the gathering storm

"may I ask what I'm charged with?" asked Martin.

The sunshine filtering through the skylight high overhead skewered the stuffy office air with bars of silver: Martin watched dust motes dance like stars behind the Citizen's bullet-shaped head. The only noises in the room were the scratching of his pen on heavy official vellum and the repetitive grinding of gears as his assistant rewound the clockwork drive mechanism on his desktop analytical engine. The room smelled of machine oil and stale fear.

"Am I being charged with anything?" Martin persisted.

The Citizen ignored him and bent his head back to his forms. His young assistant, his regular chore complete, began unloading a paper tape from the engine.

Martin stood up. "If I am not being charged with anything, is there any reason why I should stay?"

This time the Citizen Curator glared at him. "Sit," he snapped.

Martin sat.

Outside the skylight, it was a clear, cold April afternoon; the clocks of St Michael had just finished striking fourteen hundred, and in the Square of the Five Corners, the famous Duchess's Simulacrum was jerking through its eternal pantomime. The boredom grated on Martin. He found it difficult to adapt to the pace of events in the New Republic; it was doubly infuriating when he was faced with the eternal bureaucracy. He'd been here for four months now, four stinking months on a job which should have taken ten days. He was beginning to wonder if he would live to see Earth again before he died of old age.

In fact, he was so bored with waiting for his work clearance to materialize that this morning's summons to an office somewhere behind the iron facade of the Basilisk came as a relief, something to break the monotony. It didn't fill him with the stuttering panic that such an appointment would have kindled in the heart of a subject of the New Republic—what, after all, could the Curator's Office do to him, an off-world engineering contractor with a cast-iron Admiralty contract? The summons had come on a plate borne by a uniformed courier, and not as a night-time raid. That fact alone suggested a degree of restraint and, consequently, an approach to adopt, and Martin resolved to play the bemused alien visitor card as hard as he could.

After another minute, the Citizen lowered his pen and looked at Martin. "Please state your name," he said softly.

Martin crossed his arms. "If you don't know it already, why am I here?" he asked.

"Please state your name for the record." The Citizen's voice was low, clipped, and as controlled as a machine. He spoke the local trade-lingua—a derivative of the nearly universal old English tongue—with a somewhat heavy, Germanic accent.

"Martin Springfield."

The Citizen made a note. "Now please state your nationality."

"My what?"

Martin must have looked nonplussed, for the Citizen raised a gray-flecked eyebrow. "Please state your nationality. To what government do you owe allegiance?"

"Government?" Martin rolled his eyes. "I come from Earth. For legislation and insurance, I use Pinkertons, with a backup strategic infringement policy from the New Model Air Force. As far as employment goes, I am incorporated under charter as a personal corporation with bilateral contractual obligations to various organizations, including your own Admiralty. For reasons of nostalgia, I am a registered citizen of the People's Republic of West Yorkshire, although I haven't been back there for twenty years. But I wouldn't say I was answerable to any of those, except my contractual partners—and they're equally answerable to me."

"But you are from Earth?" asked the Citizen, his pen poised.

"Yes."

"Ah. Then you are a subject of the United Nations." He made a brief note. "Why didn't you admit this?"

Copyright © 2003 by Charles Stross