Charles Stross - Merchant princes 01 - The Family Trade

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The Family Trade

Charles Stross

"The Family Trade shows that Charles Stross is no longer a beginner to watch,

but a star to watch." —Mike Resnick

"Quirky, original, and entertaining. The Family Trade could be The Godfather of

all fantasy novels."

—Kevin J. Anderson, New York Times bestselling author of A Forest of Stars

THE MERCHANT PRINCES The Family Trade

The six families of the Clan rule the kingdom of Gruinmarkt from behind the

scenes, a mixture of nobility and criminal conspirators whose power to walk

between the worlds makes them rich in both. Braids of family loyalty and

intermarriage provide a fragile guarantee of peace, but a recently-ended civil

war has left the families shaken and suspicious.

Caught up in schemes and plots centuries in the making, Miriam Beckstein is

surrounded by unlikely allies, forbidden loves, lethal contraband, and, most

dangerous of all, her family. Her unexpected return to this world will supersede

the claims of other clan members to her mother's fortune and power, and whoever

killed her mother will be happy to see her dead, too.

Behind all this lie deeper secrets still, which threaten everyone and everything

she has ever known. Patterns of deception and interlocking lies, as intricate as

the knotwork between the universes.

"The Family Trade is one of those rare delights—a book that is fun,

intelligently written, and which leaves a reader breathlessly wondering what

will happen next. Readers Beware: Stross weaves a tale that continually builds

to an engrossing climax. Once you get into this, you'll find yourself hooked."

—David Farland

"At last, a story in which a character from our world is plunged into another,

and doesn't act like a complete idiot. Miriam Beckstein is sharp-witted enough

not to waste time trying to pretend that she can avoid the dilemmas that have

been forced on her, while being human enough to let her emotions guide her into

risky territory."

"Stross not only creates a alternate world that is fascinating and original, he

even does the unheard of, for a fantasist: His depiction of our world is deep

and real. Many a fantasist is able to create, or at least borrow from Tolkien, a

reasonably interesting milieu in which the characters can cavort, but when they

try their hand at showing something from the real world, like, in this case, the

society of high finance, they embarrass themselves by revealing how little they

know."

"No such problem with Stross. He knows this world backward and forward, and

seems to have thought of everything. His characters behave in ways that make

sense. They know all the things they should know, and don't know the things they

shouldn't. The result is that we readers can trust this author completely, dive

into this story and let it carry us wherever the current flows."

"Not to mention the fact that it's simply a great adventure, full of dangers, of

plots within plots, of forbidden love and political murder. Science fiction is

in good hands with Charles Stross here to lead the new generation."

—Orson Scott Card

"Charles Stress's "The Family Trade is an intuitive, irreverent, and delightful

romp into an alternate world where business is simultaneously low and high tech,

and were romance, murder, marriage, and business are hopelessly intertwined—and

deadly." —E. Modesitt, Jr.

Book One of the Merchant Princes

Charles Stross

TOR®

fantasy

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK NEW YORK

NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this

book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the

publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for

this "stripped book."

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book

are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE FAMILY TRADE

thereof, in any form.

Edited by David G. Hartwell

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor.com

Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

ISBN 0-765-34821-7

EAN 978-0765-34821-0

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2004049576

First edition: December 2004

First mass market edition: May 2005

Printed in die United States of America 098765432

For Steve and Jenny Glover

No novelist works in a creative vacuum. Whatever we do, we owe a debt to the

giants upon whose shoulders we stand. This book might not have happened if I

hadn't read the works of H. Beam Piper and Roger Zelazny.

Nor would this book have been written without the intervention of several other

people. My agent, Caitlin Blaisdell, nudged me to make a radical change of

direction from my previous novels. David Hartwell of Tor encouraged me further,

and my wife, Feorag, lent me her own inimitable support while I worked on it.

Other friends and critics helped me in one way or another; I'd like to single

out for their contributions my father, Jan Goulding, Paul Cooper, Steve Glover,

Andrew Wilson, Robert "Nojay" Sneddon, Cory Doctorow, Sydney Webb, and James

Nicoll. Thank you all.

