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  PRAISE FOR BLACK CHAMBER

  “As always, [Stirling] comes up with inventive twists that keep your mind racing and the pages turning. Bravo!”

  —Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award–winning author of Quantum Night

  “The nice thing about getting a Steve Stirling book in the mail is that you know for a few hours you can fly on dreams of wonder, travelling to a world so much more than this angry reality.”

  —John Ringo, author of Under a Graveyard Sky

  “It’s a great feeling being in the hands of an alternate history master, who knows his material and crafts an utterly plausible world. Stirling gives us Teddy Roosevelt’s USA and a Cuban-Irish-American secret agent who’s more than a match for an airship full of James Bonds.”

  —Django Wexler, author of The Infernal Battalion

  “Imagine that World War One began in Europe with the activist Teddy Roosevelt in the White House instead of the academic Woodrow Wilson. You’ve got a dandy steampunk setting for a slam-bang spy thriller with an engaging female protagonist.”

  —David Drake, author of Death’s Bright Day

  “One of the most intriguing and entertaining adventures to come along in years.”

  —Diana L. Paxson, author of Sword of Avalon

  “Serves us a World War One America under a Theodore Roosevelt presidency, spiced with all the possibilities, good and bad, that Stirling’s ever-ambitious imagination and meticulous approach to historical can cook up.”

  —A. M. Dellamonica, author of The Nature of a Pirate

  “This is a sheer joy of an alternative history . . . If you can put this book down once you’ve picked it up, I’ll eat my bowler hat.”

  —Patricia Finney, author of Gloriana’s Torch

  “One mighty fine read—sexy, action-filled adventure in a thoughtful alternate history.”

  —Lawrence Watt-Evans, author of the Obsidian Chronicles

  “This novel provides a desperately needed infusion of courage and originality. How appropriate that Penguin, publisher of the James Bond novels, launches a hard-edged new spy series with Stirling. How appropriate that Ace, famous for classic science fiction, is onboard for the adventure.”

  —Brad Linaweaver, Prometheus Award–winning author of Moon of Ice

  ALSO BY S. M. STIRLING

  Novels of the Change

  Island in the Sea of Time

  Against the Tide of Years

  On the Oceans of Eternity

  Dies the Fire

  The Protector’s War

  A Meeting at Corvallis

  The Sunrise Lands

  The Scourge of God

  The Sword of the Lady

  The High King of Montival

  The Tears of the Sun

  Lord of Mountains

  The Given Sacrifice

  The Golden Princess

  The Desert and the Blade

  Prince of Outcasts

  The Sea Peoples

  Novels of the Shadowspawn

  A Taint in the Blood

  The Council of Shadows

  Shadows of Falling Night

  Other Novels by S. M. Stirling

  The Peshawar Lancers

  Conquistador

  ACE

  Published by Berkley

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2018 by S. M. Stirling

  “Readers Guide” copyright © 2018 by Penguin Random House LLC

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  ACE is a registered trademark and the A colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Stirling, S. M., author.

  Title: Black chamber / S. M. Stirling.

  Description: First edition. | New York : ACE, 2018.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017047810| ISBN 9780399586231 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780399586248 (ebook)

  Subjects: | GSAFD: Alternative histories (Fiction)

  Classification: LCC PS3569.T543 B58 2018 | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017047810

  First Edition: July 2018

  Cover design by Adam Auerbach

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  To Jan, in all possible worlds!

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To Kier Salmon, longtime close friend and valued advisor, whose help with things in Spanish and about Mexico—she lived there into adulthood—has been very, very helpful with this one, as well as her general advice to which I always listen carefully. My mother grew up speaking Spanish too (in Lima, Peru), but alas she and my aunt used it as a secret code the children couldn’t understand, and Kier has been invaluable in filling in those lacunae, as well as being a fine editor (and promising writer) in her own right.

  To Markus Baur, for help with the German language. Though he did chuckle at “pigdog.”

  To Dave Drake, for help with the Latin bits and a deep knowledge of firearms acquired in several different ways.

  To Alyx Dellamonica, for some really good advice on how to handle a crucial relationship. Bless the aunties!

  To my first readers; Steve Brady, Pete Sartucci, Brenda Sutton, Lucienne Brown, and Scott Palter.

  To Patricia Finney, for friendship and her own wonderful books, starting with A Shadow of Gulls and going on from there.

  To Roland and Sheila Richter at Joe’s Diner of Santa Fe—for putting up with me using their place as an unofficial office, not charging me rent, and for Roland helping me with some German subtleties. Besides, Joe’s is a really good diner.

