The Trade of Queens

Leaking Everywhere

In a stately house four miles outside Niejwein, two noble ladies sat beside an unlit hearth, awkwardly eyeing each other. Between their angled chairs an occasional table stood like a frontier fence, surmounted by the border tower of a fortified wine decanter. The afternoon sun slanting through the lattice window stained the wood-paneled walls with a deep golden warmth; a pair of fat flies buzzed in erratic circles below the ceiling, swooping and tracing out the lines of their confinement.

“Have you been keeping well?” asked the older of the pair, her age-spotted eyelids drooping as she watched her sixty-two-year-old visitor. “Do you have any complaints?” She spoke abruptly, her tone brusque.

The younger one snorted. “Only the obvious, Mother.” The last word came out with an odd emphasis, falling just short of making an insult of it. “Your hospitality is impeccable but, I hope you’ll excuse me for putting it so crudely, oppressive. I would ask, though, is my maid Mhara unharmed?”

The dowager frowned, her crow’s-feet wrinkles deepening. “I do not know.” She extended a shaky hand and tugged on a braided bell cord. A discreet servants’ door opened behind her. “My daughter inquires of her maid.”

“Yes, my lady.” The attendant bowed his head.

“Was she taken? If so, is she well?”

“She, ah, escaped, my lady. After she shot one of the dragoons in the, ah, thigh.”

“Well then.” The dowager gave her daughter a wintry smile. “Satisfied?”

Her daughter stared back at her for a long moment, then nodded fractionally. “Satisfied.”

“Go away,” the dowager announced to the air. The servants’ door opened and closed again, restoring the illusion of privacy. “Such a show of compassion,” she added, her tone of voice dripping with irony.

“There’s no show about it, Mother.” Patricia Thorold-Hjorth, herself dowager duchess and mother to the queen-widow, stared back at her own dam, the duchess Hildegarde. “We’ve bled ourselves white in your lifetime. Every one of us of the true blood who dies, especially the women, is a score fewer grandchildren to support our successors. If you don’t feel that—”

She stopped, as Hildegarde’s palm rattled the crystal on the table. “Of course I feel that!” the duchess exploded. “I’ve known that since long before I whelped you, you ungrateful child. I’ve known that ever since my sister—” She stopped, and reached for a glass of wine. “Damn you, you’re old enough to know better, too.”

Hildegarde stopped. They sat in silence for a minute, eyeing each other sidelong. Finally Patricia spoke. “I assume you didn’t bring me here for a friendly mother-daughter chat.”

“I brought you here to save your life, girl,” Hildegarde said harshly.

Patricia blinked. “You did?”

“If you were elsewhere, I could not insure that certain of the more enthusiastic members of the conservative club would leave you be,” the dowager pointed out. “And I feel some residual family loyalty to this day, whatever you may think of me.”

“Eh. Well, if you say so. Do you expect that will make Helge think better of you?”

“No.” The dowager stared at her daughter. “But it will be one less thing for me to take to my grave.” For a moment her eyes unfocussed, staring vaguely into some interior landscape. “You corrupted her most thoroughly. My congratulations would be in order, were the ultimate effect not so damaging.”

Patricia reached slowly for the other wineglass. “Why should I thank you for saving my life?” she asked. “Are your faction planning a return to the bad old days? Cousin killers?”

“No. Not really.” Hildegarde took a sip from her glass. “But it was necessary to break the back of your half-brother’s organization, to buy time while we deal with the harvest he was about to bring in from the field. Test-tube babies, what an idea. I gather I should thank you for helping deal with it—Dr. ven Hjalmar was quite effusive in his praise for your assistance. But in any case: The program is secure, as is our future. We shall make sure that the infants are raised by trustworthy families, to know their place within the Clan—better than your wildcat, anyway—and in the next generation our numbers will increase fivefold.”

Patricia nodded guardedly. “Where is the doctor?” she asked.

“Oh, who cares?” Hildegarde waved a shaky hand: “He doesn’t matter now that the program records are destroyed.”

“Really?” Patricia shook her head. Hildegarde’s grasp of computers was theoretical at best, shaky at worst. “He’s not tried to blackmail you?”

“No.” Hildegarde’s grin was not reassuring. “I think he might be afraid to show his face. Something to do with your hoyden.”

“So you took action against Security?” Patricia nudged.

“Yes. I had to, to preserve the balance. I know you harbor Anglischprache ideas about ‘equality’ and ‘freedom,’ but you must understand, we are not a meritocracy—we live or die by our bloodlines. Certainly Angbard had the right idea thirty years ago, to clamp a lid on the feuding, but his solution has become a monster. There are young people who pledge their loyalty to the Security directorate, would you believe it? If he was allowed to bring the, the changelings into his organization, within a generation we’d be done for. This way is better: With the Security organization cut back to its original status, and other threats dealt with, we can resume our traditional—” Patricia was whey-faced. “What is it?”

“Other threats. What other threats?”

“Oh, nothing important.” Hildegarde waved the back of her hand dismissively, prompting a fly to dodge. “We sent a message to the Anglischprache leadership, one that they won’t ignore. Once we’ve got them out of our hair—”

“A message the Anglischprache won’t ignore? What kind of message?”

“Oh, we used those bombs Oliver had lying about.” Hildegarde sniffed. “How else do you deal with a hostile king? They’ll make the point quite well: Once the new Anglischprache president-emperor ascends the throne, he won’t be under any illusions about the consequences of threatening us. We’ll talk to him, I’m sure. We’ve done it before: This will just set negotiations off on the right foot.”

“Sky Father…” Patricia stared at her mother, aghast, then raised her wineglass and knocked it back in a single swallow. “Those were atomic weapons,” she said slowly. “Where were they set?”

“Oh, some white palace, I gather,” Hildegarde said dismissively. “In a town named after a famous soldier.”

“Oh dear Trickster Cousin,” Patricia muttered under her breath. “You said ‘used.’ I suppose it’s too much to hope that you misspoke, and there’s still time—”

Hildegarde stared at her daughter, perplexed. “Of course not. This was yesterday. Are you all right?”

“I—a moment.” Patricia shrugged uncomfortably. “This is not a criticism I speak now, but—I lived among them for nearly a third of a century, Mother. You did not. You don’t know them the way I do.” Patricia nodded at the decanter: Her mother reached for the bell-pull once more. “I’m telling you, you’ve misjudged them badly.”

“We had to get rid of their current king-emperor somehow; he’s an idiot.” Hildegarde paused while her footman refilled both goblets and retreated. “His next-in-line is far more intelligent. He understands power and its uses.”

“Granted. But their president is not a king, as we understand the term, he is merely a first citizen, elected by his people. They run everything by a system of laws.”

“I know that—”

“The trouble is, simply attacking them on their home field is … it’s a declaration of war. And they don’t know how to surrender, Mother. They can’t. There is no law in their constitution that says ‘if attacked by an irresistible force it is permissible to offer a limited surrender: To do so invoke this clause.’ Once they’re at war, any leader who tries to stop it will be impeached—removed. It’s like stabbing a hornets’ nest: Every one you kill just makes the others angrier. I’m not making this up. The last time they lost a war, nearly thirty years ago, they left it to an unelected temporary regent to take the barrage of rotten fruit, and there are still people who think they could have won in Vietnam if only they’d fought harder. There are still many in the South who think they could have won the slaveowners’ rebellion against the North, a century and a half ago. They’re all quite mad, you know. Just now they’re fighting two wars on the other side of the world, all because a ranting priest sent his idiot followers to blow up a couple of towers. Two wars—because they’re not sure who did it.” Patricia picked up her glass again. “Do you know how powerful these bombs are?” she asked. “I’m told they can be made more or less damaging—”

“Oh, I’m sure they used the most powerful available,” Hildegarde said dismissively. “No point tapping your enemy on the head with a twig when there’s a club to hand, is there? As you say, it only makes them angry. But the enemy’s intentions, you must understand—they don’t matter. What can they do to us? Certainly they may kidnap one or two of our own, ride them like mules, and they may even bring more of their bombs, but we are on our home ground here. We must be firm and deliver our ultimatum, and they must learn to leave us alone!”

