The Sky Road

4 Paper Tigers

Three flags hung behind the coffin: the Soviet, red with gold hammer and sickle; the Kazakhstani, blue with yellow sun and eagle; and the ISTWR, yellow with black trefoil.

About two hundred people were crammed into the hall of the crematorium. The funeral was the nearest thing to a State occasion the republic had had since the Sputnik centenary. The entire depleted apparat was there, and a good proportion of the workers, peasants and intelligentsia was probably watching on television. The distinguished foreign guests included the Kazakhstani consul, the head of the Western United States Interests Section, and David Reid, who was wedged between a couple of Mutual Protection greps. Myra sat with the rest of Sovnarkom in the front row, dry-eyed, as one of Georgi’s old comrades—another Afganets—delivered the eulogy.

“Major Georgi Yefrimovich Davidov was born in Alma-Ata in 1956. At school, in the Pioneers and the Komsomol, he soon distinguished himself as an exemplary individual—studious, civic-minded, with great athletic prowess. After obtaining a degree at the University of Kazakhstan, where he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he completed his national service and chose a military career. In 1979 he qualified as a helicopter pilot, and later that same year was among the first of the limited contingent of the Soviet armed forces to fulfil their internationalist duty to the peoples of Afghanistan.”

A ripple of dissidence, expressed with indrawn breaths, or sighs, or shifting of feet, went through the room. Myra herself sniffed, compressed her lips, looked down. All those nights he’d woken her by grabbing her, holding her, talking away his nightmares; all those mornings when he’d said not a word, given no indication that he remembered any interruption to his sleep, or to hers.

The speaker raised his voice a little and continued undaunted.

“His service earned him promotion and the honour of Hero of the Soviet Union. In 1985 he applied for transfer to the space programme, and after training at Baikonur he won the proud title of Cosmonaut of the Soviet Union. However, many decades were to pass before he was able to fulfil this part of his destiny.”

By which time it was a fucking milk-run, and there was no fucking Soviet Union, so get on with it—

“During the turbulent years of the late 1980s, Major Davidov took some political stands about which his friends and comrades may honesdy differ—”

Nice one, he was a fucking Yeltsinite, get on with it—

“—but which testify to his true Soviet and Kazakh patriotism and the seriousness with which he took his civic duty and the Leninist ideals of the armed forces, which in his view proscribed the use of violence against the people.”

Myra was not the only one who had to choke back a laugh.

“After the Republic of Kazakhstan became independent, Major Davidov’s expertise in the areas of nuclear weaponry and questions of nuclear disarmament gave him a new field for his great political skill and personal charm…”

Myra bit her lip.

He was in front of her in the taxi queue outside the airport at Alma-Ata. Tall, even taller than she was, very dark; swept-back black hair, eyebrows almost as thick as his black moustache; relaxed in a stiff olive-green uniform; smoking a Marlboro and glancing occasionally at a counterfeit Rolex.

Myra, just arrived, lost and anxious, could not take her eyes off him. But it was the yellow plastic bag at his feet that gave her the nerve to speak. Printed on it in red were a picture of a parrot and the words:

She leaned forward, into his field of vision.

You’ve flown in from Glasgow?” she asked, in Russian.

He turned, startled out of some trance, and looked at her with a bemused expression which rapidly became a smile.

“Ah, the bag.” He poked it with his foot, revealing that the carrier was bulging with cartons of cigarettes and bottles of Johnny Walker Black Label. Toil’re a stranger here, then.”

“Oh?”

“These plastic bags have nothing to do with Glasgow. They’re used by every shop from here to China, God knows why.” He laughed, showing strong teeth stained with nicotine. “Have you been to Glasgow?”

“Yes,” said Myra. “I lived there for several years, back in the seventies.”

Something cooled in his look. “What were you do-ing?”

“I was writing a thesis,” Myra said, “on the economy of the Soviet Union.”

He guffawed. “You got permission to do thai?”

“It wasn’t a problem—” she began, then stopped. She realised that he’d taken her for a former-Soviet citizen. Former nomenklatura, if she’d had clearance for such dangerous research.

“I’m not a Russian, I’m from the United States!”

He raised his eyebrows.

