guys cat, I'll repeat the plan, interrupt if you want me to explain anything."

"Okay," said Hulius. Elena nodded, rolling her eyes as she chewed.

"First, we assemble the stage one kit. Clothing, boots, cameras, guns, telemetry belts. We triple-test the belt batteries and set them running at five minutes to zero hour. There's no post on this trip, even if we get some results. Elena piggybacks on Yul, on the first attempt. If you fail, we call it a wash today, switch off the telemetry, and break open the wine. If you succeed, you evaluate your surroundings and proceed to Plan Alpha or Plan Bravo, depending. Now." He tore off a wedge of cooling pizza: "It's your turn to tell me what you're supposed to do as soon as you find yourself wherever the hell you're going. Hoping to go. Plan Alpha first. Elena, describe your job...?"

The carvery in the hotel wasn't anything Miriam would have described as a classy restaurant, but after being locked in the basement of a brothel for most of a week it felt like the Ritz. Miriam was ravenous from a day pounding the sidewalks: but Erasmus, she noticed over the soup, ate slowly but methodically, clearing his plate with grim determination. "Hungry?" she asked, lowering her spoon.

"I try never to leave my food." He nodded, then tore off another piece of bread to mop his soup bowl clean. "Old habit. Bad manners, I'm afraid: I apologize."

"No offense taken." Miriam nodded. "You need to put on weight, anyway. I haven't heard you coughing today, but you're so thin!"

"Really?" He made as if to raise his napkin to cover his mouth, then grinned at her. "When you start you know about it, but when something goes away... it's an unnoticed miracle." A waiter arrived, silently, and removed their bowls. "I don't feel ancient and drained anymore. But you're right, I need to eat. I wasn't always a sack of bones." He shook his head, and the grin slipped into rueful oblivion.

"It was your time in the north, wasn't it?" The statement slipped out before Miriam could stop it.

Erasmus stared at her. "Yes, it was," he said quietly.

She licked her lips. "Sorry. Didn't mean to say that."

"Yes you did." He glanced sidelong at the other occupants of the room: no one was paying them any obvious attention... "But it's all right, I don't mind."

"I don't mean to pry." The waiter was returning, bearing two plates. She leaned back while he deftly slid her entree in front of her. When he'd gone, she looked back at Burgeson. "But I'd be crazy not to be curious. Months ago, when I said I didn't care what your connections were... I didn't expect things to go this way."

He shrugged, then picked up his knife and fork. "Neither did I," he said shortly. "You are curious as to the nature of what you've gotten yourself into?"

She took a sip of wine, then began to methodically slice into the overcooked lamb chops on her plate. "This probably isn't the right place for this conversation."

"I'm glad you agree."

He wasn't making this easy. "So. Tomorrow... train back home? Then what?"

"It'll be a flying visit. Overnight, perhaps." He shoveled a potato onto his fork, holding it in place with a fatty piece of mutton: "I need to pick up my post, make arrangements for the shop, and notify the Polis." His cheek twitched. "I've reserved a suite on the night mail express, leaving tomorrow evening. It joins up with the Northern Continental at Dunedin, we won't have to change carriages."

"A suite?" She raised an eyebrow. "Isn't that expensive?"

Erasmus paused, another forkful of food halfway to his mouth: "Of course it is! But the extra expense, on top of a transcontinental ticket, is minor." He grimaced. "You expect travel to be cheaper than it is. It can be-if you don't mind sleeping on a blanket roll with the steerage for a week."

"Yes, but..." Miriam paused for long enough to eat some more food: "I'm sorry. So we're going straight through Dunedin and stopping in Fort Petrograd? How many days away?"

"We'll stop halfway for a few hours. The Northern Continental runs from Florida up to New London, cuts northwest to Dunedin, stops to take on extra carriages, nonstop to New Glasgow where it stops to split up, then down the coast to Fort Petrograd. We should arrive in just under four days. If we were really going the long way, we could change onto the Southern Continental at Western Station, keep going south to Mexico City, then cross the Isthmus of Panama and keep going all the way to Land's End on the Cape. But that's a horrendous journey, seven thousand miles or more, and the lines aren't fast-it takes nearly three weeks."

"Hang on. The Cape-you mean, you have trains that run all the way to the bottom of South America?"

"Of course. Don't your people, where you come from?" They ate in silence for a few minutes. "I'd better write that letter to Roger right now and mail it this evening."

"That would be prudent." Burgeson lowered his knife and fork, having swept his plate clean. "You'll probably want to go through my bookcases before we embark, too-it's going to be a long ride."

After the final cup of coffee, Burgeson sighed. "Let us go upstairs," he suggested.

