The Merchants’ War

letter from you, rather than sending a messenger to pay a local wino to pick it up?”

“Jeez, you sound like you’ve done this a lot.”

Mrs. Beckstein rapped a knuckle on the wooden window frame of the carriage: “Fifty years ago there were three times as many world-walkers as there are now, and they didn’t all die out because they forgot how to make babies.”

“Huh?”

Olga glanced down. “Civil war,” she said very quietly. “And now, your government.”

“Civil—” Mike paused. Didn’t Matthias say something about internal feuds? “Hold on. It killed two thirds of you?”

“You wouldn’t believe how lethal a war between world-walkers can be, boy.” Mrs. Beckstein frowned. “You should hope the Clan Council never decides they’re at war with the United States.”

“We’d wipe you out. Eventually.” He realized he was gritting his teeth, from anger as much as from the pain in his leg: he tried to force himself to relax.

She nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, probably. But right now? You think you have a problem with terrorism? You have seen nothing, boy. And we are not religious fanatics, no. We just want to live our lives. But the logic of power—” she stopped.

“What do you want me to do?”

“I want my daughter out of this mess and home safe, Mr. Fleming. She had a sheltered upbringing: she’s in danger and her own ignorance of it is her worst enemy. Second…when she came over she raised a shit storm among our relatives. In particular, she aired some very dirty family linens in public half a year ago. Called for a complete rethink of the Clan’s business model, in fact: she pointed out that the emperor has no clothes, and that basing one’s income on an enemy’s weakness—in this case, the continuing illegality of certain substances, combined with the continuing difficulty your own organization and others face in stopping the trade—is foolish. This made her a lot of enemies at the time, but it set minds a-thinking. The current upheavals are largely a consequence of her upsetting that apple cart. The Clan will change in due course, and switch to a line of work more profitable than smuggling, but as long as she remains among them, her presence will act as a reminder of the source of the change to the conservative faction, and will provoke them, and that will make her a target. So I want her out of the game.”

“Uh, I think I see where you’re leading.” Mike shook his head. “But she’s missing…?”

Iris snorted. “She won’t stay missing for long—unless she’s gotten herself killed.”

“Oh.” He thought for a moment. “That’s not all, is it?”

She stared at him. “No, Mr. Fleming, that is not all, not by a long way. I mentioned a conservative faction. You won’t be surprised to know that there exists a progressive faction, too, and current circumstances—the fighting you may have noticed—is about to tip the scales decisively in their favor. Your interests would be served by promoting the progressives to the detriment of the conservatives, believe me.”

“And you’re a progressive. Right?”

“I prefer to think of myself as a radical.” She leaned against the seat back as the coach hit another rough patch on the dirt track. “Must be all the sixties influences. A real flower child, me.”

“Ah.” Verbal punctuation was easier than trying to hold his own against this intimidating old woman. “Okay, what do the progressives want?”

“You’d best start by trying to understand the conservatives if you want to get a handle on our affairs, boy. The Clan started out as the descendants of an itinerant tinker. They learned to world-walk, learned how to intermarry to preserve the family ability, and got rich. Insanely rich. Think of the de Medicis, or the Saudi royal family. That’s what the Clan represents here, except that ‘here’ is dirt-poor, mired in the sixteenth or seventeenth century—near enough. It’s not the same, never is, but there are enough points of similarity to make the model work. But the most important point is, they got rich by trade in light merchandise, by running a postal service. The postal service ships high-value goods, whatever they are, either reliably—for destinations in your world, without fear of interception—or fast—for destinations in this world, by FedEx across a continent ruled by horseback.”

She pushed herself upright with her walking stick. “Put yourself in their shoes. They want nothing to change, because they feel threatened by change—their status is tenuous. A postal network is a packet-switched network, literally so. If world-walkers drift away from it, the bandwidth drops, and thus, its profitability. New ventures divert vital human capital. They’re against exploration, because they’re scrambling to stay on top of the dung heap.”

“Sounds like—” Mike could think of a number of people it sounded like, uncomfortably close to home— change the subject. “What about the progressives?”

“We want change, simple as that. Miriam observed that we are mired in a business that scales in direct proportion to the number of world-walkers, like a service business. She suggested—and her uncovering another world provided the opportunity—that we switch to what she called a technology-transfer model, trading information between universes.”

“How many are there?” he asked, side-tracked by fascination.

“At least three. We thought two, until a year ago. Now we know there are three, and we suspect there are many more. Yours is the most advanced we know of, but what might be lurking out there? We can trade, Mr. Fleming. We could be very useful to the United States of America. But first we need a… change of management? Yes, a change of management. We originated in a feudal realm, and our ability is hereditary: don’t underestimate the effects of reproductive politics on the Clan’s governance. Before we can change the way we do things, before we can end our unfortunate reliance on illegal trafficking, we need to break the grip of the conservative factions on the council, and to do that we need to entirely overturn our family and tribal foundations.”

“Your family structures?”

“Yes.” Olga pulled a face: Iris either ignored it, or pretended to do so. “You must be aware of the implications of artificial insemination. There’s been a quiet argument going on within the Clan’s council for a generation now, over whether it is our destiny to continue existing as braided matrilineal families in a patriarchal society, or to become…well, not a family organization any more, but one open to anyone born with the ability, whatever their parentage.”

Mike shut his eyes. I think my brain just exploded, he thought. “Who are the progressives?”

“Myself for one, to your very great good fortune. My half-brother for another, although he is as circumspect in public as befits the head of the Clan’s external security organization—a seat of significant power on the council. There are others. You do not need to know who they are. If you’re captured or tortured, what you don’t know you can’t give away.”

“And the conservatives?”

“Miriam’s great-uncle Henryk, if he’s still alive. He was the late king’s spymaster in chief. My mother, Hildegarde, who is also Miriam’s grandmother. Baron Oliver Hjorth, about two thirds of the council…too many to enumerate.”

“Okay. So you want me to set up a covert channel between you—your faction—and, my agency? Or just me?”

“Just you, at first.” Iris’s cheek twitched. “You’re injured. When you are back on your feet I will contact you. You will excuse me, but I am afraid I will require certain actions from you in order to demonstrate that you are trustworthy. Tokens of trust, if you like.”

I don’t like the sound of this. “Such as…?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out.” She relented slightly: “I can’t do business with you if I can’t trust you. But I won’t ask you to do anything illegal—unlike your superiors.”

Mike shivered. She’s got my number. “What makes you think they’d issue illegal orders?”

“Come now, Mr. Fleming, how stupid do I look? How did you get here? If your superiors could move more than one or two people at a time they’d have sent a division. They sent you because their transport capacity is tiny, probably because they’re using captured—or renegade—world-walkers. Probably the former, knowing this administration; they don’t trust anyone they haven’t bought for cold cash.” Her expression shifted into one of outright distaste. “Honor is a luxury when you reach the top of the dung heap. Everybody wants it, but it’s in short