“Objection!” Shouted someone at the back of the hall. “Clan feud takes precedence!”
“Are you saying the Clan can afford to lose more people?” asked Miriam.
“Damn the blood! What about our dead? This calls for revenge!” Ayes backed him up: Miriam forced herself to think fast, knowing that if she let the heckling gather pace she could very easily lose control of the meeting.
“It seems to me that the lost family is sorely depleted,” she began. “They had to send a child to supervise an adult’s job. You know, as I know, that the efficiency of a postal service like the one responsible for the Clan’s wealth is not just a function of how many world-walkers we have. It’s also a function of the number of routes we can send packages over. They’re small, and isolated, and they’re not as numerous as we are. However, rooting them out in the name of a feud will uncover old wounds and risk depleting our numbers for no gain. I’m going to stick my neck out and assert that the next few years are going to be far more dangerous for the Clan than most of you yet realize.”
“Point of order!” It was Baron Hjorth again. “This is rubbish. She’s trying to frighten us. Won’t you—”
“Shut
up
,” grated Angbard. “Let her finish a sentence, damn your eyes.”
Miriam waited a moment. “Thank you,” she said. “Factors to think about. Firstly, a new world. This is going to be important because it opens up new opportunities for trade and development, as I’ve already demonstrated. Secondly, the state of the Clan’s current business. I don’t know how to approach this subtly so I won’t: You’re in
big
trouble.
“To be perfectly blunt, your current business model is obsolescent. You can keep it running for another two to five years, but then it’ll go into a nosedive. In ten years, it’ll be dead. And I’m not just talking about heroin and cocaine shipments. I mean
everything.
“You’ll have noticed how hard it has become to launder the proceeds of narcotics traffic on the other side in the past few years. With the current anti-terrorist clampdown and the beefing up of police powers, life isn’t going to get any easier. Things are changing very fast indeed.
“The Clan used to be involved in different types of commerce: gold smuggling, gemstones, anything valuable and lightweight. But those businesses rely on anonymity, and like I said, the anti-terrorist clampdown is making anonymity much harder to sustain. Let me emphasize this, the traditional business models
don’t work anymore
because they all rely on the same underlying assumption—that you can be anonymous.
“Many of you probably aren’t aware of the importance of electronic commerce, or e-commerce. I’ve been working with specialists covering the development of the field. What you need to know is that goods and services are going to be sold, increasingly, online. This isn’t an attempt to sell you shares in some fly-by-night dot-com; it’s just a statement of fact—communications speed is more important than geographical location, and selling online lets small specialist outfits sell to anyone On the planet. But with the shift to online selling, you can expect cash money to become obsolete. High-denomination euro banknotes already come with a chip, to allow transactions to be traced. How long do you think it’ll be before the greenbacks you rely on stop being anonymous?
“The fat times will be over—and if you’ve spent all your resources pursuing a blood feud, you’re going to be screwed. No money on the other side means no imports. No imports mean no toys, antibiotics, digital watches, whatever to buy the compliance of the landowners. No guns to shoot them with, either. If you try to ignore reality you will be screwed by factors outside your control.
“But this isn’t inevitable. If you act now, you can open up new lines of revenue and new subsidiaries. Take ancient patents from my world, the world you’re used to using as a toy chest, and set up companies around them in the new world, in New Britain. Take the money you raise in New Britain and import books and tools
here.
Set up universities and schools. Build, using your power and your money to establish factories and towns and laboratories over here. In a couple of generations, you can pull Gruinmarkt out of the mire and start an industrial revolution that will make you a true world power, whether or not you depend on the family talent.
“You can change the world—if you choose to start now, by changing the way you think about your business.”
There was total silence in the hall. A puzzled silence, admittedly, but silence—and one or two nodding heads.
Just let them keep listening,
Miriam thought desperately. Then voices began to pipe up.
“I never heard such a—”
“—What would you have us put our money into?”
“—Hear, hear!”
“—Gather that educating the peasants is common over—”
“Silence,” Angbard demanded testily. “The chair has a question.”
