Charles Stross - Singularity Sky

“Huh. That’s so much fun to know.” She forced a grin. “So where do you come from? Go on, I told you—”

Martin stretched his arms and leaned back. “I grew up in a Yorkshire hill farming village, all goats and cloth caps and dark satanic mills full of God-knows-what. Oh yes, and compulsory ferret-legging down the pub on Tuesday evenings, for the tourist trade tha’ knows.”

“Ferret-legging?” Rachel looked at him incredulously.

“Yup. You tie your kilt up around your knees with duct tape — as you probably know, no Yorkshireman would be seen dead wearing anything under his sporran — and take a ferret by the scruff of his neck. A ferret, that’s like, uh, a bit like a mink. Only less friendly. It’s a young man’s initiation rite; you stick the ferret where the sun doesn’t shine and dance the furry dance to the tune of a balalaika. Last man standing and all that, kind of like the ancient Boer aardvark-kissing competition.” Martin shuddered dramatically.

“I hate ferrets. The bloody things bite like a cask-strength single malt without the nice aftereffects.”

“That was what you did on Tuesdays,” Rachel said, slowly beginning to smile. ‘Tell me more. What about Wednesdays?“

“Oh, on Wednesdays we stayed home and watched reruns of Coronation Road . They remixed the old video files to near-realistic resolution and subtitled them, of course, so we could understand what they were saying. Then we’d all hoist a pint of Tetley’s tea and toast the downfall of the House of Lancaster.

Very traditional, us Yorkshirefolk. I remember the thousandth-anniversary victory celebrations — but that’s enough about me. What did you do on Wednesdays?” Rachel blinked. “Nothing in particular. Defused terrorist A-bombs, got shot at by Algerian Mormon separatists. Uh, that was after I kicked over the traces the first time. Before then, I think I took the kids to soccer, although I’m not sure what day of the week that was.” She turned aside for a moment and rummaged in the steamer trunk under her bunk. “Ah, here it is.” She pulled out a narrow box and opened it. “You know what? Maybe you shouldn’t have used that sober patch.” The bottle gleamed golden beneath the antiseptic cabin lights.

“I’d be lousy company though. I was getting all drunk and depressed on my own, and you had to interrupt me and make me sober up.”

“Well, maybe you should just have tried to find someone to get drunk with instead of doing it on your own.” Two small glasses appeared. She leaned close. “Do you want it watered?” Martin eyed the bottle critically. Replicated Speyside fifty-year malt, a cask-strength bottling template. If it wasn’t a nanospun clone of the original, it would be worth its weight in platinum. Even so, it would be more than adequately drinkable. “I’ll take it neat and report to sick bay for a new throat tomorrow.” He whistled appreciatively as she poured a generous measure. “How did you know?”

“That you’d like it?” She shrugged. “I didn’t. I just grew up on corn liquor. Didn’t meet the real thing till a job in Syrtis—” Her face clouded over. “Long life and happiness.”

“I’ll drink to that,” he agreed after a moment. They sat in silence for a minute, savoring the afterbloom of the whisky. “I’d be happier right now if I knew what was going on, though.”

“I wouldn’t be too worried: either nothing, or we’ll be dead too fast to feel it. The carrier from Septagon will probably just make a fast pass to reassure itself that we’re not planning on spreading any more mayhem, then escort us to the next jump zone while the diplomats argue over who pays. Right now, I’ve got the comms room taking my name in vain for all it’s worth; hopefully, that’ll convince them not to shoot at us without asking some more questions first.”

“I’d be happier if I knew we had a way off this ship.”

“Relax. Drink your whisky.” She shook her head. “We don’t. So stop worrying about it. Anyway, if they do shoot us, wouldn’t you rather die happily sipping a good single malt or screaming in terror?”

“Has anyone ever told you you’re cold-blooded? No, I take it back. Has anyone ever told you you’ve got a skin like a tank?”

“Frequently.” She stared into her glass thoughtfully. “It’s a learned thing. Pray you never have to learn it.”

“You mean you had to?”

“Yes. No other way to do my job. My last job, that is.”

“What did you do?” he asked softly.

“I wasn’t joking about the terrorist A-bombs. Actually, the bombs were the easiest bit; it was finding the assholes who planted them that was the hard part. Find the asshole, find the gadget, fix the gadget, fix the dump they sprang the plute from. Usually in that order, unless we were unlucky enough to have to deal with an unscheduled criticality excursion in downtown wherever without someone mailing in a warning first. Then if we found the asshole, our hardest job would be keeping the lynch mob away from them until we could find out where they sourced the bang-juice.”

“Did you ever lose any?” he asked, even more quietly.

“You mean, did I ever fuck up and kill several thousand people?” she asked. “Yes—”

“No, that’s not what I meant.” He reached for her free hand gently. “I know where you’ve been. Any job I do — if it doesn’t work, somebody pays. Possibly hundreds or thousands of somebodies. That’s the price of good engineering; nobody notices you did your job right.”

“Nobody’s actually trying to stop you doing your job,” she challenged.

“Oh, you’d be surprised.”

The tension in her shoulders ebbed. “I’m sure you’ve got a story about that, too. You know, for someone who’s no good at dealing with people, you’re not bad at being a shoulder to cry on.” He snorted. “And for someone who’s a failure at her job you’re doing surprisingly well so far.” He let go of her hand and rubbed the back of her neck. “But I think you could do with a massage. You’re really tense. Got a headache yet?”

“No,” she said, slightly reluctantly. Then she took another sip of her whisky. The glass was nearly empty now. “But I’m open to persuasion.”

“I know three ways to die happy. Unfortunately, I’ve never tried any of them. Care to join me?”

“Where did you hear about them?”

“At a seance. It was a good seance. Seriously, though. Dr. Springfield prescribes another dose of Speyside life-water, then a lie down and a neck massage. Then, even if the many-angled ones decide to come in shooting, at least fifty percent of us get to die happy. How’s that sound?”

“Fine.” She smiled tiredly and reached for the bottle, ready to top his glass up. “But you know something? You were right about the not knowing. You can get used to it, but it doesn’t get any easier. I wish I knew what they were thinking …”

Bronze bells tolled on the bridge of the Fleet attack carrier Neon Lotus . Incense smoldered in burners positioned above air inlet ducts; beyond the ornate gold-chased pillars marking the edges of the room, the brilliant jewels of tracking glyphs streamed past against a backdrop consisting of infinite darkness.

Shipboard Facilities Coordinator Ariadne Eldrich leaned back in her chair and contemplated the blackness of space. She stared intently at the cluster of glyphs that intersected her vector close to the center of the wall. “Cultureless fools. Just what did they think they were doing?”

“Thinking probably had very little to do with it,” Interdictor Director Marcus Bismarck noted drily. “Our Republican neighbors seem to think that too much mind-work rots the brain.” Eldrich snorted. “Too true.” A smaller cloud of diadems traced a convergent path through the void behind the New Republican battle squadron; a wing of antimatter-powered interceptors, six hours out from the carrier and accelerating on a glare of hard gamma radiation at just under a thousand gees. Their crew — bodies vitrified, minds uploaded into their computational matrices — watched the intruders, coldly alert for any sign of active countermeasures, a prelude to attack. “But who did they think they were shooting at?”