The Merchant’s War

Smith followed, trying not to gape too obviously. He was used to security procedures on Air Force bases and some other types of sensitive installations, but he'd never seen anything quite like this. The main tunnel was domed overhead, rising to a peak about fifty feet up; it stretched to infinity ahead and behind. There were no windows, but more conduits and the boxy, roaring ducts of a huge air conditioning system overhead. The concrete piles that had once supported a mile-long linear accelerator were still visible on the floor, but the linac itself had long since been removed and replaced by beige office partitions surrounding a forlorn-looking clump of cubicles, and a line of mobile office trailers that stretched along one wall like a subterranean passenger train. The train didn't go on forever, though, and after they'd walked a couple of hundred feet from the "back door" they reached the end of the column. Beyond it, the concrete tunnel stretched dizzyingly towards a blank wall in the distance, empty but for a grid of colored lines painted on the floor. Lots of room for expansion, he realized.

Simms gestured at the trailer on the edge of the empty floor space. "Dr. James uses Room 65 as his site office when he's visiting. I believe he's in a meeting until fifteen hundred, but he told me to tell you that Dr. Hu will be along to give you the dog and pony tour at eleven thirty. If you make yourself at home, I'll find Dr. Hu and get things started."

Eric paused at the door to the trailer. "Dr. James didn't exactly tell me what it is you people do out here," he said slowly. "Can you fill me in on what to expect?"

Simms frowned. "I think I ought to leave that to Dr. Hu," he said.

"Is Dr. Hu one of Professor Armstrong's team?" Simms nodded. "I'll go get him." "Okay." Eric climbed the step up to the site office trailer and went inside to wait.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

"You wanted to s-see me, sir?"

"Yes, yes I did. Have a seat, lad. Your parents: doing well, I hope?"

"Calm down, there's a good fellow. Try to relax, I'm not going to bite your head off. I'm sure they'll be perfectly fine, current emergency notwithstanding. No, the pretender isn't about to go hating off into the Sennheur marches, and if he does, they'll have plenty of warning to evacuate. Now, where was I...? Ah, yes. I wanted to ask you about your studies."

(Mumble.)

"Yes, I know. In the current situation, it's difficult. But I think it may be possible for you to go back there in the fall, if things work out well."

"But I'll be behind. I should be working right now, with my roommates-it's not like a regular school. They'll want to know where I was while they were working on our project."

(Snorts.) "Well, you'll just have to tell them you were called away by urgent family business. A dying relative, or something. Don't look at me like that: worse things happen in wartime. If you go back to your laboratory at all you will be luckier than many of our less talented children, Huw. But as it happens, I have a little research project for you that I think will smooth your way. One that you and your talking-shop friends will be able to get your teeth into, and that will be much more profitable in the long term."

"A research project? But you don't need someone like mc-I mean, the kind of research your staff do, begging your pardons in advance, your grace, aren't exactly where my aptitude lies-"

"Correct. Which is why I want you for a different kind of research."

"I don't understand."

"On the contrary, I think you'll understand all too well." (Pause.) "Red or white?"

"Red, please." (Sound of glass being filled.) "Thank you very much."

"Show me your locket."

"My" (coughing) "locket? Uh, sure. Here-"

"Put it there. Yes, open. Don't focus on it. Now, this one. You can see the difference if you look at them-not too close, now! What do you think?"

"I'm- excuse me, it's easier to study them if you cover part of the design and compare sections. Less distracting."

"You sound as if you've done that before."

(Hurriedly): "No sir! But it's only logical. We've been using the Clan sigil for generations. Surely" (pause) "hey, I think the upper right are of this one is different!"

"It is." (Sound of small items being cleared away.) "It came from our long-lost, lamentably living, cousins. The Lees. Who, it would appear, discovered the hard way that redesigning the knotwork can have catastrophic consequences."

(Pause.) "I'd heard they used a different design. But..." (Pause.) "Nobody thought to experiment? Ever?"