“Your accent is very good,” he said, in English. His accent was very good. They talked until they reached the top of the queue, and then went on talking, because they shared a taxi into town, and went on talking…

Would she ever have spoken to him, Myra wondered, if it hadn’t been for that yellow bag? And if she hadn’t spoken to him, would she ever have seen him again? Perhaps; but perhaps not, or not at such a moment, when they were both free, and on the rebound from other lovers, and in that case…

She wouldn’t be here, for one thing, and Georgi wouldn’t be in that coffin, and… the consequences went on and on, escalating until she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. For want of a nail the kingdom was lost—and the result of that triviality, the fictitious Pollockshaws pet-shop address on the plastic bag, had gained her a republic, and imposed on others losses she could not bear to contemplate. Or so it might seem, if anyone ever learned enough about her to see her hand in history.

But then again, maybe not, maybe old Engels and Plekhanov had been right after all about the role of the individual in history: maybe it did all come out in the wash—at the end of the French Revolution someone, but, of course, ha-ha, “not necessarily that particular Corsican’, would have stepped into the tall boots which circumstances, like a good valet, had laid out for a man on horseback.

She’d never found that theory particularly convincing, and it gave her small comfort now to even consider it. No, she was stuck, as were they all, with her actions and their consequences.

“—in recent years Georgi Yefrimovich played a leading part in the diplomatic service of the ISTWR, in which duty he met his death.” The eulogist paused for a moment to direct a stabbing glance at the distinguished foreign guests. “He is survived by his former wife and loyal friend, Myra Godwin-Davidova, their children and grandchildren—”

Too many to read out, and none of them here, get on with it—

Messages were, however, read out from all of the absent offspring, other relatives, old friends. The eulogist laid down his sheaf of papers at last, and raised his hand. The crematorium filled with the oddly quiet and modest sound of Kazakhstan’s national anthem. The coffin rolled silendy through the unobtrusive hatch. Everyone stood up and sang, or mimed along to, the Internationale. And that was that. Another good materialist gone to ash.

Myra turned and walked out of the crematorium, and row by row, from the front, they fell in and walked out behind her.

Her hands were shaking as she fumbled with her black fur hat and tried to light a cigarette in the driveway. Out on the street, cars were being moved into position to carry the dignitaries off to the post-funeral luncheon function. Somebody steadied her hand, helped her with the cigarette. She lit up and looked up, to see David Reid. Dark brows, dark eyes, white hair down to the upturned collar of his astrakhan coat. He looked less than half his age, with only the white hair—itself an affectation—indicating anything different; none of her give-away flaws. She was pretty sure his joints didn’t creak, or his bones ache. They had better fixes in the West. His minders hung about a few steps away, their gaze grepping the surroundings. People were milling around, drifting towards the waiting cars.

“Are you all right?” Reid asked.

Tm fine, Dave.”

He scuffed a foot on the gravel, scratched the back of his neck.

“We didn’t do it, Myra.”

“Yeah, well…” She shrugged. “I read the autopsy. I believe it.”

You’d be dead if I didn’t she disdained to add. She believed the autopsy; she had no choice. She believed Reid, too. She still had her doubts about the verdict: natural causes—it might be one of those dark episodes where she could never be sure of the truth, like Stalin’s hand in the Kirov affair, or in the death of Robert Harte… But Reid took the point she wanted him to take. He seemed to relax slightly, and lit a cigarette himself. His gaze flicked from the burning tip to the crematorium chimney, then to her.

“Ah, shit. It seems such a waste.”

Myra nodded. She knew what he meant. Burning dead people, burying them in a fucking hole in the ground—it was already beginning to seem barbaric.

“He didn’t even want cryo,” she said. “Let alone that Californian computer-scan scam.”

“Why not?” Reid asked. “He could’ve afforded it.”

“Oh, sure,” Myra said. “Just didn’t believe in it, is all.”

Reid smiled thinly. “Neither do I.”

“Oh?”

He spread his hands. “I just sell the policies.”

“Is there any pie you don’t have a finger in?”

Reid rubbed the side of his nose with his finger. “Diversification, Myra. Name of the game. Spread the risks. Learned that in insurance, way back when.” He reached out, waiting for her unspoken permission to take her arm. “We need to talk business.”

