Charles Stross: The Hidden Family

“I guess so,” Miriam said tiredly. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s safe where it is.” She glanced at Brill, who mimed incomprehension Until she was forced to smile. “Still. Tomorrow I’m going to spend some time in a museum. Then— ” She glanced at Paulette.

“Oh no, you’re not going to do that again,” Paulie began.

“Oh yes, I am.” Miriam grinned humorlessly. “It’s the only way to crack the story wide open.” Her eyes went wide. “Shit! I’d completely forgotten! I’ve got a feature to file with Steve, for The Herald ! The deadline’s got to be real soon! If I miss it there’s no way I’ll get the column—”

“Miriam.”

“Yes, Paulie?”

“Why are you still bothering about that?”

“I—” Miriam froze for a moment. “I guess I’m still thinking of going back to my old life,” she said slowly. “It’s something to hang onto.”

“Right.” Paulette nodded. “Now tell me. How much money is there on that platinum card?”

Pause. “About one point nine million dollars left.”

“Miriam?”

“Yes, Paulie?”

“As your legal advisor I am telling you to shut the fuck up and get a good night’s sleep. You can sort out whether you’re going to write the article tomorrow—but I’d advise you to drop it. Say you’ve got stomach flu or something. Then you can take an extra day over your preparations for the journey. Got it?”

“Yes, Paulie.”

“And another thing?”

“What’s that?”

“Drink your wine and shut your mouth, dear, you look like a fish.”

The next day, Miriam pulled out her notebook computer—which was now acquiring a few scratches—and settled down to pound the keyboard while Paulette took Brill shopping. It wasn’t hard work, and she already knew what she was going to write, and besides, it saved her having to think too hard about her future. The main headache was not having access to her Mac, or a broadband connection. Paulie, despite her brief foray into dot-com management, had never seen the point of spending money to receive spam at home. Finally she pulled out her mobile and dialed The Herald ’s front desk. “Steve Blau, please,” she said, and waited.

“Steve. Who’s this?”

“Steve? It’s Miriam.” She took a deep breath. “About that feature.”

“Deadline’s this Thursday,” he rumbled. “You needing an extension?”

She breathed out abruptly, nearly coughing into the phone. “No, no, I’m ready to e-mail you a provisional draft, see if it fits what you were expecting. Uh, I’ve had a bit of an exciting life lately, got a new phone number for you.”

“Really?” She could almost hear his eyebrows rising.

“Yeah. Domestic incident, big-time.” She extemporized hastily. “I’m having to look after my mother. She’s had an incident. Broken hip. You want my new details?”

“Sure. Hang on a moment. Okay, fire away.”

Miriam gave him her new e-mail and phone numbers. “Listen, I’ll mail in the copy in about an hour’s time. Is there anything else you’re looking for?”

“Not right now.” He sounded amused. “They sprang a major reorg on us right after our last talk, followed by a guerilla page-plan redesign; looks like that slot for a new columnist I mentioned earlier is probably going to happen. Weekly, op-ed piece on medical/biotech investment and the VC scene, your sort of thing. Can I pencil you in for it?”

Miriam thought furiously. “I’m busier than I was right after I left The Weatherman , but I figure I can fit it in. Only thing is, I’ll need a month’s notice to start delivering, and I’d like to keep a couple of generic op-ed pieces in the can in case I’m called away. I’m going to be doing a lot of head-down stuff in the next year or so. It won’t stop me keeping up with the reading but it may get in the way of my hitting deadlines once in a blue moon. Could you live with that?”

“I’ll have to think about it,” he said. “I’m willing to make allowances. But you’re a pro. You’d give me some warning wherever possible, right?”

“Of course, Steve.”

“Okay. File that copy. Bye.”

She put the phone down for a moment, eyes misting over. I’ve still got a real life, she told herself. This shit hasn’t taken everything over. She thought of Brill, trapped by family expectations and upbringing. If I could unhook their claws, I could go back to being the real me. Really. Then she thought about the rest of them. About the room at the Marriott, and what had happened in it. About Roland, and her. Maybe.

She picked the phone up again. It was easier than thinking.

Iris answered almost immediately. “Miriam, dear? Where have you been?”

“Ma?” The full weight of her worries crashed down on her. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you! Listen, I’m onto a story. It’s—” She struggled for a suitable metaphor. “It’s as big as Watergate. Bigger, maybe. But there’s people involved who’re watching me. I’d like to spend some time with you, but I don’t know if it would be safe.”

“That’s interesting.” She could hear her adoptive mother’s mind crunching gears even on the end of a phone. “So you can’t come and visit me?”

“Remember what you told me about COINTELPRO, Ma?”

“Ah, those were the days! When I was a young firebrand, ah me.”

“Ma!”

“Stuffing envelopes with Jan Six, before Commune Two imploded, picketings and sit-ins—did I tell you about the time the FBI bugged our phones? How we got around it?”

“Mom.” Miriam sighed. “Really! That student radical stuff is so old , you know?”

“Don’t you old me, young lady!” Iris put a condescending, amused tone in her voice. “Is your trouble federal, by any chance?”

“I wish it was.” Miriam sighed again.

“Well then. I’ll meet you at the playground after bridge, an hour before closing time.” Click.

She’d hung up, Miriam realized, staring at her phone. “Oh sweet Jesus,” she murmured. Never, ever, challenge a onetime SDS activist to throw a tail. She giggled quietly to herself, overcome by a bizarre combination of mirth and guilt—mirth at the idea of a late-fifties Jewish grandmother with multiple sclerosis giving the Clan’s surveillance agents the slip, and guilt, shocking guilt, at the thought of what she might have unintentionally involved Iris in. She almost picked up the phone to apologize, to tell Iris not to bother—but that would be waving a red rag at a bull. When Iris got it into her mind to do something, not even the FBI and the federal government stood much chance of stopping her.

The playground. That’s what she’d called the museum, when she was small. “Can we go to the playground?” she’d asked, a second-grader already eating into her parents’ library cards, and Iris had smiled indulgently and taken her there, to run around the displays and generally annoy the old folks reading the signs under the exhibits until, energy exhausted, she’d flaked out in the dinosaur wing.

And bridge. Iris never played card games. That must mean … yes. The bridge over the Charles River. More confirmation that she meant the Science Museum, an hour before closing time. Right. Miriam grinned mirthlessly, remembering Iris’s bedtime stories about the hairy years under FBI surveillance, the times she and Morris had been pulled in for questioning—but never actually charged with anything. When she was older, Miriam realized that they’d been too sensible, had dropped out to work in a radical bookstore and help with a homeless shelter before the hard-core idiots began cooking up bombs and declaring war on the System, a System that had ultimately gotten tired of their posturing and rolled over in its sleep, obliterating them.