The Traders' War (Merchant Princes Omnibus 2) by Stross Charles Page B

eyelids were closing on him, randomly trying to fool him into falling asleep on his feet. So he phoned for a cab, nearly zoning out against a concrete pillar just inside the station lobby while he
waited. The cab was stuffy and hot and smelled of anonymous cheap sex and furtive medicinal transactions. It was probably his imagination, but he could almost feel the driver watching him in the
mirror, the itchy, prickly touch of the guy’s eyeballs on his face. It was a relief to get out and slowly climb the steps to his apartment. ‘Hello, strange place,’ he muttered to
himself as he unlocked the door. ‘When was I last here?’
    Mike knew he was tired, but it was only when he misentered the code to switch off his intruder alarm twice in a row that he got a visceral sense of how totally out of it he was.
Whoa, hold
on!
He leaned against the wall and yawned, forced himself to focus, and deliberately held off from fumbling at the manically bleeping control panel until he’d blinked back the fuzz
enough to see the numbers.
Two days?
he wondered vaguely as he slouched upstairs, the door banging shut behind him.
Yeah, two days
. A night and most of a day with the SOC team
picking over the bones of the buried fortress, then a night and most of the next morning debriefing the paranoid defector in a safe house. Then more meetings all afternoon, trying to get it through
Tony Vecchio’s head that yes, the source was crazy – in fact, the source was bug-fuck crazy with brass knobs on – but he was an
interesting
crazy, whose every lead had
turned over a stone with something nasty scuttling for cover from underneath it, and even the crazy bits were internally consistent.
    Mike stumbled past the coat rail and shed his jacket and tie, then fumbled with his shoelaces for a minute. While he was busy unraveling the sacred mysteries of knot theory, Oscar slid out of
the living room door, stretched stiffly and cast him a where-have-you-been glare. ‘I’ll get to you in a minute,’ Mike mumbled. He was used to working irregular hours; Helen the
cleaner had instructions to keep the cat fed and watered when he wasn’t about, though she drew the line at the litter tray. It turned out that unlacing the shoes took the last of his energy.
He meant to check Oscar’s food and water, but instead he staggered into the bedroom and collapsed on the unmade bed. Sleep came slamming down like a guillotine blade.
    A couple of hours later, Oscar dragged Mike back to semiwakefulness. ‘Aagh.’ Mike opened his eyes. ‘Damn. What time is it?’ The elderly tom lowered his head and butted
his shoulder for attention, purring quietly.
I was dreaming, wasn’t I?
Mike remembered.
Something about being in a fancy restaurant with – her
. That ex-girlfriend, the
journalist. Miriam. She’d dumped him when he’d explained about The Job. It’d been back during one of his self-hating patches, otherwise he probably wouldn’t have been that
brutal with the truth, but experience had taught him – ‘Damn.’ Oscar purred louder and leaned against his stomach.
Why was I naked from the waist down? What the hell is my
subconscious trying to tell me?
    It was only about six o’clock in the evening, far too early to turn over and go back to sleep if he wanted to be ready for the office tomorrow. Mike shook his head, trying to dislodge the
cobwebs. Then he sat up, gently pushed Oscar out of the way, and began to undress. After ten minutes in the shower with the heat turned right up he felt almost human, although the taste in his
mouth and the stubble itching on his jaw felt like curious reminders of a forgotten binge.
Virtual bar-hopping, all the after-effects with none of the fun
. He shook his head disgustedly,
toweled himself dry, dragged on sweat pants and tee, then took stock.
    The flat was remarkably tidy, considering how little time he’d had to spend on chores in the past week – thank Helen for that. She’d left him a note on the