“Car,” she said, catching his elbow firmly and turning about on the crunching gravel. They walked side by side to the armoured limousine. Myra, out of the corner of her eye, watched people watching. Good: let it be clear that she no longer suspected Reid. Not publicly, not politically, not even—at a certain level—privately. Just personally, just in her jealous old bones. But there was more to it than making a diplomatic display; there was still a genuine affection between them, attenuated though it was by the years, exasperated though it was by their antagonism. Reid had never been a man to let enmity get in the way of friendship.

Myra glanced at her watch as the car door shut with a well-engineered clunk. They had about five minutes to talk in private as the big black Zhil rolled through Kapitsa’s city centre to its only posh hotel, the Sheraton. She setded back in the leather seat and eyed Reid cautiously.

“OK,” she said. “Get on with it.”

Reid reached for the massive ashtray, stubbed out one cigarette and lit up another. Myra did the same. Their smoky sighs met in a front of mutual disruption. Reid scratched his eyebrow, looked away, looked back.

“Well,” he said. “I want to make you an offer. We know you still have some of your old —” he hesitated; even here, there were words one did not say “—strategic assets, and we’d like to buy them off you.”

He could be bluffing.

“I have no—” she began. Reid tilted his head back and puffed a tiny jet of smoke that, after a few centimetres, curled back on itself in a miniature mushroom-cloud.

“Don’t waste time denying it,” he said.

“All right,” said Myra. She swallowed a rising nausea, steadied herself against a dizzy, chill darkening of her sight. It was like being caught with a guilty secret, but one which she had not known she held. But, she knew too well, if she had not known it was because she had never tried, and never wanted, to find out.

“Suppose we do. We wouldn’t sell them to anyone, let alone you. We’re against your coup—”

It was Reid’s turn to feign ignorance, Myra’s to show impatience.

“We wouldn’t use them,” he said. “Good God, what do you take us for? We just want them… off the board, so to speak. Out of the game. And quite frankly, the only way we can be sure of that is to have control of them ourselves.”

Myra shook her head. “No way. No deal.”

Reid raised his hand. “Let me tell you what we have to offer, before you reject it. We can buy you out, free and clear. Give everybody in this state, every one of your citizens, enough money to settle anywhere and live more than comfortably. Think about it. The camps are going to be wound down, and whoever wins the next round is going to move against you. Your assets aren’t going to be much use when Space Defense gets back in business.”

That’s a threat, I take it?”

“Not at all. Statement of fact. Sell them now or lose them later, it’s up to you.”

“Lose them—or use them!”

Reid gave her a “we are not amused” look.

“I’m not fooling,” Myra told him. “The best I can see coming out of your coup is more chaos, in which case we’ll need all the goddamn assets we can get!”

Reid took a deep breath. “No, Myra. If you do get chaos, it’ll be because we haven’t won. This coup, as you call it, is the last best chance for stability. If we fail the world will go to hell in its own way. Your personal contribution to that will then be no concern of mine—I’ll be dead, or in space—but you can help make sure it doesn’t happen, and benefit yourself and your people in the process.” He was putting all of his undeniable charm into his voice and expression as he concluded, “Think it over, Myra. That’s all I ask.”

“I’ll think about it,” she said, granting him at least this victory, for what it was worth. She looked around. “We’ve arrived.”

The hotel’s ornately furnished function suite was filled with people in dark clothes, standing about in small groups and conversing in low voices. Already they were beginning to relax out of their funereal solemnity, to smile and laugh a little: life goes on. Fine.

Myra and Reid walked together to the long tables on which the buffet was spread, and contrived to lose each other in the random movement of people selecting food and drinks. With a plate of savouries in one hand and a large glass of whisky in the other, Myra looked around. Over in one corner Andrei Mukhartov was deep in conversation with a lady in a black suit and a large hat; she was answering his quiet questions in a loud voice. Myra hoped this representative of the tattered Western fringe of the former United States wasn’t talking about anything confidential. Possibly that was the point. She noticed that Valentina was standing alone, in an olive-green outfit whose black armband was rather shouted down by an astonishing amount of gold braid. Myra made a less than subtle bee-line for her.

“Ah, there you are,” she said, as Valentina turned. She nudged her defence minister towards the nearest of the many small tables dotted around the vast floor. They sat.

