Charles Stross: The Hidden Family

“Yeah.” Paulette turned toward the kitchen doorway, then paused. “Brilliana? Is it okay if I call you Brill?”

“Surely!” The younger woman beamed at her.

“Oh. Well, uh, this is the kitchen. I was going to make some fresh coffee, but I figure if you’re staying here for a while I ought to start by showing you where things are and how not to—” She glanced at Miriam. “Do they have electricity?” she asked. Miriam shook her head minutely. “Oh sweet Jesus! Okay, Brill, the first thing you need to learn about the kitchen is how not to kill yourself. See, everything works by electricity. That’s kind of—”

Miriam picked up a bundle of official papers and a pen, and wandered out into the front hall. It’s going to be okay, she told herself. Paulie’s going to mother-hen her. Two days and she’ll know how to cross the road safely, use a flush toilet, and work the washing machine. Two weeks, and if Paulie didn’t kill her, she’d be coming home late from nightclubs with a hangover. If she didn’t just decide that the twenty-first century was too much for her, and hide under the spare bed. Which, as she’d grown up in a world that hadn’t got much past the late medieval, was a distinct possibility. Wouldn’t be a surprise; it’s too much for me at times, Miriam thought, contemplating the stack of forms for declaring the tax status of a limited liability company in Massachusetts with a sinking heart.

That evening, after Paulette and Miriam visited the bank to open a business account and deposit the checks, they holed up around Paulie’s kitchen table. A couple of bottles of red wine and a chicken casserole went a long way toward putting Brill at her ease. She even managed to get over the jittery fear of electricity that Paulie had talked into her in the afternoon to the extent of flipping light switches and fiddling with the heat on the electric stove.

“It’s marvelous!” she told Miriam. “No need for coal, it stays just as hot as you want it, and it doesn’t get dirty! What do all the servants do for a living? Do they just laze around all day?”

“Um,” said Paulette. One glance told Miriam that she was suffering a worse dose of culture shock than the young transportee—her shoulders were shaking like jelly. “Like, that’s the drawback, Brill. Where would you have the servants sleep, in a house like this?”

“Why, if there were several in the bedchamber you so kindly loaned—oh. I’m to drudge for my keep?”

“No,” Miriam interrupted before Paulette could wind her upany further. “Brill, ordinary people don’t have servants in their homes here.”

“Ordinary? But surely this isn’t—” Brill’s eyes widened.

Paulette nodded at her. “That’s me, common as muck!” she said brightly. “Listen, the way it works in this household is, if you make a mess, you tidy it up yourself. You saw the dishwasher?” Brill nodded, enthused. “There are other gadgets. A house this big doesn’t need servants. Tomorrow we’ll go get you some more clothes—” She glanced at Miriam for approval. “—then do next month’s food shopping, and I’ll show you where everything’s kept. Uh, Miriam, this is gonna slow everything up—”

“Doesn’t matter.” Miriam put her knife and fork down. She was, she decided, not only over-full but increasingly exhausted. “Take it easy. Brill needs to know how to function over here because if it all comes together the way I hope, she’s going to be over here regularly on business. She’ll be working with you, I hope.” She picked up her wineglass. “Tomorrow I’m going to go call on a relative. Then I think I’ve got a serious road trip ahead of me.”

“You’re going away?” asked Brill, carefully putting her glass down.

“Probably.” Miriam nodded. “But not immediately. Look, what I said earlier holds—you can go home whenever you want to, if it’s an emergency. All you have to do is catch a cab around to the nearest Clan safe house and hammer on the door. They’ll have to take you back. If you tell them I abducted you, they’ll probably believe it—I seem to be the subject of some wild rumors.” She smiled tiredly. “I’ll give you the address in the morning, alright?” The smile faded. “One thing. Don’t you dare bug out on Paulie without telling her first. They don’t know about her and they might do something about her if they learn … mightn’t they?”

Brill swallowed, then nodded. “I understand,” she said.

“I’m sure you do.” Miriam realized Paulette was watcning her through narrowed eyes. “Brill has seen me nearly get my sorry ass shot to pieces. She knows the score.”

“Yeah, well. I was meaning to talk to you about that, too.” Paulette didn’t look pleased. “What the hell is happening over there?”

“It’s a mess.” Miriam shook her head. “First, Olga tried to kill me. Luckily she gave me a chance to talk my way out of it first—someone tried to set me up while I was visiting you, last time. Then the shit really hit the fan. Last night I figured out that my accommodation was insecure, the hard way, then parties unknown tried to rub out Olga and me, both. Multiple parties. There are at least two factions involved, and I don’t have a clue who this new bunch are, which is why I’m here and brought Brill—she’s seen too much.”

“A second gang? Jesus, Miriam, you’re sucking them up like a Hoover! What’s going on?”

“I wish I knew, believe me.” She drained her wineglass. “Hmm. This glass is defective. Better fix it.” Before she could reach for the bottle, Paulette picked it up and began to pour, her hand shaking slightly. “Had a devil of a time getting here, I can tell you. Nearly put my back out carrying Brill, then found some evil son of a bitch had booby-trapped the warehouse. Earlier I phoned Roland to come tidy up—someone murdered the site watchman—but instead someone put a bomb in it.”

“I told you that smoothie would turn out to be a weasel,” Paulette insisted. “It’s him, isn’t it?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Miriam shook her head. “Things are messy, very messy. We ran into one of Angbard’s couriers on the train over, so I gave him a message that should shake things loose if it’s anyone on his staff. And now… well.” She pulled out the two lockets from her left pocket. “Spot the difference.”

Paulette’s breath hissed out as she leaned forward to study them. “Shit. That one on the left, the tarnished one—that’s yours, isn’t it? But the other—”

“Have a cigar. I took it off the first hired gun last night. He won’t be needing it anymore.”

“Mind if I? …” Paulette picked the two lockets up and sprang the catch. She frowned as she stared at the contents, then snapped them closed. “The designs are different.”

“I guessed they would be.” Miriam closed her eyes.

Brill stared at the two small silver disks as if they were diamonds or jewels of incalculable value. Finally she asked, timidly, “How can they be different? All the Clan ones are the same, aren’t they?”

“Who says it’s a Clan one?” Miriam scooped them back into her pocket. “Look, firstly I am going to get a good night’s sleep. I suggest you guys do the same thing. In the morning, I’m going to hire a car. I’d like to be able to go home, just long enough to retrieve a disk, but—”

“No, don’t do that,” said Paulette.

Miriam looked at her. “I’m not stupid. I know they’re probably watching the house in case I show up. It’s just frustrating.” She shrugged.

“It’s not that bad,” Paulette volunteered pragmatically. “Either they got the disk the first time they black-bagged you—or they didn’t, in which case you know precisely where it is. Why not leave it there?”