“Mother.” Patricia looked at Hildegarde: “You’re not the only person who’s been sending messages. I—at the rump Council’s orders—I’ve been trying to negotiate with them for some time. They don’t want to haggle; they want our total surrender. They sent a final démarche and cut me dead.”

“Really.” Hildegarde didn’t bother to feign interest.

“They’re working on a machine, Mother dearest. A machine that does what we do, a machine for walking between worlds. Yes, they told us this. Also that it might take months or years, but when they succeeded, they would come here, and how they would treat with us would depend entirely on how we treated with them.”

“And you believed that?”

“Yes. As a matter of fact, I did—and do. You’ve never really lived among them. You don’t know what they’re capable of.”

Hildegarde sniffed. “Well, it will probably never happen. And if it does, we’ll think of something. But for now, our internal factional dispute is settled. The Security apparat is back in its box, we have found a satisfactory solution to Angbard’s silly little breeding program, and we—you and I—are back on course to meet our braid’s long-term goal. Your diversion has had no real long-term effect. That’s always been your besetting problem—always wanting to hare off and do things your own way, even when it forces you to do something silly, like hide yourself away in a foreign scholar’s hovel for thirty years instead of enjoying the rightful fruits due to one of your rank. I know, you’re not going to apologize. I don’t expect you to. Will you believe me if I tell you that I bear you no ill will? Or your daughter? Or her child, be they boy or girl? But you have been a sore trial to your elderly mother, these years, more even than the prodigal stepson. Even now. Not even asking why I wanted to see you.”

There was an uncomfortable pause. “Why?” Patricia finally asked.

“Because I’m dying,” Hildegarde said, so offhandedly that it took Patricia a moment to do a double take. “Nothing that the Anglischprache doctors can repair, I assure you—I have been poked and prodded by Drs. ven Skorzeman and ven Hjalmar, and they have attempted to convince me to visit the other side for blood treatments that will make my hair fall out and my gums bleed, to no avail. I am a goodly age, Patricia. I may even live to see a world-walking great-grandchild of mine take the throne, which is more than my half-sister managed. And I never managed to settle my affairs with Angelin. So there is a canker in my guts and I should not want to impose overlong on your patience, but I am an old and impatient woman and I ask you to indulge my sentiment.”

Patricia stared at the dowager. “But Angelin refused to speak to you—”

“She might have eventually, had she not died at the hands of her own grandchild’s men.” Hildegarde turned unfocussed eyes on the window. “Which just goes to show the unwisdom of schooling our young in alien ways: Never forget that—we are foreigners wherever we live, whether we be ruler or servant. Angelin failed to look to Egon’s schooling. She left him to go native. You … made the opposite error with Helge. I never took the time to set things right with my sister. So, I thought I should at least make a gesture … don’t make me reconsider the wisdom of this meeting.”

“Oh, Mother.” Patricia put her wineglass down. “This is most harsh, this news.” A hesitancy crept into her voice.

“Bear with me.” Hildegarde raised a slightly shaky hand and closed her eyes, as Patricia picked up the decanter with both hands and refilled their glasses. “I have always acted for what I perceived to be the best interests of our braid. I had hoped you would understand that, and at least not stand in my way, but by poisoning my natural heir against me … well, it’s too late to undo that.” She opened her eyes and blinked rheumily at her daughter. “May you have better luck with your grandchild. Angelin’s great-grandchild.”

“If it arrives. Consanguinuity—”

“It will be all right, child. Helge and Creon were second cousins, and Creon’s ailment was a consequence of poisoning, not inbreeding. We risk worse with every twist of the braid. The hazard is minimal.”

“Miriam won’t see it that way, you know.”

“Miriam—what an odd name. Where did you get it from?”

Patricia smiled tightly. “The same place I got Iris. And Beckstein. She answers to it, you know. You might have gotten better results from her if you’d called her by the name she prefers.”

“Perhaps. But it’s not her name, it’s a disguise. Where would we be if people could pick and choose their name? Nobody need recognize their seniors—there would be anarchy! Or another strong man like Angbard would grab everybody by the throat and rule by force majeure. A rogue, that boy. But listen, I have a few months, perhaps a year or two. And seeing that Angbard was ill, I decided to move now, to detach his slippery followers’ fingers from the reins of power and hand them back to their rightful owner—a woman of the line, or a lord working as her agent, as is right and proper. You, Patricia. You have a grandchild in the great game, or you will soon—you will act in their name. Once the hangers-on and opportunists are purged, once Angbard’s security apparatus is emptied of dangerous innovators and cut back to its original size and scope, you will inherit the full power of my position, and they’ll love you. Complete freedom of action. I never had that, girl, but you will.”

Patricia stared at Hildegarde for almost a minute. Presently, she closed her mouth. “You’re not joking.”

“You know me, girl. Do I ever joke?”

Patricia opened her mouth for a moment, then closed it again. “Let me get this straight. You had your granddaughter forcibly inseminated with your sister’s grandson’s sperm so that you could reassert our cadet branch’s claim to the throne. You had me kidnapped and brought here so that we could kiss and make up. You’re dying of cancer, so you decided to set up Miriam’s kid for the throne by destroying Angbard’s security organization, just as the old nobility are getting over the civil war and wondering what we’re going to unleash on them next. And you nuked the White House, just to send a message to WARBUCKS. Am I missing anything?”

“Yes.” Hildegarde looked smug. “Who do you think taunted Egon about his younger brother’s marriage? Someone had to do it—otherwise we’d never have pried his useless ass off the throne! It would have set us back at least two generations.”

Patricia picked up her wineglass and drained it for the second time. “Mother, I have a confession to make. Miriam once told me she thought you were a scheming bitch, and I’m afraid I defended your honor. I take it all back. You’re completely insane.”

“Let us pray that it runs in the family, then. As for your confession—consider yourself forgiven. I shall be relying on your cunning once I surrender to you, you realize.” Hildegarde reached out and pulled the bell rope—“More wine, damn your eyes! I insist on getting drunk with my daughter at least once before I die. Yes, I’m insane. If insanity is defined by wanting to put my great-grandchild on the throne, I’m mad. If it’s crazy to want to strangle the ghouls that crowd the royal crib and break the private army that threatens our autonomy, I’m all of that. I bent the Clan and the Kingdom to serve you and your line, Patricia, and I find at the end of my days that I regret nothing. So. Once you are in charge of the Clan, what do you think you will do with it?”

“I haven’t made my confession yet, Mother.” Patricia looked at the dowager oddly. “It would have been good to have had this heart-to-heart a little earlier—perhaps a year ago. I’m afraid we’re both too late.…”

* * *

An hour after Miriam and her guards and allies arrived at the farmstead, the place was abuzz with Clan Security. There were several safe transfer locations in the state forest, and one of Earl-Major Riordan’s first orders had been to summon every available soldier—not already committed to point defense or the pursuit of the renegade elements of the Postal Service and the Conservative Club—to establish a security cordon.

Miriam, sick at heart, sat in one corner of the command post, listening—the fast, military hochsprache was hard to follow, and she was catching perhaps one word in three, but she could follow the general sense of the discussion—and watching as Riordan took reports and consulted with Olga and issued orders, as often as not by radio to outlying sites. The headquarters troops had set up a whole bunch of card indexes and a large corkboard, startlingly prosaic in a field headquarters in a fire-damaged farmhouse, and were keeping a written log of every decision Riordan handed down. A hanging list of index cards had gone up on one wall, each card bearing a name: Baron Henryk, Baron Oliver, Dowager Duchess Thorold-Hjorth. Miriam carefully avoided trying to read the handwritten annotations whenever a clerk updated one of them. Ringleaders they might be, and in some cases bitter enemies, but they were all people she knew, or had known, at court. A similar list hung on the opposite wall, and it was both longer and less frequently updated—known allies and their disposition.

