Charles Stross - Singularity Sky

“That’s—” he sat up, and the voice went away abruptly.

Martin blinked and looked around. No voices. Nothing else had changed in the cell; it was still too hot, stuffy, with a constant background smell of bad drains and stale cabbage. (The cabbage was inexplicable; the menu had long since shifted to salt beef and ship’s biscuit, a recipe perversely retained by the New Republic’s Navy despite the ready availability of vacuum and extreme cold millimeters beyond the outer pressure hull of the ship). He lay down again.

“—just one. If you can—”

He closed his eyes and, as if at a stance, rapped once, hard, on the base of the toilet.

“Received. Now tap—” The voice paused. “Tap once for each day you’ve been in the tank.” Martin blinked, then rapped out an answer.

“Do you know Morse code?”

Martin racked his brains. It had been quite a long time— “yes,” he tapped out. A mostly obsolete skill, that low-bandwidth serial code set, but one that he did know, for a simple reason: Herman had insisted he learn it. Morse was human-accessible, and a sniff for more sophisticated protocols might easily miss something as mundane as the finger-tapping back channel in a video call.

“If you lie with your head up against the side of the toilet bowl, you will hear me better.” He blinked. Bone conduction ? No, something else. The induction wires around his auditory nerves — some high-frequency source must be shorting out against the metal of the toilet, using it as an antenna! Inefficient, but if it wouldn’t carry far …

“Identify yourself,” he signaled.

The reply came in Morse. “AKA Ludmilla. Who watched us over dinner?”

“The boy wonder,” he tapped out. He slumped against the floor, shivering in relief. Only two people could reasonably be on the other side of the pipe, and the Curator’s Office wasn’t likely to authenticate his identity that way. “What’s your relay?”

“Spy drone in sewage system jammed against effluent valve. One of batch accidentally released by idiot subcurator. Told them to find you. Fuel cells in drone very low, drained by conduction telephone. Prefer Morse. Martin, I am trying to get you out. No luck so far.”

“How long till arrival?” he tapped urgently.

‘Ten days to low-orbit arrival. If not released first, expect rescue day of arrival. Attempting to assert diplomatic cover for you.“

Ten days. Rescue — if they didn’t stick him on a freighter under armed guard and ship him back to execution dock, and if Rachel wasn’t whistling in the face of a storm. “Query rescue.”

“Diplomatic life belt big enough for two. Power level approaching shutdown: will try to send another relay later. Love you. Over.”

“I love you, too,” he tapped hopefully, but there was no reply.

A miriad of tiny gears whirred, clucked, and buzzed in a background hum of gray noise beneath a desktop. Optical transducers projected a magic-lantern dance of light on the wall opposite. The operator, gold-leafed collar unbuttoned, leaned back in his chair and dribbled smoke from his nostrils: a pipe dangled limply between his knuckles as he stared at the display.

There was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” he called. The door opened. He blinked: came to his feet. “Ah, and what can I do for you, Procurator?”

“A mmoment of your time if I may, sir?”

“By all means. Always a pleasure to be of service to the Basilisk. Have a seat?” Vassily settled down behind the desk, visibly uncomfortable. The shadow play of lights danced on the wall, thin blue smoke catching the red-and-yellow highlights and coiling lazily in midair. “Would this be the, ah, our state vector?”

For a moment Security Lieutenant Sauer considered hazing the lad; he reluctantly shelved the idea. “Yes.

Not that there’s much to be made of it, unless you’re interested in the topology of five-dimensional manifolds. And it’s only theoretical, until we arrive at the far end and relativistics come out with a pulsar map to confirm it. I’m trying to study it; promotion board ahead you know, once this affair is straightened out.”

“Hmm.” Vassily nodded. Sauer wasn’t the only Navy officer expecting a promotion to come out of this campaign. “Well, I suppose you could look on the bright side; we’re most of the way there now.” Sauer pursed his lips, raised his pipe, and sucked. “I would never say that. Not until we know the enemy’s dead and buried at a crossroads with a mouthful of garlic.”

“I suppose so. But your lads will take care of that, won’t they? Meanwhile it’s my people who have to come in afterward and do the tidying up, keep this sort of thing from happening again.” Sauer looked at the young policeman, maintaining a polite expression despite his mild irritation. “Is there something I can help with?”

“Er, yah, I think so.” The visitor leaned back. He reached into his tunic pocket and withdrew a cigar case. “Mind if I smoke?”

Sauer shrugged. “You’re my guest.”

“Thank you!”

For a minute they were silent, lighters flaring briefly and blue-gray clouds trailing in the airflow to the ceiling vents. Vassily tried to suppress his coughing, still not quite accustomed to the adult habit. “It’s about the engineer in the brig.”

“Indeed.”

“Good.” Puff . “I was beginning to wonder what is going to happen to him. I, er, gather that the last supply ships will be dropping off their cargo and heading home in a couple of days, and I was wondering if …?”

Sauer sat up. He put his pipe down; it had flamed out, and though the bowl was hot to the touch, it held nothing but white-stained black shreds. “You were wondering if I could sign him over to you and put you on the slow boat home with your man in tow.”

Vassily half smiled, embarrassed. “Exactly right, I’m sure. The man’s guilty as hell, anyone can see that; he needs to be sent home for a proper trial and execution — what do you say?” Sauer leaned back in his chair and contemplated the analytical engine. “You have a point,” he admitted.

“But things aren’t quite so clear-cut from where I’m sitting.” He relit his pipe.

“Nice tobacco, sir,” ventured Vassily. “Tastes a bit funny, though. Very relaxing.”

“That’ll be the opium,” said Sauer. “Good stuff, long as you don’t overdo it.” He puffed contentedly for a minute. “Why do you think Springfield’s in the brig in the first place?” Vassily looked puzzled. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? He violated Imperial regulations. In fact, that’s just what I’d been looking for.”

“Executing him isn’t going to make it easy for the Admiralty to convince foreign engineers to come work for us, though, is it?” Sauer sucked on his cigar. “If he was a spacer, lad, he’d have done the frog kick in the airlock already. I’ll tell you what. If you insist on dragging him home on the basis of what you found on him, all that will happen is that the Admiralty will sit on it for a few months, hold an inquiry, conclude that no real harm was done, court-martial him for something minor, and sentence him to time served — on general principles, that is — and leave you looking like an idiot. You don’t want to do that; trust me, putting a blot on your record card at this stage in the game is a bad move.”

“Ah, so what do you suggest, sir?”

“Well.” Sauer stubbed out his cigar and looked at it regretfully. “I think you’re going to have to decide whether or not to have a little flutter on the horses.”

“Horses, sir?”

“Gambling, Mr. Muller, gambling. Double or quits time. You have decided that this engineer is working for the skirt from Earth, no? It seems a justifiable suspicion to me, but there is a lack of firm evidence other than the disgraceful way she plays for him. Which, let us make no mistake, could equally well be innocent — disreputable but innocent of actual criminal intent against the Republic, I say. In any event, she has made no sign of wrongdoing, other than possessing proscribed instruments in her diplomatic bag and generally being detrimental to morale by virtue of her rather unvirtuous conduct. We have no grounds for censure, much less for declaring her persona non grata . And irritating though she may be, her presence on this mission was decreed by His Excellency the Archduke. So I think the time has come for you to either shit or get off the can. Either accept that Mr. Springfield is probably going to waltz free, or shoot for the bigger target and hope you find something big to pin on her so that we can overcome her immunity.”