Charles Stross - MP 6 -The Trade of Queens

"Not much." She looked pensive. "Wheelbarrows—it was suppressed by the lords of the post, I presume, during the civil war. Too much risk of a few young things going over the wall, if they realized how few bodies it would take to start a rival operation; we would have faced dissolution within months. But there is no obvious size limit; the limit was imposed by the exclusion problem, the risk of wheels intersecting with matter in the other world. Given a suitably prepared staging area, machined to high precision, who knows what they could send. Tanks? Helicopters? And we are on their doorstep. These people sent a hundred thousand soldiers halfway around the world. What can they send an hour's drive down the road?"

"I don't think we need worry about that just yet," Riordan declared, trying to regain control of the briefing. "But." He paused a moment, looking around the anxious faces before him. "At a minimum, we face teams of special forces and possibly backpack atomic bombs, like the ones that have already been used. At worst, if they have truly worked out how to travel between worlds, we may see a full-scale invasion. I think the latter is a very real threat, and we have the example of their recent adventure in the distant land of Iraq to learn from. If we sit and wait for them to come to us, we will be defeated—they outnumber all the Eastern kingdoms, not just the Gruinmarkt, by thirty bodies to one, and look what they did to Iraq. This is not a matter for chivalrous denial; it is a fight

we cannot win."

He gestured in the direction of Baron Horst of Lorsburg, one of the few conservatives to have been conclusively proven to have been on the outside of the coup attempt—a tiresomely

business-minded fellow, fussy and narrowly legalistic. "Sir, I believe you wish to express an opinion?"

Lorsburg removed his bifocals and nervously rubbed them on his shirt sleeve. "You appear to be saying that Clan Security can't protect us. Is that right?"

"Clan Security can't take on the United States government, no, not if they develop world-walking machines." Riordan nodded patiently. "Do you have something more to say?"

Lorsburg hunkered down in his seat. "If you can't save us, what good

are

you?" he asked querulously.

"There's a difference between saying we can't win a direct fight, and not being able to save you. We probably

can

save the Clan—but not if we sit and wait for the Anglischprache to come calling. What we can't save are the fixed assets: our estates and vassals. Anything we can't carry. We are descended from migrant tinkers and traders, and I am afraid that we will have to become such again, at least for a while. Those of you who think the American army will not come here are welcome to go back to your palaces and great houses and pretend we can continue to do business as usual. You might be right—in which case, the rest of us will rejoin you in due course. But for the time being, I submit that our best hope lies elsewhere.

"We could cross over to America, and live in hiding among a people who hate and fear us. The Clan has some small accumulated capital; the banking committee has invested heavily in real estate, investment banks, and big corporations over the past fifty years. We would be modestly wealthy, but no longer the rulers and lords of all we survey, as we are here; and we would live in fear of a single loose-tongued cousin unraveling our network, by accident or malice. Our modest wealthy existence could only survive if all of us took a vow of silence and held to it. And I leave to your imagination the difficulty of maintaining our continuity, the braids—

"But there is a better alternative. My lady ven Thorold?"

Olga stood up. "I speak not as the director of intelligence operations, but as a confidant of the queen-widow," she said, turning to face the room. "As we have known for some time, there are other worlds than just this one and that of the Anglischprache. Before his illness, Duke Lofstrom detailed a protege of Helge's to conduct a survey. Helge has continued to press for these activities—we now know of four other worlds beyond the initial three, but they are not considered suitable for exploitation. If you desire the details, I will be happy to describe them later. For the time being, our best hope lies in New Britain, where Her Majesty is attempting to establish negotiations with the new revolutionary government—" Uproar.

"I say!

Silence!"

Riordan's bellow cut through the shouting. "I'll drag the next man who interrupts out and horse-whip him around the walls! Show some respect, damn you!"

The hubbub subsided. Olga waited for the earl to nod at her, then continued.

"Unlike

the Anglischprache of America, we have

good contacts

with the revolutionaries who have formed the provisional government of New Britain. We have, if nothing else, a negotiable arrangement with our relatives there; I'm sure a diplomatic accommodation can be reached." She stared at Lorsburg, who was looking mulishly unconvinced. "Her Majesty is a

personal friend

of the minister of propaganda. We supplied their cells in Boston with material and aid prior to the abdication and uprising. Unlike the situation in the United States, we have no history of large-scale law-breaking to prejudice them against us; nothing but our aristocratic rank in the Gruinmarkt, which we must perforce shed in any case if we abandon our way of life here and move to a new world." She paused, voluntarily this time: Lorsburg had raised a hand. "Yes? What is it?"

"This is well and good, and perhaps we would be safe from the Americans there—for a while. But you're asking us to abandon everything, to take to the roads and live like vagabonds, or throw ourselves on the mercy of a dubious cabal of regicidal peasants! How do you expect us to subsist in this new world? What shall we do?"

"We will have to work." Olga smiled tightly. "You are quite right; it's not going to be easy. We will have to give up much that we have become accustomed to. On the other hand, we will be alive, we will be able to sleep without worrying that the next knock on the door may be agents of the state come to arrest us, and, as I said, there is a

business plan.

Nobody will hold a gun to your heads and force you to join those of us who intend to establish first a refuge and then a new trade and source of wealth in New Britain—if you wish to wait here and guard your estates, then I believe the Council will be happy to accede to your desires. But there is one condition:

If

the Americans come, we don't want you spilling our plans to their interrogators. So I am going to ask everyone to leave the room now. Those of you who wish to join our plan, may come back in; those who want no truck with it should go home. If you change your minds later, you can petition my lord the earl for a place. But if you stay for the next stage of this briefing you are committing yourselves to join us in New Britain—or to the silence of the grave."

War train rolling

Holed up back in a motel room with a bottle of Pepsi and a box of graham crackers, Mike opened up his planner and spread his spoils on the comforter—room service had tidied the room while he'd been burglarizing Miriam's booby-trapped home. He was still shaking with the aftermath of the adrenaline surge from the near-miss with the police watch team.

Thirty seconds and they'd have made me.

Thirty seconds and—Stop

that,

he scolded himself.

You've got a job to do!

Two items sat on the bed: a cassette and a bulging organizer, its edges rounded and worn by daily use. He added the remaining contents of his shopping bag, spoils of a brief excursion into a Walgreens: a cheap Far Eastern walkman, and a box of batteries. "Let's get you set up," he muttered to the machine, then did a double take.