“Why not computerize?” she’d asked Brill, in a quiet moment when the latter had sat down on the bench beside her with a mug of coffee.

“Where are we going to get the electricity to run the computer from?” Brill replied, shrugging. “Batteries need charging, generators need fuel. Best not to make hostages to fate. Besides,” she glanced sidelong at the communications specialist bent over the radio, “computers come with their own problems. They make treachery easier. And it’s a small enough squabble that we don’t need them.”

“But the Clan—” Miriam stopped.

“We know all the main players. By name and by face. We know most of our associates, too.” The world-walkers, children of latent, outer-family lines, not yet fully integrated into the Clan of which they were branches. “We are few enough that this will be over—” Brill stopped. The communications specialist had stood up, hunching over his set. Suddenly he swore, and waved urgently at Olga. Olga hurried over; a moment later Riordan joined her.

“What’s going on?” Miriam stood up.

“I don’t know.” Brill’s face was expressionless. “Nothing good by the look of it.”

Olga turned towards them, mouthed something. She looked appalled.

“Tell me,” Miriam demanded, raising her voice against the general hubbub of urgent questions and answers.

Olga took two steps towards her. “I am very sorry, my lady,” she said woodenly.

“It’s Plan Blue?”

Olga nodded. “It is all over the television channels,” she added softly. “Two nuclear explosions. In Washington.”

For a moment everything in Miriam’s vision was as gray as ash. She must have staggered, for Brilliana caught her elbow. “What.” She swallowed. “How bad?”

“We do not know yet, my lady. That news is still in the pipeline. We have”—she gestured at the radio bench—“other urgent priorities right now. But there are reports of many casualties.”

Miriam swallowed again. Her stomach clenched. “Was this definitely the work of, of the conservative faction?”

“It is reasonable to suppose so, but we can’t be certain yet.” Olga was peering at her, worried. “My lady, what do you—”

“Because if it was their doing, if it was anything to do with the Clan, then we are fucked.” She could see it in her mind’s eye, mushroom clouds rising over the Capitol, and a bleak vision of a future far more traumatic than anything she’d ever imagined. “We’re about to lose all access to the United States. They won’t rest until they’ve found a way to come over here and chase us down and kill us. There won’t be anywhere we can run to in their world or this one that’s far enough away for safety.”

“Even if it was not Baron Hjorth’s doing, even if we had nothing to do with it, we would not be secure,” Brilliana pointed out. “We know that the vice president has reason to want us dead. This could be some other’s work, and he would still send his minions to hunt us.”

“Shit.” Miriam swallowed again, feeling the acid tang of bile at the back of her mouth. “Think I’m going to throw up.”

“This way, milady”—everyone was solicitous towards the mother-to-be, Miriam noted absentmindedly, up to and including making decisions on her behalf, as if she were a passive object with no will of her own—

It was raining outside, and the stench from the latrines round the side of the house completed the job that the news and the anxiety and the morning sickness had started. Her stomach cramped as she doubled over, spitting bile, and waited for the shooting pain in her gut to subside. Brill waited outside, leaving her a token space. I’m alone, she realized despondently. Alone, surrounded by allies and sworn vassals, some of whom consider themselves my friends. I don’t think any of them truly understand.… Her thoughts drifted back towards the sketchily described horrors unfolding down south, and her stomach clenched again. By the time she finished, she found she had regained a modicum of calm. They don’t know what’s going to happen, she realized. But I do. Miriam had been living in Boston through the crazy days that followed 9/11. And she’d seen the glassy-eyed lockstep to the drumbeat of war that followed, seen the way everybody rallied to the flag. In the past few weeks and months, a tenuous skepticism had been taking hold, but nothing could be better calculated to extinguish it than a terrorist outrage to dwarf the fall of the Twin Towers. The only question was how long it would take the US military to gear up for an invasion, and she had an uneasy feeling that they were already living on borrowed time.

“Milady?” It was Brill.

“I’m better. For now.” Miriam waved off her offered hand and took a deep breath of rain-cleansed air. “I’m going to lie down. But. I need to know how bad it is, what the bastards have done. And as soon as Riordan and Olga have a free minute I need to talk to them.”

“But they’re going to be—” Brill stopped. “What do you need to distract them with?”

“The evacuation plan,” Miriam said bluntly.

“What plan—”

“The one we need to draw up right now to get everyone across to New Britain. Because if we don’t”—she raised her head, stared across the seared fields towards the tree line at the edge of the cleared area—“we’re dead, or worse. I know what my people—sorry, the Americans—are capable of. We don’t stand a chance if we stay here. One way or another, the Clan is finished with the Gruinmarkt; this whole stupid cockamamie scheme to put a baby on the throne is pointless now. The only question is which direction we run.”

* * *

A steady stream of couriers, security staff, and refugees trickled into the farmstead over the hours following Miriam’s evacuation. By midafternoon, Earl Riordan had sent out levies to round up labor from the nearest villages, and by sunset a large temporary camp was taking shape, patrolled by guards with assault rifles. The farm itself was receiving a makeover in the shape of a temporary royal residence: However humble it might be by comparison with the palaces of Niejwein, it was far better than the tents and improvised bivouacs of the soldiers.

Despite her ongoing nausea, Miriam followed Riordan and Olga and their staff when they moved into a pavilion beside the farmhouse. “You should be lying down, taking things easy,” Brilliana said, halfheartedly trying to divert her.

“The hell with that.” Miriam glared at her. “These are my people, aren’t they? I need to be here.” And I need to know … The sense of dread gnawing at her guts was beyond awful.

In late afternoon, despite the apparent defection of most of the Clan postal office’s lords to the traitors’ side—at least, it was hard to put any other interpretation on their total failure to comply with the executive head of Clan Security’s increasingly heated orders to report—they managed to establish a solid radio network with the other security sites in the Gruinmarkt; and the New York office was still sufficiently functional to arrange a three-hourly courier run with digital video tapes from the Anglischprache world’s news feeds. Shortwave and FM didn’t have the bandwidth to play back video, but the headlines off the wire services were more than enough to make Miriam sick to her stomach and leave Brilliana and Sir Alasdair anxious for her health.

REUTERS: THIRD ATOMIC WEAPON FAILS TO DETONATE AT PENTAGON

AP: FLIGHTS, STOCK MARKET TRADING SUSPENDED INDEFINITELY

REUTERS: VICE PRESIDENT SWORN IN AS WHITE HOUSE CONFIRMED DESTROYED: PRESIDENT WAS “AT HOME”

UPI: IRAN CONDEMNS “FOOLISH AND ILL-ADVISED” ATTACK

REUTERS: SADR LEADS NIGHTTIME DEMONSTRATION IN BAGHDAD: MILLION PROTESTORS IN FIRDOS SQUARE

AP: PRESIDENT TO ADDRESS NATION

But there was even more important news.

At first there was nothing more than a knot of turmoil around the table where Olga and three clerical assistants were coordinating intelligence reports and updating the list of known survivors and victims of the coup attempt. “I don’t believe it,” said Sir Alasdair, making his way back towards Miriam. “It can’t be a coincidence!” His expression was glazed, distant.

“What’s happened?” Brill, who had been leaning over a clipboard crossing off the names of couriers who had made too many crossings for the day, looked up at the tone in Miriam’s voice.

“The duke,” said Sir Alasdair. He cleared his throat. “I am very sorry, my lady. Your uncle. The latest report from the clinic says. Um. He went into cardiac arrest this morning.”

“This morning?” Miriam caught Brilliana staring at her. She clutched the arm of her folding director’s chair. “Can’t be. Can’t possibly be. Are they sure?” She swallowed. Angbard, the thin white duke: For over thirty years he’d been the guiding will behind the Clan Security operation, the hand that held the reins binding the disparate squabbling families together. Since his stroke two months ago his duties had been carved up and assigned to Olga and Riordan, but not without question or challenge: The Clan Council was not eager to see any individual ever again wield that much power. “He’s dead?” She heard her voice rising and raised a hand to cover her mouth.