PART 1

Pink Slip

WeatherMan

Ten and a half hours before a mounted knight with a machine gun tried to kill

her, tech journalist Miriam Beckstein lost her job. Before the day was out, her

pink slip would set in train a chain of events that would topple governments,

trigger civil wars, and kill thousands. It would be the biggest scoop in her

career, in any journalist's career— bigger than Watergate, bigger than 9/11—and

it would be Miriam's story. But as of seven o'clock in the morning, the story

lay in her future: All she knew was that it was a rainy Monday morning in

October, she had a job to do and copy to write, and there was an editorial

meeting scheduled for ten.

The sky was the colour of a dead laptop display, silver-gray and full of rain.

Miriam yawned and came awake to the Monday morning babble of the anchorman on

her alarm radio.

"—Bombing continues in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, in business news, the markets are

down forty-seven points on the

word that Cisco is laying off another three thousand employees," announced the

anchor. "Ever since 9/11, coming on top of the collapse of the dot-com sector,

their biggest customers are hunkering down. Tom, how does it look from where

you're sitting—"

"Shut up," she mumbled and killed the volume. "I don't want to hear this." Most

of the tech sector was taking a beating. Which in turn meant that The Industry

Weatherman's, readers—venture capitalists and high-tech entrepreneurs, along

with the wannabe day traders—would be taking a beating. Her own beat, the

biotech firms, were solid, but the collapsing internet sector was making waves.

If something didn't happen to relieve the plummeting circulation figures soon,

there would be trouble.

Trouble. Monday. "I'll give you trouble," she muttered, face forming a grin that

might have frightened some of those readers, had they been able to see it.

'Trouble is my middle name." And trouble was good news, for a senior reporter on

The Industry Weatherman.

She slid into her bathrobe, shivering at the cold fabric, then shuffled along

stripped pine boards to the bathroom for morning ablutions and two minutes with

the electric toothbrush. Standing before the bathroom mirror under the merciless

glare of the spotlights, she shivered at what she saw in it: every minute of her

thirty-two years, in unforgiving detail. "Abolish Monday mornings and Friday

afternoons," she muttered grimly as she tried to brush some life into her

shoulder-length hair, which was stubbornly black and locked in a vicious rear-

guard action against the ochre highlights she bombarded it with on a weekly

basis. Giving up after a couple of minutes, she fled downstairs to the kitchen.

The kitchen was a bright shade of yellow, cosy and immune to the gloom of autumn

mornings. Relieved, Miriam switched on the coffee percolator and made herself a

bowl of granola—what Ben had always called her rabbit-food breakfast.

Back upstairs, fortified by an unfeasibly large mug of coffee, she had to work

out what to wear. She dived into her

closet and found herself using her teeth to tear the plastic bag off one of the

three suits she'd had dry-cleaned on Friday—only to discover it was her black

formal interview affair, not at all the right thing for a rainy Monday pounding

the streets—or at least doing telephone interviews from a cubicle in the office.

She started again and finally managed to put together an outfit. Black boots,

trousers, jacket, turtle-neck, and trench coat: as black as her Monday morning

mood. / look like a gangster, she thought and chuckled to herself. "Gangsters!"

That was what she had to do today. One glance at her watch told her that she

didn't have time for makeup. It wasn't as if she had to impress anyone at the

office anyway: They knew damned well who she was.

She slid behind the wheel of her four-year-old Saturn, and thankfully it started

first time. But traffic was backed up, one of her wiper blades needed replacing,

the radio had taken to crackling erratically, and she couldn't stop yawning.

Mondays, she thought. My favourite day! Not. At least she had a parking space

waiting for her—one of the handful reserved for senior journalists who had to go

places and interview thrusting new economy executives. Or money-laundering

gangsters, the nouveau riche of the pharmaceutical world.

Twenty minutes later she pulled into a crowded lot behind an anonymous office

building in Cambridge, just off Somerville Avenue, with satellite dishes on the

roof and fat cables snaking down into the basement. Headquarters of The Industry

Weatherman, journal of the tech VC community and Miriam's employer for the past

three years. She swiped her pass-card, hit the elevator up to the third floor,

and stepped out into cubicle farm chaos. Desks with PCs and drifts of paper that

overflowed onto the floor: A couple of harried Puerto Rican cleaners emptied

garbage cans into a trolley laden with bags, to a background of phones ringing

and anchors gabbling on CNN, Bloomberg, Fox. Black space-age Aeron chairs

everywhere, all wire and plastic, electric chairs for a fully wired future.