“New uniform?” Myra asked.

Valentina’s rigid epaulettes moved up and down. “Never had much occasion for it before,” she said.

“Never knew you’d accumulated so many medals, either.”

Valentina had to laugh. Teah, it is a bit… Brezhnevian, isn’t it?”

“All too appropriate, for us. The period of stagnation.’.

Valentina devoured a canape, not looking away from Myra. “Indeed. I see you had a little chat with our main inward investor.”

“Yes. He made me an interesting offer,” Myra looked down at her plate, picked up something with legs. “I do hope this stuff’s synthetic; I’d hate to think of the radiation levels if it isn’t.”

“I think we have to rely on somebody’s business ethics on the radiation question,” Valentina said.

“Ah, right.” Myra peered at the shrimp’s shell; it had an ICI trademark. Full of artificial goodness. She hauled the pale pink flesh out with her teeth. “Anyway, Madame Comrade People’s Commissar for Defence, my dear: our inward investor gave me to understand that he knows we’ve done a little less… outward divestment than I’d been led to believe.”

Valentina, rather to her credit, Myra thought, looked embarrassed.

“I inherited the assets from my predecessors… and I never mentioned them because I thought you already knew, or you didn’t and you needed to have deniability.”

So it was true. The confirmation was less of a shock than Reid’s original claim had been. It would take a while for the full enormity of it all to sink in.

Myra nodded, her mouth full. Swallowed, with a shot of whisky. “The latter, actually. I didn’t know. I thought they’d all been seized by the Yanks after the war.”

“Most of them were. There was one exception, though. A large portfolio of assets that made it through the crackdown, that the US/UN just couldn’t get their hands on; one contract that was always renewed. Until the Fall Revolution, of course. Then it… lapsed, and I was left holding the babies. They were sent back to us in a large consignment of large diplomatic bags, from various locations, all controlled by…”

“You can tell me now, I take it?”

Valentina looked around, and shrugged.

“The original ministate, with the original mercenary defence force.”

Myra had to think for a moment before she realised just which state Valentina was talking about.

“Jesus wept!”

“Quite possibly,” said Valentina, “quite possibly he did.”

There are times when all you can do is be cynical, put up a hard front, don’t let it get to you… Myra joined in Valentina’s dark chuckle.

“So what happened to the assets, and why is our investor concerned about them?”

“Ah,” said Valentina. “You’ll recall the Sputnik centenary a couple of years ago. We rather extravagantly launched one of our obsolete boosters to celebrate it. What I did at the time was take the opportunity to place most of our embarrassing legacy in orbit.”

“In Earth orbit?” Myra resisted an irrational impulse to pull her head down between her shoulders.

“Some of them,” said Valentina. “The ones designed specifically for orbital use, you know? They’re in high orbit, quite safe.” She frowned, and against some inner resistance added, “Well, fairly safe. But the rest we sent to an even safer place: Lagrange.”

Myra had a momentary mental picture, vivid as a virtual display, of Lagrange: L5, one of the points where Earth’s gravity and the Moon’s combined to create a region of orbital stability, and which had, over half a century, accumulated a cluttered cluster of research stations, military satellites, official and unofficial space habitats, canned Utopias, abandoned spacecraft, squatted modules, random junk… It was the space movement’s promised land, and with the new nanofactured ultralight laser-launched spacecraft its population was rising as fast as Kapitsa’s was falling.

“Oh, fucking hell,” said Myra.

“Don’t worry,” Valentina assured her. “They’re almost undetectable among all the debris.”

Myra didn’t have the heart to tell her how much she was missing the point.

“Why the fuck did you park them there?” she demanded. “Safe, in a way, yeah, that I can understand, but didn’t it occur to you that if it ever came out, we might find our intentions… misunderstood?”

Valentina looked even more embarrassed. “It was—well, it was a Party thing, Myra. A request.”

“Oh, right. Jeez. Are you still in the fucking Party?”

Valentina chuckled. “I am the Party. The ISTWR section, at least.”

“Now that Georgi’s gone. Shit, I’d forgotten.”

They hadn’t even put the fourth flag, the flag of the Fourth, on his coffin. Shit. Not that it mattered now. Not to Georgi, anyway. And not to those who’d gathered to pay their respects—the only one present who’d have understood its significance was Reid.