  And to: Walter Jon Williams, Emily Mah, John Miller, Vic Milan, Jan Stirling, Matt Reiten, Lauren Teffeau, and Sareena of Critical Mass, our writer’s group, for constant help and advice.

  Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die; and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life. Both life and death are parts of the same Great Adventure.

  —THEODORE ROOSEVELT

  CONTENTS

  Praise for Black Chamber

  Also by S. M. Stirling

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

&
nbsp; CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Readers Guide

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  Sagamore Hill, Long Island, New York

  MAY 25TH, 1912–1912(B)

  Point of Departure plus 4 Hours

  There was a rising murmur of voices in the entranceway of Sagamore Hill’s great North Room. Theodore Roosevelt and his advisors ignored it.

  “Your tour’s really fired up the Party’s supporters, Colonel Roosevelt,” Lucius Swift said. “As far as the ordinary members are concerned, the Party’s ours. We took Ohio by nearly fifty thousand votes . . . Taft’s home state! It’s the Progressive Republican Party now in all but name.”

  “Bully!” Roosevelt said, sincerely.

  He’d broken with tradition and whistle-stopped the country as a candidate for the nomination, and he intended to do much more along those lines. Tradition was good, but you couldn’t let it become a set of shackles, turning a young vigorous country into a bunch of prissy lawyers . . . like his ex-friend and the current president, William Howard Taft. The North Room of his country estate, lined with books and maps and hunting trophies—he was very proud of the elephant tusks framing the entrance, and the rhino horn—showed what he was and how he led. From the front, as he’d led the Rough Riders up San Juan Hill with the 7mm bullets of the Spanish Mausers making that ripping-silk sound as they punched past his ears.

  Senator Dixon nodded. “They can’t win it now unless they steal it, so they’re panicking and punching below the belt. They stole New York outright with fake ballots, and they’ll rely on stuffing the selection committees to disqualify our delegates and put in theirs.”

  Roosevelt tapped his knuckles on the table thoughtfully. “The Old Guard controls the state machines and Taft has his hand on the federal patronage spigots. Right now we need to—”

  The voices rose to near-shouts, and the men around the table looked at each other. Some, like the newspaperman Frank Knox, had fought with him in Cuba; others like Croly had furthered the reform cause with their books . . . and Roosevelt was an author himself many times over. Only one was older than his own fifty-three years and a few were new to serious politics; earnest young men who reminded him of his earlier, unbattered self. He’d left strict orders that nobody should interrupt this late-night meeting with his closest advisors, and there were a couple of ex–Rough Riders at the entrance to enforce it, men whose real duties involved six-shooters and brass knuckles rather than the chores of stables and farm. Assassination wasn’t unknown—McKinley’s had put him in the White House a decade ago—and Roosevelt had been outspoken enough about the need to do something about Mexico’s gathering chaos that some wild-eyed fanatic might have traveled north to slay the gringo devil.

  “What is it?” Roosevelt said.

  He felt a welcome quickening of the blood. Whatever the news was, it would be a challenge.

  A flash of memory: that time in the Badlands of the Dakota Territory, walking into Nolan’s saloon and the taunting voice of the killing-drunk gunman demanding the four-eyed eastern dude buy the drinks all ’round, and the two Colts pointing at his gut. He’d laughed then . . . just before a quick right-left-right to the jaw had left the man unconscious on the sawdust-covered boards with the smoking pistols in his hands. The bullets had come close, but he’d never felt more alive.

  A fight gave life its savor . . . and so did an opportunity.

  “Telegraph, Colonel,” the pale-eyed man in the bowler hat said as he came to the balustrade at the entrance and waved a Western Union flimsy; there was a bulge under the left armpit of his cheap blue suit, a scar kinked his beaky nose, and his voice had a strong western twang. “You’re going to want to see this one right now and no mistake.”

  Whitlock’s a reliable man. This has to be something big . . .

  Herbert Croly went to the entranceway landing and reached up to take the paper. It took a moment for him to cross the big dim room, and the others had an instant to look at each other again with growing speculation. His usually stolid moon-shaped face went slack in surprise as he read.

  “Hell and damnation!” he said, even more uncharacteristically, being rather prim and reserved by nature. “President Taft’s dead!”

  “Good God!” a young Harvard man murmured under the chorus of gasps and oaths, which was a Boston Brahmin’s way of running around the room waving his arms and shrieking.

  “What!” Roosevelt said, almost a shout.

  After surprise came a stab of grief. He’d meant what he said when he called Taft a fat-headed Old Guard flubdub, but they’d been friends and allies once.

  “How?” he said sharply.