" 'Lo, Emily," she nodded, passing the departmental secretary.

"Hi! With you in a sec." Emily lifted her finger from the "mute" button, went

back to glassy-eyed attention. "Yes, I'll send them up as soon as—"

Miriam's desk was clean: The stack of press releases was orderly, the computer

monitor was polished, and there were no dead coffee cups lying around. By tech

journalist standards, this made her a neat freak. She'd always been that way

about her work, even when she was a toddler. Liked all her crayons lined up in a

row. Occasionally she wished she could manage the housework the same way, but

for some reason the skill set didn't seem to be transferable. But this was work,

and work was always under control. I wonder where Paulie's gotten to?

"Hi, babe!" As if on cue, Paulette poked her head around the side of the

partition. Short, blonde, and bubbly, not even a rainy Monday morning could dent

her enthusiasm. "How's it going? You ready to teach these goodfellas a lesson?"

" 'Goodfellas?'" Miriam raised an eyebrow. Paulette took the cue, slid sideways

into her cubicle, and dropped into the spare chair, forcing Miriam to shuffle

sideways to make room. Paulie was obviously enjoying herself: It was one of the

few benefits of being a research gofer. Miriam waited.

"Goodfellas," Paulette said with relish. "You want a coffee? This is gonna take

a while."

"Coffee." Miriam considered. "That would be good."

"Yeah, well." Paulette stood up. "Read this, it'll save us both some time." She

pointed out a two-inch-thick sheaf of printouts and photocopies to Miriam, then

made a beeline for the departmental coffeepot.

Miriam sighed and rubbed her eyes as she read the first page. Paulie had done

her job with terrifying efficiency yet again: Miriam had only worked with her on

a couple of investigations before—mostly Miriam's workload didn't require the

data mining Paulette specialized in—but every single time she'd come away

feeling a little dizzy.

Automobile emissions tests in California? Miriam squinted and turned the page.

Failed autos, a chain of repair shops buying them for cash and shipping them

south to Mexico

and Brazil for stripping or resale. "What's this got to do with—" she stopped.

"Aha!"

"Nondairy creamer, one sweetener," said Paulie, planting a coffee mug at her

left hand.

"This is great stuff," Miriam muttered, flipping more pages. Company accounts. A

chain of repair shops that— "I was hoping you'd find something in the small

shareholders. How much are these guys in for?"

"They're buying about ten, eleven million in shares each year." Paulette

shrugged, then blew across her coffee and pulled a face. "Which is crazy,

because their business only turns over about fifteen mill. What kind of business

puts eighty percent of its gross into a pension fund? One that bought two

hundred and seventy-four autos last year for fifty bucks a shot, shipped them

south of the border, and made an average of forty thousand bucks for each one

they sold. And the couple of listed owners I phoned didn't want to talk."

Miriam looked up suddenly. "You phoned them?" she demanded.

"Yes, I—oh. Relax, I told them I was a dealership in Vegas and I was just doing

a background check."

" 'Background check.'" Miriam snorted. "What if they've got caller-ID?"

"You think they're going to follow it up?" Paulette asked, looking worried.

"Paulie, you've got eleven million in cash being laundered through this car

dealership and you think they're not going to sit up and listen if someone

starts asking questions about where those beaters are coming from and how come

they're fetching more than a new Lexus south of the border?"

"Oh. Oh shit."

"Yes. 'Oh shit' indeed. How'd you get into the used car trail anyway?"

Paulette shrugged and looked slightly embarrassed. "You asked me to follow up

the shareholders for Proteome Dynamics and Biphase Technologies. Pacific Auto

Services looked kind of odd to me—why would a car dealership have a pension fund

sticking eight digits into cutting-edge proteome research? And there's another

ten like them, too. Small mom-and-pop businesses doing a lot of export down

south with seven- or eight-digit stakeholdings. I traced another—flip to the

next?"

"Okay. Dallas Used Semiconductors. Buying used IBM mainframe kit? That's not

our—and selling it to—oh shit."

"Yeah." Paulie frowned. "I looked up the book value. Whoever's buying those

five-year-old computers down in Argentina is paying ninety percent of the price

for new kit in cash greenbacks—they're the next thing to legal currency down

there. But up here, a five-year-old mainframe goes for about two cents on the

dollar."