“Don’t worry,” said Valentina.

“What does the International want with—oh, fuck. I can think of any number of things it might want with them.”

Valentina nodded. “Some of them could be to our advantage.”

“Hah. I’ll be the judge of that. You’ve kept the access codes to yourself?”

“Of course!”

“Well, that’s something.”

“So our man’s proposing in a buy-out, is he?” Valentina continued. “Could be worth considering.”

“Yeah.” Myra stood up, taking her glass. “I’m going to talk to him some more. Thanks for the update, Val.”

She refilled her glass, with vodka this time, and set out in a carefully casual ramble to where Reid stood chatting to an awestruck gaggle of low-level functionaries. Denis Gubanov and one of Reid’s greps circled unobtrusively, keeping a wary distance from the group and from each other, each at a La-grange point of his own. She couldn’t hear the conversation. On her way, she was intercepted by Alexander Sherman. The Industry Commissar was wearing the same sharp plastic suit, its colour adjusted to black. He looked shiftier than usual; a bad sign.

“Ah, Myra. A sad day for us all.” He shook his head slowly. “A sad day.”

“Yes,” said Myra. The phrase get on with it once more came to mind.

Alex took a deep breath and, as if telepathic, announced, T have something to tell you. It’s not a good time, but… Well, I’ve had an offer from Mr Reid.”

“To buy out our assets?”

“No, no!” Alex looked surprised at the suggestion. “An employment offer.”

“Oh, right,” said Myra dismissively. She waved a hand as she walked past him. “Take it.”

She could see herself in the big gilt-framed mirrors as she walked up; they faced similar mirrors at the far side of the room, and for a moment she saw herself multiplied, a potential infinity of different versions of herself: a visual, virtual image of the many worlds interpretation. She had entertained a childish notion, once, that mirror images might be windows into those other worlds. Did the photon ever decide, she’d wondered, did it ever turn aside in its reflection?

What she saw was the endlessly repeated image of a tall, thin woman in a long black dress, moving towards the still oblivious Reid like some MIRVed nemesis. She saw the flickered glances exchange their messages, between her Security Commissar, Reid’s security man, Reid, and herself, until Reid’s reflected eyes met her actual eyes, and widened.

She encountered a sort of deadness in the air, and realised that the security men were, between them, setting up audio countermeasures, casting a cloak of silence around the group. Then she was through the region of dead air, where the voices were garbled and strange, and suddenly the conversation was audible—for the moment before it died on the lips of those who noticed her arrival.

“Well, hello again,” she said. Her gaze swept the half-dozen of her employees gathered around Reid; they were all making comical efforts to flee, walking backwards as discreetly as possible. “Head-hunting my lower-middle cadres as well as my commissars?”

Tup,” said Reid, quite unabashed. He made a fractional movement of his fingertips and eyebrows, and his supplicants—or applicants—dispersed like smoke in a draught. The grep and Gubanov continued their watchful mutual circling. A waiter went past with a salver of glasses and a tray of Beluga on rye; Myra and Reid helped themselves from both, then stood facing each other with a slight awkwardness, like tongue-tied teenagers after a dance.

“I could do some head-hunting the other way, you know,” Myra said. “Perhaps I should buy a spy or two from you. It turns out you’re better informed about our investment portfolio than I’ve been. Particularly its, ah, spread.”

Reid acknowledged this with a small nod.

Tuts us in a difficult position,” he said. “You have the drop on us, frankly. Earth orbit is the high ground, after all.”

Oh? she thought to herself. So he didn’t know about Lagrange? Or didn’t want her to know he knew.

“However,” Reid went on, Tm pretty confident that you won’t, um, liquidate. For obvious reasons.”

“So why the offer?”

“Peace of mind… nah, seriously. Between us, you and I know everyone who knows of the current level of exposure. But neither of us can guarantee that that’ll last. A word in the wrong place and there could be severe market jitters on my side. Which, I hasten to add, would not be to your benefit, either, so we have a mutual—”

“Assured deterrence?”

Reid gave her a shut the fuck up look. “You could say that… but I’d rather you didn’t.”

Myra grinned evilly. “OK,” she said. “It’s still no deal, Dave.”