“If it’s a coincidence I’ll eat this table. I’m sorry, my lady,” Sir Alasdair added, “but it can’t possibly be an accident. Not with a revolt in progress and, and the other news. From the Americans.”

“Brill, I’m sorry—” Miriam’s voice broke. Angbard hadn’t felt like an uncle to her—more like a scary Mafia godfather who, for no obvious reason, had taken a liking to her—but he’d been a huge influence on Brilliana. And Olga, Miriam reminded herself. Shit. “Is there any word on who killed him? Because when we find them—”

“It wasn’t a killing, according to the clinic,” Sir Alasdair reminded her. “Although it beggars belief to suppose it a coincidence, for now it must needs be but one more insult to avenge at our convenience. One of our doctors was in attendance, Dr. ven Hjalmar—”

“Shit. Shit.” Miriam clenched her fist. Brill was watching her, a dangerous light in her eyes.

Sir Alasdair paused. “Is there a problem?” he asked.

“Dr. ven Hjalmar is a wanted man,” Brilliana said, her tone colorless.

“Very,” Miriam added, her voice cracking. “Sir Alasdair. Should you or your men find Dr. ven Hjalmar … I will sleep better for knowing that he’s dead.”

Sir Alasdair nodded. “I’m sure that can be arranged.” He paused. “Is there a reason?”

Brilliana cleared her throat. “A necessary and sufficient one that need not concern you further. Oh, and his murder of Duke Angbard should be sufficient, should it not?”

“Ah—really?” Sir Alasdair’s eyebrow rose. “Well, if you say so—” He noticed Miriam’s expression. “You’re sure?”

“Very sure,” she said flatly.

“In that case, I’ll put the order out. By your leave.” Sir Alasdair beat a hasty retreat.

Miriam glanced at Brill, trying to gather her wits. “Come on, I want to find out what’s happening.”

The card indexes, divided by faction members and known status, were growing in size and complexity—and a third list had joined the first two: known fatalities. Earl Riordan was deep in conversation with one of his lieutenants as Miriam approached him—“Then tomorrow morning, we shall relocate to Koudrivier House. Assign two lances to establish a security cordon and a third for courier and doppelganger duties. The rest of your men I want—my lady?” He straightened up. “What can I do for you?”

“My uncle is dead,” Miriam managed, the words feeling strange in her mouth. The uncle I never had time to get to know has been murdered.… “Is my mother accounted for? Or my grandmother?”

Earl Riordan looked irritated for a moment, then thoughtful. “Your grandam is unaccounted for. Along with several of her friends, who appear to be involved in the insurrection.” He turned to one of the clerks and asked a question in rapid hochsprache. “We shall find out about about her grace your mother shortly, I trust. Is there anything else?”

“Yes.” Miriam gripped her hands tightly behind her back. “The duke is dead. How fast can we get a quorum of the Clan Council together? Just enough to confirm”—she caught Olga’s head turning towards her, the warning look too late—“you as official head of Clan Security,” she continued. “And an extraordinary meeting to discuss policy.”

“We’ll do that as soon as—” Riordan glanced at the map table across the aisle from his clerks. “We have a cabal of insurrectionists to arrest first—”

“No.” The firmness in her voice surprised Miriam. Even though her guts were burning, acid bile and churning stress in her belly: Can’t stop now. “I don’t think you grasp how far this has gone. WARBUCKS has just been sworn in as president. You know he worked for the duke: This is a comprehensive clusterfuck. WARBUCKS wants to destroy us, destroy the evidence, and the fuckwit faction have just handed him the perfect excuse. The American military are going to find a way to come over here and they will kill everybody. You’re thinking months or weeks. We probably don’t have that long.” Miriam stared at Riordan. He was not entirely an enigma, but she couldn’t say that she knew him well; another of the younger generation, like Roland, educated to college level or higher in the United States, but bound to serve in the traditional family trade. “We just nuked the White House,” she reminded him. “What would you do in their shoes?”

“I’d—” His expression would have been funny if the situation hadn’t been so serious. “Oh. Scheisse.” A momentary expression of pure disgust flickered across his face. “What do you suggest?”

“We need to establish safe locations in New Britain right now, today. Get our people across there, start setting up an evacuation pipeline. You’re right about suppressing the, the rebels—but we’re not going back to business as usual over here. Never again. They won’t give us time; if we want to survive we need to evacuate. There are folk I know who might be able to help us, if we can—”

Riordan raised a hand. “There will be no cutting and running,” he said firmly. “Your point is well taken, but if we ‘cut and run’ while the houses are divided, our organization will … it won’t remain viable. The rebels will harry us and our less loyal relatives will desert us, until there’s nothing left. The Clan stands or dies as a group. But.” He looked at Brilliana. “My lady, this world is not safe for her royal highness, not now, and probably not for some time. And she is quite right about the need for us to prepare an evacuation pipeline, against the hazard she so vividly identifies. Can you take her to New Britain and see to her safety?”

“Now wait a—” Miriam began, but Brill cut in before she could get going.

“Yes, I can do that.” She nodded. “I’ll need muscle. Sir Alasdair, her royal highness’s household, a number of other people. And we’ll need money.”

“You’ve got it.” Riordan took a deep breath. “My lady?” He looked back at Miriam. “The rebels want you under their thumb. If they have you, they hold the monarchy here. And they don’t realize what they’ve unleashed in America. Your goal of preparing a, a fallback for us, in New Britain, is a worthy one, and my second-highest priority after rounding up the traitors. I see no reason for it not to be your highest priority. If nothing else, it puts you beyond the insurrectionists’ easy reach—and the Americans’, if your worries are realistic.” He glanced at Brilliana. “Look after her and see that her orders in this enterprise are carried out. Make sure to keep me informed of your location: We may need to move the Continuity Council there as well, or at least hold audiences. If anyone obstructs you, you have my authority on this matter, on the orders of the Clan Security executive.” To Miriam: “Is that what you desire, my lady?”

Miriam nodded, swallowed. The nausea was quite severe; she shoved it out of her mind. “I’ve got some plans already nailed down,” she said. “Come on, Brill. Let’s find somewhere to work. There’s a list of people and things we need.” She swallowed again, feeling a cramp in her belly. “Oh. Oh shit. I don’t feel good.…”

(BEGIN RECORDING)

“Shalom, Mordechai.”

“And you, my friend. This must be a fraught time for you; I can’t say how much these outrages pain me, I can barely imagine how much worse it must be for you.” (Pause.) “I assume this is not a casual visit?”

“No, I—I’ve been very busy, as you can imagine. I’ve got about an hour out of the office, though, and I think you need to know. First, tell me—the attacks. Who do you think carried them out?”

(Pause.) “If I tell you who I think did it, you’ll assume it’s inside information. And I can’t give you inside information even if I have it to give, my friend. But I don’t think it was the usual clowns, if that’s what you’re fishing for? Because they’re simply incapable of pulling something like this off. Let me tell you, everyone in the Institute is doing their nut right now—”

“Oh

hell

. They haven’t officially told your people, then? Who did it?”

“You

know

who did it? Who?”

(Slowly.) “You’re going to think I’m nuts if you don’t get this through official channels, I swear—they briefed everybody yesterday and this morning, half of us thought they were mad but they have evidence, Mordechai, hard evidence. It’s a new threat, completely unlike anything we imagined.”

“Really? My money was on a false-flag operation by the Office of Special Programs.”

“No, no, it wasn’t us. Well, the bombs were ours. They were stolen from the inactive inventory.”

“

Stolen?

Tell me it’s not true, Jack! Nobody ‘just steals’ special weapons like they’re shoplifting a candy store—”

“Take a deep breath, man. There are other universes, parallel worlds, like ours but where things happened differently. Different people, different history. There’s a secret project under Livermore building machines for transiting between parallel worlds: They’ve got the photographs to prove it. Way they briefed us—a bunch of, of drug lords from another dimension, can you believe it? Illegal aliens, emphasis on the alien, whatever. They stole half a dozen backpack nukes, they just

appeared inside

the secure storage cells and walked off with them! The White House has been studying the situation for a year now. Negotiations broke down, and this was their idea of a Dear John.”

