Charles Stross - The Family Trade

“So?” He looked distracted, so she stopped fumbling at his belt for a moment.

“Well.” She leaned her chin against the hollow of his neck, licked his pulse spot slowly. “It may have escaped your attention, but I am an expert in one particular field-I’ve spent years studying it, and I think I probably know more about it than anyone else in the family. The Clan is an old-fashioned unlimited-liability partnership, with a dose of family politics thrown in. The business structure itself is a classic variation on import/export trade, but it’s cash-rich enough to support a transition to some other model. All I need is a lever and an appropriate fulcrum and then a direction to make them move in. Business restructuring, baby, that’s where it’s at. A whole new business model. The lever we need is one that will convince them that they have more to lose by not changing than by sticking with the status quo.

Once we’re in the driver’s seat, nobody is going to tell us we can’t shack up on this side and live the way we want to.”

He lifted her off her feet and lay down beside her. “What leverage do you need?” he asked alertly. “I spent years looking and didn’t find anything that powerful…”

“It’s going to be something convincing.” She smiled hungrily up at him. “And they’ll never know what hit them. We need to establish a power base by Beltaigne. A pilot project that demonstrates massive potential for making money in some way that relies on the Clan talent without falling into the classic mercantilist traps. It’ll make me worth much more to them alive than dead, and it’ll give us the beginning of a platform to recruit like-minded people and start building.” She looked pensive. “A skunk works within an established corporation, designed to introduce new ways of thinking and pioneer new business opportunities. I’ve written up enough stories about them-I just never thought I’d be setting one up myself.”

She stopped talking. There’d be time to work out the details later.

Miriam dozed fitfully, unable to relax her grip on consciousness. She kept turning events over in her mind, wondering what she could have done differently. If there was anything in the past two weeks that she could have changed, what might have come of it? She might not have accepted the pink and green shoebox. She wouldn’t be in this mess at all.

But she wouldn’t have met Brill, or Roland, or Angbard, or Olga, or the rest of the menagerie of Clan connections who were so insistently cluttering up her hitherto-straightforward family life with politics and feuds and grudges and everything else that went with the Clan. Her life would be simpler, emptier, more predictable, and safer, she thought sleepily. With nobody trying to exploit me because of who I am.

Who I am? She opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling in the dark. Is it me they’re after or someone else? She wondered. If only I could ask my mother. Not the mother who’d loved her and raised her, not Iris-the other one, the faceless woman who’d died before she’d had a chance to remember her. The woman who’d borne her and been murdered, her only legacy a mess of-

She glanced sideways. Roland was asleep next to her, his face smooth and relaxed, free of worry. I’ve gone from being completely independent to this in just two weeks. Never mind Brill and Kara back in the palace, the weight of Angbard’s expectations, the Clan’s politics… Miriam wasn’t used to having to think about other people when planning her moves, not since the divorce from Ben.

She glanced at the alarm clock. It was coming up to seven o’clock-too late to go back to sleep. She leaned over toward Roland’s ear. “Wake up, sleepyhead,” she whispered.

Roland mumbled something into the pillow. His eyelids twitched.

“Time to be getting up,” she repeated.

He opened his eyes, then yawned. “I hate morning people,” he said, looking at her slyly.

“I’m not a morning person, I just do my best worrying when I should be asleep.” She took a deep breath. I’m going to have to go find that lever to move the Clan,” she told him. “The one we were talking about last night. While that’s going on, unless we can find out who’s really got it in for me, we may not be able to meet up very often.”

“We can’t talk about this publicly,” he said. “Even if Olga keeps her mouth shut-”

“No.” She kissed him. “Damn, I feel like they’re all watching us from behind the bed!”

“What are you going to do today?” he asked diplomatically.

“Well.” She rolled up against him. “First, we’re going to order breakfast from room service. Then you’re going to go and do whatever it is that Angbard expects of you this morning. If you come back here, I’ll probably be gone, because I’ve got some research to do and some stuff to buy. There’s someone I’ve hired-” he raised an eyebrow-“Yes, I’ve established a pattern of drawing out cash against that card, for as long as it’ll hold out. I’m paying a friend who I trust, implicitly, to keep an eye out for me. I’m not going to tell you any more about it because the fewer people who know, the better. But when you come back to this room, even if I’m not here, you’ll find a prepaid new mobile phone. From time to time, I want you to check for voice mail. Only three people will know the number-you, me, and my employee. It’s for emergencies only. There’ll be a single number programmed into it, and that’s for me-again, I’ll only check for voice mail occasionally. I figure if I can’t even hide a mobile phone, there won’t be anything you can do to help.”

“So you’re going away,” he said. “But are you going back to court or are you going underground?”

“I’m going back to face the music,” she replied. “At least for this evening, I need to be seen. But I’m going to hole up on this side at night, at least until I can find a safely doppelgangered room or figure out who’s after me. And then-” she shrugged. “Well, I’ll have to play it by ear. For now, I’m thinking about setting up a new startup venture, in the import/export field.”

“That’s not safe-they’ll kill you if they find out! Clan business ventures are really tightly controlled. If you splinter off, they’ll assume you’re setting up as a rival.”

“Not if I do it right,” she said confidently. “It’s a matter of finding a new business model that hasn’t occurred to any of them. Then get it going and deal the Clan shareholders in before they know what’s happening. If I can finesse it, they’ll have a vested interest in seeing me succeed.”

“But that’s-” Roland was at a loss for words. “A new business? There is no scope for anything new! Nobody’s come up with a new trade since the 1940s, when the drug thing began taking over from gold and hot goods. I was thinking you were going to try and do something like bootstrap reforms on your own estate, not-”

“That’s because you’re thinking about it all wrong.” She reached out and touched his nose. “So are they. You did the postgraduate research thing,” she said. “Economic history, right?”

“Right. What’s that got to do with it?”

“Well. The family business structure is kind of primitive, isn’t it? So you went looking for a way to modernize it, didn’t you? Using historical models.”

“Yes. But I still don’t see-”

“Historical models are the wrong kind. Look at me. They tried to train you up to improve things, but there’s not a lot you can do when the management tree is defined by birth, is there?”

“Correct.” He looked frustrated. “I did some work on this side, cutting overheads and reorganizing, but there’s stuff I couldn’t touch-I just wasn’t allowed anywhere near it, in fact. There’s no easy way to apply the European model in the Gruinmarkt. No investment banking infrastructure, no limited liability, all property rights ultimately devolve to the king-it’s straight out of the late-feudal period. Lots of really competent, smart people who are never going anywhere because they can’t world-walk and lots of time-wasting prima donnas who are basically content to serve as couriers on a million-dollar salary.” He caught her eye and flushed.