He gazed back at her, expressionless, but he couldn’t hide the plea in his voice. “Will you at least agree not to dump your assets during the takeover bid? Not to make any offers to the competition?”

Oh, Jeez. This was a tricky one. She had no intention of doing any of the things he feared. On the other hand—if he were to fear them (even if only theoretically, and only at the margin, but still…) it might restrain him. It might keep him, and his allies, from crossing that invisible border, that terminator between the daylight and the dark. Let them hate, as long as they fear.

She shook her head, and saw her multiple reflections do the same, in solemn repetition. The act of observation collapses the wave-function, yes: the die cast, the cat dies.

“Sorry, Dave,” she told him. “I can’t make any promises.”

His gaze measured hers for a moment, and then he shrugged.

“You win some, you lose some,” he said lightly. “See you around, Myra.”

She watched him walk away, as she so often had. His grep followed at a safe distance. Denis raised his eyebrows, rolled his eyes, came over.

“What was all that about?”

“Oh, just some old stuff between us,” Myra said. “We don’t see eye to eye, is all.” She took his arm. “Let’s see how Andrei is getting on with that lady from the Western United States, shall we?”

Not well, as it turned out. This was not the place for secret diplomacy, even if they’d been using the privacy shields, which they weren’t. Juniper Bear, the West American unofficial consul, was making her diplomatic position no secret at all. Her broad-brimmed black hat with black wax fruit around its crown seemed chosen to amplify her voice, even though her pose indicated urgent, confidential communication.

“…Just in the last month we hit a Green guerilla incursion from SoCal, and at the same time a White Aryan Nations push across the Rockies, and would you believe the First Nations Federation, the goddamn Indians, lobbing significant conventional hardware on our northern settlements on the Cannuck side of the old border? Let me tell you, Comrade Mukhartov, we could do with some orbital backup, this time on our side for a change.” She laughed, grinning at Myra and Valentina as they joined the conversation. “Would you believe? she repeated, “the goddamn Greens are actually lobbying the old guard to keep the battlesats as asteroid defence? Like we ever really needed that, and now we got everything bigger’n a pea out there mapped and tracked, we might as well worry about a new ice age!”

“Well, that’s coming,” said Valentina.

Juniper Bear’s hatbrim tilted. “Sure, the Milankovitch cycle, yeah, but it isn’t a worry, now is it?” She laughed. “Hey, I remember global warming!”

“And thafs happening,” Myra said. “But, like you say, it isn’t a worry, not any more. And the ozone holes, and the background radiation levels, and the synthetic polymers in every organic, and the jumping genes and all that, yeah, we’re not worrying.” She felt surprised at the sound of her own voice, at how angry she felt about all that, now she was articulating it; it was as though she had a deep Green deep inside her, just waiting to get out. “But to be honest, Ms Bear, we are worried about something else. About the plan to revitalise the ReUnited Nations. Even if they will be the enemies of our enemies, in the first instance. We don’t want that kind of power turned against anyone on Earth, ever again.” She took off her hat, fingering the smooth hairs and running her thumb over the red star and gold sigil; realised she was standing there, literally cap in hand, begging for help.

Juniper Bear shook her head. She was an old woman, not as old as Myra; she looked about thirty, by pre-rejuvenation reckoning, when her face was in repose, but the weight of her years showed in her every facial expression, if you were old enough to notice these things. You learned to transmit and to receive those non-verbal tics, in parallel processes of increasing wisdom.

“That’s what our opposition are saying,” the woman said. “No more New World Orders!’ Well, I’m sorry, but we need a real new world order, one on our side this time. It’ll be only temporary—once we get enough forces out there, there’s no way anyone can keep central control. Once the emergency is over, it’ll just…” She made a downward-planning gesture.

“Wither away?”

Juniper’s creased eyes registered the irony, her compressed lips her refusal to let it deflect her. “Speaking of states that wither away,” she said, changing the subject adroitly, “if any of you find yourselves looking for new opportunities, when all this is over one way or another…”

Valentina and Andrei said nothing, at least not in Myra’s presence; but Myra herself smiled, and nodded, and said she’d bear it in mind.