“Uh. I’m ready.” Feeling tensely nervous, Miriam crossed her fingers behind her back.
“Describe the business you established in the new world. What did you take with you to start it? And what is it worth?”
“Ah, that’s an interesting one.” Miriam forced herself to keep a straight face, although the wave of relief she felt at Angbard’s leading question nearly made her go weak at the knees. “Exchange rate irregularities—or rather, the lack of them—make it hard to establish a true currency conversion rate, and I’m still looking for a means of repatriating value from the new world to the United States, but I’d have to say that expenditure to date is on the order of six hundred thousand dollars. The business in New Britain is still working toward its first contract, but that contract should be worth on the order of fifty thousand pounds. Uh, near as I can pin it down, one pound is equivalent to roughly two to three hundred dollars. So we’re looking at a return on investment of three hundred percent in six months, and that’s from a cold start.”
A buzz of conversation rippled through the hall, and Angbard made no move to quell it. The figures Miriam had come up with sounded like venture capitalist nirvana—especially with a recession raging in the other world, and NASDAQ in the dumps. “That’s by selling a product that’s been obsolete for thirty years in the U.S.,” Miriam added. “I’ve got another five up my sleeve, waiting for this first deal to provide seedcorn capital for reinvestment. In the absence of major disruptive factors—”
like a war with the hidden family,
she added mentally “—I figure we can be turning over ten to a hundred million pounds within ten to fifteen years. That would make us the equivalent of IBM or General Motors, simply by recycling ideas that haven’t been invented yet over there.”
The buzz of conversation grew louder. “I’ve done some more spreadsheet work,” Miriam added, now more confident. “If we do this, we’ll push the New British economic growth rate up by one or two percent per annum over its long-term average. We could do the same, though, importing intermediate technologies from there to here. There’s no point trying to train nuclear engineers or build airports in the Gruinmarkt, not with a medieval level of infrastructure, and a lot of the technologies up for sale in the U.S. are simply too far ahead to use here. Those of you who’ve wired up your estates will know what I’m talking about. But we can import tools and ideas and even teachers from New Britain, and deliver a real push to the economy over here. Within thirty years you could be traveling to your estates by railway, your farmers could be producing three times as much food, and your ships could dominate the Atlantic trade routes.”
Angbard rapped his gavel on the wooden block in front of him for attention. “The chair thanks Countess Helge,” he said formally. “Are there any more questions from the floor?”
A new speaker stood up: a smooth-looking managerial type who smiled at Miriam in a friendly manner from the bench behind her grandmother. “I’d like to congratulate my cousin on her successful start-up,” he began. “It’s a remarkable achievement to come into a new world and set up a business, from scratch, with no background.”
Oh shit,
Miriam thought uneasily.
Who is this guy, and when’s he going to drop the hammer?
“And I agree completely with everything she says. But clearly, her efforts could be aided by an infusion of support and experience. If we accept her motion to transfer the new business to the Clan as a subsidiary enterprise, it can clearly benefit from sound management—”
“Which it already has,” Miriam snapped, finally getting his drift. “If you would like to discuss employment opportunities—”
and a pound of flesh in return for keeping out of my way, you carpetbagger
“—that’s all very well—but this is not the time and place for it. We have an immediate problem, which is relations with the sixth family. I’ll repeat my proposal; that the new business venture be recognized as a Clan business, that membership in it be open to the Clan, and that handling the lost family be considered the responsibility of this business. Can we put this to a vote?”
Oliver Hjorth made to interrupt, but Angbard caught his hand and whispered something in his ear. His eyes narrowed and he shut up.
“I don’t see why we can’t settle it now,” muttered Julius. “Show of hands! Ayes! Count them, damn your eyes. Nays!” He brought his own hammer down briskly. “The Ayes have it,” he announced. He turned to Miriam. “It’s yours.”
Is that it?
Miriam wondered dumbly, feeling as if something vast and elusive had passed her by in an eyeblink while her attention was elsewhere.
