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Authors: Charles Stross
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accessed from this one, if you use the Lee's knot. We couldn't get through to it in New England, but it worked down south; I think it may be in the middle of an ice age."
"Did you find anyone? People, I mean?"
"Yes." Huw paused as the coffee maker coughed and grumbled to itself. "Their bones. A big dome, made out of something like, like a very odd kind of concrete. Residual radioactivity. A skull with perfect dentistry, bits of damaged metalwork, fire escapes or gantries or something, that I'll swear are made out of titanium. It's clearly been there decades or centuries. And then there's the door."
"Door?"
"Yul hit it with an axe. Nearly killed us-there was hard vacuum on the other side."
"Whoops." Miriam pulled out a stool and sat down at the breakfast bar. "Too fast. Vacuum? You think you found a door onto another world?"
"We didn't stick around to make sure," Huw said drily. "But it didn't stop sucking after a couple of minutes. Last time we saw the dome, it was surrounded by fog."
"Oh my." Her shoulders were shaking. "God."
Huw watched her, not unsympathetically. He'd had more than a day to get used to the idea: If Lady Brilliana was right-and his own judgement was right-and Miriam was fit to lead them…
"That changes a lot of things," she said, looking straight at him. "If it is a door to another world… how do you think it works?"
Huw shrugged again. "We are cursed by our total ignorance of our family talent's origins," he pointed out. "But what we seem to have is a trait that can be externally controlled-that's what the knot's for-and I figure if it turns out that other knots take us to other worlds, then it's no huge leap to conclude that it was engineered for a purpose. I don't think anyone's looked inside us-I figure the mechanism, if there is one, has got to be something intracellular-but the fact that it's controllable, that we don't world-walk at random when we look at a maze or a fractal generator on a PC, screams design. This door? There's more stuff in that dome, lots more, and it looks like wreckage left behind by a civilization more advanced than this one." He pointed at the coffee maker. "Think what a peasant back home would make of that? You know, and I know, what it is and how it works, because we went to school and college in this country." He pulled the jug out and poured two mugs of coffee. "Electricity. But to a peasant…"
"Magic." The word hung in the air as Miriam poured milk into both mugs.
"So." He chose his words carefully. "What do you think it means?"
"Oh boy." Miriam stared at her coffee mug, then blew on it and took a first sip. "Where do you want me to start? If nothing else, it makes all the Clan's defensive structures obsolete overnight. One extra universe is useful, two is embarrassing, three extra universes implies… more. Which means, assuming there are more, that doppelgangered houses stop being effectively defended." Doppelgangering-the practice of building defenses in the other worlds, physically colocated with the space occupied by the defended structure, in order to stop hostile world-walkers gaining access-was a key element in all the Clan families' buildings. But you could build an earth berm or a safe house in one parallel universe-how could you hope to do it if there were millions? "And then… well. I tried telling the Council their business model was broken, but I didn't realize how broken it was."
"Really?" Huw leaned forward.
"Really." She put her mug down. "The-hell, I'm doing it again. Distancing. We got rich in the Gruinmarkt by exploiting superior technology-being able to move messages around fast, make markets, that kind of thing. And we got rich in this world"-she glanced at the window, which opened out onto an unkempt yard-"by smuggling. But what they were really doing was exploiting a development imbalance. Making money through a monopoly on superior technology-okay, call it a family talent, and it may be something you can selectively breed for,
"Did you find anyone? People, I mean?"
"Yes." Huw paused as the coffee maker coughed and grumbled to itself. "Their bones. A big dome, made out of something like, like a very odd kind of concrete. Residual radioactivity. A skull with perfect dentistry, bits of damaged metalwork, fire escapes or gantries or something, that I'll swear are made out of titanium. It's clearly been there decades or centuries. And then there's the door."
"Door?"
"Yul hit it with an axe. Nearly killed us-there was hard vacuum on the other side."
"Whoops." Miriam pulled out a stool and sat down at the breakfast bar. "Too fast. Vacuum? You think you found a door onto another world?"
"We didn't stick around to make sure," Huw said drily. "But it didn't stop sucking after a couple of minutes. Last time we saw the dome, it was surrounded by fog."
"Oh my." Her shoulders were shaking. "God."
Huw watched her, not unsympathetically. He'd had more than a day to get used to the idea: If Lady Brilliana was right-and his own judgement was right-and Miriam was fit to lead them…
"That changes a lot of things," she said, looking straight at him. "If it is a door to another world… how do you think it works?"
Huw shrugged again. "We are cursed by our total ignorance of our family talent's origins," he pointed out. "But what we seem to have is a trait that can be externally controlled-that's what the knot's for-and I figure if it turns out that other knots take us to other worlds, then it's no huge leap to conclude that it was engineered for a purpose. I don't think anyone's looked inside us-I figure the mechanism, if there is one, has got to be something intracellular-but the fact that it's controllable, that we don't world-walk at random when we look at a maze or a fractal generator on a PC, screams design. This door? There's more stuff in that dome, lots more, and it looks like wreckage left behind by a civilization more advanced than this one." He pointed at the coffee maker. "Think what a peasant back home would make of that? You know, and I know, what it is and how it works, because we went to school and college in this country." He pulled the jug out and poured two mugs of coffee. "Electricity. But to a peasant…"
"Magic." The word hung in the air as Miriam poured milk into both mugs.
"So." He chose his words carefully. "What do you think it means?"
"Oh boy." Miriam stared at her coffee mug, then blew on it and took a first sip. "Where do you want me to start? If nothing else, it makes all the Clan's defensive structures obsolete overnight. One extra universe is useful, two is embarrassing, three extra universes implies… more. Which means, assuming there are more, that doppelgangered houses stop being effectively defended." Doppelgangering-the practice of building defenses in the other worlds, physically colocated with the space occupied by the defended structure, in order to stop hostile world-walkers gaining access-was a key element in all the Clan families' buildings. But you could build an earth berm or a safe house in one parallel universe-how could you hope to do it if there were millions? "And then… well. I tried telling the Council their business model was broken, but I didn't realize how broken it was."
"Really?" Huw leaned forward.
"Really." She put her mug down. "The-hell, I'm doing it again. Distancing. We got rich in the Gruinmarkt by exploiting superior technology-being able to move messages around fast, make markets, that kind of thing. And we got rich in this world"-she glanced at the window, which opened out onto an unkempt yard-"by smuggling. But what they were really doing was exploiting a development imbalance. Making money through a monopoly on superior technology-okay, call it a family talent, and it may be something you can selectively breed for,
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