“Well!” said Andrei Mukhartov, when the function was over and the guests had departed, the diplomats, the apparatchiks and captains of industry. Andrei, Valentina, Denis and Myra had retired to one of the hotel’s smaller and quieter bars. Hardwood and mirrors, leather and glass, plush carpets and quiet music. There were plenty of people in the bar who’d had nothing directly to do with the funeral. This made for a degree of security for the four remaining Commissars, huddled as they were around a vodka bottle on a corner table, like dissidents. “Thanks for your intervention earlier, comrades. I thought I was getting somewhere until you turned up.”

“You thought wrong,” said Myra. She didn’t feel like arguing the point. “I know Juniper, she’ll seem to agree with you and then start talking about the war. Which is where we came in. You didn’t lose anything.”

“Huh,” grunted Andrei. He knocked back a thumbnail glass. “Tell me why you need a Foreign Secretary at all.”

“Because I can’t do everything myself,” Myra told him. “Even if I can do every particular thing better than anyone. Division of labour, don’t knock it. It’s all in Ricardo.”

Andrei and Valentina were looking at each other with eye-rolling, exaggerated bafflement.

“Megalomania,” said Andrei sadly. “Comes to all the dictators of the proletariat, just before the end.”

“Think we should overthrow her before it’s too late?” Valentina straightened her back and sketched a salute. “Get Denis in on it and we can form a troika. Blame all the problems on Myra and declare a clean slate.”

“That is not funny,” said Myra. She poured another round, watched the clear spirit splash into the crystal ware, four times. “That is exactly how it will be. One day all the problems of the world will be blamed on me.” This was not funny, she thought. This was her deepest suspicion, in her darkest moments. She grinned at her confederates. “To that glorious future!”

They slugged back the vodka shots and slammed down the empty glasses. Myra passed up an offer of a Marley or a Moscow Gold, lit up a Dunhill from her last trip out. The double foil inside the pack, the red and the gold of its exterior—there was still, to her, something wicked and opulent about the brand, which she’d first smoked when duty-free still meant something.

“So, what’s the score, Andrei? Apart from today’s subtle approaches.”

“Ah.” Andrei exhaled the fragrant smoke through his nostrils. “Not good, I have to say. Kazakhstan’s still keeping out of it—after all, they have Baikonur to think about, and the Sheenisov threat. If it weren’t for previous bad blood between them and the space movement, I think they might be tempted to side with it. So their neutrality is something, when all’s said and done. As for the rest—1 have canvassed every country, I have checked with our delegates in New York, and frankly it looks as if next week’s vote will go through.”

“Valentina?”

Myra didn’t need to spell anything out. Kozlova had spent days and nights tracking reports from agents in the battlesats and the settlements. She replied by holding out her spread hand and waggling it.

“Nothing much we can do up there,” she said. “The other side have all the resources to tip the balance their way, whichever way the argument is going.”

“Not all the resources,” Myra said.

“Oh, come,” said Valentina, with careful calm. “We couldn’t.” She might have been talking about cheating at cards.

“But they don’t know we couldn’t,” Myra said. “We do have a hard reputation, after all. Most of the new countries, not to mention the settlements, probably think we’re some kind of ruthless Bolsheviks.”

They shared a cynical laugh.

“I’m sure Reid is disabusing them of that notion right now,” said Andrei. He seemed to have picked up on what they were talking about; and as for Denis Gubanov, he was leaning back with a smug smile, as if he’d known it for years. Probably had.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Myra said. “He’s a devious son of a bitch. He says his side don’t know what we’ve got, and he might still hold out a hope of winning us over—or using us as a threat to keep his own side in order.”

She inhaled again.

“Besides,” she added, “he doesn’t know all we’ve got. Or so I gathered. He thinks it’s all in Earth orbit.”

“It isnW Denis’s smile faded instantly. “So where is it?”

“Good question,” Myra said. “See if you can find out.”

Valentina was intently studying the reflection of the chandelier in the bar mirror.

“Is this a joke, or what?” Denis demanded.

Myra shook her head, laid her palm on the back of his hand. “Easy, man. Don’t waste too much time on it—just treat it as an exercise, see what you can find out about what people know or suspect—”

“And I’m not to know myself?”

