Charles Stross - Halting State

You shake your head. “They’re a net company. That’ll leave them dead in the water.”

“Oh yes.” He nods cheerfully: “Take them down for two working days, and they’ll probably go out of business. They’re on the sharp end of quality of service guarantees with teeth. It’s our nuclear option.” From the way he’s stroking his briefcase you have an uncomfortable feeling that he hopes he’s going to get to push the button.

“Brendan—” Faye warns, fingers tap-tapping at her lap.

“Sorry.” He doesn’t sound it. You smear the condensation with your sleeve and look out at the traffic. Four euros a litre for diesel up here, and the road’s still jammed.

An uncomfortable minute of stop-go traffic later, the taxi takes an abrupt left, then left again, and grinds to a halt. All you can see out of the window is a muddy car-park surrounded by dripping trees, but when you call up your overlay, you see that this is it: Unless the address is wrong, you’re in the right place. Brendan waves his company card at the scanner, the doors spring open, and you immediately put both your feet in an ankle-deep icy puddle. “Shit.” You bite back on your anger as you hop forwards, hoping your shoes aren’t ruined.

Louder swearing from the other side of the taxi tells you that the whole car-park is a mud-bath. You reach dry land and see a building ahead, two police cars drawn up in front of it— that’s the offices of Hayek Associates? It looks more like a brightly coloured garden shed. Raised voices: “I’m sorry, sir, but you can’t come in unless the inspector says—”

There’s a thicket of twirling tags above the entrance: Chris, Maggie, Mohammed, and a blue diamond marker blinking blues and twos. Your heart sinks as you hurry towards the shed, hoping to get out of the rain. Inside the entrance you find a strange little scene. The shed is tricked out like the lobby of a corporate office, but there’s no office building attached, just a bank of lifts. Which are being guarded by a very bored-looking policeman, who is giving Chris and Mo the I’m-sorry-sir-you’ll-have-to-come-back-another-day story while scanning your face with his evidence-locked life recorder’s camera.

“We’ve got a court order,” says Chris. “Mr. Kadir, if you’d care to show the gentleman…” He’s using the stilted, formal language smart people use when talking to police with evidence cams.

“Sure.” Mohammed opens his conference folder and pulls out a document. “This is a compulsory search order, served by—”

“I’m sure it is, sir, but you’ll have to stop right there.” The cop looks flustered. “This is a criminal investigation. I’ll call the inspector immediately, and she’ll sort you out as soon as—” He stops, then fidgets with his earpiece. “Oh.” He nods to himself. “Uh, Sarge? If I can…? I’ve got a group of visitors here with a solicitor and a compulsory search order demanding immediate access. What should I…okay, I see, right, I’ll do that…It’s what? Aw, no! Right, right. I’ll do that, sir.” Behind the CopSpace glasses and the flickering pixelated reflections off his eyelids, his face tells its own story. Grim news. He shakes his head and takes the court order from Mohammed. “I’m sorry to break it to you gentlefolk, but I’m going to have to take your identity cards. Then you can go in an’ do what you must, but before you leave the site, I must take DNA samples and verify your identity.”

“DNA what ?” Maggie squawks indignantly, and you are inclined to agree: Being photographed and fingerprinted for the ID card is all very well, but this isn’t normal.

The cop sighs. “Orders,” he says. “So we can exclude you from our enquiries.”

“But it’s a fraud case. What use is DNA evidence?”

“Not those enquiries.” He furrows his brows at Harrison. “The missing person investigation.”

The Martians from CapG are not wholly inhumane: The clock starts ticking when the one o’clock gun sounds from the castle battlements. You take yourself off to the designer shops on George Street to do something about your wardrobe—for eight thousand a day it’d be stupid not to—and by the time you hear the distant thud, you’ve acquired a new suit, some lunch, and a precarious determination to bluff your way through to the bitter end. You’ve even bought a tie, soup stains optional.

When Mr. Pin-Stripe texts you, you’re dodging through the lunchtime crowds on your way towards the West End: GO TO [LOCATOR: SEE ATTACHMENT]. ELAINE BARNABY WILL MEET YOU IN THE LOBBY.

Oh great, you think: Who the hell is she? Then you glance at the locator. Some hotel or other. Wonderful. You’re still shaking your head as you hail a taxi— CapG are paying, you remind yourself—and tell the driver where to go.

The hotel is a modern conversion. Edinburgh’s planning laws are strictly dedicated to keeping the capital looking like a time warp from the eighteenth century, so the developers bought an old stone warehouse and gutted it, erecting a glassy cube of modernity inside the hollow shell. You wander into the lobby and glance around. Who am I looking for? vies with What am I doing here? There are skinny people with very expensive glasses and/or very thin laptops sitting on non-Euclidean sofas under tastefully arranged halogen spotlights, but no way of knowing which one of them is your contact. Which is annoying. So you stand around aimlessly for a minute, then put your brain into gear and walk over to the reception desk. “Hi. Is there an, um, Elaine Barnaby staying here?”

The receptionist fakes a smile. “I’m sorry, but we don’t disclose guests’ names—”

“Could be,” a woman’s voice says from behind your shoulder. You begin to turn. “Did CapG services send you?”

“Uh, yeah,” you say, finishing the turn—

“Oh I’m sorry,” apologizes the receptionist—

“Well, you’re late.” She looks like a librarian. Mousy hair, black plastic spectacle frames, and a sternly disapproving expression. “Like the rest of this circus,” she adds, taking some of the sting out of the words. “Come on.” She turns and stalks towards the lobby staircase, not bothering to wait for you.

Ah, fuck it. She can bitch all she wants for a thousand an hour. A thousand an hour! Jesus, they’re paying me a thousand an hour for this? You follow her in a hurry.

She pauses at the top of the stairs, on the mezzanine that looks out across the city towards the international conference centre from behind the cunningly designed false frontage. “By the way, what’s your name?”

“Jack. Jack Reed. And you are Elaine Barnaby? From, uh, Dietrich-Brunner Associates?” Who are you and what do you do?

“Two out of two.” Her smile is less insincere than the receptionist’s, but you can tell it’s concealing the core message: Who is this slob, and is there some kind of mistake? “You’re not like the normal run of consultants CapG send us.”

You shrug. “That’s because I’m not one of their normal consultants.” She starts moving again, up the staircase towards the first floor like she’s got chromed pistons inside those trousers instead of legs. She probably cycles everywhere. You manage to keep up, but you’re breathing heavily by the time she barges through the fire doors and into a corridor on the second floor. “Much farther?”

“Just in here.” She waves you towards an office door, which unlocks with a clunk as she approaches. “Sit down. I want to get some things straight.”

Ah, right . This is where your thousand-euros-an-hour mirage evaporates on contact with the white heat of reality. Well, it was nice while it lasted. “Yeah, well, this job smelled funny from the first. I mean, CapG isn’t a game-development consultancy, so I was wondering why they were looking for someone with my skills. So I guess the disconnect was with the requirements you sent out?”