Charles Stross - Halting State

Well, duh . You blink, feeling stupid. She told you she was into mediaeval sword-fighting, didn’t she? What did you expect?

“Sorry. You scared the crap out of me, Jack.” Pause. “How do you feel?”

Your throat feels like it’s on fire, and there’s definitely something wrong with your chest: It makes odd crackling noises when you breathe, and you can’t quite get enough air. “Water,” you say hopefully. You’re too tired to worry about anything else. Besides, she’s here, and she’s in the chair by your— hospital bed? —so she must be okay. “Phone?”

“I phoned Sophie,” she says. “After they rebooted the phone system.” She looks apprehensive: that same facing-the-noose expression you saw earlier, back when…

“You know, then.”

She nods. “They told me everything.”

The mummy lobe—what’s left of it—closes your eyes, out of embarrassment, or respect for the dead, or something. “I couldn’t handle it back then. Not six months after Mum died. I just couldn’t handle being on my own.” The mummy lobe is tired, too: tired of holding you together through lonely years of death-march work and playing at real life, tired of emulating the society you’ve been so cut off from for so long.

“But to try blackmailing you—” She breaks off.

“How were they to know that Sophie wasn’t real? They were sub-contracting hands-on stuff to a local blacknet. Probably gave it to some local muscle down south who’s laughing his rocks off. Like the story about the police who send this guy a photograph of his car, speeding, and a fine: So he sends them a photograph of a cheque. And they send him back a photograph of a pair of handcuffs…”

Cold little fingers insert themselves into your hand, kneading. “But you don’t need to be alone, if you don’t want to,” she says hesitantly. “You do know that, don’t you?”

“I do now .” You squeeze her fingers, as hard as you can, which is about drowned-rat strength right now. “Game over.”

“…So I was nattering wi’ the heid zombie in the hotel lobby when I heard the shots. The front-desk video take will show me lookin’ scunnered. It was two stories up, but I knew what they was immediately—that’s when I called, as I ran upstairs. It was all history by the time I got there, she had him on the floor with that sword of hers, and it was all over bar the bleedin’. But I feel like a right wally, skipper.”

“You and me both, Sergeant, and you know who the enquiry’s going to blame for assigning an uncertified officer to personal protection duty.”

That’s scant comfort, and ye ken the inspector knows it, but it’s a worse mess for her, you’ve got to admit—you’re not climbing the greasy pole after all. On the other hand—“We wuz in a collective tizzy, Liz, thanks to those bloody spooks and their full-dress crapfest. If they hadna sprung the terrorism alert at the same time we had to shut down CopSpace, we’d maybe hae stood a chance, and if we’d had CopSpace, again, we’d hae known what was happening. I blame myself—I should have told Bob to get his boots back upstairs the instant he’d spoken to the front desk.”

“You’re trying to second-guess an IPCC enquiry, Sue. My advice? Drop it, it’s over.” Liz looks irritated. “Besides, we shouldn’t talk about it outside of school. It looks like collusion in the wrong light, and that would never do.”

“Oh, okay.” Collusion is a political word, and you’ll take Liz’s word for it looking bad. You tighten your grip on your hat, realize what you’re doing, twitch it round in your lap, then let go again. It’s too much like sitting in a dentist’s waiting room for comfort. All it would need is a NO PHONES sign and a ticking clock on the mantelpiece above a dysfunctional gas fire to drive the message home. But this particular waiting room’s in better shape than your tooth doctor’s front room, right down to the extra-uncomfortable chairs and the civilian receptionist outside.

Kavanaugh looks at her watch. “Not long now,” she remarks, and you realize she’s bloody nervous, too. And then the inner-office door opens.

“Inspector Kavanaugh, Sergeant Smith, please take a seat.”

There are two chairs waiting for you, opposite a desk the size of a wee conference-table. And on the other side of it is the top brass—Deputy Chief Constable McMullen, who is definitely not dressed for the golf course this morning, sitting with a face like a hanging judge beneath a photie of his boss, Andrew Sampson, chief constable of South East Scotland force, shaking hands with the last-but-one justice minister on the back steps outside Holyrood, just to rub it in. But you have to work hard not to raise an eyebrow, because sitting next to him is that fly-case, Michaels—and another character in a grey suit with a face like a horse and a look that says high-altitude civil service , so high you need an oxygen mask just to breathe up there.

“At ease, sit down.” That’s McMullen. He glances to either side. “I want to make it clear right now that this is not a disciplinary hearing. Nothing is being recorded, and nothing you say here will go on any record. Is that understood?”

You don’t dare look round, but you can just about hear the sonic boom from Liz’s eyebrows as they head for the stratosphere. It’s policing, but not as we know it—everything is on the record, these days, lest the clients start throwing themselves down the stairs and suing the force for compensation. “Isnae that a bit… radical ?” you hear yourself asking, somewhat to your own disbelief.

“It’s necessary.” McMullen doesn’t look terribly happy. “As Mr. Jones from the Joint Defense Ministry will explain…?”

Jones—the high-flyer—has been looking at something in a leather folio. Now he closes it, puts in on the desk, and clears his throat. “I’m here to inform you that the events that took place at the West End Malmaison the Thursday before last are the subject of a classification order issued by the Ministry of Justice, at our request. The Home Office down south is also playing along. You may not discuss those events with anyone outside this room, other than the direct participants, without breach of the Official Secrets Act. You will need to sign these forms before you leave”—he taps the folder—“to confirm that you have been so informed. That’s the bad news.” He pauses for a moment. “On the other hand, you won’t be facing a board of enquiry.”

Really? But they didn’t need to call you here to tell you that in person, did they? So what’s going on?

McMullen clears his throat. “This leaves us with a little problem.” He pointedly doesn’t glance at Michaels, who’s got his arms crossed and is looking smugly dishevelled, or at Jones, who appears to have turned back into a cardboard statue of a civil servant. “The disposal of one Marcus Hackman. Who I believe you arrested and charged with attempted murder, possessing an unlicensed firearm, and, Inspector…?”

Liz clears her throat. “Also, two counts of murder—Wayne Richardson and Wu Chen—and that’s before we get into the esoteric stuff—solicitation of murder, conspiracy, membership of an organized criminal enterprise, whatever we can pin on him for the blacknet node he was running out of the MacDonald safe house, the various securities violations, insider trading, fraud, and you could probably nail him for spying if you were willing to drag everything up in court.” Now you spare her a glance: She rolls her eyes. “Of course, that’s all just fall-out from trying to cover up his first mistake, which was to have so little confidence in his own business venture that he expected it to fail and configured it as a honey trap for investors.”