“Oy. From anyone else I would not believe it, Jack, but from you, I take it as gospel. Tell me, have you been working too hard lately?”

“Fuck off, I’m not jerking your chain. Listen, this is all over the internal chain. I expect you’ll hear about it officially through diplomatic channels. It’s a huge mess—a whole fucking sewage farm has hit the windmill. D.C. was blowback, just like al-Qaeda, let’s not kid ourselves—and the president means to put an end to it, and do it hard and fast.”

“What do you mean by hard and fast, in this context?”

“They’ve indented for a hundred and sixty B83s from Pantex, with an option on another two hundred in two weeks, that’s what I mean. And the Fifth Bomb Wing have gone onto lockdown. I mean, everyone’s on alert everywhere, but the Fifth have canceled all leave and there’s a complete communications blackout. Half of them moved to Fairford in England for Iraq, and the grapevine says the rest are staging out there with B83s aboard, just to keep them out of enemy hands. I just saw orders reactivating the Seventy-second Bomb Squadron and pulling in ground staff.”

“Out of

enemy

—what the fuck is going on?”

“Like I said, it’s a whole new ballgame. These fuckers can just appear out of thin air, anywhere! Inside your security perimeter! My guess is that the Fifth Bomb Wing is being readied for a counterstrike mission into a, a parallel universe, just as soon as they can load up with B83s, fit the transit machines, and as soon as the U2s deliver accurate target maps. Keeping them overseas in England is a security measure: They can move sideways between worlds, show up inside the perimeter of our bases—but if the bombers aren’t home they can’t touch them. Watch for the KC-10s moving too. I tell you, they’re getting ready for an attack on North America—just not

our

North America.”

“Okay, Jack, I’ve got to hand it to you. You are either taking far more LSD than is good for you, or you have completely spoiled my afternoon, because you are just not imaginative enough to make up a story like that without chemical assistance. I say that as a compliment, by the way—an excessively active imagination is a liability in your line of work. I’m going to have to escalate this, and that’s going to make my head hurt because my boss, it’s going to make

his

head hurt. So I hope you won’t take this the wrong way when I ask, what have you got for me? What concrete evidence have you got to back these claims up?”

(Rustling.) “It’s classified, but not top-secret. I mean, this stuff is general dissemination for about a hundred thousand soldiers, as of this morning—it

was

top-secret, but they’re realists, there’s no way to keep a lid on something like this indefinitely. So I, uh, there’s a classified briefing pack that I need to lock back in my office drawer tonight. I assume you’ve got a camera or something?”

“Of course. Jack, you’re a mensch. Listen, I am just about to go to the toilet, I’ll be back in a few minutes and your briefing pack can go right back to the office after lunch while I go find some headache pills before I call Tel Aviv. Are you sure this isn’t just a prank to make Benny Netenyahu shit himself…? No? Too bad. Because I’d love to be there to see his face when this lands on his desk.”

(END RECORDING)

Oliver, Baron Hjorth—formerly Earl Hjorth, but the higher landed titles had been coming vacant with distressing frequency over the past year—had spent a sleepless night in a co-opted tax farmer’s mansion in a country estate, near the site of Baltimore in the United States. Two stories up, under the eaves, the rooms were uncomfortably hot in the summer miasma; but they lent a good view of the approaches to the house, and more importantly, good radio reception for a location so far south of the Gruinmarkt.

In his opinion, it was only sensible to take precautions: He had played his part in the operation in good faith, but there was a significant risk that some ne’er-do-well or rakehell anarchist of the progressive creed might seek him out with murder in mind. So the baron sat in a sweltering servants’ room, his head bowed beneath the roof beams, while next door his man Schuller poked at the scanner, waiting.

On the other side of the wall of worlds from this mansion there was a modest, suburban family home. In its car port waited a black Lincoln, fully fueled for the dash up I-95 to Boston. But once he took to the wide American highways he’d be trapped, in a manner of speaking; committed to Niejwein, by hook or by crook. He could be at the palace in a matter of hours, there to take charge of a troop of cavalry such as befitted a gentleman: but while he was on the road he’d be unable to listen in on the upstart Riordan’s increasingly desperate messages.

Impatient and irritable with tiredness, Oliver stood—for perhaps the fifth time that morning—and walked to the window casement. Below him, a cleared slope ran downhill to the woodline: Nobody stirred on the dirt track leading to the house. Good. He glanced at the doorway. Schuller was a reliable man, one of the outer family world-walkers Riordan had sacked from Angbard’s organization in the wake of the fiasco at the Hjalmar Palace. Let’s see what news … Oliver walked to the doorway and shoved the curtain aside. “How goes it?” he demanded.

Schuller glanced up, then nodded—overfamiliarly, in Oliver’s opinion, but fatigue made churls of all men—and shoved one headphone away from an ear. “Nothing for the past fifteen minutes, my lord. Before that, something garbled from Lady Thorold’s adjutant. A call for reinforcements from their Millgartfurt station, where they reported word of an attack—cut short. Orders from Major Riordan’s command post, demanding that all units hold their station and report by numbers. There were three responses.”

“Good.” The baron laced his fingers together tightly. “What word from the Anglischprache?”

“Riordan told the post to keep reporting hourly on the attack; it is by all accounts chaos over there. All air flights are grounded, but the roads are open—outside of the capital, of course. They’re clucking like headless chickens.” Schuller’s expression was stony. “As well they might. Fools.”

“Did I pledge you for your opinions?” The baron raised an eyelid: Schuller recoiled slightly.

“No sir!”

“Then kindly keep them to yourself, there’s a good chap. I’m trying to think.” Oliver dabbed at his forehead, trying to mop away the perspiration. The limousine is air-conditioned, he reminded himself. “You have a log, yes? Let me see it.” Schuller held up a clipboard. The pages were neatly hand-scribed, a list of times and stations and cryptic notes of their message content. “Careless of them. They’re not encrypting.”

“They are probably shorthanded, sir.” Schuller looked up at the baron as he paged through the sheet. “Their traffic has been tailing off all morning.”

“Well then.” The baron smiled tightly as he saw the time stamps grow thinner, the broadcasts more desperate. “I think it’s time to move headquarters. Tell Stanislaw and Poul we’re moving, then hail Andrei and tell him to ready the troops to move this afternoon. Shut up shop and meet me downstairs in ten minutes: I must change first.” It wouldn’t do to be stopped and searched by the Anglische police while dressed as a Sudtmarkt cousin’s guest, but he had a business suit laid out next door.

The plan was simple, as such things went: Baron Hjorth would transfer to the United States, drive north—covering a distance of hundreds of miles in a mere afternoon—and reemerge in the Gruinmarkt, on his own estate, with a bodyguard of cavalrymen in time to ride to the flag of the Postal Lords and her grace the dowager duchess. Who, if things were going to plan—as appeared to be the case—would have coaxed the Idiot’s hoyden widow into a suitably well-guarded retreat and arranged for her confinement, in every sense of the word. Having managed the successful delivery of the atomic bombs to their targets (an expensive process, as Kurt and Jurgen could attest), he was, if nothing else, in line for the reward for a job well done. Probably more of the same, he thought, as he dressed in American fashion, mildly irritated by the lack of body servants. The sacrifices we make.…

Oliver made his way through the empty servants’ quarters, passing the room recently vacated by Schuller, before descending by way of a back staircase and a dressing room to reach the main staircase. His men had dismissed most of the regular servants, banishing them to the village over the hill in the name of security. The great house was almost deserted, sweltering in the noon heat. Air-conditioning and the milder Northern climate beckoned, putting a spring in the baron’s step. As he reached the bottom step, one shoe touching the mosaic floor of the central hall, he paused. It was, if anything, too quiet. “Poul?” he called quietly. “Stanislaw—”

“They won’t be answering.” Schuller stepped out of the shadows.