"And you're sum all this is going into Proteome and Biphase?" Miriam shook the

thick sheaf of paper into shape. "I can't believe this!"

"Believe it." Paulette drained her coffee cup and shoved a stray lock of hair

back into position.

Miriam whistled tunelessly. "What's the bottom line?"

" 'The bottom line?'" Paulette looked uncomfortable. "I haven't counted it, but—

"Make a guess."

"I'd say someone is laundering between fifty and a hundred million dollars a

year here. Turning dirty cash into clean shares in Proteome Dynamics and Biphase

Technologies. Enough to show up in their SEC filings. So your hunch was right."

"And nobody in Executive Country has asked any questions," Miriam concluded. "If

I was paranoid, I'd say it's like a conspiracy of silence. Hmm." She put her mug

down. "Paulie. You worked for a law firm. Would you call this ...

circumstantial?"

" 'Circumstantial?'" Paulette's expression was almost pitying. "Who's paying

you, the defence? This is enough to get the FBI and the DA muttering about

RICO."

"Yeah, but..." Miriam nodded to herself. "Look, this is heavy. Heavier than

usual anyway. I can guarantee you that if we spring this story we'll get three

responses. One will be Bowers in our hair, and the other will be a bunch of

cease-

and-desist letters from attorneys. Freedom of the press is all very well, but a

good reputation and improved circulation figures won't buy us defence lawyers,

which is why I want to double-check everything in here before I go upstairs and

tell Sandy we want the cover. Because the third response is going to be oh-shit-

I-don't-want-to-believe-this, because our great leader and teacher thinks the

sun shines out of Biphase and I think he's into Proteome too."

"Who do you take me for?" Paulette pointed at the pile. "That's primary, Miriam,

the wellspring. SEC filings, public accounts, the whole lot. Smoking gun. The

summary sheet— " she tugged at a Post-it note gummed to a page a third of the

way down the stack—"says it all. I was in here all day yesterday and half the

evening—"

"I'm sorry!" Miriam raised her hand. "Hey, really. I had no idea."

"I kind of lost track of time," Paulette admitted. She smiled. "It's not often I

get something interesting to dig into. Anyway, if the boss is into these two,

I'd think he'd be glad of the warning. Gives him time to pull out his stake

before we run the story."

"Yeah, well." Miriam stood up. "I think we want to bypass Sandy. This goes to

the top."

"But Sandy needs to know. It'll mess with his page plan—"

"Yeah, but someone has to call Legal before we run with this. It's the biggest

scoop we've had all year. Want to come with me? I think you earned at least half

the credit..."

They shared the elevator up to executive row in silence. It was walled in

mirrors, reflecting their contrasts: Paulette, a short blonde with disorderly

curls and a bright red blouse, and Miriam, a slim five-foot-eight, dressed

entirely in black. The business research wonk and the journalist, on their way

to see the editorial director. Some Mondays are better than others, thought

Miriam. She smiled tightly at Paulette in the mirror and Paulie grinned back: a

worried expression, slightly apprehensive.

The Industry Weatherman was mostly owned by a tech venture capital firm who

operated out of the top floors of the building, their offices intermingled with

those of the magazine's directors. Two floors up, the corridors featured a

better grade of carpet and the walls were genuine partitions covered in oak

veneer, rather than fabric-padded cubicles. That was the only difference she

could see—that and the fact that some of the occupants were assholes like the

people she wrote glowing profiles of for a living. I've never met a tech VC who

a shark would bite, Miriam thought grumpily. Professional courtesy among

killers. The current incumbent of the revolving door office labelled editorial

director—officially a vice president—was an often-absent executive by the name

of Joe Dixon. Miriam led Paulette to the office and paused for a moment, then

knocked on the door, half-hoping to find he wasn't there.

"Come in." The door opened in her face, and it was Joe himself, not his

secretary. He was over six feet, with expensively waved black hair, wearing his

suit jacket over an open-necked dress shirt. He oozed corporate polish: If he'd

been ten years older, he could have made a credible movie career as a captain of

industry. As it was, Miriam always found herself wondering how he'd climbed into

the boardroom so young. He was in his mid-thirties, not much older than she was.

"Hi." He took in Miriam and Paulette standing just behind her and smiled. "What

can I do for you?"