"Okay- yes." Miriam managed to stand up. She was, she realized, exhausted, even though the night was still young. "I'm tired."

"Really?" Erasmus led the way to the elevator. "Maybe you should avail yourself of the bathroom, then catch an early night. I have some business to attend to in town. I promise to let myself in quietly."

He slid the elevator gate open and as she stepped inside she noticed the heavily built doorman just inside the entrance. "If it's safe, that works for me."

"Why would it be unsafe? To a hotel like this, any whiff of insecurity for the guests is pure poison." "Good."

Back in the room, Miriam jotted down a quick note to her sometime chief research assistant, using hotel stationery.

"Can you get this posted tonight?" she asked Erasmus. "I'm going to have that bath now..."

The bathroom turned out to be down the corridor from the bedroom, the bath a contraption of cold porcelain fed by gleaming copper pipework. There was, however, hot water in unlimited quantities-something that Miriam had missed for so long that its availability came as an almost incomprehensible luxury.

The things we take for granted, she thought, relaxing into the tub: the comforts of a middle-class existence in New Britain seemed exotic and advanced after months of detention in a Clan holding in Niejwein. I could fit in here. She tried the thought on for size. Okay, so domestic radios are the size of a photocopier, and there's no Internet, and they use trains where we'd use airliners. So what? They've got hot and cold running water, and gas and electricity. Indoor plumbing. The chambers Baron Henryk had confined her to had a closet with a drafty hole in a wooden seat. I could live here. The thought was tempting for a moment- until she remembered the thin, pinched faces in the soup queue, the outstretched upturned hats. Erasmus's hacking cough, now banished by medicines that she'd brought over from Boston-her own Boston. No antibiotics: back before they'd been discovered, a quarter to a third of the population had died of bacterial diseases. She sighed, lying back carefully to avoid soaking her brittle-bleached hair. It's better than the Clan, but still...

She tried to gather her scattered thoughts. New Britain wasn't some kind of nostalgic throwback to a gaslight age: it was dirty, smelly, polluted, and intermittently dangerous. Clothing was expensive and conservative because foreign sweatshops weren't readily available: the cost of transporting their produce was too high even in peacetime-and with a wartime blockade in force, things were even worse. Politics was dangerous, in ways she'd barely begun to understand: there was participatory democracy for a price, for a very limited franchise of rich land-owning men who thought themselves the guardians of the people and the rulers of the populace, shepherding the masses they did not consider to be responsible enough for self-determination.

It wasn't only women's rights that were a problem here-and that was bad enough, as she'd discovered: women here had fewer civil rights than they had in Iran, in her own world; at least in Iran women could vote-but here, anyone who wasn't a member of the first thousand families was second-class, unable to move to a new city without a permit from the Polis, a subject rather than a citizen. "Fomenting democratic agitation" was an actual on-the-books felony that could get you sent to a labor camp in the far north. Outright chattel slavery might not be a problem-it seemed to have fizzled away in the late nineteenth century-but the level of casual racism she'd witnessed was jarring and unpleasant.

I just want to go home. If only I knew where home is!

The water was growing cold. Miriam finished her ablutions, then returned to the hotel room. It was close and humid in the summer heat, so she raised the sash window, dropping the gauze insect screen behind it. Erasmus can let himself in, she thought, crawling between the sheets. How late will he -she dozed off.

She awakened to daylight, and Erasmus's voice, sounding heartlessly cheerful as he opened the shutters: "Rise and shine! And good morning to you, Miriam! I hope you slept well. You'll be pleased to know that your letter made the final collection: it'll have been delivered already. I'll be about my business up the corridor while you make yourself decent. How about some breakfast before we travel?"

"Ow, you cruel, heartless man!" She struggled to sit up, covering her eyes. "What time is it?"

"It's half-past six, and we need to be on the train at ten to eight."

"Ouch. Okay, I'm awake already!" She squinted into the light. Burgeson was fully dressed, if a bit rumpled-looking. "The chaise was a bit cramped?"

"I've slept worse." He picked up a leather toilet bag. "If you'll excuse me? I'll knock before I come in."

He disappeared into the corridor, leaving Miriam feeling unaccountably disappointed. Damn it, it's unnatural to be that cheerful in the morning! Still, she was thoroughly awake. Kicking the covers back, she sat up and stretched. Her clothing lay where she'd left it the evening before. By the time Erasmus knocked again she was prodding her hair back into shape in front of the dressing-table mirror. "Come in," she called.

"Oh good." Erasmus nodded approvingly. "I've changed my mind about breakfast: I think we ought to catch the morning express. How does that sound to you? I'm sure we can eat perfectly well in the dining car."