“Double-blind,” Myra said firmly. “And double-bluff. I’ll let you know after you’ve brought back some results, but I don’t want your investigation dropping any inadvertent hints.”

Denis scowled. “OK,” he allowed, “I see the point of that.” He looked at his watch, sighed and stood up. “Three-fifteen,” he said. “Time I was back at the office.”

“The unsleeping sword of the Cheka,” Myra said. “Time we all went back, I guess.”

“No,” said Andrei. Tou and Valentina stay here and get drunk.” He pushed back his chair and raised himself ponderously to his feet. “We Russian men will take care of the rest of the day’s business.”

“Sure?”

“Sure.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “Relax, Davidova. The coup won’t come today, or tomorrow.”

“I know that,” she said. “But we just lost one more commissar today—”

“Alex, huh, son of a bitch. No loss. I cleared his desktop and locked him out the second he mentioned he was leaving us.”

“He was good at his job, and we don’t have a replacement.”

“The economy can get along fine without a commissar for a while,” Andrei said. “The free market, don’t knock it. It’s all in Ricardo.”

The two men walked to the bar. Andrei gallantly laid a wad of currency on it, indicating Myra and Valentina with a glance, nodded to them and left with Denis.

“So,” said Valentina, looking after them, “what do you suppose they’re up to?”

“Anything but going back to work, I hope,” Myra laughed. “Hitting the spaceport bars, or plotting our demise. Whatever. What the fuck.” She downed another vodka; stared at the tip of a cigarette that had burnt down, unregarded; lit another.

“You’re drunk already,” Valentina accused.

“And bitter and twisted. Yeah, I know.”

“I’ll tell you why they left,” Valentina said. “Apart from the space-port attractions, that is.”

“Yeah?”

“They’re giving us space, my dear. For a caucus.”

“Women’s caucus? Bit dated, that.”

Valentina loosened her uniform jacket, removed her tie and rolled it up carefully. “Not—what was it called?—feminism, Myra. Socialism. A Party caucus.”

“But I’m not even in the Party!”

“Are you so sure about that?” Valentina asked. “I’ve never seen a resignation letter from you. And I would have, you know. I’m sure you’re at least a sympathiser, even if—” she giggled “—you’ve been missing branch meetings lately.”

Myra had to think about it. She supposed there was still a direct-debit mandate paying her dues to some anonymous Caribbean data-haven account. She still got the mailings, filed unread. She still wrote for Analysis, the International’s online theoretical journal. (Its contributors had nicknamed it Dialysis, because of its insistent theme that everything was going down the tubes.)

Myra frowned at Valentina. The noise in the bar was louder than it had been. People were drifting in from other functions going on in the hotel: a business conference, an anime con, and at least two weddings.

“What does it matter?” she asked. “We’re nothing, we’re probably among the last Internationalists in the whole fucking world,”

“Indeed we are,” said Valentina. “But there’s still a couple of things we can do. One is give our comrade a good send-off, by getting absolutely smashed in his memory.”

They knocked glasses, drank.

“And the other thing?”

“Oh, yes. We can see if there’s anything the International is planning to do about the coup.”

Tou must be fucking joking.”

“I am not. If you want my guess, that’s what they wanted the assets for.”

“Whoever thought of that must be out of their tiny fucking minds. Talk about adventurism.”

“I’m not so sure. Remember, there may not be many of us left in the world, but—” Valentina leaned closer “—there isn’t only one world.”

“Oh, don’t be—” Myra gave it a second thought. “Oh,” she said. “Our friends in the sky.”

“Yeah,” said Valentina. “The space fraction.”

“I don’t want to discuss this right now,” Myra said. She looked around, wildly. The place was jumping. One beautiful Kazakh girl whom she’d thought was a bride yelled something in what sounded like Japanese. Her big white dress shrank like shrink-wrap to her body, changing colour and hardening to a costume of pastel-shaded plastic armour. A smart-suit—made from, rather than by, nanotech—was a heinously expensive novelty, offering a limited menu of programmed transformations. Myra wondered how long it would be before its price plummeted, its repertoire exploded; how long it would be before people could as readily transform their bodies. A world of comic-book super-heroes—it didn’t bear thinking about. The girl struck a combative pose, to a scatter of applause from the other anime fans.

“Let’s get drunk,” Myra said.