Miriam smiled back. "May we have a moment?' she asked.

"Sure, come in." Joe retreated behind his desk. "Have a chair, both of you." He

nodded at Paulette. "Miriam, we haven't been introduced."

"Oh, yes. Joe Dixon, Paulette Milan. Paulie is one of our heavy hitters in

industrial research. She's been working with me on a story and I figured we'd

better bring it to you first before taking it to the weekly production meeting.

It's a bit, uh, sensitive."

" 'Sensitive.'" Joe leaned back in his chair and looked straight at her. "Is it

big?"

"Could be," Miriam said noncommittally. Big? It's the

biggest I've ever worked on! A big story in her line of work might make or break

a career; this one might send people to jail. "It has complexities to it that

made me think you'd want advance warning before it breaks."

"Tell me about it," said Joe.

"Okay. Paulie, you want to start with your end?" She passed Paulette the file.

"Yeah." Paulie grimaced as she opened the file and launched into her

explanation. "In a nutshell, they're laundries for dirty money. There's enough

of a pattern to it that if I was a DA in California I'd be picking up the phone

to the local FBI office."

"That's why I figured you'd want to know," Miriam explained. "This is a big

deal, Joe. I think we've got enough to pin a money-laundering rap on a couple of

really big corporations and make it stick. But last November you were talking to

some folks at Proteome, and I figured you might want to refer this to Legal and

make sure you're fire-walled before this hits the fan."

"Well. That's very interesting." Joe smiled back at her. "Is that your file on

this story?"

"Yeah," said Paulette.

"Would you mind leaving it with me?" he asked. He cleared his throat. "I'm kind

of embarrassed," he said, shrugging a small-boy shrug. The defensive set of his

shoulders backed his words. "Look, I'm going to have to read this myself.

Obviously, the scope for mistakes is—" he shrugged.

Suddenly Miriam had a sinking feeling: It's going to be bad. She racked her

brains for clues. Is he going to try to bury us?

Joe shook his head. "Look, I'd like to start by saying that this isn't about

anything you've done," he added hurriedly. "It's just that we've got an

investment to protect and I need to work out how to do so."

"Before we break the story." Miriam forced another, broader, smile. "It was all

in the public record," she added. "If we don't break it, one of our competitors

will."

"Oh, I don't know," Joe said smoothly. "Listen, I'll get

back to you in an hour or so. If you leave this with me for now, I just need to

go and talk to someone in Legal so we can sort out how to respond. Then I'll let

you know how we're going to handle it."

"Oh, okay then," said Paulette acceptingly.

Miriam let her expression freeze in a fixed grin. Oh shit, she thought as she

stood up. "Thanks for giving us your time," she said.

"Let yourselves out," Joe said tersely, already turning the first page.

Out in the corridor, Paulette turned to Miriam. "Didn't that go well” she

insisted.

Miriam took a deep breath. "Paulie."

"Yeah?"

Her knees felt weak. "Something's wrong."

"What?" Paulette looked concerned.

"Elevator." She hit the "call" button and waited in silence, trying to still the

butterflies in her stomach. It arrived, and she waited for the doors to close

behind them before she continued. "I may just have made a bad mistake."

" 'Mistake?'" Paulette looked puzzled. "You don't think—"

"He didn't say anything about publishing," Miriam said slowly. "Not one word.

What were the other names on that list of small investors? The ones you didn't

check?"

"The list? He's got—" Paulette frowned.

"Was Somerville Investments one of them?"

"Somerville? Could be. Why? Who are they?"

"Because that's—" Miriam pointed a finger at the roof and circled. She watched

Paulette's eyes grow round.

"I'm thinking about magazine returns from the newsstand side of the business,

Paulie. Don't you know we've got low returns by industry standards? And people

buy magazines for cash."

"Oh."

"I'm sorry, Paulie."

When they got back to Miriam's cubicle, a uniformed security guard and a suit

from Human Resources were already waiting for them.

"Paulette Milan? Miriam Beckstein?" said the man from HR. He checked a notepad

carefully.

"Yes?" Miriam asked cautiously. "What's up?"

"Would you please follow me? Both of you?"

He turned and headed for the stairwell down to the main entrance. Miriam glanced

around and saw the security guard pull a brief expression of discomfort. "Go on,

ma'am."

