The Merchant’s War

Miriam climbed onto the streetcar's platform, waited while Erasmus paid, then climbed the stairs to the upper deck, her mind whirling. Things have been going downhill fast, she realized: war, a liquidity crisis, and martial law? Despite the muggy warmth of the day, she shivered. Looking around, she realized the streetcar was almost empty. The conductor's bell dinged and the 'car moved off slowly as Erasmus came up the stairs, his hair blowing in the breeze that came over the open top of the vehicle. Sparks crackled from the pickup on top of the chimneylike tower behind her. "I didn't realize things were so bad," she remarked.

"Oh, they're bad all right," he replied a little too loudly: "I'll be lucky to make my rent this month."

She gave him an old-fashioned look as he sat down beside her. "Afraid of eavesdroppers?" she muttered.

"Yes," he whispered, almost too quietly to hear.

Whoops. Miriam shut up and stared out the window as the city unrolled to either side. This city might be called New York, but the layout was bewildering; from the citadel and palaces of Manhattan Island-here called New London-to the suburbs sprawling across the mainland around it, Jersey City to Brookhaven, everything was different. There was no orderly grid, but an insane mishmash of looping and forking curlicues, as if village paths laid out by drunkards had grown together, merging at the edges: high streets and traffic circles and weird viaducts with houses built on top of them. Tenement blocks made of soot-stained brick, with not a single fire escape in sight. In the distance, blocky skyscrapers on the edge of the administrative district around the palace loomed on the skyline, but they weren't a patch on her New York, the New York of the Chrysler and the Empire State buildings and, not long ago, the twin towers. High above them a propeller aircraft droned slowly across the underside of the clouds, trailing a thin brown smear of exhaust. For a moment she felt very alone: a tourist in the third world who'd been told her ticket home was invalid. I wanted to escape, didn't I? To cut loose and go where the Clan can't find me.

She pondered the irony of the change in her circumstances: it all seemed so long ago, now.

"Nearly there," remarked Burgeson, and she noticed his hand tightening on the back of the chair in front of them.

"Nearly where?"

"New Line crossing. Come on." He unfolded from the seat and rolled towards the staircase, pulling the bell chain on his way. Miriam scrambled to follow him.

There were more people here, and the buildings were higher, and the air smelled of coal smoke and damp even in the summer heat. Miriam followed Burgeson across the street, dodging a horse-drawn cart piled high with garbage and a chuffing steam taxi. A lot of the people hereabouts were badly dressed, their clothing worn and threadbare and their cheeks gaunt: a wheeled stall at one corner was doing a brisk trade, doling out cupfuls of stew or soup to a long queue of shuffling men and women. She hurried to keep up with Erasmus as he walked past the soup kitchen. Stagflation, that's it, she remembered vaguely. The treasury's rolling the presses to print their way out of the fiscal crisis triggered by the war and the crop failure, hut the real dynamic is deflationary, so wages and jobs are being squeezed even as prices are going up because the currency is devaluing... she remembered the alleyway three nights before, the beggar threatening her with a knife, and abruptly felt sick at the implications. They were starving, she realized. This is the capital. What's going on, out in the boonies?

Erasmus stopped so suddenly that she nearly ran into his back. "Follow me," he muttered, then lurched into the road and stuck an arm out. "Cab!" he called, then stepped back sharply to avoid being run over by a steamer. "Get in," he told her, then climbed in behind. "St. Peter's Cross," he called forward to the driver: "An extra shilling if you can get us there fast!"

"Aye, well."

The driver nodded at him and kicked the throttle open. The cab lurched forward with a loud chuffing noise and a trail of steam as it accelerated, throwing Miriam backwards into the padded seat. Erasmus landed at the other side from her, facing. She grinned at him experimentally. "What's the hurry?"

"Company." Burgeson jerked his chin sideways. A strip of cobbled street rattled beneath the cab's wheels. "We're best off without them."

"We were followed?" A sudden sense of dread twisted her stomach. "Who by?"