Oliver’s left hand tightened on the handrail. “What is this?” His right hand was already shoving aside his jacket, reaching for the small of his back—

Schuller shot him. In the confines of the high-ceilinged room the blast of the shotgun was more than a noise, a deafening concussion that launched a screeching flight of frightened birds from the grounds outside. Oliver Hjorth collapsed, eyes staring, his chest flayed open as any victim of the blood-eagle. Schuller racked the pump on his weapon, ejecting the smoking cartridge, his eyes red-rimmed and tired, his face still expressionless. “Fucking aristocratic traitor,” he muttered, inspecting the baron’s body for any sign of residual life; but there was not so much as a toe-twitch, and the pool of blood was spreading evenly now, no longer spurting but beginning to soak into the rug at the center of the hall. Turning on his heel, Schuller walked slowly towards the front door of the hall; raising his left hand to stare at something cupped within his palm, he vanished. An instant later he reappeared in a linoleum-floored utility room, windowless. Walking over to the telephone, he dialed a number from memory: “Message to the major,” he said, swallowing back bile. “Cuckoo Four has hatched three eggs. Cuckoo Four is going home.”

There was a moment’s delay, and then a woman’s voice spoke: “Got that, and good luck. The major says you did well.”

“Bye.” He hung up, carefully unloaded his shotgun, and deposited it on the workbench. Then, taking a pair of car keys from his pocket, he headed for the carport. It would be a long drive for one man sticking religiously to the speed limit; but if he hurried, he could be back with his unit by sundown. Unlike the baron, Earl-Major Riordan didn’t think of his agents as expendable embarrassments.

* * *

It took more than a war, a liquidity crisis, or even a revolution to stop the dogs. The morning after his father explained the new arrangement to him—the identity of their new political patron, the reason for backing ven Hjalmar, and the ruling council of elders’ plans for the future—James Lee, his hat pulled down as low as his spirits, walked to the track to put some money on the greyhounds.

It was not, of course, entirely safe for a man with Asian features to walk these streets alone; but Lin, his favorite younger brother, was more than eager to get out of the house for a few hours. With smoked glasses and the beard he’d been cultivating of late, James didn’t feel too out of place; and in addition to his cane, he had a pistol and a locket on a ribbon around his left wrist.

“Look—I’ll put two shillings on Red Leinster in the next race,” said Lin, pointing at one of the muzzled and hooded hounds, being led back to the kennels in the wake of a near-miss. “How about you?”

“Huh. Three and six on Bottle Rocket, I think.” James glanced around, looking for a tout’s man. “And a pint of mild.”

“Make that two pints.” Lin flashed him a brief grin. “What’s gotten into you, brother? I haven’t seen you this low since…” He trailed off.

James shook his head. Another glance: “Not in English,” he said quietly. “Later, maybe.”

“Oh.” Slightly crestfallen, Lin subsided. But not for long: “Look! There’s your bookmaker.” He pointed excitedly, at a sharply dressed figure surrounded by a court of supplicants, and not a few stone-faced gentlemen with stout walking sticks—some of them doubtless concealing blades. “Are you going to—”

James shook his head. “Life’s a gamble,” he said quietly. A moment later his mood lifted. “Yes, I think I shall take a flutter.” He worked his way over towards the bookmaker, Lin following along in his wake. A few minutes later, by way of a tap-man who dispensed mild straight into battered pewter pots from the back of a cask-laden dray, he made his way towards the back of the trackside crowd. The audience was abuzz with anticipation as the fresh dogs were led out to the stalls. “Which do you think is more important: filial obedience, or honor?” he asked.

Lin’s eyes crossed briefly. “Uh. Beer?” he hazarded.

James shook his head minutely. “Imagine I’m being serious.”

“Well, then.” Lin took a gulp of the black beer. “This is a trick question, isn’t it? Filial obedience, obviously, because that’s where your honor comes from, right?”

“Wrong.” James took a sip from his own mug. “And yes it is a trick question, but not the kind you’re expecting. Let me see. Try this one: Why does honor come from filial obedience?”

“Because it does?” Lin rolled his eyes this time, making it clear that he was honoring his elder brother precisely inasmuch as the free beer required. “This is boring—”

“No it isn’t,” James said, quietly urgent. “Listen. Firstly, we obey because it’s the right and traditional thing to do. Secondly, we obey because it is what we shall want for ourselves, when we are elders. And thirdly, we obey because the old farts are usually right, and they are making decisions with our family’s best interests in mind. They know what they’re doing. Except when they don’t. So let me rephrase: If you found out that the elders were doing something really stupid, dangerously stupid, and you couldn’t talk them out of it—what would you do?”

A rattling clangor of gates and the shrill of a whistle: The dogs were off, bolting up the track in pursuit of the mechanical hare. “Oh brother.” Lin was uncharacteristically quiet. “This isn’t theoretical, is it?”

“No.” Shouting and hoarse cheering rose on all sides as the crowd urged their hounds on. “They’ve bet the family’s future on a wild black dog. Our future, Lin.”

“They wouldn’t do that,” Lin said automatically. He raised his tankard, drank deeply as the gongs clashed and the crowd roared their approval. “Would they?” He wiped his mouth with the back of a hairless wrist.

“They would, and they did, with the best of intentions.” James shook his head. “Huh, there goes my three and six. But looks like you lucked out.”

“What have they done?” Lin asked as they queued to collect his winnings—not so much, for he’d bet on a favorite—from the men with clubs.

“Later.” James waited vigilantly while his younger brother swapped his ticket for five shillings; the tout’s men looked disapprovingly on, but made no move to pick a fight. They headed back to the dray for a refill, then over to the fence near the bleachers to watch. The racing dogs were kenneled, while dogs of another kind were brought out, along with a bear for them to bait in a wire-fenced enclosure in the middle of the track. “You met the enemy heir, Helge, Miriam. What did you think of her?”

Lin shook his head. “She’s a crazy woman,” he said admiringly. A shadow crossed his face. “I owe her, brother. It shames me to say.”

“The elders sent you to kill her, and she ended up saving your life. That’s a heavy obligation, isn’t it? What if I said the elders have settled on a harebrained scheme to make us safe and rich—but one that will kill her? Where’s your honor there, eh?”

“They wouldn’t do that!” Lin glanced from side to side. “That would restart the war, wouldn’t it?”

“They may not realize what they’re doing,” James said quietly. “They’re entering into an arrangement with one of her enemies, though, a man who she told me had wronged her grievously. Another of the cousins, their feuds are hard to keep track of … but what makes this different is that they’re also talking to a government man.” His younger brother’s eyes were bulging with disbelief. “I know, I know. I think they’ve taken leave of their senses, you know the rules—but Dad and Uncle Huan are agreed. They figure the revolution’s going to turn into a bloody civil war, and I think they’re probably right about that—and they think we need political patronage to survive it. Well, that goes against the old rules, but they’re the elders: They make the rules, and sometimes you have to throw out the old rules and bring in new rules. The trouble is, they’re hoping to use a mad scheme of Dr. ven Hjalmar’s to breed extra world-walkers—don’t ask me how it works, it’s magic medicine from the other world the cousins go to—and they’re hoping to use their political patron’s offices to make it work. Ven Hjalmar is poison: Miriam hates him. And the patron they’ve picked—” James shook his head. “I don’t trust him. Uncle doesn’t trust him either, but I think Uncle underestimates how untrustworthy he is. And ven Hjalmar. They’ll cut a deal behind our backs and we’ll be at their mercy.”

“A deal. What sort of deal? What do they want us to do?” Lin stared at his elder brother.

“Assassination. Spying. Smuggling. What do you think the Leveler’s secret Polis might want of us? And then they’ll own us, match, lock, and trigger. But more importantly—the cousins will be looking for sanctuary here, and this will put them at our throat, and we at theirs: The Polis won’t tolerate a different group of world-walkers beyond their control, once they learn of the cousins’ existence. We’ll be right back where we started, but this time under the thumb of the Polis—who despise us because we’re children of the Inner Kingdom.”

“We could go back there—” Lin stopped.

