Charles Stross - Halting State

“But they wouldna buy a quantum processor just so’s they could rip off their customers, is that what you’re sayin’?”

“Yup.” Her cheek twitches. Liz is clearly not a happy camper today. “Who’s to say precisely what bunch of codes they’ve been cracking with it? Say what you will, mobile gaming takes bandwidth, so Hayek have a great excuse for running lots of fat pipes in and out of the exchanges. And I don’t think they’re going to tell us what they’re doing with it, do you? So if we want to crack this case, we’ve got to go after it from other angles. Did you get anywhere looking for the mysterious Mr. MacDonald?”

“Not a whisper.” You shrug. Just then, the waitress reappears with your latte and something black and villainous-looking in a small glass for Liz. “It’s as if he just vanished right off the face of the earth.”

“Maybe he did.” You look at her sharply, but she’s just staring at her coffee as if she’s afraid it’ll bite her. “I am having second thoughts about our mysterious Mr. MacDonald. I think he’s a snipe—in the American sense.”

You can find snipe all over Fife, they’re not endangered or anything, but you take her point. “Then why did that wee fool Wayne send me off after him? Wayne’s a civilian.”

“Yes? I wouldn’t be so sure of that.” She’s visibly falling into a dreicht, dour mood. “They’ve all got their little angles to play, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them aren’t playing against each other. And anyway, there’s that body in Pilton. Very convenient that would be, don’t you think?”

You have the uncomfortable feeling that the inspector is trying to tell you exactly the opposite of the words she’s using. “Aye, too convenient.”

“My thoughts exactly. I don’t buy that line about this being unconnected. And I’m really worried about that blacknet set-up in MacDonald’s house. It doesn’t fit .” She takes a sip of her Turkish coffee, and it’s at that exact point that you realize what’s going on.

Liz is scared shitless. She thinks she’s got a sleeping dragon by the tail, and she’s not sure it isn’t about to wake up. So she’s decided to designate you as her insurance policy.

“Jesus, skipper.”

“He’s not answering his IMs this century.”

“If we can’t get ahold of MacDonald, who’re we going to go after?”

“Haven’t you heard from your two new contacts today? The nerd and the librarian?”

“No, I—” You pause. “They were dead keen to be helpful yesterday,” you say doubtfully.

The waitress is back with a platter of meze for Liz and a traditional Scottish fry-up breakfast for you.

“After lunch I want you to plug yourself back in and see what’s keeping them from you,” says the inspector. “Then I’d like you to go and talk to them, off the record. They’re not suspects, but if what I think is happening is actually happening, they might be in danger if too much information about them shows up in CopSpace.”

“In CopSpace? But—”

“Sergeant, this is way out of my league, but I’m not convinced that idiot Kemal from Brussels was wrong. I think there’s some kind of shitty infowar nonsense going on, some kind of nasty little intra-European diplomatic espionage spat. I’ve got a nasty feeling that someone’s already been murdered because of it, and if we don’t call time, there may be a bunch more bodies showing up. And worst of all—I think whoever’s behind it has got their claws into CopSpace, maybe a blacknet, too. And you know something? I don’t intend to do their dirty work for them…”

Sitting in the back of the police car as it careens along the M8 with its lights flashing, you suddenly realize you feel deathly tired—and sick. Not nauseous, not period pain, just the kind of gut-deep malaise that comes from being stressed to the breaking point. Everything’s happened too fast for you to get a handle on it: from Jack stumbling on a Chinese student who thought you were working for the security services, to Jack being stabbed, then the insane call from Spooks Control and the taxi trying to kill you both, then the word that one of Jack’s nieces had been kidnapped, and now this…it’s too fucking much . You want to hit PAUSE, make yourself a nice mug of Horlicks, put your feet up, and watch a fluffy romantic comedy before curling up in bed. Or maybe get your shiny new claymore, find a gymnasium, and spend half an hour walloping the living shit out of a dummy. Your mental overload light is flashing red. It’s too fucking much: And you’re not getting any time off to assimilate it.

Sucks to be you.

Constable Patel isn’t being a whole bag of laughs—he’s so keyed up and focussed on the head-up display and the steering wheel that you’re terrified he’ll explode if you ask him anything (like, oh, “are we nearly there yet?” for values of there that map onto wherever you’re taking us ), and in any case the speed with which he’s zipping past the cars and trucks in the slow lane clues you in that maybe he’s exceeding the speed limit just a little—and Jack’s not much use right now, either. Come to think of it, if you’re feeling like a pile of crap, what’s he going through right now? You glance sideways, just enough to see that he’s slumped against the opposite door, cheek leaning against the window, looking half-asleep. Just mild shock, the paramedics said, but that’s not the half of it. You know what it’s like to get home after a burglary, or to hear that a friend’s died suddenly—more’s the pity, from personal experience—and right now Jack shouldn’t be here: He should be at home and in bed. A million spy thrillers and hard-boiled detective capers insist that the hero bounces back right after being slugged upside the head, but real life’s not like that. Sucks to be him , too. You’re torn between sympathy and a despicable little sense of warmth that comes from knowing that he’s got it even worse than you have. That’s not nice, and it’s making you feel guilty, so you shove it to the back of your head. Sympathy is respectable; that’ll do for now.

Your left spectacle frame vibrates, signalling that your phone wants to talk to you about something. Annoyed, you hit the display sync button. It’s an instant message from—

JACK: dont look at me dont act suspicious

You nearly bite your tongue, so hard is the urge to look round or speak aloud. Instead, you start finger-typing. And what you type is—

ELAINE: WTF?

JACK: our driver is listening

ELAINE: so?

JACK: need 2 talk l8r not near phones

ELAINE: LOL, afraid of bugs???

JACK: yes

ELAINE: got crypto on fone lines

JACK: HA keys compromised. who else?

ELAINE: U R paranoid

JACK: ORLY?

A cold shiver runs up your spine as Officer Friendly slows, then accelerates up a slip road towards the gyratory that connects the motorway to the city bypass.

ELAINE: l8r

JACK: OK

You clear the chat log from your phone, then switch it to standby again. What Jack’s saying is clear enough, and for all that you think he’s being a bit paranoid, he’s got a point. You’re sitting in the back of a fucking police car, for crying out loud!

Of course, if Jack’s afraid they’re monitoring your phone and using it as an omnidirectional bug, why the hell did he have to IM you? He’s not stupid enough to think that they won’t be snooping on his texts as well, is he? Or maybe he wants them to think he’s paranoid and needs to talk to you in private? But if that’s the case, surely they’re going to realize he’s trying to make them think he’s paranoid and—that way madness lies, the infinite receding mirror-walled tunnel of spy-versusspy. Which, let’s be honest, is what you both signed up for in a fit of boredom or a burst of manic competitive analysis, never suspecting that SPOOKS wasn’t simply a game but is some kind of Machiavellian ploy to get thousands of willing agents’ boots on the ground. Useful idiots , the real spymasters used to call them, the cannon-fodder of human intelligence gathering.