"You've got newspapers?" Huw demanded, incredulity getting the better of him.
"Yes, why wouldn't we?" Miriam was nonplussed. "They don't have domestic television, Huw, no internet either. How do you expect they get their news?"
"But, but—there's a civil war going on!"
"Yes, but that's not stopping the local papers. We get visitors, Huw. We've had knife-grinders and pan-sellers and we get a book merchant who carries the weekly paper. As far as our neighbors know, we're a bunch of squatters who moved in here when the farmer and his family ran away—they're royalists, he was a snitch, apparently. They don't mind having us around: Alasdair and Erik saw off a gang of hobos—probably deserters—the day before yesterday. So we, we try to keep informed. And we're trying to fit in." She frowned. "Got to get you some local clothes."
"I'll sort him out." Brill rose and poked at the firebox in the range cautiously. Huw winced. Between the summer warmth and an active fire the kitchen was unpleasantly warm, although Miriam still looked as if she was cold. "There's a lot of work involved in establishing a safe house," she said, looking at Huw speculatively. "I've got a list. If you want to stick around, make yourself useful—"
"No," said Miriam. Brill looked at her. "I need to see Erasmus. In person." She tapped a finger on the table. "We need to send a message to James Lee, fix up a conference." Another tap. "And we need to get as many of our people as possible over here right now. And set up identities for them." A third finger-tap. "Which feeds back to Erasmus. If he'll help us out,
all
our immediate troubles here go away."
"And if he doesn't?" Asked Brill.
"Then we're so screwed it isn't funny." Miriam took a sip of coffee. "So we're not going to worry about that right now. I'm not well enough to travel today, but I'm getting better. Huw? I want you and Yul—you're the expeditionary research team, aren't you?—to go into Framingham today. Yeah, I know, so find him some clothes, Brill. I'll give you a couple of letters to post, Huw, and a shopping list. Starting with a steamer. We've got gold, yes? More of the shiny stuff than we know what to do with. So we're going to spend some of it. Get a steamer—a truck, not a passenger car—and buy food and clothing, anything that's not nailed down, anything you can find from thrift stores. Some furniture, too, chairs and beds if you can get them, we're short on stuff here, but that's a secondary consideration." She was staring past him, Huw realized, staring into some interior space, transcribing a vision. "Along the way you're going to post those letters, one to James Lee, one to Erasmus."
She cleared her throat. "Now here's the hard bit. If you're stopped by Freedom Riders, drop my name—Miriam Beckstein and say I'm working for Erasmus Burgeson and Lady Margaret Bishop. Remember that name: Margaret Bishop. It'll get their attention. If it doesn't get their attention,
don't
resist if they take you into custody, but make sure you emphasize that you're working for me and I'm working for their bosses—Lady Bishop and Erasmus know about me, and about the Clan, at least in outline. Then get the hell away. You know how to do it, you've got your temp tats, yes?"
Huw cleared his throat. "Do you want that to happen?" Or
is this just micromanagement due to nerves?
"No." Miriam shook her head. "We want to make contact at the highest level, which means ideally we go straight to Erasmus. But if things go wrong, we
don't
want to start out with a firefight. Do you see where I'm going here?"
"Six different directions at once, it seems." Huw rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I
think
I get it. These people are going to be our patrons, so don't start the relationship by shooting the servants, right?"
"That's about it." Miriam paused. "If you run into real trouble, don't hang around—just world-walk. We can afford to try again later; we can't afford to lose you."
"Conflicting mission objectives: check."
Click.
Yul shoved another cartridge into the magazine he was filling. "Flashing wads of money around in the middle of a revolution while guilty of looking foreign."
Click.
"Micromanaging boss trying to run things on impulse."
Clack.
He squeezed down on the last cartridge with a quiet grunt, then laid the magazine aside. "Have I missed anything, bro?"
"Yes." It was either the coffee or pre-op nerves: Huw was annoyed to find his hands were shaking slightly as he checked the battery level on the small Pentax digital camera. "We've got a six-month deadline to make BOLTHOLE work." (BOLTHOLE was the name Brill had pinned on the current project; a handy identifier, and one that anticipated Miriam's tendency to hatch additional projects.) "Then all the hounds of Hel come belling after our heels. And that's before the Americans—"
"I don't see what you and Her Maj are so worked up about, bro. They can't touch us." Yulius stood, shrugging his coat into shape.
"We disagree." Huw slid the camera into an inner pocket of his own jacket. "You haven't spent enough time over there to know how they think, how they work." He stood up as Yul stowed his spare magazines in a deep pocket. "Come on, let's go." He slung a small leather satchel across his chest, allowed it to settle into place, then gave the strap a jerk: Nothing rattled.
It was a warm day outside, but the cloud cover threatened rain for the afternoon. Huw and Yul headed out into the run-down farmyard—now coming into a modicum of order as Helge's arms-men cleared up after the absent owners—then down the dirt track to the highway. The road into town was metaled but only wide enough for one vehicle, bordered by deep ditches with passing places every quarter mile. "They make good roads," Yul remarked as they walked along the side. "Not as good as the Americans, but better than us. Why is that?"
"Long story." Huw shook his head. "We're stuck in a development trap, back home."
"A what trap?"
A rabbit bolted for safety ahead of them as the road curved; birds peeped and clattered in the trees to either side like misconfigured machinery. "Development. In the Americans' world there are lots of other countries. Some of them are dirt-poor, full of peasants. Sort of like home, believe it or not. The rich folks can import automobiles and mobile phones but the poor are just like they've always been. The Americans were that way, two hundred years ago—somewhere along the way they did something right. You've seen how they live today. Turns out—they've tried it a lot, in their world—if you just throw money at a poor country and pay for things like roads and schools, it doesn't automatically
get better.
The economists have a bunch of theories about why, and how, and what you need to do to make an entire nation lift itself up by its own bootstraps . . . but most of them are wrong. Not surprising, really; mostly economists say what the rich people who pay them want to hear. If they knew for sure, if there was one true answer, there'd be
no
underdeveloped nations.
We'd
have developed, in the Gruinmarkt, too, if there was a well-defined recipe. It's probably some combination of money, and institutions like the rule of law and suppression of corruption, and education, and a work ethic, and fair markets, and ways of making people feel like they can better themselves—social inclusion. But nobody knows for sure."
A high stone wall appeared alongside the road, boundary marker to a country estate. "People have to be able to produce a bit more than they consume, for one thing. And for another, they have to know that if they