“Could we?” It was James’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Where would we be, if we couldn’t move freely through New Britain? How would we prosper? And that’s assuming we can go back there. What the cousins have stirred up—” He shook his head. “No, it wouldn’t work. That’s why I’m asking you: Which comes first, your honor or your filial loyalty?”

Lin stared for a few seconds; then his shoulders slumped. He took a deep mouthful of beer. “I defer to your elder wisdom,” he finally said. Another pause. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to watch.” James whistled tunelessly between his front teeth. “Hopefully I won’t have to do anything. Hopefully Uncle is right and I am wrong. But if it turns out that Uncle Huan isn’t right … will you obey him to the end, or will you do what’s right for the family?”

Lin looked away. Then he looked back and nodded: a minute inclination of the head, but a significant one—the precise degree of submission that he might otherwise give his father. “What are you considering?”

“Nothing specific, as yet.” James raised his tankard. “But if the elders’ plans go astray—we’ll see.”

* * *

As he turned in to Miriam Beckstein’s street, Mike Fleming felt an uncontrollable shudder ripple up the small of his back: an intense sensation of guilt, as if he’d done something unforgivable. Which was ridiculous. Why do I feel like a stalker? he wondered ironically. I’m not the guy who’s been lurking in the bushes with a phone and a camera for the past six months, hoping she’ll come home. He drove carefully up the road, not slowing and not staring at the houses, trying to tag the parked cars as memories battered for his attention.

Mike had a history: not uncommon. Single cop, married to the job. He had another history, too: dates, girlfriends, brief excursions into the alien world of domesticity that never quite seemed to gain traction. Four or five years ago he’d met a woman journalist—how? he could remember the where, but not the why—and asked her out, or maybe she’d asked him to ask her out, or something. And they’d gotten to know each other and she’d asked him home and then it all seemed to cool off, over the space of a couple of months.

Nothing new there; and he could easily have written it off. She’s a civilian, it wasn’t going to work. But for some reason, he hadn’t gotten over her as easily as all that. He’d thought about looking her up. Seeing if he could make her change her mind. Then he realized he was getting into some creepy headspace, and asked himself if that was really who he wanted to be, took a vacation and went on a cruise, drank too much, and had a couple of one night stands. Which seemed to fix things, but he’d teetered on the fine edge of obsession for a few weeks, and now here he was driving down her street, and it felt weird. Creepy. Blame FTO for sucking him in and Miriam for concealing her secret other life from him—assuming that was what she’d been doing?—but this felt wrong. And what he was going to do next was even more wrong.

Burgling Ex-Girlfriend’s House 101: First make sure there’s nobody watching it, then make sure there’s nobody home. Mike took a long loop around the neighborhood, killing five minutes before he turned back and drove down the street in the opposite direction. One parked car had departed; of the remaining ones, two were occupied, but hadn’t been on his first pass. Ten minutes later, he made a third pass. A truck had parked up, with two workmen sitting inside, eating their lunch or something. Someone was messing with the trunk of another parked car. The two that had been occupied earlier were vacant. If there’s a watch they’re using a house or a camera. But not sitting in a car, waiting to pounce.

Mike pulled in, several doors down from Miriam’s. He’d stopped at a Kinkos on his way. Now he hung a laminated badge around his neck, and stuck a fat day planner under his left arm. The badge bore a photograph but gave a false name and identified him as working for a fictional market research company, and the bulging day planner’s zipped compartment held tools rather than papers, but to a casual bystander … well.

Now came the tricky part. He climbed out of his car and locked it; stretched; then walked up the street, trying not to hobble. He paused at the first door he came to, deliberately trying to look bored. There was a doorbell: J & P SUTHERLAND. He pushed it, waited, hoping nobody was in. If they were, he had a couple of spiels ready; but any exposure was a calculated risk. After a minute he pushed the buzzer again. The Sutherlands were obviously out; check one house off the list—he ritually made a note on the pad clipped to the back of his planner—and move on.

As Mike moved up the road, ringing doorbells and waiting, he kept a weather eye open for twitching curtains, unexpected antennae. A bored Boston grandmother at one apartment threatened to take too much interest in him, but he managed to dissuade her with the number-two pitch: was she satisfied with her current lawn-care company. (For telecommuting techies, the number-one pitch was a nonstick-bakeware multilevel marketing scheme. Anything to avoid having to actually interview anybody.) Finally he reached Miriam’s doorstep. The windows were grimy, and the mailbox was threatening to overflow: good. So nobody’s renting. He rang the doorbell, stood there for the requisite minute, and moved on.

This was the moment of maximum danger, and his skin was crawling as he slowly walked to the next door. If FTO was watching the Beckstein house, they’d be all over him if they suspected he was trying to make contact. But they wouldn’t be all over a random street canvasser, and Mike had taken steps to not look like Mike Fleming, rogue agent and wanted man, from his cheap suit to the shaven scalp and false mustache. It wouldn’t fool a proper inspection, but if he had to do that he’d already lost; all he had to do was look like part of the street furniture.

Three doors. Nobody coming out of the houses opposite, no sedan cruising slowly down the road towards him. His mind kept circling back to the ingrained grime on the windows, the crammed mailbox. Let them have dropped the watch, he prayed. A 24 × 7 watch on a person of interest was a costly affair: It took at least five agents working forty hours a week to minimally cover a target, and if they were expecting it and taking evasive measures—jumping next door’s backyard fence, for example—you could double or triple that watch before you had a hope of keeping the cordon intact. Add management and headquarters staff and vacation and sick leave and you could easily use up twenty personnel—call it a cool million and a half per year in payroll alone. And Miriam hadn’t been back, that much he was fairly sure of. Another sixty seconds passed. Mike made an executive decision: There’s no watch. Party time!

The houses adjacent to the Beckstein residence were all vacant. Mike turned and walked back to the next one over, then rang the doorbell again. When there was no response, he shrugged; then instead of going back to the sidewalk he walked around the building, slowly, looking up at the eaves. (Cover story number three: Would you like to buy some weatherproof gutter lining?)

The fence between their yard and the next was head-high, but they weren’t tidy gardeners and there was no dog; once he was out of sight of the street it took Mike thirty seconds to shove an empty rainwater barrel against the wooden wall and climb over it, taking care to lower himself down on his good leg. The grass in Miriam’s yard was thigh-high, utterly unkempt and flopping over under its own weight. Mike picked himself up and looked around. There was a wooden shed, and a glass sliding door into the living room—locked. Think like a cop. Where would she leave it? Mike turned to the shed immediately. It had seen better days: The concrete plinth was cracked, and the window hung loose. He carefully reached through the window opening, slowly feeling around the frame until his questing fingers touched a nail and something else. He stifled a grin as he inspected the keyring. This was almost too easy. What am I missing? he wondered. A momentary premonition tickled the edge of his consciousness. Miriam has enemies in the Clan, folks like Matthias. Oh. Matthias had an extra-special calling card. Mike looked at the sliding door, then shook his head. So it wasn’t going to be easy. Was it?

The key turned in the lock. Mike opened his case and removed a can of WD40, and sprayed it into the track at the bottom of the door. Then he took out another can, and a long screwdriver. First, he edged the door open a quarter of an inch. Then he slowly ran the screwdriver’s tip into the gap, and painstakingly lifted it from floor to ceiling. It met no resistance. Good. It was a warm day, and the cold sweat was clammy across his neck and shoulders and in the small of his back as he widened the entrance. Still nothing. Am I jumping at shadows? When the opening was eighteen inches wide, Mike gave the second spray can a brisk shake, then pointed it into the room, towards the ceiling, and held the nozzle down.

Silly String—quick-setting plastic foam—squirted out and drifted towards the floor in loops and tangles. About six inches inside the doorway, at calf level to a careless boot, it hung in midair, draped over a fine wire. Mike crouched down and studied it, then looked inside. The tripwire—now he knew what to look for—ran to a hook in the opposite side of the doorframe, and then to a green box screwed to the wall.

Mike stepped over the wire. Then he breathed out, and looked around.