  “Just didn’t wake up from his nap after dinner. They think it was his heart. A gentle way to go, at least.”

  Roosevelt shook his head as the brief message was dropped on the table, looking at it as if it were a carrion bird cawing nevermore. Croly slumped back into his chair and gulped at a hitherto-untasted glass, choking a little on the brandy.

  “He never did exercise enough,” Roosevelt said sadly.

  Taft had looked like a walrus on legs for decades, and it had gotten worse since he moved into the White House and ate more to cope with the nervous strain. They’d had to install a custom-built bathtub seven feet by four after he got stuck in the regular one and was left roaring for help when he couldn’t pull himself out. The terrible grinding labor of campaigning in the new fashion must have been the last straw that broke him . . .

  “God rest his soul; he always meant well. As a judge, he’d have been magnificent. A patriot and a scholar, but he just wasn’t made to be a leader.”

  Theodore Roosevelt was a bit stocky himself these days, but it was nearly all muscle. He rode and wrestled and swam, hunted and hiked and split wood and pitched in on the farm here at Sagamore Hill with gusto, enjoying the strenuous, outdoor life he’d pursued since he was a sickly little boy dreaming of adventure. That was why he’d gone west to be a rancher, that and sorrow after his first wife died bearing her namesake daughter, Alice: for the challenge and the adventure of the rough frontier life. The same spirit had taken him through the East African wilderness and down the Nile, and it would take him back to the White House whatever the conservative faction thought.

  Everyone was silent for a long moment, in respect and speculation. Then Knox cleared his throat.

  “There’s Sherman,” he said, naming Taft’s vice president. “He’s able, and popular with the Old Guard. They could rally around him; he’s the president now, after all.”

  “No,” Roosevelt said incisively. “Sherman is very ill.”

  He’d known, but hadn’t mentioned it before because it hadn’t been directly relevant and a gentleman didn’t refer to another’s personal matters unless he must. Now it was something that had to be said.

  “How sick, Colonel?” Knox asked.

  Only men who’d fought with the Rough Riders called him that without the name attached; as a nickname he liked it a good deal more than Teddy, to which he was most unwillingly resigned when it came from other adults.

  “He’s dying, Frank,” Roosevelt said. “His kidneys, Bright’s disease. His doctors don’t think he can survive the year. He may not live to November.”

  Roosevelt wouldn’t wish that long painful passing on any man; he’d always carried a vial of morphine in dangerous situations, so that if death was coming he could choose its manner and time and not die like a beaten beast. But in practical terms . . . Possibly you could be nominated as a vice presidential candidate with a fatal disease. Not as a contender for president.

  And I’m as healthy as a bull moose!

  “We’ve got them, if we move quickly,” he said. “Their candidate is . . . gone, and now Sherman’s a sitting president but too sick to run. The Three Witches f
rom Macbeth couldn’t have cursed them more comprehensively.”

  “Good God Almighty,” Knox said . . . but in a very different tone, and looked at Roosevelt with a tinge of awe. “Colonel, didn’t Bismarck say something once about Providence and America—”

  Roosevelt knew the German statesman’s saying, but let Croly supply the quote:

  “‘A special Providence of God protects drunkards, small children, and the United States of America.’”

  Roosevelt waited for laughter, but nobody was treating it as a joke . . . or even smiling. He didn’t believe in divine intervention of that type himself, but he did believe in destiny, for men and nations. He could feel his stirring now, and with it America’s, like boulders shifting at the tipping point of an all-conquering avalanche. And all because of one blocked artery in a fat man’s heart, a tiny thing moving mountains. He went on thoughtfully, but with a growing feeling of exhilarating certainty:

  “The Old Guard probably can’t even agree on a candidate without an incumbent to run, not in the time they’ve got before the convention . . . and they don’t have the guts to bolt the Party when we carry the nomination.”

  Which I would have done, if they’d stolen it!

  Dixon broke a brown study of concentration: “Taft’s ordinary delegates will come over to us in the next week, or enough of them. But the big boys, and the corporations and trusts behind them . . . they’ll sit on their hands all the way to November.”

  The campaign manager’s warning meant he was already looking ahead to the general election. It was just dawning on the rest that the struggle they’d met here to plan was effectively over. The senator from Montana continued:

  “They’ll close their checkbooks too, and hope we’re discredited if the Democrats win.”

  “I don’t care if they pout. All the better! We can put reliable Progressives in every position while the malefactors of great wealth are sulking in their tents,” Roosevelt said.

  “We can build a Progressive Republican Party that’s a disciplined political army, not a divided rabble!” Croly said.