Charles Stross - Halting State

“No, I—” You look away, embarrassed. Then an idea surfaces in your imagination like an iceberg. It’s too preposterous for words, but it fits the observable facts—“whoops.”

“Yes?” She leans forward.

“What if the whole reason STEAMING was shitcanned last week was because Michaels was planning to hire me anyway? Or rather…they’ve got a hole in their org chart with my name on it—or rather, ‘Nigel MacDonald,’ but I’m there if they need to activate me—and it’s not the only hole, they’ve probably got a bunch of other ones. Hell, there’s probably an agency somewhere with an Elaine-Barnaby-shaped hole in it by any other name, just waiting. Let’s suppose Michaels already had the wind up that something shitty was stinking up the Beijing gutters, and was getting ready to activate a counter-espionage unit to go looking for it. He was planning on running most of the team via SPOOKS, but he’d need some clueful people on the inside—I suspect he tapped me for the job of GM. But then the robbery pointed to the bad guys having penetrated a lot further than anyone realized, and the idiot marketing manager called in the cops. So he ensured that when you asked for a native guide, I was hired”—you flash back to that weird interview, with Mr. Pin-Stripe and Mr. Grey and the not-quite-right uncanny valley graphical overlay—“and he probably leaned on your boss to make sure you were left up here because, after all, you’re one of his pawns.”

“Sounds plausible. I think you’re right about him tapping you for a job—but it’s not just the matter of your old employment being terminated. I think he had you arrested in Amsterdam just to drive you home with your tail between your legs.” She puts her coffee mug down.

“Agh!” The mummy lobe manages to blurt out an indignant denial of your innocence, then shuts down in complete catatonic withdrawal.

She grins at you impishly. “That’s how I’d have done it, anyway.”

“You have an evil mind!”

“And this is a bad thing how, exactly?”

You find yourself returning her grin. “We’re going to need it if we’re going to figure out what Barry isn’t telling us. As long as you can remember only to use your powers for good.”

“I’ll do my best. But anyway, Team Red are dug in, they can listen in on any communications in Scotland, and they can crack any of the common encryption systems in use.” She looks dubious. “Are we safe?”

“I don’t know. Certainly Barry’s man-behind-the-curtain operation has got stuff that Team Red don’t know about or can’t break. And”—another iceberg heaves into view—“I think I just got it.”

“Got what?” She looks anxious. “Is it catching?”

“Skill set: Nigel MacDonald. Let’s suppose…yeah. Let’s say Barry got wind of Team Red’s existence and also got wind of Chen’s little bank robbery before it happened. Yes? Or even just the capability Chen had tucked up his post-graduate-student sleeve. ‘Nigel MacDonald’ shows up, encourages Chen to do the deed, then vanishes after the robbery. Team Red are trying to figure out what the ingenious Mr. Chen was up to, and they realize MacDonald has done a runner, so they focus on him as the accomplice. Then I turn up in their trawl, and—”

Her eyes go wide. “Carry on, Nigel.”

Nigel? It’s not a name you’d have picked for yourself, but if the hat fits …

“Whoops. They set me up—and you—to go and poke Team Red with a pointy stick, and Team Red are primed to think that I’m their rogue member’s partner, right? They don’t know what Nigel MacDonald looks like, other than through his NIR entry. Shit, I bet you he’s my spitting image!”

“What’s the opposite of identity theft? Identity donation?” She shakes her head. “Okay, so they’ve set you up as bait for Team Red. So that makes me…the sniper. Right?” She stands up. “Where’s the bathroom?”

You point wordlessly and track her as she heads upstairs. The street light filtering through the hall window outlines the calves of her legs beneath the robe, drawing your eyes after her. It’s as if your mind is split three ways. Part of you is still trying to assimilate the fact that the other side play for keeps, and you are it . Not the People’s Republic of Scotland, but you , personally, are facing the sharp end of the best and the brightest of the Chinese Ministry of State Affairs, and you are not qualified to dabble in their games. Another part of you is now almost certain that Elaine is considering inviting you to play a different game, the oldest game there is—and the mummy lobe is tongue-tied and stricken with horror, realizing that, if you take up her invitation, you’ll have to explain both your little problems…And, finally, there’s the little fact that you’re playing a game you don’t understand the rules of against an artificial reality engine that Barry Michaels says has taken Elsie hostage, and that he thought it’d be a good idea to cross-link your National Identity Register files with those of an imaginary double agent. Slick public-school dog-fucker.

With a creak of floor-boards, Elaine sits down beside you on the futon, graceful and elegant as only a gawky collection of librarian-shaped elbows and knees can be. “I’m trying to figure out what they expect me to do,” she says, arranging the dressing-gown so that it covers her bare toes. “And you,” she adds. “I know what role you’re meant to play, but who am I?”

She’s eerily focussed, and you’re not entirely sure which game she’s talking about at this point. “Who do you want to be?” you ask, not quite looking at her directly.

“I think”—she licks her upper lip nervously—“I want to be a spook.” Her pupils are wide and black in the twilight. “I know what I don’t want to be.”

“Well, then. I think you’re already halfway there. You’re a forensic analyst with a security clearance, and you’re positioned so uncomfortably close to, uh, ‘Nigel MacDonald’ that if Team Red are tracking our meatspace location, they’ll figure MacDonald is under extreme close-up examination.”

“But that’s not what you should have asked,” she says, nodding at the stack of dead home-entertainment gear.

“Oh?”

“You should have said, who do you want”—she looks you in the eye, and you realize it’s game on , and you freeze in her path like a pheasant in front of a highland Land Rover; because there’s one special unfair rule to this game that applies to you but not to anybody else: And now it’s time to tell her, you find you’re terrified, but you can’t not tell her, either, and retain a shred of self-respect—“to be?”

Which is how Elaine ends up staying the night at your flat.

Face it, it was probably inevitable from the moment you offered to lend her the use of the washing-machine and a spare pair of jeans. If you’d realized she was halfway to fancying you, you’d have panicked and stuck your foot so far down your throat you could have kicked yourself in the ass: But by being considerate and friendly, you accidentally convinced her that you’re not a desperate loser. So she sat on your futon in the twilight, and you both chewed the paranoid cud and realized how isolated you were. And the next thing you noticed it was dark outside and the washing-machine was still running. “How do I get back to the hotel from here?” she asked. “Without using a taxi,” she added with the ghost of a smile.

“There’s a bus that’ll take you most of the way—or I could walk you”—and then you stood up and looked out the window and saw the rain: not the roaring waterfall that had ambushed you on the way home, but a normal Edinburgh evening’s worth of rain, a sporadic tinkling of liquid shrapnel—“or you can use the futon if you like: There’s plenty of spare bedding.”