The lounge-cum-office was a mess. Some person or persons unknown had searched it, thoroughly, not taking pains to tidy up afterwards; then someone else had installed the booby box and tripwire. It was dusty inside, and dark. Power’s probably out, he realized. A turf’n’trap sting gone to seed, long neglected by its intended victim: Better check for more wires. Before touching anything, he pulled on a pair of surgical gloves. A poke at a desk lamp confirmed that the power was out—no surprises there. Hunting around in the sea of papers that hands unseen had dumped on the office floor was going to take some time, but seemed unavoidable: Empty sockets in a main extension block under the desk, and an abandoned palmtop docking station, suggested the absence of a computer and other electronic devices. Mike checked the rest of the house briefly, squirting Silly String before going through each doorway: There was another wire just inside the front door, beyond a toppled-over bookcase, but there were no other traps as far as he could see.

Getting down to work on the office, he wondered who’d turfed the scene. The missing computer was suggestive; going by the empty shelves and the boxes on the floor, it didn’t take long to notice that all the computer media—Zip disks, CD-ROMs, even dusty old floppy disks—were missing. “Huh,” he said quietly. “So they were looking for files?” Miriam was a journalist. It was carelessly done, as if they’d been looking for something specific—and the searchers weren’t cops or spooks. Cops searching a journalist’s office wouldn’t leave a scrap of paper behind, and spooks wouldn’t want the subject to know they were under surveillance. “Fucking amateurs.” Mike took heart: It made his job that bit easier, to know that the perps had been looking for something specific, not trying to deny information to someone coming after.

Fumbling through the pile of papers, sorting them into separate blocks, Mike ran across a telephone cable. It was still plugged in, and tracing it back to the desk he discovered the handset, which had fallen down beside the wall. It was a fancy one, with a built-in answerphone and a cassette tape. Mike pocketed the tape, then went back to work on the papers. Lots of cuttings from newspapers and magazines, lots of scribbled notes about articles she’d been working on, a grocery bill, invoices from the gas and electric—nothing obviously significant. The books: There was a pile of software manuals, business books, some dog-eared crime thrillers and Harlequin romances, a Filofax—

Mike flipped it open. “Bingo!” It was full of handwritten names, numbers, and addresses, scribbled out and overwritten and annotated. Evidently Miriam didn’t trust computers for everything; either that, or he’d latched on to a years-out-of-date organizer. But a quick look in the front revealed a year planner that went as far forward as the current year. Why the hell didn’t they take it? he wondered, looking around. “Huh.” Assuming the searchers were from the Clan … would they even know what a Filofax was? It looked like a book, from a distance; perhaps someone had told the brute squad to grab computers, disks, and any loose files on her desk. They don’t think like cops or spooks. He looked round, at the green box on the wall above the door, and shuddered. Time to blow.

Outside, with the glass door shut and the key back on its nail in the shed, he glanced at the fence. His leg twinged, reminding him that he wasn’t ready for climbing or running. There was a gap between the fence and the side of the house, shadowy; he slipped into it, his fat planner (now pregnant with Miriam’s Filofax) clutched before him.

There was a wooden gate at the end of the alley, latched shut but not padlocked. He paused behind it to peer between the vertical slats. A police car cruised slowly along the street, two officers inside. Two? Mike swore under his breath and crouched down. The car seemed to take forever to drive out of sight. Heart pounding, Mike checked his watch. It was half past noon, near enough exactly. He straightened up slowly, then unlatched the gate and limped past the front of the house as fast as he could, then back onto the sidewalk outside. He fumbled the key to his rental car at first, sweat and tension and butterflies in his stomach making him uncharacteristically clumsy, but on the second try, the door swung open and he slumped down behind the steering wheel and pulled it to just as another police car—or perhaps the same one, returning—swung into the street.

Mike ducked. They’re not running a stakeout but they’ve got regular surveillance, he told himself. Believe it, man. Adding the Beckstein residence to a regular patrol’s list of places of interest would cost FTO virtually nothing—and they’d missed spotting him by seconds. He stayed down, crouched over the passenger seat as the cruiser slowly drove past. They’d be counting heads, looking for the unexpected. His cover was good but it wouldn’t pass a police background check if they went to town on him—and they would, if they found Miriam’s purloined Filofax. Ten seconds passed, then twenty. Mike straightened up cautiously and glanced in the rearview mirror. The cops were nearing the end of the road. Thirty seconds; they paused briefly, then hung a left, and Mike breathed out. Okay, back to the motel, he told himself. Then we’ll see what we’ve got here.…

BEGIN RECORDING

“My fellow Americans, good evening.

“It pains me more than I can say to be speaking to you tonight as your president. There are no good situations in which a vice president can take the oath of office; we step into the boots of a fallen commander in chief, hoping we can fill them, hoping we can live up to what our dead predecessor would have expected of us. It is a heavy burden of responsibility and, God willing, I shall do my utmost to live up to it. I owe nothing less to you, to all our citizens and especially to the gallant men and women who serve the cause of freedom and democracy in our nations armed forces; and I say this—I shall not sleep until our enemies, the enemies who murderously attacked us a week ago, are hunted down wherever they hide and are destroyed.

“In time of war—and this is nothing less—it is the job of the commander in chief to defend the republic, and it is the job of the vice president to stand ready to serve, which is why I have nominated as my replacement a man well-qualified to fight for freedom: former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. I trust that his appointment to this post, vacated by my succession, will be approved by the house. The future of the republic is safe in his hands.

“But I can already hear you asking: Safe from whom?

“In the turmoil and heroism and agony of the attacks, it was difficult at first for us to ascertain the identity of our enemies. We have many enemies in the Middle East, from al-Qaeda and the terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan, to the mullahs of Tehran, and naturally our suspicions first fell in those quarters. But they are not our only enemies; and the nature of the attack made it hard to be sure who was responsible. The two atomic bombs that exploded in our capital, and the third that misfired in the Pentagon visitors lot, were stolen from our own stockpile. This was not only a cowardly and heinous act of nuclear terrorism, but a carefully planned one. However, we have identified the attackers, and we are now preparing to deal with them as they have dealt with us.

“There is no easy way for me to explain this because the reality lies far beyond our everyday experience, but the scientists of our national laboratories assure me that this is true: We live in what they call a multiverse, a many-branched tree of reality. Scientists at Los Alamos have for a year now been probing techniques for traveling to other universes—to other versions of this, our own Earth. They had hoped to use this technique for peaceful ends, to solve the environmental and climatic problems that may arise in future decades. But we have discovered, the hard way, that we are not alone.

“Some of the alternate earths we have discovered are inhabited. And in one of these, at least, the inhabitants are hostile. Worse: They, too, have the technological tools to travel to other universes. The enemy who attacked us is the government of a sovereign nation in another America, a Godless feudal despotism ruled by terror and the lash. They know no freedom and they hate our own, for we are a living refutation of everything they hold to be true. Agents of this enemy have moved unseen among us for a generation, and indeed they have been active in the narcotics trade, using it to fund their infiltration of our institutions, their theft of our technologies. They are followers of an alien ideology and they seek to bring us down, and it is to that end that they stole at least six atomic weapons from their storage cells on military bases—gaining access from another unseen universe even as our guards vigilantly defended the perimeter fences.

“We have a name for this enemy: They call themselves the Clan, and they rule a despotic kingdom called Gruinmarkt. And we know what to do to them, for they attacked us without warning on the sixteenth of July, a date that will live in infamy with 9/11, and 12/7, for as long as there is a United States of America.

“To you of the Clan, the cabal of thieves and drug smugglers who have attacked America, I have a simple message: If you surrender now, without preconditions, I will guarantee you a fair trial before the military tribunals now convened at Guantánamo Bay. Only those of you who are guilty of crimes against the United States need fear our justice. But you should think fast. This offer expires one week from today. And then, in the words of my predecessor, Harry S Truman, you face prompt and utter annihilation.

“Think about it.

“Good night, and God bless America.”

END RECORDING