"Go on," echoed Paulette from her left shoulder, her face white.

This can't be happening, Miriam thought woodenly. She felt her feet carrying her

toward the staircase and down, toward the glass doors at the front.

"Cards, please," said the man from Human Resources. He held out his hand

impatiently. Miriam passed him her card reluctantly: Paulette followed suit.

He cleared his throat and looked them over superciliously. "I've been told to

tell you that The Industry Weatherman won't be pressing charges," he said.

"We'll clear your cubicles and forward your personal items and your final

paycheck to your addresses of record. But you're no longer allowed on the

premises." The security guard took up a position behind him, blocking the

staircase. "Please leave."

"What's going on?" Paulette demanded, her voice rising toward a squeak.

"You're both being terminated," the HR man said impassively. "Misappropriation

of company resources; specifically, sending personal e-mail on company time and

looking at pornographic Web sites."

" 'Pornographic—'" Miriam felt herself going faint with fury. She took half a

step toward the HR man and barely noticed Paulette grabbing her sleeve.

"It's not worth it, Miriam," Paulie warned her. "We both know it isn't true."

She glared at the HR man. "You work for Somerville Investments, don't you?"

He nodded incuriously. "Please leave. Now."

Miriam forced herself to smile. "Better brush up your r6-sume," she said shakily

and turned toward the exit.

Two-thirds of her life ago, when she was eleven, Miriam had been stung by a

hornet. It had been a bad one: Her arm had swollen up like a balloon, red and

sore and painful to touch, and the sting itself had hurt like crazy. But the

worst thing of all was the sense of moral indignation and outrage. Miriam-aged-

eleven had been minding her own business, playing in the park with her

skateboard—she'd been a tomboy back then, and some would say she still was—and

she hadn't done anything to provoke the angry yellow-and-black insect. It just

flew at her, wings whining angrily, landed, and before she could shake it off it

stung her.

She'd howled.

This time she was older and much more serf-sufficient— college, pre-med, and her

failed marriage to Ben had given her a grounding in self-sufficiency—so she

managed to say good-bye to an equally shocked Paulie and make it into her car

before she broke down. And the tears came silently—this time. It was raining in

the car park, but she couldn't tell whether there was more water inside or

outside. They weren't tears of pain: They were tears of anger. That bastard—

For a moment, Miriam fantasized about storming back in through the fire door at

the side of the building, going up to Joe Dixon's office, and pushing him out of

the big picture window. It made her feel better to think about that, but after a

few minutes she reluctantly concluded that it wouldn't solve anything. Joe had

the file. He had her computer—and Paulie's—and a moment's thought told her that

those machines would be being wiped right now. Doubtless, server logs showing

her peeking at porn on the job would be being fabricated. She'd spoken to some

geeks at a dot-com startup once who explained just how easy it was if you wanted

to get someone dismissed. "Shit," she mumbled to herself and sniffed. "I'll have

to get another job. Shouldn't be too hard, even without a reference."

Still, she was badly shaken. Journalists didn't get fired for exposing money-

laundering scams; that was in the rules

somewhere. Wasn't it? In fact, it was completely crazy. She blinked away the

remaining angry tears. / need to go see Iris, she decided. Tomorrow would be

soon enough to start looking for a new job. Or to figure out a way to break the

story herself, if she was going to try and do it freelance. Today she needed a

shoulder to cry on—and a sanity check. And if there was one person who could

provide both, it was her adoptive mother.

Iris Beckstein lived alone in her old house near Lowell Park. Miriam felt

obscurely guilty about visiting her during daytime working hours. Iris never

tried to mother her, being content to wander around and see to her own quiet

hobbies most of the time since Morris had died. But Miriam also felt guilty

about not visiting Iris more often. Iris was convalescent, and the possibility

of losing her mother so soon after her father had died filled her with dread.

Another anchor was threatening to break free, leaving her adrift in the world.

She parked the car in the road, then made a dash for the front door—the rain was

descending in a cold spray, threatening to turn to penetrating sheets—and rang

the doorbell, then unlocked the door and went in as the two-tone chime echoed

inside.

"Ma?"

"Through here," Iris called. Miriam entered, closing the front door. The hallway

smelled faintly floral, she noticed as she shed her raincoat and hung it up: The

visiting home help must be responsible. "I'm in the back room."