“Next motion,” said Angbard. “Some of you have been misinformed that I announced that I was designating Helge as my heir. I wish to clarify the issue: I did not do so. However, I
do
intend to change my designated successor—to Patricia Thorold-Hjorth, my half-sister. Can anyone dispute my right to do so?” He looked around the room furiously. “No?” He nudged Julius. “See it minuted so.”
Miriam felt as if a great weight had lifted from her shoulders—but not for long. “A new motion,” said Oliver Hjorth. He frowned at Miriam. “The behavior of this long-lost niece gives me some cause for concern,” he began. “I am aware that she has been raised in strange and barbarous lands, and allowances must be made; but I fear she may do herself an injury if allowed to wander around at random. As her recent history of narrow scrapes shows, she’s clearly accident-prone and erratic. I therefore move that she be declared incompetent to sit as a member of the Clan, and that a suitable guardian be appointed—Baroness Hildegarde—”
“Objection!” Miriam turned to see Olga standing up. “Baron Hjorth, through negligence, failed to see to the subject’s security during her residence here, notionally under his protection. He is not fit to make determinations bearing on her safety.”
Oliver rounded on her in fury. “You little minx! I’ll have you thrown out on the street for—”
Bang!
The gavel again. “Objection sustained,” Julius quavered.
Oliver glared at him. “Your time will come,” he growled, and subsided into grim silence.
“I am an adult,” Miriam said quietly. “I am divorced, I have created and managed a Clan subsidiary, and I am not prepared to surrender responsibility for my own security.” She looked around the hall. “If you try to railroad me out of the New London operation, you’ll find some nasty surprises in the title deeds.” She stared at Oliver: “or you can sit back and wait for the profits to roll in. It’s your choice.”
“I withdraw my motion,” Oliver growled quietly. Only his eyes told Miriam that he resented every word of it. There’d be a reckoning, they seemed to say.
* * *
“Check your gun.”
“I don’t need to.”
“I said, check it. Listen. I told Poul to go for help. Think he’ll have made it?”
“I don’t see why not.” Sullivan looked dubious, but he ejected the magazine and worked the slide on his gun, then reloaded and safed it.
“Matthias believes in belt and braces.” For a moment, Roland looked ill. “I think he’ll have left a surprise or two for us.”
“So?” Sullivan nodded. “You ready?”
“Ready?” Roland winced, then flipped his locket open. “Yes. Come on. On my back—Sky Father, you’re heavy! Now—”
Roland’s vision dimmed and his head hammered like a drum. His knees began to give way and he fell forward, feet slipping on the damp floor. Sullivan rolled off him with a shout of dismay. “What’s—”
Roland fell flat, whimpering slightiy as one knee cracked hard on the concrete. Red, everything seemed to be
red
with bits of white embedded in it, like an explosion in an abattoir. He rolled over, sliding slightly, smelling something revolting and sweet as the noise of Sullivan being violently sick reached his ears.
The pounding headache subsided. Roland sat up, dismayed, staring at the wall behind him. It was chipped and battered, stained as if someone had thrown a tin of blackish paint at it.
The smell.
Roland leaned forward and squeezed his eyes shut. The blackness stayed with him, behind his eyelids. “Belt and braces.”
Sullivan stopped heaving. The stench refused to clear. Roland opened his eyes again. The post room in the basement of Fort Lofstrom had been painted with blood and bits of flesh and bone, as if a live pig or sheep had been fed through a wood chipper. There were small gobbets of stuff everywhere. On his hands, sticking to his trousers where he’d fallen down. He pulled a hunk of something red with hairs sprouting from it off the back of his hand. The furniture was shredded, and the door hung from its hinges as if an angry bull had kicked it.
“Belt and braces,” Roland repeated hoarsely. “Shit.”
Sullivan straightened up. “You sent Poul into this,” he said flatly. He wiped his mouth with the back of one hand.
“Shit.” Roland shook his head. A pair of legs, still wearing trousers, still attached at the hips, had rolled under the big oak table in the middle of the room. A horrified sense of realization settled over him. “Why hasn’t someone—”
“Because they are all fucking
dead
,” Sullivan hissed, moving to the side of the door and bringing his gun up. “Shut up!”