Ken Macleod - The Sky Road

Myra turned and walked out of the crematorium, and row by row, from the front, they fell in and walked out behind her.

Her hands were shaking as she fumbled with her black fur hat and tried to light a cigarette in the driveway. Out on the street, cars were being moved into position to carry the dignitaries off to the post-funeral luncheon function. Somebody steadied her hand, helped her with the cigarette. She lit up and looked up, to see David Reid. Dark brows, dark eyes, white hair down to the upturned collar of his astrakhan coat. He looked less than half his age, with only the white hair—itself an affectation—indicating anything different; none of her give-away flaws. She was pretty sure his joints didn’t creak, or his bones ache. They had better fixes in the West. His minders hung about a few steps away, their gaze grepping the surroundings. People were milling around, drifting towards the waiting cars.

“Are you all right?” Reid asked.

Tm fine, Dave.”

He scuffed a foot on the gravel, scratched the back of his neck.

“We didn’t do it, Myra.”

“Yeah, well…” She shrugged. “I read the autopsy. I believe it.”

You’d be dead if I didn’t she disdained to add. She believed the autopsy; she had no choice. She believed Reid, too. She still had her doubts about the verdict: natural causes—it might be one of those dark episodes where she could never be sure of the truth, like Stalin’s hand in the Kirov affair, or in the death of Robert Harte… But Reid took the point she wanted him to take. He seemed to relax slightly, and lit a cigarette himself. His gaze flicked from the burning tip to the crematorium chimney, then to her.

“Ah, shit. It seems such a waste.”

Myra nodded. She knew what he meant. Burning dead people, burying them in a fucking hole in the ground— it was already beginning to seem barbaric.

“He didn’t even want cryo,” she said. “Let alone that Californian computer-scan scam.”

“Why not?” Reid asked. “He could’ve afforded it.”

“Oh, sure,” Myra said. “Just didn’t believe in it, is all.”

Reid smiled thinly. “Neither do I.”

“Oh?”

He spread his hands. “I just sell the policies.”

“Is there any pie you don’t have a finger in?”

Reid rubbed the side of his nose with his finger. “Diversification, Myra. Name of the game. Spread the risks. Learned that in insurance, way back when.” He reached out, waiting for her unspoken permission to take her arm. “We need to talk business.”

“Car,” she said, catching his elbow firmly and turning about on the crunching gravel. They walked side by side to the armoured limousine. Myra, out of the corner of her eye, watched people watching. Good: let it be clear that she no longer suspected Reid. Not publicly, not politically, not even—at a certain level—privately. Just personally, just in her jealous old bones. But there was more to it than making a diplomatic display; there was still a genuine affection between them, attenuated though it was by the years, exasperated though it was by their antagonism. Reid had never been a man to let enmity get in the way of friendship.

Myra glanced at her watch as the car door shut with a well-engineered clunk. They had about five minutes to talk in private as the big black Zhil rolled through Kapitsa’s city centre to its only posh hotel, the Sheraton. She setded back in the leather seat and eyed Reid cautiously.

“OK,” she said. “Get on with it.”

Reid reached for the massive ashtray, stubbed out one cigarette and lit up another. Myra did the same. Their smoky sighs met in a front of mutual disruption. Reid scratched his eyebrow, looked away, looked back.

“Well,” he said. “I want to make you an offer. We know you still have some of your old —” he hesitated; even here, there were words one did not say “—strategic assets, and we’d like to buy them off you.”

He could be bluffing.

“I have no—” she began. Reid tilted his head back and puffed a tiny jet of smoke that, after a few centimetres, curled back on itself in a miniature mushroom-cloud.

“Don’t waste time denying it,” he said.

“All right,” said Myra. She swallowed a rising nausea, steadied herself against a dizzy, chill darkening of her sight. It was like being caught with a guilty secret, but one which she had not known she held. But, she knew too well, if she had not known it was because she had never tried, and never wanted, to find out.

“Suppose we do. We wouldn’t sell them to anyone, let alone you. We’re against your coup—”

It was Reid’s turn to feign ignorance, Myra’s to show impatience.

“We wouldn’t use them,” he said. “Good God, what do you take us for? We just want them… off the board, so to speak. Out of the game. And quite frankly, the only way we can be sure of that is to have control of them ourselves.”

Myra shook her head. “No way. No deal.”

Reid raised his hand. “Let me tell you what we have to offer, before you reject it. We can buy you out, free and clear. Give everybody in this state, every one of your citizens, enough money to settle anywhere and live more than comfortably. Think about it. The camps are going to be wound down, and whoever wins the next round is going to move against you. Your assets aren’t going to be much use when Space Defense gets back in business.”

That’s a threat, I take it?”

“Not at all. Statement of fact. Sell them now or lose them later, it’s up to you.”

“Lose them—or use them!”

Reid gave her a “we are not amused” look.

“I’m not fooling,” Myra told him. “The best I can see coming out of your coup is more chaos, in which case we’ll need all the goddamn assets we can get!”

Reid took a deep breath. “No, Myra. If you do get chaos, it’ll be because we haven’t won. This coup, as you call it, is the last best chance for stability. If we fail the world will go to hell in its own way. Your personal contribution to that will then be no concern of mine—I’ll be dead, or in space—but you can help make sure it doesn’t happen, and benefit yourself and your people in the process.” He was putting all of his undeniable charm into his voice and expression as he concluded, “Think it over, Myra. That’s all I ask.”

“I’ll think about it,” she said, granting him at least this victory, for what it was worth. She looked around. “We’ve arrived.”

The hotel’s ornately furnished function suite was filled with people in dark clothes, standing about in small groups and conversing in low voices. Already they were beginning to relax out of their funereal solemnity, to smile and laugh a little: life goes on. Fine.

Myra and Reid walked together to the long tables on which the buffet was spread, and contrived to lose each other in the random movement of people selecting food and drinks. With a plate of savouries in one hand and a large glass of whisky in the other, Myra looked around. Over in one corner Andrei Mukhartov was deep in conversation with a lady in a black suit and a large hat; she was answering his quiet questions in a loud voice. Myra hoped this representative of the tattered Western fringe of the former United States wasn’t talking about anything confidential. Possibly that was the point. She noticed that Valentina was standing alone, in an olive-green outfit whose black armband was rather shouted down by an astonishing amount of gold braid. Myra made a less than subtle bee-line for her.

“Ah, there you are,” she said, as Valentina turned. She nudged her defence minister towards the nearest of the many small tables dotted around the vast floor. They sat.