Doors and memories lay ajar before Miriam as she hurried toward the living room.

She'd grown up in this house, the one Morris and Iris had bought back when she

was a baby. The way the third step on the staircase creaked when you put your

weight on it, the eccentricities of the downstairs toilet, the way the living

room felt cramped from all the bookshelves—the way it felt too big, without Dad.

"Ma?" She pushed open the living room door hesitantly.

Iris smiled at her from her wheelchair. "So nice of you to visit! Come in! To

what do I owe the pleasure?"

The room was furnished with big armchairs and a threadbare sofa deep enough to

drown in. There was no television—neither Iris nor Morris had time for it—but

there were bookcases on each wall and a tottering tower of paper next to Iris's

chair. Miriam crossed the room, leaned over, and kissed Iris on top of her head,

then stood back. "You're looking well," she said anxiously, hoping it was true.

She wanted to hug her mother, but she looked increasingly frail—only in her

fifties, but her hair was increasingly gray, and the skin on the backs of her

hands seemed to be more wrinkled every time Miriam visited.

"I won't break—at least, I don't think so. Not if you only hug me." Iris

grimaced. "It's been bad for the past week, but I think I'm on the mend again."

The chair she sat in was newer than the rest of the furniture, surrounded by the

impedimenta of invalidity: a little side trolley with her crochet and an

insulated flask full of herbal tea, her medicines, and a floor-standing lamp

with a switch high up its stem. "Marge just left. She'll be back later, before

supper."

"That's good. I hope she's been taking care of you well."

"She does her best." Iris nodded, slightly dismissively. "I've got physiotherapy

tomorrow. Then another session with my new neurologist, Dr. Burke—he's working

with a clinical trial on a new drug that's looking promising and we're going to

discuss that. It's supposed to stop the progressive demyelination process, but I

don't understand half the jargon in the report. Could you translate it for me?"

"Mother! You know I don't do that stuff any more—I'm not current; I might miss

something. Anyway, if you go telling your osteopath about me, he'll panic. I'm

not a bone doctor."

"Well, if you say so." Iris looked irritated. "All that time in medical school

wasn't wasted, was it?"

"No, Mom, I use it every day. I couldn't do my job without it. I just don't know

enough about modern multiple sclerosis drug treatments to risk second-guessing

your specialist, all right? I might get it wrong, and then who'd you sue?"

"If you say so." Iris snorted. "You didn't come here just to talk about that,

did you?"

Damn, thought Miriam. It had always been very difficult to pull one over on her

mother. "I lost my job," she confessed.

"I wondered." Iris nodded thoughtfully. "All those dotcoms of yours, it was

bound to be infectious. Is that what happened?"

"No." Miriam shook her head. "I stumbled across something and mishandled it

badly. They fired me. And Paulie ... Remember I told you about her?"

Iris closed her eyes. "Bastards. The bosses are bastards."

"Mother!" Miriam wasn't shocked at the language—Iris's odd background jumped out

to bite her at the strangest moments—but it was the risk of misunderstanding.

"It's not that simple; I screwed up."

"So you screwed up. Are you going to tell me you deserved to be fired?" asked

Iris.

"No. But I should have dug deeper before I tried to run the story," Miriam said

carefully. "I was too eager, got sloppy. There were connections. It's deep and

it's big and it's messy; the people who own The Weatherman didn't want to be

involved in exposing it."

"So that excuses them, does it?" asked Iris, her eyes narrowing.

"No, it—" Miriam stopped.

"Stop making excuses for them and I'll stop chasing you." Iris sounded almost

amused. "They took your job to protect their own involvement in some dirty

double-dealing. Is that what you're telling me?"

"Yeah. I guess."

"Well." Iris's eyes flashed. "When are you going to hang them? And how high? I

want a ringside seat!"

"Ma." Miriam looked at her mother with mingled affection and exasperation. "It's

not that easy. I think The Weatherman's owners are deeply involved in something

illegal. Money laundering. Dirty money. Insider trading too, probably. I'd like

to nail them, but they're going to play dirty if I try. It took them about five

minutes to come up with cause for dismissal, and they said they wouldn't press

charges if I kept my mouth shut."

"What kind of charges?" Iris demanded.

"They say they've got logfiles to prove I was net-surfing pornography at work.

