Charles Stross - The Hidden Family

“Sunday worship? I don’t see much sign of that around here,” Miriam let slip. She backed up hastily. “I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t cause you any trouble?”

“Trouble, no, no trouble, not unless you count having the King Street thief-taker himself asking pointed questions about my visitor of the other morning.” His back was turned to her, so Miriam couldn’t see his expression, but she tightened her grip on her bag, as she suddenly found herself wishing that the pockets of her coat were deep enough to conceal her pistol.

“That wasn’t my doing,” she said evenly.

“I know it wasn’t.” He turned to face her, and she saw that he was holding a somewhat tarnished silver teapot. “And you’d taken the Marx, so it wasn’t as if it was lying around for him to trip over, was it? For which I believe I owe you thanks enough to cancel out any ill will resulting from his unwelcome visit.” He held up the pot. “Can I offer you some refreshment, while you explain why you’re here?”

“Sure.” She glanced in the opposite direction. “In there?”

“The morning room, by all means. I will be but a few moments.”

Miriam walked into Burgeson’s morning room and got a surprise. The room was perfectly round. Even the window frames and the door were curved in line with the wall, and the plaster moldings around the ceiling described a perfect circle twelve feet in diameter. It was also extremely untidy. A huge and dubious Chesterfield sofa with stuffing hanging out of its arms hulked at one side, half submerged beneath a flood of manuscripts and books. An odd-looking upright piano, its scratched lid supporting a small library, leaned drunkenly against the wall. There was a fireplace, but the coals in it barely warmed the air immediately in front of it, and the room was icy cold. A plate with the remnants of a cold lunch sat next to the fireplace. Miriam sat gingerly on the edge of the sofa. The sofa was cold too, so that it seemed to suck the heat right through her layers of heavy clothing.

“How do you take your tea?” Burgeson called. “Milk, sugar?”

He was moving in the hall. She slipped a hand into her bag and pulled out her weapon, and pointed its spine at him. “Milk, no sugar,” she replied.

“Very good.” He advanced, bearing a tray, and laid it down in front of the fireplace. There were, she noticed, bags under his eyes. He looked tired, or possibly ill. “What’s that?” He asked, staring at her hand.

“One good history book deserves another,” she said evenly.

“Oh dear.” He chuckled hoarsely. “You know I can’t offer you anything for it. Not on a Sunday. If the police—”

“Take it, it’s a gift,” she said impatiently.

“A gift ?” From his expression Miriam deduced that the receipt of presents was not an experience wim which Erasmus Burgeson was well acquainted—he made no move to take it. “I’m touched, m’dear. Mind if I ask what prompted this unexpected generosity?” He was staring at her warily, as if he expected her to sprout bat wings and bite him.

“Sure,” she said easily. “If you would pour the tea before it gets cold? Is it always this cold here in, uh, whatever this city is called?”

He froze for a moment, then knelt down and began pouring tea from the pot into two slightly chipped Delft cups. “Boston.”

“Ah, Boston it is.” She nodded to herself. “The cold?”

“Only when a smog notice is in effect.” Burgeson pointed at the fire. “Damned smokeless fuel ration’s been cut again. You can only burn so much during a smog, or you run out and then it’s just too bad. Especially if the pipes burst. But when old father smog rolls down the Back Bay, you’d rather not have been born, lest pipes of a different kind should go pop.” He coughed for effect and patted his chest. “You speak the King’s English remarkably well for someone who doesn’t know a blessed thing. Where are you from, really?”

She put the book down on the heap on the sofa. “As far as I can tell, about ten miles and two hundred years away,” she said, feeling slightly light-headed at the idea of telling him even this much.

“Not France? Are you sure you don’t work for the dauphin’s department?” He cocked his head on one side, parrotlike.

“Not France. Where I come from they chopped his head off a long time ago.” She watched him carefully.

“Chopped his head off? Fascinating—” He rose on one knee, and held out a cup to her.

“Thank you.” She accepted it.

“If this is madness, it’s a most extraordinary delusion,” he said, nodding. “Would you be so good as to tell me more?”

“In due course. I have a couple of questions for you, however.” She took a decorous sip of the tea. “Specifically, taking on trust the question of your belief in my story, you might want to contemplate some of the obstacles a traveler from, um, another world, might face in creating an identity for themselves in this one. And especially in the process of buying a house and starting a business, when one is an unaccompanied female in a strange country. I don’t know much about me legal status of women here other than that it differs quite significantly from where I come from. I think I’m probably going to need a lawyer, and possibly a proxy. Which is why I thought of you.”

“I see.” Burgeson was almost going cross-eyed in his attempts to avoid interrupting her. “Pray tell, why me?”

“Because an officer of the law recommended you.” She grinned. “I figure a fence who is also an informer is probably a safer bet than someone who’s so incompetent that he hasn’t reached a working accommodation with the cops.” There were other reasons too, reasons connected with Miriam’s parents and upbringing, but she wasn’t about to give him that kind of insight into her background. Trust went only so far, after all.

“A fence—” He snorted. “I’m not dishonest or unethical, ma’am.”

“You just sell books that the Lord Provost’s Court wants burned,” she said, with an amused tone. “And the police recommend you. Do I need to draw a diagram?”

He signed. “Guilty as charged. If you aren’t French, are you sure you aren’t a Black Chamber agent playing a double gamer’

“What’s the Black Chamber?”

“Oh.” Abruptly he looked gloomy. “I suppose I should also have sold you an almanac.”

“That might have been a good idea,” she agreed.

“Well, now.” He brushed papers from the piano stool and sat on it, opposite her, his teacup balanced precariously on a bony knee. “Supposing I avoid saying anything that might incriminate myself. And supposing we take as a matter of faith your outrageous claim to be a denizen of another, ah, world? Like this one, only different. No le Roi Française , indeed. What, then, could you be wanting with a humble dealer and broker in secondhand goods and wares like myself?”

“Connections.” Miriam relaxed a little. “I need to establish a firm identity here, as a woman of good character. I have some funds to invest—you’ve seen the form they take—but mostly … hmm. In the place I come from, we do things differently. And while we undoubtedly do some things worse, everything I have seen so far convinces me that we are far, far better at certain technical fields. I intend to establish a type of company that as far as I can tell doesn’t exist here, Mister Burgeson. I am limited in the goods I can carry back and forth, physically, to roughly what I can carry on my back—but ideas are frequently more valuable than gold bricks.” She grinned. “I said I’d need a lawyer, and perhaps a proxy to sign documents for my business. I forgot to mention that I will also want a patent clerk and a front man for purposes of licensing my inventions.”