Charles Stross - Singularity Sky

“What happened?” asked Herman.

“Nothing important, but I was warned off, and warned hard. I’ll put it in my report. They didn’t question my affiliation.”

“Any query over your work?”

“No. No suspicion, as far as I can tell.”

“Why did they question you?”

“Spies in bars. They want the frighteners on me. I haven’t been on board the Lord Vanek yet. Dockyard access control is very tight. I think they’re upset about something.”

“Any confirmation of unusual events? Fleet movements? Workup toward departure?”

“Nothing I know about.” Martin bit back his further comment: talking to Herman via the illegal transmitter always made him nervous. “I’m keeping my eyes on the ball. Report ends.”

“Bye.”

“PA: shut down link now.”

“The link is down.” Throughout the entire conversation, Martin noted, the only voice he had heard was his; the PA spoke in its owner’s tones, the better to be a perfect receptionist, and the CC link was so expensive that sending an audio stream over it would be a foolish extravagance. Talking to himself across a gulf of seventy light-years made Martin feel very lonely. Especially given the very real nature of his fears.

So far, he’d successfully played the gormless foreign engineering contractor with a runaway mouth, held overlong on a two-week assignment to upgrade the engines on board His Majesty’s battlecruiser Lord Vanek . In fact, he was doing such a good job that he’d gotten to see the inside of the Basilisk, and escaped alive.

But he wasn’t likely to do so twice, if they learned who he was working for.

“Do you think he is a spy?“ asked trainee procurator Vassily Muller.

“Not as far as I know.” The Citizen smiled thinly at his assistant, the thin scar above his left eye wrinkling with satanic amusement. “If I had any evidence that he was a spy, he would rapidly become an ex-spy.

And an ex-everything else, for that matter. But that is not what I asked you, is it?” He fixed his subordinate with a particular expression he had perfected for dealing with slow students. ‘Tell me why I let him go.“

“Because …” The trainee officer looked nonplussed. He’d been here six months, less than a year out of gymnasium and the custody of the professors, and it showed. He was still a teenager, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and almost painfully unskilled in the social nuances: like so many intelligent men who survived the elite boarding school system, he was also inclined to intellectual rigidity. Privately, the Citizen thought this was a bad thing, at least in a secret policeman — rigidity was a habit that would have to be broken if he was ever to be of much use. On the other hand, he seemed to have inherited his father’s intelligence. If he’d inherited his flexibility, too, without the unfortunate rebelliousness, he’d make an excellent operative.

After a minute’s silence, the Citizen prodded him. “That is not an acceptable answer, young man. Try again.”

“Ah, you let him go because he has a loose mouth, and where he goes, it will be easier to see who listens to him?”

“Better, but not entirely true. What you said earlier intrigues me. Why don’t you think he is a spy?” Vassily did a double take; it was almost painful to watch as he tried to deal with the Citizen’s abrupt about-face. “He’s too talkative, isn’t he, sir? Spies don’t call attention to themselves, do they? It’s not in their interests. And again, he’s an engineer contracted to work for the fleet, but the ship was built by the company he works for, so why would they want to spy on it? And he can’t be a professional subversive, either. Professionals would know better than to blab in a hotel bar.” He stopped and looked vaguely self-satisfied.

“Good going. Such a shame I don’t agree with you.”

Vassily gulped. “But I thought you said he wasn’t a—” He stopped himself. “You mean he’s too obviously not a spy. He draws attention to himself in bars, he argues politics, he does things a spy would not do — as if he wants to lay our suspicions at ease?”

“Very good,” said the Citizen. “You are learning to think like a Curator! Please note that I never said that Mr. Springfield is not a spy. Neither did I assert that he is one. He might well be; equally well, he might not. However, I will be unsatisfied until you have resolved the issue, one way or the other. Do you understand?”

“You want me to prove a negative?” Vassily was almost going cross-eyed with the effort of trying to understand the Citizen’s train of thought. “But that’s impossible!”

“Exactly!” The Citizen cracked a thin smile as he clapped his subordinate on the shoulder. “So you’ll have to find some way of making it a positive that you prove, won’t you? And that is your assignment for the foreseeable future, Junior Procurator Muller. You will go forth and try to prove that our irritating visitor of the morning is not a spy — or to gather sufficient evidence to justify his arrest. Come, now!

Haven’t you been champing at the bit to get out of this gloomy dungeon and see a bit of the capital, as I believe you referred to it only last week? This is your chance. Besides, when you return, think about the story you’ll have to tell that piece of skirt you’ve been chasing ever since you arrived here!”

“Ah — I’m honored,” said Vassily. He looked somewhat taken aback. A young officer, still sufficiently fresh from training that the varnish hadn’t eroded from his view of the universe, he looked up at the Citizen in awe. “Sir, humbly request permission to ask why? I mean, why now?”

“Because it’s about time you learned to do more than take minutes of committee meetings,” said the Citizen. His eyes gleamed behind their glasses; his moustache shuddered all the way out to its waxen points. “There comes a time when every officer needs to assume the full burden of his duties. I expect you have picked up at least a clue about how the job is done from the interminable reports you’ve been summarizing. Now it’s time to see if you can do it, no? On a low-risk assignment, I might add; I’m not sending you after the revolutionaries right away, ha-ha. So this afternoon you will go to sublevel two for field ops processing, then tomorrow you will start on the assignment. I expect to see a report on my desk, first thing every morning, starting the day after tomorrow. Show me what you can do!” The next morning Martin was awakened by a peremptory rap on the door. ‘Telegram for Master Springfield!“ called a delivery boy.

Martin pulled on a dressing gown and opened the door a crack. The telegram was passed inside; he signed for it quickly, pulled out the contents, and passed back the signed envelope. Blinking and bleary-eyed, he carried the message over to the window and pulled back the shutters to read it. It was a welcome surprise, if somewhat annoying to be woken for it — confirmation that his visa had been approved, his security vetting was complete, and that he was to report at 1800 that evening to the Navy beanstalk in South Austria for transit to the fleet shipyards in geosynchronous orbit.

Telegrams, he reflected, were so much less civilized than e-mail — the latter didn’t come with an officious youth who’d get you out of bed to sign for it. Such a shame that e-mail was unavailable in the New Republic and telegrams ubiquitous. But then again, e-mail was decentralized, telegrams anything but. And the New Republic was very keen on centralization.

He dressed, shaved, and made his way downstairs to the morning room to await his breakfast. He wore local garb — a dark jacket, tight breeches, boots, and a shirt with a ruff of lace at the collar — but of a subtly unfashionable cut, somehow betraying a lack of appreciation for the minutiae of fashion. Off-world styles, he found, tended to get in the way when trying to establish a working rapport with the locals: but if you looked just slightly odd, they’d sense your alien-ness without being overwhelmed by it, and make at least some allowances for your behavior. By any yardstick, the New Republic was an insular society, and interacting with it was difficult even for a man as well traveled as Martin, but at least the ordinary people made an effort.