They ... they—" Miriam found she was unable to go on speaking.

"So were you?" Iris asked quietly.

"No!" Miriam startled herself with her vehemence. She caught Iris's sly glance

and felt sheepish. "Sorry. No, I wasn't. It's a setup. But it's so easy to

claim—and virtually impossible to disprove."

"Are you going to be able to get another job?" Iris prodded.

"Yes." Miriam fell silent.

"Then it's all right. I really couldn't do with my daughter expecting me to wash

her underwear after all these years."

"Mother!" Then Miriam spotted the sardonic grin.

"Tell me about it. I mean, everything. Warm a mother's heart, spill the beans on

the assholes who took her daughter's job away."

Miriam flopped down on the big overstuffed sofa. "It's either a very long story

or a very short one," she confessed. "I got interested in a couple of biotech

companies that looked just a little bit odd. Did some digging, got Paulette

involved— she digs like a drilling platform—and we came up with some dirt. A

couple of big companies are being used as targets for money laundering.

"Turns out that The Weatherman's parent company is into them, deep. They decided

it would be easier to fire us and threaten us than to run the story and take

their losses. I'm probably going to get home and find a SLAPP lawsuit sitting in

my mailbox."

"So. What are you going to do about it?"

Miriam met her mother's penetrating stare. "Ma, I spent three years there. And

they fired me cold, without even trying to get me to shut up, at the first

inconvenience. Do you really think I'm going to let them get away with that if I

can help it?"

"What about loyalty?" Iris asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I gave them mine." Miriam shrugged. "That's part of why this hurts. You earn

loyalty by giving it."

"You'd have made a good feudal noble. They were big on loyalty, too. And blind

obedience, in return."

"Wrong century, wrong side of the Atlantic, in case you hadn't noticed."

Now Iris grinned. "Oh, I noticed that much," she conceded. "No foreign titles of

nobility. That's one of the reasons why I stayed here—that, and your father."

Her smile slipped. "Never could understand what the people here see in kings and

queens, either the old hereditary kind or the modern presidential type. All

those paparazzi, drooling after monarchs. I like your line of work. It's more

honest."

"Harder to keep your job when you're writing about the real world," Miriam

brooded gloomily. She struggled to sit a little straighter. "Anyway, I didn't

come around here to mope at you. I figure I can leave job-hunting until tomorrow

morning."

"Are you sure you're going to be all right?" Iris asked pointedly. "You

mentioned lawsuits-—or worse."

"In the short term—" Miriam shrugged, then took a deep breath. "Yes," she

admitted. "I guess I'll be okay as long as I leave them alone."

"Hmm." Iris looked at Miriam sidelong. "How much money are we talking about

here? If they're pulling fake lawsuits to shut you up, that's not business as

usual."

"There's—" Miriam did some mental arithmetic— "about fifty to a hundred million

a year flowing through this channel."

Iris swore.

"Ma!"

"Don't you 'Ma' me!" Iris snorted.

"But—"

"Listen to your old ma. You came here for advice, I'm going to give it, all

right? You're telling me you just happened to stumble across a money-laundering

operation that's handling more money in a week than most people earn in their

life. And you think they're going to settle for firing you and hoping you stay

quiet?"

Miriam snorted. "It can't possibly be that bad, Ma, this isn't goodfellas

territory, and anyway, they've got that faked evidence."

Iris shook her head stubbornly. "When you've got criminal activities and

millions of dollars in cash together, there are no limits to what people can

do." For the first time, Miriam realized with a sinking feeling, Iris looked

worried. "But maybe I'm being too pessimistic—you've just lost your job and

whatever else, that's going to be a problem. How are your savings?"

Miriam glanced at the rain-streaked window. What's turned Ma so paranoid? she

wondered, unsettled. "They're not doing badly. I've been saving for the past ten

years."

"There's my girl," Iris said approvingly.

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TheFamilyTradeCharlesStross"TheFamilyTradeshowsthatCharlesStrossisnolongerabeginnertowatch,butastartowatch."—MikeResnick"Quirky,original,andentertaining.TheFamilyTradecouldbeTheGodfa herofallfantasynovels."—KevinJ.Anderson,NewYorkTimesbestsellingauthorofAForestofStarsTHEMERCHANTPRINCESTheFamilyTr...

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