Charles Stross - Halting State

Jack nods thoughtfully. “What’s the cover?” He sounds resigned, almost as if he can guess what’s coming.

“Hayek Associates play by the rules—officially.” Michaels bares his teeth, briefly. “We don’t have a dirty-tricks department, officially .”

“Ah.” Jack looks satisfied, but you’re anything but. “What kind of dirty tricks?” you demand.

“The industry—the games biz—has a habit of playing dirty. Keeping players happy is all about fun, isn’t it?” says Michaels. “So by extension, a tool that can tweak how much fun you’re having in a given game can also…”

“He’s talking about sabotage tools,” Jack cuts in. He gives Michaels a hard look. “That was your story for Wayne?”

Michaels nods. “Yes, basically. If we ever had to do anything deniable, we wanted a scapegoat to pin it on.”

“What did Wayne do after you told him that?” Jacks asks.

“He played along.” Michaels looks thoughtful. “He suggested we flesh out the role, actually. Rent a flat, pay the bills, work up a credit history, so we’d have something to look shocked about if anyone ever started digging.” He looks straight at you: “When the police broke down the MacDonald residence door and found a blacknet node, that was a shock. But by that point the cover story was out, so it could have been anyone at Hayek Associates, really. But that”—he nods at Jack, with an expression something like respect—“is when we realized we had a real problem. Now we know that part of the problem was Wayne. The question is, who else is involved?”

You swallow. It’s time to lay some cards of your own on the table. “I don’t like this game, Barry. I came up here to audit a bank, not identify murder victims.” (Or be abducted by kamikaze taxis, or conscripted by the secret service.) “I’m not cut out for this, and neither is Jack.”

“Really? I’d never have guessed,” he snarks at you. “Before you get on your high horse, I’d like to say that you’re absolutely wrong about that last bit. You’re here because you’re both graduates of an extensive training course. Only you didn’t see it as training, you paid to subscribe to it; it’s the difference between work and play, nothing more. You’re complaining now because something you used to do for fun turns out to be a paying career—”

“Paying?” Jack asks sharply.

“Who the hell do you think is footing the bill for the contract you gouged out of CapG?” Michaels raises an eyebrow. “It wasn’t just the stuff you listed on your CV, Jack. We know about the other. The tools. You’ve got exactly what we need for this job.” Then he turns to you: “You also, even though three-quarters of what we’re paying for your services is going into Dietrich-Brunner’s coffers—you’d do better to go freelance.” While you’re gasping indignantly, he adds, “I’m not going to make the mistake of appealing to your patriotism: It’s a deflating currency these days, and an ambiguous one. But I would like to put a word in for ethics, fair play, and enlightened self-interest. It’s not good for any of us to let Team Red run around hijacking certain, ah, critical systems—and killing people.” (He’s clearly got something in mind other than Avalon Four or the Zonespace game platform, and you find his fastidious reluctance to name things extremely disturbing.) “This isn’t the Great Game as it was played in the 1870s, in the high plateaus of central Asia; it’s the extension of diplomacy by other means into the medium of virtual worlds. It wouldn’t be necessary if those virtual worlds didn’t have entry points back into the net at large, or if we used virtual realms only for gaming—but you get the picture.”

And indeed you do. It’s a heady mixture of blackmail, flattery, appeals to your idealism, and a play for your self-interest, all rolled into one. You’d resent it even more if you weren’t compelled to sit back and admire the sheer brass-necked cheek of his approach. “You forgot to mention the kitten,” you say.

“The kitten?” Michaels looks nonplussed.

“If we don’t help you, you’ll have to drown the cute widdle kitten, and it’ll all be our fault.” You glare at him, but it just glances off the glacis of his self-confidence. Michaels’s confidence is disturbing, almost religious in its unshakable faith. Never trust a man who thinks his religion gives him all the answers. “Never mind. What are you trying so hard to get us to do?”

“What you’ve already been doing. You’ve already spooked one of our security problems into running and given us a handle on another.” He contrives to look innocent as one of the bar staff slopes by and deposits a bowl stuffed with small condiment sachets on your barrel top.

“But you’ve been penetrated—”

“Not just us, the entire country. Which is why there’s a very quiet panic going on today as the police go onto a civil contingencies footing and couriers distribute new one-time pads to all the telcos. Once that’s done, we can re-authenticate the entire backbone, and at that point we’ll have locked out Team Red. The trouble is, someone on the inside—and I doubt it was Wayne, he wasn’t clueful enough to pull a stunt like that—sold them a copy of the old pad via the blacknet, and I want to know who. If we don’t identify them, the whole operation’s a waste of time. But I think there’s a very good chance that if you just keep doing what you’ve been doing, you’ll make them break cover.”

The waiter is back, with two portions of coronary artery disease and a heart attack on the side. Michaels waits while he slides the traditional Scottish cuisine under your respective noses, then clears his throat. “Someone inside Hayek Associates used the Nigel MacDonald sock-puppet as a safe house for a criminal blacknet, then sold the crown jewels.” He bares his teeth as he hacks away at something that looks like a square of deep-fried sausage meat with his steak knife. “None of us is safe until they’re out of the way.”

Jack glances at you and silently shakes his head. There’s something speared on his fork, waiting in front of his open mouth—the naked cooked Scottish breakfast. You don’t want to look at it.

“Why?” you persist.

“Because…” Michaels looks confused.

“Why us ? As opposed to any other specialists you might have on tap, already working in your department?”

“Oh.” His face clears. “Because you’re not part of the core intelligence group—sorry, but that’s the fact of it. You don’t know enough about us to give anything significant away: You’re outsiders. Skilled, highly trained outsiders. Just like Team Red, actually. Nobody sends real spies these days; everything’s very hands-off. Anyway, once the mole is out of the way and the backbone is secure, their controls will realize that Team Red are blown, and they’ll withdraw. We want to send them a message—don’t mess around on our patch.”

It sounds superficially plausible, but you’ve got a feeling that things are never simple where Michaels is concerned. The strange cross-linkage between Jack’s ID and the non-existent Nigel MacDonald tells you there’s more to this than meets the eye, as does the business in the taxi, and Chen’s terror. Not to mention Jack’s Elsie. “You expect me to swallow that whole?” you ask, holding up a forkful of slowly congealing baked beans.

“Of course I don’t!” Michaels carves away at an egg that appears to have been fried in sump oil and lard. “But I can’t tell you everything. It’d be a hideous security breach for starters, despite the variable EULA you signed…What I can assure you is that your role is significant, your co-operation is highly desirable, and if you do what we want, you will be rewarded, both financially and with the knowledge that you’ve helped secure your country’s borders against a probe by an unfriendly foreign agency.”